Epistemic Viciousness

55 Eliezer_Yudkowsky 13 March 2009 11:33PM

Previously in seriesA Sense That More Is Possible

Someone deserves a large hattip for this, but I'm having trouble remembering who; my records don't seem to show any email or OB comment which told me of this 12-page essay, "Epistemic Viciousness in the Martial Arts" by Gillian Russell.  Maybe Anna Salamon?

      We all lined up in our ties and sensible shoes (this was England) and copied him—left, right, left, right—and afterwards he told us that if we practised in the air with sufficient devotion for three years, then we would be able to use our punches to kill a bull with one blow.
      I worshipped Mr Howard (though I would sooner have died than told him that) and so, as a skinny, eleven-year-old girl, I came to believe that if I practised, I would be able to kill a bull with one blow by the time I was fourteen.
      This essay is about epistemic viciousness in the martial arts, and this story illustrates just that. Though the word ‘viciousness’ normally suggests deliberate cruelty and violence, I will be using it here with the more old-fashioned meaning, possessing of vices.

It all generalizes amazingly.  To summarize some of the key observations for how epistemic viciousness arises:

  • The art, the dojo, and the sensei are seen as sacred.  "Having red toe-nails in the dojo is like going to church in a mini-skirt and halter-top...  The students of other martial arts are talked about like they are practicing the wrong religion."
  • If your teacher takes you aside and teaches you a special move and you practice it for 20 years, you have a large emotional investment in it, and you'll want to discard any incoming evidence against the move.
  • Incoming students don't have much choice: a martial art can't be learned from a book, so they have to trust the teacher.
  • Deference to famous historical masters.  "Runners think that the contemporary staff of Runner's World know more about running than than all the ancient Greeks put together.  And it's not just running, or other physical activities, where history is kept in its place; the same is true in any well-developed area of study.  It is not considered disrespectful for a physicist to say that Isaac Newton's theories are false..."  (Sound familiar?)
  • "We martial artists struggle with a kind of poverty—data-poverty—which makes our beliefs hard to test... Unless you're unfortunate enough to be fighting a hand-to-hand war you cannot check to see how much force and exactly which angle a neck-break requires..."
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Initiation Ceremony

49 Eliezer_Yudkowsky 28 March 2008 08:40PM

    The torches that lit the narrow stairwell burned intensely and in the wrong color, flame like melting gold or shattered suns.
    192... 193...
    Brennan's sandals clicked softly on the stone steps, snicking in sequence, like dominos very slowly falling.
    227... 228...
    Half a circle ahead of him, a trailing fringe of dark cloth whispered down the stairs, the robed figure itself staying just out of sight.
    239... 240...
    Not much longer, Brennan predicted to himself, and his guess was accurate:
    Sixteen times sixteen steps was the number, and they stood before the portal of glass.
    The great curved gate had been wrought with cunning, humor, and close attention to indices of refraction: it warped light, bent it, folded it, and generally abused it, so that there were hints of what was on the other side (stronger light sources, dark walls) but no possible way of seeing through—unless, of course, you had the key: the counter-door, thick for thin and thin for thick, in which case the two would cancel out.
    From the robed figure beside Brennan, two hands emerged, gloved in reflective cloth to conceal skin's color.  Fingers like slim mirrors grasped the handles of the warped gate—handles that Brennan had not guessed; in all that distortion, shapes could only be anticipated, not seen.
    "Do you want to know?" whispered the guide; a whisper nearly as loud as an ordinary voice, but not revealing the slightest hint of gender.
    Brennan paused.  The answer to the question seemed suspiciously, indeed extraordinarily obvious, even for ritual.

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