accusations of “extremism” are not critical arguments
Of course they are not. But such perceptions have consequences for those who are not hermits or safely ensconced in an ivory tower. If you want to persuade (and you do, don’t you?) the common people, getting labeled as an extremist is not particularly helpful.
I don’t attempt persuasion via attaining social status and trying to manage people’s perceptions. I don’t think that method can work for what I want to do.
It didn’t? What’s your criterion for “worked”, then? If you want to convert most of the world to your ideology you better call yourself a god then, or at least a prophet—not a mere philosopher.
I guess Karl Marx is a counterexample, but maybe you don’t want to use these particular methods of “persuasion”.
Deutsch invented Taking Children Seriously and Autonomous Relationships. That was some decades ago. He spent years in discussion groups trying to persuade people. His status did not help at all. Where are TCS and AR today? They are still only understood by a tiny minority. If not for curi, they might be dead.
Deutsch wrote “The Fabric of Reality” and “The Beginning of Infinity”. FoR was from 1997 and BoI was from 2011. These books have ideas that ought to change the world, but what has happened since they were published? Some people’s lives, such as curi’s, were changed dramatically, but only a tiny minority. Deutsch’s status has not helped the ideas in these books gain acceptance.
EDIT: That should be Autonomy Respecting Relationships (ARR).
So, a professor of physics failed to convert the world to his philosophy. Why are you surprised? That’s an entirely normal thing, exactly what you’d expect to happen. Status has nothing to do with it, this is like discussing the color of your shirt while trying to figure out why you can’t fly by flapping your arms.
Huh, you’re someone who would get the name of ARR [1] wrong? I didn’t expect that. You’re giving away significant identifying information, FYI. Why are you hiding your identity from me, btw?
And DD’s status has a significant counter productive aspect – it intimidates people and prevents him from being contacted in some ways he’d like.
Feynman complained bitterly about his Nobel prize, which he didn’t want, but they didn’t give him the option to decline it privately (so that no one found out). After he got it, he kept getting the wrong kinds of people at his public lectures (non-physicists) which heavily pressured him to do introductory lectures that they could understand. (He did give some great lectures for lay people, but he also wanted to do advanced physics lectures.) Feynman made an active effort not to intimidate people and to counteract his own high status.
If you want to convert most of the world to your ideology you better call yourself a god then, or at least a prophet—not a mere philosopher.
I’d be very happy to persuade 1000 people – but only counting productive doer/thinker types who learn it in depth. That’s better than 10,000,000 fans who understand little and do less. I estimate 1000 great people with the right philosopher [typo: PHILOSOPHY] is enough to promptly transform the world, whereas the 10,000,000 fans would not.
EDIT: the word “philosopher” should be “philosophy” above, as indicated.
I estimate 1000 great people with the right philosopher is enough to promptly transform the world
ROFL. OK, so one philosopher and 1000 great people. Presumably specially selected since early childhood since normal upbringing produces mental cripples? Now, keeping in mind that you can only persuade people with reason, what next? How does this transformation of the world work?
Sorry that was a typo, the word “philosopher” should be “philosophy”.
How would they transform the world? Well consider the influence Ayn Rand had. Now imagine 1000 people, who all surpass her (due to the advantages of getting to learn from her books and also getting to talk with each other and help each other), all doing their own thing, at the same time. Each would be promoting the same core ideas. What force in our current culture could stand up to that? What could stop them?
Concretely, some would quickly be rich or famous, be able to contact anyone important, run presidential campaigns, run think tanks, dominate any areas of intellectual discourse they care to, etc. (Trump only won because his campaign was run, to a partial extent, by lesser philosophers like Coulter, Miller and Bannon. They may stand out today, but they have nothing on a real philosopher like Ayn Rand. They don’t even claim to be philosophers. And yet it was still enough to determine the US presidency. What more do you want as a demonstration of the power of ideas than Trump’s Mexican rapists line, learned from Coulter’s book? Science? We have that too! And a good philosopher can go into whatever scientific field he wants and identify and fix massive errors currently being made due to the wrong methods of thinking. Even a mediocre philosopher like Aubrey de Grey managed to do something like that.)
