29 ms·

What if I’m wrong? (2023)

209 points by jrlocke 3y ago

delichon 3y ago
Ptolemy was wrong. But he was wrong with a large pile of actual measurements of celestial bodies, and a falsifiable theory. That made him wrong in the positive sense of wrong in the phrase "not even wrong", where wrong is just the first step of the ladder. I wish I could say the same about Freud, but that ladder is distressingly horizontal.
- aspenmayer 3y ago
  > "Not even wrong" is a phrase often used to describe pseudoscience or bad science. It describes an argument or explanation that purports to be scientific but uses faulty reasoning or speculative premises, which can be neither affirmed nor denied and thus cannot be discussed rigorously and scientifically. The phrase "not even wrong" is synonymous with "unfalsifiable".[0][1] [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Not_even_wrong https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Not_even_wrong [1] https://www.theguardian.com/science/2005/sep/19/ideas.g2 https://www.theguardian.com/science/2005/sep/19/ideas.g2
  - killthebuddha 3y ago
    Hmm. I always thought "not even wrong" meant "correct, but answering the wrong question" or more generally "correct but irrelevantly so".
    - aspenmayer 3y ago
      I think that your example is something I would consider “beside the point,” whereas the flavor of “not even wrong” to me seems to describe a statement or claim that has truthiness[0] rather than a truth value[1]. A statement which is not even wrong is one that can’t or isn’t expressed properly as a logical assertion or argument but rather asserted without evidence or in such a way that it is made to seem inherently or intuitively obvious. Such a statement isn't argued for or against properly or logically, or isn’t otherwise properly expressed or derived, or a statement or claim which falls short of making a concrete point or argument which can be dismissed or validated on the basis of evidence or logical argument. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Truthiness https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Truthiness > Truthiness is the belief or assertion that a particular statement is true based on the intuition or perceptions of some individual or individuals, without regard to evidence, logic, intellectual examination, or facts. Truthiness can range from ignorant assertions of falsehoods to deliberate duplicity or propaganda intended to sway opinions. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Truth_value https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Truth_value > In logic and mathematics, a truth value, sometimes called a logical value, is a value indicating the relation of a proposition to truth, which in classical logic has only two possible values (true or false).
  - dataflow 3y ago
    I'm not sure "not even wrong" actually means the same thing as "unfalsifiable" like Wikipedia claims? I thought "not even wrong" means the asker is so confused that their question doesn't make sense. As I understand it, "ghosts exist" (or even "the universe is infinite") may well be impossible to falsify, but it doesn't signal any sort of confusion on the part of the asker. But if the statement was "ghosts exist because the universe is infinite", then I thought that would fall into the "not even wrong" bucket.
    - aspenmayer 3y ago
      I understand “not even wrong” to be synonymous with unfalsifiable in the sense that the statement being described as such is not a truth claim, or is otherwise not a valid formal statement or claim, such that the scientific method is not able to be deployed to consider its validity. > In religion, a truth claim is an assertion that the belief system holds to be true; however, from the existence of an assertion that the belief system holds to be true, it does not follow that the assertion is true. For example, a truth claim in Judaism is that only one God exists. Conflicting truth claims between different religions can be a cause of religious conflict. The theory of truth claims has been advanced by John Hick. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Truth_claim https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Truth_claim
- dekhn 3y ago
  I think the right phrase here is not 'not even wrong' but 'wrong but for the right reasons' or 'all models are wrong, but some models are useful (possibly by being less wrong'
  - deleted 3y ago
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- javajosh 3y ago
  There is a strong analogy in software engineering here. Often the first implementation is "wrong" in the sense that it doesn't resolve the inherent tensions in the system. But that doesn't make it useless - in fact, it's quite useful because it actually showed you what is important. Plus, the people who attempt the initial solution to a problem deserve special honor, even if their work is eventually tossed away, specifically because they revealed these system tensions. The common dictum to "write a prototype and throw it away" is largely based on this insight. What I'm saying is that Ptolemy, Aristotle, etc did a great service to humanity by taking a stab at hard problems, even if their solutions were convincing but wrong. Whether they knew it or not they were the primordial programmers writing a throw-away prototype upon which all future progress was based.
  - jyunwai 3y ago
    A similar idea about the importance of planning as a way to improve your understanding of a problem was expressed by Dwight D. Eisenhower, said in a speech while he was in office as the US President in 1957 [1]. Reflecting on his experience in the Second World War, he said: "Plans are worthless, but planning is everything. There is a very great distinction because when you are planning for an emergency you must start with this one thing: the very definition of “emergency” is that it is unexpected, therefore it is not going to happen the way you are planning." [1] https://quoteinvestigator.com/2017/11/18/planning/ https://quoteinvestigator.com/2017/11/18/planning/
  - QuercusMax 3y ago
    I work on healthcare at Alphabet, and in late 2016 I set out to build a flexible DICOMweb STOW-RS receiver in the form of a GCP API - the first time anyone had done that at Alphabet. (I've worked on the same project across Verily and Google). In the process I researched and built a bunch of little prototypes built in a variety of ways, and for example had to rule out building it as an App Engine API - because DICOMweb uploads can potentially be gigabytes in size, and App Engine didn't support handling a POST as a stream as it arrived. At any rate, along the way over the course of 9 months or so I found a technology stack that supported all my requirements and ran into a bunch of roadblocks. Lots of things related to how internal bits of GCP APIs are handled - the internal libraries had documentation indicating that streaming APIs were supported, and that each chunk of the request would be passed from the API proxy/backend multiplexer to the actual API server as they arrived. This worked for streaming responses, but not for streaming requests, and so I had to add that functionality to the API proxy. That was a huge pain - really hairy c++ code using fibers with multiple layers of request processing wrappers. But I worked thru that and got it landed into the google-wide binary, and never worried about it again. I got this project to the level I needed it to support the precise requirements for the (regulated medical device) system I was working on. Around this time the GCP Cloud Healthcare group was getting started, and they built a new system using a fair number of bits of my implementation, which they'd eventually replace completely. But my first system saved them most of a year or work, resulting in the CHC feature set rapidly leapfrogging what I'd built.
- paganel 3y ago
  Trying to apply falsifiable theory to Freud (or to psychoanalysis) is wrong in itself, as a matter of fact thinking about Freud and psychoanalysis in the realm of scientifically right or wrong is, well, scientifically wrong.
  - helloplanets 3y ago
    In that case, how should we think about it? Genuinely curious.
    - paganel 3y ago
      He (Freud) had some very good insights, almost genius-like, for example the part with Eros and Thanatos. With that said, I don't think there's a best way to approach his works, I do know though that treating them as science would do no-one any good. As for psychoanalysis as a whole, it's definitely not my preferred cup of tea but I do believe those people that say that it has genuinely helped them, in which case all the power to them and to psychoanalysis. Maybe treat it through a functionalist prism? (just an idea) Similar to meditation, let's say (similar as in there's no scientific "basis" behind it but I also do believe that meditation helps some people, similar to psychoanalysis). Of course, that would not solve the issue with "what should we do with the psychoanalysis crooks?", the same issue that probably gets asked when it comes to meditation crooks, meaning grifters trying to live off psychoanalysis/meditation/any similar movement. I don't know what the best answer for that would be, maybe some sort of community-based validation/word of mouth thingie?
