Kawoomba comments on A reply to Mark Linsenmayer about philosophy - Less Wrong

19 Post author: lukeprog 05 January 2013 11:25AM

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

Comments (68)

You are viewing a single comment's thread.

Comment author: Kawoomba 05 January 2013 05:46:25PM 6 points [-]

Citing Sturgeon's Law - while the amiable thing to do, charitably offering to resolve the dispute in a general cloud of "we should all improve" - seems a bit like a cop out.

Making a claim such as "90% of philosophy should be thrown out for rationality reasons" (assuming that quote isn't a strawman) singles out philosophy. Defending that using Sturgeon's Law - which in your estimation applies to various fields, if to differing extents - portrays your posts retrospectively in a much more generic and thus less hard hitting and less aimed critique of the current modus operandi of science. Did you really mean to quiet your thunder thus, when you started like Prometheus?

So while you technically can cite Sturgeon's Law as predicting/explaining your stance, it goes against the spirit of dealing with philosophy specifically.

Comment author: lukeprog 05 January 2013 08:43:39PM 2 points [-]

I'm not quite sure what it would mean to say that "90% of philosophy should be thrown out for rationality reasons," but I probably don't endorse that statement.

Anyway, as I said in my post, philosophy isn't alone in being mostly crap, and I wouldn't want people to think I believed otherwise.

Comment author: Kawoomba 05 January 2013 09:38:21PM 1 point [-]

(Was just meaning to paraphrase "I'm generally skeptical when someone proclaims that "rationality" itself should get us to throw out 90%+ of philosophy...")