Alternative medicine is any practice that is put forward as having the healing effects of medicine, but does not originate from evidence gathered using the scientific method.
LOL. That's pretty much most of contemporary Western medicine. Recall that "evidence-based medicine" is a relatively recent notion and still resisted by a lot of doctors.
Hahaha thanks for the laugh, this entire posts could use some.
You could probably have just covered Ubuntu with "I'm not talking about the OS, I'm talking about a philosophy/ideology used used by Mugabe".
Although as formoral relativism... bad idea by whose standard? By what logic? If it's irrational nonsense to be a moral relativist, do you have a rational argument for moral realism?
Ah yes the illusion of transparency. I should have seen it coming that the OS would be first on peoples minds. Stupid.
My position on moral realism/relativism is a bit middle ground between the two. There is no law of the universe that says we all should be "good" or even what this "good" is supposed to be. But I believe that does not mean we can't think rationally about it. We can show that some moral systems are at least inconsistent with respect to their stated goals. And on top of that if we assume for the sake of argument that we can get everyone to believe "suffering is bad" we can rule out a few more. For example the pro-life lobby in the US is vehemently against abortion, yet thinks that the death penalty is a good thing. If life were in fact sacrosanct would it not be logical to stop killing people? (This would also extend to cryonism, but since most of the pro-life lobby is christian, most adherents believe they are going to heaven and won't actually die. So that doesn't necessarily make it inconsistent.) Such a philosophy could be made more rational by making its beliefs consistent with its goal. To say that it would be better or more moral to do so would require people to at least agree suffering is bad, although I think most people would agree on that one.
I deleted the post by now. This entire ordeal was very bad for my karma. Which come to think of it, is a strange term. Why not call it "thumbs up" or something? Such a reference to a non-scientific meta-physical idea seems a bit inconsistent with the rest of the content of the site.
Alternative medicine is any practice that is put forward as having the healing effects of medicine, but does not originate from evidence gathered using the scientific method. So e.g. candling, homeopathy, Whole Body Vibration Training, acupuncture, etc. Given that either the effect sizes of these methods are negligible or they don't work at all, these practices are irrational from both the epistemic and the instrumental perspective. The explanation of the assertion might be a bit circular since any "alternative" medicine that works would simply be medicine. Well I can't do anything about that.
Unless of course the goal is to just feel happy about some form of quackery, in which case it would be instrumentally rational of course.
However "alternative" medicine cannot be established using the scientific method,
Care to explain what you mean by that assertion. You might want to start by defining what you mean by "alternative medicine".
Alternative medicine is any practice that is put forward as having the healing effects of medicine, but does not originate from evidence gathered using the scientific method. So e.g. candling, homeopathy, Whole Body Vibration Training, acupuncture, etc. Given that either the effect sizes of these methods are negligible or they don't work at all, these practices are irrational from both the epistemic and the instrumental perspective. The explanation of the assertion might be a bit circular since any "alternative" medicine that works would simply be medicine. Well I can't do anything about that.
I believe the problem people have with this is that it isn't actually helpful at all. It's just a list of outgroups for people to laugh at without any sort of analysis on why they believe this or what can be done to avoid falling into the same traps. Obviously a simple chart can't really encompass that level of explanation, so it's actual value or meaningful content is limited.
EDIT: Also, looking over your list it seems that you have marked most philosophies and alternate governments as "Immoral", along with literally everything as "Pointless and Counterproductive". Anarchism, Authoritarianism, Bushido, Collectivism, Cultural Relativism, Cynicsm, Defeatism, Ecocentrism, Egocentrism, Error Theory, Ethical Egoism, fascism, Gothicismus, Harmonious Society & Scientific Outlook on Development, Hedonism, Illegalism, Libertarianism, Machiavellianism, Medievalism, Misanthropy, Misology, Moral Relativism, Moral Skepticism, Moral Subjectivism, Nihilism, Non-Atomic Eudaiominism, Opportunism, Pacifism, Sensualism, Ubuntu(!), Value-Pluralism, Virtue Ethics, Voluntaryism are all marked as "Immoral" and nothing else. I have a lot of issues with your list, but the one that jumps out hte most is Ubuntu. How is UBUNTU of all things Immoral, Pointless and Counterproductive?
Haha the "pointless and counterproductive" was a joke actually, since well, all irrational ideas are pointless and counterproductive. As you already mentioned giving detailed explanations for all ideas will make into a four volume work so obviously I can't do that.
