I think BB would agree with me that purely positive consequentialism (i.e., the view that a life with any positive experiences is better than oblivion) is, although prima facie pretty implausible, not something that can be rejected out of hand.
Meat eater problem, many conclusions you could make from it, one might be to value human lives much more than animal lives, to avoid claiming that saving/inducing human lives is bad, and killing/preventing human lives is good, on consequentialist grounds.
Hmm. Why not be a skeptic or someone who’s agnostic about everything. The credence in *your* rational thought about a subject being correct should be very low if many people much smarter than you are intractable divided over the issue and have been for many many years with no progress.
I think this is mostly right, but missing out on two important facts.
1. People can be very smart at one thing and not very smart at another thing, and
2. It becomes harder to change one's mind the older one gets.
So, a person like Paul Cockshott could be amazing at computer science, good at economics, but just not good at sociology or at trying to put himself in others shoes. Maybe he heard some arguments why society should be egalitarian, and because he isn't good at sociology, he hasn't realized that those arguments don't make sense. Or he just can't put himself in the shoes of someone who doesn't value egalitarianism, so he assumes everyone must like it, and people who are against it are just being self interested.
Or maybe he was convinced of socialism at 15 and only hung around with socialist friends for 10 years after that, and after 25 it just starts to be harder to change ones mind, so now he might hold some beliefs that there really are only terrible arguments for, but as a teenager he didn't really care about that sort of thing and just believed what his friends did, and now it's just such a core part of his identity, and the human brain really isn't built to change ones mind after 25, so he just keeps clinging to his set of beliefs even though he "should" be smart enough to realize how bad all the arguments are.
(He's just an example; I'm not claiming his beliefs are especially bad or so.)
Exactly. James Lindsay is obviously far better at maths than I could ever be, and is competent enough to write books and explain things. But my god, from my perspective, he sounds moronic.
Agree with the broad point but I have talked to some people who know about math about Lindsey and apparently his thesis is like hilarious bad mathematically, for reasons I couldn't understand but they all seemed to agree on.
Have you encountered Helen Beebee's paper Philosophical Scepticism and the Aims of Philosophy? This reminds me very much of some parts of the paper, although she focuses on disagreement within philosophy. https://youtu.be/a0h--LV7g6c?si=zNYBkwYyjy-3ngUV
In my experience, highly intelligent, nuanced, politically fixated, and creative people do not converge on a single correct perspective. Rather, they diverge in beliefs as they are each one is more capable of generating justifications for novel worldviews.
At what point do you think “Alexander Pruss disagrees with me” should stop being an undercutting defeater for your confidence in atheism? Is anyone spared?
This reads like the realisations of a 20 year old. Of course opinions differ even with complete information. This is because the axioms/goals/objectives/priorities people start with are different.
Many laypeople have sort of incoherent or vague views on big issues, that they are nevertheless deeply committed to, in such cases it's hard for me to imagine anyone intelligent and knowledgeable being able to defend such views. A good example might be vague macroecon stuff and banking stuff, it's just a story with a particular conclusion in mind, with details fleshed out after the fact.
I spent awhile trying to think of exceptions to this. Something that some dumb people do believe but no smart person believes. In the end, I could only think of some really dumb conspiracy theories, specifically flat earthers and lunar landing being faked. Even those two, I would only be a little surprised if someone intelligent believes one of those somewhere in the entire internet.
This is certainly true. Very intelligent people can definitely have differing views on any given topic.
And one does become annoyed at the atheist who insist that people who subscribe to religious belief are stupid or deceived. These atheists are utterly ignorant.
I'd be curious about the arguments of your anti-Israel friend, because though I support Israel that does not mean I approve of the Gaza campaign (I hope that it's more justifiable than I think but I wish Israel had made a different choice) and I don't approve of the land encroachment in the West Bank.
So what is the non-naive view in defense of factory farming? Are there intelligent arguments in favor of it? Can you share them?
I think BB would agree with me that purely positive consequentialism (i.e., the view that a life with any positive experiences is better than oblivion) is, although prima facie pretty implausible, not something that can be rejected out of hand.
I don’t support factory farming, but I guess the main defense of it is that it produces cheap meat.
