felipec
unbelief
No bio...
User ID: 1796
felipec
unbelief
1yr ago
You don't need education to gain knowledge. And you don't need to go to a school to be educated.
felipec
unbelief
1yr ago
Whom to believe? I wouldn't know unless I had spent really long time studying dynamics of bridge safety.
If you don't know who to believe, then don't believe anyone. Why must people trust anybody?
felipec
unbelief
1yr ago
I'm willing to engage in open debate with you, and your chance to convince me depends on the correctness of your position.
And who decides the correctness of my position? You. So in order for me to be able to convince you that X may be true, I first have to convince you that X may be true, but X cannot be true, because you have decided that the position that X may be true is not correct, why? Because X cannot be true.
How is this not the definition of circular reasoning?
felipec
unbelief
1yr ago
Would you say that most people outside of here would agree that when one assumes something, one cannot have any level of doubt about it?
No, I believe most people outside of here would agree that when one assumes something it can mean that one doesn't have any level of doubt about it.
If so, does she believe there is a 0% chance that she will receive unequivocal evidence otherwise?
Yes, if that's what she believes, which the word "assume" does not necessarily imply.
If she was previously absolutely certain that a dog is in the box, then why wouldn't she adopt one of the alternative hypotheses compatible with both her assumption and the evidence?
Because she might be attempting to be a rational open-minded individual and actually be seeking the truth.
By my prior notion of "believe with zero doubt", your prompt is vacuous, since it is impossible that "Alice believes claim X is true with zero doubt" but also "changes her mind", since if she can change her mind, then she didn't actually have zero doubt.
It's not impossible because of a fundamental aspect of reality: change.
It's entirely possible for x=1 at t=0, and x=0.8 at t=1.
Under that notion, ChatGPT is logically permitted to output whatever it wants, since it is not consistently capable of detecting absurdities in its input.
The fact that you think it's absurd doesn't mean it is absurd. It is not absurd to me.
So whenever you tell ChatGPT that Alice has "zero doubt" or "absolute certainty", it may be inferring that you're probably mistaken or exaggerating (since many people exaggerate all the time), and that Alice is strongly but not absolutely convinced.
It may, but it's clearly not, since in your interaction it said: "If Alice truly had absolutely zero doubt", and then concluded "it would be unlikely for her to change her belief based". You seem to have a motivated reasoning since you are ignoring what it is saying. It's not impossible for Alice to change her belief, even if she truly had absolutely zero doubt.
The first time, you indeed said you believe that the dictionaries are wrong.
No, I said I believed if they said X, then they would be wrong.
How is he "wrong" about his own notion of an assumption?
Because if you flip the definitions they are entirely correct under my view. Even under your view "assume" is stronger than "suppose", and he is saying the opposite.
felipec
unbelief
1yr ago
But there is still zero evidence that such a teapot doesn't exist. Even if I were to grant you that your rationale is solid, that's not evidence.
I feel people have a hard time understanding that unlikelihood is not evidence. If someone tells me it's unlikely for me to lose in Russian roulette, that's not evidence that I'm going to win. Unlikely events happen all the time, and people don't seem to learn that.
What are the chances that the entire housing market is overpriced and it's about to collapse? Someone might have said "almost impossible" right before the financial crash of 2008, and in fact many did.
What are the chances that Bernie Madoff is running a Ponzi scheme given that his company has already passed an SEC exam? Again, "almost impossible" is what people said.
Black swans were considered impossible long time ago, and yet they existed, which is precisely why the term is used nowadays to describe things we have no evidence for, but yet could happen.
You can be considered right in thinking that black swans don't exist, that Bernie Madoff is legit, and that the housing market is not about to collapse (innocent), right until the moment the unlikely event happens and you are proven wrong. It turns out a cheeky Russian astronaut threw out a teapot in the 1970s and it has been floating since.
Why insist in believing the unlikely is not going to happen only to be proven wrong again and again when we can just be skeptical?
felipec
unbelief
1yr ago
It's hard for something to be most common reason for something if you can do it only once in your whole life, and you have plenty of warning before it.
No it's not, it's basic statistics. You can only donate your heart once by dying, and guess what's the most common reason for heart donation: death.