But to come to Ubuntu, I think we definitely should see this as a bad idea. Although admittedly it has had a large net positive effect in South Africa so I should probably just delete the last column. The central tennet of Ubuntu "A person is a person through other people", can be very easily corrupted into a form of communitarian dictatorship, as has in fact happened in Zimbabwe. The fact that a philosophy allows itself to be used by Mugabe does not make it look good. Of course just because Mugabe uses it doesn't mean it is a bad idea, it could just be his one good trait, but it probably isn't. The idea has more negative facets. It includes a form of philosophical innatism which is just factually wrong (see for example:Just Babies: The Origins of Good and Evil) and it also has as a third central tennet "that the king owed his status, including all the powers associated with it, to the will of the people under him". I think it strange that any modern philosophy would take monarchy as a basis. One positive side is that under "unhu" children are never orphans since the roles of mother and father are by definition not vested in a single individual with respect to a single child, so no orphans.
Also moral relativism is kind of a bad idea.. Just because North Koreans think concentration camps are a good idea does not mean they are suddenly moral.
Actually I am a bit surprised, the post got two downvotes already. I was under the impression that LW would appreciate it given it being a site about rationality and all.. I've been reading LW for quite some time but I hadn't actually posted before, did I do something horribly wrong or anything?
This list falls into a common failure mode among "skeptics" attempting to make a collection of "irrational nonsense". Namely, having no theory of what it means for something to be "irrational nonsense" so falling back on a combination of absurdity heuristic and the belief's social status.
It doesn't help that many of your labels for the "irrational nonsense" are vague enough that they could cover a number of ideas many of which are in fact correct.
Edit: In some cases I suspect you yourself don't know what they're supposed to mean. For example, you list "alternative medicine". What do you mean by this. The most literal interpretation is that you mean that all medical theories other than the current "consensus of the medical community" (if such a thing exists) are "irrational nonsense". Obviously you don't believe the current medical consensus is 100% correct. You probably mean something closer to "the irrational parts of alternative medicine are irrational", this is tautologically true and useless. Incidentally it is also true (and useless) that the irrational parts of the current "medical consensus" are irrational.
Fair criticism, indeed the list has been inclusive on some of the more philosophical ideas. Obviously I hold that some scientific ideas could be mistaken. However "alternative" medicine cannot be established using the scientific method, how is that wrong to include as irrational? Out of a list of 1229 ideas that is probably one of the most definite nonsense ideas included.
Why exactly is "Denver Airport" a conspiracy theory? Also MKULTRA was an actual CIA project, though I'm aware there are a lot of falsehoods circulating about it as well.
There are several conspiracy theories about the airport actually. Apparently there are storage bunkers below the main buildings used for "unsavory business". The MKULTRA-Jonestown conspiracy theory says that MKULTRA created the Jonestown cult if I remember correctly :)
Actually I am a bit surprised, the post got two downvotes already. I was under the impression that LW would appreciate it given it being a site about rationality and all.. I've been reading LW for quite some time but I hadn't actually posted before, did I do something horribly wrong or anything?
I think an important part of what makes their ending so terrifying is that you don't get to make those stipulations. Or any other stipulations. The Superhappies may or may not follow them, that's their choice - you just don't get any say, one way or the other.
Indeed, all situations in which one is powerless share that I think. It makes it frightful, but does it make it wrong? I don't necessarily think it does. Assuming for the moment that those stipulations stand (for reasons not necessarily related to the story) is pain abolitionism really as bad as it seemingly is represented in the story?
Actually I am nearly completely on the side of the Super Happies on this one. It is not as if the humans are moral with rape legalized. I'd support the Happies provided: 1. The utility function will not diverge from the goals of a) spreading truth, and eliminating delusion, b) spreading happiness, and eliminating suffering, c) growing, and not dying. With the negative statements taking precedence over the positive ones. 2. That accordingly the babies they will eat to accommodate the Baby Eaters are not only not sentient, but also incapable of suffering of any kind. I.e. have the moral status of a rock. 3. That a negative behaviour feedback is available for things like putting hands on stoves. A painless equivalent needs to be available to prevent anti-utility behaviour.
So, in short I kind of have to admit I dislike both endings.
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My objection to this: Let's suppose you translate each of these things into a set of claims about the world (this might be hard to do in some cases, but if it cannot be done, why are you calling it "irrational nonsense"?)
The probability that all of the claims in every set are false, will be approximately zero. There will be some true claims in some of the sets.
Why? Because there are a lot of them? The list of scientific beliefs I take seriously is at least a hundred times as long, going by the books on my shelf and those in the library. I am not saying that I never made a mistake, I am only human but the probability that a significant fraction of these are false is incredibly low. Most of it is filled with alternative medicine and ufo nonsense.