6 ms·

What is the difference between those two camps?

Ericson2314 5y ago
Hegel /s I don't have a great idea how to sum up, these ideas are still a bit raw in my head. I am not sure to what extent this line of inquiry in intellectual history is well-studded. I suppose a concrete place to to begin is how to connect micro and macro phenomena. The Dawkins camp is very keen on the micro stuff, and wants to study the micro stuff very hard and then extrapolate. The Gould camp spends more time thinking about the macro stuff alone before trying to connect the two. That makes bridging the gap harder, and it could well be argued the Gould camp hasn't spent enough time working on that harder problem they made for themselves. But at least their description of the macro is a bit less biased by micro considerations.
- TOMDM 5y ago
  If you do end up giving this some more thought, I'd be interested in hearing about meaningful differences of opinion on cultural or policy issues. I've never heard of this spectrum before.
  - Ericson2314 5y ago
    I left another long comment going through Scott's list. I looked around and found https://www.marxist.com/marx-darwin-and-gould-the-revolution-of-evolution-pt-1.htm https://www.marxist.com/marx-darwin-and-gould-the-revolution... which has some neat quotes but is written at times in a bit a rigid way that I think would be a cringy rhetorical misfire for this audience. But as I am currently taking some economics classes, the biology--economics relationships are top of mind. Dawkin's https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gene-centered_view_of_evolution https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gene-centered_view_of_evolutio... and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microfoundations https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microfoundations along with neoclassical economics writ large have some pretty clear parallels.
    - Ericson2314 5y ago
      I might add, in the way that a programmer might, that living unformalized theories are very flexible, and trying to "disprove" based on fact will never end the dispute. It's better to think in terms of "what model responds with fewer epicycle" as new evidence arises, or even broader and more simply "which abstractions are more useful". So it's more like the quest for better programming languages and libraries, than "right" and "wrong". I see no other way to resolve these sorts of disputes productively.

Hegel /s I don't have a great idea how to sum up, these ideas are still a bit raw in my head. I am not sure to what extent this line of inquiry in intellectual history is well-studded. I suppose a concrete place to to begin is how to connect micro and macro phenomena. The Dawkins camp is very keen on the micro stuff, and wants to study the micro stuff very hard and then extrapolate. The Gould camp spends more time thinking about the macro stuff alone before trying to connect the two. That makes bridging the gap harder, and it could well be argued the Gould camp hasn't spent enough time working on that harder problem they made for themselves. But at least their description of the macro is a bit less biased by micro considerations.

TOMDM 5y ago
If you do end up giving this some more thought, I'd be interested in hearing about meaningful differences of opinion on cultural or policy issues. I've never heard of this spectrum before.
- Ericson2314 5y ago
  I left another long comment going through Scott's list. I looked around and found https://www.marxist.com/marx-darwin-and-gould-the-revolution-of-evolution-pt-1.htm https://www.marxist.com/marx-darwin-and-gould-the-revolution... which has some neat quotes but is written at times in a bit a rigid way that I think would be a cringy rhetorical misfire for this audience. But as I am currently taking some economics classes, the biology--economics relationships are top of mind. Dawkin's https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gene-centered_view_of_evolution https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gene-centered_view_of_evolutio... and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microfoundations https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microfoundations along with neoclassical economics writ large have some pretty clear parallels.
  - Ericson2314 5y ago
    I might add, in the way that a programmer might, that living unformalized theories are very flexible, and trying to "disprove" based on fact will never end the dispute. It's better to think in terms of "what model responds with fewer epicycle" as new evidence arises, or even broader and more simply "which abstractions are more useful". So it's more like the quest for better programming languages and libraries, than "right" and "wrong". I see no other way to resolve these sorts of disputes productively.