5 ms·

I used to naively assume that intelligence implied rationality. An old work colleague taught me differently. My old work friend was really intelligent. He had

by berntb 13y ago

I used to naively assume that intelligence implied rationality. An old work colleague taught me differently. My old work friend was really intelligent. He had been considering a PhD in philosophy and had problems to stop talking about Wittgenstein. On one hand, this guy had a large interest -- and deep studies -- on the subjects of language meaning, epistemology, logic, the scientific method, etc. On the other hand, he believed in conspiracy theories like being a 9/11 truther, etc. I tried to discuss this contradiction with him, but probably tried to reason on a too low level. I argued that there is an infinite number of conspiracy theories that would satisfy the available facts. It might have worked better to simply ask: "What does your philosophy studies say about conspiracy theories based on hand picked facts?" Such a sad, sad waste of a good brain.

marcosdumay 13y ago
> I argued that there is an infinite number of conspiracy theories that would satisfy the available facts. Thus, you can't say it wasn't a conspiracy. Yeah, you can't say it was one either. Both of you are jumping to conclusions, what's irrational by the definition of the article.
- berntb 13y ago
  I'm not going to discuss arguments about one of the beliefs of a non-rational person. If you feel a pressing need to iron out the finer distinctions of such stuff, I'm certain there are multiple suitable sub-reddits. (But I'll add: There are also an infinite number of non-conspiracy theories fitting the facts.) Edit: coldtea, sorry I'm not going to discuss e.g. if an infinite number of possible alien species could be responsible for 9/11. (And no, not even if the possibly existing alien species are enumerable :-) ) See above. I might, if I had more time.
  - coldtea 13y ago
    >There are also an infinite number of non-conspiracy theories fitting the facts. That's wrong too. Social life and human action don't have infinite possibilities. Depending on what scale you draw the line for detail, there are is a finite number of theories fitting any fact -- and less of them, if you include possibilities (Ocamm's razor). And the more facts you have, the smaller the number of theories becomes.
- tstactplsignore 13y ago
  The reality is rational people do dismiss hypotheses completely unsupported by the available evidence. They just at the same time acknowledge that they could theoretically be wrong. There's nothing irrational with saying; "Aliens did not build the Pyramids", or "I know that aliens did not build the pyramids". It is assumed that a rational person acknowledges an infinitesimally small possibility that they are wrong in stating such a fact, but the reality is, all claims whether negative ("There is no conspiracy") or positive ("There is a conspiracy") are accepted by a rational person with such an acknowledgment of varying importance, so there's no reason for a rational person to append every statement with "but I could be wrong". The crucial flaw I think that you (and the many, many others who have made such arguments) make is a fallacious distinction between positive and negative claims. Let's take a positive claim like: "There is a chair in the corner of the room". This claim, however, well supported by physical evidence (our rational subject has felt the chair, seen the chair, and seen others interact with the chair), can't be known rationally with absolute certainty- of course, there's always the possibility that some sufficiently advanced technology, conspiracy, mind-altering substance, or intelligent being is deceiving the rational subject, and there is no chair. This remote possibility must be acknowledged, but at the same time, it is dismissed by every rational agent, and rational agents do not base their actions on such possibilities. The point is, every positive claim like "There is a chair" can be framed as a negative claim like "There is no force or phenomena deceiving me into believing there is a chair". Thus, if your suggestion that "dismissing unsubstantiated negative claims is irrational" is accurate, it would follow that you also cannot accept any positive claims without being irrational. Rationality is having an open mind, accepting the most likely conclusion based on the available evidence, and properly estimating the degree to which you may be wrong. It works exactly like that for both positive and negative claims. I hope you realize this isn't just semantics. This difference is crucial in understanding why arguments like "You don't know for certain if there's no God" and "You can't prove there's no conspiracy" are flawed, and these arguments are actually used by irrational people to justify all kinds of nonsense.
coldtea 13y ago
>Such a sad, sad waste of a good brain. Except if he is right, you know. Which depends on which conspiracies he is arguing about, and on what depth. It's just as wrong to assume the official or popular version of the stories was correct, just because it was reported in the media that way. If he argued for example that there was widespread surveillance of Americans 2 years ago, lots of people would have told him "No, that's a conspiracy theory". Well, turns out it wasn't. If somebody argued that the CIA knowlingly had people sell crack in the USA in order to finance foreign operations, people would also yell that it's a conspiracy theory. But then you get this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CIA_and_Contras_cocaine_trafficking_in_the_US http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CIA_and_Contras_cocaine_traffic...
- berntb 13y ago
  I'm not going to go over this guy's many and varied strange opinions, just note that they were conspiracy theories and that he thought people he didn't agree intellectually with were dishonest (e.g. AI researchers from before the AI winter). And so on. (And if you have a hard and certain opinion about something really complex you don't understand without good facts/logic for support, what are you doing..? Don't answer, that was a rhetorical question.)
comefrom30 13y ago
> he believed in conspiracy theories like being a 9/11 truther, etc. On that subject, there's a video that it would be great it every American watched. It's made by a group called Architects & Engineers for 9/11 Truth. It's about evidence that explosives were used on 9/11. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ddz2mw2vaEg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ddz2mw2vaEg

by berntb 13y ago

marcosdumay 13y ago

> I argued that there is an infinite number of conspiracy theories that would satisfy the available facts. Thus, you can't say it wasn't a conspiracy. Yeah, you can't say it was one either. Both of you are jumping to conclusions, what's irrational by the definition of the article.

