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paper-machine comments on Open thread, 25-31 August 2014 - Less Wrong Discussion
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Comments (227)
Irresponsibility is something very different than irrationality.
Do you judge postmodernists because their tribe does things that you don't like or do you judge them because you think the average postmodernist would score less on a proper Rationality Quotient test than members of other tribes?
If you really think that they would score less on a Rationality Quotient test it should be possible for you to make predictions about the effect size in numbers. You are free to set your error bars as wide as you wish or chose another tribe to compare than analytical philosophers if you think there's a better comparison.
Right, finding a single anecdote where members of a tribe that you don't like failed is a rational way to assess the general rationality of the average member of that tribe.
Keep in mind the editors of Social Text did not believe Sokal's article was actually sound philosophy. Not understanding it, they preferred to give it the benefit of the doubt. The only thing that Sokal was able to trick them into believing was that the article was intended to be sound philosophy.
That's like excusing oneself from causing a car crash on the grounds of being drunk.
We only know that's what they said afterwards.
By the same argument, we only know it was intended to be a hoax because Sokal said so afterward....
Sokal is a physicist, and a publication like this would have been a major embarassment inside his field. So he had no choice not to disclose the hoax before anyone else (who maybe didn't get the joke) would have commented.