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In my experience, there's little to no reward for rigor and people mostly invoke it when somebody says something they don't want to hear. People are impressed

In my experience, there's little to no reward for rigor and people mostly invoke it when somebody says something they don't want to hear. People are impressed enough if you cite some bullcrap even if it's been refuted since they themselves don't have the rigor to actually question if what you cited is correct. They usually don't have the rigor to even check your original source in the first place.

AndrewKemendo 3y ago
It's an existential problem for the species that we can encode into our structures conceptions of the way the universe works that are measurably wrong Bloodletting is well understood that it doesn't work but there was a time where the most trusted people performed that Why is that even possible? There was absolutely no epistemic proof that bloodletting was associated with a falsifiable hypothesis which would lead to improved health outcomes - in fact it was all based on these "humors" in the body that needed to be "balanced" which makes no mathematical sense whatsoever. Even then, as early as the 1400s there were scientists saying "This is actually bad" - and yet George Washington had bloodletting done on him in his dying repose at the end of the 1700s 300 years of an activity that is bad for you that was encoded into medical practice The conclusion we should come to is that MOST of our assumptions about the structure of the world and how to optimize within it, are based on literally nothing but aggregated social velocity, instead of claims that are measurable and testable
- faeriechangling 3y ago
  The other problem with right I forgot to mention is that Rigor generally means: 1: Refusing to make a firm affirmative statement on an issue, when that's what people want 2: Correcting what you have claimed in the past, which makes you look gullible and indecisive With the example of bloodletting, people wanted to believe a doctor knew how to cure them, and once somebody had done bloodletting even if they had doubts later, they would look like fools if they convinced people they had been harming their patients all along. It's easier and often more rewarding to be a fraud.
  - AndrewKemendo 3y ago
    That’s exactly right and I think your final point is the key point we have created systematic incentives for fraudulent behavior If we get rid of those incentives, then that will expose all of the frauds, and so as a result, they have no incentive to overturn the system

AndrewKemendo 3y ago

It's an existential problem for the species that we can encode into our structures conceptions of the way the universe works that are measurably wrong Bloodletting is well understood that it doesn't work but there was a time where the most trusted people performed that Why is that even possible? There was absolutely no epistemic proof that bloodletting was associated with a falsifiable hypothesis which would lead to improved health outcomes - in fact it was all based on these "humors" in the body that needed to be "balanced" which makes no mathematical sense whatsoever. Even then, as early as the 1400s there were scientists saying "This is actually bad" - and yet George Washington had bloodletting done on him in his dying repose at the end of the 1700s 300 years of an activity that is bad for you that was encoded into medical practice The conclusion we should come to is that MOST of our assumptions about the structure of the world and how to optimize within it, are based on literally nothing but aggregated social velocity, instead of claims that are measurable and testable

faeriechangling 3y ago
The other problem with right I forgot to mention is that Rigor generally means: 1: Refusing to make a firm affirmative statement on an issue, when that's what people want 2: Correcting what you have claimed in the past, which makes you look gullible and indecisive With the example of bloodletting, people wanted to believe a doctor knew how to cure them, and once somebody had done bloodletting even if they had doubts later, they would look like fools if they convinced people they had been harming their patients all along. It's easier and often more rewarding to be a fraud.
- AndrewKemendo 3y ago
  That’s exactly right and I think your final point is the key point we have created systematic incentives for fraudulent behavior If we get rid of those incentives, then that will expose all of the frauds, and so as a result, they have no incentive to overturn the system