OTOH, I'm pretty sure a lot of people tried to scam rationalists
False equivalence fallacy.
Surely, they haven't been scammed this particular way before, but nobody has been scammed this particular way before, so there's nothing special for rat circles.
Yes they have. Financial fraud is not new.
BTW, a lot of much more weathered people - like journalists, politicians, Hollywood types, etc. - had accepted SBF with open arms.
This has nothing to do with my argument, you are attacking a straw man of it. Of course there are dumb journalists who fell for the scam, but the intelligent ones with solid epistemology likely did not, because they have epistemic humility.
felipec
unbelief
1yr ago
You made this claim:
It's an assumption about the meaning of the question, not an assumption about the actual laws of arithmetic, which are not in question.
The "laws of arithmetic" that are relevant depend 100% on what arithmetic we are talking about, therefore it's imperative to know which arithmetic we are talking about. People assume it's the normal arithmetic and cannot possibly be any other one. There is zero doubt in their minds, and that's the problem I'm pointing out.
felipec
unbelief
1yr ago
My post has absolutely nothing to do with bases. Did you read it?
felipec
unbelief
1yr ago
Because if you look at historical polls and elections you can see Ukraine has been pro-Russia a substantial amount of its short history, in particular the regions in the east, and in particular the regions in the east that speak Russian. If you look at recent polls like "Ukraine should continue fighting until it wins the war" you can see these regions as not particularly eager to continue fighting, it's only the western regions that want to fight, and in particular Kiev. If you look at a density map you'd see the south-eastern regions are particularly denser.
There's also the referendums where a significant part of the population voted to join Russia. Even if you consider them a complete sham, there are interviews of people voting clearly wanting to be part of Russia.
I believe people underestimate the desire for peace and having a normal life, and also the devastation of war. Which is why I don't find surprising at all the westerns part of Ukraine so eager to continue the fight: they haven't seen any of it. The regions who have been devastated by the conflict the most are the ones most eager for it to stop.
Moreover a lot of things can change, for example there's talk of Poland absorbing part of the western region of Ukraine, other neighboring countries could also do the same. If that happens Ukraine will be left without the most anti-Russian population.
Plus, Russia is already helping the new territories it has annexed, that could sway opinion in their favor.
And finally there's a lot of information in Telegram channels which if true would paint in a greener light the Russian forces and the Ukrainian ones much less so, which will eventually move public opinion.
In just don't trust Western mainstream media to paint an accurate picture of what Ukrainian people actually want.
felipec
unbelief
1yr ago
Information is always limited. Humans and all rational agents always operate with limited information. There is no omission.
felipec
unbelief
1yr ago
Yes, but to point out what the true answer depends on, a level-3 skeptic has to first doubt the problem. A level-3 skeptic might not know the answer, but it's better to say "I don't know", than what some confident people would automatically say: 50%.
felipec
unbelief
1yr ago
I said 2+2=4 in standard arithmetic is not the same statement as 2+2=0 (mod 4).
You keep omitting the context of your own statements, you clearly implied that "more than 0.0001% people think 2+2 is necessarily 4", obviously you meant in standard arithmetic, since very few people know that 2+2=4 (mod 4) even exists. And you also accepted 2+2=4 (mod 4) is not the same statement as 2+2=4, therefore it's entirely possible for more than 0.0001% people to think that 2+2=4, and less than 0.0001% people think that 2+2=4 (mod 4).
felipec
unbelief
1yr ago
No, it's not. A person can gain knowledge with zero education. They are independent.
felipec
unbelief
1yr ago
You would probably be rightly frustrated because you'd feel that you addressed that point, but my summary simplified your explanation away.
Because it's too simple. But if you try to do it in say two paragraphs you might be able to extract the gist of it.
I notice this with Scott Alexander's writings pretty often, where I think 'I don't need all this extra stuff', but then see comments from people that didn't closely read the piece. They object in a way that was answered by the thing I thought was unnecessary
I'm pretty sure I can come up with better versions of at least some of Scott Alexander's writings that are in fact simpler. I wouldn't be making the same points as him though.
People have too much ego though and think that their ideas cannot be explained better by other people, or even find it offensive for example if I claim I can explain something better than Scott Alexander. Why?
