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wedrifid comments on Qualia Soup, a rationalist and a skilled You Tube jockey - Less Wrong
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It will be a sad day when fetishization of "science" takes over this site as well.
The word "science" should be taboo. It is used both for idealized pursuit of knowledge when you want to praise it; and then for a particular set of practice of academia which pretends to be about pursuit of knowledge, but it's really the most horrible waste of brainpower in history.
What about pursuit of knowledge involves shady statistics, obsession with "statistical significance", peer review to exclude "outsiders", massive publication bias, very little reproduction of anything (some estimates say that for 95% of published results, nobody bothered even once - but if it wasn't worth reproducing, was it worth studying at all?), hiding results behind pay walls, and focus on whatever lies within established disciplines instead of what's most important?
Not surprisingly nearly none of old discoverers of knowledge like Newton, Darwin, Maxwell, Einstein, etc. would be even considered "scientists" by modern criteria.
As far as I can tell the main reason people are blinded to all problems of practice of "science" is the very word "science" itself.
The word 'should' should be taboo.
Why? Certainly "should" is not a trivial concept, but refusing to use it entirely costs a lot in simplicity of expression, in exchange for a slight increase in clarity.
Explain to me what should means.
The long version is contained in the metaethics sequence, which I broadly agree with.
To noughth order, though, "should" means "satisfies my utility function, which is partly shared by you and others."