They could discuss whatever problems came up to stop them. This discussion quality, having 1000 great thinkers, would far surpass any discussions that have ever existed, and so it would be highly effective compared to anything you have experience with.
As the earliest adopters catch on, the next earliest will, and so on, until even you learn about it, and then one day even Susie Soccer Mom.
Have you read Atlas Shrugged? It’s a book in which a philosophy teacher and his 3 star students change the world.
Look at people like Jordan Peterson or Eliezer Yudkowsky and then try to imagine someone with ~100x better ideas and how much more effective that would be.
His ideas got to be very very popular.
He spread bad ideas which have played a major role in killing over a hundred million of people and it looks like they will kill billions before they’re done (via e.g. all the economic harm that delays medical science to save people from dying of aging). Oops… As an intellectual, Marx fucked up and did it wrong. Also he’s been massively misunderstood (I’m not defending him; he’s guilty; but also I don’t think he’d actually like or respect most of his fans, who use him as a symbol for their own purposes rather than seriously studying his writing.)
Presumably specially selected since early childhood since normal upbringing produces mental cripples?
a few people survive childhood. you might want to read the inexplicable personal alchemy by Ayn Rand (essay, not book). or actually i doubt you do… but i mean that’s the kind of thing you could do if you wanted to understand.
Let’s see… Soviet Russia lived (relatively) happily until 1991 when it imploded through no effort of Ayn Rand. Libertarianism is not a major political force in any country that I know of. So, not that much influence.
What could stop them?
Oh dear, there is such a long list. A gun, for example. Men in uniform who are accustomed to following orders. Public indifference (a Kardashian lost 10 lbs through her special diet!).
some would quickly be rich or famous, be able to contact anyone important, run presidential campaigns, run think tanks, dominate any areas of intellectual discourse they care to, etc
Are you familiar with the term “magical thinking”? Popper couldn’t do it. Ayn Rand couldn’t do it. DD can’t do it. You can’t do it. So why would suddenly you have this thousand of god-emperors who can do anything they want to, purely through the force of reasoning?
Trump only won because his campaign was run, to a partial extent, by lesser philosophers
I think our evaluations of the latest presidential elections… differ.
a good philosopher can go into whatever scientific field he wants and identify and fix massive errors currently being made due to the wrong methods of thinking
You are a good philosopher, yes? Would you like to demonstrate this with some scientific field?
Even a mediocre philosopher like Aubrey de Grey managed to do something like that.
de Grey runs a medical think tank that so far has failed at its goal. In which way did he “fix massive errors”?
Have you read Atlas Shrugged? It’s a book in which a philosophy teacher and his 3 star students change the world.
… (you do understand that this is fiction?)
try to imagine someone with ~100x better ideas and how much more effective that would be
We’re back to magical thinking (I can imagine a lot of things, but presumably we are talking about reality), but even then, what will that someone do against a few grams of lead at high velocity?
He spread bad ideas
Did he believe they were bad ideas? How is his belief in his ideas different from your belief in your ideas?
a few people survive childhood
Since my childhood was sufficiently ordinary, I presume that I did not survive. Oops, you’re talking to a zombie...
Let’s see… Soviet Russia lived (relatively) happily until 1991 when it imploded through no effort of Ayn Rand. Libertarianism is not a major political force in any country that I know of. So, not that much influence.
Considering Rand was anti-libertarianism, you don’t know the first thing about her.
You are a good philosopher, yes? Would you like to demonstrate this with some scientific field?
sure, wanna do heritability studies? cryonics?
de Grey runs a medical think tank that so far has failed at its goal. In which way did he “fix massive errors”?
did you read his book? ppl were using terrible approaches and he came up with much better ones.
Ronald Reagan was a fan of Ayn Rand. He won the cold war so what is Lumifer talking about when he says Rand had no influence? He’s ignorant of history. Woefully ignorant if he thinks that the Soviet Union “lived (relatively) happily”. He hates Trump too. Incidentally, Yudkowsky lost a chunk of money betting Trump would lose. That’s what happens with bad philosophy.
Funny how a great deal of libertarians like her a lot… But we were talking about transforming the world. How did she transform the world?
wanna do heritability studies? cryonics?
