[LINK] Scott Adam's "Rationality Engine". Part III: Assisted Dying

I generally approve of Scott Adams, and am glad to see someone being rational (or at least shooting for that) loudly in public. But:

resulting in several unexpected conclusions

Eh. The gender wage gap is an issue where you just need to be unbiased and read carefully to get to the right answer, and so the only possibly surprising thing was that the partisans were willing to accept that a famous person had read carefully and was unbiased, especially since he used enough space to make the various claims distinct and clear. (I was surprised by nothing in that post, because I had read carefully about the gender wage gap in the past.)

But the second one rapidly turned into being unproductive (by his own admission) because the question was ill-formed, and you need more than being unbiased and reading carefully to get to the right answer. (Note his claim that no one ever died because they misunderstood evolution--as if antibiotic resistance and eugenics weren't relevant! You also need a strong world-model, i.e. an understanding of all the relevant science.)

"Balance" is also not that good a way to look at things: like he discovered, both parties have roughly equal numbers of voters who are against vaccination. In general, we should expect scientific ignorance (do more Republicans or Democrats believe in Newtonian physics instead of folk physics?), and so unless it's a club they can use to beat their enemies, it rarely shows up.

Perhaps you could go science by science, and figure out which delusions are encouraged by which party. The Republicans surely like to misuse the Laffer Curve, but the Democrats also surely like to misrepresent the effects of a minimum wage. Which is the more serious sin? Now we have to rerun the engine on a new topic, and getting an answer may require evidence that does not yet exist.

I notice he is 100% confidant of several conclusions in "the gender pay gap", and that he thinks that absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. But apart for that, it seems fairly rational.

I understood the sentiment in Scott Adams's post, "I Hope My Father Dies Soon."

http://blog.dilbert.com/post/102964994651/i-hope-my-father-dies-soon

I had a similar experience with my father, who died last October (age 87) after years of dementia.

What is the actual algorithm? In the gender pay gap debate, it seems the idea is that asking the right questions is 75% of the win.

I think Adams needs to get a bit more Bayesian, as he seems to think the absence of evidence is not an evidence of absence. It is, although its strength depends on how loud signals the thing you are looking for (gender bias) is supposed to emit. Not seeing a chameleon on a tree is a weak evidence of not being a chameleon on the tree, but not seeing an elephant on a savannah is a fairly strong evidence of it not being on the savannah.

I should add I find his argument very persuasive that average group privilege does not equal every member having exactly that much, so if you are a white male but other things, such as being nerdy with poor social skills reduces your chances, you had one good chance and it was blown via some diversity policy, that is, well, bad.

(The meta level is getting treated like a member of your group when you are not a typical member of your group. It is really turtles all the way down: pretty much every social-justice thing is rooted in a bunch of people saying "hey, we are not typical members of the group you think we are!" e.g. white male but also mentally ill, disabled fat or gay. Doing this with enough granularity you will have about two and half unquestionably privileged people to be discriminated against left in the world, as everybody else will claim and find some kind of a special disadvantage.)

I thought Adams' comments on the economics of AGW were rather silly.

It's a fascinating link and nice idea, but I think it's ultimately useless.

In my experience, there is no point in "debating" religious people on topics that are obviously dominated by religious belief: They think there is an absolutely flawlessly moral invisible alpha male who has already given them the answer.

Sure, you could debate them on apologetics of theism and supernaturalism first, but this debate is pretty much dead for decades or centuries now. At least for informed people. There are no new arguments or new evidence.

In fact, this is why I don't debate religious people. Their clinging to indefensible religious beliefs is evidence they're not going to change their minds on social issuses that depend on them either. Such as the ethics of suicide and euthanasia. It's fruit of the poisonous tree.

Sure, it may look nice and not arrogant to "debate" them on these matters. But to expect anything other than a post-hoc rationalization circlejerk from them is delusional.