- bsder 3y ago
  Ptolemy was not "wrong". His model worked quite well within the margin of his measuring tools. And, in fact, Ptolemy was more "right" than heliocentric circles (as opposed to ellipses). You have to have both elliptical orbits and inverse square law forces to predict better than Ptolemy. It wasn't until the telescope allowed seeing Venusian phases that geocentricity was actively disproven.
ggm 3y ago
I've grown used to being corrected, to the point that it's a pleasant surprise to be told I might be right. What I notice more and more, is the "you're wrong" is used to buttress opinion masquerading as fact. If you preface "I think that.." to asserts it doesn't stop the "you're wrong" but it at least puts the discussion into the realms of conjecture about things, including facts, rather than simple asserts of facts which are often not as factual as they seem. I also notice that argument by analogy is being over-used. Because you want to compare your large single CPU to a multi CPU doesn't mean it actually is a Bull compared to a herd of chickens. Or that cat-herding is actually much harder than it looks: you need the right kind of cream. Wait.. that analogy might not work here..
- XorNot 3y ago
  "best-practice" is a specific, over-used term in the tech industry. People instinctively give opinions and say "well best-practice is..." to fortify it against being criticized, and then lean heavily on the fact that if you actually ask them to support that notion then they imply or accuse the questioner of being hostile. "It's best practice" should invite the question of "according to who, in which publications? What are the circumstances of the practice, are they similar to our circumstances?"
  - aspenmayer 3y ago
    > A weasel word, or anonymous authority, is a word and phrase aimed at creating an impression that something specific and meaningful has been said when in fact only a vague, ambiguous, or irrelevant claim has been communicated. The terms may be considered informal. Examples include the phrases "some people say", "it is thought", and "researchers believe". Using weasel words may allow one to later deny any specific meaning if the statement is challenged, because the statement was never specific in the first place. Weasel words can be a form of tergiversation and may be used in advertising, (popular) science, opinion pieces and political statements to mislead or disguise a biased view or unsubstantiated claim. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weasel_word https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weasel_word Edit: Verb tergiversate (third-person singular simple present tergiversates, present participle tergiversating, simple past and past participle tergiversated) (intransitive) To evade, to equivocate using subterfuge; to obfuscate in a deliberate manner. (intransitive) To change sides or affiliation; to apostatize. (intransitive, rare) To flee by turning one's back. https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/tergiversate https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/tergiversate
atdt 3y ago
Wonderful piece. Dennett knows how to write. And he captures the pleasure and privilege of Hacker News with this felicitous phrase: > Distributed understanding is a real phenomenon, but you have to get yourself into a community of communicators that can effectively summon the relevant expertise.
- wayeq 3y ago
  are you sure that's us? :)
  - DiscourseFan 3y ago
    Yeah I'm having serious doubts
  - Jensson 3y ago
    Yes, you have a combination of people who learn and people who know here. That is what he described, and environment where you are allowed to be wrong and where people will correct you when you are. You don't get banned from HN for being wrong, so you are allowed to be wrong here, unlike many other forums like most of reddit.
    - Capricorn2481 3y ago
      What is being described is that people will know what they're talking about, which is debatable. You might be corrected on here, but I've seen more cases of people being loudly wrong but having enough general knowledge on a subject that they sound correct, and lucky enough that no one with specific knowledge stumbled on their posts to correct them. Frankly, I don't think hackernews is all that different in terms of community from Reddit. People are just better at hiding it. Many are regurgitating rhetoric they've heard in other posts without having experience with a subject. Even in the realms of programming, it's not hard to see how little experience people have with the things they demonize or evangelize.
  - calf 3y ago
    Maybe he's talking about the string theorist community
wavemode 3y ago
> Take courage and set out to write up the Great Discovery; if after many hours of red- hot thinking and writing you discover to your dismay a fatal flaw ... all is not lost. Go back to the first paragraph and write something along the lines of “It is tempting to think that ...” I love this. I go through similar experiences with software engineering. I notice some area of the field that appears overly complicated (build systems, CI/CD, version control, web frameworks, so on and so on) and start thinking to myself "Why all the complexity? Surely we could just-" and then I'm down a rabbit hole for weeks. The usual end result being I learn a lot of new things and discover for myself what all the complexity was for. But hey, occasionally maybe I really do come up with a Next Big Thing.
codeulike 3y ago
"I've Been Thinking" is the best possible name for a philosopher's autobiography
- layer8 3y ago
  Descartes would like it.
- jibalt 3y ago
  Especially for this philosopher, whose life work has been in Theory of Mind, delving into what thinking is, how it happens, and how it works.
nonrandomstring 3y ago
Did anyone else read "Minds I"? I loved that book, and come to think of it the 'soul searching' comments always had that note of humble fallibilism in there.
- lIl-IIIl 3y ago
  Yes, it was one of my favorite books when I was young. I picked it up after reading GEB, of which there was discussion here recently.
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FrustratedMonky 3y ago
I actually got a little suckered in, and thought this might be Dennett opening up to being wrong and giving some new account of what he might now think is correct. Especially after all the debates on free will with Sapolsky. Instead it ended up being backhanded self complement, more like, "a lot of other great people agree with me, so maybe I'm wrong, but probably not". "Descartes’s theory of everything is, even in hindsight, remarkably coherent and persuasive. It is hard to imagine a different equally coherent and equally false theory! He was wrong, and so of course I may well be wrong, but enough other thinkers I respect have come to see things my way that when I ask myself, “What if we are wrong?” I can keep this skeptical murmur safely simmering on a back burner."
- PaulDavisThe1st 3y ago
  I had an interesting email exchange with Dennett in the 90s. He had just brought out his book "Consciousness Explained". I read it and emailed him a short note saying that I thought the book was mistitled - the contents were an explanation of what we were conscious of not how we could be conscious. I expected him to write back with some eloquent or witty or pithy defense of the link between the title and the contents, but he just thanked me and said, "yes, now that you put it that way, it probably is the wrong title. Oops, too late."
  - bbor 3y ago
    The beauty and flexibility of radical skepticism :). Minsky, another noted skeptic of idealist claims (from the opposite angle?), had a quote that stuck with me from one of his YouTube lectures on Society of Mind. I can’t find it at the moment but it was along the lines of; “when you write your own cognitive theory, leave room in the edges for it to grow. You never know what parts will be proven wrong, and you shouldn’t let that stifle the overall exercise.” In other words, any attempt to break down the mind into component parts is better than declaring it a lost cause and hypothesizing your favorite alternative instead (god, soul, one-ness, consciousness as an essential property, etc).
  - nonameiguess 3y ago
    This probably means I'm a bit younger than you, but I also had some e-mail conversations with Dennett about the same book, I think in 2001 or so. I always found him gracious and patient and he is still the only public intellectual I have ever carried on a meaningful conversation with and gained insight from in this way, and I was just a random college student, not even his student.
svat 3y ago