Cryonics is not a science. It’s an attempt to develop a specific technology which isn’t working all that well so far. By heritability do you mean evo bio? Keep in mind that I read people like Gregory Cochran and Razib Khan so I would expect you to fix massive errors in their approaches.
Pointing me to large amounts of idiocy in published literature isn’t a convincing argument: I know it’s there, all reasonable people know it’s there, it’s a function of the incentives in academia and doesn’t have much to do with science proper.
he came up with much better ones
You are a proponent of one-bit thinking, are you not? In Yes/No terms de Grey set himself a goal and failed at it.
Funny how a great deal of libertarians like her a lot...
Where can I find them?
You are a proponent of one-bit thinking, are you not? In Yes/No terms de Grey set himself a goal and failed at it.
This is an over-simplification of a nuanced theory with a binary aspect. You don’t know how YESNO works, have chosen not to find out, and can’t speak to it.
Gregory Cochran
According to a quick googling, this guy apparently thinks that homosexuality is a disease. Is that the example you want to use and think I won’t be able to point out any flaws in? There seems to be some political bias/hatred in this webpage so many it’s not an accurate secondary source. Meanwhile I read that, “Khan’s career exemplifies the sometimes-murky line between mainstream science and scientific racism.”
I am potentially OK with this topic, but it gets into political controversies which may be distracting. I’m concerned that you’ll disagree with me politically (rather than scientifically) when I comment. What do you think? Also I think you should pick something more specific than their names, e.g. is there a particular major paper of interest? Cuz I don’t wanna pick a random paper from one of them, find errors, and then you say that isn’t their important work.
Also, at first glance, it looks like you may have named some outliers who may consider their field (most of the ppl/work/methods in it) broadly inadequate, and therefore might actually agree with my broader point (about the possibility of going into fields and pointing out inadequacies if you know what you’re doing, due to the fields being inadequate).
I’m not plugged into these networks, but Cato will probably be a good start.
apparently thinks that homosexuality is a disease
Kinda. As far as I remember, homosexuality is an interesting thing because it’s not very heritable (something like 20% for MZ twins), but also tends to persist in all cultures and ages which points to a biological aspect. It should be heavily disfavoured by evolution, but apparently isn’t. So it’s an evolutionary puzzle. Cochran’s theory—which he freely admits lacks any evidence in its favour—is that there is some pathogen which operates in utero or at a very early age and which pushes the neurohormonal balance towards homosexuality.
This is clearly spitballing in the dark and Cochran, as far as I know, doesn’t insist that it’s The Truth. It’s just an interesting alternative that everyone else ignores.
scientific racism
Generally translated as “I don’t like the conclusions which science came up with” :-D
I might or might not disagree with you politically, but I believe myself to be capable of distinguishing normative statements (this is what it is) from prescriptive ones (this is what it should be).
I don’t wanna pick a random paper from one of them
I am not expecting you to go critique their science. Their names were a handwave in the direction of what kind of heritability studies we’re talking about.
might actually agree with my broader point (about the possibility of going into fields and pointing out inadequacies if you know what you’re doing, due to the fields being inadequate)
It’s a bit more complicated. Scientific fields have a lot of diverse content. Some of it is invariably garbage and it’s not hard to go into any field, find some idiots, and point out their inadequacies. However it’s not a particularly difficult or worthwhile activity and certainly one that can be done by non-philosophers :-D In particular, during the last decade or so people who understand statistics have been having at lot of fun at the expense of domain “experts” who don’t.
I would generally expect that in every field there would be a relatively small core of clueful people who are actually pushing the frontier and a lot of deadweight just hanging on. I would also expect that it would be difficult to identify this core without doing a deep dive into the literature or going to conferences and actually talking to people.
However the thing is, I like empirical results. So if you claim to be able to go into a field and “fix massive errors”, I don’t think that merely pointing at the idiots and their publications is going to be sufficient. Fixing these errors should produce tangible results and if the errors are massive, the results should be massive as well. So where is my cure for aging? frozen and fully revived large mammals? better batteries, flying cars, teleportation devices, etc.?
As you could have guessed, I’m already familiar with Cato. If you’re not plugged into these networks, why are you trying to make claims about them?
Fixing these errors should produce tangible results and if the errors are massive,
No, I was talking about intellectual fixing of errors. That could lead to tangible results if ppl in the fields used the improved ideas, but i don’t claim to know how to get them to do that.
