[Link] Eric S. Raymond - Me and Less Wrong

philh

http://esr.ibiblio.org/?p=6549

I’ve gotten questions from a couple of different quarters recently about my relationship to the the rationalist community around Less Wrong and related blogs. The one sentence answer is that I consider myself a fellow-traveler and ally of that culture, but not really part of it nor particularly wishing to be.

The rest of this post is a slightly longer development of that answer.

http://esr.ibiblio.org/?p=6549

I’ve gotten questions from a couple of different quarters recently about my relationship to the the rationalist community around Less Wrong and related blogs. The one sentence answer is that I consider myself a fellow-traveler and ally of that culture, but not really part of it nor particularly wishing to be.

The rest of this post is a slightly longer development of that answer.

Alfred Korzybyski

So, long ago I was rather put off Korzybyski and General Semantics by the brief discussion of them in Martin Gardner's "Fads and Fallacies in the Name of Science". A few sample quotations:

Neither movement [sc. general semantics and psychodrama, which Gardner happens to put in the same chapter -- gjm], it should be stated, approaches the absurdity of the two previously considered cults [sc. orgonomy and dianetics -- gjm]. For this reason, general semantics and psychodrama must be regarded as controversial, borderline examples, which may or may not have considerable scientific merit.

[Science and Sanity] is a poorly organized, verbose, philosophically naive, repetitious mish-mash of sound ideas borrowed from abler scientists and philosophers, mixed with neologisms, confused ideas, unconscious metaphysics, and highly dubious speculations and neurology and psychiatric therapy.

Korzybyski's explanation of why non-Aristotelian thinking has therapeutic body effects was bound up with a theory now discarded by his followers as neurologically unsound. It concerned the cortex and the thalamus. [...]

The simple reason is that Korzybyski made no contributions of significance to any of the fields about which he wrote with such seeming erudition. Most of the Count's followers admit this, but insist that the value of his work lies in the fact that it was the first great synthesis of modern scientific philosophy and psychiatry.

The impression I get from Gardner is that "the parts that are good are not original, and the parts that are original are not good". So, e.g., Korzybyski is of course right to say that black-and-white dichotomous thinking is harmful, and that it's useful to distinguish between a thing and a description of that thing, and that "is" can be a treacherous word. But we didn't need Korzybyski to tell us that. And much of what's distinctive in Korzybyski (again, I'm describing the impression I get from people like Gardner) is just plain wrong.

Is that all wrong? Is there substantially more to Korzybyski and "General Semantics"? Has present-day GS filtered out all the pseudoscience while preserving (or, better, newly finding) a lot of insight? Are there insights there that are unique to GS?

Has present-day GS filtered out all the pseudoscience while preserving (or, better, newly finding) a lot of insight? Are there insights there that are unique to GS?

I would be more suspicious of a work along these lines that was full of new insight. Science and Sanity is a work of synthesis, not of discovery, and sometimes we do need someone to put it all together and tell us what, once we hear it, we can easily dismiss as "but we knew all that anyway". "What is new is not good, and what is good is not new" is a misdirected complaint ... (read more)

4buybuydandavis12y

On the charges of neologisms for old ideas and the repetitive claims, my recollection is that those were intentional moves on Korzybski's part. The repetition was to develop semantic habits - to actually change people. The neologisms were for creating new semantic habits, without carrying the semantic baggage of the old terms for the "same" ideas into the new.

4ChristianKl12y

Korzybyski wrote Science and Sanity in 1933 and as such specific things he says about the brain turned out to be false. I don't think you will find a single person who wrote at the time who made no mistakes. Technology such as fMRI did allow us to discard a lot of ideas about the brain as wrong. [...] A bit above you mention that "is" can be a treacherous word. Yet you started both of those question with it. From the General Semantics perspective your insight that "is" is can be a treacherous word didn't help you. It's a bit like teaching someone Bayes theorem. It's quite easy to teach it in a way that someone can use it in textbook problems but it's quite another thing to teach it in a way that someone actually uses it in daily life. Someone well trained in General Semantics and who uses that framework as his default way of reasoning about the world wouldn't ask "Is that all wrong?". Discussion whether the rejection of that question is pseudoscience bring you again near the space of what Korzybyski calls flawed Aristotelian reasoning. Of course when I speak about that way and ask whether or not your statement is Aristotelian in nature, I'm also using binary categories. That makes it easier to make my point, but at the same time I'm not moving inside the rules of the General Semantics framework. In Science and Sanity Korzybyski mostly tries to present the arguments for General Semanitcs in it's own logic. That makes the book very hard to read. As far as the charge of being poorly organized and verbose goes, it comes from the book being hard to understand. Korxybyski didn't write in a way that's easily accessible. If he would have the world would likely look different. As far as the charge of not having influenced anybody goes, Albert Ellis who developed Rational emotive behavior therapy (REBT) with is one of of Cognitive Behavior Therapy does say that he was influenced by several of Korzybyski's ideas when developen REBT. He has also influenced a lot of othe

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[Link] Eric S. Raymond - Me and Less Wrong

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