Vladimir_Nesov comments on Is Scott Alexander bad at math? - Less Wrong

31 Post author: JonahSinick 04 May 2015 05:11AM

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Comment author: Vladimir_Nesov 06 May 2015 11:15:26PM 6 points [-]

I reject the social norms that are in place as maladaptive

Do you expect the social norms to accept your arguments, and should they, given the evidence (i.e. what is the role of addressing them in this context, expressing disapproval of certain responses)? That's the frustration of hard-to-communicate facts: you can (1) give up, (2) turn to the dark side and cut through your audience's epistemology with a machete, insisting that they accept the conclusion based on insufficient evidence and appeals to on-reflection irrelevant things, or (3) put in so much work that the result isn't worth the trouble.

(I personally dislike the machete more than the breaking of social norms, but that might be unusual.)