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There's a difference between being able to conjure up a few examples of things you think are immoral in any situation, and the conviction that evidence cannot,

There's a difference between being able to conjure up a few examples of things you think are immoral in any situation, and the conviction that evidence cannot, in principle, have any impact on what policies one should enact.

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yummyfajitas 16y ago
I did not claim that evidence should never change views. I gave an example illustrating that some views should not be changed by evidence. Evidence tells you how to maximize your objective function. It does not tell you what your objective function should be.
- goodside 16y ago
  You didn't. Shermer did. That's what I was complaining about initially. If you meant your comment as an interesting side note rather than a rebuttal, that's fine and I misread you. Maybe I should be less defensive.
  - yummyfajitas 16y ago
    What he is discussing is just a less extreme version of what I discussed. I picked a fairly strong and apolitical example [1] because I didn't want to devolve into a more political discussion. But maybe I have no choice, so here goes. Many liberals favor increasing distributional equality. In math terms, they wish to maximize L = (min utility) / (max utility). This means they should be open to arguments which argue "policy X decreases L, and should be opposed". However, many conservatives don't care about distributional equality, only overall utility, i.e. conservatives may wish to maximize C = 0.75 x (max utility) + 1.0 x (min utility). Therefore, such people would be unconvinced by any evidence based argument that "policy X reduces L". Shermer and I were both arguing that evidence can tell you have to maximize your objective function. Only ideology/morality/values can tell you what your objective function should be. [1] There is no clear political divide on torture. To pick recent high profile politicians, both Bush and Hillary supported it while McCain and Obama opposed it.

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yummyfajitas 16y ago

I did not claim that evidence should never change views. I gave an example illustrating that some views should not be changed by evidence. Evidence tells you how to maximize your objective function. It does not tell you what your objective function should be.

goodside 16y ago
You didn't. Shermer did. That's what I was complaining about initially. If you meant your comment as an interesting side note rather than a rebuttal, that's fine and I misread you. Maybe I should be less defensive.
- yummyfajitas 16y ago
  What he is discussing is just a less extreme version of what I discussed. I picked a fairly strong and apolitical example [1] because I didn't want to devolve into a more political discussion. But maybe I have no choice, so here goes. Many liberals favor increasing distributional equality. In math terms, they wish to maximize L = (min utility) / (max utility). This means they should be open to arguments which argue "policy X decreases L, and should be opposed". However, many conservatives don't care about distributional equality, only overall utility, i.e. conservatives may wish to maximize C = 0.75 x (max utility) + 1.0 x (min utility). Therefore, such people would be unconvinced by any evidence based argument that "policy X reduces L". Shermer and I were both arguing that evidence can tell you have to maximize your objective function. Only ideology/morality/values can tell you what your objective function should be. [1] There is no clear political divide on torture. To pick recent high profile politicians, both Bush and Hillary supported it while McCain and Obama opposed it.