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This is trash of the worst kind: fatuous nonsense wrapped in pseudoscience. Please tell me this is a parody and it's gone over my head. Just in case, I will cr

by sgentle 15y ago

This is trash of the worst kind: fatuous nonsense wrapped in pseudoscience. Please tell me this is a parody and it's gone over my head. Just in case, I will critique in the spirit of the original article: The first immutable law of madeupistan is that this article makes no sense. If one quantifies by Q the amount of sense this article doesn't make, and divides it by L, which is how badly the sense it doesn't make is, one can plot the result on a graph, with axes and everything like in science. As you can see by even a cursory examination of the diagram, anything can be positioned from "scotsman" to "no scotsman" on the Y axis, and "sense" to "no sense" on the X axis. This explains the fundamental nature of mankind. The second immutable law of madeupistan is that your position on the scotsmanian axis is irreversibly determined at birth. You may be confused initially by the observation that even someone with a high degree of scotsmanity will sometimes act like a non-scotsman and vice-versa. Never fear, that is explained by the graph. The fourth immutable law (and, by extension, the third) is that anything can be proven by decomposition into a punnett square. The fifth immutable law is that once someone has been determined to be a scotsman, they will take actions without any basis in rationality whatsoever (I will heretoafter call these actions "Just So" actions). Note, though, that as per the second law, sometimes they will not. The danger of these Just So actions is inexplicably large, and it behooves any non-scotsmen among us to immediately seek out and prevent Just So actions by dangerous scotsmen. If we do not do this, society will collapse.[1] [1] Myself, 2011, Journal of Just So Information

nazgulnarsil 15y ago
you're taking it way too seriously.
grovulent 15y ago
Well - I think it's part parody. I mean - obviously the author hasn't done the sort of empirical work discovering the amount of stupid people in each kind of social class. It was at this point in the text that people like me laughed and people like you required a laugh-track. It's interesting though. I meet dudes like you that respond to something that for some reason irks them with: "It's not formulated to the highest standards of intellectual rigour - and so is worst kind of crap" I have to wonder what really is provoking the hyperbole. Because it hardly seems warranted to me. Just a suggestion - but maybe you might profit from stepping back from this a little. Plenty of contributions to a discourse can still possess insight without all the trappings of intellectual rigour.
- sgentle 15y ago
  The reason I say it's the worst kind of trash is (ironically) the same reason the author says stupid people are the most dangerous - it has about as much merit as, say, a Daily Mail article, but because it's presented in a way that mimics science, it more easily slips past peoples' defences. I suspect that you are falling victim to hyperbole yourself with "highest standards of intellectual rigour". I don't expect a double-blind randomised trial or publication in Nature, but surely when someone says to us "this is the truth", we must ask "why?" If the author had said "I think that people are born stupid or clever, and stupid people are very dangerous, so we should watch out for them." I would disagree, but not loudly - it is, after all, a matter of opinion unless someone has facts to bring to the table. But when someone dresses up their conjecture in make-believe laws and pseudo-scientific formulae, they are being deceptive. Perhaps a more acceptable thing to do would be dispassionately describe the flaws in his argument, but the deception made me angry and I don't see anger as necessarily wrong. I don't believe I wrote anything inaccurate, or anything I wouldn't say if the article was brought up among my friends. Frankly, I'm surprised I was the only one. Perhaps it's just the wrong crowd.
  - grovulent 15y ago
    To a certain degree I emphasise - in spoken contexts I often fail to pick up sarcasm. But I have far less problems in navigating through subtle shifts in tone in a piece of text. While you seem to see it as a wolf in sheep's clothing and are terrified that the sheep are about to be devoured, I'm seeing the wolf, dressed in sheep's clothing, comically delivering a lecture to said sheep about avoiding wolves - and actually dispensing some pretty good advice. Surely you can see the wonderfully playful irony here. What's more, the sheep are sitting around (i.e. hacker news readers) having a good ol laugh at the wolf. And you're amongst them shouting loudly - WATCH OUT THE WOLF WILL DEVOUR YOU! And when they look at you strangely your response to this is to conclude that you're just in the wrong crowd. Just a shame is all - you're obviously quite a smart chap. It's like meeting Beethoven and finding out that really he hates listening to Mozart. It would boggle the mind!
    - sgentle 15y ago
reedlaw 15y ago
I agree that it's trash but for another reason. It's exactly along the lines of theories like "everyone behaves selfishly", or "evil men rule the world". There is some truth in such theories, but only in a glass-half-empty kind of way. They tend to become self-fulfilling prophecies in that they produce the exact kinds of behavior that they predict. Why not, instead of railing against stupidity, work on educating people to overcome their (perceived) stupidity?
deleted 15y ago
[deleted]
chmike 15y ago
You're definitly not in the I group of people. I was also a bit irritated by the pseudo-scientific introduction, but reading it all, at the end, I came to the conclusion that this is strong and valuable wisdom. I even consider it a valuable scientific work equivalent to the work of early taxonomists. It is a theory which allows to infer and deduce things that where not obvious in the first place.
stcredzero 15y ago
This is trash of the worst kind: fatuous nonsense wrapped in pseudoscience. Please tell me this is a parody and it's gone over my head. I was just talking to my sister about kitsch, camp, and punk, and how all of those scenes were misunderstood by a certain subpopulation who didn't catch the irony. "Animal House" was pure parody. I can tell you that a lot of fellow undergrads emulated it, and not everyone caught the joke. And sometimes, some people are so enthusiastically applying irony to everything, they forget about basic decency. (I admit to making mistakes in both directions.) I suspect that a study of what people actually read would reveal that "fatuous nonsense wrapped in pseudoscience" is about par for the course. Most diet movements fit this description, yet how many billions of dollars have been wasted on them? One can't even get the general public to apply something as basic as the laws of thermodynamics without making huge mistakes. A lot of people are no better off applying basic physical laws than thinking they should make more sacrifices to Zeus. http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2567081 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2567081 http://www.garytaubes.com/2010/12/inanity-of-overeating/ http://www.garytaubes.com/2010/12/inanity-of-overeating/ The takeaway here is that we're evolved to deal with the problems and lives of cavemen. It's only through some accidents of talent and diligence that some of us are able to understand things above and beyond that level.
mcantor 15y ago
You seem to be suggesting that the world would be better off if this article didn't exist. I'm interested to know why, because I found it mostly funny and a little thought-provoking. I didn't get the impression that the author claims his work has been subjected to any degree of scientific rigor, nor that he thinks people ought to be idolizing or congratulating him for sharing it. It's just kind of out there, for each reader to make whatever they want of it. Also, what exactly do you mean by "parody"? I thought he was clearly poking fun at the world at large, but didn't get the sense that there was any particular other work which he was lampooning.

by sgentle 15y ago

nazgulnarsil 15y ago

you're taking it way too seriously.

grovulent 15y ago

Well - I think it's part parody. I mean - obviously the author hasn't done the sort of empirical work discovering the amount of stupid people in each kind of social class. It was at this point in the text that people like me laughed and people like you required a laugh-track. It's interesting though. I meet dudes like you that respond to something that for some reason irks them with: "It's not formulated to the highest standards of intellectual rigour - and so is worst kind of crap" I have to wonder what really is provoking the hyperbole. Because it hardly seems warranted to me. Just a suggestion - but maybe you might profit from stepping back from this a little. Plenty of contributions to a discourse can still possess insight without all the trappings of intellectual rigour.

