hairyfigment comments on Rationality Quotes January 2015 - Less Wrong

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

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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.

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