Scientific American argues that using “negative words” (including skeptical, unclear, doubt, and shouldn’t) hurts your ability to “sell your science.” Instead, you need to be optimistic.
““If you have a method or idea and you believe it works, you have to be optimistic about it. Optimism is the number-one thing.” ~Anne Kinney, Director of the Solar System Exploration Division at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center.
So supposedly, in order to sell your ideas, you need to hide evidence of the LessWrongian values that help you develop a solid method or idea in the first place.
Finding a truth and selling the truth are two different processes, with different rules. So are you suggesting that in order to sell the truth we should remove ourselves from the suspicion that we are able to find it?
If yes, then you are probably right. I suppose that when Eliezer writes his Sequence-book, he would sell thousand times more copies if he would put there an introduction stating something like: “These are the eternal truths which have been communicated to me in my dreams by an omniscient being from the seventh dimension. If you read this book and believe it, your soul will be blessed forever.” And the rest of LessWrongians could put on some robes, go singing on streets, give people flowers and sell them the book.
Scientific American argues that using “negative words” (including skeptical, unclear, doubt, and shouldn’t) hurts your ability to “sell your science.” Instead, you need to be optimistic.
““If you have a method or idea and you believe it works, you have to be optimistic about it. Optimism is the number-one thing.” ~Anne Kinney, Director of the Solar System Exploration Division at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center.
So supposedly, in order to sell your ideas, you need to hide evidence of the LessWrongian values that help you develop a solid method or idea in the first place.
http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/guest-blog/2011/10/06/optimism-and-enthusiasm-lessons-for-scientists-from-steve-jobs/
Finding a truth and selling the truth are two different processes, with different rules. So are you suggesting that in order to sell the truth we should remove ourselves from the suspicion that we are able to find it?
If yes, then you are probably right. I suppose that when Eliezer writes his Sequence-book, he would sell thousand times more copies if he would put there an introduction stating something like: “These are the eternal truths which have been communicated to me in my dreams by an omniscient being from the seventh dimension. If you read this book and believe it, your soul will be blessed forever.” And the rest of LessWrongians could put on some robes, go singing on streets, give people flowers and sell them the book.
In this case, what exactly should a rationalist do?