Comment author: EphemeralNight 03 July 2012 11:10:09AM -1 points [-]

Okay, maybe we need to taboo "excited".

I do see, though, that so long as they think that learning about either the cause of their wonder or the cause of the rainbows will steal the beauty from them, no progress will be made on any front.

This right here is at the crux of my point. I am predicting that, for your average neurotypical, explaining their wonder produces significantly less feeling of stolen beauty than explaining the rainbow. Because, in the former case, you're explaining something mental, whereas in the latter case, you're explaining something mental away.

The rainbow may still be there, but it's status as a Mentally-Caused Thing is not.

Comment author: VKS 03 July 2012 01:10:18PM *  0 points [-]

If people react badly to having somebody explain how their love works, what makes you think that things will go better with wonder?

And, in a different mental thread, I'm going to posit that really, what you talk about matters much less than how you talk about it, in this context. You can (hopefully) get the point across by demonstrating by example that wonder can survive (and even thrive) after some science. At least if, as I suspect, people can perceive wonder through empathy. So, if you feel wonder, feel it obviously and try to get them to do so also. And just select whatever you feel the most wonder at.

Less dubiously, presentation is fairly important to making things engaging. Now, I would guess that the more familiar you are with a subject, the easier it becomes to make it engaging. So select whether you explain rainbow or the wonder of rainbows based on that.

Maybe.

I'm speculating.

Comment author: EphemeralNight 24 June 2012 11:45:43PM *  -1 points [-]

that even if you know that the rainbows are refraction phenomena, you can still see feel wonder at them

This kind of touches my point You're talking about two separate physical processes here, and I hold that the latter is the only one worth getting excited about. Or, at least the only one worth trying to get laypeople excited about.

Comment author: VKS 25 June 2012 08:14:29AM *  0 points [-]

Eh, both phenomena are things we can reasonably get excited about. I don't see that there's much point in trying to declare one inherently cooler than the other. Different people get excited by different things.

I do see, though, that so long as they think that learning about either the cause of their wonder or the cause of the rainbows will steal the beauty from them, no progress will be made on any front. What I'm trying to say is that once that barrier is down, once they stop seeing science as the death of all magic (so to speak), then progress is much easier. Arguably, only then should you be asking yourself whether to explain to them how rainbows work or why one feels wonder when one looks at them.

In response to comment by [deleted] on The scourge of perverse-mindedness
Comment author: EphemeralNight 24 June 2012 09:52:18AM 1 point [-]

This may be the wrong tact. As I pointed out above, I think it likely that the problem lies not in the nature of the phenomenon but in the way a person relates to the phenomenon emotionally. Particularly, that for natural accidents like rainbows, most people simply can't relate emotionally to the physics of light refraction, even if they sort of understand it.

So, I think a more effective tact would be to focus on the experience of seeing the rainbow, rather than the rainbow itself, because if a person is focusing on the rainbow itself, then they inevitably will by disappointed by the reductionist explanation supplanting their instinctive sense of there being something ontologically mental behind the rainbow.

Because, however you word it, the rainbow is just a refraction phenomena, but when you look at the rainbow and experience the sight of the rainbow there are lots of really awesome things happening in your own brain that are way more interesting than the rainbow by itself is.

I think trying to assign words like "just" or "wonderful" to physical processes that cause rainbows is an example of the Mind Projection Fallacy. So, let's not try to get people excited about what makes the rainbow. Let's try to get people excited about what makes the enjoyment of seeing one.

Comment author: VKS 24 June 2012 04:44:44PM 0 points [-]

It may be true that saying these things may not get everybody to see the beauty we see in the mechanics of those various phenomena. But perhaps saying "Rainbows are a wonderful refraction phenomena" can help get across that even if you know that the rainbows are refraction phenomena, you can still see feel wonder at them in the same way as before. The wonder at their true nature can come later.

I guess what I'm getting at is the difference between "Love is wonderful biochemistry" and "Love is a wonderful consequence of biochemistry". The second, everybody can perceive. The first, less so.

Comment author: Gastogh 10 June 2012 09:29:08PM 0 points [-]

I'd say "moral atheism" is being used as an idiomatic expression; a set of more than one word with a meaning that's gestalt to its individual components. One of the synonyms for "atheism" is "godlessness", so by analogy "moral atheism" would just mean "morality-lessness".

