I will use my intuition to take the passion weighted average of all commenters sentiments

There was no argument or sentiments given by the "Yes" team, so, how do you explain the resolution ?

@dionisos What do you mean? I argued against you

@levifinkelstein You asked questions about why I was thinking what I was thinking, you didn’t argue for the proposition.

@dionisos I disagree

@levifinkelstein Ok, where did you argue it was sexist ?

@dionisos > I will use my intuition to take the passion weighted average of all commenters sentiments.

My sentiments were quite passionate. And they were convincing in the sense that they revealed the opposition to have weak arguments.

@levifinkelstein You didn’t express any sentiments about the proposition (also the arguments for "no" didn’t really need to be strong, given there were no argument for "yes").
But ok, you can consider you was a commenter and you know what you was feeling, I still think it is a poor way to resolve it given the description. \_(O)_/

@dionisos It seems your notion or argument only more directly arguing as opposed to sentiments that influence our beliefs one way or another. For example you might not consider Socratic questioning to be a form expression that would influence your beliefs one way or another, but I disagree with you on that.

@dionisos There's a reason I used the word "sentiment" instead "argument", to try to avoid this narrow notion of belief influencing expression

@levifinkelstein Questioning an argument can reduce its strength, but it can’t reverse it.

> There's a reason I used the word "sentiment" instead "argument"

Yes, the problem, imo, is that you didn’t express anything about the proposition. Even if you were strongly thinking it was a "no", you could have questioned my argument in the same way.

@dionisos > Questioning an argument can reduce its strength, but it can’t reverse it.
Disagree. Just from a Bayesian view a failed attempt at disproving something should be evidence for the thing being true. In the same way absence of evidence can be evidence of absence.

@levifinkelstein This is untrue, it only works for observed absence of evidence, not failed arguments.

"the sun is bigger than the earth, because the earth is flat", is a very bad argument, but it didn’t decrease the probability of "the sun is bigger than the earth".
And you can make an infinity of invalid arguments like that.

@dionisos Yes, in the same way running around with your eyes closed won't work as a valid form of "absence of evidence is evidence of absence" due to conservation of expected evidence. Only if there was a prior expectation that it might work out as an argument would debunking it be evidence that the proposition it argues for is false. If we already believe it's a bad argument debunking it does nothing.

@levifinkelstein It would be evidence for or against me having a good argument, not against the proposition.

Even if my answers to your questions decrease your expectation of the proposition being false, it would still don’t mean you was believing it to be true. (the questions work at best as an observation, and/or an expression of doubt about my arguments, not the expression of an opinion on the question)

@dionisos >It would be evidence for or against me having a good argument, not against the proposition.

If you're still unconvinced I can present the idea as short story:

A wizard and a knight are looking at a large pristine egg of unknown origin.

Soldier: "What an interesting egg this is! I bet I could crush it to pieces with a single blow of my hand!"

Wizard: "Hmm interesting, I would like to see you try. I estimate a 99.99% probability that it's breakable by today's human wielding some type of weapon."

The soldier punches the egg.

Soldier: "GAAAAAH, MY HAND, IT HURTS!"

Wizard: "I had a prior expectation you might be able to break it, now that it's not breakable by a a hard punch I'll change my prior to 99.90%. However I'm still curious if it can be broken, so you should try your sword."

The soldier gashes at the egg with a vengeful fury. The sword boinks of the egg, slips out of the soldiers hand and into a nearby well.

Soldier: "That sword has been in my family for generations, quickly Wizard cast a spell to retrieve it!"

Wizard: "I'll have to change my prior to 97% now. Hmm, I can't help but still wonder what it takes to break this egg though."

The wizard, in his curiosity, summons all the greatest warriors across the land and posts a bounty of 10 golden hawks as reward for any man or woman who manages to break the egg using only their hand with a tool therein! From far and wide people came and tried their hand at breaking the egg, using all from sledge hammer to butter knife, but none did the trick.

Wizard: "Well, now I assign more like 5% chance that it's doable by current men wielding current weapons."

Soldier: "That is a foolish way of thinking, Wizard! All that has been demonstrated is that the egg is not breakable by my punch, or someone's sledge hammer, or someone's butter knife, or .... anything else that was tried. This says nothing about how hard the egg is to break in general! In fact saying as much would be an instance of the logical fallacy of the denied antecedent! A failed attack says nothing about how difficult something is to attack!"

Wizard: "Well, maybe a failed butter knife attack doesn't tell us much after we tried the sledge hammer, however surely you must agree that after the sledge hammer was tried things started to look somewhat more bleak."

Solider: "NO, I learned my philosophy class that such reasoning is fallacious!"

The wizard pauses. A thoughtful expression rests on his face.

Wizard: "Hmm, maybe an analogy will help: Imagine two people are arguing. The first person is intelligent and tries to argue in support of proposition A. The second person shows that this attempt was successful. So now they start believing it's less likely A is true prior to starting the discussion.

Soldier: "Aha! That is the fallacy, right there! A failed argument says nothing about the truth of the proposition being argued for, all it says is that THAT argument is weakened."

The wizard thinks for a second.

Wizard: "If the arguer was just a random noise generator I would agree with you, Soldier, however in this case we have the expectation that the person making the argument is both intelligent and giving an honest attempt to argue. That means we probably expect the argument to have a descent chance of panning out, perhaps 30%. If we also assume arguments for true things are more likely to work out in general, then it just follows mathematically that we should update the % of the proposition downwards if the argument fails.

P(argument works | proposition is true) > P(argument works),

P(argument works | proposition is false) < P(argument works),

P(proposition is true) < P(proposition is true | argument works)

P(proposition is true) > P(proposition is true | argument does not work) [<- this is what you disagree with]

[note: P(proposition is false) = 1 - P(proposition is true), so if P(true) does down P(false) goes up.]

Soldier: "Ah, I see the flaw in my reasoning now! Since (P(H|E)-P(H)) P(E) + (P(H|~E)-P(H)) P(~E) = 0, it would be contradictory to agree with the first 3 and disagree with the 4th!"

Wizard: "Yes, exactly! I knew this analogy would do the trick."

The wizard and soldier lived happily ever after and nobody really managed to break that egg.

@levifinkelstein "The second person shows that this attempt was successful" should be "unsuccessful"

Cover image is on point.

I assume you would not do something you think is sexist, and I don’t see why it would be.

@dionisos I don't think "sexist => bad" is true in all cases, for example if being sexist saved all sentient life from being tortured for all eternity

Sure, but still you would probably not do that for almost no reason, so it is still a clue.

Also, it didn’t fit in any particular stereotype, and it is just a particular persona, so I don’t see why it would be sexist.

@dionisos what does "almost no reason" mean? And why do you think it applies to me?

I mean, for weak reason, more something like "I just vaguely feel like doing it now" than "saving all sentient life from being tortured".

I don’t know if it applies to you, it just seems probable, because, I mostly see no strong reason to do that.

@dionisos So if it's not vague and serves a specific purpose, then it would be "not weak"?

If the purpose is moderately important, definitely.

@dionisos Can you give some examples of "moderately important" and why those are the lower bar.

What you consider important or not, is really up to you.
I would say, having a good day instead of a boring day, or something like that, is moderately important.

@dionisos How would you consider it filling a self-serving interest, such as inducing higher engagement on markets or gaining followers?

@Nick11235 I think it would be somewhat weak.