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shminux comments on [Link] Five ways to classify belief systems - Less Wrong Discussion

15 [deleted] 17 January 2012 09:08PM

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Comment author: shminux 17 January 2012 10:20:12PM *  3 points [-]

I wish this was translated to English...

EDIT: I meant the original obscure language of Moldbug. I wasn't trying to disparage Konkvistador's attempt to make his ideas somewhat more accessible.

Comment author: [deleted] 17 January 2012 10:37:48PM *  9 points [-]

I did warn you:

He uses his writing style as a barrier to entry (it is debatable if this does more harm than good for his quality of thought and communication, but it is an interesting way to aim for the correct contrarian cluster).

But I'm not sure why this is getting downvoted. Perhaps LWers like "computer business" derived lingo? In any case here is your condensed translation in two paragraphs:

There are several ways to classify beliefs systems. I can think of the five ways nominalist (classify it according to what it calls itself), typological (classify it according to one particular feature, like "all religions that have a holy day on monday"), morphological (based on several features - dolphins and fish share several features), cladistic (both A and B are descented from C, lets get a common name for this branch despite disparate morphology) and adaptive (A fills the aquatic super-predator niche, B fills the terrestrial herbivore niche - lets now take a look at what we can say about the likley adaptations super-predators and herbivores tend to pick up and which features of A and B are more or less expected and which are surprising).

I don't think the first two are very useful for thinking about the dominant ethical/ideological/religious systems. Oh and dominant modern belief systems are largely derived from, share several characteristics with and are descended from Protestant Christianity and I drive this home by using it a as an example several times.

Hope that helps!

Comment author: ESRogs 19 January 2012 02:42:43AM 5 points [-]

Think you could do this for his whole blog? You could have a whole moldbug_explained.blogspot.com running in parallel. ;)