4 ms·
It is not my field, but the post, the video, has all the markings I see of outrage influencers on youtube: acting like they know better than everyone else, maki
by SubiculumCode 4y ago
It is not my field, but the post, the video, has all the markings I see of outrage influencers on youtube: acting like they know better than everyone else, making broad swipes and claims, posting monetized videos with exaggerated eye popping photo covers, and the whole "I used to be them but saw the light and left schtick.", claims of scientists lying, without the honesty of naming names. Well, I'd rather get this kind of review from a review article in a solid journal than this tabloid.
- pessimizer 4y agoDon't respond to tone rather than content, especially if you're in no position to evaluate the content. Otherwise you'll fall for horseshit spoken in a tone you like.
- SubiculumCode 4y agoJudging a book by its cover is actually not the worst strategy for picking a book. And I WAS responding to the content; content like accusing scientists of lying, content like silly photos designed to get you to click. edit: To sum in Bayesian terms, the prior probability of reading a good book is greater if the publisher had sunk money into a high quality cover, because they believe in its content, while a trashy cover might be the only thing a trash book could obtain. Likewise, the prior probability of bullshit is greater if the tone is shrill, accusatory, and exaggerated, while the prior probability of quality content is greater if the scientific commentary is academic, serious, and professional.
- stevenhuang 4y agoBayesian reasoning has its limits. If one is lazy and don't think to reconsider when warranted, it's often accidentally used as a crutch. Works in most cases I grant you that, just user beware. > "The man who has fed the chicken every day throughout its life at last wrings its neck instead, showing that more refined views as to the uniformity of nature would have been useful to the chicken" - Bertrand Russel
- cwillu 4y agohttps://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/heuristics-that-almost-always-work https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/heuristics-that-almost...
- stevenhuang 4y agoI liked that article very much when it was shared, perhaps time for a rereading! Cheers.
- cwillu 4y agoI will tolerate an abrasive tone in an emotionally charged discussion where people's lives are affected. I will do so carefully, because it's incredibly easy to be mislead by emotional content, but I will put in the effort, because important viewpoints can't be usefully distinguished from manipulation by their tone in those arenas. Physics is not one of those arenas. I am not even remotely worried that selecting explorations of QM interpretations based on tone might result in giving me a skewed perception of the topic due to my ignoring the views of those being harmed by them.
- saiya-jin 4y agoThere are numerous problems with approach you mention, ie strong push for emotions to sway opinion. If one resorts to attacking primitive emotions, hard facts clearly are not most important in the discussion anymore. In proper science, that should never be the case.
- ravi-delia 4y agoSpeaking as someone who works with people on the math side of things, the author is a contrarian but not super far outside the norm. This is far from a "tabloid", this is real criticism from within the field. The tone is abrasive, but every technical field has people like that. I definitely dislike the layman audience she has built up, since just reading criticism without understanding what's being criticized is a recipe for truly stupid takes, but all of these are opinions plenty of people support, even in particle physics.