So where is my cure for aging?
Aubrey de Grey says there’s a 50% chance it’s $100 million a year for 10 years away. That may be optimistic, but he has some damn good points about science that merit a lot of research attention ASAP. But he’s massively underfunded anyway (partly b/c his approach to outreach is wrong, but he doesn’t want to hear that or change it).
The holdup here isn’t needing new scientific ideas (there’s already an outlier offering those and telling the rest of the field what they’re doing wrong) – it’s most scientists and funders not wanting the best available ideas. Also, related, most people are pro-aging and pro-death so the whole anti-aging field itself has way too little attention and funding even for the other approaches.
Generally translated as “I don’t like the conclusions which science came up with” :-D
I agree, though I don’t think I agree with the people you named. The homosexuality stuff and the race/IQ stuff can and should be explained in terms of culture, memes, education, human choice, environment, etc. The twin studies are garbage, btw. They routinely do things like consider two people living in the US to have no shared environment (despite living in a shared culture).
I didn’t think that stating that libertarians like Ayn Rand was controversial. We are talking about political power and neither libertarians nor objectivists have any. In this context the fact that they don’t like each other is a small family squabble in some far-off room of the Grand Political Palace.
intellectual fixing of errors
What is an “intellectual” fixing of an error instead of a plain-vanilla fixing of an error?
Aubrey de Grey says there’s a 50% chance it’s 100 million a year for 10 years away.
What’s the % chance that he is correct? AFAIK he has been saying the same thing for years.
it’s most scientists and funders not wanting the best available ideas
You don’t think that figuring out which ideas are “best available” is the hard part? Everyone and his dog claims his idea is the best.
most people are pro-aging and pro-death
I don’t think that’s true. Most people don’t want to live for a long time as wrecks with Alzheimer’s and pains in every joint, but invent a treatment that lets you stay at, say, the the 30-year-old level of health indefinitely and I bet few people will refuse (at least the non-religious ones).
can and should be explained in terms of culture, memes, education, human choice, environment, etc
What is an “intellectual” fixing of an error instead of a plain-vanilla fixing of an error?
I’m talking about identifying an error and writing a better idea. That’s different than e.g. spending 50 years working on the better idea or somehow getting others to.
What’s the % chance that he is correct? AFAIK he has been saying the same thing for years.
Yeah it’s been staying the same due to lack of funding.
I don’t typically do % estimates like you guys, but I read his book and some other material (for his side and against), and talked with him, and I believe (using philosophy) his ideas merit major research attention over their rivals.
You don’t think that figuring out which ideas are “best available” is the hard part? Everyone and his dog claims his idea is the best.
well, using philosophy i did that hard part and figured out which ones are good.
I don’t think that’s true. Most people don’t want to live for a long time as wrecks with Alzheimer’s and pains in every joint, but invent a treatment that lets you stay at, say, the the 30-year-old level of health indefinitely and I bet few people will refuse (at least the non-religious ones).
oh they won’t refuse that after it’s cheaply available. they are confused and inconsistent.
Why is there a “should”?
b/c i didn’t want the interpretation that it can be explained multiple ways. i’m advocating just the one option.
The twin studies are garbage, btw
All of them?
i have surveyed them and found them to all be garbage. i looked specifically at ones with some of the common, important conclusions, e.g. about heritability of autism, IQ, that kinda stuff. they have major methodological problems. but i imagine you could find some study involving twins, about something, which is ok.
if you believe you know a twin study that is not garbage, would you accept an explanation of why it’s garbage as a demonstration of the power and importance of CR philosophy?
You don’t think that figuring out which ideas are “best available” is the hard part? Everyone and his dog claims his idea is the best.
well, using philosophy i did that hard part and figured out which ones are good
LOL. Oh boy.
Really? So you just used the force philosophy and figured it out? That’s great! Just a minor thing I’m confused about—why are you here chatting on the ’net instead of sitting on your megayacht with a line of VCs in front of your door, willing to pay you gazillions of dollars for telling them which ideas are actually good? This looks to be VERY valuable knowledge, surely you should be able to exchange it for lots and lots of money in this capitalist economy?
When Banzan was walking through a market he overheard a conversation between a butcher and his customer.
