No you don't; you think the likelihood of me being a psychopath has gone up slightly from its initially very low <1% likelihood. That's nowhere close to 50%, much less a confident 'I think [for sure]'. I don't know whether you are deliberately misunderstanding me here, despite my careful phrasing before, or just statistically innumerate.
> Don't try telling me that you donate to charity without evidence, either
Actually, I could prove it with my donations to Wikimedia, GNU, Debian, and the Internet Archive; but that's irrelevant to your point, I think.
> You have absolutely no emotional distaste to discussing (without sufficient evidence) whether or not some of our particular fellow human beings are psychopaths, as long as you can continue to amuse yourself.
Why would I feel any distaste about the discussion? Who is being hurt? What negative effects may even improbably occur?
Is amusement _per se_ wrong? Or is it just wrong when it is about something that is less than prefect & moral? Then since most entertainment is about non-utopias (such as wartime or criminals), we must condemn billions of peoples for producing said entertainment or consuming it.
> That demonstrates a serious lack of empathy.
What exactly should I be empathizing about? Should I feel what the psychopaths (don't) feel? Should I sympathize with their victims? (But I don't see how pondering whether Jobs is a psychopath is bad; in fact, victims of all people should be most interested in spotting psychopaths from afar.) I know what it means to empathize with tsunami or earthquake victims, but I'm really mystified as to what you mean that word to mean. To me, your comment looks like a rhetorical tissue of exaggerations and applause lights (http://lesswrong.com/lw/jb/applause_lights/).
> Seriously though, I don't think a psychopath would have as much interest in changing the world as a young Steve Jobs did, nor would a psychopath name something after his daughter or adopt her into his family.
These are much better points. But there are counterpoints; if we go into family relationships, we might learn from Wikipedia:
> She [Chrisann Brennan] briefly raised their daughter on welfare when Jobs denied paternity, claiming that he was sterile; he later acknowledged paternity.
"No you don't; you think the likelihood of me being a psychopath has gone up slightly from its initially very low <1% likelihood. That's nowhere close to 50%, much less a confident 'I think [for sure]'. I don't know whether you are deliberately misunderstanding me here, despite my careful phrasing before, or just statistically innumerate."
No, you missed the possibility that I'm just being facetious with you to make some other point, a point which has seemed to evade you. I do understand and appreciate Bayesian reasoning, of course, but that's not really the point here.
Comments
> In that case, I think you're a psychopath
No you don't; you think the likelihood of me being a psychopath has gone up slightly from its initially very low <1% likelihood. That's nowhere close to 50%, much less a confident 'I think [for sure]'. I don't know whether you are deliberately misunderstanding me here, despite my careful phrasing before, or just statistically innumerate.
> Don't try telling me that you donate to charity without evidence, either
Actually, I could prove it with my donations to Wikimedia, GNU, Debian, and the Internet Archive; but that's irrelevant to your point, I think.
> You have absolutely no emotional distaste to discussing (without sufficient evidence) whether or not some of our particular fellow human beings are psychopaths, as long as you can continue to amuse yourself.
Why would I feel any distaste about the discussion? Who is being hurt? What negative effects may even improbably occur?
Is amusement _per se_ wrong? Or is it just wrong when it is about something that is less than prefect & moral? Then since most entertainment is about non-utopias (such as wartime or criminals), we must condemn billions of peoples for producing said entertainment or consuming it.
> That demonstrates a serious lack of empathy.
What exactly should I be empathizing about? Should I feel what the psychopaths (don't) feel? Should I sympathize with their victims? (But I don't see how pondering whether Jobs is a psychopath is bad; in fact, victims of all people should be most interested in spotting psychopaths from afar.) I know what it means to empathize with tsunami or earthquake victims, but I'm really mystified as to what you mean that word to mean. To me, your comment looks like a rhetorical tissue of exaggerations and applause lights (http://lesswrong.com/lw/jb/applause_lights/).
> Seriously though, I don't think a psychopath would have as much interest in changing the world as a young Steve Jobs did, nor would a psychopath name something after his daughter or adopt her into his family.
These are much better points. But there are counterpoints; if we go into family relationships, we might learn from Wikipedia:
> She [Chrisann Brennan] briefly raised their daughter on welfare when Jobs denied paternity, claiming that he was sterile; he later acknowledged paternity.
"No you don't; you think the likelihood of me being a psychopath has gone up slightly from its initially very low <1% likelihood. That's nowhere close to 50%, much less a confident 'I think [for sure]'. I don't know whether you are deliberately misunderstanding me here, despite my careful phrasing before, or just statistically innumerate."
No, you missed the possibility that I'm just being facetious with you to make some other point, a point which has seemed to evade you. I do understand and appreciate Bayesian reasoning, of course, but that's not really the point here.