Posts like this shouldn’t appear on this blog. Adequately considering the question requires a truckload of special knowledge that most visitors don’t have and that is not associated with the topic of the blog.
The rhetoric that is visible on the surface (comparison with something ridiculous, etc.) strongly privileges a hypothesis (of the teacher’s password opaque kind, no less—to most readers), which in absence of understanding of the subject may as well be pure Dark Art.
Being contrarian doesn’t mean that we should be interested in entertaining contrarian hypotheses any more seriously just because they are contrarian. This way lies madness.
I am quite curious indeed as to how my post is any less topical than the quantum physics post by Eliezer that I linked.
I deliberately didn’t write about anything that would have been foreign to any not-reasonably-scientifically-literate reader. If you disagree, please do point out where.
I do not think that the aether hypothesis was “ridiculous”, and never said that I did. It was wrong, sure, but lots and lots of very smart people believed in it for quite a while. Similarly, I don’t think gravitons are “ridiculous” and never said that they were.
The post being off-topic is not part of my argument. (That being said, if I were arguing that it is off-topic, then being no more offtopic than a given other post is hardly an argument against this post being off-topic in the absolute sense.)
The difference between this post and the quantum mechanics sequence is that this post doesn’t get the readers up to speed, and so if they are not already up to speed, they can’t understand what’s going on (also, you won’t be able to get the readers up to speed on this post via merely a blog sequence—it’s too much work). I said:
Adequately considering the question requires a truckload of special knowledge that most visitors don’t have and that is not associated with the topic of the blog.
If you teach such knowledge on the blog, the argument no longer applies (though if it’s too off-topic, the attempt might not be appreciated). If the knowledge is associated with topic of the blog, readers are expected to have it or seek it (e.g. standard biases). If most of the readers happen to already have the knowledge for whatever reason, then it can be assumed as well (e.g. calculus, because most readers happen to be well-educated).
I deliberately didn’t write about anything that would have been foreign to any not-reasonably-scientifically-literate reader. If you disagree, please do point out where.
You are either expecting too much, or demanding too little. It takes way more than familiarity with the terms to discuss the nature of gravity...
I do not think that the aether hypothesis was “ridiculous”, and never said that I did.
And I never said you did. It wasn’t ridiculous in its time, but it is now, given our state of knowledge, which is the relevant factor in formation of nontechnical connotations.
The many-world interpretation of quantum mechanics was discussed here several times. People write about artificial intelligence here often. Evolutionary psychology is a standard topic. All these require a lot of specialised knowledge, which is not necessarily associated with rationality. Why not discuss the reality of graviton? Physics is probably more scary than evolution, since everyday intuition seems useless there, but that doesn’t mean that everyday intuition isn’t actually as useless in evo-psych.
I agree that the topic of the OP is a difficult and specialised question, but there are some aspects of it which can be accessible to non-experts, e.g. the question of testability of string theory or loop gravity, use of anthropic reasoning in physics, or how much popularity of theories influences research. I do not want to have here a strict policy of not discussing specialised topics.
My estimate is that most (>90%) of the opinions about these topics expressed on LW are wrong. After all, we are not all specialists, and even specialists are often wrong. But as long as we are trying to evaluate the questions rationally, albeit with limited knowledge, and as long as we are aware about our limits, I don’t see why we ought to stop.
But as long as we are trying to evaluate the questions rationally, albeit with limited knowledge, and as long as we are aware about our limits, I don’t see why we ought to stop.
Posts like this shouldn’t appear on this blog. Adequately considering the question requires a truckload of special knowledge that most visitors don’t have and that is not associated with the topic of the blog
The point of the post seems to be that the physics establishment may be in danger of falling into an egregious (and maybe even obvious, from an outside perspective) group irrationality trap. That point is highly topical—it shows that even mighty physics is not immune to rationality breakdowns. String theory is probably popular because lots of senior physicists, who based their careers on string theory, take on students who want to study string theory, and reject students who want to study alternatives to it.
Do you seriously consider saving the experts from error, without yourself understanding the subject? (Doesn’t matter whether this limitation applies to you in particular—the important thing is that it does apply to the blog as a whole).
I find it hard to believe that posts about the collapse postulate are on-topic but this one is not. Is there a substantial difference between the two that I’m missing?
