I think a much better, more general principle is "you gain status among members of a group by making efforts which have no other point, because that shows you care enough about the group to be loyal and commit your own resources." This is a large part, for example, of why fraternities haze people- anyone willing to go through the hazing must care a lot about getting into the fraternity.

"1. Standing up straight is low-status, because you're obviously doing it to make an impression on others -- there's no first-order benefit to yourself."

In general, making a conscious effort to do anything social is low-status, because it shows your unconscious systems are unskilled and inexperienced. So, consciously making an effort to stand up straight (if other people realize you're doing it) is bad.

"2. Saying what's on your mind is high-status, because you're doing something pleasurable. This signal is most reliable when what you say doesn't have any intellectual merit."

Most people are, frankly, stupid and don't give a damn about intellectual merit. The high-status things to say are those which match closely with what members of the group are expected to say, because saying those sorts of things shows that you have inside information, you've thought a lot about the group, etc. People are almost never expected to talk about things with intellectual merit, and so talking about things with intellectual merit is generally low-status, to my perpetual annoyance.

"3. Making an effort to have a pleasant conversation is low-status. It's high-status to talk about what you care about."

Again, the highest status thing to do is having a pleasant conversation without appearing to be exerting an effort to be pleasant.

"4. Wearing the most comfortable possible clothes is high-status, because you're clearly benefiting yourself. (Dressing in fashionable clothes is also high-status, through a different inferential pathway.)"

The most important thing here, I think, is not comfort, or even fashion- it's conformity. For instance, suppose you are hired at an investment bank, a company that cares a lot about status and appearance. There's a very specific set of things you're supposed to wear (http://www.mergersandinquisitions.com/investment-banking-wardrobe-men/), and not wearing them (no matter what you are wearing) marks you as clueless and therefore low-status.

"6. Blowing your nose is high-status because it's pleasurable and shows that you aren't affected enough by others to stop."

I think you're confusing standard signaling and countersignaling a lot. Standard signaling is much more common than countersignaling, and countersignaling can only be done when you're already established as a high status person.

"7. Asking for permission is low-status. Compare: recognizing that proceeding would be pleasurable, and believing that you are immune to any negative consequences."

Agreed somewhat, but this is also a large blow to the status of the person whose permission you're supposed to ask, who then may try to punish you. See: public school teachers.

"8. Showing off is low-status, because it reveals that the prospect of impressing your peers drives you to do things which aren't first-order selfish. (Of course, the thing you are showing off might legitimately signal status.)"

The sorts of showing off that are done in such a way that it's obvious that you know the rules about how to show off without lowering your status are high status. See, for instance, http://markbao.com/ .

(Er, you might want to check the author, I did not write the above post.)

"So depending on which features of reality you think are relevant, you can have multiple models of reality bringing out each of those features."

Of course, but then, these theories don't compete with each other. Everyone simply believes in both. I believe in both the atomic model of chemistry and the quantum model of electrons, and both can be used to describe the behavior of, say, a sugar molecule (but on different levels).

I am quite curious indeed as to how my post is any less topical than the quantum physics post by Eliezer that I linked.

I deliberately didn't write about anything that would have been foreign to any not-reasonably-scientifically-literate reader. If you disagree, please do point out where.

I do not think that the aether hypothesis was "ridiculous", and never said that I did. It was wrong, sure, but lots and lots of very smart people believed in it for quite a while. Similarly, I don't think gravitons are "ridiculous" and never said that they were.

I do agree with you that GR cannot be a fully correct description of reality on a quantum level (because of this and other issues, especially many worlds). I was saying that we should take the structure of GR into account when building a unified theory, rather than just starting off with the assumption that gravity works exactly like all the other forces.

Thank you for this excellent summary of some of the technical details. I disagree on a few points, but most of this is a great explanation of how some of this works.

Is there a single example of this that you can think of? There are the different ways of computing classical mechanics (Newtonian, Lagrangian, Hamiltonian), but these were known to be just different ways of doing the same math at the time of discovery.

"Maybe, but they're still both false! What exactly is the distinction you have in mind?"

