From: Brett Paatsch (paatschb@ocean.com.au)
Date: Sat Jan 11 2003 - 20:39:43 MST
Lee Corbin sets up a test as follows:
> Brett Paatsch claims that the two extended statements
>
> A. "I believe that life begins at conception. I believe
> that any other points we might choose are essentially
> arbitrary and uncertain. And I believe that this is
> a view founded not in religion, not in faith, but on
> the logic of the matter.
>
> B. "My working hypothesis is that human existence begins
> at conception, and I contend that this is a view founded
> not in religion, not in faith, but on logic."
>
> are not equivalent. I claim that they *are* equivalent.
>
> Who is correct?
>
> Thanks (whichever way you respond),
Good idea to put the proposition to a test in this way
Lee. Your quite right, we should be able to determine
empirically whether extropians as a whole perceive
a difference between A and B.
As Eliezer pointed out, B, as set up, is missing a sentence
(or A has an extra one), so that confounds the test a little.
Also its possible that by putting names on the options
there might be subtle "allegiance effects" that have little
to do with the question being tested. I hope not, but its
not impossible, so I'd have preferred the propositions
not potentially confound a choice involving support or
opposition of either one of our views. Its possible that some
people would not want to "dump on" the less favored
proposition in deference to whoever happened to be
holding it and so may not "vote" or express an opinion.
I'm sure both you and I would not mind (well not much :-)
but not everyone would know that we have such healthy
ego ;-) and some might be "gentle" on us.
Its also very possible many couldn't care less :-) Which
would be a pity, because if my thesis is correct this is
something that can be acted on to some good extropic
effect with negligible additional effort or cost.
I would argue that *if* a difference is perceived and more
people see the variant without belief as more open to
further discussion then I've made much but not all of the
case I need to make to get some extropes to voluntarily
give up reinforcing the believing meme (which competes
head to head with the more sociable reasoning meme) by
using it.
I'd have liked to have heard what more people thought,
that's why I've waited to respond. Perhaps this sort of test
could be set up on a web page somewhere so we can get
empirical evidence with larger response rates on perceptions
of words (i.e., memes) that we are using in social political
discourse.
Lots of other word memes and phrases could then be tested
(on different groups of people) including "human life" and
"human beings" and we'd have a useful empirical tool easily
adapted. Alas I don't have the specific tech know-how to
put this on a web page quickly, but I'm sure others would.
I'd have been particularly interested to hear what John
(Pelagius) Clarke, John Grigg, and Anders to name just
a handful thought.
I reckon I know which way Max More would vote :-)
But I could be wrong.
Rather than just leave this hanging as a tribute to gas
expenditure and idle typing why not push forward with it?
I would propose removing the word belief from the
Extropian Principles and replace the word where
it occurs with an alternative. Any thoughts?
Brett
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