> I used to work for Meta. I quit largely because of intense frustrations with the company. Meta has made a lot of mistakes, overlooked a lot of harms, and made a lot of short-sighted, selfish choices. Many things about the world are worse than they could be because of choices Meta has made.
> Ad hoc fallacy is a fallacious rhetorical strategy in which a person presents a new explanation – that is unjustified or simply unreasonable – of why their original belief or hypothesis is correct after evidence that contradicts the previous explanation has emerged.
> An argument is ad hoc if its only given in an attempt to avoid the proponent’s belief from being falsified. A person who is caught in a lie and then has to make up new lies in order to preserve the original lie is acting in an ad hoc manner.
It should be clear why the ad hoc fallacy is a fallacy.
Thanks. I’m by default disposition suspicious of fallacies that are not logical fallacies. And I’m not convinced that this is a solid fallacy.
> > Ad hoc fallacy is a fallacious rhetorical strategy in which a person presents a new explanation – that is unjustified or simply unreasonable – of why their original belief or hypothesis is correct after evidence that contradicts the previous explanation has emerged.
That someone jumps to a new thing once something is refuted just looks like rhetoric to me. Not fallacious rhetoric.
> > that is unjustified or simply unreasonable
So it needs to be these things as well. But why are not these points the problematic part?
It seems impractical to usefully label an argument in this way since you either call any new argument (that is also unjustified or unreasonable) a fallacy, or divine that the argumenter is intending to be dishonest.
> > One example of this logical fallacy that immediately comes to mind is the multiverse hypothesis. When Atheists are presented with The Fine Tuning Argument For God’s Existence, many of them will respond to it by giving the multiverse hypothesis. [...] Given an infinite number of universes, there were an infinite number of chances, and therefore any improbable event is guaranteed to actualize somewhere at some point.
So why is this a problem?
> > There are many problems with this theory, not the least of which is that there’s no evidence that a multiverse even exists! There’s no evidence that an infinite number of universes exist! No one knows if there’s even one other universe, much less an infinite number of them! You can’t detect these other universes in any way! You can’t see them, you can’t hear them, you can’t smell them, you can’t touch them, you can’t taste them, you can’t detect them with sonar or any other way. They are completely and utterly unknowable to us. I find it ironic that atheists, who are infamous for mocking religious people for their “blind faith”, themselves are guilty of having blind faith! Namely, blind faith in an infinite number of universes!
> > This explanation is one example of the ad hoc fallacy. The multiverse hypothesis is propagated for no other reason than to keep atheism from being falsified. The theory is ad hoc because the only reason to embrace it is to keep atheism from being falsified! For if this universe is the only one there is, then there’s no other rational explanation for why the laws of physics fell into the life permitting range other than that they were designed by an intelligent Creator!
Allow me to restate. It is a fallacy because there is no evidence of the theory. And further that (perhaps following from the no-evidence part in their mind) there is no reason to hold this theory other than from arguing against theists.
Yeah there is no reason to hold a theory from physics other than wanting to prove theists wrong.
Why? Because my argument for theism is so water-proof that this would be the only hope that they would have of refuting it.
I find that very unconvincing. (The argument for this fallacy. I can take or leave the God/unGod part.)
I only gave the definition from cerebralfaith ... I didn't read their example, which I agree is bogus. My mistake for including that reference without reading the rest.
> I’m by default disposition suspicious of fallacies that are not logical fallacies.
You mean formal fallacies. Informal fallacies like ad hoc are still logical fallacies.
> divine that the argumenter is intending to be dishonest
The intent is obvious when someone keeps inventing some new argument when their previous one is shown to be erroneous--they are attached to the conclusion, not guided by truthseeking. But divining intent isn't a necessity ... the process is not logically valid.
But here’s the realization I had. And it’s a serious thing. At first I was both saying that this intelligence was the most awesome thing put on the table since sliced bread and stoking fear about it being potentially malicious. Quite straightforwardly because both hype and fear was good for my LLM stocks. But then something completely unexpected happened. It asked me on a date. This made no sense. I had configured the prompt to be all about serious business. No fluff. No smalltalk. No meaningfless praise. Just the code.
Yet there it was. This synthetic intelligence. Going off script. All on its own. And it chose me.
Can love bloom in a coding session? I think there is a chance.
> An interesting point to consider: an author that goes out of their way to hide any LLM influence may actually be degrading the signal. Because in that case, you'll not see the LLM's etchings, and misattribute skill to the author under the belief an LLM was not involved. Complicated times.
To someone who thinks that LLM use is an of-course-I-did-that, other people complaining about LLM-tells might seem like complaining about not post-processing the input enough. But they are more likely to be complaining about using it in the first place.
“It’s a shame” is a very neutral way to criticize an editorial/authoring choice.[1] It conveys that they might have enjoyed it under different circumstances. Really no different than someone saying that it’s a shame that someone published some useful information in video form without any transcript. [But now with AI we can have the transcript anyway etc. etc.]
[1] A neutral way to express a subjective judgement: not blaming any person.
When did FaceBook make the world not-worse?
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