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MichaelVassar comments on Go Forth and Create the Art! - Less Wrong
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Comments (104)
I strongly agree that people who try to improve on rationality usually jump off a cliff, but I strongly disagree with the claim that this is the first thing they do even if they are smart.
Seth Roberts is a great counter-example. He eventually jumps off a cliff, hey you have done so too on occasion, though you always recovered and he hasn't, but his criticisms of existing practice and proposals for improved practice remain valid.
Hegel is a grossly unfair example, totally unrepresentative the class "great thinkers in philosophy" and recognized as a fraud by very many within philosophy. Many great philosophers are more like Seth Roberts, or early Eliezer for that matter.
I must disagree with your assessment of Hegel. Folks from the outside often see "philosophy" as something without internal divisions (like people from the outside of any culture). While it's true that 'very many' (for some values of 'very many') think Hegel is a fraud, he's still both popular and influential. I am amongst the ones who don't think very highly of 'continental philosophy' (of which Hegel is an example), but I nonetheless recommend him at times. Specifically, some folks think Marx had interesting things to say about alienation, and I have to point out that Marx pretty much just lifted those parts entirely from Hegel (though mostly reversing their spin). As continental philosophers go, I think Hegel is pretty solid (compare Heidegger).
But yes, folks that use terms that lump Isaac Newton and Dan Dennett together with Hegel and Marx are clearly doing something wrong.
Could you elaborate? It's not obvious, except in the sentence with Heidegger, that you disagree at all. "Fraud" is a bit harsh, but saying that his claim to have a new way of thinking was a pitiful jump off a cliff is not to say that "every word he says is a lie, including 'and' and 'the.'" Maybe the image of jumping off a cliff is too vivid. I take it mean having reached a position where you can convince yourself of anything, but that doesn't mean that you'll use this new tool to actually convince yourself of everything.
No discussion of Hegel is complete without posters.
I certainly believe that many people will be mislead by Michael Vassar's comment because they don't notice the difference between "very many" and "most."
"Folks from the outside often see 'philosophy' as something without internal divisions (like people from the outside of any culture)."
Aren't those people just straightforwardly wrong? If anything, philosophy has too many internal divisions.
I presume you mean that non-literally, but I don't know what else you intend it to mean. How is it that he "eventually jumps off a cliff"? Does that mean you disagree with some subset of his conclusions/hypotheses? If so, which ones?
I disagree with how far he takes his metaconclusions with which he judges his hypotheses. He rightly rejects bad scientific practices which throw away most data in a Manichean fashion and then use bad methods of analysis anyway to reach wrong conclusions but he then ends up with engaging in the massively motivated collection of confirming evidence that the scientific method is intended to prevent, the generation of cheap evolutionary just so stories, etc.
His theory of holidays, for instance, is a parody of bad evolutionary psychology. Evolution is all important, ultimately, but it's too dumb to make basic competence at hiding instinctual for toddlers. That's pretty bad!