I’m not sure I agree with Graham on the exact mechanics there. There are a number of mindkilling topics where empirically supportable answers should in principle exist: the health effects of obesity, for example. Effects of illegal drugs. Expected outcomes of certain childrearing practices.
Expertise exists on all these topics, and you can prove people wrong pretty conclusively with the right data set, but people—at least within certain subcultures, and often in general—usually feel free to ignore the data and expertise and expound their own theories. This is clearly not because these questions lack definite answers. I think it’s more because social approval rides on the answers, and because of the importance of the social proof heuristic and its relatives.
QM interpretation may or may not fall into that category around here.
Graham actually agrees with you; the essay quoted above continues:
But this isn’t true. There are certainly some political questions that have definite answers, like how much a new government policy will cost. But the more precise political questions suffer the same fate as the vaguer ones. I think what religion and politics have in common is that they become part of people’s identity, and people can never have a fruitful argument about something that’s part of their identity. By definition they’re partisan.
I’m not sure I agree with Graham on the exact mechanics there. There are a number of mindkilling topics where empirically supportable answers should in principle exist: the health effects of obesity, for example. Effects of illegal drugs. Expected outcomes of certain childrearing practices.
Expertise exists on all these topics, and you can prove people wrong pretty conclusively with the right data set, but people—at least within certain subcultures, and often in general—usually feel free to ignore the data and expertise and expound their own theories. This is clearly not because these questions lack definite answers. I think it’s more because social approval rides on the answers, and because of the importance of the social proof heuristic and its relatives.
QM interpretation may or may not fall into that category around here.
Graham actually agrees with you; the essay quoted above continues: