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Overcoming Bias Commenter's avatar

A fallacy is a type of arguement that resembles good reasoning, but that we should not find persuasive.

In evaluating Robin's or Kahneman's claims and arguements, what we should find persuasive is the evidence for the claim, and the truth of the premises of the arguement and the validity of the reasoning.

We should not find it persuasive one way or the other whether Robin or Kahneman is naive, or of the wrong generation (too old like me and Kahneman, or too young like Renshon) or of a different theoretical orientation or school of psychology or economics, or have an advanced degree or not, or have written on the subject or not, or respect us or not, or are politically to our taste or not. These are irrelevant to whether the evidence for the claim is present and convincing and whether the arguements have true premises and are validly reasoned.

With regard to Robin's claim that 'we have evolved most biases on purpose,' the evidence is not stated. If the evidence had been stated or pointed to, Kahneman possibly could have evaluated the claim based on the evidence.

Instead Kahneman seems to be evaluating the arguement -- ' evolutionary arguements are sometimes used rather naively to defend the conclusion that the mind is perfect.' Kahneman specifically criticizes the validity of the reasoning -- 'Assume for the sake of arguement that,,, we still would not see why Hanson is confident that...'

This is what it looks like to me.

On Robin's claim itself, as to the evidence for evolution of particular things, the best evidence is the genes themselves, as for example in recent work showing human evolution in the last 10,000 years in such genes as those governing lactose tolerance since humans started drinking milk, alcohol metabolism since humans started drinking alcohol, and in 10 or so other gene complexes. Next best are bones, tools and other artifacts, and things like cave paintings, rock carvings, marks on sticks, etc. But in my opinion none of these hold a candle to the genes themselves, now that we can read them.

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Robin Hanson's avatar

Eliezer, I understood before your claim that K&R's disagreement with me is due to talking about differing goals, but I didn't see any text evidence supporting that. Perhaps others can weigh in here.

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