&gt; If the result were smaller than width of atlantic &#x2F; 1 day, I&#x27;d have been convinced that transatlantic travel must take &gt; 1 day.<p>Perfect. You&#x27;re looking for a very gross upper bound. In that case, I could say that proof that human behavior is unchangeable would also convince me.<p>But I&#x27;d go one step further -- if low IQ was shown to be the main cause of poverty, I would change my views, too. Not on the necessity of a solution (I mean, we&#x27;re also genetically incapable of flying, but that didn&#x27;t stop us from building airplanes) but on the kind solution we need.<p>&gt; I asked you what evidence could change your views. Had you stated concrete measurements then I&#x27;d have had to change my theory. Since my theory predicted reality perfectly I don&#x27;t need to change it.<p>Ah, so let me question your powers of deduction. When I said &quot;anything that would show that no human action would change the poor&#x27;s fortunes&quot; you <i>assumed</i> I was stating a tautology because you chose to interpret my words that way; that is not the only interpretation, though (and in this case, it was the wrong one). If, you had chosen to assume that I wouldn&#x27;t be so stupid as to offer a tautology (which I am not), you would have realized I meant something else altogether: that proving an impossibility result is very hard, and either requires lots and lots of different kinds of evidence, or a completely irrelevant upper bound -- as in your speed of light example (and I admit that I chose that example precisely because I knew you would come up with the speed of light) -- that is known to be false in both the Atlantic-crossing argument as well as in the question on the elasticity of human behavior.<p>You could have assumed (correctly, if you had paid attention to what I&#x27;m saying), that questions like &quot;but what would you say in a world with spherical cows&quot; are of no interest to me, because the answers are obvious. If you construct an imaginary world where your conclusion is the only reasonable one, any reasonable person would reach that same conclusion. The only purpose of such questions is to test if the other side is indeed as stupid as you imagine them to be. As I am not, I see no reason in playing that game (again -- just assume that I would say the same as you) and writing the obvious answer -- it&#x27;s boring. I believe that problems arise when cows aren&#x27;t spherical, so questions about obvious-world are both obvious, and are nothing more than taunts.<p>What really happened wasn&#x27;t that my behavior matched your theory -- it most certainly didn&#x27;t -- but that you&#x27;ve chosen to imagine that it does by trying hard to not understand what I was saying. I can also surmise as to the mechanism, which I have detailed before: when someone disagrees with you on such matters you assume that they are not as smart as you, and then create an image of that reality in your mind by misinterpreting their words to match the interpretation that would be the intention of your imagined idiot.<p><i>My</i> theory was that you always choose to interpret the other side&#x27;s words in a way that would twist them to match the presumed claims of an idiot, and as a result you never actually give counter-arguments but pose teases (which you call &quot;core questions&quot;) that do nothing to move the discussion forward (I even know how you&#x27;d respond to this). My theory was yet again proven correct, and I think that much more convincingly than yours.<p>And, BTW, if by &quot;faith-based&quot; you mean based on values, then yours are, too. The difference between us is that you fail to see that.<p>In fact, that might explain a lot. If you believe that your conclusions are based on pure reasoning and nothing else, then if anyone does not reach the same conclusions, their reasoning  must be faulty (or they assign different probabilities than yours, but that is still perfectly in your comfort zone). You have no choice but to assume that the other side is stupid, because if they are not, then that means that your own conclusions arise from values, too.<p>While I can&#x27;t convince you right now that that belief is wrong[1], I would suggest -- as an eye-opening exercise -- to comb your reasoning for hidden assumptions that could reasonably be false. If you can&#x27;t find any, then either you are the greatest philosopher who ever lived or have a blindness to your own thought-process.<p>[1]: There are two problems here: 1. Is it possible to reach ethical conclusions from probabilities and reasoning alone? and 2. Is that what you&#x27;re actually doing? I&#x27;m not sure I know the answer to 1, although I believe it to be false (I can answer the claims made by ethical naturalists, and believe that they don&#x27;t really tackle this exact question), but so far I am very convinced that the answer to 2 is no.