[ExI] Self-Driving Cars Must Make Ethical Decisions

William Flynn Wallace foozler83 at gmail.com
Wed Jul 29 19:10:31 UTC 2015


see below

On Wed, Jul 29, 2015 at 1:32 PM, Flexman, Connor <connor_flexman at brown.edu>
wrote:

> On Wed, Jul 29, 2015 at 11:49 AM, William Flynn Wallace <
> foozler83 at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> Rationality is about drawing correct inferences from limited,
>>      confusing, contradictory, or maliciously doctored facts.
>>   -- Scott Alexander
>>
>> I'd say this is sheer dumb luck.  How can one be rational when the
>> 'facts' are false, or the data aren't complete, or are ambiguous or even
>> completely biased by doctoring?
>>
>> bill w
>>
>
> You can read the answer at
> http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/11/27/why-i-am-not-rene-descartes/. The
> point isn't that you literally arrive to a correct conclusion based on
> actually doctored data. The point is that you take a bunch of conflicting
> nutrition studies, some of which may be doctored, some of which have crappy
> technique, some of which are noise, and pull out of that data the best
> thing you can: a conclusion that may be relatively weak and have large
> confidence intervals, but is nonetheless not what many people get out of
> it, which is "X is clearly correct, the other studies are bunk, I am done
> with this topic". Darwin being rational enough to piece together natural
> selection from extremely limited evidence is also an example Alexander uses.
> Connor
>  ​Thanks!  IF you have those kinds of studies, the only conclusion you
> can reach is that studies need to be done with better technique, or
> whatever they are weak in.  You may at best have a hypothesis to test, but
> conclusions?  No way.
>

​Apparently the evidence Darwin had was good evidence, if limited.  And a
great intuitive mind.  Notice, though, that he did not publish for years
and year and years and more and more evidence.
​


> bill w​
>
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>
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