NancyLebovitz comments on Train Philosophers with Pearl and Kahneman, not Plato and Kant - Less Wrong

65 Post author: lukeprog 06 December 2012 12:42AM

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Comment author: Plasmon 04 December 2012 01:19:25PM 3 points [-]

It's not going to happen because it would disqualify too many candidates and make courses unpopular. Maths is a huge turn off for a lot of people.

Indeed. This is a bug, not a feature, and alas, it holds these fields back.

Also, one could argue that history is releant to just about everything. Etc.

It is certainly true that history-of-(field) is useful for people doing work in (field). History in general, while useful in general, is less directly useful for a specific field. And indeed, most fields do spend reasonable (or more than reasonable!) amounts of time discussing their own history. Art does this, philosophy does this, even mathematics and physics do this to some extent.

It is true that the argument "one could argue that (some field) is relevant to just about everything and that therefore more of (this field) should be taught" can be made convincingly for many fields, but the fact that it can be made for many fields is not an argument against it, it just means that some field must be prioritized, hopefully on utilitarian grounds.

Comment author: lucidian 04 December 2012 01:31:56PM -1 points [-]

It's not going to happen because it would disqualify too many candidates and make courses unpopular. Maths is a huge turn off for a lot of people.

Indeed. This is a bug, not a feature, and alas, it holds these fields back.

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.)

Comment author: NancyLebovitz 05 December 2012 04:06:29AM 1 point [-]

From the essay:

Or to put it more provocatively: The Aspier someone is, the more likely it is that he’ll be an eager utilitarian. (You probably know people like this. Anyone who self-identifies as a ‘utilitarian’ probably has Aspie tendencies — very fluent with abstract concepts, and very eager to apply them to all aspects of life.)

It might be possible to get some information about this from the survey.

Comment author: gwern 05 December 2012 08:41:27PM *  3 points [-]

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):

R> lw <- read.csv("2012.csv")
R> lwa <- subset(lw, !is.na(AutismScore))
R> levels(lwa$MoralViews)
[1] " " "Accept / lean toward consequentialism"
[3] "Accept / lean toward deontology" "Accept / lean toward virtue ethics"
[5] "Other / no answer"
R> lwa <- subset(lwa, as.character(MoralViews) != " " & as.character(MoralViews) != "Other / no answer")
R> cor.test(lwa$AutismScore, as.integer(lwa$MoralViews))
Pearson's product-moment correlation
data: lwa$AutismScore and as.integer(lwa$MoralViews)
t = 0.1663, df = 289, p-value = 0.868
alternative hypothesis: true correlation is not equal to 0
95 percent confidence interval:
-0.1053 0.1246
sample estimates:
cor
0.009783

(A positive correlation suggests that higher autism scorers were a tad more likely to endorse a higher category, that is, deontology or virtue ethics.)

Comment author: NancyLebovitz 05 December 2012 09:20:26PM 1 point [-]

Thank you for checking.

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