What does “agnostic” mean, operationally? I have trouble thinking you mean it in the direct sense (unknowable and not subject to testing), but maybe I’m wrong. For myself, I’m not agnostic, I’m an unbeliever—I have a reasonably confident low estimate of the probability that dragons exist, in the common conceptions of dragons and existence.
That said, I don’t spend a lot of time thinking or discussing the topic, and I am perfectly happy to nod and ignore people who think it’s important (in either direction). My private beliefs are somewhat decoupled from my public advocacy. For many of the more rabid pro-dragon proselytizers, it’s easier to get them out of my way if I say I’m agnostic, but that doesn’t make it so, and I generally don’t have to do that on LessWrong.
Operationally it means that I’m not trying to find out the truth one way or the other. If I come across arguments I ignore them, if someone asks if they can explain it to me I say no, I try not to think about it, etc.
“Agnostic” doesn’t necessarily mean “unknowable and not subject to testing”. Much more often it has the weaker meaning “not currently known”. There is a house being built across the street. Is there a work van parked in front of it right now? I don’t know. This is certainly knowable and subject to testing—I could get up, walk over to a window in the front of the house, and look. But I don’t care enough to do that, so I continue to now know if there is a work van parked in front of the house across the street. I am agnostic about the existence of such a work van.
Hmm, it seems like you might be treating this post as an allegory for religion because of the word “agnostic”, but I’m almost certain that it’s not. I think it’s about “race science”/”human biodiversity”/etc., i.e. the claim “[ethnicity] are genetically predisposed to [negative psychological trait]”.
Before I do that, though, it’s clear that horrible acts have been committed in the name of dragons. Many dragon-believers publicly or privately endorse this reprehensible history. Regardless of whether dragons do in fact exist, repercussions continue to have serious and unfair downstream effects on our society.
While this could work as a statement about religious people, it seems a lot more true for modern racists than modern religious people.
Given that history, the easy thing to do would be to loudly and publicly assert that dragons don’t exist. But while a world in which dragons don’t exist would be preferable, that a claim has inconvenient or harmful consequences isn’t evidence of its truth or falsehood.
This is the type of thing I often see LessWrongers say about race science.
But if I decided to look into it I might instead find myself convinced that dragons do exist. In addition to this being bad news about the world, I would be in an awkward position personally. If I wrote up what I found I would be in some highly unsavory company. Instead of being known as someone who writes about a range of things of varying levels of seriousness and applicability, I would quickly become primarily known as one of those dragon advocates. Given the taboos around dragon-belief, I could face strong professional and social consequences.
Religious belief is not nearly as taboo as what this paragraph describes, but the claim “[ethnicity] are genetically predisposed to [negative psychological trait]” is.
Even if it wasn’t meant to be an allegory for race science, I’m pretty sure it was meant to be an allegory for similarly-taboo topics rather than religion. Religious belief just isn’t that taboo.
What does “agnostic” mean, operationally? I have trouble thinking you mean it in the direct sense (unknowable and not subject to testing), but maybe I’m wrong. For myself, I’m not agnostic, I’m an unbeliever—I have a reasonably confident low estimate of the probability that dragons exist, in the common conceptions of dragons and existence.
That said, I don’t spend a lot of time thinking or discussing the topic, and I am perfectly happy to nod and ignore people who think it’s important (in either direction). My private beliefs are somewhat decoupled from my public advocacy. For many of the more rabid pro-dragon proselytizers, it’s easier to get them out of my way if I say I’m agnostic, but that doesn’t make it so, and I generally don’t have to do that on LessWrong.
Operationally it means that I’m not trying to find out the truth one way or the other. If I come across arguments I ignore them, if someone asks if they can explain it to me I say no, I try not to think about it, etc.
“Agnostic” doesn’t necessarily mean “unknowable and not subject to testing”. Much more often it has the weaker meaning “not currently known”. There is a house being built across the street. Is there a work van parked in front of it right now? I don’t know. This is certainly knowable and subject to testing—I could get up, walk over to a window in the front of the house, and look. But I don’t care enough to do that, so I continue to now know if there is a work van parked in front of the house across the street. I am agnostic about the existence of such a work van.
Hmm, it seems like you might be treating this post as an allegory for religion because of the word “agnostic”, but I’m almost certain that it’s not. I think it’s about “race science”/”human biodiversity”/etc., i.e. the claim “[ethnicity] are genetically predisposed to [negative psychological trait]”.
While this could work as a statement about religious people, it seems a lot more true for modern racists than modern religious people.
This is the type of thing I often see LessWrongers say about race science.
Religious belief is not nearly as taboo as what this paragraph describes, but the claim “[ethnicity] are genetically predisposed to [negative psychological trait]” is.
May be a Rorschach… For me, of the dozen or so things i thought about replacing dragons with, “race science” wasn’t one of them
What did you think of?
Even if it wasn’t meant to be an allegory for race science, I’m pretty sure it was meant to be an allegory for similarly-taboo topics rather than religion. Religious belief just isn’t that taboo.