so what seems to an outsider like a disagreement between schools is actually a
disagreement between people doing “real” philosophy and goofy people doing
something that they call philosophy.
And you are not goofy the moment you start doing any kind of philosophy that is not ‘reduction to cognitive algorithms’ or ‘consequentialist utilitarianism’? I see philosophy mostly as people trying to sound clever.
ETA: I have nothing personally against Philosophers, I just think philosophy as a well-respected field has taken a few too many wrong turns.
(Disclaimer: My knowledge of philosophy is at the
101) level.)
I do think a lot of what passes for philosophy is bogus. But the bogus
philosophers still have “Department of Philosophy” on their university
letterhead. Meanwhile: To a first approximation, all biologists believe in
evolution.
To a first approximation, all biologists believe in evolution.
Hm. I’m not sure how many biologists there are, but my guess is this allows for uncertainty on the order of a million biologists. Is the situation really that bad? I would have guessed that at least to a third approximation all biologists believe in evolution.
Are you reading “to a first approximation” as “to one significant figure”? I thought it meant something like “using the lowest order function which is an accurate fit to the data”. So, to a first approximation, pi is roughly 22⁄7, and to a first approximation, the distance to Earth’s horizon in kilometers is 3.57 times the square root of the height above sea level in meters.
To say that “to a first approximation, all biologists believe in evolution” is, by this definition, to say that the fraction of biologists that don’t is so small that it is not easily measured. I believe this to be the case because that fraction is so small that it is significantly affected by the choice of definition of “biologist”.
My guess is that I gained some notoriety here and my comments tend to get a few downvotes because of this, rather than because of their content. Which tells me that I have to phrase my replies much more carefully. Still working on it. (If whoever silently downvoted some of my recent comments think that this guess is out to lunch, I’d greatly appreciate their feedback, here or in PM.)
Hi, shminux. I recently downvoted this comment of yours. I did recognize you, but that’s from seeing you in the lesswrong IRC channel, where you make a significant portion of the interesting discussion, not from lesswrong.com, where I don’t generally look at the authors of comments or posts unless I’m having trouble following a discussion or I feel that it would be prudent to associate the author with their comment or post (for instance, I learned the name of user Nisan after they posted Formulas of Arithmetic That Behave Like Decision Agents, which contained a splendidly unusual amount of math for lw). I was particularly surprised by the low quality of your arguments in that thread, given my past experience with you. Still, I disliked one of your comments first, and saw your name second.
I also responded to one of your comments in that thread, here. I didn’t further downvote your comments, because I make a point of not downvoting people whom I’ve engaged in discussion, just as a point of argumentative hygiene. Absent that, I might have downvoted every comment of yours that I read, without reply. I don’t have any problem downvoting silently. It might be a polite norm to give feedback to any post or comment of low quality, but it is not a good use of my time in general, certainly not for that thread, in which many people were responding to you with comments to the effect that your conclusions were sloppy or informal. If other people behave as I do, then I would guess it was not one person who downvoted you, but a few people who did, and that the downvotes were given on the basis of your comments, rather than on who you are.
Thank you for your feedback! Upvoted. Though I don’t believe I ever commented on the thread you mention. Maybe you mean some other thread. I’d also appreciate if you elaborate on what in particular constitutes “low quality” for you.
I wasn’t one of the silent downvoters, but I went ahead and downvoted without being silent because your comment just misunderstands Larks’s. He did not even implicitly claim that there is a creationism tradition in biology, but rather an ongoing, publicized debate between evolution and creationism, which is analogous to analytic vs. continental philosophy, if one is laughably wrong but still famous for whatever reason.
ongoing, publicized debate between evolution and creationism, which is analogous to analytic vs. continental philosophy
I guess I fail to see an analogy between a debate between two factions in what is supposedly a science and that of science vs religion. In the latter case, it is easy to tell who the loony is, while in the former the only conclusion I can make is that they both are.
I guess I fail to see an analogy between a debate between two factions in what is supposedly a science and that of science vs religion. In the latter case, it is easy to tell who the loony is, while in the former the only conclusion I can make is that they both are.
What’s your algorithm for telling who the loony is? Look for the one not wearing a lab coat?
I didn’t say anything about my method of telling the looney. My point was that your method of telling the looney seems to boil down to who has high status/is wearing a lab coat.
What?
EDIT: I am not aware that biology has a creationism tradition.
