I find it is more likely that the times it degenerates into a fight is due to the lack of ability on one of the debaters. The alternative is to believe that people like ourselves are somehow special. It is anecdotal but I used to be incredibly stubborn until i met some good teachers and mentors. Now i think the burden of proof lies on the claim that, despite our apparent similarities, a large portion of humans are incapable of being reasoned with no matter how good the teacher or delivery. Of course i expect some people physically cannot reason due to brain damage or whatever. But these are a far smaller group than what i imagine you are suggesting.
I would claim their main goal is not fitting in but achieving happiness which they do by fitting in (albeit this may not be the most optimum path). And i claim this is your goal as well. If you can accept that premise, we again have to ask if you are special in some way for valuing the truth so highly? Do you not aim to be happy? I think you and i also have the same core goal we just realize that its easier to navigate to happiness with a map that closely matches reality. Everybody benefits from a good map. That is why a good teacher can convert bull headed people like i used to be by starting with providing tools for mapping reality such education in fallacies and biases. When packaged in an easy to digest manner, tools that help improve reality maps are so useful that very few will reject them just like very few people reject how to add and subtract.
Yes I feel that you are talking in vague but positive generalities.
First, on a side note, what do you mean by "but positive"? As in idealistic? Excuse my vagueness. I think it comes from trying to cover too much at once. I am going to pick on a fundamental idea i have and see your response because if you update my opinion on this, it will cover much of the other issues you raised.
I wrote a small post (www.wikilogicfoundation.org/351-2/) on what i view as the starting point for building knowledge. In summary it says our only knowledge is that of our thought and the inputs that influence them. It is on a similar vein to "I think therefore i am" (although, maybe it should be "thoughts, therefore thoughts are" to keep the pedantics happy) . I did not mention it in the article but if we try and break it down like this, we can see that our only purpose is to satisfy our urges. For example, if we experience a God telling us we should worship them and be 'good' to be rewarded, we have no reason to do this unless we want to satisfy our urge to be rewarded. So no matter our believes, we all have the same core drive - to satisfy our internal demands. The next question is whether these are best satisfied cooperatively or competitively. However i imagine you have a lot of objections thus far so i will stop to see what you have to say about that. Feel free to link me to anything relevant explaining alternate points of view if you think a post will take too long.
Thanks for taking the time to write all that for me. This is exactly the nudge in the right direction i was looking for. I will need at least the next few months to cover all this and all the further Google searches it sends me down. Perfect, thanks again!
Thanks for the links and info. I actually missed this last time around, so cannot comment much more until i get a chance to research Jaynes and read that link.
Who decides on what information is relevant? If i said i want to use men without beards and Alexander never had one, that would be wrong (at least my intuition tells me it would be) as i am needless disregarding information that skews the results. You say use all the info but what about collecting info on items such as a sword or a crown. I feel that is not relevant and i think most would agree. But where to draw the line? Gram_Stone pointed me to the reference class problem which is exactly the issue i face.
From the correct perspective, it is more extraordinary that anyone agrees.
Correct by whose definition? In a consistent reality that is possible to make sense of, one would expect evolved beings to start coming to the same conclusions.
Corrected by whose definition of correct?
From this question i assume you are getting at our inability to know things and the idea that what is correct for one, may not be for another. That is a big discussion but let me say that i premise this on the idea that a true skeptic realizes we can not know anything for sure and that is a great base to start building our knowledge of the world from. That vastly simplifies the world and allows us to build it up again from some very basic axioms. If it is the case that your reality is fundamentally different from mine, we should learn this as we go. Remember that there is actually only one reality - that of the viewers.
Do you not see that you are assuming you will suddenly be able to solve the foundational problems that philosophers have been wrestling with for millennia.
There were many issues wrestled with for millennia that were suddenly solved. Why should this be any different? You could ask me the opposite question of course but that attitude is not the one taken by any human who ever discover something worth while. Our chances of success may be tiny but they are better than zero, which is what they would be if no one tries. Ugh... i feel like i am writing inspirational greeting card quotes but the point still stands!
Object level disagreements can maybe be solved by people who agree on an epistemology. But people aren't in complete agreement about epistemology. And there is no agreed meta epistemology to solve epistemological disputes..that's done with same epistemology as before. Is there any resources you would recommend for me as a beginner to learn about the different views or better yet, a comparison of all of them?
I think the probability is close to zero because trying to "drill down" to force agreement between people results in fights, not in agreement.
We are not in agreement here! Do you think its possible to discuss this and have one or both of us change our initial stance or will that attempt merely result in a fight? Note, i am sure it is possible to result in a fight but i do not think its a forgone conclusion. On the contrary, i think most worthwhile points of view were formed by hearing one or more opposing views on the topic.
they will each support their own position by reasons which are effective for them but not for the other person
Why must that be the case? On a shallow level it may seem so but i think if you delve deep, you can find a best case solution. Can you give an example where two people must fundamentally disagree? I suspect any example you come up with will have a "lower level" solution where they will find it is not in their best interest. I recognize that the hidden premise on my thinking that agreement is always possible, stems from the idea that we are all trying to reach a certain goal and a true(er) map of reality helps us get there and cooperation is the best long term strategy.
Thanks for the suggestion. Added to reading list and commented on the stats site.
Sure, but why will they disagree? If I say there is 60% chance of x and you say no it is more like 70% then i can ask you why you think its 10% more likely. I know many will say "its just a feeling" but what gives that feeling? If you ask enough questions, i am confident one can drill down to the reasoning behind the feeling of discomfort at a given estimate. Another benefit of WL is it should help people get better at recognizing and understanding their subconscious feelings so they can be properly evaluated and corrected. If you do not agree, it would be really interesting to hear your thoughts on this. Thanks
The issues you raised are interesting but actually make this a pretty good example of my problem - how do you account for weak evidence and assign it a proper likelihood. One way i am testing this is by taking an example which i think is agreed to be 'most likely' (that he existed as opposed to not existing). Then i want to work backwards and see if we there is a method for assessing probability that seems to work well on small scale questions, like probability's of minted coins and give me the expected answer when i add it all together.
At this point i am still trying to work out the objective priors issue. The method either needs to be immediately agreeable by all potential critics or have an open and fair way of arguing over how to formulate the answer. When i work that out i will move to the next stages although no guarantee i keep using the Alexander example.