In open source projects programmers have to get rid of that ego, and other people constantly suggest ways to simply the code, sometimes rewrite it completely, and guess what the original author says... Thanks. I've made better versions of some big wig programmers and nobody finds it impossible or offensive. We all think differently and some people think of thinks we just don't. Why would that hurt anybody's ego?
felipec
unbelief
1yr ago
If someone reads your words, "Most people assume we are dealing with the standard arithmetic" (from your 2 + 2 post), do you believe that they are likely to understand that you mean, "Most people have zero doubt in their minds that we are dealing with the standard arithmetic"?
No, I believe in this particular case they would understand that "assume" in this context means "take for granted", but that doesn't contradict the notion that they have zero doubts in their minds. They have zero doubts in their mind because most people don't see there's any doubt to be had.
Are you saying that "assuming something is true" is different from "thinking something is true with 100% certainty"
No.
and that you are making two different points in your Substack post and submission?
No. In my substack article I said: "Why insist on 100% certainty?". My point and the objective of my point are two different things.
If people are capable of accepting evidence against what they think is true, regardless of whether they previously had 100% certainty, then why shouldn't people have 100% certainty?
Because the fact that it can happen doesn't mean it's likely to happen.
By Bayes' theorem
Not everyone follows Bayes' theorem.
And if it's true that under Bayes the probability of an event doesn't get updated if the prior is 1, regardless of the result. Then that proves Bayes is a poor heuristic for a belief system.
When you said, "I believe they are", were you not referring to the dictionaries being "flat-out wrong to say [those things]"?
Yes, I was. So I believe the dictionaries saying those things are wrong.
Or did the links I provided not show them saying those things?
The links you provided showed one dictionary saying those things, therefore if I believe those dictionaries saying those things are wrong, I believe that one dictionary saying those things is wrong.
How does this imply that his definitions are "wrong" when they are not flipped?
I explained that in the very next sentence.
Where do I say that?
You literally said: «since most people here were under the impression that by an "assumption" you meant a "strong supposition"».
felipec
unbelief
1yr ago
You don't need to trust anyone to make a decision. Nor do you need to believe anything.
felipec
unbelief
1yr ago
The correctness of your position is a matter of fact.
According to you.
That's pretty cheap trick.
Most people when faced with something they have not imagined complain about that.
But when you have multiple ways to do something, the it's different - it's hard for the way that you can do only once to be the most common.
No it's not. Do I really have to explain it with statistics?
Say everyone will experience event X once in their lifetime, which is 80 years in average, that means in a population of 1000 in every given year around 12.5 people will experience it for that reason in average. Now let's say there's another way they can experience X that also happens for everyone in their lifetime, so again it's 12.5. In this case the percentage of people who experience X for the first time every given year is 50%, so it's not the most common cause.
But, what if the other way doesn't happen for 100% of the people, they learn their lesson and it only happens to 50% of the people? In that case it's only 6.25 people and the percentage of people who experience X for the first time any given year is 67%, therefore it's the most common cause.
Your failure of imagination is not an argument.
Fraud in general is not new. This one in particular is.
No. All fraud relies on people trusting without good reason, or more specifically: not distrusting enough. This is no exception.
It remains to be proven that no intelligent ones with solid epistemology in fact did, and only dumb ones did.
Indeed, but it doesn't have to be proven because the hallmark of having a solid epistemology is not believing things without evidence, and in order to fall for the fraud you have to believe things without evidence. So if anyone with a solid epistemology fell for the fraud, they would have to be almost by definition a very rare exception.
felipec
unbelief
1yr ago
Thanks. It's a work in progress to try to question the fundamentals of belief, and the discussions it has generated show it's surprising difficult to get intelligent people to question their own cherished beliefs, which in the case of rationalists in theory should not be the case.
felipec
unbelief
1yr ago
I think you have a fundamental misunderstanding of what Bertrand Russel was doing when he proved 1+1=2
No, I don't. In mathematics the word "proof" has a very precise meaning, and anything without a "proof" is held as tentative (i.e. not necessarily true), for example a conjecture.
This entirely depends on the set of axioms you choose as as foundation, and you certainly could choose 1+1=2 as one of those axioms, therefore it's an assumption that doesn't need to be substantiated. But if you get rid of that axiom, then 1+1=2 is held as tentative and thus lacking proof.
much in the same way that the point of "coding Hello World in assembly" is not "coding Hello World in assembly" but "coding Hello World in assembly."
