Guest post: Compromise update
Originally a comment by Bjarte Foshaug on Why won’t you bitches compromise?
Frankly, I think most people sounding the “why won’t you compromise” and “both sides are so extreme, ick!” and “I’m frankly sort of in the middle” are virtue signalling; they are better. They are also committing the fallacy of the golden mean. The right answer does not always lie between the two “extremes”. And sometimes one extreme is not extreme.
[iknklast]
While we are on the subject, in the “2+2” controversy, the 6 vs. 4 debate is so intensely toxic on both sides that expressing any view that is not extreme (e.g. 2+2=5), will instantly attract attacks.
Meanwhile the “Holocaust” debate seems to be totally dominated by those extremists who want to exterminate all the jews, and those crazy radicals who don’t see any need to kill any jews, while more moderate voices who acknowledge the need to kill half the jews are shut down from both sides.
This just in: In the 2+2 debate the 6 camp has changed it’s position to 2+2=8 while the 4 camp is still sticking to its guns. Hence we now embrace the original claim of the former (2+2=6) as the moderate, responsible, non-extreme position.
And now a soccer result: Real Madrid vs. Andorra: 10-0. In other words a draw.
And it looks like we have another update on the 2+2 front. The 8 camp (formerly known as the 6 camp) has once again changed its position to 2+2=12 while the extremists in the 4 camp are still stubbornly clinging to their increasingly extreme views. As good moderates we therefore update our position to 2+2=8.
On a similar note, I seem to remember an xkcd strip in which the dialogue went something like this:
“You owe me $100!”
“What are you talking about? I don’t owe you anything!”
“Ok, let’s compromise, let’s say you only owe me $50.”
Hahahaha yes exactly.
That’s from mathematics. But there is much to be gained from consideration of chemistry too. The most abundant naturally-occurring element by far in the Universe is extremist hydrogen, with the lowest atomic mass of all, and at the other extreme, uranium has the highest atomic mass amongst elements found in nature. A moderate, but rotten, compromise is iron, found around midway between those two. But it rusts, as a vist to any junkyard or car wreckers’ yard will confirm.
As a former Australian PM by the name of Fraser put it: “Life wasn’t meant to be easy.”
There’s something about fetishizing the middle ground that strikes me as Pascal’s Wager–like. Especially this:
Except that it looks more like:
“If you don’t do what I say, you’ll have to pay God $INFINITY.”
“But what if there is no God? Then I wouldn’t have to pay anything.”
“Okay, let’s compromise and say there’s only an n% chance that God exists. n% of $INFINITY is still $INFINITY. Can you afford that?”
“Sounds legit. I guess I should do what you say.”
But wait a minute. This other guy over here says I’ll have to pay $INFINITY to his God (≠yours) if I don’t do what he says (≠what you say). As far as I can tell there is neither more nor less evidence for his claim than for yours (0=0). So why should I listen to you rather than him?
What you are both asking me to do is to believe in your particular god-claim (and reject the god-claim of the other). As I understand the word, to “believe” a proposition X means holding X to be most likely true, but none of you have presented what I would consider compelling* arguments for the truth or likelihood of your respective god-claims, only that I ought to consider them most likely true (in other words, to believe them) for purely self-serving reasons anyway just in case they turn out to be true. By that same logic I can easily think of other, equally disprovable, claims that lead to the opposite conclusion. E.g. what if God dislikes people who make themselves believe in him for self-serving reasons, and likes people with the intellectual integrity and courage to stick with evidence and reason in the face of treats and promises, takes $INFINITY from the former and gives $INFINITY to the latter?
Those were the days :D
*Or even better than nothing
But only on Modays, Thursdays and Saturdays. That’s the way the Universe works. I know that for a fact:, because it came to me in a visit from the Angel Moroni. Or was it that one from Gabriel?
NB: There are penalties for doubting my account.
Omar, I see that the quoted passage contains a mistake on my part. I really meant the opposite of “disprovable” (i.e. unfalsifiable), but once again it doesn’t technically matter, since one unfalsifiable claim is as disprovable (i.e. not at all) as another :P