Yes, and me and the Pacific Ocean are both more than 50% water by mass. Newtonian gravitation successfully explained a huge number of phenomena. Phlogiston did not.

"Anyway, I had just meant LET versus SR, but what exactly is the experimental evidence against an aether?"

With quantum mechanics (and modern experimental technology), we can actually look down below the level of individual particles, and we have found that photons are actually their own particles, not patterns of vibration (or whatever) within other particles.

"This would be a lot more convincing if the most recent and most successful theory of physics weren't such a glaring counter-example."

You mean quantum mechanics? Quantum mechanics is very elegant, it's just usually explained badly. See http://www.amazon.com/QED-Strange-Theory-Light-Matter/dp/0691024170.

"I disagree. Even under the naive theory of truth that is popular here"

Would you care to propose some alternative theory of truth?

"While that is still an open question people might come to different conclusions about which way is most promising."

Obviously, but that disagreement should then be resolved by reference to experiment. There is no room for persistent disagreement. In engineering, you can have five different methods, each with their own advantages and disadvantages, and this is a stable state. In science, having five different theories is not a stable state; it needs to be resolved, rather than harden into different factions.

"And then once you notice that theories of physics have this nasty habit of turning out false... well then I don't even know what you're using to declare A right and B wrong."

Experimental evidence?

"it then makes a lot of sense to think about the benefits working under different sets of theoretical assumptions (i.e. approaches)."

What does that even mean? How would you apply that to a theory of physics (past or present)? What "theoretical assumptions" are involved in, say, Special Relativity? Special Relativity makes the assertion that the speed of light is constant regardless of reference frame, but this isn't just a mathematical axiom that you can pick up and discard at will; it is based on a huge pile of experimental evidence.

"Wait, a theory was falsified by the invention of another theory?"

One that's been confirmed against hundreds of predictions to over a dozen decimal places? Yes.

"Why put false in quotes?"

Because there's a HUGE distinction between a theory like Newtonian gravitation and a "theory" like phlogiston, even if they're both "false".

"So you had a simple theory that explained some class of phenomena. Now there is some other phenomena that your theory fails to explain, why should simplicity be conserved here?"

I'm saying, "Successful theory of physics A was simple, and theory B was simple, and C was simple, and D, and E, and .... , but there's a new class of phenomena which needs a new theory, so this theory will probably also be simple."

"But the existence of competing approaches with varying degrees of popularity does not entail that."

"Approach" here is a HUGE misnomer. "Approach" is a term commonly used in engineering to mean "different ways of accomplishing goal X". You can build a machine in manner A to do X, or manner B. This ABSOLUTELY DOES NOT generalize to science, because there's only ever one reality. If you have theory A and theory B both purporting to explain some phenomenon X, either A or B must be wrong, while in engineering sometimes there are ten different ways of attacking a problem, depending on what your goals are.

"People liked Einstein's theory more for various reasons (good reasons, I think) but aether has never been ruled out in the way, say, phlogiston has been ruled out."

It wasn't ruled out in 1905, but it was as soon as quantum mechanics was invented. We really do know how light works nowadays, and it's very, very definitely not disturbances in some sort of material substance.

"I don't think the fact that all our false theories have been elegant and simple could possibly count as evidence that reality is, in fact, elegant and simple."

Why not? You know that all those "false" theories were accurate up to the seventh or eighth decimal place, right?

"Why would there be something wrong with this?"

Because coupling theories about how the universe works to political factions is a HUGE impediment to discovering the truth. See http://lesswrong.com/lw/gw/politics_is_the_mindkiller/.

"Try jumping off the earth. :-)"

If you don't understand the difference between observing that gravity exists, and observing that there are particles which obey the same laws of quantum mechanics as photons and electrons, which are massless and have spin 2, and are responsible for gravity, you should go back and read some of the earlier stuff on this blog.

"Sure if you don't mind having two totally different and wildly incompatible theories to describe reality."

The whole point is that saying "suppose gravity is transmitted by carrier particles called gravitons" starts off by completely ignoring all of GR, and then tries to patch it up afterwards (with little if any success). Newer theories should supersede older theories, not ignore them.