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by gaulinmp 5471 days ago
Did anyone else get a sense that this article provided no special insight? It mentioned repeated examples like "I just know" works for Ted but not flying saucers. What is the difference between Ted out the window and a saucer? I felt the author relies heavily on the audience sharing his sense of the obvious and absurd, but provides no argument to support his claims.
4 comments
bigiain 5471 days ago
No special insight for most Hacker News readers, sure.

Try showing it to that strange religious uncle of yours, or the crazy guy who lives under the freeway, or a typical middle school teacher. I suspect there's some insights for some of those people to think about / argue against...

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brudgers 5471 days ago
It's not exactly special insight, but presumably all the people involved have experienced a number of encounters with Ted whereas for flying saucers, it is generally the case that all parties to the conversation have not had a number of encounters with flying saucers - unless one has - to a high degree of probability - entered an intellectual black hole of the sort described in the article.

The argument is premised on long standing principals of ordinary language philosophy, i.e. "It's not Ted, because Ted is on holiday," is an appropriate response whereas, "It's not Ted, but a robotic doppelganger," is a bullshit response [a recent addition to the philosophical classification of propositions] in ordinary circumstances.

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kd0amg 5471 days ago
It's not exactly special insight, but presumably all the people involved have experienced a number of encounters with Ted whereas for flying saucers, it is generally the case that all parties to the conversation have not had a number of encounters with flying saucers

On top of that, there have also been many cases of believing incorrectly that somebody else is out of town.

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roundsquare 5471 days ago
I suppose the most useful part about it is that it lists out the most common things to look out for. Having this list in front of you (or in the front of you mind) can be useful even if all the elements on the list are obvious.

Also, it isn't necessary to deal with the edge cases to handle 99% of what most people encounter.

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burgerbrain 5471 days ago
I'm not sure, but I think we may have just gone nuclear...
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