Anders_Sandberg comments on Science as Attire - Less Wrong

48 Post author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 23 August 2007 05:10AM

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Comment author: Anders_Sandberg 23 August 2007 09:38:20PM 3 points [-]

I have noticed that since using the word "progress" has become unseemly, many use "evolution" in its stead. Quite often in the sense of "incremental change", sometimes in the slightly biology-analogous sense of "the effect of broad trial and error learning" - but hiding the teleological assumption progress was at least open about.

It has been scientifically proven that people use science attire to make their views sound more plausible :-) Throw in some neuroscience, statistics or a claim by a Ph.D. in anything and you show that you are credible. And the worst thing is that it seems to work fairly often. At the price, of course, that increasingly manipulation-savy media consumer start to suspect a Sinister Conspiracy behind every scientific claim. "Gravitational slingshots - who benefits?" "Who is really behind the stem cells?"

But this attire-wearning is likely nothing new. Tartuffe wore the attire of a pious person to manipulate. It might be more problematic from our standpoint that it is currently a largely epistemological profession/activity that is being used as high-status attire to hide bias and bad epistemology. Having people dress up in moral attire might have been bad for morality and people involved in the moral business, but it didn't hurt truth-seeking and bias-overcoming directly.