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What if I’m wrong? (2023)

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Re: What if I’m wrong? (2023)

#131

Post by Jensson »

haswell wrote: post #121
Jensson wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They can be arguments, for example if you want to show that the other person has inconsistent views due to feelings or bias an analogy between the two inconsistent scenarios can make that clearer. I've changed my mind thanks to analogies many times.

To split hairs a bit, analogies can support arguments, but are not considered a conclusive form of evidence/argumentation in and of themselves in formal logic. While the analogy may have been instrumental in helping change your mind, it likely did so by helping you understand the actual underlying argument.

If a human based their views solely on formal logic then they wouldn't have an inconsistent world view in the first place, so I don't see why you bring up formal logic here.

> While the analogy may have been instrumental in helping change your mind, it likely did so by helping you understand the actual underlying argument.

The world would be a much better place if that was true, but sadly people base their world view largely on feelings and those feelings often doesn't care about the underlying arguments but they can feel the analogies. That goes for you and me as well, feelings are a fundamental part of human thinking, you can't just ignore that just because formal logic says it isn't important.

For example, a person might say that they are against racism but they are pro discriminating against white people. That aligns with their feelings, but it is inconsistent and you would need something more than formal logic to make them see that inconsistency. And once they see it you didn't do it by making them understand a formal argument, you did it by changing how they feel about things, they already agreed with you that discrimination is bad they just didn't apply that consistently due to their feelings clouding their minds.

Re: What if I’m wrong? (2023)

#132

Post by Jensson »

wayeq wrote: post #83
atdt wrote: post #5

Wonderful piece. Dennett knows how to write. And he captures the pleasure and privilege of Hacker News with this felicitous phrase: > Distributed understanding is a real phenomenon, but you have to get yourself into a community of communicators that can effectively summon the relevant expertise.

are you sure that's us? :)

Yes, you have a combination of people who learn and people who know here. That is what he described, and environment where you are allowed to be wrong and where people will correct you when you are. You don't get banned from HN for being wrong, so you are allowed to be wrong here, unlike many other forums like most of reddit.

Re: What if I’m wrong? (2023)

#133

Post by defrost »

Jensson wrote: post #131
haswell wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To split hairs a bit, analogies can support arguments, but are not considered a conclusive form of evidence/argumentation in and of themselves in formal logic. While the analogy may have been instrumental in helping change your mind, it likely did so by helping you understand the actual underlying argument.

If a human based their views solely on formal logic then they wouldn't have an inconsistent world view in the first place, so I don't see why you bring up formal logic here. > While the analogy may have been instrumental in helping change your mind, it likely did so by helping you understand the actual underlying argument. The world would be a much better place if that was true, but sadly people base their world view…

> If a human based their views solely on formal logic then they wouldn't have an inconsistent world view in the first place,

Can you remind the class about Gödel's second incompleteness theorem and what it says about consistency in formal logic systems?

Re: What if I’m wrong? (2023)

#134

Post by briHass »

bpshaver wrote: post #126
mtlmtlmtlmtl wrote: post #25

Daniel Dennett is still the only modern philosopher I know of that is capable of explaining his ideas to non-philosophers without it devolving into meaningless(to me) babble, or even worse, an endless cataloguing of all the possible views one could hold on something, along with their names.

Who are some examples of the type of modern philosopher you mean?

Not OP, and it depends on how 'modern' (or alive) fits the bill, but Heidegger is pretty impenetrable as a novice.

Re: What if I’m wrong? (2023)

#135

Post by Jensson »

knightoffaith wrote: post #117
Jensson wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When you read a fantasy story you don't really think about whether it is true or not, if someone asked you then you would say it isn't true, but you never thought about it before prompted. So for me the first time I really thought about whether god existed was in internet discussions. When I learned about the religions in school it was just a bunch of cool stories and cultural things, there was no need to think wheth…

Maybe there are some people you can't ask that, but of course, many are happy to deal with the question. And indeed, historically, theists have long engaged with questions about why their religion is true. Anyway, unlike fantasy stories, religious people are led into belief due to things like people insisting that a religion is true, arguments that suggest that God exist, and spiritual experiences. Maybe this isn't c…

> people insisting that a religion is true, arguments that suggest that God exist, and spiritual experiences

I just never met such people irl so I have no idea what that is like. Like, having a bunch of people trying to gaslight you into believing in these stories feels like a nightmare to me, I can see why you would say you believe just to make the nightmare end.