Taking two seconds to click on the Collapse Postulate link it appears that the article was originally posted on Overcoming Bias. Also, it appears to be part of a larger sequence on quantum mechanics.
I haven’t read that sequence or that article so I cannot compare them to yours, but all of those links in the block you quoted presumably enhance the discussion to make the conclusion more obvious. Your article has one link.
Posts like this shouldn’t appear on this blog. Adequately considering the question requires a truckload of special knowledge that most visitors don’t have and that is not associated with the topic of the blog.
The rhetoric that is visible on the surface (comparison with something ridiculous, etc.) strongly privileges a hypothesis (of the teacher’s password opaque kind, no less—to most readers), which in absence of understanding of the subject may as well be pure Dark Art.
Being contrarian doesn’t mean that we should be interested in entertaining contrarian hypotheses any more seriously just because they are contrarian. This way lies madness.
I am quite curious indeed as to how my post is any less topical than the quantum physics post by Eliezer that I linked.
I deliberately didn’t write about anything that would have been foreign to any not-reasonably-scientifically-literate reader. If you disagree, please do point out where.
I do not think that the aether hypothesis was “ridiculous”, and never said that I did. It was wrong, sure, but lots and lots of very smart people believed in it for quite a while. Similarly, I don’t think gravitons are “ridiculous” and never said that they were.
The post being off-topic is not part of my argument. (That being said, if I were arguing that it is off-topic, then being no more offtopic than a given other post is hardly an argument against this post being off-topic in the absolute sense.)
The difference between this post and the quantum mechanics sequence is that this post doesn’t get the readers up to speed, and so if they are not already up to speed, they can’t understand what’s going on (also, you won’t be able to get the readers up to speed on this post via merely a blog sequence—it’s too much work). I said:
If you teach such knowledge on the blog, the argument no longer applies (though if it’s too off-topic, the attempt might not be appreciated). If the knowledge is associated with topic of the blog, readers are expected to have it or seek it (e.g. standard biases). If most of the readers happen to already have the knowledge for whatever reason, then it can be assumed as well (e.g. calculus, because most readers happen to be well-educated).
You are either expecting too much, or demanding too little. It takes way more than familiarity with the terms to discuss the nature of gravity...
And I never said you did. It wasn’t ridiculous in its time, but it is now, given our state of knowledge, which is the relevant factor in formation of nontechnical connotations.
The many-world interpretation of quantum mechanics was discussed here several times. People write about artificial intelligence here often. Evolutionary psychology is a standard topic. All these require a lot of specialised knowledge, which is not necessarily associated with rationality. Why not discuss the reality of graviton? Physics is probably more scary than evolution, since everyday intuition seems useless there, but that doesn’t mean that everyday intuition isn’t actually as useless in evo-psych.
I agree that the topic of the OP is a difficult and specialised question, but there are some aspects of it which can be accessible to non-experts, e.g. the question of testability of string theory or loop gravity, use of anthropic reasoning in physics, or how much popularity of theories influences research. I do not want to have here a strict policy of not discussing specialised topics.
My estimate is that most (>90%) of the opinions about these topics expressed on LW are wrong. After all, we are not all specialists, and even specialists are often wrong. But as long as we are trying to evaluate the questions rationally, albeit with limited knowledge, and as long as we are aware about our limits, I don’t see why we ought to stop.
Because there are better things to do.
The point of the post seems to be that the physics establishment may be in danger of falling into an egregious (and maybe even obvious, from an outside perspective) group irrationality trap. That point is highly topical—it shows that even mighty physics is not immune to rationality breakdowns. String theory is probably popular because lots of senior physicists, who based their careers on string theory, take on students who want to study string theory, and reject students who want to study alternatives to it.
Do you seriously consider saving the experts from error, without yourself understanding the subject? (Doesn’t matter whether this limitation applies to you in particular—the important thing is that it does apply to the blog as a whole).
I find it hard to believe that posts about the collapse postulate are on-topic but this one is not. Is there a substantial difference between the two that I’m missing?
Taking two seconds to click on the Collapse Postulate link it appears that the article was originally posted on Overcoming Bias. Also, it appears to be part of a larger sequence on quantum mechanics.
I haven’t read that sequence or that article so I cannot compare them to yours, but all of those links in the block you quoted presumably enhance the discussion to make the conclusion more obvious. Your article has one link.