“Give me the best piece of meat you have,” said the customer.
“Everything in my shop is the best,” replied the butcher. You cannot find here any piece of meat that is not the best.”
No, what surprises me is your belief that you just figured it all out. Using philosophy. That’s it, we’re done, everyone can go home now.
And since everything is binary and you don’t have any tools to talk about things like uncertainty, this is The Truth and anyone who doesn’t recognize it as such is either a knave or a fool.
There also a delicious overtone of irony in that a guy as lacking in humility as you are, chooses to describe his system as “fallible ideas”.
i have tools to talk about uncertainty, which are different than your tools, and which conceive of uncertainty somewhat differently than you do.
i have not figured it ALL out, but many things, such as the quality of SENS and twin studies.
fallibilism is one of the major philosophical ideas used in figuring things out. it’s crucial but it doesn’t imply, as you seem to believe, hedging, ignorance, equivocation, not knowing much, etc.
Of course they are not. But such perceptions have consequences for those who are not hermits or safely ensconced in an ivory tower. If you want to persuade (and you do, don’t you?) the common people, getting labeled as an extremist is not particularly helpful.
I don’t attempt persuasion via attaining social status and trying to manage people’s perceptions. I don’t think that method can work for what I want to do.
“Not getting shunned” is not quite the same thing as attempting “persuasion via attaining social status”.
Which method do you think can work for what you want to do? Any success so far?
David Deutsch has status. It hasn’t worked for him. Worse, seeking status compromised him intellectually.
It didn’t? What’s your criterion for “worked”, then? If you want to convert most of the world to your ideology you better call yourself a god then, or at least a prophet—not a mere philosopher.
I guess Karl Marx is a counterexample, but maybe you don’t want to use these particular methods of “persuasion”.
Deutsch invented Taking Children Seriously and Autonomous Relationships. That was some decades ago. He spent years in discussion groups trying to persuade people. His status did not help at all. Where are TCS and AR today? They are still only understood by a tiny minority. If not for curi, they might be dead.
Deutsch wrote “The Fabric of Reality” and “The Beginning of Infinity”. FoR was from 1997 and BoI was from 2011. These books have ideas that ought to change the world, but what has happened since they were published? Some people’s lives, such as curi’s, were changed dramatically, but only a tiny minority. Deutsch’s status has not helped the ideas in these books gain acceptance.
EDIT: That should be Autonomy Respecting Relationships (ARR).
So, a professor of physics failed to convert the world to his philosophy. Why are you surprised? That’s an entirely normal thing, exactly what you’d expect to happen. Status has nothing to do with it, this is like discussing the color of your shirt while trying to figure out why you can’t fly by flapping your arms.
Huh, you’re someone who would get the name of ARR [1] wrong? I didn’t expect that. You’re giving away significant identifying information, FYI. Why are you hiding your identity from me, btw?
And DD’s status has a significant counter productive aspect – it intimidates people and prevents him from being contacted in some ways he’d like.
Feynman complained bitterly about his Nobel prize, which he didn’t want, but they didn’t give him the option to decline it privately (so that no one found out). After he got it, he kept getting the wrong kinds of people at his public lectures (non-physicists) which heavily pressured him to do introductory lectures that they could understand. (He did give some great lectures for lay people, but he also wanted to do advanced physics lectures.) Feynman made an active effort not to intimidate people and to counteract his own high status.
[1] http://curi.us/1539-autonomy-respecting-relationships
It surprised me too. I think it was just a blooper, but I’ve done it twice now. So hmm. You didn’t pick me up the first time.
I’m aware of that.
I expect you already know who I am. I’ll take this over to FI forum.
I don’t see what’s to envy about Marx.
I’d be very happy to persuade 1000 people – but only counting productive doer/thinker types who learn it in depth. That’s better than 10,000,000 fans who understand little and do less. I estimate 1000 great people with the right philosopher [typo: PHILOSOPHY] is enough to promptly transform the world, whereas the 10,000,000 fans would not.
EDIT: the word “philosopher” should be “philosophy” above, as indicated.
His ideas got to be very very popular.
ROFL. OK, so one philosopher and 1000 great people. Presumably specially selected since early childhood since normal upbringing produces mental cripples? Now, keeping in mind that you can only persuade people with reason, what next? How does this transformation of the world work?