What is his life's work / major insight that he's referring to here? > I had found— and partly invented— a prodigious explanation- device that reliably devoured difficulties, day after day. The insights (if that is what they were) that I had struggled so hard to capture in my dissertation and my first book have matured and multiplied, generating answers to questions, solutions to problems, rebuttals to objections, and— most important— suggestions for further questions to ask with gratifying consilience. I just turn the crank and out they pour, falling into place like the last pieces in a jigsaw puzzle. Perhaps my whole perspective is a colossal mistake— some of my critics think so— and perhaps its abundant fruits are chimeras.
- tempaway11751f 3y ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multiple_drafts_model https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multiple_drafts_model
- JonChesterfield 3y ago
  Plausibly that described in the previous paragraph under distributed understanding, where he takes the consensus of some nominally informed group to be truth. See "Reddit as reality" for the failure mode of that strategy.
  - jibalt 3y ago
    Have you considered the possibility that you're wrong? Because that's definitely not it. Consider that, as you acknowledged, you don't even know who he is, so you certainly aren't familiar with his work.
  - svat 3y ago
    I don't think so -- as he tells it, the "distributed understanding" is a shortcut he's using in his later life (if something is important someone will tell/explain it to him), which he contrasts with the diligence/conscientiousness he had earlier. The distributed understanding is a working style, orthogonal to the insight/program he's talking about.
- jrlocke 3y ago
JonChesterfield 3y ago
> if this novelty is worth understanding, somebody I trust will soon explain it to me in terms I can readily digest That's unsound. It prevents learning anything which is not widely known and simply explained. I don't know the author. All the context I have is the article up to that point where I lost interest. However yes, if all you try to learn are the trivial things everyone agrees on, for some circular definition of "wrong", you won't be wrong. Bad strategy. High value are things few people know. Highest value are things people know to be true that are not so.
- pixl97 3y ago
  What value is something that only you know? The moment you act on these hidden bits of information you start leaking entropy that points back to the knowledge you keep.
- layer8 3y ago
  No, it means no single person needs to be a giant on which shoulders we stand. Instead we can form a pyramid of arbitrarily small dwarfs.
- a_wild_dandan 3y ago
  You've mistaken a heuristic for a formal argument, making your disinterest is a self-inflicted wound. Everyone uses heuristics to manage their precious, finite time. Sifting through ideas via academic prescreening and the clarity of their expression are excellent heuristics -- especially for a famous philosopher.
- jibalt 3y ago
  Have you considered the possibility that you're wrong? Dan Dennett is one of the world's most renowned thinkers, and you would do well to take the broader lesson of his article to heart. Also look into Dunning and Kruger.
  - xionplean 3y ago
    It is hysterical to me that there is this online "go to Dunning and Kruger in the total wrong context" heuristic that people who don't know anything about the subject spit out. If you understood Dunning and Kruger you would not post this not to mention make a Daniel Dennett appeal to authority case.
mtlmtlmtlmtl 3y ago
Daniel Dennett is still the only modern philosopher I know of that is capable of explaining his ideas to non-philosophers without it devolving into meaningless(to me) babble, or even worse, an endless cataloguing of all the possible views one could hold on something, along with their names.
- bpshaver 3y ago
  Who are some examples of the type of modern philosopher you mean?
  - briHass 3y ago
    Not OP, and it depends on how 'modern' (or alive) fits the bill, but Heidegger is pretty impenetrable as a novice.
    - bpshaver 3y ago
      Agreed. I assume OP meant 'contemporary' but I'm genuinely curious who they had in mind.
Jakesbeb 3y ago
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thomastjeffery 3y ago
The most useful reason to know things is not so that you can stand idly correct: it is so that the next "maybe" you invent can be unique.
tsunamifury 3y ago
I applaud the author and thinker for taking on this timely and hard topic. I struggle with this question in the same way I think as the author, but in technology we are afforded less time to ponder if we are wrong and more time to test if we are wrong. However the author points out, even in testing as he does with his students, we can be wrong in a fundamental way that all the branches of my iterations stem from the wrong source. So I’m left with: who thinks I’m wrong and why does that matter. I’m finding that outside of reddit, very very few people will tell me im wrong and this is deeply frustrating. Really only my wife who is tired of my pondering fully engages in what might be wrong with what I’m working on and I’m thankful for that. But I wish more people would help me be “constructively wrong” which means they understand the goal but want to correct the approach. Most online merely want to point out irrelevant wrongness for sport.
- randomdata 3y ago
  > I wish more people would help me be “constructively wrong” What's the value proposition? As you noted, not even your own wife will help you until she sees some kind of return for herself (abating her tiredness). Online actors pointing out irrelevant wrongness get to laugh at the meltdown of the maladjusted "intellectual" that usually follows. This is what consultancy is for. You pay someone to look at what you are doing and tell you where you are going wrong. The pay offers the incentive. Most people are quite happy to offer consultant services for pay. But presumably you are having this wish because you want it for free?
  - tsunamifury 3y ago
    I get your point, but to be genuine with you I have paid. Very very few people you are paying with genuinely critique or disagree with you for very obvious reasons. However I can’t help but point out that you’re being exactly as I’ve described redditors…argue an adjacent point to just say the original point is ‘stupid’. It’s a waste of good brain cells.
    - randomdata 3y ago
      As before, I am humoured by the meltdown, which has not failed to disappoint. There is no other value proposition online.
LuciBb 3y ago
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CornCobs 3y ago
> They will eventually discover that they’re wrong, and we will have yet further examples of evolution’s devious paths. In my terminology, their dogged search for skyhooks will uncover heretofore unimagined cranes. And precisely because their conclusions will be the opposite of what they hoped to discover, we will take them seriously. An important part of being able to truly ask oneself if they are wrong is the humility to seriously consider an alternative. The author's treating of ID research as a foregone conclusion, even with his acknowledgment that we could be wrong in the next paragraph, seems rather ironic. Isn't it this kind of hubris that he is precisely calling out?
- Blahah 3y ago
  No it isn't. Because there is precisely no evidence for, or coherent argue in favour of, ID. If you imagine ID is an alternative to evolution then that is to misunderstand the concept of evolution which is, at least in its fundamental form, inherently true. It's mathematically true. It has demonstrably happened and is demonstrably happening. ID is purely conjecture that is only contradicted by evidence. I do think Dennett is being rather sneering in his inclusion of ID in the essay at all. But he's not wrong that good work can be funded, and genuinely useful, and appreciated without malice, for misguided reasons.
- ketzo 3y ago
  I think he’s simultaneously acknowledging the wild unlikelihood of creationism, while also poking a little fun at himself with the irony of “of course I’m not wrong about this.”
- jibalt 3y ago
  "An important part of being able to truly ask oneself if they are wrong is the humility to seriously consider an alternative." Which he did, at length. "The author's treating of ID research as a foregone conclusion" No, it's a consequence of massive amounts of evidence, not just of evolution, but of the character of the sort of people who work at the Discovery Institute.
EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK 3y ago
Idiots never ask themselves that question, that's why they usually win the argument.
- passion__desire 3y ago
  There was a nice thread on why Yann has put forward his theory of Autonomous AI. Somebody commented this is infact nice that now we have something concrete to work with, either to add, modify, delete elements from the theory. This is similar to Newton's method of approximation in numerical analysis. You start with initial guess (initial research paper) and then modify the original guess based on what worked and what didn't. Descartes got his original theory so wrong but Newton corrected it.
Williams77 3y ago
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neilv 3y ago
