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djcb comments on May 2012 Media Thread - Less Wrong Discussion

4 Post author: RobertLumley 02 May 2012 01:34AM

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Comment author: djcb 02 May 2012 11:41:55AM 2 points [-]

I finally read Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged; the book needs little introduction, I suppose. I found the characters rather one-dimensional and unconvincing, the tone preachy. Still, somewhere in that tome there's an interesting speculative-fiction book hiding, and sometimes it shows. Anyway, it's an influential book, I'm glad I read it. And I know now who John Galt is.

Comment author: RobertLumley 02 May 2012 01:09:50PM 2 points [-]

Relevant, if you haven't read it.

Comment author: djcb 02 May 2012 08:32:07PM 1 point [-]

Thanks, that was an interesting read. I don't agree with EYs premise that just because Rand didn't use Bayesian probability theory, her work is somehow flawed --at least in Atlas Shrugged, epistemology does not play a big role, and POR (plain-old-rationalism) versus a probabilistic approach is not the level the book operates on.

Comment author: fubarobfusco 02 May 2012 11:11:39PM *  7 points [-]

It seemed to me that EY's point there was not to castigate Rand for not following Bayes, but rather to point out the flaw in ever creating a "closed system":

Science isn't fair. That's sorta the point. An aspiring rationalist in 2007 starts with a huge advantage over an aspiring rationalist in 1957. It's how we know that progress has occurred.

To me the thought of voluntarily embracing a system explicitly tied to the beliefs of one human being, who's dead, falls somewhere between the silly and the suicidal. [...]

The vibrance that Rand admired in science, in commerce, in every railroad that replaced a horse-and-buggy route, in every skyscraper built with new architecture—it all comes from the principle of surpassing the ancient masters.

Moreover, this isn't a "premise". EY is not assuming a premise that Rand (or anyone else) is bad-because-not-Bayesian; he is using Objectivism as an example of what has elsewhere been called "worshiping the finger that points to the moon."

Comment author: djcb 03 May 2012 06:42:34AM 0 points [-]

Agreed, the cultishness/orthodoxy is the overall point of the article, and on the whole I do agree with it. However, I was specifically referring to the part where it says:

Ayn Rand's philosophical idol was Aristotle. Now maybe Aristotle was a hot young math talent 2350 years ago, but math has made noticeable progress since his day. Bayesian probability theory is the quantitative logic of which Aristotle's qualitative logic is a special case; but there's no sign that Ayn Rand knew about Bayesian probability theory when she wrote her magnum opus, Atlas Shrugged. Rand wrote about "rationality", yet failed to familiarize herself with the modern research in heuristics and biases. How can anyone claim to be a master rationalist, yet know nothing of such elementary subjects?

and I would argue that bayesianism is a typical tool for instrumental rationalism, which is not what Rand was writing about.

Comment author: shminux 02 May 2012 11:48:14PM 3 points [-]

Relevant recent XKCD (mouseover text is the best part)

Comment author: AlanCrowe 02 May 2012 08:48:40PM 0 points [-]

I thought that the heroes were wish-fulfillment fantasy figures, but the villains were drawn from real life.

Comment author: djcb 02 May 2012 10:40:49PM 1 point [-]

It's interesting indeed how one's sees the "anti-dog-eat-dog-act" and the like all around after reading the book. Still, I think the villains (and even moreso, their 'useful idiots') were caricatures as well -- certainly with a grain of truth, but overall pushed way beyond credibility.

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