Constant comments on Costs and Benefits of Scholarship - Less Wrong

40 Post author: lukeprog 22 March 2011 02:19AM

You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.

Comments (106)

You are viewing a single comment's thread. Show more comments above.

Comment author: [deleted] 23 March 2011 12:01:20AM 10 points [-]

That you carefully avoid naming names is itself a symptom of the problem, as well as contributing to it (I'm not in any way blaming you - you have to protect yourself). You self-censor, along with a lot of other sensible and reasonable people, with the result that the propaganda goes unanswered. Of course a lot of people are not shy about attacking the propaganda, but they either already were or else become low-status, which has the perverse effect of strengthening the propaganda.

It's really very inconvenient for me that you never name names, which leaves the discussion at an abstract and therefore not entirely useful level. Additionally it's not very convincing, because you don't give the material, specific evidence that your claims are true (again, entirely understandable and blameless). It's a bit like discussing the conflict between the creationists and the Darwinists without ever saying that that's what you're talking about, let alone saying which side is right and why. (It is safe to mention the Darwinists versus the creationists, because the right side, the Darwinists, are high status.)