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Desrtopa comments on What is wrong with "Traditional Rationality"? - Less Wrong
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Comments (95)
This is not a novel contribution, it's based on a confusion of the position we hold here. The traditional response to comments like this is "read the sequences," because a lot of effort was put into them so we wouldn't have to spend time sorting out comments like this. But the sequences are a lot of reading, and it's not always fair to expect people to do that much work to participate in a conversation, so we don't do that as much anymore, but when a person persistently doesn't show the commitment to catching up on the information everyone else in the discussion is already operating on, a lot of people will just get frustrated and downvote.
I did not downvote, but I am going to suggest that Brian Scurfield read the sequences if he's going to participate further. That's why they were written after all; to bring people up to speed to the point where they're able to meaningfully participate.
The comment I responded to made factual errors about Popper and Feynman and attributed to them positions they did not hold. I don't need to read the sequences to point that out.
The comment referred to characteristics of modern individuals, particularly scientists, who identify as rational individuals, and associate themselves with the intellectual traditions of Feynman and Popper. If you read the sequences, you would receive examples which show exactly to what these criticisms refer.
could you link a page in the sequences with a (high quality) criticism of Popper?
No.
There are many pages in the sequences devoted to addressing mistakes made by individuals who identify as rational, who associate themselves with the traditions of modern science, and showing how to do better (not just arguments for a procedure that alleges to be more epistemically sound but how it produces better results in the real world.)
In devoting ourselves to the procedures that produce the best tangible results, we have found no reason to take a particular interest in producing criticisms of Popper. If Critical Rationalism distinguished itself as an epistemology that produced exceptional real world results, then matters would be different.
Hmm...I had something else written here, but had a thought causing me to be less certain of what I wrote. I do think Popper should be criticized by someone on this site, to point out what is wrong with his epistemology.
I agree that the whole Popper debate has passed the point of being silly; I'm ashamed to have continued to participate in it so far past the point where it was clear that further headway was unlikely to be made. I dispute the allegation of bad scholarship though.
The purpose isn't to criticize the authors, but how the specified people behave. What the authors actually say is irrelevant; the criticisms of the people specified by the reference to "traditional rationalists" would be equally applicable whether Popper and Feynman's writings on epistemology were complete nonsense or identical to what Eliezer is arguing.
There are, of course, wide selections of views encompassed in mainstream philosophy and traditional rationality, but the differences between them are only salient to the discussion if they distinguish them from the qualities that are being referenced.
I apologize, I edited my after submitting it. I did realize the issue of relevance, and I also think that my criticism was unfair in that I think the critique of "Traditional Rationality" is meant to be a methodological critique. I think the critique is very much in terms of valuing process (even a particular scholarly process) over results; which was also part of your point.
I guess I'm very much used to the scholarship process, and I'm not entirely clear on what "Traditional Rationality" ultimately is meant to imply, other than finding clues on various pages. I shouldn't have expressed my confusion as disagreement.
I don't see how
... could be interpreted as making claims about Popper or Feynman, or attributing any positions to them. Oscar's writing was quite clear and understandable.
You really don't see how that could be done, even with the usage of words such as "especially"?
Read the context. Oscar makes a set of claims about scientists, especially those who read Popper and Feynman. Such scientists, apparently, make a fetish of falsification, they operate only in a small domain, don't explain how knowledge is created etc. Well, those sort of things are not in the tradition of Popper and Feynman and if there are scientists who do that, and who have read Popper and Feynman, then they did not understand what they read. Not only is Oscar's comment rude to the tradition of Popper and Feynman, he doesn't understand that tradition.
Right, and if that's the case, then Oscar's characterization was correct, and not attributing any positions to Feynman and Popper.
Oscar was just summarizing Eliezer (with caveats like "something like"), it seems a bit like a wate of time to attack his summary in detail, where instead you could just find from which of Eliezer's writings Oscar formed that impression, and point out any errors at their source.
My vague recollection of Eliezer's position would be something like "Here are the kind of mistakes that I made, that listening to Feynman didn't prevent, and that scientists still make". But again, that's just my vague summary, no point in trying to take it apart.
Accurately understanding a work is no prerequisite to being influenced by it.