= 27d567bc2d48d9f40e9ccc20ea370b15)
RobinHanson comments on Two Truths and a Lie - Less Wrong
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
= 783df68a0f980790206b9ea87794c5b6)
Loading…= b715d02e85f7b3b4ae65ca3d3e450868)
Subscribe to RSS Feed
Powered by Reddit
= f037147d6e6c911a85753b9abdedda8d)
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
Comments (66)
I didn't understand Psychohistorian's post as suggesting that we should make up fictional data - for then of course it may be no surprise that the given theory would have to bend in order to accommodate it. Rather, we should take real data, which is not explained by the theory (but which is understood in light of some different theory), and see just how easily the advocate can stretch his explanation to accommodate it. Does he/she notice the stretch? Can he/she resolve the difference between that data from the others?
People get into man-with-a-hammer mode with evolutionary explanations. A lot. Because of the nature of evolutionary biology, sometimes they just reason like, "I can imagine what advantages this feature could have conferred in the past. Thus, ...". And yes, a lot of the time what you get is ad hoc crap.
But what if we don't know which data is actually explained by the theory or not? That will make it hard to come up with "real data, which is not explained by the theory".