> This inspired me to adopt the same strategy with my books: I invite Tufts students to help me write my books by sharing the penultimate draft with them in a seminar, where they are all encouraged to point out errors, challenge arguments, demand more clarity, and in general complain about anything that strikes them as amiss. Two professors from whom I was fortunate to learn, who did something like this in classes: * Marvin Minsky (MIT) -- While he was researching The Emotion Machine, class sessions would often be him talking about whatever he'd been working on earlier that day, and related thoughts from his formidable knowledge, and people would ask questions and share information. For example, one day, general anesthesia came up, and a physician/surgeon who was sitting in on class that day added to that (something about, in some cases, the patient is conscious but doesn't remember after, which was a memorable idea to hear). * Peter Wegner (Brown U.) -- He was working on theory of interactive models of computation (e.g., whether interacting objects were reducible to Turing Machines), and some days would put up drafts of a paper on a projector, for class discussion around them. IIRC, he'd first read sections of the paper, and then ask questions of the class around that. Of course, we learned more than he did, but perhaps we were also a helpful rubber duck on some ideas he was thinking through. Also, drafts of textbooks are a thing: Leslie Kaelbling (then Brown U.) arranged to use draft copies of Norvig & Russell's intro AI book, which were two comb-bound volumes with unfinished bits, and IIRC we could feed back comments. Which reminds me of the time I was taking classes at the community college, and the author of one of the textbooks was in the department (though not my instructor), so I wrote down some comments as I worked though the book. The author seemed kind and delighted to be getting book feedback from a student, even though I assume now that my comments weren't of any help.
- felipefar 3y ago
  There are even more ways to benefit your work from other more mundane activities. It helps a lot to find a day job where you can learn a skill that will help on one independent project you will tackle. It's a great idea as well to test ideas and arguments when having a casual conversation with someone: it both deepens the conversation and you have a better feel about how your opinion will be received.
- SamBam 3y ago
whoswho 3y ago
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ChrisMarshallNY 3y ago
I live by a life philosophy that tells me to own my defects and shortcomings, and promptly admit them. I remember being told once, "Congratulations! It's your fault!". The thinking is that, if it's some[one|thing] else's fault, there's nothing I can do to change it, but if it's my fault, then I have the power to amend the situation. In every conflict in my life; even when I am clearly in the right, and the other party is clearly in the wrong, I always have something to address, on my end. Sometimes, I may even need to apologize for it; which can really suck. In my coding, I have found that writing unit tests always finds bugs. Happened to me yesterday, in fact. Since the test ran through 35,000 records, and took almost an hour, it was painful. I can't remember the last time that I wrote unit tests that didn't find bugs in the CuT. But I am now satisfied that the code I wrote is top-shelf.
- jibalt 3y ago
  Having spent months trying to track down bugs that turned out to be due to occasional timing errors in esoteric mechanical devices, it is indeed a relief when I discover that a bug is due to something I did wrong and am able to fix.
gwd 3y ago
I think the more important question is, "How would I know if I were wrong?" As a thinking Christian, and I've thought very carefully on what kind of evidence could be presented to me to show that Christianity was wrong; I'd be interested in what kind of evidence Dennet would accept to show him that his atheism was wrong.
- viscountchocula 3y ago
  Out of curiosity, what might that evidence Christianity is wrong be?
- kgwxd 3y ago
  You have 0 evidence that Christianity is "right", whatever that even means. Provide just a tiny shred of evidence, and Dennet, along with the rest of us, will reconsider the position.
- cksquare 3y ago
  This is the tired kind of equivocating that's used by lazy Christians to claim atheism is a discrete and well-formed ideology. Atheism is just that, a-theism, a rejection of the notion of a supernatural dimension occupied by 'personal' god(s). What evidence (or counter-evidence) do you suggest I present to show that my disbelief in Thor or Odin is wrong?
  - gwd 3y ago
    "Unicorns exist" and "unicorns don't exist" are both factual statements of which one can have a belief. Right now you probably hold one or the other. Sure, if you'd never heard of unicorns, such a thing wouldn't enter your head; but you have heard of unicorns, and thus you do have an opinion on their existence. Similarly, if one lived all one's life in a rationalist bubble, and never even heard the mention of God or gods or religion or the supernatural, then perhaps one could not have an opinion on whether God exists. But that applies neither to you nor to Dennet. How would I know that my disbelief in Thor is wrong? At a first cut, I'd need to have someone propose a more concrete proposition to evaluate; then I could try to evaluate it. But whatever that proposition is, it would need to be able to accommodate all that we've learned about the world and about science; it would need to be falsifiable; and it would need to explain the world in a more satisfactory manner than the alternative worldviews.
a_square_peg 3y ago
I never got to ask this as an interview question, but I always thought it would be interesting to ask - 'if you were wrong, would you want to know?' Not on any particular topic but in general. When I asked this in casual settings, I thought it was illuminating that no one gave a simple 'yes' as an answer.
- briHass 3y ago
  I would definitely think this would be very topic-dependent. Perhaps the flip side to this is to consider when (if ever) lies or mistruths are allowable. After all, a lie, believed sincerely, makes the believer 'wrong' about something. I can certainly think of things told to me by people I care about, that if they turned out to be lies, I wouldn't gain any utility or value from their revelation.
- calf 3y ago
  That's so alien to me, because my answer to your question is an enthusiastic "Yes!!". On further thought, I think the only humane objection is whether truth can ever really be separated from judgment. People don't like being judged and especially not judged unfairly, and true propositions can nevertheless connote judgment by contextual salience of the particular thing we tell someone that they're wrong about and why they're wrong, etc.
DiscourseFan 3y ago
So, everyone in the world knows what a circle is, or has a basic idea of a circle: you won't find a person who doesn't recognize one, right? But, there are no circles in the world, empirically--every circle you've ever thought you've seen is actually an ellipse, even the earth itself is oblong, just like all the stars and planetary bodies. Well, would we call it a mistake if someone described what, empirically, was an ellipse, as a circle? The question itself "What if I'm wrong?" is flawed: we are always already wrong. But it is the wrongness which makes the world, for us; and to the extent our creations are false, to that same extent they are true. So why concern yourself with questions of true or false, right or wrong, Good and Evil? Go out, create your own truth, make the world anew...leave behind all this worrying over nothing.
- Jensson 3y ago
  > But, there are no circles in the world, empirically Only if you have an overly strict definition of circle. I don't think it is wrong to call the outline of a ball a circle, or the shape you do if you take an Y shaped object and rotate it along one of those branches, it isn't a perfect circle but it is still a circle.
  - mtlmtlmtlmtl 3y ago
    And crucially, lots of things like the ones you mentioned are often not better approximated by an ellipse than a circle(I realise circles are just a subset of ellipses).
    - DiscourseFan 3y ago
      >I realise circles are just a subset of ellipses Ah, but in a circle the circumference is always equidistant to the centre, which is never true of an ellipse. I suppose there is only one circle in the world.
      - jibalt 3y ago
        > Ah, but in a circle the circumference is always equidistant to the centre, which is never true of an ellipse. It's never true of an ellipse that isn't a circle. i.e., this is a--ahem--circular argument.
enonimal 3y ago
> Take courage and set out to write up the Great Discovery; if after many hours of red- hot thinking and writing you discover to your dismay a fatal flaw . . . all is not lost. Go back to the first paragraph and write something along the lines of “It is tempting to think that . . . ” XD
ivanojakov33 3y ago
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deleted 3y ago
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209 points by jrlocke 3y ago