berntb 13y ago
I'm not going to discuss arguments about one of the beliefs of a non-rational person. If you feel a pressing need to iron out the finer distinctions of such stuff, I'm certain there are multiple suitable sub-reddits. (But I'll add: There are also an infinite number of non-conspiracy theories fitting the facts.) Edit: coldtea, sorry I'm not going to discuss e.g. if an infinite number of possible alien species could be responsible for 9/11. (And no, not even if the possibly existing alien species are enumerable :-) ) See above. I might, if I had more time.
- coldtea 13y ago
  >There are also an infinite number of non-conspiracy theories fitting the facts. That's wrong too. Social life and human action don't have infinite possibilities. Depending on what scale you draw the line for detail, there are is a finite number of theories fitting any fact -- and less of them, if you include possibilities (Ocamm's razor). And the more facts you have, the smaller the number of theories becomes.
tstactplsignore 13y ago
The reality is rational people do dismiss hypotheses completely unsupported by the available evidence. They just at the same time acknowledge that they could theoretically be wrong. There's nothing irrational with saying; "Aliens did not build the Pyramids", or "I know that aliens did not build the pyramids". It is assumed that a rational person acknowledges an infinitesimally small possibility that they are wrong in stating such a fact, but the reality is, all claims whether negative ("There is no conspiracy") or positive ("There is a conspiracy") are accepted by a rational person with such an acknowledgment of varying importance, so there's no reason for a rational person to append every statement with "but I could be wrong". The crucial flaw I think that you (and the many, many others who have made such arguments) make is a fallacious distinction between positive and negative claims. Let's take a positive claim like: "There is a chair in the corner of the room". This claim, however, well supported by physical evidence (our rational subject has felt the chair, seen the chair, and seen others interact with the chair), can't be known rationally with absolute certainty- of course, there's always the possibility that some sufficiently advanced technology, conspiracy, mind-altering substance, or intelligent being is deceiving the rational subject, and there is no chair. This remote possibility must be acknowledged, but at the same time, it is dismissed by every rational agent, and rational agents do not base their actions on such possibilities. The point is, every positive claim like "There is a chair" can be framed as a negative claim like "There is no force or phenomena deceiving me into believing there is a chair". Thus, if your suggestion that "dismissing unsubstantiated negative claims is irrational" is accurate, it would follow that you also cannot accept any positive claims without being irrational. Rationality is having an open mind, accepting the most likely conclusion based on the available evidence, and properly estimating the degree to which you may be wrong. It works exactly like that for both positive and negative claims. I hope you realize this isn't just semantics. This difference is crucial in understanding why arguments like "You don't know for certain if there's no God" and "You can't prove there's no conspiracy" are flawed, and these arguments are actually used by irrational people to justify all kinds of nonsense.

coldtea 13y ago

>Such a sad, sad waste of a good brain. Except if he is right, you know. Which depends on which conspiracies he is arguing about, and on what depth. It's just as wrong to assume the official or popular version of the stories was correct, just because it was reported in the media that way. If he argued for example that there was widespread surveillance of Americans 2 years ago, lots of people would have told him "No, that's a conspiracy theory". Well, turns out it wasn't. If somebody argued that the CIA knowlingly had people sell crack in the USA in order to finance foreign operations, people would also yell that it's a conspiracy theory. But then you get this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CIA_and_Contras_cocaine_trafficking_in_the_US http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CIA_and_Contras_cocaine_traffic...

berntb 13y ago
I'm not going to go over this guy's many and varied strange opinions, just note that they were conspiracy theories and that he thought people he didn't agree intellectually with were dishonest (e.g. AI researchers from before the AI winter). And so on. (And if you have a hard and certain opinion about something really complex you don't understand without good facts/logic for support, what are you doing..? Don't answer, that was a rhetorical question.)

comefrom30 13y ago

> he believed in conspiracy theories like being a 9/11 truther, etc. On that subject, there's a video that it would be great it every American watched. It's made by a group called Architects & Engineers for 9/11 Truth. It's about evidence that explosives were used on 9/11. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ddz2mw2vaEg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ddz2mw2vaEg