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wedrifid comments on Rationality Quotes March 2013 - Less Wrong
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Flamboyant straw men do not belong in the Rationality Quotes thread. Cliff is clearly not accurately describing reality. Popular evopsych doesn't say that. It doesn't matter how irrational the opponents who are being criticised are, bullshit is still bullshit.
It's worth noting that LWers may have more exposure to real evopsych relative to popular evopsych. I for one had despared of ever finding rational evopsych before discovering this site. Pop evopsych is incredibly bad.
Pop evopsych may very well be incredibly bad (I wouldn't know myself, as I've been exposed to very little of it). But if a quote doesn't have any instructive value beyond making fun of bad ideas -- as opposed to more general biases, and even there I'm leery of the "making fun" bit -- I'm not sure it belongs here. Particularly if they're also politically sensitive ideas.
I wouldn't, for example, consider clever attacks on religion to be shiningly rational.
As a theist, I would have to agree with you there ;)
People like wit, though, so witty defense of rational positions garners upvotes regardless of intrinsic rationality.
I think there's a distinction that could be made between defense of rational positions and attacks on particular irrational ones. Reversed stupidity, etc.
The quote is instructive to those of us trying to develop an integrated and rational view of evo psych. In my case, I DO see a lot of compelling material on how women are different from men, and I DO see a lot of compelling material on how humans are like other primates and even mammals. The quote brings me up short: do I have the sex differences within species properly "weighted" in my thinking compared to across-species similarities? Or do I switch between my microscope and my telescope paying attention only to what I am seeing, forgetting which instrument I am using to look?