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JGWeissman comments on A Parable On Obsolete Ideologies - Less Wrong
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Interesting. Part way through this switches to a narrower focus but the general concept applies to obsolete philosophy or discarded theories or anything else that has essentially been "overruled" by later works. One could even make the case that Newtonian physics is an obsolete ideology.
Philosophy in particular has great deal of old stuff that sticks around because it was first, even though large parts of it are now irrelevant. While it makes an interesting historical study, it now borders on bad philosophy. I have no specific examples to share, however, this is just an impression.
Newtonian physics successfully makes precise predictions that approximate reality much closer than the precision of human perception for a large domain of problems that includes most of human experience, with far less computational cost than the more exact theories, and the more exact theories explain why the approximations are so good. While it is important to remember it is an approximation if you are going to investigate phenomena outside the domain that it works, the approximation is useful.
Conversely, religious morality is perceptibly wrong except in very narrow domains, and more complicated than secular morality.
Agreed. I am not making the case against Newtonian physics, but I can see how someone would start.
Also, is it just me, or are my examples just causing more confusion? If I switched to the word "illustration" would it be easier? I keep using small examples to help convey a point but people jump on a problem with the example and completely ignore the point.
Something is amiss but I cannot see what it is.
I did not mean to imply that you were. I meant to demonstrate that this concept of obsolete ideology can discriminate between old theories that are just wrong and old theories that are still useful. The best way I know to show that Newtonian physics could be defended against the charge of being an obsolete ideology is to actually defend it against the charge.
Perhaps I could have been clearer about my central point, that the concept of obsolete ideology is not a fully general counter argument against any use of old theories that are inconsistent with newer theories.
Ah, okay. I think that the distinction you make is very good point.
This in particular is good to keep in mind. "Old" does not mean "bad" and even if something comes along and supersedes an older ideology, the older ideology can have its uses. Approximation is the current example. Are there any others?