Comment by TeMPOraL
10 years ago
> This guy believes in PROVING PSEUDOHISTORY. It's hard to understand what that even means, but let's look at specifics
No, he does not. He only said that a good book proving pseudohistory sounds totally convincing to a history layman like him, and so does a book disproving the previous book. Since he can't tell what is false from what is true without huge amount of effort into studying history (no one has time to study everything in that amount of detail), he concludes that his only solution to stay sane is to ignore both arguments and stay with the general science consensus.
> But it is utter nonsense to assign 100% probability to any of these (that's what proof means, it means 100% likely). These just aren't provable matters.
That's your implication, nowhere written in the text. The guy hangs out in rationalists circles, he knows better than to assign P=1.0 to stuff. I know because I read quite a lot of his articles.
I don't see how you're replying to my core point, which is that getting "totally convinced" is a function of the intuitive mind, and the intuitive mind will be totally convinced of anything that is consistent.
Could you help me understand the difference between "totally convincing" and proving? If you are "totally convinced" of something, isn't that a p=1.0?
Whether the topic is history or pseudohistory, words like "true", "false", "prove" and "disprove" really don't belong. Those words are fine in casual conversation, but they can't be part of the thinking of a serious person.
> I don't see how you're replying to my core point, which is that getting "totally convinced" is a function of the intuitive mind, and the intuitive mind will be totally convinced of anything that is consistent.
Well, I think that was actually his point - that if you're not an expert on a topic and don't have the explicit knowledge to counter your intuition, every relatively consistent set of arguments will sound convincing.
> Could you help me understand the difference between "totally convincing" and proving? If you are "totally convinced" of something, isn't that a p=1.0?
No, it's not, and assigning probabilities of 0 and 1 to anything is a very bad idea. See: http://lesswrong.com/lw/mp/0_and_1_are_not_probabilities/.
Otherwise, exept of pointing out that we have intuitive and explicit parts of reasoning that often oppose one another, I'm not sure what you're getting at.
> Whether the topic is history or pseudohistory, words like "true", "false", "prove" and "disprove" really don't belong. Those words are fine in casual conversation, but they can't be part of the thinking of a serious person.
Yes and no. They are shorthands. Unlike maths, in the real world you can't assign absolute true value to anything, but you can still be really, really sure. If I jump out of the fourth-floor window, I will hurt myself. That is true. Arguing that it's not true because you can't be absolutely positively 100% sure is just pointless arguing about words, a failure in communication. C.f. https://xkcd.com/1576/.
> assigning probabilities of 0 and 1 to anything is a very bad idea
THAT'S MY WHOLE POINT. Thank you. When a person says something is true/false/proven/disproven, that person is assigning a probability of 0 or 1 to it.
> http://lesswrong.com/lw/mp/0_and_1_are_not_probabilities/
I nearly cited this exactly. I love that article because it clearly spells out what's disturbed me for years about cloudy thinking.
When someone says a matter has been "proven" or "disproven", they are saying the matter is closed, and they feel no need to update in the future.
It's not pointless arguing. That's really what the words mean, and that's usually what people intend when they use those words. Other uses are misuses. It's perfectly OK to mis-speak in casual conversation and we're all obliged to understand each other in the most charitable way possible. On the other hand - when someone consistently speaks in a way that sure to be misunderstood, it's helpful to point this out.
And seriously - Kahneman made the overall point more clearly, with a practical antidote we can use every day. Being "totally convinced" is a clean indicator that our intuitive mind has latched onto consistency. And that's a very useful guideline to introspecting that very conclusion.
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