Risto_Saarelma comments on Tell Your Rationalist Origin Story - Less Wrong

30 Post author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 25 February 2009 05:16PM

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Comment author: Risto_Saarelma 08 September 2012 08:05:43AM *  1 point [-]

i would not stereotype him with likes of Rand or Hubbard (yikes!)

Yeah, there's the difference between deciding that his stuff is actually the same kind of stuff as some very iffy stuff, and then skipping it, and just noting a vague and very possibly unfair surface resemblance to iffy stuff, and then not bothering to investigate further since the stuff is 70 years old and there should be more people saying it's important if it really is.

I lent him my copy of RAW's Quantum Psychology held it up to the whole class the next day and lectured on why you shouldn't read books like that.

What should I know about this one? I know that when a book has "quantum" in the title and is not a physics book, the odds are that it really is a book you shouldn't be reading. If my quick-and-unfair pattern match for Korzybski was Hubbard+Rand, my quick-and-unfair pattern match for something titled "Quantum Psychology" is The Secret.

Then again, I do know that RAW should be more interesting than that, though I also have the suspicion that his stuff may be a bit too stuck in the counterculture of the 60s and 70s to really have aged well.