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Val comments on The Galileo affair: who was on the side of rationality? - Less Wrong
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Comments (70)
The first question really needs an "Other" option in (1). I would guess that for a majority of people on LW neither of the options is accurate.
My answer to (1) is "This article changed my mind . . .". Not because I'm entirely convinced of the article's thesis, but because it provided enough evidence to <i> update my prior </i> about the role of the historical Catholic Church.
I had sort of assumed that would be the consensus definition of "changed my mind" around these parts.
The core issue is the prior.
It's quite possible to have the prior that the Catholic Church was not out to quash science and spread ignorance without knowing most of the arguments of the article.
There are atheists who believe "the pre-modern Catholic Church was opposed to the concept of the Earth orbiting the Sun with the deliberate purpose of hindering scientific progress and to keep the world in ignorance" as their prior belief but I don't think that's the prior of a majority of LW. There are reasons why two people called it a strawman.
"it successfully challenged some of the biases I held about it." has some quality of "I have stopped beating my wife" to it.
Is there a way to edit it? I'm fairly new and inexperienced in the mechanics of this forum. I guessed that the third option already covered everything not in the first two. I would happily include an "Other" option if it was possible.
No "most of the arguments are already known" doesn't cover everything. It's perfectly possible to not know most of those arguments and still not believe that the Catholic Church had the agenda of hindering science and propagating ignorance.
The assumption that everybody who doesn't know the arguments believes that is baseless.
If I remember correctly, unfortunately no.
I also previously believed the case showed that the Catholic church didn't care much about science, rather than having a consciously anti-science agenda. I believe it had a strong bias towards staying in charge.
2 needs an option "What a well-studied man in the 17th century would have thought is irrelevant to whether the Church was working against science, because remaining in power by suppressing the side which doesn't have well-studied men is just as bad as remaining in power by suppressing the side which does".
To judge whether the Catholic Church was actively hindering science at all, not just for the express purpose of keeping power, I would need to read about what the Church did or did not do with the aim of hindering science. Galileo was a very interesting person, but I have no way to determine how representative was his situation of the general state of affairs, especially if he was friends with the Pope.