sgentle 15y ago
The reason I say it's the worst kind of trash is (ironically) the same reason the author says stupid people are the most dangerous - it has about as much merit as, say, a Daily Mail article, but because it's presented in a way that mimics science, it more easily slips past peoples' defences. I suspect that you are falling victim to hyperbole yourself with "highest standards of intellectual rigour". I don't expect a double-blind randomised trial or publication in Nature, but surely when someone says to us "this is the truth", we must ask "why?" If the author had said "I think that people are born stupid or clever, and stupid people are very dangerous, so we should watch out for them." I would disagree, but not loudly - it is, after all, a matter of opinion unless someone has facts to bring to the table. But when someone dresses up their conjecture in make-believe laws and pseudo-scientific formulae, they are being deceptive. Perhaps a more acceptable thing to do would be dispassionately describe the flaws in his argument, but the deception made me angry and I don't see anger as necessarily wrong. I don't believe I wrote anything inaccurate, or anything I wouldn't say if the article was brought up among my friends. Frankly, I'm surprised I was the only one. Perhaps it's just the wrong crowd.
- grovulent 15y ago
  To a certain degree I emphasise - in spoken contexts I often fail to pick up sarcasm. But I have far less problems in navigating through subtle shifts in tone in a piece of text. While you seem to see it as a wolf in sheep's clothing and are terrified that the sheep are about to be devoured, I'm seeing the wolf, dressed in sheep's clothing, comically delivering a lecture to said sheep about avoiding wolves - and actually dispensing some pretty good advice. Surely you can see the wonderfully playful irony here. What's more, the sheep are sitting around (i.e. hacker news readers) having a good ol laugh at the wolf. And you're amongst them shouting loudly - WATCH OUT THE WOLF WILL DEVOUR YOU! And when they look at you strangely your response to this is to conclude that you're just in the wrong crowd. Just a shame is all - you're obviously quite a smart chap. It's like meeting Beethoven and finding out that really he hates listening to Mozart. It would boggle the mind!
  - sgentle 15y ago

reedlaw 15y ago

I agree that it's trash but for another reason. It's exactly along the lines of theories like "everyone behaves selfishly", or "evil men rule the world". There is some truth in such theories, but only in a glass-half-empty kind of way. They tend to become self-fulfilling prophecies in that they produce the exact kinds of behavior that they predict. Why not, instead of railing against stupidity, work on educating people to overcome their (perceived) stupidity?

deleted 15y ago

[deleted]

chmike 15y ago

You're definitly not in the I group of people. I was also a bit irritated by the pseudo-scientific introduction, but reading it all, at the end, I came to the conclusion that this is strong and valuable wisdom. I even consider it a valuable scientific work equivalent to the work of early taxonomists. It is a theory which allows to infer and deduce things that where not obvious in the first place.

stcredzero 15y ago

This is trash of the worst kind: fatuous nonsense wrapped in pseudoscience. Please tell me this is a parody and it's gone over my head. I was just talking to my sister about kitsch, camp, and punk, and how all of those scenes were misunderstood by a certain subpopulation who didn't catch the irony. "Animal House" was pure parody. I can tell you that a lot of fellow undergrads emulated it, and not everyone caught the joke. And sometimes, some people are so enthusiastically applying irony to everything, they forget about basic decency. (I admit to making mistakes in both directions.) I suspect that a study of what people actually read would reveal that "fatuous nonsense wrapped in pseudoscience" is about par for the course. Most diet movements fit this description, yet how many billions of dollars have been wasted on them? One can't even get the general public to apply something as basic as the laws of thermodynamics without making huge mistakes. A lot of people are no better off applying basic physical laws than thinking they should make more sacrifices to Zeus. http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2567081 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2567081 http://www.garytaubes.com/2010/12/inanity-of-overeating/ http://www.garytaubes.com/2010/12/inanity-of-overeating/ The takeaway here is that we're evolved to deal with the problems and lives of cavemen. It's only through some accidents of talent and diligence that some of us are able to understand things above and beyond that level.

mcantor 15y ago

You seem to be suggesting that the world would be better off if this article didn't exist. I'm interested to know why, because I found it mostly funny and a little thought-provoking. I didn't get the impression that the author claims his work has been subjected to any degree of scientific rigor, nor that he thinks people ought to be idolizing or congratulating him for sharing it. It's just kind of out there, for each reader to make whatever they want of it. Also, what exactly do you mean by "parody"? I thought he was clearly poking fun at the world at large, but didn't get the sense that there was any particular other work which he was lampooning.