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Plans you're not supposed to talk about

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Re: Plans you're not supposed to talk about

#231

Post by WalterBright »

danblick wrote: post #83

The author presents the idea that "you may be born into a culture with social practices that you don't understand but that work for your benefit; they may work better if you don't understand them!" I find this idea a little repellant, but it's something Friedrich Hayek wrote about too. (In my mind Hayek is the person most associated with distributed knowledge.) ~"You may not understand the forces that have led societ…

Similarly, nobody understands the free market. (This is likely why there's so much interest in socialism, as the mind yearns for order and predictability.)

Yet the free market works well despite this lack of understanding, and even contempt, of it.

Re: Plans you're not supposed to talk about

#232

Post by tshaddox »

BurningFrog wrote: post #213
tshaddox wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This sentiment seems completely useless (actually incredibly dangerous) without at least some attempt at explaining how we might distinguish between aspects of society which seem terrible but are actually secretly good even though no one knows why, and aspects of society which seem terrible because they're terrible.

You ask a difficult and important question. The two relevant ideas I know are: 1. Chesterton's Fence: "I don't understand why this exists, so let's tear it down" is an big and tempting error. Wait until you understand. 2. Consequences of societal change are inherently unknowable, which is why revolutions usually end in tragedy. The sane approach is to change society incrementally, see what happens, and adjust and lea…

> Chesterton's Fence: "I don't understand why this exists, so let's tear it down" is an big and tempting error. Wait until you understand.

Right, but the quote I was questioning seemed to indicate that this principle should be applied in cases where no one knows or perhaps even there is no way to know what the purpose is or even in there is one.

That’s a much stronger claim than Chesterton’s fence, because a fence is at least a pretty clear indication of human intent (prevent creatures or objects of a certain size from traveling from one particular area to another), and the class of reasons to build a fence is fairly bounded and can feasibly be investigated.

Also, I’m not sure how Chesterton’s fence is used in detail, but I wouldn’t agree that you must discover the original reason for the fence to justify removing it. You should investigate all the normal reasons a fence would be there, and if no extant reason turns up, tear down the fence and maybe keep an eye out for a while in case you missed something.

I don’t want Chesterton’s fence to devolve all the way to the precautionary principle. Sure, maybe the fence was never needed as a traditional fence, and instead was built by ancient people because they were visited by aliens who said they will destroy Earth if there is ever not a fence in that location. Sure, that’s probably physically possible, but keeping the fence around because of that possibility is terrible epistemology.

Re: Plans you're not supposed to talk about

#233

Post by timeon »

czbond wrote: post #210
alasdair_ wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What if believing in one specific god pisses off the “real” god when you die and you go to hell for believing in the wrong god, while not believing in any god gets you a free pass? If we’re making up unfalsifiable claims then this seems just as likely to happen as not.

Any enlightened G0d would know that humans minds are limited, and thus the worship of any G*d is actually meant for them. Thus no problem. [Italics are being inserted by HN]

If it is enlightened do you even need to be believer?

Re: Plans you're not supposed to talk about

#235

Post by tomcatfish »

bsedlm wrote: post #48

this is the best explanation I've even seen for a positive aspect to secrecy. yet I still distrust secretive practices on principle, because evil deeds require secrecy 99% of the time

I'm on the side of honesty here despite the argument for secrecy, but I want to note your argument can be firmed up interestingly.

You say "evil deeds require secrecy 99% of the time" which means that P(need_secrecy | evil) = 0.99

However, you are saying you don't like secrecy because of this, which means you are accessing a different fact, P(evil | needs_secrecy)

This is one of my favorite examples of flawed reasoning of all time because it is almost entirely hidden until you formalize things in one of a few ways: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prosecutor's_fallacy

Comment note: P(A|B) = P(A&B)/P(B) is the "conditional probability" and is read "Probability of A given B".

Re: Plans you're not supposed to talk about

#236

Post by salt-thrower »

guidoism wrote: post #62
mherdeg wrote: post #54

Reading this gave me a kind of horrifying idea that goes something like: You know about a deadly disease whose most serious outcomes can be avoided by getting a shot. Many members of a group in your society have decided they don't want to get the shot. You are annoyed by the way they talk about a lot of things, including the way they talk about avoiding the shot. They, in turn, call you "smug" for the way your group…

Yikes don’t say that out loud! But seriously, the left needs to think more like this. The right plays dirty and if the left plays like this they get the same outcomes of playing dirty but is not saying anything bad or wrong.

Social conditioning by years of right-wing media to distrust everything any scientist says is what will cause the outcomes we're seeing, not a cartoonish reverse psychology plot.

Re: Plans you're not supposed to talk about

#237

Post by WalterBright »

WalterBright wrote: post #231
danblick wrote: post #83

The author presents the idea that "you may be born into a culture with social practices that you don't understand but that work for your benefit; they may work better if you don't understand them!" I find this idea a little repellant, but it's something Friedrich Hayek wrote about too. (In my mind Hayek is the person most associated with distributed knowledge.) ~"You may not understand the forces that have led societ…

Similarly, nobody understands the free market. (This is likely why there's so much interest in socialism, as the mind yearns for order and predictability.) Yet the free market works well despite this lack of understanding, and even contempt, of it.

The free market works well in spite of downvotes, too!

Re: Plans you're not supposed to talk about

#238

Post by ejb999 »

shkkmo wrote: post #141
EB-Barrington wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Our vaccines are working exceptionally well. They continue to work well for Delta with regard to severe illness and death - they prevent it, but what they can't do anymore is prevent transmission," CDC Director Rochelle Walensky

Preventing transmission != reducing transmission rates. The vaccines absolutely do the later.

are you sure about that? - seems right now the most vaccinated states also seem to have the largest spike in cases - I agree the vaccine, at this point anyway, seems to be reducing deaths - but not sure I agree on transmission - seems like it it still spreading worse than before.

And no, I am not an antivaxxer i I am triple vaxxed myself and work in the healthcare field.

Re: Plans you're not supposed to talk about

#239

Post by tomcatfish »

czbond wrote: post #212
veqz wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pascal's wager. But the big flaw there is rather straightforward: which god? Is worshiping a false god better or worse than not worshiping at all? Should one avoid eating pork in case the Jewish/Islamic god is real? Or maybe avoid eating beef in case the Hindu religions are the true ones? Or maybe the Jains have it figured out, and you should really be vegan to be safe? Perhaps the Aztecs were right, and we're way ov…

I think Pascal's wager didn't take the final logical step. A G0d knows that any worship on Earth is meant for them. It's like a symlink

Well, the god of the Christians doesn't seem to know that as there is a commandment written to not worship other gods.

Either many gods seem to have missed the memo that they are identical to all other gods of their type or your conception of religion is more about you than the religions that actually exist, and I would bet on the latter.

Re: Plans you're not supposed to talk about

#240

Post by imgabe »

tshaddox wrote: post #225
imgabe wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The GP said aspects of society you don't understand. You changed "don't understand" to "seems terrible". Those aren't the same thing. This doesn't require you to accept things that you find terrible.

No, I only mentioned the ones that seem terrible because those are the ones you would be most inclined to change.

Ah, well I think the answer would be to investigate whether something that seems terrible, is in fact actually terrible or not, and then act on that rather than a superficial impression.
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