prase comments on What is wrong with "Traditional Rationality"? - Less Wrong

17 Post author: Perplexed 08 April 2011 05:13PM

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Comment author: prase 09 April 2011 11:12:29AM 3 points [-]

Although I too have now a sort of negative gut reaction to the defenses of Popper, as a result of reading through the discussions below the recent curi's posts, I think that this reply is a bit unfair. Saying "scientist who read Popper do X" weakly implies that Popper really suggests X, or at least that it is easy to mistakenly derive X from his work; it certainly is a statement about Popper, even if an indirect one.

This in no way contradicted anything that Oscar wrote.

is literally true, but belongs to the class of literal-interpretation nitpickery so often found in traditional debates. It is logically possible that Popper had in no way suggested the things his followers were doing, but it is not probable and we should not be interested in mere logical possibility.