David Stove also talked about it a bit (not focusing on the transmission part but more on detection) with “What is Wrong with out Throughts?” ( http://web.maths.unsw.edu.au/~jim/wrongthoughts.html ). I’m not sure there is a good solution, as it is almost impossible to know whether or not you are in the grip of some irrationality.
To give an example, it is conceptually easy to kill germs—bacteria simply can’t handle wide swings in humidity, temperature, acidity, etc. Washing hands with soap and hot water, cooking food, using bleach, etc. are easy ways that are guaranteed to kill bacteria. They have an extremely low failure rate (Anthrax is the toughest bacteria I know of, and it can be killed with enough bleach and ingenuity).
These limitations are caused by limitations in the fundamental processes that make life work. Metabolism has to happen in particular temperature ranges. Cell walls can only be made out of a few sorts of materials, and all of those materials react violently to extremely basic or acidic substances.
The basic problem is that, if there are analogous limitations to “mind viruses”, we simply don’t know what they are (beyond the trivial making the host commit suicide instantly).
The best I have come up with is the advice that Feynman gave in his “Cargo Cult Science” talk ( http://wwwcdf.pd.infn.it/~loreti/science.html ) - cultivate a brutal sense of honesty so that you have a small edge on the detection side of things.
The example by David Stove gave me shivers. I only wish it was shorter—not fewer examples, but shorter author’s comments between them.
This discussion is about hand washing, but now I think more about vaccination. I feel like reading Stove’s article vaccinated me against most of philosophy.
A good epistemic practice might be courage to say “this is nonsense” or “this is insane” when reading a thoughtless flow of words. Perhaps the karma system of LW should include a reason why someone voted text up or down. Reasons for upvote could be like “interesting”, “well referenced” etc., reasons for downvote could be like “useless”, “offensive” or “insane”.
If some text does not make sense, members of rational community should have courage to say “this does not make sense to me”. (People usually don’t do this, because they fear it will make them appear stupid.) It is always a useful signal… at best it means that author should communicate more clearly, at worst it means that author wrote nonsense.
Perhaps the karma system of LW should include a reason why someone voted text up or down. Reasons for upvote could be like “interesting”, “well referenced” etc., reasons for downvote could be like “useless”, “offensive” or “insane”.
Suggested implementation: Clicking upvote or downvote could make a tiny textbox next to the thumb appear where you can (but are NOT obliged to) type a maximum of 15 letters, explaining the vote in one word.
Reasons for upvotes appear in tiny green letters, reasons for downvotes appear in tiny red letters. Identical words are not repeated but a + can appear next to them.
There is no getting away from it: the Logical Positivist nosology too is pitifully inadequate. Hegel just is different from Plotinus, and again from Foucault, and so on. Likewise, every specimen from (3) to (40) on my list is different from every other, as well as from the first two. Of course I cannot prove that all those things are different from one another, or even that any two of them are different. So if a Logical Positivist chose to dig in his heels, and insist that the ways in which thought can go wrong are all of them comprehended in the three categories of contingent falsity, self-contradiction, and unverifiability—well, I could not prove him wrong. But it is obvious enough that he is wrong. There are just more things in hell and earth than are dreamed of in his philosophy; thirty-odd more, at the least.
And yet there are philosophers, and beneficiaries of Logical Positivism at that, who actually propose, not to enlarge the Positivist nosology, but to contract it, to the point where it contains only one category! Now I ask you: what ought to be thought of a doctor, even in the most primitive state of medicine, who acknowledges the existence of only one disease? I am referring, of course, to Quine, who wants us to make do just with the category of contingent falsity:14 an excess of Positivist pedestrianism which deserves (though it will not receive in this book) an essay to itself.
That doctor would probably want to replace my broken parts with functional parts, rather than treat my diseases. The horror.
Just a very few of the labels used on this site are passwords I am thinking of, labels of the very few ways the forty are wrong. The resources enabling one to see underlying problems among the forty are on this website. However, it is better not to simply declare: “The problem behind most of them all is X”, where X is a label. Someone might believe me!
David Stove also talked about it a bit (not focusing on the transmission part but more on detection) with “What is Wrong with out Throughts?” ( http://web.maths.unsw.edu.au/~jim/wrongthoughts.html ). I’m not sure there is a good solution, as it is almost impossible to know whether or not you are in the grip of some irrationality.
To give an example, it is conceptually easy to kill germs—bacteria simply can’t handle wide swings in humidity, temperature, acidity, etc. Washing hands with soap and hot water, cooking food, using bleach, etc. are easy ways that are guaranteed to kill bacteria. They have an extremely low failure rate (Anthrax is the toughest bacteria I know of, and it can be killed with enough bleach and ingenuity).
These limitations are caused by limitations in the fundamental processes that make life work. Metabolism has to happen in particular temperature ranges. Cell walls can only be made out of a few sorts of materials, and all of those materials react violently to extremely basic or acidic substances.
The basic problem is that, if there are analogous limitations to “mind viruses”, we simply don’t know what they are (beyond the trivial making the host commit suicide instantly).
The best I have come up with is the advice that Feynman gave in his “Cargo Cult Science” talk ( http://wwwcdf.pd.infn.it/~loreti/science.html ) - cultivate a brutal sense of honesty so that you have a small edge on the detection side of things.
The example by David Stove gave me shivers. I only wish it was shorter—not fewer examples, but shorter author’s comments between them.
This discussion is about hand washing, but now I think more about vaccination. I feel like reading Stove’s article vaccinated me against most of philosophy.
A good epistemic practice might be courage to say “this is nonsense” or “this is insane” when reading a thoughtless flow of words. Perhaps the karma system of LW should include a reason why someone voted text up or down. Reasons for upvote could be like “interesting”, “well referenced” etc., reasons for downvote could be like “useless”, “offensive” or “insane”.
If some text does not make sense, members of rational community should have courage to say “this does not make sense to me”. (People usually don’t do this, because they fear it will make them appear stupid.) It is always a useful signal… at best it means that author should communicate more clearly, at worst it means that author wrote nonsense.
Suggested implementation: Clicking upvote or downvote could make a tiny textbox next to the thumb appear where you can (but are NOT obliged to) type a maximum of 15 letters, explaining the vote in one word.
Reasons for upvotes appear in tiny green letters, reasons for downvotes appear in tiny red letters. Identical words are not repeated but a + can appear next to them.
That doctor would probably want to replace my broken parts with functional parts, rather than treat my diseases. The horror.
Just a very few of the labels used on this site are passwords I am thinking of, labels of the very few ways the forty are wrong. The resources enabling one to see underlying problems among the forty are on this website. However, it is better not to simply declare: “The problem behind most of them all is X”, where X is a label. Someone might believe me!