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A car could look fast, but be slow, or have latent problems, software on the car's computer could be fooling emissions tests... Looking at a tree tells you noth

A car could look fast, but be slow, or have latent problems, software on the car's computer could be fooling emissions tests... Looking at a tree tells you nothing about photosynthesis, tree pheromones, deep relationships with symbiotic insects or bacteria... You can't understand very much at all just based on how things look. That holds for humans and inhumans alike.

deogeo 7y ago
But you can make a pretty good guess: http://www.spsp.org/news-center/blog/stereotype-accuracy-response http://www.spsp.org/news-center/blog/stereotype-accuracy-res...
seph-reed 7y ago
Ultimately we know nothing, so one can always nit-pick any statement into an oversimplified oblivion. There are also cakes that look like cars, model sets which have miniature mountains, on and on. But in typical nature, it works well enough to breed and see what comes next.
- desert_boi 7y ago
  Tactical Nihilism sounds a lot like solipsism. "We can't ever not make generalizations, so we shouldn't even try to make statements."
core-questions 7y ago
This is a perfect example of Tactical Nihilism. You're basically denying the existence of a massive amount of reproducible psychometrics and anthropological research because it makes you uncomfortable, and you're declaring that heuristic analysis of available, salient facts is not worthwhile because "you can't understand very much at all based on how things look." When an arborist "looks" at a tree, they identify the kind of tree it is, and that connects to all of the research they know about that species of tree. It's reasonable to suppose that a new instance of a known kind of tree is going to have properties in common with all the other known instances.
- lazyasciiart 7y ago
  The claim wasn't that people are harder to understand than trees based on appearance - it was that people are harder to understand than anything based on appearance. It seems like a poorly articulated reference to people having an interior mind - but so do animals. Can you identify a friendly or sick or lazy dog just by looking? No.
  - ars 7y ago
    > Can you identify a friendly or sick or lazy dog just by looking? No. ?? Obviously you can. Why do you think you can't?
    - rolltiide 7y ago
      they're talking about the times when you can't. you can't identify every friendly dog just by looking at it, you'll identify dogs that are also acting friendly and doing things people have found preceded positive experiences. you can't identify every sick dog just by looking at it, otherwise the vet would never find additional issues. and so on
      - PeterisP 7y ago
        This is a case of "When people thought the Earth was flat, they were wrong. When people thought the Earth was spherical, they were wrong. But if you think that thinking the Earth is spherical is just as wrong as thinking the Earth is flat, then your view is wronger than both of them put together. " Yes, it's wrong to assume that you can tell everything about that dog by looking at it - but it's so much more uncomparably wrong to consider that you can tell nothing about friendly or sick dogs based on looking at them! Observating the behaviors and dog breeds correlating with previous friendly and unfriendly experiences is a very useful, somewhat reliable predictor of how likely this particular dog is to be (un)friendly. Sure, if you know this particular dog, then that should supercede any group information, but if not, then that's all the information you have, it is useful information that correlates with (future) reality that matters to you, and so it's prudent to use it. Appearing "nonjudgmental" by throwing away information and judgment is simply stupid, and bound to get you bitten at least in the metaphorical way.
didericis 7y ago
Empiricism is basically the art of inference based on outward appearance in different contexts. I’d argue we learn everything based on appearance. You have to do more than just observe things superficially and take context into account, but for something to be measurable it has to have some sort of outward appearance, whether that be direct, as in something you can see with your naked eye, or indirect, as in something we need to measure through some other instrument.
sershe 7y ago
You can, probabilistically. If you randomly sample cars from all the street-legal models in the US (for example), and sort them by how fast they are based on appearance only, you would not be 100% correct, but you'd probably do much better than if you claim that "You can't understand very much at all just based on how things look" and sort them randomly (the prior being that each car is equally likely to be anywhere in the distribution).

deogeo 7y ago

But you can make a pretty good guess: http://www.spsp.org/news-center/blog/stereotype-accuracy-response http://www.spsp.org/news-center/blog/stereotype-accuracy-res...

seph-reed 7y ago

Ultimately we know nothing, so one can always nit-pick any statement into an oversimplified oblivion. There are also cakes that look like cars, model sets which have miniature mountains, on and on. But in typical nature, it works well enough to breed and see what comes next.

desert_boi 7y ago
Tactical Nihilism sounds a lot like solipsism. "We can't ever not make generalizations, so we shouldn't even try to make statements."

core-questions 7y ago

This is a perfect example of Tactical Nihilism. You're basically denying the existence of a massive amount of reproducible psychometrics and anthropological research because it makes you uncomfortable, and you're declaring that heuristic analysis of available, salient facts is not worthwhile because "you can't understand very much at all based on how things look." When an arborist "looks" at a tree, they identify the kind of tree it is, and that connects to all of the research they know about that species of tree. It's reasonable to suppose that a new instance of a known kind of tree is going to have properties in common with all the other known instances.

lazyasciiart 7y ago
The claim wasn't that people are harder to understand than trees based on appearance - it was that people are harder to understand than anything based on appearance. It seems like a poorly articulated reference to people having an interior mind - but so do animals. Can you identify a friendly or sick or lazy dog just by looking? No.
- ars 7y ago
  > Can you identify a friendly or sick or lazy dog just by looking? No. ?? Obviously you can. Why do you think you can't?
  - rolltiide 7y ago
    they're talking about the times when you can't. you can't identify every friendly dog just by looking at it, you'll identify dogs that are also acting friendly and doing things people have found preceded positive experiences. you can't identify every sick dog just by looking at it, otherwise the vet would never find additional issues. and so on
    - PeterisP 7y ago
      This is a case of "When people thought the Earth was flat, they were wrong. When people thought the Earth was spherical, they were wrong. But if you think that thinking the Earth is spherical is just as wrong as thinking the Earth is flat, then your view is wronger than both of them put together. " Yes, it's wrong to assume that you can tell everything about that dog by looking at it - but it's so much more uncomparably wrong to consider that you can tell nothing about friendly or sick dogs based on looking at them! Observating the behaviors and dog breeds correlating with previous friendly and unfriendly experiences is a very useful, somewhat reliable predictor of how likely this particular dog is to be (un)friendly. Sure, if you know this particular dog, then that should supercede any group information, but if not, then that's all the information you have, it is useful information that correlates with (future) reality that matters to you, and so it's prudent to use it. Appearing "nonjudgmental" by throwing away information and judgment is simply stupid, and bound to get you bitten at least in the metaphorical way.

didericis 7y ago

Empiricism is basically the art of inference based on outward appearance in different contexts. I’d argue we learn everything based on appearance. You have to do more than just observe things superficially and take context into account, but for something to be measurable it has to have some sort of outward appearance, whether that be direct, as in something you can see with your naked eye, or indirect, as in something we need to measure through some other instrument.

sershe 7y ago

You can, probabilistically. If you randomly sample cars from all the street-legal models in the US (for example), and sort them by how fast they are based on appearance only, you would not be 100% correct, but you'd probably do much better than if you claim that "You can't understand very much at all just based on how things look" and sort them randomly (the prior being that each car is equally likely to be anywhere in the distribution).