NancyLebovitz comments on Train Philosophers with Pearl and Kahneman, not Plato and Kant - Less Wrong
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I disagree that this is a bug, not a feature. I think it's useful for fields to contain people with different styles of thinking. The people who are competent at math are probably N types on the MBTI, people who are good at abstract reasoning, but who might be less competent at focusing on empirical data and specific concrete situations. The sciences, especially the social sciences, need people who are good at observing/collecting data, and I would hate to disqualify these people with a math requirement, or relegate them to lower-status because their minds operate in a different (but also useful) way.
(This comment informed by having read this essay earlier this morning.)
From the essay:
It might be possible to get some information about this from the survey.
The utilitarian/autism-spectrum correlation may be true in the general population, but there doesn't seem to be any correlation between self-reported AQ and consequentialism endorsement in the LW population (perhaps because the LW population is already self-selected for either being a consequentialist or coming up with good justifications for non-consequentialism):
(A positive correlation suggests that higher autism scorers were a tad more likely to endorse a higher category, that is, deontology or virtue ethics.)
Thank you for checking.