Re: The Conjunction Fallacy Fallacy

From: Michael Anissimov (michaelanissimov@gmail.com)
Date: Tue Aug 29 2006 - 01:38:28 MDT


John,

> "ad hominem". I was never accused of engaging in "ad hominem"
> (what a ridiculous phrase!)

It is standard and widespread on many intellectually-oriented mailing
lists and fora... it's somewhat disappointing that someone on this
list sees it as a foreign term.

> but rather Eliezer said I was the victim
> of it and he tried to convince me that the only reason he killed the
> thread was to protect my delicate sensibilities.

It was a long, long, long thread. (If we're talking about the
darwinian dynamics/SI one.) Usually there is a limit to how long a
thread can go before it starts repeating itself.

> I don't buy it for one nanosecond. This is a classic case of intellectual
> cowardice pure and simple.

No. People who write book-length works on cognitive science around
the age of 20 aren't really what you'd call intellectual cowards.
Rather, these are people who are exhausted with what they see as
uninformed and counterproductive bantering.

-- 
Michael Anissimov
Lifeboat Foundation      http://lifeboat.com
http://acceleratingfuture.com/michael/blog


This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Wed Jul 17 2013 - 04:00:57 MDT