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I said: any strong evidence that no human action could improve the poor's fortunes. That's not an answer, it's just a tautology. "Anything that meets the crit

I said: any strong evidence that no human action could improve the poor's fortunes. That's not an answer, it's just a tautology. "Anything that meets the criteria of the question you asked" is not an answer. I'm asking for specific measurements. E.g., "data showing that holding economics constant, certain groups wildly underperform". Of course, if your views are faith based then no such measurement exists. Given how carefully you avoid stating such a measurement, this is my belief. I, too, would oppose a violent solution, and not only for egotistical reasons, but your example is a non-sequitur. A hypothetical designed to probe the limits of your morality is hardly a non-sequitur. Similarly, the trolley problem probably never literally happened in real life. That doesn't mean it's a non-sequitur to ask. Anyway, good to know that there is little in this discussion beyond assertions of faith and dodging the core questions. Have fun.

pron 11y ago
> I'm asking for specific measurements. E.g., "data showing that holding economics constant, certain groups wildly underperform". I don't understand. What measurement would have convinced you that it is impossible for humans to cross the Atlantic in under a day? You're making an impossibility claim and ask me to come with a measurement to verify it. I guess I could come up with a very long and boring series of experiments, each invalidating a possible approach, but nothing that you couldn't think of yourself. > Of course, if your views are faith based then no such measurement exists. Both of our views are largely based on values (although mine is augmented by study) but the difficulty of proving an impossibility result is not a consequence of that. Also, I'm not sure why you choose to call values "faith". Not that I mind, but "value" is the familiar philosophical (and psychological) term that is most apt here. > Anyway, good to know that there is little in this discussion beyond assertions of faith and dodging the core questions. As someone who implies that his views are based on measurements, you seem strangely incapable of listening and processing new input. Remember, valuable input does not have to be raw data, if, for example, it points out that your mathematical reasoning is based on unfounded assumptions. You don't "know" what you have just said any more than you did before joining the conversation. You pre-supposed that, and then didn't try to understand what I was saying. Which goes to show that mere observation doesn't change any conclusion if it is never processed by the observer. How do you expect to have an interesting conversation if you don't make the effort to understand what the other side is actually saying? Aren't you even curious to see whether you could come up with good arguments to counter the other side's actual arguments? It's OK to accidentally talk past one another because of a misunderstanding, but it seems like you're making a conscious effort to not understand what people are saying (and not just me), and then respond to your own made-up distortion by ridiculing that made-up position. What's the point?
- yummyfajitas 11y ago
  What measurement would have convinced you that it is impossible for humans to cross the Atlantic in under a day A reliable measurement of the speed of light (supposing of course that we still knew SR). If the result were smaller than width of atlantic / 1 day, I'd have been convinced that transatlantic travel must take > 1 day. You pre-supposed that, and then didn't try to understand what I was saying. True - my initial theory is that your views are faith based. I then made a measurement that could prove me wrong; I asked you what evidence could change your views. Had you stated concrete measurements then I'd have had to change my theory. Since my theory predicted reality perfectly I don't need to change it. As for why I don't attempt to predict your views, that's a trap. If you were arguing in bad faith then whatever measurement I proposed (and then refuted) would result in you simply accusing me of not "try[ing] to understand what I was saying".
  - pron 11y ago
    > If the result were smaller than width of atlantic / 1 day, I'd have been convinced that transatlantic travel must take > 1 day. Perfect. You're looking for a very gross upper bound. In that case, I could say that proof that human behavior is unchangeable would also convince me. But I'd go one step further -- if low IQ was shown to be the main cause of poverty, I would change my views, too. Not on the necessity of a solution (I mean, we're also genetically incapable of flying, but that didn't stop us from building airplanes) but on the kind solution we need. > I asked you what evidence could change your views. Had you stated concrete measurements then I'd have had to change my theory. Since my theory predicted reality perfectly I don't need to change it. Ah, so let me question your powers of deduction. When I said "anything that would show that no human action would change the poor's fortunes" you assumed I was stating a tautology because you chose to interpret my words that way; that is not the only interpretation, though (and in this case, it was the wrong one). If, you had chosen to assume that I wouldn't be so stupid as to offer a tautology (which I am not), you would have realized I meant something else altogether: that proving an impossibility result is very hard, and either requires lots and lots of different kinds of evidence, or a completely irrelevant upper bound -- as in your speed of light example (and I admit that I chose that example precisely because I knew you would come up with the speed of light) -- that is known to be false in both the Atlantic-crossing argument as well as in the question on the elasticity of human behavior. You could have assumed (correctly, if you had paid attention to what I'm saying), that questions like "but what would you say in a world with spherical cows" are of no interest to me, because the answers are obvious. If you construct an imaginary world where your conclusion is the only reasonable one, any reasonable person would reach that same conclusion. The only purpose of such questions is to test if the other side is indeed as stupid as you imagine them to be. As I am not, I see no reason in playing that game (again -- just assume that I would say the same as you) and writing the obvious answer -- it's boring. I believe that problems arise when cows aren't spherical, so questions about obvious-world are both obvious, and are nothing more than taunts. What really happened wasn't that my behavior matched your theory -- it most certainly didn't -- but that you've chosen to imagine that it does by trying hard to not understand what I was saying. I can also surmise as to the mechanism, which I have detailed before: when someone disagrees with you on such matters you assume that they are not as smart as you, and then create an image of that reality in your mind by misinterpreting their words to match the interpretation that would be the intention of your imagined idiot. My theory was that you always choose to interpret the other side's words in a way that would twist them to match the presumed claims of an idiot, and as a result you never actually give counter-arguments but pose teases (which you call "core questions") that do nothing to move the discussion forward (I even know how you'd respond to this). My theory was yet again proven correct, and I think that much more convincingly than yours. And, BTW, if by "faith-based" you mean based on values, then yours are, too. The difference between us is that you fail to see that. In fact, that might explain a lot. If you believe that your conclusions are based on pure reasoning and nothing else, then if anyone does not reach the same conclusions, their reasoning must be faulty (or they assign different probabilities than yours, but that is still perfectly in your comfort zone). You have no choice but to assume that the other side is stupid, because if they are not, then that means that your own conclusions arise from values, too. While I can't convince you right now that that belief is wrong[1], I would suggest -- as an eye-opening exercise -- to comb your reasoning for hidden assumptions that could reasonably be false. If you can't find any, then either you are the greatest philosopher who ever lived or have a blindness to your own thought-process. [1]: There are two problems here: 1. Is it possible to reach ethical conclusions from probabilities and reasoning alone? and 2. Is that what you're actually doing? I'm not sure I know the answer to 1, although I believe it to be false (I can answer the claims made by ethical naturalists, and believe that they don't really tackle this exact question), but so far I am very convinced that the answer to 2 is no.

