I like your last point—that you feel better than everyone else now, because you do get real science, and so you’d hate to have everything change around.
That was my first thought, because you know it’s very sexy on LW and OB to attribute your thinking to status signalling.
But I don’t think that’s it. I’m going to reclaim the rational high ground. I’ve seen lots of examples of the kinds of theories of the world that lead to pyramids on Mars, lost civilizations in the Atlantic, hollow Earth, auras, divination, etc.
They’re ugly theories. The pyramid on Mars is not enticing, because it would lend support to ugly theories and pull the rug out from under beautiful theories.
(If the pyramids on Mars were built by an ancient Martian civilization, then, fine. But if they were built by spacefaring aliens who visited the Egyptians—or, worse yet, by spacefaring Egyptians—not so fine. A human face on Mars would be even worse.)
(Gene transfer by bacterial conjugation is a little bit ugly, because it makes it a lot harder to predict things from evolutionary theory, and to make all sorts of inferences. I was going to give that as an example, but realized it isn’t the same thing at all. It makes the empirical realization of your theory messier, but it doesn’t force you to adopt a different, uglier theory.)
Gene transfer also resolves some very puzzling and ugly irregularities. Sometimes the beauty isn’t just the theory, but it’s relationship to data. If a theory’s very elegant, but the data too messy, it disturbs my sense of completion.
That was my first thought, because you know it’s very sexy on LW and OB to attribute your thinking to status signalling.
But I don’t think that’s it. I’m going to reclaim the rational high ground. I’ve seen lots of examples of the kinds of theories of the world that lead to pyramids on Mars, lost civilizations in the Atlantic, hollow Earth, auras, divination, etc.
They’re ugly theories. The pyramid on Mars is not enticing, because it would lend support to ugly theories and pull the rug out from under beautiful theories.
(If the pyramids on Mars were built by an ancient Martian civilization, then, fine. But if they were built by spacefaring aliens who visited the Egyptians—or, worse yet, by spacefaring Egyptians—not so fine. A human face on Mars would be even worse.)
(Gene transfer by bacterial conjugation is a little bit ugly, because it makes it a lot harder to predict things from evolutionary theory, and to make all sorts of inferences. I was going to give that as an example, but realized it isn’t the same thing at all. It makes the empirical realization of your theory messier, but it doesn’t force you to adopt a different, uglier theory.)
Gene transfer also resolves some very puzzling and ugly irregularities. Sometimes the beauty isn’t just the theory, but it’s relationship to data. If a theory’s very elegant, but the data too messy, it disturbs my sense of completion.