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Overcoming Bias Commenter's avatar

Unknown, okay, but you would have to say, if you are honest, "I believe you are being irrational on this matter, hence I will continue to disagree with you." Or at least, one of you has to say this. And this despite the fact that each of you strenuously claims to be arguing in good faith and to being as close to rational as humanly possible. It still seems to me that calling a person irrational in such circumstances is disrespectful and disagreeable behavior. It is saying that the person is not being as open-minded and clear-headed as he claims to be.

I see Robin has a new posting on disagreement, I will go read that now.

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Overcoming Bias Commenter's avatar

Hal, the Aumann theorem makes it impossible to disagree with someone persistently without either believing that his position is irrational, or that he is convinced that your position is irrational. But it doesn't follow either that you don't respect him, or that he doesn't respect you; as I have stated before, everyone sometimes holds irrational beliefs. So an irrational belief can't be a reason to hold someone in contempt. Otherwise we would hold everyone in contempt, including ourselves, as Caledonian does (although he irrationally exempts himself, I presume.)

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