[SEQ RERUN] Tolerate Tolerance

MinibearRex

Today's post, Tolerate Tolerance was originally published on 21 March 2009. A summary (taken from the LW wiki):

One of the likely characteristics of someone who sets out to be a "rationalist" is a lower-than-usual tolerance for flawed thinking. This makes it very important to tolerate other people's tolerance - to avoid rejecting them because they tolerate people you wouldn't - since otherwise we must all have exactly the same standards of tolerance in order to work together, which is unlikely. Even if someone has a nice word to say about complete lunatics and crackpots - so long as they don't literally believe the same ideas themselves - try to be nice to them? Intolerance of tolerance corresponds to punishment of non-punishers, a very dangerous game-theoretic idiom that can lock completely arbitrary systems in place even when they benefit no one at all.

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Today's post, Tolerate Tolerance was originally published on 21 March 2009. A summary (taken from the LW wiki):

One of the likely characteristics of someone who sets out to be a "rationalist" is a lower-than-usual tolerance for flawed thinking. This makes it very important to tolerate other people's tolerance - to avoid rejecting them because they tolerate people you wouldn't - since otherwise we must all have exactly the same standards of tolerance in order to work together, which is unlikely. Even if someone has a nice word to say about complete lunatics and crackpots - so long as they don't literally believe the same ideas themselves - try to be nice to them? Intolerance of tolerance corresponds to punishment of non-punishers, a very dangerous game-theoretic idiom that can lock completely arbitrary systems in place even when they benefit no one at all.

I have a question. My meta-question is whether the question makes sense in light of what you said. (I like working in low-information conditions, downside being dumb questions.)

Wouldn't this still be a testable difference? If electrons can briefly store energy, you could send a steady stream of below-Planck photons. Standard QM predicts no spots on the photoplate, but you predict spots, right?

The answer to that is a firm "Maybe."

The question becomes - how do you create a steady stream of below-Planck photons? In the current model, photons are only emitted when electrons shift valence shells - these photons start, at least, as above-Planck.

Rhydberg's model (assuming I understand where he was going with it correctly) asserts that photons are -also- emitted when the electrons are merely energetic - black-body radiation, essentially. However, if your electrons are energetic, and at least 50% of all photons are being shared by the emitti... (read more)

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