Sorry that was a typo, the word “philosopher” should be “philosophy”.
How would they transform the world? Well consider the influence Ayn Rand had. Now imagine 1000 people, who all surpass her (due to the advantages of getting to learn from her books and also getting to talk with each other and help each other), all doing their own thing, at the same time. Each would be promoting the same core ideas. What force in our current culture could stand up to that? What could stop them?
Concretely, some would quickly be rich or famous, be able to contact anyone important, run presidential campaigns, run think tanks, dominate any areas of intellectual discourse they care to, etc. (Trump only won because his campaign was run, to a partial extent, by lesser philosophers like Coulter, Miller and Bannon. They may stand out today, but they have nothing on a real philosopher like Ayn Rand. They don’t even claim to be philosophers. And yet it was still enough to determine the US presidency. What more do you want as a demonstration of the power of ideas than Trump’s Mexican rapists line, learned from Coulter’s book? Science? We have that too! And a good philosopher can go into whatever scientific field he wants and identify and fix massive errors currently being made due to the wrong methods of thinking. Even a mediocre philosopher like Aubrey de Grey managed to do something like that.)
They could discuss whatever problems came up to stop them. This discussion quality, having 1000 great thinkers, would far surpass any discussions that have ever existed, and so it would be highly effective compared to anything you have experience with.
As the earliest adopters catch on, the next earliest will, and so on, until even you learn about it, and then one day even Susie Soccer Mom.
Have you read Atlas Shrugged? It’s a book in which a philosophy teacher and his 3 star students change the world.
Look at people like Jordan Peterson or Eliezer Yudkowsky and then try to imagine someone with ~100x better ideas and how much more effective that would be.
He spread bad ideas which have played a major role in killing over a hundred million of people and it looks like they will kill billions before they’re done (via e.g. all the economic harm that delays medical science to save people from dying of aging). Oops… As an intellectual, Marx fucked up and did it wrong. Also he’s been massively misunderstood (I’m not defending him; he’s guilty; but also I don’t think he’d actually like or respect most of his fans, who use him as a symbol for their own purposes rather than seriously studying his writing.)
a few people survive childhood. you might want to read the inexplicable personal alchemy by Ayn Rand (essay, not book). or actually i doubt you do… but i mean that’s the kind of thing you could do if you wanted to understand.
Let’s see… Soviet Russia lived (relatively) happily until 1991 when it imploded through no effort of Ayn Rand. Libertarianism is not a major political force in any country that I know of. So, not that much influence.
Oh dear, there is such a long list. A gun, for example. Men in uniform who are accustomed to following orders. Public indifference (a Kardashian lost 10 lbs through her special diet!).
Are you familiar with the term “magical thinking”? Popper couldn’t do it. Ayn Rand couldn’t do it. DD can’t do it. You can’t do it. So why would suddenly you have this thousand of god-emperors who can do anything they want to, purely through the force of reasoning?
I think our evaluations of the latest presidential elections… differ.
You are a good philosopher, yes? Would you like to demonstrate this with some scientific field?
de Grey runs a medical think tank that so far has failed at its goal. In which way did he “fix massive errors”?
… (you do understand that this is fiction?)
We’re back to magical thinking (I can imagine a lot of things, but presumably we are talking about reality), but even then, what will that someone do against a few grams of lead at high velocity?
Did he believe they were bad ideas? How is his belief in his ideas different from your belief in your ideas?
Since my childhood was sufficiently ordinary, I presume that I did not survive. Oops, you’re talking to a zombie...
Considering Rand was anti-libertarianism, you don’t know the first thing about her.
sure, wanna do heritability studies? cryonics?
did you read his book? ppl were using terrible approaches and he came up with much better ones.
Ronald Reagan was a fan of Ayn Rand. He won the cold war so what is Lumifer talking about when he says Rand had no influence? He’s ignorant of history. Woefully ignorant if he thinks that the Soviet Union “lived (relatively) happily”. He hates Trump too. Incidentally, Yudkowsky lost a chunk of money betting Trump would lose. That’s what happens with bad philosophy.
Funny how a great deal of libertarians like her a lot… But we were talking about transforming the world. How did she transform the world?
