Laurence Tennant hosts essays by Stephen Bond on logical fallacies, Bayes' theorem culture, and critical thinking.
Commenters cite "The Ad Hominem Fallacy Fallacy" to argue that questioning a speaker's trustworthiness is not ad hominem, and share the Bayes' theorem critique.
> I cannot judge to which degree these theses are bullshit.
Go the link, go to references, read about them. I'll outline the gist: Most of what Yudkowsky says is extremely sci-fi, no real basis in scientific fact, but stretching the current technological progress to the point where his opinions on things (stuff like transhumanism, singularity) can be justified.
What he's preaching isn't science. Certainly not rigorous experimental science. He (along with Bostrom) tends to engage in extreme hypotheticals. Which, sure if you're a philosopher, is fine. But even then, wouldn't you want your work to be judged by like-minded peers? But alas, here has a convenient excuse of being "auto didactic" to fall back on, so he can sit on his armchair and critique traditional education, and his lack of peer reviewed material.
Not to mention, and this is a bit of a pet peeve, I find that most LW people are too self-absorbed, I've literally seen a blog where the person who runs it "warns" the readers that what he writes is too complicated for people to follow. This sort of narcissistic, self congratulatory thinking is what puts me off more than anything. Writing long form posts on the Internet which use complicated words don't make you smart.
http://laurencetennant.com/bonds/cultofbayes.html is another critique. It comes off as bit crass, but stick with it.
> I've found LW a tremendously rich source of thinking tools and I'm convinced that reading or skimming a lot of the sequences have…
I can't do better than this post:
https://laurencetennant.com/bonds/adhominem.html
... and to say that most instances in which ad-hom is invoked on HN result in stupid debates about whether an argument is (a) actually ad-hom and (b) fallaciously ad-hom (a subtlety most invokers on HN don't really grok).
I think we already have a culture that rejects personalized arguments, and "ad hominem", which gets deployed because people have long ago pulled it out of one of those Internet "fallacy lists", virtually always just clouds discussions. It's certainly more corrosive than "whataboutism".
Honestly, I think it's possible that all "canned" fallacy arguments --- ad hom, whataboutism, argument from authority, straw-man --- basically contravene the "principle of charity" guideline, and that it'd be worth having the guidelines ask people not to deploy pre-canned responses to other people's arguments. You can make the "this is a fallacious ad hominem" argument, if you really know what you're talking about, without using the words "ad hominem", and that'll always be a better comment.
Optimize HN for better writing!
>It's ironic that the top reply to a comment about quality of discourse on this site is an ad hominem.
You might find the Ad Hominem Fallacy Fallacy page interesting:
"Argumentum ad hominem is the logical fallacy of attempting to undermine a speaker's argument by attacking the speaker instead of addressing the argument. The mere presence of a personal attack does not indicate ad hominem: the attack must be used for the purpose of undermining the argument, or otherwise the logical fallacy isn't there. It is not a logical fallacy to attack someone; the fallacy comes from assuming that a personal attack is also necessarily an attack on that person's arguments."
https://laurencetennant.com/bonds/adhominem.html
So for example, if I said: "The arguments for constructing an AI pause button are bad because they are being made by AI company employees", this would be a fallacious argument.
If I said: "HN users have this weird mental block where they fail to take AI progress seriously", that's not necessarily a fallacious argument, unless it's for the purpose of undermining an argument the HN user made.
Shame they didn't map some of the Fighting Fantasy books ( http://www.fightingfantasy.com/ ) or Steve Jackson's Sorcery Series ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sorcery! - now made into a series of mobile apps http://www.inklestudios.com/sorcery/ ). Jackson & Livingstone really pushed this format far more than the "Choose Your Own Adventure" books.
Most of all I remember "Creature of Havoc" ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Creature_of_Havoc ) as being amazing and extremely hard. Instead of being an adventurer you play a monster with limited IQ forced to unravel the mystery of your own existence. It employed various techniques that prevented cheating like "If you have the key, add the number written on the key to this page number to open the door". One of those puzzles still has people discussing it http://laurencetennant.com/bonds/creatureofhavoc.html ( contains spoilers ). At 13 years old it took me and a friend 2-3 months to finally crack it.
> For something to be an ad hominem you simply need to address the speaker rather than what was said
No, this is a common misconception. Addressing the speaker is part of it but is not sufficient by itself.
People who are quick to claim “ad hominem!” have been getting this wrong basically forever, so please feel free to educate yourself by reading this excellent post: https://laurencetennant.com/bonds/adhominem.html
“It is not a logical fallacy to attack someone; the fallacy comes from assuming that a personal attack is also necessarily an attack on that person's arguments.
Therefore, if you can't demonstrate that your opponent is trying to counter your argument by attacking you, you can't demonstrate that he is resorting to ad hominem.”
I think Stephen Bond did some excellent takedowns of the identity politics that has arisen around Bayes' Theorem back in the day. I wonder where he's at these days.
The Cult of Bayes' Theorem
http://laurencetennant.com/bonds/cultofbayes.html
> One of Yudkowsky's constant refrains, appropriating language from Frank Herbert's Dune, is "Politics is the Mind-killer". Under this rallying cry, Lesswrong insiders attempt to purge discussions of any political opinions they disagree with. They strive to convince themselves and their followers that they are dealing in questions of pure, refined "rationality" with no political content. However, the version of "rationality" they preach is expressly politicised.