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Swimmy comments on Rationality quotes: October 2010 - Less Wrong
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5) Burning Bibles is socially considered far more disrespectful than simply calling the Bible "false." Even a scientist who treats honesty as a lexicographic preference may still try to maximize politeness or social capital afterwards.
6) A scientist who lives in a time/region when Bible-burning leads to self-burning will use the method of observation to determine that burning the Bible is a bad idea.
I believe this about captures it - for the purpose it serves, burning Bibles is usually needlessly incendiary.
Upvoted for the punnish double entendre.
I aim to please (if not always inform). (:
5. To the extent that a person places political correctness before truth, that person is not behaving as a scientist.
6. i strongly doubt that's what the people who downvoted me had in mind. I could imagine getting a few downvotes on those grounds, but not net downvotes.
Regarding 5, I don't see how not burning a particular book is a necessary condition for valuing truth above political correctness. "Destroying information" and "Valuing truth" might seem logically equivalent to you, but to me they seem quite in tension.
Again, this seems disingenuous. Are people really interpreting the quote in terms of censorship rather than blasphemy?
The quote's at -2. That could well be 2 downvotes total. You have at least 6 reasons here that believably could be why someone might have done that, and you still seem to balk. Is it really that confusing?
When I first saw the quote, I thought "meh". When I saw it again, a couple of the things I cited occurred to me. It's totally out-of-context, and I'm not sure what the intended interpretation is. I definitely wasn't thinking in terms of "censorship" or "blasphemy"; rather, I tried to imagine what the author might have thought scientists do all day that requires them to set books on fire.
There are very few things that I would count as logically necessary conditions for being a "scientist", and that particular action isn't one of them. Why do bibles have anything to do with scientists at all? Are you a religious nut or something?
2 downvotes total requires not only that two people downvote it, but also that no people upvote it. It is the latter that I find surprising.
I was thinking of the objection to scientists who believe unsupportable things when they leave the laboratory.
I certainly hope not. :(
Yes. Historically as well as in current culture, burning a book is THE signal that you wish for it to disappear, not just that you consider it wrong. It implies that you would do the same to all copies, not just one, and book-burners who had the power to do so almost always did. Ridiculously extensive Wikipedia article.
In retrospect, I really should have thought of that myself.