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A comment on I was denied admission to a PhD program because of my perceived political views. Parent comment

Re:I was denied admission to a PhD program because of my per... by isolate on Wednesday December 16, 2015 @08:56PM (#10748979)
Presumably you can imagine a somewhat stupid robot that does random scientific experiments, generating good beliefs and bad ones. Why would that invalidate the good beliefs?

Belief A has no rational basis. Belief B has a rational basis. If you believe A yet have proven B, that doesn't make B wrong. Even if believe that it was A which led you to the discovery.

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Re:I was denied admission to a PhD program because of my per... by Retra on Thursday December 17, 2015 @08:33AM (#10751333)
It doesn't. But it is a good clue that the robot isn't using a rational process to select beliefs, and is instead doing so randomly. It is far easier to come up with an invalid belief than a valid one, and if you aren't selecting them rationally, you are practically guaranteed to be wrong.

>If you believe A yet have proven B, that doesn't make B wrong.

It makes you wrong. All the time you spend as a proponent for A is wasted.

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Re:I was denied admission to a PhD program because of my per... by isolate on Thursday December 17, 2015 @05:48PM (#10755202)
Brute force approaches can work. For example, evolution produced humans.

I agree that it's better not to waste your time believing A if you can avoid it.

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