Lumifer comments on Rationality Quotes November 2014 - Less Wrong

8 Post author: elharo 07 November 2014 07:07PM

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Comment author: Lumifer 20 November 2014 10:21:49PM -1 points [-]

Presenter: [Snipping 75 minutes of reading without eye contact.] "...so as you can see, I have reconceptualized and reconsidered and -icized and -atized until this problem I talk about is clearly both like and unlike what Hobbes, Locke, Rousseau, Plato, and Arendt implied by choosing one word instead of a universe of other words in these few sentences no one else has really talked much about."

Theory Search Committee Member: "Well, certainly, but since we have clear answers about this philosophical problem deriving from Augustine's flirtation with manichaeism [snipping 15 minutes of bibliographic citations] ... what could we turn to in order to understand why what you have presented improves our understanding of the problem at hand?"

Audience Member In the Back: "Data."*

*This totally happened.

source

Comment author: Weedlayer 21 November 2014 12:27:32PM 3 points [-]

I'm not really getting anything from this other than "Mainstream philosophy, boo! Empiricism, yeah!"

Is there anything more to this post?

Comment author: [deleted] 21 November 2014 05:42:32PM 0 points [-]

If you read the comment thread on the source, you see that it isn't actually philosophy boo, empiricism yeah, but rather an internecine conflict within academic political science.

Comment author: Weedlayer 23 November 2014 07:46:50AM *  2 points [-]

Honestly, I did read the source, and it's very difficult to get anything useful out of it. The closest I could interpret it is "Theory (In what? Political Science?) had become removed from "Other fields" (In political science? Science?)".

In general, if context is needed to interpret the quote (I.E. It doesn't stand on it's own), it's good to mention that context in the post, rather than just linking to a source and expecting people to follow a comment thread to understand it.

Sorry if this is overly critical, that was not my intention. I just don't get what the "internecine conflict" you are referring to is.