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Vladimir_Nesov comments on Note on Terminology: "Rationality", not "Rationalism" - Less Wrong Discussion
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Comments (51)
I don't have specific references sufficient to convince someone who doesn't agree ("evidence"), but I have my reasons. I believe this probable, via feeling the negative connotation with "-ism" myself, knowing of other people who feel similarly, and understanding arguments for why such feelings could appear by association, so I don't need such references to hold the level of believe I have. The opposite effect (of "-ism" being beneficial) looks less probable for similar reasons. The effect is important because if it's real, it affects many people (or simply, it affects a big expected number of people).
(I welcome any references that would convince me of this claim more strongly or disprove it.)
My experiences agree. I have a memory of having talked to several people who've expressed notions of the type "anything ending in -ism is something to avoid", though these have been off-line conversations so I can't give direct references to them.
To me, this sounds like a typical example of a theory that sounds neat and plausible when stated vaguely, but which turns out to be unsubstantiated on a closer examination. You can certainly tell a neat story to make it sound convincing, but when I consider in more detail the concrete mechanisms by which opinions of different sorts of people are formed in the modern society, I don't see any grounds to conclude that this concrete issue has much relevance.
(On a related note, the actual dynamics of the contemporary public opinion with regards to evolution and Darwinism are, in my opinion, very different from the standard story within which, among others, Drexler also frames his argument.)
Could be. But most beliefs (even most correct beliefs) are like that, you can't set some magical default level of certainty for everything that was not formally studied. The power of scientific evidence is in ability to conclusively destroy incorrect beliefs upon closer examination, but it doesn't hold monopoly on construction of correct beliefs.
There are many different grades of understanding and evidence between the extremes of absolute ignorance/confusion and a true no-nonsense scientific approach. Based on what Drexler writes in this article, I do think that my understanding of the issues at hand (i.e. the state of the current public opinion about Darwinism, the factors influencing it, and various linguistic claims he's made) is significantly more accurate than his, and my understanding suggests that his hypothesis is false. Of course, to substantiate this claim I would have to explain my position at length, for which I could hardly find the necessary time and space in the context of this discussion.
Nevertheless, if some evidence could be found for his position, it would provide an interesting challenge to my own ideas about these issues, and it could lead to an interesting discussion which wouldn't require me to first write a lengthy explanation for why I believe his ideas are mistaken. That's why I asked.