This is the Quality Contributions Roundup. It showcases interesting and well-written comments and posts from the period covered. If you want to get an idea of what this community is about or how we want you to participate, look no further (except the rules maybe--those might be important too).
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These are mostly chronologically ordered, but I have in some cases tried to cluster comments by topic so if there is something you are looking for (or trying to avoid), this might be helpful.
We also had the problem with the database earlier this month, so some of these comments aren't available in their original context. However I am reposting the comments themselves below; it's not a perfect solution, but in various ways it beats the alternatives I could think of. That said, if you find any errors in need of correction (misattributed comments, for example) please feel free to @ me. The number of copy/paste errors I made in the process of trying to put this together is... not small.
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Notes -
@100ProofTollBooth's original comment:
I know this wasn't your intent, but that sounds like scientism. Furthermore, any reading of basic epistemology will show that "science" isn't the Master Truth Substance that exists in the popular conception. Science is far, far more about an ongoing process of discovery and discernment than a universal record of unimpeachable facts.
As @WhiningCoil's excellent posts in this thread point out, rationalism was and is the attempt to Science All The Things (including emotionally influenced human thinking). I would say that, taken to its extreme, it leads to the Effective Altruism shenanigans (self-delusion, and self-absolution for deception and worse offenses) or the often paralyzing over examination of outlets like LessWrong and SSC. Don't get me wrong, I love reading Scott's 10,000 word posts just as much as most Mottizens, but you have to admit that the RAT community discourse can quickly devolve almost to the level of "depends on what the meaning of "is" is".
Rationalism's core flaw, in my opinion, is that you're trying to debug the firmware with the firmware.
"A man's at odds to know his mind cause his mind is aught he has to know it with." - Cormac McCarthy, The Road.
Humanity just hasn't found out how to "debug" the brain. Various religions try to do this by focusing on transcendental exercises and appeals to divine intervention (prayer, meditation). I give them credit because they, at least, often state explicitly that you can and should do these things, but you're not going to ever truly "succeed" while still remaining a human on earth.
Rationalism does a sneaky thing in that it admits no one can actually think "perfectly" yet self-ranks ahead of any other way of knowing by kind of gesturing towards "science" and "better thinking." The retail version of this is companies and people who say they are "data driven." Bayesian inference is the real eye roller here. People who "update their priors" surely don't have a record of all of their priors to understand the system of thought that led them to their present situation. Those that do are fall into the trap of hyper-over-examination and probably fail to make any decisions of consequence in life.
When people (not you) worry about "science deniers" - it's just a very shiny "boo outgroup." The irony of ironic examples here is, in fact, COVID. All of the people who really care about people who are vaxx-suspicious are also probably double masked outdoors in 2024. There's bidirectional "science" denial, but one group's direction is bad and my group's direction is good.
So, what's the cure? Doubt. I've written before about how negative emotions are utterly misunderstood and undervalued by modernist thinking. Guilt is bad because it makes you feel guilty and it's really only a social construct or something, whatever, keep having an affair! Disgust is wrong because you aren't appreciating differences in cultures, you colonist! Doubt is bad because you should just "Do You" and believe that "the universe" will take care of the rest. Believe as you feel!
Well, no. Use doubt as the road to humility. "Here's a bunch of shit I truly believe down to my very bones and I'll literally DIE for it ..... but, shit, I could be wrong" is a far healthier way to go through life than just the first part of that sentence.
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