I understand that this post seems wise to some people. To me, it seems like a series of tautologies on the surface, with an understructure of assumptions that are ultimately far more important and far more questionable. The basic assumption being made is that society-wide “memetic collapse” is a thing; the evidence given for this (even if you follow the links) is weak, and yet the attitude throughout is that further debate on this point is not worth our breath.
I am a co-author of statistics work with somebody whose standards of mathematical rigour are higher than mine. I often take intuitive leaps that she questions. There are three different common outcomes: one, that once we add the necessary rigour to my initial claim, it turns out to be right; two, that we recognize a mistake, but are able to fix things with some relatively minor claim to the original claim; and three, that I turn out to have been utterly wrong. So yes, it’s good that she demands rigour, but I think that if she said “you are a Bad Person for making a locally-invalid argument” every time I made a leap, our collaboration would be less productive overall.
Overall, I don’t object to the basic valid points made by this post, and I understand that it’s a useful and clarifying exposition for some people (including people who are smarter than I am). Still, I wouldn’t want to include this post in a “best of” (that is, I wouldn’t use it to demonstrate how cool I find Less Wrong) because I find it gives an impression of self-satisfaction that I find off-putting.
I understand that this post seems wise to some people. To me, it seems like a series of tautologies on the surface, with an understructure of assumptions that are ultimately far more important and far more questionable. The basic assumption being made is that society-wide “memetic collapse” is a thing; the evidence given for this (even if you follow the links) is weak, and yet the attitude throughout is that further debate on this point is not worth our breath.
I am a co-author of statistics work with somebody whose standards of mathematical rigour are higher than mine. I often take intuitive leaps that she questions. There are three different common outcomes: one, that once we add the necessary rigour to my initial claim, it turns out to be right; two, that we recognize a mistake, but are able to fix things with some relatively minor claim to the original claim; and three, that I turn out to have been utterly wrong. So yes, it’s good that she demands rigour, but I think that if she said “you are a Bad Person for making a locally-invalid argument” every time I made a leap, our collaboration would be less productive overall.
Overall, I don’t object to the basic valid points made by this post, and I understand that it’s a useful and clarifying exposition for some people (including people who are smarter than I am). Still, I wouldn’t want to include this post in a “best of” (that is, I wouldn’t use it to demonstrate how cool I find Less Wrong) because I find it gives an impression of self-satisfaction that I find off-putting.