Comment by unalone | Hacker News Reader

Comment by unalone | Hacker News Reader

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In what way is it irrational?

The fact that it relies on an absurd belief.

Rabbi's are inspired by God, God created us and inspired scripture and knows what is best.

Yeah. That's the irrational part.

But it is a rational argument, it applies known (to the subject) facts in a logical manner to determine the true course to take.

"God told us to" isn't logic unless God is first proven.

The question of whether God exists is not a scientific question

Yes it is. If God exists, there should be a proof for it. If there is no proof, then there is no God.

"Rabbi's provide bad advice" might be a good first hypothesis - eventually we see that Rabbi's usually provide good advice, should we take that advice? Seems logical (within this limited discourse).

That's a non sequitur. If a rabbi (not a proper noun, by the way) provides good advice, that proves that the rabbi as a human being is wise regarding certain things. I can give terrific personal advice and still not be good at playing the stock market.

Well do we have scientific data which somehow shows his premises to be wrong?

You're invoking Sagan's dragon. The burden of proof is on you, not on reality. Until you prove it right, you are wrong and have no argument to make.

We belive they are wrong but can't readily show they are objectively wrong.

But we can.

There is no proof that the speed of light in vacuum is constant - so relativity is wrong?

There is no proof (none possible by Godels incompleteness theorem) that our system of arithmetic is complete and consistent - indeed the first incompleteness theorem says that there is a truth in the system which is unprovable. So, yeah we can't use arithmetic, no proof see.

Things in reality are not wrong if you don't have a proof. Some things are true for which no proof [currently] exists.

"pbhjpbhj is not thinking of an orange", true? Well I have no proof and so you determine that it is objectively false. Presumably you see the absurdity in that?

[Aside: i was never taught grammar at school and so have picked it up piecemeal, can you direct me how Rabbi is not a proper noun. It is a class of people, for sure, but is also used as a specific name for a single person (in common parlance at least); also how I then misused it, thanks]

"God told us to" isn't logic unless God is first proven.

Not really. This, for example, is a perfectly logical argument:

  All burritos are Platonists.
  Batman is a burrito.
  Therefore, Batman is a Platonist.

It does not require either of the premises to be proven (or even true, or even semantically meaningful) to be rational.

To be reasonable, on the other hand, is a much fuzzier concept.

You're invoking Sagan's dragon. The burden of proof is on you, not on reality. Until you prove it right, you are wrong and have no argument to make.

"Burden of proof" has no real connection to rationality as such (beyond determining whether the logic itself is valid). It is fundamental to the scientific method, but that's another thing altogether.

You are using terms in a loose and nontraditional way.

The argument isn't logical so much as it is valid. It isn't sound, based on the untrue premises, but it preserves the truth of the premises.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soundness

Occam's razor provides a reasonable metric for burden of proof. Any position that requires Saturday to have a special property that affects light switches is obviously more complicated than the null hypothesis that light switches are agnostic with respect to the day of the week. The valid arguments in favor of a special Saturday are not terribly satisfiable (in a technical sense), and are thus unfavored.

A series of statements that are valid are logical. The conclusions can be wrong, as "anything follows from a false premise" (about the only actual statement I recall from logic lectures; see eg http://www.dpmms.cam.ac.uk/~wtg10/implication.html).

Occam's Razor is unsound. The truth is not necessarily simple.

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