Vaniver comments on Rationality Quotes January 2015 - Less Wrong

4 Post author: Gondolinian 01 January 2015 02:23AM

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Comment author: Vaniver 05 January 2015 11:31:01AM *  1 point [-]

Not for the first time, someone on LW links a West Hunter page that isn't content to make a reasonable point, but has to exaggerate that point and present it with sneering.

I see Cochran as also making the meta-point that we should be sneering at things that are obviously wrong when you look at them from an evolutionary or realist perspective, or that map blue tribe 'what-we-want-to-be' back to the historical past. Take this comparable aside (that I expect is more agreeable) from The Germ of Laziness:

After giving one talk, two M.D.s wondered if actually getting rid of hookworm, curing the disease – wouldn’t that cut into their practice? And while he didn’t kill them on the spot, I guarantee he considered it.

Comment author: hairyfigment 06 January 2015 07:26:17PM -2 points [-]

obviously wrong when you look at them from an evolutionary or realist perspective

Yeah, screw those fools who think homosexuality exists.

Science is hard.

Comment author: Vaniver 07 January 2015 01:07:10AM 3 points [-]

Yeah, screw those fools who think homosexuality exists.

In case you aren't aware, Cochran is one of the names behind the 'gay germ' hypothesis, which is basically the claim that homosexuality's most likely cause is a pathogen of some sort, given how common it is and the negative impact it has on fertility. (An index of his posts on the subject.)

Comment author: hairyfigment 22 January 2015 08:52:03PM 0 points [-]

I see Cochran as also making the meta-point that we should be sneering at things that are obviously wrong when you look at them from an evolutionary or realist perspective

So in practice, this means you will sneer at anyone disagreeing with an idea you consider "obvious", ie clever. The point of the Jonathan Swift link was that your prior is bad and you should feel bad:

We get to see Harry fail once in Ch. 22, because I felt like I had to make the point about clever ideas not always working. A more realistic story with eight more failed ideas passing before Harry’s first original discovery in Ch. 28 would not have been fun to read, or write.

Comment author: Vaniver 22 January 2015 10:26:23PM 1 point [-]

So in practice, this means you will sneer at anyone disagreeing with an idea you consider "obvious", ie clever.

Consider this quote:

The law that entropy always increases holds, I think, the supreme position among the laws of Nature. If someone points out to you that your pet theory of the universe is in disagreement with Maxwell's equations--then so much the worse for Maxwell's equations. If it is found to be contradicted by observation--well, these experimentalists do bungle things sometimes. But if your theory is found to be against the second law of thermodynamics I can give you no hope; there is nothing for it but to collapse in deepest humiliation.

--Sir Arthur Stanley Eddington, The Nature of the Physical World (1927)

That there is some idea that you think is fundamental, and as a result it is overwhelmingly likely that anyone who goes up against will end in defeat, does not mean you extend that privilege to all ideas or that you lock in your current sense of obviousness.

I wouldn't put evolution at second law status, but it seems like it should be more shameful to propose ideas that fail on basic evolutionary principles.

Comment author: hairyfigment 23 January 2015 07:42:38PM -1 points [-]

And if you can prove mathematically that some idea goes against evolutionary principles - rather than making an informal argument of exactly the type that Swift seems to believe rules out homosexual behavior in other animals - this would be relevant.

Comment author: satt 06 January 2015 03:45:19PM 0 points [-]

I see Cochran as also making the meta-point that we should be sneering at things that are obviously wrong when you look at them from an evolutionary or realist perspective, or that map blue tribe 'what-we-want-to-be' back to the historical past.

Sounds plausible, and there's nothing intrinsically wrong with such sneering. I do ask, though, that the sneering be reserved for obviously wrong claims, and that the sneerer not simultaneously make a sneer-worthy claim of their own.

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