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Old 11-02-2005, 07:34 PM
kbfc kbfc is offline
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Join Date: Mar 2005
Location: Los Angeles
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Default Re: Simpler Question to Avoid PrayingMantis\'s Wrath

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I wasn't confused. I knew exactly what you meant. I just think your example is broken.

You are assuming some sort of continuous, monotonic function between 'farfetchedness' of belief and doctor ability, and a fairly linear one at that. I have doubts that this is the case at all. It could very well be something like a step-funciton, where goofy beliefs don't make much of a difference up to a certain point, after which one falls off the edge, so-to-speak. If this were the case, I would most likely put the crossover point well past OJ-innocence, but well before religion.

As I mentioned before, watch any number of Hitchcock films for outlandish "wrongfully accused" sorts of plots; the details of these plots may be pretty farfetched, but they are nowhere the level where a rational person couldn't see it as a reasonable possibilty.

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I'd guess its the other way round. The closer the far fetched belief is to normal life/medical science the more worried I'd be. A really far-fetched belief is likely to be be as a result of a completely different process.

There's two parameters both of which are ill-defined. How ludicrous the belief is, and how close the belief is to everyday/scientific activity. These may correlate but I don't see why they should.

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Definitely possible. I wasn't trying to advance my particular 'guess' as to what the function is, just noting that David's assumption was unsupported.

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Also it's not what is believed that matters most, but why they believe it.

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Eh, this line of debate is about using beliefs as indicators of intelligence, so for this discussion, 'what is believed' is the important factor.
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