Essay talk:Rational people

I am now going to refer to people as NPCs. Тy talk 00:34, 6 December 2011 (UTC)
 * (EC) You may not see this as a compliment, but this is very Yudkowskian. You've basically just done exactly what he did in this sequence: restate what falsifiability means in simpler terms using concepts like "observation" and "anticipated experiences." (See especially this one and this one.) And the "I'm going to beat this strawman into oblivion" style of presentation reminds me of his writing as well. (That may not sound like a compliment, but it actually is - I enjoyed this piece very much because of the format.)
 * Also, what Ty said.
 * I'm at a loss for what the point is here except that people often hold logically and empirically incoherent beliefs. If you think god is bad, try free will. Nebuchadnezzar (talk) 07:07, 6 December 2011 (UTC)
 * The difference with free will is that I don't think it's particularly consequential to believe either way on it. We might not have "free will", but thinking that provides no benefit. Believing in free will is as much belief-in-belief as most people's view of God and religion, but is probably less demanding of a belief. Scarlet A.pnggnostic 11:39, 6 December 2011 (UTC)
 * Actually, there's some research on free will that says it is consequential. Nebuchadnezzar (talk) 15:55, 6 December 2011 (UTC)
 * Would that not just be psychological ramifications of possessing the belief, rather than consequences of free will being a real entity or not. Much like witch hunts were a consequence of believing in God and the words of the Bible, not a consequence of God being real and the words of the Bible being 100% fact. While we can suggest that people who think they have free will have a better time of it than people who don't, that's not a direct consequence of actual free will. For instance, if you're whacked by a car and break your leg, that's a consequence of the car itself - it doesn't matter whether you believe in the car or not, you're still going to be in a cast for a few months. You cannot formulate a universe where free will (in the broadest, most conventional sense) exists and formulate a universe that is deterministic but designed to simulate free will and then detect the difference from the inside. Scarlet A.pngd hominem 16:20, 6 December 2011 (UTC)
 * That was ambiguously worded, sorry -- I meant belief in free will, not the existence thereof. Nebuchadnezzar (talk) 16:28, 6 December 2011 (UTC)