Cryonics is not a science. It’s an attempt to develop a specific technology which isn’t working all that well so far. By heritability do you mean evo bio? Keep in mind that I read people like Gregory Cochran and Razib Khan so I would expect you to fix massive errors in their approaches.
Pointing me to large amounts of idiocy in published literature isn’t a convincing argument: I know it’s there, all reasonable people know it’s there, it’s a function of the incentives in academia and doesn’t have much to do with science proper.
You are a proponent of one-bit thinking, are you not? In Yes/No terms de Grey set himself a goal and failed at it.
Where can I find them?
This is an over-simplification of a nuanced theory with a binary aspect. You don’t know how YESNO works, have chosen not to find out, and can’t speak to it.
According to a quick googling, this guy apparently thinks that homosexuality is a disease. Is that the example you want to use and think I won’t be able to point out any flaws in? There seems to be some political bias/hatred in this webpage so many it’s not an accurate secondary source. Meanwhile I read that, “Khan’s career exemplifies the sometimes-murky line between mainstream science and scientific racism.”
I am potentially OK with this topic, but it gets into political controversies which may be distracting. I’m concerned that you’ll disagree with me politically (rather than scientifically) when I comment. What do you think? Also I think you should pick something more specific than their names, e.g. is there a particular major paper of interest? Cuz I don’t wanna pick a random paper from one of them, find errors, and then you say that isn’t their important work.
Also, at first glance, it looks like you may have named some outliers who may consider their field (most of the ppl/work/methods in it) broadly inadequate, and therefore might actually agree with my broader point (about the possibility of going into fields and pointing out inadequacies if you know what you’re doing, due to the fields being inadequate).
I’m not plugged into these networks, but Cato will probably be a good start.
Kinda. As far as I remember, homosexuality is an interesting thing because it’s not very heritable (something like 20% for MZ twins), but also tends to persist in all cultures and ages which points to a biological aspect. It should be heavily disfavoured by evolution, but apparently isn’t. So it’s an evolutionary puzzle. Cochran’s theory—which he freely admits lacks any evidence in its favour—is that there is some pathogen which operates in utero or at a very early age and which pushes the neurohormonal balance towards homosexuality.
This is clearly spitballing in the dark and Cochran, as far as I know, doesn’t insist that it’s The Truth. It’s just an interesting alternative that everyone else ignores.
Generally translated as “I don’t like the conclusions which science came up with” :-D
I might or might not disagree with you politically, but I believe myself to be capable of distinguishing normative statements (this is what it is) from prescriptive ones (this is what it should be).
I am not expecting you to go critique their science. Their names were a handwave in the direction of what kind of heritability studies we’re talking about.
It’s a bit more complicated. Scientific fields have a lot of diverse content. Some of it is invariably garbage and it’s not hard to go into any field, find some idiots, and point out their inadequacies. However it’s not a particularly difficult or worthwhile activity and certainly one that can be done by non-philosophers :-D In particular, during the last decade or so people who understand statistics have been having at lot of fun at the expense of domain “experts” who don’t.
I would generally expect that in every field there would be a relatively small core of clueful people who are actually pushing the frontier and a lot of deadweight just hanging on. I would also expect that it would be difficult to identify this core without doing a deep dive into the literature or going to conferences and actually talking to people.
However the thing is, I like empirical results. So if you claim to be able to go into a field and “fix massive errors”, I don’t think that merely pointing at the idiots and their publications is going to be sufficient. Fixing these errors should produce tangible results and if the errors are massive, the results should be massive as well. So where is my cure for aging? frozen and fully revived large mammals? better batteries, flying cars, teleportation devices, etc.?
As you could have guessed, I’m already familiar with Cato. If you’re not plugged into these networks, why are you trying to make claims about them?
No, I was talking about intellectual fixing of errors. That could lead to tangible results if ppl in the fields used the improved ideas, but i don’t claim to know how to get them to do that.
Aubrey de Grey says there’s a 50% chance it’s $100 million a year for 10 years away. That may be optimistic, but he has some damn good points about science that merit a lot of research attention ASAP. But he’s massively underfunded anyway (partly b/c his approach to outreach is wrong, but he doesn’t want to hear that or change it).
