Depending on exactly what you mean by “literally any tradition”, this may well be true, but if there’s an unstated inference of ”… so it’s probably wrong” then I am not convinced. It could well be that literally any tradition (… that’s survived as long as that of the Sabbath among otherwise-often-smart people) can have something genuinely valuable drawn out of it. And that those that can’t are in fact the exceptions to your conjecture.
Even if something is a neutral or bad idea overall, it merely takes a little creativity to focus on the good parts that it has. How many generations did smart people support the gold standard? (To pick an idea that’s suboptimal and impactful but not too crazy or repulsive.) I’m sure there are some quite nice essays ruminating on its good points.
Now, suppose that you are reading an essay “drawing out the value” of the gold standard. How much does this essay help you arrive at useful beliefs about currency? Perhaps it is quite helpful, because even if it’s highlighting the good points of a bad idea, those particular good points might be general things it’s helpful to keep in mind. On the other hand, if those good points are cherry-picked to tell a favorable story about the gold standard, then maybe keeping them in mind will come at the expense of tracking other important factors.
Overall, I would say that an essay on the good points of the gold standard is only useful if you already have some key knowledge about currencies that will allow you to integrate the essay into a larger system of understanding, without being unduly swayed by it. And I think that this sort of flexible understanding requires a lot of work to gain, and most people don’t have it about most things. Therefore, an essay about the good points of an idea of unknown quality can be helpful for people with strong understanding of the subject, but is not very useful for most readers.
As mentioned in the comments on the crosspost: Ben and, independently, Zvi Moskowitz, have both been doing something similar but different and finding that making it more like the original tradition fulfills their goals more. This seems to be a pretty good indication that it is not just a rationalization. Also mentioned there, from Jason Green-Lowe: The actual tradition as she is practiced has drifted far from the thing that’s desirable.
This seems like the sort of reasonable and introspective rationalization that could grow up around literally any tradition.
Traditions like this one are selected for intergenerational survival value.
Depending on exactly what you mean by “literally any tradition”, this may well be true, but if there’s an unstated inference of ”… so it’s probably wrong” then I am not convinced. It could well be that literally any tradition (… that’s survived as long as that of the Sabbath among otherwise-often-smart people) can have something genuinely valuable drawn out of it. And that those that can’t are in fact the exceptions to your conjecture.
Even if something is a neutral or bad idea overall, it merely takes a little creativity to focus on the good parts that it has. How many generations did smart people support the gold standard? (To pick an idea that’s suboptimal and impactful but not too crazy or repulsive.) I’m sure there are some quite nice essays ruminating on its good points.
Now, suppose that you are reading an essay “drawing out the value” of the gold standard. How much does this essay help you arrive at useful beliefs about currency? Perhaps it is quite helpful, because even if it’s highlighting the good points of a bad idea, those particular good points might be general things it’s helpful to keep in mind. On the other hand, if those good points are cherry-picked to tell a favorable story about the gold standard, then maybe keeping them in mind will come at the expense of tracking other important factors.
Overall, I would say that an essay on the good points of the gold standard is only useful if you already have some key knowledge about currencies that will allow you to integrate the essay into a larger system of understanding, without being unduly swayed by it. And I think that this sort of flexible understanding requires a lot of work to gain, and most people don’t have it about most things. Therefore, an essay about the good points of an idea of unknown quality can be helpful for people with strong understanding of the subject, but is not very useful for most readers.
As mentioned in the comments on the crosspost: Ben and, independently, Zvi Moskowitz, have both been doing something similar but different and finding that making it more like the original tradition fulfills their goals more. This seems to be a pretty good indication that it is not just a rationalization.
Also mentioned there, from Jason Green-Lowe: The actual tradition as she is practiced has drifted far from the thing that’s desirable.
This comment insinuates but doesn’t overtly state an interesting disagreement. It would be interesting to have the claim made more explicit.