You are making a very obvious assumption there.
Russel was showing that you could lower the "basement" of mathematics and consider it as starting from another foundation deeper down from which you could construct all mathematical knowledge, and to do that he had to build towards mathematics where it already stood.
I know.
Another way to think about it is that he tried to refactor the 1+1=2 axiom into more fundamental axioms. But this work necessitates the possibility that an axiomatic system that doesn't have 1+1=2 as an axiom is tenable. If such a system exists (which I think Bertrand Russell pretty much proved), that means that 1+1=2 does not need to be assumed to be true, it can be inferred.
I call "not assume" "doubt", but it doesn't matter what you call it, the fact is that to write Principia Mathematica Bertrand Russell had to not assume 1+1=2.
felipec
unbelief
1yr ago
Then please stop assuming that my uncountable usage of "the concept of arithmetic in general" in that sentence is secretly referring to your countable idea of "a single arithmetic".
Where did I "assume" that in my last comment?
I've clarified my meaning twice now, I'd appreciate it if you actually responded to my argument instead of repeatedly hammering on that initial miscommunication.
I don't know what argument you are talking about. If you are referring to this:
-
almost no one uses the notation associated with real-number arithmetic in a way contrary to real-number arithmetic
-
∴ I refuse to entertain the notion that someone is actually referring to some system of arithmetic incompatible with real-number arithmetic when they use the notation associated with real-number arithmetic, unless they first clarify this
That's not an argument, you are just stating your personal position. You are free to do whatever you want, if you don't want to doubt a particular "unequivocal" claim, then don't. Your personal position doesn't contradict my claim in any way.
Why should there be any doubt in their minds
Because that's what skepticism demands. I assert that 100% certainty on anything is problematic, which is the reason why skepticism exists in the first place.
felipec
unbelief
1yr ago
That's the field where you would doubt 1+1=2, not because you actually doubt it, but because you expect insight from dispelling that doubt.
It doesn't matter if Bertrand Russell personally doubted it or not, he acted as if it was rational to not believe with 100% certainty something which had not been proven yet, and it was.
The reason he attempted to dispell that doubt, is that absent that proof, it was reasonable to doubt.
It's the same level of abstraction as wondering whether you're actually a brain in a vat.
Which is a valid doubt in philosophy.
In politics or engineering, you can't do that.
You have to doubt in engineering, for the same reason you have to doubt in every field. Bridges have fallen because engineers did not doubt enough.
felipec
unbelief
1yr ago
No need to be salty.
That's specifically why I mentioned the converse error fallacy. Just because somebody appears to be salty doesn't mean that he is.
I am asking the people who voted for the winner if they could explain why. I am genuinely curious.
To be honest, I do think my post is better than the winner too
I agree as well.
TheMotte like all places has its tastes and our job was to cater to that taste.
No, our job was to write an essay about intuition, the price was the motivation, not the goal. Just like the goal of a newspaper is supposed to be to inform the truth, not to make money. Pandering to a specific audience wasn't supposed to be the goal.
You are trying to distract from what you said, this is what you said:
You also said:
It's very clear what you said:
Most people think
2+2=4is trueThe existence of modular arithmetics makes
2+2=0another representation of the same statement2+2=0 (mod4)is not the same statement as2+2=0There are facts. I'm not misrepresenting anything you said.
If by
2+2=0you didn't mean2+2=0, but2+2=0 (mod 4), then that contradicts your initial claim that most people think2+2=4is true, because to be the same statement it would need to be2+2=4 (mod 4).So either your claim (2) is false becase
2+2=0 (mod 4)is not another representation of2+2=4, or it's unrelated to claim (1) because2+2=4 (mod 4)is not the same as2+2=4.Either way your argument is invalidated.
But it's pretty clear that you meant
2+2=4, not2+2=4 (mod 4), because the former is what most people think is true. You are trying to antagonize me to distract from the fact that your argument has been blown up to bits.You know what you tried to do, and now you are trying to hide it. Even when one tries to be as charitable as possible, there's only one likely conclusion: you are arguing in bad faith.
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