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EphemeralNight comments on The scourge of perverse-mindedness - Less Wrong
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This may be the wrong tact. As I pointed out above, I think it likely that the problem lies not in the nature of the phenomenon but in the way a person relates to the phenomenon emotionally. Particularly, that for natural accidents like rainbows, most people simply can't relate emotionally to the physics of light refraction, even if they sort of understand it.
So, I think a more effective tact would be to focus on the experience of seeing the rainbow, rather than the rainbow itself, because if a person is focusing on the rainbow itself, then they inevitably will by disappointed by the reductionist explanation supplanting their instinctive sense of there being something ontologically mental behind the rainbow.
Because, however you word it, the rainbow is just a refraction phenomena, but when you look at the rainbow and experience the sight of the rainbow there are lots of really awesome things happening in your own brain that are way more interesting than the rainbow by itself is.
I think trying to assign words like "just" or "wonderful" to physical processes that cause rainbows is an example of the Mind Projection Fallacy. So, let's not try to get people excited about what makes the rainbow. Let's try to get people excited about what makes the enjoyment of seeing one.
It may be true that saying these things may not get everybody to see the beauty we see in the mechanics of those various phenomena. But perhaps saying "Rainbows are a wonderful refraction phenomena" can help get across that even if you know that the rainbows are refraction phenomena, you can still see feel wonder at them in the same way as before. The wonder at their true nature can come later.
I guess what I'm getting at is the difference between "Love is wonderful biochemistry" and "Love is a wonderful consequence of biochemistry". The second, everybody can perceive. The first, less so.
This kind of touches my point You're talking about two separate physical processes here, and I hold that the latter is the only one worth getting excited about. Or, at least the only one worth trying to get laypeople excited about.
Eh, both phenomena are things we can reasonably get excited about. I don't see that there's much point in trying to declare one inherently cooler than the other. Different people get excited by different things.
I do see, though, that so long as they think that learning about either the cause of their wonder or the cause of the rainbows will steal the beauty from them, no progress will be made on any front. What I'm trying to say is that once that barrier is down, once they stop seeing science as the death of all magic (so to speak), then progress is much easier. Arguably, only then should you be asking yourself whether to explain to them how rainbows work or why one feels wonder when one looks at them.
Okay, maybe we need to taboo "excited".
This right here is at the crux of my point. I am predicting that, for your average neurotypical, explaining their wonder produces significantly less feeling of stolen beauty than explaining the rainbow. Because, in the former case, you're explaining something mental, whereas in the latter case, you're explaining something mental away.
The rainbow may still be there, but it's status as a Mentally-Caused Thing is not.
If people react badly to having somebody explain how their love works, what makes you think that things will go better with wonder?
And, in a different mental thread, I'm going to posit that really, what you talk about matters much less than how you talk about it, in this context. You can (hopefully) get the point across by demonstrating by example that wonder can survive (and even thrive) after some science. At least if, as I suspect, people can perceive wonder through empathy. So, if you feel wonder, feel it obviously and try to get them to do so also. And just select whatever you feel the most wonder at.
Less dubiously, presentation is fairly important to making things engaging. Now, I would guess that the more familiar you are with a subject, the easier it becomes to make it engaging. So select whether you explain rainbow or the wonder of rainbows based on that.
Maybe.
I'm speculating.
That is an interesting analysis. I think I might view "just" and "wonderful" more like physically null words, so as to say they do not have any meaning beyond interpretation.
I guess I am just getting too rational for interacting with normal people psychology purely by typical-mindedness.
You are misunderstanding the purposes of this discussion.
I don't have any problems, I can hardly not see anything as beautiful without maths.
But normalfolk are not so fortunate. How do we trick them into thinking that reductionism is cool?