Ptolemy was wrong. But he was wrong with a large pile of actual measurements of celestial bodies, and a falsifiable theory. That made him wrong in the positive sense of wrong in the phrase "not even wrong", where wrong is just the first step of the ladder. I wish I could say the same about Freud, but that ladder is distressingly horizontal.

aspenmayer 3y ago
> "Not even wrong" is a phrase often used to describe pseudoscience or bad science. It describes an argument or explanation that purports to be scientific but uses faulty reasoning or speculative premises, which can be neither affirmed nor denied and thus cannot be discussed rigorously and scientifically. The phrase "not even wrong" is synonymous with "unfalsifiable".[0][1] [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Not_even_wrong https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Not_even_wrong [1] https://www.theguardian.com/science/2005/sep/19/ideas.g2 https://www.theguardian.com/science/2005/sep/19/ideas.g2
- killthebuddha 3y ago
  Hmm. I always thought "not even wrong" meant "correct, but answering the wrong question" or more generally "correct but irrelevantly so".
  - aspenmayer 3y ago
    I think that your example is something I would consider “beside the point,” whereas the flavor of “not even wrong” to me seems to describe a statement or claim that has truthiness[0] rather than a truth value[1]. A statement which is not even wrong is one that can’t or isn’t expressed properly as a logical assertion or argument but rather asserted without evidence or in such a way that it is made to seem inherently or intuitively obvious. Such a statement isn't argued for or against properly or logically, or isn’t otherwise properly expressed or derived, or a statement or claim which falls short of making a concrete point or argument which can be dismissed or validated on the basis of evidence or logical argument. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Truthiness https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Truthiness > Truthiness is the belief or assertion that a particular statement is true based on the intuition or perceptions of some individual or individuals, without regard to evidence, logic, intellectual examination, or facts. Truthiness can range from ignorant assertions of falsehoods to deliberate duplicity or propaganda intended to sway opinions. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Truth_value https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Truth_value > In logic and mathematics, a truth value, sometimes called a logical value, is a value indicating the relation of a proposition to truth, which in classical logic has only two possible values (true or false).
- dataflow 3y ago
  I'm not sure "not even wrong" actually means the same thing as "unfalsifiable" like Wikipedia claims? I thought "not even wrong" means the asker is so confused that their question doesn't make sense. As I understand it, "ghosts exist" (or even "the universe is infinite") may well be impossible to falsify, but it doesn't signal any sort of confusion on the part of the asker. But if the statement was "ghosts exist because the universe is infinite", then I thought that would fall into the "not even wrong" bucket.
  - aspenmayer 3y ago
    I understand “not even wrong” to be synonymous with unfalsifiable in the sense that the statement being described as such is not a truth claim, or is otherwise not a valid formal statement or claim, such that the scientific method is not able to be deployed to consider its validity. > In religion, a truth claim is an assertion that the belief system holds to be true; however, from the existence of an assertion that the belief system holds to be true, it does not follow that the assertion is true. For example, a truth claim in Judaism is that only one God exists. Conflicting truth claims between different religions can be a cause of religious conflict. The theory of truth claims has been advanced by John Hick. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Truth_claim https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Truth_claim
dekhn 3y ago
I think the right phrase here is not 'not even wrong' but 'wrong but for the right reasons' or 'all models are wrong, but some models are useful (possibly by being less wrong'
- deleted 3y ago
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javajosh 3y ago
There is a strong analogy in software engineering here. Often the first implementation is "wrong" in the sense that it doesn't resolve the inherent tensions in the system. But that doesn't make it useless - in fact, it's quite useful because it actually showed you what is important. Plus, the people who attempt the initial solution to a problem deserve special honor, even if their work is eventually tossed away, specifically because they revealed these system tensions. The common dictum to "write a prototype and throw it away" is largely based on this insight. What I'm saying is that Ptolemy, Aristotle, etc did a great service to humanity by taking a stab at hard problems, even if their solutions were convincing but wrong. Whether they knew it or not they were the primordial programmers writing a throw-away prototype upon which all future progress was based.
- jyunwai 3y ago
  A similar idea about the importance of planning as a way to improve your understanding of a problem was expressed by Dwight D. Eisenhower, said in a speech while he was in office as the US President in 1957 [1]. Reflecting on his experience in the Second World War, he said: "Plans are worthless, but planning is everything. There is a very great distinction because when you are planning for an emergency you must start with this one thing: the very definition of “emergency” is that it is unexpected, therefore it is not going to happen the way you are planning." [1] https://quoteinvestigator.com/2017/11/18/planning/ https://quoteinvestigator.com/2017/11/18/planning/
- QuercusMax 3y ago
  I work on healthcare at Alphabet, and in late 2016 I set out to build a flexible DICOMweb STOW-RS receiver in the form of a GCP API - the first time anyone had done that at Alphabet. (I've worked on the same project across Verily and Google). In the process I researched and built a bunch of little prototypes built in a variety of ways, and for example had to rule out building it as an App Engine API - because DICOMweb uploads can potentially be gigabytes in size, and App Engine didn't support handling a POST as a stream as it arrived. At any rate, along the way over the course of 9 months or so I found a technology stack that supported all my requirements and ran into a bunch of roadblocks. Lots of things related to how internal bits of GCP APIs are handled - the internal libraries had documentation indicating that streaming APIs were supported, and that each chunk of the request would be passed from the API proxy/backend multiplexer to the actual API server as they arrived. This worked for streaming responses, but not for streaming requests, and so I had to add that functionality to the API proxy. That was a huge pain - really hairy c++ code using fibers with multiple layers of request processing wrappers. But I worked thru that and got it landed into the google-wide binary, and never worried about it again. I got this project to the level I needed it to support the precise requirements for the (regulated medical device) system I was working on. Around this time the GCP Cloud Healthcare group was getting started, and they built a new system using a fair number of bits of my implementation, which they'd eventually replace completely. But my first system saved them most of a year or work, resulting in the CHC feature set rapidly leapfrogging what I'd built.
paganel 3y ago
Trying to apply falsifiable theory to Freud (or to psychoanalysis) is wrong in itself, as a matter of fact thinking about Freud and psychoanalysis in the realm of scientifically right or wrong is, well, scientifically wrong.
- helloplanets 3y ago
  In that case, how should we think about it? Genuinely curious.
  - paganel 3y ago
    He (Freud) had some very good insights, almost genius-like, for example the part with Eros and Thanatos. With that said, I don't think there's a best way to approach his works, I do know though that treating them as science would do no-one any good. As for psychoanalysis as a whole, it's definitely not my preferred cup of tea but I do believe those people that say that it has genuinely helped them, in which case all the power to them and to psychoanalysis. Maybe treat it through a functionalist prism? (just an idea) Similar to meditation, let's say (similar as in there's no scientific "basis" behind it but I also do believe that meditation helps some people, similar to psychoanalysis). Of course, that would not solve the issue with "what should we do with the psychoanalysis crooks?", the same issue that probably gets asked when it comes to meditation crooks, meaning grifters trying to live off psychoanalysis/meditation/any similar movement. I don't know what the best answer for that would be, maybe some sort of community-based validation/word of mouth thingie?
bsder 3y ago
Ptolemy was not "wrong". His model worked quite well within the margin of his measuring tools. And, in fact, Ptolemy was more "right" than heliocentric circles (as opposed to ellipses). You have to have both elliptical orbits and inverse square law forces to predict better than Ptolemy. It wasn't until the telescope allowed seeing Venusian phases that geocentricity was actively disproven.