pron 11y ago

> I'm asking for specific measurements. E.g., "data showing that holding economics constant, certain groups wildly underperform". I don't understand. What measurement would have convinced you that it is impossible for humans to cross the Atlantic in under a day? You're making an impossibility claim and ask me to come with a measurement to verify it. I guess I could come up with a very long and boring series of experiments, each invalidating a possible approach, but nothing that you couldn't think of yourself. > Of course, if your views are faith based then no such measurement exists. Both of our views are largely based on values (although mine is augmented by study) but the difficulty of proving an impossibility result is not a consequence of that. Also, I'm not sure why you choose to call values "faith". Not that I mind, but "value" is the familiar philosophical (and psychological) term that is most apt here. > Anyway, good to know that there is little in this discussion beyond assertions of faith and dodging the core questions. As someone who implies that his views are based on measurements, you seem strangely incapable of listening and processing new input. Remember, valuable input does not have to be raw data, if, for example, it points out that your mathematical reasoning is based on unfounded assumptions. You don't "know" what you have just said any more than you did before joining the conversation. You pre-supposed that, and then didn't try to understand what I was saying. Which goes to show that mere observation doesn't change any conclusion if it is never processed by the observer. How do you expect to have an interesting conversation if you don't make the effort to understand what the other side is actually saying? Aren't you even curious to see whether you could come up with good arguments to counter the other side's actual arguments? It's OK to accidentally talk past one another because of a misunderstanding, but it seems like you're making a conscious effort to not understand what people are saying (and not just me), and then respond to your own made-up distortion by ridiculing that made-up position. What's the point?

