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Erik comments on Defense Against The Dark Arts: Case Study #1 - Less Wrong
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Comments (48)
I disagree with your conclusion on the grounds that I think you're interpreting the passage in a different way than the author intended it.
My interpretation is more along the lines of "Steve Jobs, on seeing the profound economic destitution in the East, examined his beliefs about human utility functions. Finding that Western values/practices seemed to promote utility better than Eastern values/practices in developing countries (and perhaps that they do even in developed countries), he decided that the East should adopt the West's values/practices."
I loved the dissection into multiple biases, and I agree with your dissection based on your reading of the passage, but I think the author is saying something different and more in line with the prevalent beliefs on Less Wrong.
I think you may very well be correct in your interpretation of the original authors intention. However, I think Yvain's is more spot on for the majority of the upvotes the comment got.
....or maybe the quotation and by extension the entire comment were meant to suggest that traditionally materialist concerns like sanitation, wealth and longevity are more deserving of the title enlightenment and than our categorizing of enlightenment to only mean the spirit is not entirely accurate. Expressing wonder at reductionist, material understanding of the universe shouldn't be new to this crowd. Expressing value judgements do not a dark art make.
...or maybe it meant to ignore all Indian claims to enlightenment....
There is a lot of nonsense on OB and LW about separating content from style; the occasional attempts to translate into positivist verifiable claims or examples of Dark Arts often say more about the person doing the translating than illuminating the text for the reader.
Yvain obviously interpreted this in a very specific way. Yvain has a good basis for asking Phil to clarify the issues. These sorts of things are more valuable as discussions and instead it was turned into a broadcast.
This is not a criticism, but just a suggestion that the world of give-and-take, persuasion and rebuttal can be a lot more valuable than posting an instantiation of meaning for the comment that is highly suspect at best.
As a sidenote, it's a very good sign that this discussion has followed the path of