Larks can speak for themself, but I think their analogy was
analytic philosophy : continental philosophy :: (evolutionist) biology : creationism
so what seems to an outsider like a disagreement between schools is actually a disagreement between people doing “real” philosophy and goofy people doing something that they call philosophy.
(This seems overstated at best to me.)
And you are not goofy the moment you start doing any kind of philosophy that is not ‘reduction to cognitive algorithms’ or ‘consequentialist utilitarianism’? I see philosophy mostly as people trying to sound clever.
ETA: I have nothing personally against Philosophers, I just think philosophy as a well-respected field has taken a few too many wrong turns.
(Disclaimer: My knowledge of philosophy is at the 101) level.)
I do think a lot of what passes for philosophy is bogus. But the bogus philosophers still have “Department of Philosophy” on their university letterhead. Meanwhile: To a first approximation, all biologists believe in evolution.
Hm. I’m not sure how many biologists there are, but my guess is this allows for uncertainty on the order of a million biologists. Is the situation really that bad? I would have guessed that at least to a third approximation all biologists believe in evolution.
Are you reading “to a first approximation” as “to one significant figure”? I thought it meant something like “using the lowest order function which is an accurate fit to the data”. So, to a first approximation, pi is roughly 22⁄7, and to a first approximation, the distance to Earth’s horizon in kilometers is 3.57 times the square root of the height above sea level in meters.
To say that “to a first approximation, all biologists believe in evolution” is, by this definition, to say that the fraction of biologists that don’t is so small that it is not easily measured. I believe this to be the case because that fraction is so small that it is significantly affected by the choice of definition of “biologist”.
Yes. Perhaps incorrectly.
Yes, but my “nth approximation” module only has settings for “zeroth” and “first”.
Why was this downvoted? It points how a way that Larks’s example is not analogous to shminux’s.
My guess is that I gained some notoriety here and my comments tend to get a few downvotes because of this, rather than because of their content. Which tells me that I have to phrase my replies much more carefully. Still working on it. (If whoever silently downvoted some of my recent comments think that this guess is out to lunch, I’d greatly appreciate their feedback, here or in PM.)
Hi, shminux. I recently downvoted this comment of yours. I did recognize you, but that’s from seeing you in the lesswrong IRC channel, where you make a significant portion of the interesting discussion, not from lesswrong.com, where I don’t generally look at the authors of comments or posts unless I’m having trouble following a discussion or I feel that it would be prudent to associate the author with their comment or post (for instance, I learned the name of user Nisan after they posted Formulas of Arithmetic That Behave Like Decision Agents, which contained a splendidly unusual amount of math for lw). I was particularly surprised by the low quality of your arguments in that thread, given my past experience with you. Still, I disliked one of your comments first, and saw your name second.
I also responded to one of your comments in that thread, here. I didn’t further downvote your comments, because I make a point of not downvoting people whom I’ve engaged in discussion, just as a point of argumentative hygiene. Absent that, I might have downvoted every comment of yours that I read, without reply. I don’t have any problem downvoting silently. It might be a polite norm to give feedback to any post or comment of low quality, but it is not a good use of my time in general, certainly not for that thread, in which many people were responding to you with comments to the effect that your conclusions were sloppy or informal. If other people behave as I do, then I would guess it was not one person who downvoted you, but a few people who did, and that the downvotes were given on the basis of your comments, rather than on who you are.
Thank you for your feedback! Upvoted. Though I don’t believe I ever commented on the thread you mention. Maybe you mean some other thread. I’d also appreciate if you elaborate on what in particular constitutes “low quality” for you.
I wasn’t one of the silent downvoters, but I went ahead and downvoted without being silent because your comment just misunderstands Larks’s. He did not even implicitly claim that there is a creationism tradition in biology, but rather an ongoing, publicized debate between evolution and creationism, which is analogous to analytic vs. continental philosophy, if one is laughably wrong but still famous for whatever reason.
I guess I fail to see an analogy between a debate between two factions in what is supposedly a science and that of science vs religion. In the latter case, it is easy to tell who the loony is, while in the former the only conclusion I can make is that they both are.
What’s your algorithm for telling who the loony is? Look for the one not wearing a lab coat?
Hmm, if you need help figuring out who the loony is in the evolution/creation debate, this comment thread is not the place to set things straight.
I didn’t say anything about my method of telling the looney. My point was that your method of telling the looney seems to boil down to who has high status/is wearing a lab coat.
Yeah, there does seem to be some amount of karmassination going on here.
That’s OK, it’s a risk you run if you stick your neck out.