Aumann agreement theorem

Still, I think the general concept that "agreeing to disagree" is a pitiful cop-out. You wouldn't have the conversation "I think gay people should be allowed to marry" "Well I think that's against God's law so they shouldn't" "Okay, that's your opinion, I respect that, let's agree to disagree". No. One of those is just wrong.

This is why I dislike debate. Two sides shouting at each other. How productive. Contrast with science where you have one side: science. And you have one solution: reality. Can you apply that method to "non science" areas (What's the best tax level? Should we have a death penalty?)? It's not easy, but neither should it be considered impossible and dismissed as even worthwhile trying. Sometimes it produces non-intuitive answers, such as when Yudkowsky said that from a utility perspective it would be preferable to torture one person for 50 years over 3^^^3 people getting dust in their eye - because it causes less net suffering overall. It's counter-intuitive compared to how we've evolved to think, but it's the result of a method.

Now, there are sometimes more than one solution. I know in modelling kinetic data with more than two processes this happens a lot. But you can compare the solutions in other ways, focusing on the "right" one. You don't just "agree to disagree" because two people used the same modelling method from different starting guesses and got two different answers with similar R² - you bang on it again and again until you're right.

When it comes to disagreements over factual questions, one side is always "just wrong," and this can, in theory, be demonstrated; but the only way to demonstrate that an ethical proposition is "just wrong" is to prove that it is logically inconsistent.

If it was just a case of demonstrating it, that would be trivial. Even for an ethical position. The problem is convincing the other side, because that's where prior biases (fucking shoot me I am turning into EY) come in and make it more work than it should be. The flip side to that, of course, is that if your prior biases are in favour, it'll take far less work than it should to convince someone of it.

So I'm curious, why are you all so convinced that a "real" or "true" or "factual" point can be made in something like ethics or philosophy. (or am i misreading you). Just because you think something, and you are "rational" doesn't mean your something is logically correct, especially at the cost of other somethings.

You are definitely misreading me; I think that for any questions outside of the factual/naturalistic sphere, you just have to pick something to believe (preferably something that is logically consistent) and roll with it. These sorts of beliefs are categorically asserted without evidence and are dismissable without evidence.

You're getting into apples and oranges here. Unless you're going to pull a Sam Harris and argue that moral propositions are "facts" like physical law.

No, I didn't suggest you can treat moral judgements as "facts" - although you can demonstrate their consequences in a factual manner ("Gay marriage will lead to bestiality!!" - "Well, just watch it not do that."). But demonstrating something to be factually inaccurate, or demonstrating an ethical position to be badly thought out is fairly trivial next to convincing the believer that it's so.

Why do you refer to science? Didn't you read Yudkowsky's anti-science rants? You are supposed to refer to Yudkowsky's interpretation of Bayes' theorem.

Also, you can't assume that utilitarianism is the "true" moral system, or the only possible framework to look at moral issues through. Hume's law can't be surpassed. No, not even by Yudkowsky. There is no correct moral theory. Certain utilitarian applications come across as rather horrible to the majority of us, so we choose not to apply them.