It seems like millions could be made in defense of factory farming, I mean I don’t support it personally but it’s not indefensible like flat earth is
Meat eater problem, many conclusions you could make from it, one might be to value human lives much more than animal lives, to avoid claiming that saving/inducing human lives is bad, and killing/preventing human lives is good, on consequentialist grounds.
Hmm. Why not be a skeptic or someone who’s agnostic about everything. The credence in *your* rational thought about a subject being correct should be very low if many people much smarter than you are intractable divided over the issue and have been for many many years with no progress.
I think this is mostly right, but missing out on two important facts.
1. People can be very smart at one thing and not very smart at another thing, and
2. It becomes harder to change one's mind the older one gets.
So, a person like Paul Cockshott could be amazing at computer science, good at economics, but just not good at sociology or at trying to put himself in others shoes. Maybe he heard some arguments why society should be egalitarian, and because he isn't good at sociology, he hasn't realized that those arguments don't make sense. Or he just can't put himself in the shoes of someone who doesn't value egalitarianism, so he assumes everyone must like it, and people who are against it are just being self interested.
Or maybe he was convinced of socialism at 15 and only hung around with socialist friends for 10 years after that, and after 25 it just starts to be harder to change ones mind, so now he might hold some beliefs that there really are only terrible arguments for, but as a teenager he didn't really care about that sort of thing and just believed what his friends did, and now it's just such a core part of his identity, and the human brain really isn't built to change ones mind after 25, so he just keeps clinging to his set of beliefs even though he "should" be smart enough to realize how bad all the arguments are.
(He's just an example; I'm not claiming his beliefs are especially bad or so.)
Exactly. James Lindsay is obviously far better at maths than I could ever be, and is competent enough to write books and explain things. But my god, from my perspective, he sounds moronic.
Agree with the broad point but I have talked to some people who know about math about Lindsey and apparently his thesis is like hilarious bad mathematically, for reasons I couldn't understand but they all seemed to agree on.
It's much easy to quantify stupidity than intelligence.
I can fairly confidently say I am of 'above average intelligence', but not a genius.
It helps to believe as little as possible.
Have you encountered Helen Beebee's paper Philosophical Scepticism and the Aims of Philosophy? This reminds me very much of some parts of the paper, although she focuses on disagreement within philosophy. https://youtu.be/a0h--LV7g6c?si=zNYBkwYyjy-3ngUV
In my experience, highly intelligent, nuanced, politically fixated, and creative people do not converge on a single correct perspective. Rather, they diverge in beliefs as they are each one is more capable of generating justifications for novel worldviews.
At what point do you think “Alexander Pruss disagrees with me” should stop being an undercutting defeater for your confidence in atheism? Is anyone spared?
This reads like the realisations of a 20 year old. Of course opinions differ even with complete information. This is because the axioms/goals/objectives/priorities people start with are different.
It is the realisation of a 20-year-old
Many laypeople have sort of incoherent or vague views on big issues, that they are nevertheless deeply committed to, in such cases it's hard for me to imagine anyone intelligent and knowledgeable being able to defend such views. A good example might be vague macroecon stuff and banking stuff, it's just a story with a particular conclusion in mind, with details fleshed out after the fact.
I agree with the thrust of this but I still can’t imagine a non-naive defense of “Defund the police” or 2020 election denial.
Growing up religious I experienced the same thing in the opposite direction, all atheists are stupid and have no convincing arguments.
I spent awhile trying to think of exceptions to this. Something that some dumb people do believe but no smart person believes. In the end, I could only think of some really dumb conspiracy theories, specifically flat earthers and lunar landing being faked. Even those two, I would only be a little surprised if someone intelligent believes one of those somewhere in the entire internet.
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This is certainly true. Very intelligent people can definitely have differing views on any given topic.
And one does become annoyed at the atheist who insist that people who subscribe to religious belief are stupid or deceived. These atheists are utterly ignorant.
I'd be curious about the arguments of your anti-Israel friend, because though I support Israel that does not mean I approve of the Gaza campaign (I hope that it's more justifiable than I think but I wish Israel had made a different choice) and I don't approve of the land encroachment in the West Bank.