Will_Newsome comments on Rationality Quotes April 2012 - Less Wrong

4 Post author: Oscar_Cunningham 03 April 2012 12:42AM

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

Article Navigation

Comments (858)
Tags: quotes

Comments (858)

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

Comment author: Will_Newsome 10 April 2012 09:35:45PM *  -1 points [-]

Just came across a comment by Deogolwulf in response to a comment on one of Mencius Moldbug's posts:

“I would say that all things are ultimately reduceable to quarks”

Say it if you like, but if you are to be rationally coherent, you must believe that your proposition also reduces to quarks, and therefore, given that you believe that quarks are intrinsically meaningless, and given that “nothing enters in at a different level”, you must hold your own proposition to be fundamentally meaningless, and therefore not actually a proposition at all, and therefore that your non-propositional emittance is fundamentally without truth. But why then assert it? Do you ever consider that you are just trying irrationally to put yourself at the furthest remove from your former beliefs? Perhaps that is the source of your aversion to metaphysical philosophy which no rational-thinking animal can ever avoid even should he perversely wish it — any rational consideration of your own beliefs might reveal their nonsensical nature to you.

“It may be impractical to think at the quark-level, but that is the actual level reality operates on and nothing enters in at a different level.”

Could you think of any way to test or affirm this strange belief of yours even empirically-scientifically, let alone quarkly? Of course not, nor could there be any such way. Besides, it seems that, according to your own hazy brand of positivism-cum-physicalism, “levels of reality” are not ontologically objective, let alone empirically-scientifically knowable as such, and thus, by your own lights, it is meaningless to speak of them. But perhaps, after all, you do believe that the levels of reality of which you speak are ontologically objective, or that quarks have intrinsic meaning, in which case, slipping from your positivism, perhaps you would have some philosophical defence of these ideas, along with some defence of the bold equation of reality with physicality. But, once again, you would have to enter the metaphysical-philosophical realm which you yourself claim to be rubbish, and why enter it if you believe it to be so — or is all this just pseudo-scientific and scientistic posing?

Oh, snap!

Comment author: TheOtherDave 10 April 2012 11:09:22PM 4 points [-]

I couldn't find the original on a quick Google, but:

The Master was speaking in the public square about the illusory nature of reality, when a bull got away from his handler and charged the crowd. The crowd scattered in fear, all but a young child who had been learning at the master's feet, who had absorbed some of his wisdom and was therefore unafraid.

Afterwards, the Master approached the child's trampled body and, saddened, asked "Why did you not run?"
The child replied, with difficulty, "But Master, had you not just been teaching us that the bull was just an illusion? What should I have to fear from an illusion?"
"Yes, child," he replied. "The bull is an illusion. But so are you."

At that moment, the child died.

Which is to say, believing that something can be entirely explained in terms of something else doesn't absolve me from the need to deal with it. Even if I and the bull and my preference to remain alive can all be entirely captured by the sufficiently precise specification of a set of quarks, it doesn't follow that there exists no such person, no such bull, or no such preference.

Comment author: Will_Newsome 10 April 2012 11:19:31PM 5 points [-]

The argument was a meta-level undermining argument supporting the necessity of metaphysical reasoning (of the exact sort that you're engaging in in your comment);—it wasn't an argument about the merits of reductionism. That would likely have been clearer had I included more context; my apologies.

Comment author: TheOtherDave 11 April 2012 12:22:49AM 0 points [-]

(nods) Context is often useful, agreed.

Also, metaphysical reasoning is often necessary, agreed.

Sadly, I often find it necessary in response to metaphysical reasoning introduced to situations without a clear sense of what it's achieving and whether that end can be achieved without it.
In this sense it's rather like lawyers.

Not that I'm advocating eliminating all the lawyers, not even a little.
Lawyers are useful.
They're even useful for things other than defending oneself from other lawyers.

But I've also seen situations made worse because one party brought in a lawyer without a clear understanding of the costs and benefits of involving lawyers in that situation.

I suspect that a clear understanding of the costs and benefits of metaphysical reasoning is equally useful.

Comment author: Bugmaster 10 April 2012 11:32:15PM 0 points [-]

Where is that quote from, out of curiosity ?

Comment author: TheOtherDave 11 April 2012 12:03:00AM 1 point [-]

If I could remember that, I probably could have found it on Google in the first place.

Comment author: Bugmaster 11 April 2012 12:23:08AM 0 points [-]

...fair enough. I tried looking on Google, and couldn't find it either. Perhaps your quote is original enough for you to claim authorship :-/

Comment author: TheOtherDave 11 April 2012 12:30:37AM 0 points [-]

Perhaps? I'm fairly sure I read it somewhere, but my memory is unreliable.

Comment author: Eugine_Nier 11 April 2012 04:03:42AM 1 point [-]

I think part of the problem is different scenes of the word "reduce". Consider the following two statements:

1) All things ultimately reduce to quarks (nitpick: and leptons)

2) Quarks and leptons ultimately reduce to quantum wave functions.

3) Quantum wave functions ultimately reduce to mathematics.

4) All mathematics ultimately reduces to the ZFC axioms.

Notice that all these statements are true (I'm not quite sure about the first one) for slightly different values of "reduces".

Comment author: J_Taylor 12 April 2012 03:08:25AM 0 points [-]

Deogolwulf is the sort of fellow who uses 'proposition' while obviously meaning 'statement'. Also, some of the first paragraph is pure unreflective sophistry. Still, the second half:

Could you think of any way to test or affirm this strange belief of yours even empirically-scientifically, let alone quarkly? Of course not, nor could there be any such way.

Following this epistemic attack, I am imagining Deogolwulf holding up a mirror to TGGP's face and stating "No, TGGP, you are the metaphysics."

Powered by Reddit Powered by Reddit