yummyfajitas 11y ago
What measurement would have convinced you that it is impossible for humans to cross the Atlantic in under a day A reliable measurement of the speed of light (supposing of course that we still knew SR). If the result were smaller than width of atlantic / 1 day, I'd have been convinced that transatlantic travel must take > 1 day. You pre-supposed that, and then didn't try to understand what I was saying. True - my initial theory is that your views are faith based. I then made a measurement that could prove me wrong; I asked you what evidence could change your views. Had you stated concrete measurements then I'd have had to change my theory. Since my theory predicted reality perfectly I don't need to change it. As for why I don't attempt to predict your views, that's a trap. If you were arguing in bad faith then whatever measurement I proposed (and then refuted) would result in you simply accusing me of not "try[ing] to understand what I was saying".
- pron 11y ago
  > If the result were smaller than width of atlantic / 1 day, I'd have been convinced that transatlantic travel must take > 1 day. Perfect. You're looking for a very gross upper bound. In that case, I could say that proof that human behavior is unchangeable would also convince me. But I'd go one step further -- if low IQ was shown to be the main cause of poverty, I would change my views, too. Not on the necessity of a solution (I mean, we're also genetically incapable of flying, but that didn't stop us from building airplanes) but on the kind solution we need. > I asked you what evidence could change your views. Had you stated concrete measurements then I'd have had to change my theory. Since my theory predicted reality perfectly I don't need to change it. Ah, so let me question your powers of deduction. When I said "anything that would show that no human action would change the poor's fortunes" you assumed I was stating a tautology because you chose to interpret my words that way; that is not the only interpretation, though (and in this case, it was the wrong one). If, you had chosen to assume that I wouldn't be so stupid as to offer a tautology (which I am not), you would have realized I meant something else altogether: that proving an impossibility result is very hard, and either requires lots and lots of different kinds of evidence, or a completely irrelevant upper bound -- as in your speed of light example (and I admit that I chose that example precisely because I knew you would come up with the speed of light) -- that is known to be false in both the Atlantic-crossing argument as well as in the question on the elasticity of human behavior. You could have assumed (correctly, if you had paid attention to what I'm saying), that questions like "but what would you say in a world with spherical cows" are of no interest to me, because the answers are obvious. If you construct an imaginary world where your conclusion is the only reasonable one, any reasonable person would reach that same conclusion. The only purpose of such questions is to test if the other side is indeed as stupid as you imagine them to be. As I am not, I see no reason in playing that game (again -- just assume that I would say the same as you) and writing the obvious answer -- it's boring. I believe that problems arise when cows aren't spherical, so questions about obvious-world are both obvious, and are nothing more than taunts. What really happened wasn't that my behavior matched your theory -- it most certainly didn't -- but that you've chosen to imagine that it does by trying hard to not understand what I was saying. I can also surmise as to the mechanism, which I have detailed before: when someone disagrees with you on such matters you assume that they are not as smart as you, and then create an image of that reality in your mind by misinterpreting their words to match the interpretation that would be the intention of your imagined idiot. My theory was that you always choose to interpret the other side's words in a way that would twist them to match the presumed claims of an idiot, and as a result you never actually give counter-arguments but pose teases (which you call "core questions") that do nothing to move the discussion forward (I even know how you'd respond to this). My theory was yet again proven correct, and I think that much more convincingly than yours. And, BTW, if by "faith-based" you mean based on values, then yours are, too. The difference between us is that you fail to see that. In fact, that might explain a lot. If you believe that your conclusions are based on pure reasoning and nothing else, then if anyone does not reach the same conclusions, their reasoning must be faulty (or they assign different probabilities than yours, but that is still perfectly in your comfort zone). You have no choice but to assume that the other side is stupid, because if they are not, then that means that your own conclusions arise from values, too. While I can't convince you right now that that belief is wrong[1], I would suggest -- as an eye-opening exercise -- to comb your reasoning for hidden assumptions that could reasonably be false. If you can't find any, then either you are the greatest philosopher who ever lived or have a blindness to your own thought-process. [1]: There are two problems here: 1. Is it possible to reach ethical conclusions from probabilities and reasoning alone? and 2. Is that what you're actually doing? I'm not sure I know the answer to 1, although I believe it to be false (I can answer the claims made by ethical naturalists, and believe that they don't really tackle this exact question), but so far I am very convinced that the answer to 2 is no.