Comment author: VKS 10 June 2012 11:17:33PM *  5 points [-]

We have a word for "morality-lessness", and it is amorality, which coincidentally works more naturally in your analogy: If morality is analogous to theism, then a-morality is analogous to a-theism.

I hope you understand my trouble with the use of an idiom that implicitly equates morality with theism. (Well, amorality with atheism, which is more the problem.)

(sorry about all the edits, this was written horribly.)

Comment author: Gastogh 10 June 2012 07:18:02PM 1 point [-]

It paraphrases the bottom line of the metaethics sequence - or what I took to be the bottom line of those posts, anyway. Namely, that one can have values and a naturalistic worldview at the same time.

Comment author: VKS 10 June 2012 07:34:49PM *  3 points [-]

So, having values is moral theism? The choice of words seems suspect.

Comment author: VKS 08 June 2012 11:13:33AM *  19 points [-]

I am reminded of a commentary on logic puzzles of a certain kind; it was perhaps in a letter to Martin Gardner, reprinted in one of his books. The puzzles are those about getting about on an island where each native either always tells the truth or always lies. You reach a fork in the road, for example, and a native is standing there, and you want to learn from him, with one question, which way leads to the village. The “correct” question is “If I asked you if the left way led to the village, would you say yes?” But why should the native’s concept of lying conform to our own logical ideas? If the native is a liar, it means he wants to fool you, and your logical trickery will not work. The best you can do is say something like “Did you hear they are giving away free beer in the village today?” and see which way the native runs. You follow him, even if he says something like “Ugh, I hate beer!” since then he probably really is lying.

  • Alexandre Borovik, quoting an unidentified colleague, paraphrasing another unidentified source, possibly Martin Gardner quoting a letter he got.
Comment author: [deleted] 02 June 2012 05:39:30AM 2 points [-]

To apply a rule with natural ease, with judgment, noticing the cases where it fits, and without ever letting the words of the rule obscure the purpose of the action or the opportunities of the situation, is mastery.

George Pólya

In response to comment by [deleted] on Rationality Quotes June 2012
Comment author: VKS 02 June 2012 10:43:30PM *  2 points [-]

Duplicate of this. (Well, close enough that the monicker should apply.)

Comment author: jeremysalwen 02 May 2012 06:35:02PM 7 points [-]

No, you can only get an answer up to the limit imposed by the fact that the coastline is actually composed of atoms. The fact that a coastline looks like a fractal is misleading. It makes us forget that just like everything else it's fundamentally discrete.

This has always bugged me as a case of especially sloppy extrapolation.

Comment author: VKS 02 May 2012 10:31:09PM 7 points [-]

The island of knowledge is composed of atoms? The shoreline of wonder is not a fractal?

Comment author: Normal_Anomaly 26 April 2012 10:08:48PM 0 points [-]

(Slightly belated) welcome!

<3 Cat.

Can you explain this bit?

Comment author: VKS 27 April 2012 12:07:47AM 3 points [-]

As dlthomas says, Cat is the category of all (small) categories. (The small is there in certain (common (?)) axiomatizations only, in which CAT is the quasi-category of all categories.) In abjectly terrible metaphor, a category can be taken as a mathematical structure which represents a particular field of mathematics. So you have things like Grp, the category of groups and group homomorphisms, for group theory, Top, which contains topological spaces and continuous transformations for topology, Set for set theory, etc, etc... This is why they are called categories, as they categorize mathematics into the study of the things in various categories.

So what I'm saying is that I like Cat, which is the category of all categories, which is the same as saying that I like Category Theory. (It also sometimes, depending on your axioms, means that I like all of mathematics, which is also true.) Which is what I (redundantly) said in the text.

In other words, you probably didn't actually miss anything ;p

(P.S.: If you meant to ask why about <3 (so why I like it) rather than why about the Cat, I have badly misinterpreted your message.)

Comment author: Incorrect 11 April 2012 07:30:39PM 5 points [-]

It was like a glass of warm water thrown into her face.

What exactly is this supposed to evoke?

Comment author: VKS 12 April 2012 07:42:57PM *  0 points [-]

Like a glass of cold water, but more unexpected.

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