You were claiming he cherrypicked the example. [...] If that were true, Luke would be seriously cherrypicking and that is not a harmless error [...].
This appears to me to be an instance of a common error: assuming that when someone says something, they intended every inference you find it natural to make from it. It doesn't appear to me, at all, that for Luke to have been wrong in the way I say he was he needs to have been a liar or bozo or whatever else you're trying to suggest I accused him of being.
(I'm puzzled, too. We seem to be agreed that Luke's quotation gives a misleading impression about what claim Taube was making, and -- rightly, in my opinion -- you don't appear to have concluded from this that Luke was dishonestly cherrypicking and needs the bozo bit flipped. But I don't understand, at all, why giving a misleading impression about Taube's relevant expertise is a worse thing to "accuse" him of than giving a misleading impression about what Taube was claiming. Either of them means that the quotation from Taube fails to serve the purpose Luke put it there for.)
I don't especially care what you actually think, I care just what you wrote and whether it is a serious issue with Luke's comment.
If you don't especially care what I actually think, then what the hell are you doing putting words into my mouth about how librarians are uninteresting low-status unintellectual drudges? (Which, just in case it needs saying again, in no way resemble my actual opinion.)
I'm sure you actually meant [...]
I meant what I said. I did not mean what you said. I also did not mean the particular equally-ridiculous thing you now sarcastically suggest I could have meant. I honestly have no idea what I've done to bring forth all this hostility, but if you want an actual reasoned discussion then I politely suggest that you stop flinging shit at me and then we can have one.
cannot be construed as 'science' no matter how broadly defined
Those last five words are yours, not mine. I'm sure you can find definitions according to which Taube's work was "science". I'm also sure you can quickly and easily think of plenty of instances where "no matter how broadly defined" ends up meaning "way too broadly defined for most purposes". (Here's an extreme example: Richard Dawkins is on record as accepting the term "cultural Christian" as applying to him. I would accordingly not say that RD cannot be construed as 'Christian' no matter how broadly defined -- but, none the less, for most purposes describing him as a Christian would be silly. Taube's work is certainly nearer to being science than Richard Dawkins is to being a Christian; the point of the example is to clarify my point, not to be a perfect analogy.)
A PhD in philosophy is not enough to be called a philosopher?
Ian Bostridge has a doctorate in history, and spent some time as an academic historian. However, I would not now call him a historian but a singer. (Or, more specifically, a tenor.) Angela Merkel has a PhD in physics, but I wouldn't now call her a physicist but a politician (or, perhaps, some more august term along those lines). George Soros has a PhD in philosophy but I wouldn't call him a philosopher.
So: no, the fact that someone got a PhD in philosophy in 1935 is not sufficient reason to call them a philosopher in 1960. As I say, having a PhD in philosophy is certainly quite like being a philosopher; it's certainly not wholly irrelevant; I oversimplified and I shouldn't have. But it's not the same thing.
This appears to me to be an instance of a common error: assuming that when someone says something, they intended every inference you find it natural to make from it.
It's a common error indeed, and one that is justifiable when enough other people draw that error. Yeah Hitler said to kill all the Jews, but he really meant to kill the Jew inside, not real Jews. If I may quote your other comment:
(I agree that private_messaging's comment is extremely silly, and I regret the fact that what I wrote seems to have encouraged it.)
Indeed.
...If you don't especia
In an erratum to my previous post on Pascalian wagers, it has been plausibly argued to me that all the roads to nuclear weapons, including plutonium production from U-238, may have bottlenecked through the presence of significant amounts of Earthly U235 (apparently even the giant heap of unrefined uranium bricks in Chicago Pile 1 was, functionally, empty space with a scattering of U235 dust). If this is the case then Fermi's estimate of a "ten percent" probability of nuclear weapons may have actually been justifiable because nuclear weapons were almost impossible (at least without particle accelerators) - though it's not totally clear to me why "10%" instead of "2%" or "50%" but then I'm not Fermi.
We're all familiar with examples of correct scientific skepticism, such as about Uri Geller and hydrino theory. We also know many famous examples of scientists just completely making up their pessimism, for example about the impossibility of human heavier-than-air flight. Before this occasion I could only think offhand of one other famous example of erroneous scientific pessimism that was not in defiance of the default extrapolation of existing models, namely Lord Kelvin's careful estimate from multiple sources that the Sun was around sixty million years of age. This was wrong, but because of new physics - though you could make a case that new physics might well be expected in this case - and there was some degree of contrary evidence from geology, as I understand it - and that's not exactly the same as technological skepticism - but still. Where there are sort of two, there may be more. Can anyone name a third example of erroneous scientific pessimism whose error was, to the same degree, not something a smarter scientist could've seen coming?
I ask this with some degree of trepidation, since by most standards of reasoning essentially anything is "justifiable" if you try hard enough to find excuses and then not question them further, so I'll phrase it more carefully this way: I am looking for a case of erroneous scientific pessimism, preferably about technological impossibility or extreme difficulty, where it seems clear that the inverse case for possibility would've been weaker if carried out strictly with contemporary knowledge, after exploring points and counterpoints. (So that relaxed standards for "justifiability" will just produce even more justifiable cases for the technological possibility.) We probably should also not accept as "erroneous" any prediction of technological impossibility where it required more than, say, seventy years to get the technology.