Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by placebo 938 days ago
Both our opinions about this are equally unfalsifiable unless we agree on an experiment that can be performed at some point which would make one of us change their mind.

I assume you'd agree that the pursuit of what is ultimately true should be exactly the opposite of making oneself more closed minded by repairing inconvenient holes in one's opinions rather than reassessing them based on new evidence.

I wasn't referring to the ability to persuade someone to hold an arbitrary position (although that could be a fun debate as well), and putting aside the discussion about the ability to persuade fanatics, if a super intelligence had an internal model that is more aligned with what is true, it could in theory convince someone who wants to understand the truth to take a critical look at their opinions and change them if they are authentic and courageous enough to do so.