ggm 3y ago

I've grown used to being corrected, to the point that it's a pleasant surprise to be told I might be right. What I notice more and more, is the "you're wrong" is used to buttress opinion masquerading as fact. If you preface "I think that.." to asserts it doesn't stop the "you're wrong" but it at least puts the discussion into the realms of conjecture about things, including facts, rather than simple asserts of facts which are often not as factual as they seem. I also notice that argument by analogy is being over-used. Because you want to compare your large single CPU to a multi CPU doesn't mean it actually is a Bull compared to a herd of chickens. Or that cat-herding is actually much harder than it looks: you need the right kind of cream. Wait.. that analogy might not work here..

XorNot 3y ago
"best-practice" is a specific, over-used term in the tech industry. People instinctively give opinions and say "well best-practice is..." to fortify it against being criticized, and then lean heavily on the fact that if you actually ask them to support that notion then they imply or accuse the questioner of being hostile. "It's best practice" should invite the question of "according to who, in which publications? What are the circumstances of the practice, are they similar to our circumstances?"
- aspenmayer 3y ago
  > A weasel word, or anonymous authority, is a word and phrase aimed at creating an impression that something specific and meaningful has been said when in fact only a vague, ambiguous, or irrelevant claim has been communicated. The terms may be considered informal. Examples include the phrases "some people say", "it is thought", and "researchers believe". Using weasel words may allow one to later deny any specific meaning if the statement is challenged, because the statement was never specific in the first place. Weasel words can be a form of tergiversation and may be used in advertising, (popular) science, opinion pieces and political statements to mislead or disguise a biased view or unsubstantiated claim. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weasel_word https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weasel_word Edit: Verb tergiversate (third-person singular simple present tergiversates, present participle tergiversating, simple past and past participle tergiversated) (intransitive) To evade, to equivocate using subterfuge; to obfuscate in a deliberate manner. (intransitive) To change sides or affiliation; to apostatize. (intransitive, rare) To flee by turning one's back. https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/tergiversate https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/tergiversate

atdt 3y ago

Wonderful piece. Dennett knows how to write. And he captures the pleasure and privilege of Hacker News with this felicitous phrase: > Distributed understanding is a real phenomenon, but you have to get yourself into a community of communicators that can effectively summon the relevant expertise.

wayeq 3y ago
are you sure that's us? :)
- DiscourseFan 3y ago
  Yeah I'm having serious doubts
- Jensson 3y ago
  Yes, you have a combination of people who learn and people who know here. That is what he described, and environment where you are allowed to be wrong and where people will correct you when you are. You don't get banned from HN for being wrong, so you are allowed to be wrong here, unlike many other forums like most of reddit.
  - Capricorn2481 3y ago
    What is being described is that people will know what they're talking about, which is debatable. You might be corrected on here, but I've seen more cases of people being loudly wrong but having enough general knowledge on a subject that they sound correct, and lucky enough that no one with specific knowledge stumbled on their posts to correct them. Frankly, I don't think hackernews is all that different in terms of community from Reddit. People are just better at hiding it. Many are regurgitating rhetoric they've heard in other posts without having experience with a subject. Even in the realms of programming, it's not hard to see how little experience people have with the things they demonize or evangelize.
- calf 3y ago
  Maybe he's talking about the string theorist community

wavemode 3y ago

> Take courage and set out to write up the Great Discovery; if after many hours of red- hot thinking and writing you discover to your dismay a fatal flaw ... all is not lost. Go back to the first paragraph and write something along the lines of “It is tempting to think that ...” I love this. I go through similar experiences with software engineering. I notice some area of the field that appears overly complicated (build systems, CI/CD, version control, web frameworks, so on and so on) and start thinking to myself "Why all the complexity? Surely we could just-" and then I'm down a rabbit hole for weeks. The usual end result being I learn a lot of new things and discover for myself what all the complexity was for. But hey, occasionally maybe I really do come up with a Next Big Thing.

codeulike 3y ago

"I've Been Thinking" is the best possible name for a philosopher's autobiography

layer8 3y ago
Descartes would like it.
jibalt 3y ago
Especially for this philosopher, whose life work has been in Theory of Mind, delving into what thinking is, how it happens, and how it works.

nonrandomstring 3y ago

Did anyone else read "Minds I"? I loved that book, and come to think of it the 'soul searching' comments always had that note of humble fallibilism in there.

lIl-IIIl 3y ago
Yes, it was one of my favorite books when I was young. I picked it up after reading GEB, of which there was discussion here recently.

deleted 3y ago

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FrustratedMonky 3y ago

I actually got a little suckered in, and thought this might be Dennett opening up to being wrong and giving some new account of what he might now think is correct. Especially after all the debates on free will with Sapolsky. Instead it ended up being backhanded self complement, more like, "a lot of other great people agree with me, so maybe I'm wrong, but probably not". "Descartes’s theory of everything is, even in hindsight, remarkably coherent and persuasive. It is hard to imagine a different equally coherent and equally false theory! He was wrong, and so of course I may well be wrong, but enough other thinkers I respect have come to see things my way that when I ask myself, “What if we are wrong?” I can keep this skeptical murmur safely simmering on a back burner."

PaulDavisThe1st 3y ago
I had an interesting email exchange with Dennett in the 90s. He had just brought out his book "Consciousness Explained". I read it and emailed him a short note saying that I thought the book was mistitled - the contents were an explanation of what we were conscious of not how we could be conscious. I expected him to write back with some eloquent or witty or pithy defense of the link between the title and the contents, but he just thanked me and said, "yes, now that you put it that way, it probably is the wrong title. Oops, too late."
- bbor 3y ago
  The beauty and flexibility of radical skepticism :). Minsky, another noted skeptic of idealist claims (from the opposite angle?), had a quote that stuck with me from one of his YouTube lectures on Society of Mind. I can’t find it at the moment but it was along the lines of; “when you write your own cognitive theory, leave room in the edges for it to grow. You never know what parts will be proven wrong, and you shouldn’t let that stifle the overall exercise.” In other words, any attempt to break down the mind into component parts is better than declaring it a lost cause and hypothesizing your favorite alternative instead (god, soul, one-ness, consciousness as an essential property, etc).
- nonameiguess 3y ago
  This probably means I'm a bit younger than you, but I also had some e-mail conversations with Dennett about the same book, I think in 2001 or so. I always found him gracious and patient and he is still the only public intellectual I have ever carried on a meaningful conversation with and gained insight from in this way, and I was just a random college student, not even his student.

