Virgil Kurkjian

Counterspells

Back in the early days of the internet, when New Atheism was king, people would collect and catalogue various logical fallacies. Then, when getting into an argument on some forum, they would identify and call out all the logical fallacies being used by their opponent; Ad Hominem! Appeal to Emotion! Tu Quoque! Post hoc, ergo propter hoc! These days we tend to know better. Appealing to these lists of logical fallacies and their Latin names doesn't help you, and it doesn't help the conversation. The problem is that to the person you're talking to, throwing around the names of these fallacies just sounds like an Argument from Authority— Wait! I mean, it just sounds like you think you're smarter or better educated than they are, which isn't relevant to the argument. If you really had something to contribute, you would explain the problem with their reasoning, rather than just throwing out a Latin term they've never heard of. Even if they have heard of it, you should still take the time to tell them why you think it applies to what they said. Logical fallacies are all sound complaints. But when disagreeing with someone, they deserve to hear the arguments those complaints are based on. More than that, you're not going to convince someone of your position unless you actually try to convince them. Fortunately, logical fallacies are such bad arguments that most of them can be rebutted in a few simple sentences. And the form of each fallacy tends to be so consistent that these rebuttals can be highly formulaic. In accordance with the Rationalist tradition that requires everything to have a nerdy sci-fi or fantasy name, I am calling these formulaic rebuttals Counterspells. Like I mentioned, I know that by now everyone knows how to avoid using these fallacies themselves. Most of us can also recognize when other people are using these bad arguments against us. Somehow the next step doesn't come as easily. You might think that an in

101Apr 27, 2019

Virgil Kurkjian

Message

Felix qui potuit rerum cognoscere causas.

320

Academia as Company Hierarchy

In The Gervais Principle, Venkatesh Rao argues that the show The Office "is not a random series of cynical gags aimed at momentarily alleviating the existential despair of low-level grunts. It is a fully realized theory of management that falsifies 83.8% of the business section of the bookstore." In this...

May 9, 202172

Billionaire Economics

I have progressive friends in my circles and so I see a lot of stuff like this: As well as somewhat more eloquent takes like this one, and a number of similar things I haven't bothered digging up. But I notice that I'm still confused. The entry-level mistake (which some...

Jul 28, 202022

Something about the Pinker Cancellation seems Suspicious

Something about the recent attempt to cancel Steve Pinker seems really off. They problem is that the argument is suspiciously bad. The open letter presents only six real pieces of evidence, and they're all really, trivially weak. The left isn't incompetent when it comes to tallying up crimes for a...

Jul 8, 20209

The Devil Made Me Write This Post Explaining Why He Probably Didn't Hide Dinosaur Bones

Recently, Scott Alexander has been blogging about how to figure out what theories to support when you can't easily perform empirical work to distinguish between them (here, here). Scott is a nuanced thinker, but in this case I think he's overcomplicating things. This problem has a simple solution. I. Proof...

Dec 5, 2019-1

The Right Way of Formulating a Problem?

David Chapman Writes, > Finding a good formulation for a problem is often most of the work of solving it. I agree with this intuitively, and I feel like I have seen this principle at work in my own work and in the problems I have tried to solve. However,...

Jul 2, 201915

Counterspells

Apr 27, 2019101

Leto among the Machines

I've always been surprised that there's not more discussion of Dune in rationalist circles, especially considering that: 1. It's a book all about people improving their minds to the point where they become superhuman. 2. It's set in a world where AI Goal Alignment issues are not only widely understood,...

Sep 30, 201857

LESSWRONG
LW

LESSWRONG
LW

Virgil Kurkjian

Virgil Kurkjian

Virgil Kurkjian

Counterspells

Academia as Company Hierarchy

Leto among the Machines

Billionaire Economics

Virgil Kurkjian

Academia as Company Hierarchy

Billionaire Economics

Something about the Pinker Cancellation seems Suspicious

The Devil Made Me Write This Post Explaining Why He Probably Didn't Hide Dinosaur Bones

The Right Way of Formulating a Problem?

Counterspells

Leto among the Machines

Counterspells

Academia as Company Hierarchy

Leto among the Machines

Billionaire Economics

Academia as Company Hierarchy

Billionaire Economics

Something about the Pinker Cancellation seems Suspicious

The Devil Made Me Write This Post Explaining Why He Probably Didn't Hide Dinosaur Bones

The Right Way of Formulating a Problem?

Counterspells

Leto among the Machines