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This feels like a motte and bailey. It proves that not all sustained incompetence is malice. But you need to prove a stronger claim: That sustained incompeten

by jonahx 5y ago

This feels like a motte and bailey. It proves that not all sustained incompetence is malice. But you need to prove a stronger claim: That sustained incompetence, by an actor capable of competence, and who would gain from incompetence, is not malice. But this is a case that can only be resolved in specific contexts, not in general. Because of course it's possible all the incompetence was accidental. Likewise it's possible the incompetence is being used as cover. However, it's reasonable to be suspicious in these cases.

JoshCole 5y ago
I don't need to prove a stronger claim. Equality requires showing that all cases are the same. He is the one who asked if they were always the same. In other words, if they were equal. Inequality doesn't require that all cases are shown to be the same. It only requires that there is a single difference. Consider that 110 is different to 111 despite the fact that they both share a common prefix. If you're correct and I must prove that 11 and 11 are not equal to each other in order for these numbers to be different then it must be the case that 1 != 1 for the very concept of differences to exist. If that is true then the entire of mathematics breaks down because the identity function no longer holds.
JoshCole 5y ago
It feels like a motte and balley because you're getting confused about what his question was. You seem to think his question was whether a malicious actor can pretend to be incompetent. That wasn't his original question. That was the situation he presented later when asking me for more detail. The existence of that claim doesn't have any bearing on his actual question. It shows an instance in which the union of the two sets isn't the empty set not that the two sets are equal. There exists a disjoint. Therefore they are not equal. QED. However, for the purposes of debate lets say we strictly limit our discussion to the cases in which there is malice. We're now in a competitive context in which our upside is going to be minimized. A lot of people don't seem to realize that the prisoner dillema is actually a condemnation of rational behavior, since it traps us in the worst possible world. It's actually smarter in plenty of real world scenarios to intentionally cooperate, sacrificing your own utility, rather than engaging in tit for tat. Flowing out from this mathematical idea are many teachings in religion from the Lord Jesus Christ like being good to those who are evil to you. You can see the underlying principle in our biology too. We aren't strictly rational, we instead have emotions. In particular people who are angry with other people have health consequences. There is a biological punishment to choosing not to cooperate built into us. This shows that evolution has selected for that quality which implies there is a benefit to this. I say all this because not attributing to malice what is better explained by stupidity isn't a completely foolish idea even in the case that they actually were malicious. The world in which they merely pretended to be incompetent is less severe than the nuclear war of tit for tat that wipes out all life on Earth and leaves it an irradiated wasteland.

by jonahx 5y ago

JoshCole 5y ago

I don't need to prove a stronger claim. Equality requires showing that all cases are the same. He is the one who asked if they were always the same. In other words, if they were equal. Inequality doesn't require that all cases are shown to be the same. It only requires that there is a single difference. Consider that 110 is different to 111 despite the fact that they both share a common prefix. If you're correct and I must prove that 11 and 11 are not equal to each other in order for these numbers to be different then it must be the case that 1 != 1 for the very concept of differences to exist. If that is true then the entire of mathematics breaks down because the identity function no longer holds.

JoshCole 5y ago

It feels like a motte and balley because you're getting confused about what his question was. You seem to think his question was whether a malicious actor can pretend to be incompetent. That wasn't his original question. That was the situation he presented later when asking me for more detail. The existence of that claim doesn't have any bearing on his actual question. It shows an instance in which the union of the two sets isn't the empty set not that the two sets are equal. There exists a disjoint. Therefore they are not equal. QED. However, for the purposes of debate lets say we strictly limit our discussion to the cases in which there is malice. We're now in a competitive context in which our upside is going to be minimized. A lot of people don't seem to realize that the prisoner dillema is actually a condemnation of rational behavior, since it traps us in the worst possible world. It's actually smarter in plenty of real world scenarios to intentionally cooperate, sacrificing your own utility, rather than engaging in tit for tat. Flowing out from this mathematical idea are many teachings in religion from the Lord Jesus Christ like being good to those who are evil to you. You can see the underlying principle in our biology too. We aren't strictly rational, we instead have emotions. In particular people who are angry with other people have health consequences. There is a biological punishment to choosing not to cooperate built into us. This shows that evolution has selected for that quality which implies there is a benefit to this. I say all this because not attributing to malice what is better explained by stupidity isn't a completely foolish idea even in the case that they actually were malicious. The world in which they merely pretended to be incompetent is less severe than the nuclear war of tit for tat that wipes out all life on Earth and leaves it an irradiated wasteland.