The holdup here isn’t needing new scientific ideas (there’s already an outlier offering those and telling the rest of the field what they’re doing wrong) – it’s most scientists and funders not wanting the best available ideas. Also, related, most people are pro-aging and pro-death so the whole anti-aging field itself has way too little attention and funding even for the other approaches.
I agree, though I don’t think I agree with the people you named. The homosexuality stuff and the race/IQ stuff can and should be explained in terms of culture, memes, education, human choice, environment, etc. The twin studies are garbage, btw. They routinely do things like consider two people living in the US to have no shared environment (despite living in a shared culture).
I didn’t think that stating that libertarians like Ayn Rand was controversial. We are talking about political power and neither libertarians nor objectivists have any. In this context the fact that they don’t like each other is a small family squabble in some far-off room of the Grand Political Palace.
What is an “intellectual” fixing of an error instead of a plain-vanilla fixing of an error?
What’s the % chance that he is correct? AFAIK he has been saying the same thing for years.
You don’t think that figuring out which ideas are “best available” is the hard part? Everyone and his dog claims his idea is the best.
I don’t think that’s true. Most people don’t want to live for a long time as wrecks with Alzheimer’s and pains in every joint, but invent a treatment that lets you stay at, say, the the 30-year-old level of health indefinitely and I bet few people will refuse (at least the non-religious ones).
Why is there a “should”?
All of them?
I’m talking about identifying an error and writing a better idea. That’s different than e.g. spending 50 years working on the better idea or somehow getting others to.
Yeah it’s been staying the same due to lack of funding.
I don’t typically do % estimates like you guys, but I read his book and some other material (for his side and against), and talked with him, and I believe (using philosophy) his ideas merit major research attention over their rivals.
well, using philosophy i did that hard part and figured out which ones are good.
oh they won’t refuse that after it’s cheaply available. they are confused and inconsistent.
b/c i didn’t want the interpretation that it can be explained multiple ways. i’m advocating just the one option.
i have surveyed them and found them to all be garbage. i looked specifically at ones with some of the common, important conclusions, e.g. about heritability of autism, IQ, that kinda stuff. they have major methodological problems. but i imagine you could find some study involving twins, about something, which is ok.
if you believe you know a twin study that is not garbage, would you accept an explanation of why it’s garbage as a demonstration of the power and importance of CR philosophy?
http://existentialcomics.com/comic/191
LOL. Oh boy.
Really? So you just used
the forcephilosophy and figured it out? That’s great! Just a minor thing I’m confused about—why are you here chatting on the ’net instead of sitting on your megayacht with a line of VCs in front of your door, willing to pay you gazillions of dollars for telling them which ideas are actually good? This looks to be VERY valuable knowledge, surely you should be able to exchange it for lots and lots of money in this capitalist economy?When Banzan was walking through a market he overheard a conversation between a butcher and his customer. “Give me the best piece of meat you have,” said the customer.
“Everything in my shop is the best,” replied the butcher. You cannot find here any piece of meat that is not the best.”
At these words Banzan became enlightened.
http://12stepsandzenkoans.blogspot.com.au/2013/08/everything-is-best-part-ii.html?m=1
the VCs would laugh, like you, and don’t want to hear it. surely this doesn’t surprise you.
i’m also not a big fan of yachts and prefer discussions.
No, what surprises me is your belief that you just figured it all out. Using philosophy. That’s it, we’re done, everyone can go home now.
And since everything is binary and you don’t have any tools to talk about things like uncertainty, this is The Truth and anyone who doesn’t recognize it as such is either a knave or a fool.
There also a delicious overtone of irony in that a guy as lacking in humility as you are, chooses to describe his system as “fallible ideas”.
i have tools to talk about uncertainty, which are different than your tools, and which conceive of uncertainty somewhat differently than you do.
i have not figured it ALL out, but many things, such as the quality of SENS and twin studies.
fallibilism is one of the major philosophical ideas used in figuring things out. it’s crucial but it doesn’t imply, as you seem to believe, hedging, ignorance, equivocation, not knowing much, etc.
Reason. Some.
Appeasing irrational shunning criteria is intellectually self-destructive and those people don’t matter intellectually anyway.
Ivory tower it is, then.