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Disagree
How is my religious family to comprehend it, working, as they must, from the assumption that [my brother] was murdered by a benevolent God? The same loving God, I presume, who arranges for millions of children to grow up illiterate and starving; the same kindly tribal father-figure who arranged the Holocaust and the Inquisition's torture of witches. I would not hesitate to call it evil, if any sentient mind had committed such an act, permitted such a thing.
Agree
The vast majority of religions in human history - excepting only those invented extremely recently - tell stories of events that would constitute completely unmistakable evidence if they'd actually happened. The orthogonality of religion and factual questions is a recent and strictly Western concept. The people who wrote the original scriptures didn't even know the difference. ... The idea that religion is a separate magisterium which cannot be proven or disproven is a Big Lie...
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Disagree
I have weighed the evidence as best I can, and I do not believe the universe to be evil, a reply which in these days is called atheism.
Agree
So let me state then, very clearly, on behalf of any and all physicists out there who dare not say it themselves: Many-worlds wins outright given our current state of evidence. There is no more reason to postulate a single Earth, than there is to postulate that two colliding top quarks would decay in a way that violates conservation of energy. It takes more than an unknown fundamental law; it takes magic. The debate should already be over. It should have been over fifty years ago.
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Disagree
Here's my proposal: Let's argue against bad ideas but not set their bearers on fire. ... My syllogism runs, "I think Susie said something wrong, therefore, I will argue against what she said, but I will not set her on fire, or try to stop her from talking by violence or regulation..."
Disagree
When someone actually offends us - commits an action of which we (rightly or wrongly) disapprove - then, I observe, the correspondence bias redoubles. There seems to be a very strong tendency to blame evil deeds on the Enemy's mutant, evil disposition. ... Realistically, most people don't construct their life stories with themselves as the villains. Everyone is the hero of their own story. The Enemy's story, as seen by the Enemy, is not going to make the Enemy look bad.
Disagree
My position might perhaps be called "Requiredism." When agency, choice, control, and moral responsibility are cashed out in a sensible way, they require determinism - at least some patches of determinism within the universe. ... You are within physics, and so you/physics have determined the future. If it were not determined by physics, it could not be determined by you.
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Mostly Disagree
I think that if there is ever a vow of honesty among rationalists, it will be restricted in scope. Normally, perhaps, you would avoid making statements that were literally false, and be ready to accept brutal honesty from anyone who first said "Crocker's Rules". Maybe you would be Radically Honest, but only with others who had taken a vow of Radical Honesty, and who understood the trust required to tell someone the truth.
Agree
When you're doubting one of your most cherished beliefs, close your eyes, empty your mind, grit your teeth, and deliberately think about whatever hurts the most. Don't rehearse standard objections whose standard counters would make you feel better. Ask yourself what smart people who disagree would say to your first reply, and your second reply. Whenever you catch yourself flinching away from an objection you fleetingly thought of, drag it out into the forefront of your mind.
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Mostly Agree
What would humans with brain-computer interfaces do with their augmented intelligence? One good bet is that they’d design the next generation of brain-computer interfaces. Intelligence enhancement is a classic tipping point; the smarter you get, the more intelligence you can apply to making yourself even smarter. ... This positive feedback cycle ... rapidly surges upward and creates superintelligence (minds orders of magnitude more powerful than human) before it hits physical limits.
Disagree
Why would anyone bite a bullet that large? Why would anyone postulate unconscious zombies who write papers about consciousness for exactly the same reason that our own genuinely conscious philosophers do? ... on a core level, the sane thing to do when you see the conclusion of the zombie argument, is to say "That can't possibly be right" and start looking for a flaw.
Agree
...I hope [from reading this you will] gain an entirely new perspective on where your "identity" is located... ...if your brain were non-destructively frozen (e.g. by vitrification in liquid nitrogen); and a computer model of the synapses, neural states, and other brain behaviors were constructed a hundred years later; then it would preserve exactly everything about you that was preserved by going to sleep one night and waking up the next morning.
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Agree
...a man spoke of some benefit X of death [and] I said: "...given human nature, if people got hit on the head by a baseball bat every week, pretty soon they would invent reasons why getting hit on the head with a baseball bat was a good thing. But if you took someone who wasn't being hit on the head with a baseball bat, and you asked them if they wanted it, they would say no. I think that if you took someone who was immortal, and asked them if they wanted to die for benefit X, they would say no.
Agree
[If you go through the logic], you should actually be able to see intuitively that successful cryonics preserves anything about you that is preserved by going to sleep at night and waking up the next morning.
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Disagree
Oh, sure, everyone thinks two plus two is four, everyone says two plus two is four, and in the mere mundane drudgery of everyday life everyone behaves as if two plus two is four, but what does two plus two really, ultimately equal? As near as I can figure, four.
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Agree
It is a non-so-hidden agenda of this site, Less Wrong, that there are many causes which benefit from the spread of rationality - because it takes a little more rationality than usual to see their case, as a supporter, or even just a supportive bystander. Not just the obvious causes like atheism, but things like marijuana legalization - where you could wish that people were a bit more self-aware about their motives and the nature of signaling, and a bit more moved by inconvenient cold facts.
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Disagree
[Satirical reenactment of government officials:] It's done. The plane targeted at Congress was crashed by those on-board, but the Pentagon and Trade Center attacks occurred just as scheduled. ... Congress seems sufficiently angry in any case. ... I don't think the further steps of the plan will meet with any opposition. We should gain the governmental powers we need, and the stock market should move as expected. ... Have you prepared the conspiracy theorists to accuse us?
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Agree
[By denying evolution you] engage in motivated cognition; and instead of focusing on the unthinkably huge heaps of evidence in favor of evolution, the innumerable signs by which the fact of evolution has left its heavy footprints on all of reality, ... ...instead you search your mind, and you pick out one form of proof that you think evolutionary biologists can't provide; and you demand, you insist upon that one form of proof; and when it is not provided, you take that as a refutation.
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