Fuckin’ ay
'scuse my french
They obviously haven’t seent it.
Yes, I said seent.
And with that, we have brought language itself to it’s knees!
I hate and love simultaneously to point out the obvious here;
(Actually, only love…)
An actually free person isn’t going to start a war, murder, rape, pillage, bash, or otherwise harm anyone else over a difference of opinion.
We currently live with the reality that indeed people will do all of the above and more on the basis of “bias”.
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I sat with Richard whilst he read a professor’s article for a long time ago (no idea who) when I was discussing “tunnelling microscopes” and the state of science.
My impression is that Richard specifically will deliberately “mess with your worldview” to get you out of the “I know what is going on” surety of normal into the wonder of things.
Had he, or Craig, or anyone else backed down because someone who isn’t free thought an opinion was worth something, then that would do a huge mis-service to allowing the already existing peace-on-earth to become apparent. One of the primary delusions that the entire psychic realm rests on is “omniscient authority”.
You can trust me on that. 
Of course, I am putting together a case for actually free people deliberately messing with your expectations for the purpose of ending the 'human condition '.
They of course could well be just having different opinions.
By the way; there is no logical proof that the universe is not infact sentient. Craig could be right. Just to mess with the paradigm a bit.
The entire premise of actual freedom is the end of war, rape, murder, child abuse, and the endless list of brutality with which we live with.
One simply has to ask; what price would you pay for world peace? A few bad opinions?
I would willingly bless myself with spaghetti sauce and walk backwards if it meant the shitshow that is ‘humanity’ would end.
Amen
Perhaps they are seeing the facts which don’t fall apart upon scrutiny. If it is the facts then it is not biased.
Quite 
On the contrary, we’re living proof that the universe is in fact sentient. It’s looking all around at itself right now as a matter of fact. And it is good.
Even this isn’t a price to pay. Not like as soon as you become free you are injected from some otherworldly source with “bad opinions” . . .
Just like to point out again that I wasn’t questioning the value of actual freedom. Also, ftr I don’t think Craigs opinions on god, whatever they are, i don’t even know, are biased.
In that case…
It’s unambiguous that ‘self’ is a gigantic source of bias. Indeed silly to argue it isn’t. So question is, what remains and why?
The best way for you to answer the question – is to become free, and see for yourself what bias remains and why 
. We certainly need more free people data points to be able answer such things. Then you will be able to better answer why or how Richard and Vineeto maintain the opinions they do
Exactly
Goes without saying
For me I think of it like this:
“Bias” is already a loaded word. It implies something ‘bad’. Further it implies the possibility of being “unbiased”. This seems plausible at first except if you dig into it you’ll see that there’s no such thing. It’s ultimately a quasi-spiritual ideal of there being an All-Seeing Being whose word is Absolute Truth, and therefore attains to the prestigious: “Unbiased”.
If we reformulate the problem without using biased or unbiased we are basically left with:
- Fact: what is a fact is undisputable, plain for everyone to see etc.
- Opinion: What isn’t a fact or can’t be determined to be a fact is opinion
Validity of opinions can vary based on expertise, amount of research, etc.
Here’s a super simple example that I think is actually totally not controversial once you look at it, but I am sure may get me flamed. Richard points out on the AFT that it is not proven that smoking causes lung cancer. He doesn’t say cigarettes don’t have deleterious health effects – just that they don’t necessarily (i.e. it isn’t known as a fact that they) cause lung cancer.
To me it is very sensible that the way you show that A causes B is that you find the underlying mechanism of A that you can point directly leads to B. I was shocked when I started googling around to find out that this hadn’t been shown for cigarette smoke and lung cancer!
Or another indicator of causality would be that if you do A then you will get B. e.g. if I apply a flame to a paper, the paper will start to burn – the flame causes the paper to burn. This isn’t a % chance to happen, it’s 100%. Of course there may be confounding factors like, the paper is coated with a non-burn coating or something, in which case it’s a different situation. Or it’s a type of paper with a higher flame point etc. But then you can take those factors into account. So I was also shocked to find that the statistics were something like 1% of general population gets lung cancer, while 6% of smokers get lung cancer. So it indeed is 6x more likely… but if it were a plainly and simply causal thing I would expect it to be much higher (like as an example only that 80% of people who smoke X amount will get lung cancer). [1]
So it seems safe to say smoking is a factor combined which with other things may contribute to developing lung cancer… but not that smoking causes lung cancer. It might – but it hasn’t been shown yet (as far as I know).
What really cinched the deal for me and caused me to stop my search is I found an article written 10-15 years ago which said that they had “finally” found the causal link between smoking and lung cancer. i.e. the article plainly stated that it hadn’t been found before (which isn’t usually explicitly stated). However that paper also later turned out to not prove it.
None of this seems crazy to me now, it’s just seeing what the facts are (what has actually been shown) and not taking them for more than it is. But at first exposure it seemed absolutely nuts to even contemplate that smoking doesn’t cause lung cancer.