svat 3y ago

What is his life's work / major insight that he's referring to here? > I had found— and partly invented— a prodigious explanation- device that reliably devoured difficulties, day after day. The insights (if that is what they were) that I had struggled so hard to capture in my dissertation and my first book have matured and multiplied, generating answers to questions, solutions to problems, rebuttals to objections, and— most important— suggestions for further questions to ask with gratifying consilience. I just turn the crank and out they pour, falling into place like the last pieces in a jigsaw puzzle. Perhaps my whole perspective is a colossal mistake— some of my critics think so— and perhaps its abundant fruits are chimeras.

tempaway11751f 3y ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multiple_drafts_model https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multiple_drafts_model
JonChesterfield 3y ago
Plausibly that described in the previous paragraph under distributed understanding, where he takes the consensus of some nominally informed group to be truth. See "Reddit as reality" for the failure mode of that strategy.
- jibalt 3y ago
  Have you considered the possibility that you're wrong? Because that's definitely not it. Consider that, as you acknowledged, you don't even know who he is, so you certainly aren't familiar with his work.
- svat 3y ago
  I don't think so -- as he tells it, the "distributed understanding" is a shortcut he's using in his later life (if something is important someone will tell/explain it to him), which he contrasts with the diligence/conscientiousness he had earlier. The distributed understanding is a working style, orthogonal to the insight/program he's talking about.
jrlocke 3y ago

JonChesterfield 3y ago

> if this novelty is worth understanding, somebody I trust will soon explain it to me in terms I can readily digest That's unsound. It prevents learning anything which is not widely known and simply explained. I don't know the author. All the context I have is the article up to that point where I lost interest. However yes, if all you try to learn are the trivial things everyone agrees on, for some circular definition of "wrong", you won't be wrong. Bad strategy. High value are things few people know. Highest value are things people know to be true that are not so.

pixl97 3y ago
What value is something that only you know? The moment you act on these hidden bits of information you start leaking entropy that points back to the knowledge you keep.
layer8 3y ago
No, it means no single person needs to be a giant on which shoulders we stand. Instead we can form a pyramid of arbitrarily small dwarfs.
a_wild_dandan 3y ago
You've mistaken a heuristic for a formal argument, making your disinterest is a self-inflicted wound. Everyone uses heuristics to manage their precious, finite time. Sifting through ideas via academic prescreening and the clarity of their expression are excellent heuristics -- especially for a famous philosopher.
jibalt 3y ago
Have you considered the possibility that you're wrong? Dan Dennett is one of the world's most renowned thinkers, and you would do well to take the broader lesson of his article to heart. Also look into Dunning and Kruger.
- xionplean 3y ago
  It is hysterical to me that there is this online "go to Dunning and Kruger in the total wrong context" heuristic that people who don't know anything about the subject spit out. If you understood Dunning and Kruger you would not post this not to mention make a Daniel Dennett appeal to authority case.

mtlmtlmtlmtl 3y ago

Daniel Dennett is still the only modern philosopher I know of that is capable of explaining his ideas to non-philosophers without it devolving into meaningless(to me) babble, or even worse, an endless cataloguing of all the possible views one could hold on something, along with their names.

bpshaver 3y ago
Who are some examples of the type of modern philosopher you mean?
- briHass 3y ago
  Not OP, and it depends on how 'modern' (or alive) fits the bill, but Heidegger is pretty impenetrable as a novice.
  - bpshaver 3y ago
    Agreed. I assume OP meant 'contemporary' but I'm genuinely curious who they had in mind.

Jakesbeb 3y ago

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thomastjeffery 3y ago

The most useful reason to know things is not so that you can stand idly correct: it is so that the next "maybe" you invent can be unique.

tsunamifury 3y ago

I applaud the author and thinker for taking on this timely and hard topic. I struggle with this question in the same way I think as the author, but in technology we are afforded less time to ponder if we are wrong and more time to test if we are wrong. However the author points out, even in testing as he does with his students, we can be wrong in a fundamental way that all the branches of my iterations stem from the wrong source. So I’m left with: who thinks I’m wrong and why does that matter. I’m finding that outside of reddit, very very few people will tell me im wrong and this is deeply frustrating. Really only my wife who is tired of my pondering fully engages in what might be wrong with what I’m working on and I’m thankful for that. But I wish more people would help me be “constructively wrong” which means they understand the goal but want to correct the approach. Most online merely want to point out irrelevant wrongness for sport.

randomdata 3y ago
> I wish more people would help me be “constructively wrong” What's the value proposition? As you noted, not even your own wife will help you until she sees some kind of return for herself (abating her tiredness). Online actors pointing out irrelevant wrongness get to laugh at the meltdown of the maladjusted "intellectual" that usually follows. This is what consultancy is for. You pay someone to look at what you are doing and tell you where you are going wrong. The pay offers the incentive. Most people are quite happy to offer consultant services for pay. But presumably you are having this wish because you want it for free?
- tsunamifury 3y ago
  I get your point, but to be genuine with you I have paid. Very very few people you are paying with genuinely critique or disagree with you for very obvious reasons. However I can’t help but point out that you’re being exactly as I’ve described redditors…argue an adjacent point to just say the original point is ‘stupid’. It’s a waste of good brain cells.
  - randomdata 3y ago
    As before, I am humoured by the meltdown, which has not failed to disappoint. There is no other value proposition online.

LuciBb 3y ago

[flagged]

CornCobs 3y ago

> They will eventually discover that they’re wrong, and we will have yet further examples of evolution’s devious paths. In my terminology, their dogged search for skyhooks will uncover heretofore unimagined cranes. And precisely because their conclusions will be the opposite of what they hoped to discover, we will take them seriously. An important part of being able to truly ask oneself if they are wrong is the humility to seriously consider an alternative. The author's treating of ID research as a foregone conclusion, even with his acknowledgment that we could be wrong in the next paragraph, seems rather ironic. Isn't it this kind of hubris that he is precisely calling out?

Blahah 3y ago
No it isn't. Because there is precisely no evidence for, or coherent argue in favour of, ID. If you imagine ID is an alternative to evolution then that is to misunderstand the concept of evolution which is, at least in its fundamental form, inherently true. It's mathematically true. It has demonstrably happened and is demonstrably happening. ID is purely conjecture that is only contradicted by evidence. I do think Dennett is being rather sneering in his inclusion of ID in the essay at all. But he's not wrong that good work can be funded, and genuinely useful, and appreciated without malice, for misguided reasons.
ketzo 3y ago
I think he’s simultaneously acknowledging the wild unlikelihood of creationism, while also poking a little fun at himself with the irony of “of course I’m not wrong about this.”
jibalt 3y ago
"An important part of being able to truly ask oneself if they are wrong is the humility to seriously consider an alternative." Which he did, at length. "The author's treating of ID research as a foregone conclusion" No, it's a consequence of massive amounts of evidence, not just of evolution, but of the character of the sort of people who work at the Discovery Institute.

EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK 3y ago

Idiots never ask themselves that question, that's why they usually win the argument.

passion__desire 3y ago
There was a nice thread on why Yann has put forward his theory of Autonomous AI. Somebody commented this is infact nice that now we have something concrete to work with, either to add, modify, delete elements from the theory. This is similar to Newton's method of approximation in numerical analysis. You start with initial guess (initial research paper) and then modify the original guess based on what worked and what didn't. Descartes got his original theory so wrong but Newton corrected it.