The only very religious person I talked to about these things irl said that belief is a very personal thing and he didn't care about what others thinks or doesn't think. I think that is much healthier, and with such an approach you get almost no believers since there is no longer any pressure to believe things we wouldn't naturally believe in.

Re: What if I’m wrong? (2023)

#136

Post by Jensson »

defrost wrote: post #133
Jensson wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If a human based their views solely on formal logic then they wouldn't have an inconsistent world view in the first place, so I don't see why you bring up formal logic here. > While the analogy may have been instrumental in helping change your mind, it likely did so by helping you understand the actual underlying argument. The world would be a much better place if that was true, but sadly people base their world view…

> If a human based their views solely on formal logic then they wouldn't have an inconsistent world view in the first place, Can you remind the class about Gödel's second incompleteness theorem and what it says about consistency in formal logic systems?

Nope, I wrote that based on a feeling not formal logic. But now I'm starting to feel that I was wrong there, see my mind is changing without any formal arguments.

Re: What if I’m wrong? (2023)

#137

Post by randomdata »

tsunamifury wrote: post #49

I applaud the author and thinker for taking on this timely and hard topic. I struggle with this question in the same way I think as the author, but in technology we are afforded less time to ponder if we are wrong and more time to test if we are wrong. However the author points out, even in testing as he does with his students, we can be wrong in a fundamental way that all the branches of my iterations stem from the…

> I wish more people would help me be “constructively wrong”

What's the value proposition? As you noted, not even your own wife will help you until she sees some kind of return for herself (abating her tiredness). Online actors pointing out irrelevant wrongness get to laugh at the meltdown of the maladjusted "intellectual" that usually follows.

This is what consultancy is for. You pay someone to look at what you are doing and tell you where you are going wrong. The pay offers the incentive. Most people are quite happy to offer consultant services for pay. But presumably you are having this wish because you want it for free?

Re: What if I’m wrong? (2023)

#138

Post by briHass »

a_square_peg wrote: post #86

I never got to ask this as an interview question, but I always thought it would be interesting to ask - 'if you were wrong, would you want to know?' Not on any particular topic but in general. When I asked this in casual settings, I thought it was illuminating that no one gave a simple 'yes' as an answer.

I would definitely think this would be very topic-dependent.

Perhaps the flip side to this is to consider when (if ever) lies or mistruths are allowable. After all, a lie, believed sincerely, makes the believer 'wrong' about something. I can certainly think of things told to me by people I care about, that if they turned out to be lies, I wouldn't gain any utility or value from their revelation.

Re: What if I’m wrong? (2023)

#139

Post by ggm »

dylan604 wrote: post #91
ggm wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I love the orange cream. I hate the nougat.

what if you're wrong

Then I have to change my mind. But I think right now, it's not that I'm wrong to prefer orange cream, it's that I can't justify it from objective criteria except that one time I split a tooth on hard nougat which might colour my preferences

Re: What if I’m wrong? (2023)

#140

Post by taneq »

ggm wrote: post #3

I've grown used to being corrected, to the point that it's a pleasant surprise to be told I might be right. What I notice more and more, is the "you're wrong" is used to buttress opinion masquerading as fact. If you preface "I think that.." to asserts it doesn't stop the "you're wrong" but it at least puts the discussion into the realms of conjecture about things, including facts, rather than simple asserts of facts…

> you need the right kind of cream.

Ina a similar vein, when people talk about managing creative technical types as ‘herding cats’ I respond that this is a management style issue: You don’t herd cats, you give them something to chase.

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