= 27d567bc2d48d9f40e9ccc20ea370b15)
David_Gerard comments on A sense of logic - 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 (269)
That's a very lucky response. I visualise something like a broken, mashed-up machine made of human belief and longing, flailing and bleeding as it tries to keep running. It's really very horrible. That's what determined stupidity looks like.
(wow, that's icky. It's also true. I slightly wish I hadn't realised that's what I've been picturing. Mostly in a dim sodium-yellow light rather than full colour, thankfully.)
*chuckles* You just induced me to notice another response: Your metaphor registers as 'made of smoke', aka 'that map doesn't match the territory'. Logic based on nonexistent or incorrect assumptions doesn't 'run painfully', it just doesn't run at all. (Logic, like software, doesn't try.) People can run on beliefs that are incorrect, but in such cases there are true things that are relevant, like 'this person doesn't understand photons' or 'this person has fallen for the Dunning–Kruger effect' or 'this person doesn't care enough about being correct to actually form logical arguments'.
The difference seems to be that I find the latter situation to be much more emotionally neutral than most people here do. I can only speculate on possible reasons for that. (I'm more used to it? I don't see the contents of other peoples' heads as my problem? I sympathize with people who don't have the capacity or the background to grasp (the importance of) science, because there are things that I have similar levels of difficulty with? Possibly some combination of these and other issues?)
I'm seeing them flail about as they try to do what others think of as "thinking". Dunning-Kruger sufferers give this image particularly badly. "Like a monkey trying to fuck a football."
That image resonates. And, yeah, icky.