Williams77 3y ago

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neilv 3y ago

> This inspired me to adopt the same strategy with my books: I invite Tufts students to help me write my books by sharing the penultimate draft with them in a seminar, where they are all encouraged to point out errors, challenge arguments, demand more clarity, and in general complain about anything that strikes them as amiss. Two professors from whom I was fortunate to learn, who did something like this in classes: * Marvin Minsky (MIT) -- While he was researching The Emotion Machine, class sessions would often be him talking about whatever he'd been working on earlier that day, and related thoughts from his formidable knowledge, and people would ask questions and share information. For example, one day, general anesthesia came up, and a physician/surgeon who was sitting in on class that day added to that (something about, in some cases, the patient is conscious but doesn't remember after, which was a memorable idea to hear). * Peter Wegner (Brown U.) -- He was working on theory of interactive models of computation (e.g., whether interacting objects were reducible to Turing Machines), and some days would put up drafts of a paper on a projector, for class discussion around them. IIRC, he'd first read sections of the paper, and then ask questions of the class around that. Of course, we learned more than he did, but perhaps we were also a helpful rubber duck on some ideas he was thinking through. Also, drafts of textbooks are a thing: Leslie Kaelbling (then Brown U.) arranged to use draft copies of Norvig & Russell's intro AI book, which were two comb-bound volumes with unfinished bits, and IIRC we could feed back comments. Which reminds me of the time I was taking classes at the community college, and the author of one of the textbooks was in the department (though not my instructor), so I wrote down some comments as I worked though the book. The author seemed kind and delighted to be getting book feedback from a student, even though I assume now that my comments weren't of any help.

felipefar 3y ago
There are even more ways to benefit your work from other more mundane activities. It helps a lot to find a day job where you can learn a skill that will help on one independent project you will tackle. It's a great idea as well to test ideas and arguments when having a casual conversation with someone: it both deepens the conversation and you have a better feel about how your opinion will be received.
SamBam 3y ago

whoswho 3y ago

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ChrisMarshallNY 3y ago

I live by a life philosophy that tells me to own my defects and shortcomings, and promptly admit them. I remember being told once, "Congratulations! It's your fault!". The thinking is that, if it's some[one|thing] else's fault, there's nothing I can do to change it, but if it's my fault, then I have the power to amend the situation. In every conflict in my life; even when I am clearly in the right, and the other party is clearly in the wrong, I always have something to address, on my end. Sometimes, I may even need to apologize for it; which can really suck. In my coding, I have found that writing unit tests always finds bugs. Happened to me yesterday, in fact. Since the test ran through 35,000 records, and took almost an hour, it was painful. I can't remember the last time that I wrote unit tests that didn't find bugs in the CuT. But I am now satisfied that the code I wrote is top-shelf.

jibalt 3y ago
Having spent months trying to track down bugs that turned out to be due to occasional timing errors in esoteric mechanical devices, it is indeed a relief when I discover that a bug is due to something I did wrong and am able to fix.

gwd 3y ago

I think the more important question is, "How would I know if I were wrong?" As a thinking Christian, and I've thought very carefully on what kind of evidence could be presented to me to show that Christianity was wrong; I'd be interested in what kind of evidence Dennet would accept to show him that his atheism was wrong.

viscountchocula 3y ago
Out of curiosity, what might that evidence Christianity is wrong be?
kgwxd 3y ago
You have 0 evidence that Christianity is "right", whatever that even means. Provide just a tiny shred of evidence, and Dennet, along with the rest of us, will reconsider the position.
cksquare 3y ago
This is the tired kind of equivocating that's used by lazy Christians to claim atheism is a discrete and well-formed ideology. Atheism is just that, a-theism, a rejection of the notion of a supernatural dimension occupied by 'personal' god(s). What evidence (or counter-evidence) do you suggest I present to show that my disbelief in Thor or Odin is wrong?
- gwd 3y ago
  "Unicorns exist" and "unicorns don't exist" are both factual statements of which one can have a belief. Right now you probably hold one or the other. Sure, if you'd never heard of unicorns, such a thing wouldn't enter your head; but you have heard of unicorns, and thus you do have an opinion on their existence. Similarly, if one lived all one's life in a rationalist bubble, and never even heard the mention of God or gods or religion or the supernatural, then perhaps one could not have an opinion on whether God exists. But that applies neither to you nor to Dennet. How would I know that my disbelief in Thor is wrong? At a first cut, I'd need to have someone propose a more concrete proposition to evaluate; then I could try to evaluate it. But whatever that proposition is, it would need to be able to accommodate all that we've learned about the world and about science; it would need to be falsifiable; and it would need to explain the world in a more satisfactory manner than the alternative worldviews.

a_square_peg 3y ago

I never got to ask this as an interview question, but I always thought it would be interesting to ask - 'if you were wrong, would you want to know?' Not on any particular topic but in general. When I asked this in casual settings, I thought it was illuminating that no one gave a simple 'yes' as an answer.

briHass 3y ago
I would definitely think this would be very topic-dependent. Perhaps the flip side to this is to consider when (if ever) lies or mistruths are allowable. After all, a lie, believed sincerely, makes the believer 'wrong' about something. I can certainly think of things told to me by people I care about, that if they turned out to be lies, I wouldn't gain any utility or value from their revelation.
calf 3y ago
That's so alien to me, because my answer to your question is an enthusiastic "Yes!!". On further thought, I think the only humane objection is whether truth can ever really be separated from judgment. People don't like being judged and especially not judged unfairly, and true propositions can nevertheless connote judgment by contextual salience of the particular thing we tell someone that they're wrong about and why they're wrong, etc.

DiscourseFan 3y ago

So, everyone in the world knows what a circle is, or has a basic idea of a circle: you won't find a person who doesn't recognize one, right? But, there are no circles in the world, empirically--every circle you've ever thought you've seen is actually an ellipse, even the earth itself is oblong, just like all the stars and planetary bodies. Well, would we call it a mistake if someone described what, empirically, was an ellipse, as a circle? The question itself "What if I'm wrong?" is flawed: we are always already wrong. But it is the wrongness which makes the world, for us; and to the extent our creations are false, to that same extent they are true. So why concern yourself with questions of true or false, right or wrong, Good and Evil? Go out, create your own truth, make the world anew...leave behind all this worrying over nothing.

Jensson 3y ago
> But, there are no circles in the world, empirically Only if you have an overly strict definition of circle. I don't think it is wrong to call the outline of a ball a circle, or the shape you do if you take an Y shaped object and rotate it along one of those branches, it isn't a perfect circle but it is still a circle.
- mtlmtlmtlmtl 3y ago
  And crucially, lots of things like the ones you mentioned are often not better approximated by an ellipse than a circle(I realise circles are just a subset of ellipses).
  - DiscourseFan 3y ago
    >I realise circles are just a subset of ellipses Ah, but in a circle the circumference is always equidistant to the centre, which is never true of an ellipse. I suppose there is only one circle in the world.
    - jibalt 3y ago
      > Ah, but in a circle the circumference is always equidistant to the centre, which is never true of an ellipse. It's never true of an ellipse that isn't a circle. i.e., this is a--ahem--circular argument.

enonimal 3y ago

ivanojakov33 3y ago

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deleted 3y ago

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