[SEQ RERUN] The Fallacy of Gray

MinibearRex

Today's post, The Fallacy of Gray was originally published on 07 January 2008. A summary (taken from the LW wiki):

Nothing is perfectly black or white. Everything is gray. However, this does not mean that everything is the same shade of gray. It may be impossible to completely eliminate bias, but it is still worth reducing bias.

Discuss the post here (rather than in the comments to the original post).

This post is part of the Rerunning the Sequences series, where we'll be going through Eliezer Yudkowsky's old posts in order so that people who are interested can (re-)read and discuss them. The previous post was But There's Still A Chance, Right?, and you can use the sequence_reruns tag or rss feed to follow the rest of the series.

Sequence reruns are a community-driven effort. You can participate by re-reading the sequence post, discussing it here, posting the next day's sequence reruns post, or summarizing forthcoming articles on the wiki. Go here for more details, or to have meta discussions about the Rerunning the Sequences series.

Today's post, The Fallacy of Gray was originally published on 07 January 2008. A summary (taken from the LW wiki):

Nothing is perfectly black or white. Everything is gray. However, this does not mean that everything is the same shade of gray. It may be impossible to completely eliminate bias, but it is still worth reducing bias.

I can't possibly disagree more. The importance of a round earth for oceangoing navigation and trade was ALWAYS of huge importance, and EVEN if I allow you to dismiss it, there are plenty of other examples where our knowledge is or was woefully inadequate even for what we want to do. You might say to a peasant it doesn't matter what shape the earth is, but you could never say he didn't need to know about the disease vectors of effluent in the water EVEN if he didn't know. We are as we speak trying to understand cancer in greater and greater detail because want to cure it, but it's not hugely more important today to cure disease than it was in the past.

The importance of a round earth for oceangoing navigation and trade was ALWAYS of huge importance

I find it unlikely that they didn't notice if it was hugely important.

but you could never say he didn't need to know about the disease vectors of effluent in the water

Useful, but difficult to find out, not unlike economics, psychology, and several other things we still don't fully understand. I suppose we are making progress in these areas. We're learning more, and it's not becoming more important. We are still nowhere near done. I didn't think of this, ... (read more)

-3[anonymous]14y

Well, cancer used to be quite rare when few people lived past forty.