Yes, I am aware that you can use equivocation fallacies to explain that we can't know anything and all claims are equally likely to be true. I was talking about what a wise person would do, though.
Would you mind explaining what about my comment was either rude or a flame, given the context in which rationality was named as a sign of being unwise?
... when "stupid thing X" is making an argument that doesn't address the problem, and "you can do stupid thing X" is actually an explanation of what the problem with that argument is, and it's also not calling anyone names, but just calling out fallacious reasoning as what it is: Fallacious reasoning? Fallacious reasoning might well be correlated with stupidity, but that doesn't make pointing out fallacious reasoning an insult in itself.
Equally, if the topic of the discussion is what makes a certain decision wise or not, as it happened to be the case here, I don't see how pointing out that a suggested methodology does not qualify due to fallacious reasoning in that methodology is either rude or a flame. That is, unless you consider the start of that discussion (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20129547) a rude flame, which you possibly could, even though I don't think it was intended as such.
I'm afraid I'm not really following this. In a way it doesn't matter, though, because even if I missed some subtlety in perceiving your comment as rude, I can guarantee you that most readers would miss that subtlety as well. Since there are plenty of ways to make your substantive points, why not just choose ones that don't straddle that line?
> I’ve only asserted that it is impossible to prove any absolute truth.
No, you have also asserted that there is no way to distinguish different levels of justification for "non-absolute truths", or else your whole argument makes no sense. Which is also exactly what an equivocation fallacy is: Claiming that two things are the same because you can decide to ignore the differences.
I made no such assertion. I’m made no comments that attempted to ignore the differences that exist between different belief systems, nor made any comments that said you couldn’t qualitatively differentiate them. Simply that you can’t use the truth as the basis of that differentiation. All belief systems, whether they’re a belief in science as a source of truth, or a religion as a source of truth, are based on assertions that cannot be proven, and are therefor all equally unprovable. This is a perfectly rational equivalence, and doesn’t present a fallacy on any level. If you were more intellectually humble this might be easier for you to accept, but as it stands, you are no different from anybody else who chooses to reject the limits of their knowledge.
> All belief systems, whether they’re a belief in science as a source of truth, or a religion as a source of truth, are based on assertions that cannot be proven, and are therefor all equally unprovable.
Or in other words: There is no such thing as absolute (mathematical, provable) truth about reality, and if you ignore that there is such a thing as evidence for claims about reality, then all claims are equally justified, as long as you make assumptions that are consistent with your claims.
> If you were more intellectually humble this might be easier for you to accept, but as it stands, you are no different from anybody else who chooses to reject the limits of their knowledge.
Well, yeah, it is tragic how religion poisons minds to the point where everything about the world is upside down.
The funny thing is, you yourself don't actually believe that that supposed limit to our knowledge is there. You yourself do constantly make decisions prefering empirical evidence over other "belief systems". When the stove is hot, you don't put your hand on it "because it can't be proven that I will hurt myself (true!), and if I assume that heat doesn't hurt you, that is just as proven as the assumption that empirical evidence tells me something about reality (true!), so I am just as justified in my belief system that putting your hand on a hot stove won't hurt you as people with a scientific 'belief system'! Believing the science requires just as much faith as believing that a hot stove won't hurt you!" You are not actually stupid enough to believe that. In your daily life, for the most part, you constantly act consistent with the belief that empirical/scientific methodology gives you reliable information about reality, and inconsistent with the belief that any other assumptions instead of what possibly underlies scientific "belief systems" is just as justified/just as much "faith based". Nor would you accept so from anyone who disagree with you about something. If someone made the assumption that murdering people made their loved ones happy, and started murdering people on that basis, you would not say "oh, well, it's their assumption, and it can not be proven, but science can't either, so it proably makes people happy". You would immediately call that out as completely moronic reasoning that is way overstretching the implications of an iteresting conundrum of epistemology to be more real than the obvious immediate experience that killing people does not make their loved ones happy.
All of this is not actually a set of principles that you believe in. It's a set of excuses you give so as to avoid seriously examining the epistemic foundations of this one particular belief that you happen to have, and that you apply only very selectively to that one claim.
This is really just an incoherent anti-religious rant, with a whole lot of completely unfounded assumptions you’ve made about me personally thrown in.
I have a tremendous amount of faith in science, I have a degree in physics. I simply happen to understand the contextual limitations of the knowledge that I’ve derived from it, something you seem far too arrogant to do yourself.