Now consider a situation of me who researched all this ^ and then someone comes to me and says I’m wrong, smoking does cause lung cancer. And then I ask ok, where’s the evidence? And then they point me to articles and links that don’t actually demonstrate it. And then I point out it doesn’t and… I start being accused of holding on to views that fall apart upon scrutiny or ignoring good faith arguments that refute my claims… when it’s just that they haven’t actually presented something that does refute my claims.
It wouldn’t be sensible for me to change my opinion just because they said so, would it?
And this is I think the nub of the issue. It actually isn’t sensible to agree with people just because they strongly think something is true. They need to actually provide evidence. If they can’t, then opinion does not change. If they provide evidence you already looked at, and leave it at that – opinion does not change. The only way to change opinion is if you get into it deeply enough to dig down to the nub of why I think X and Y, and why their evidence directly addresses that, such as to effectuate a change of opinion.
The more informed I am about it, the harder that will be to do (if I happened to follow an egregiously false chain of thinking). But also the more I dig in the less likely I am to make such a mistake as I become more informed about the topic.
BTW no one on the Australia trip was able to do this – emotional arguments always came in and overwhelmed the non-actually-free conversant before it could get to this point. It’s very important to note this doesn’t mean the non-free people were automatically wrong… just that if they were correct, they weren’t able to hold a conversation to get to that point. So if they were it might have been interesting… but as they weren’t, indeed it became relevant to point out that we weren’t there to just argue about such things 
.
In any case I think the issue is an emotional one or even a psychic current one – emotionally feeling or believing X to be true (or a strong psychic current existing underlying these beliefs that X is true), and then being vexed when the actually free person isn’t swayed by these beliefs or emotions or emotional arguments or psychic currents.
The only way this could be a real fear or hindrance to becoming free is if you believe that your emotions are somehow necessary to uncover certain “biases” such that you don’t commit certain fallacies. But this fear falls apart under scrutiny. You are less inclined to emotional bias… so people need to provide non-emotional arguments to change your opinion. These are harder to make… but that’s because it’s harder to figure out what the facts are and make the valid deductions rather than just believe something. And just believing it isn’t a good reason in the first place to form an opinion – the emotional arguments aren’t actually good ones.
My 2 cents!
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Note people get very tricky here as they say “80% of lung cancer deaths are linked to smoking”. This doesn’t mean that 4 of 5 smokers get lung cancer. For example, in a population of 1 million people, if 100,000 people smoke and 5,000 smokers have lung-cancer, while 1,200 non-smokers have lung cancer, then 5% of all smokers have lung cancer while 80% of lung cancer deaths are from people who smoke. ↩︎
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Global warming is such a great example of where this is the case, it’s rare that someone doesn’t have strong feelings about it one way or another. Maybe some 3 year olds that haven’t been taught to yet 
I don’t remember Richard or Vineeto being nearly as reasonable (in argumentation) as you claim. Yes. They were very nice and not at all emotional. But they still made some really silly arguments. 2 of which I have already given. Now it’s possible no one has ever notified them how and why those arguments are silly. But that seems highly unlikely. FTR, I don’t think the smoking argument is their worst argument. In fact, as you present it, it’s completely fair. Smoking may be a factor in poor health but in and of itself doesn’t cause cancer as far as science has yet been able to establish. I only recall them saying smoking doesn’t cause cancer and the whole movement was based on just one study. But that’s just one persons memory and their smoking stance isn’t the source of their bad arguments.
Every time I think about it, I never get to a satisfactory conclusion. Saying it’s as biological as being tone deaf or rhythm impaired is my best response.
It’s interesting that you are wondering about this.
I remember ‘srinath’ being very bothered by it. About 5-6 years ago. I ended up being the “police” and shutting down threads on whatever platform we were on at the time to avoid a full on controversy.
What is behind the bothersome thoughts about bias?
I would say it’s what Claudiu and I have both said; the belief in “omniscience”. That one can, and must be correct on all subjects.
Seems you missed this part
Who is the arbiter of whether their arguments are ultimately silly and don’t hold water? You? Why? I would wager they spent more time researching those topics than you.
I find it hard to understand. I don’t think there are correct answers. I think there are good and bad arguments. Which there are.
Keep in mind I already gave two examples earlier of fundamentally opposite conclusions that may still rest on good arguments from both sides. So ambiguity, I’m not afraid of. Omniscience, I don’t seek. I just want to know how a person with no emotional bias can still hold on to bad arguments.
Didn’t you study logic in school? Arguments resting on faulty premises and/or rely on logical fallacies are bad arguments. And I have no problem questioning the legitimacy of deductive reasoning. I just don’t understand continuing to hold on to a bad argument.
And a bias for the purposes of this conversation is a persistent holding onto of a bad argument despite it being pointed out that the premises are faulty and the connections are inconsistent.
I’m still confused about what grounds you have to dismiss their arguments as bad
I don’t know if George Soros & co aren’t controlling the climate change movement from the shadows. How do you know that?
Because it’s a deflection. Even if Hitler was found alive in Argentina and funding every single climate change study personally, it wouldn’t change how the ice caps are retreating. Or how much heat CO2 traps, for how long, and how much of it is being released in the atmosphere. Or any other data points. I don’t know the name of the logical fallacy. Maybe ad hominem.