“I can almost certainly say that whoever wrote this blog would never
dream of writing off an entire branch of science based on his limited
understanding of the subject”
True, to be a real, hardcore STEMlord you definitely need to write off historical sciences completely, probably biology, and maybe chemistry if you're feeling really brave. As Ernst Rutherford said, "All science is either physics or stamp-collecting."
Physics? A truly powerful rationalist knows that physics is nothing compared to Bayes. AI god will defeat entropy through rationality and everyone will live forever even people who died before it.
One of the early things that broke me out of my SSC-reading days was
reading his posts about an area I’m fairly well-versed in (neurobiology)
and thinking that his argument was not very well-founded. And that was
in an area he (theoretically) has some background in…
“Would the guy who wrote this think that Fox was a reliable narrator
of the Obama presidency? The two sentiments are exactly the same.”
I love this. Also I feel the author’s pain: just spent a day dealing
with a client asking why they pay us for the job we do (creative sector
- people love to shit on us just as much as historians).
Why DO people like SSC shit on the humanities as much as they do?
They seem to think it’s easy, and I just don’t understand why, when it
seems to me that a little experience with any of these disciplines would
immediately make ’em take their words back! (At least I hope it
would…)
"my failure to grasp nuance is actually a result of my extremely large brain. now, hard numbers, real *data*, that i can work with~~"
*proceeds to shit out barely functional CRUD webapps for 20 years and then dies in a boiling ocean*
They think it's vague and unquantifiable. And you can't reason about vague, unquantifiable things the same way you reason about precise, quantifiable things. Therefore, why bother reasoning about them at all, except when they can be forced into a quantifiable framework?
See: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streetlight_effect
On top of that, if it's unquantifiable, it doesn't have real methods. There's a lower barrier to entry because you don't need to be able to do, say, calc or code to just pick up a history book. So history, then, must just be reading a bunch of shit. There's no exhaustive archival research, source criticism, historiography, or need to learn a foreign language. Just read a bunch of shit and you can "do" history!
It's not as if rationalists are really that much better when talking about the sciences, most of the rationalist/rationalist-adjacent takes I've heard regarding math, physics, or CS that aren't from people actually involved in those fields are utter garbage. T[his](https://www.reddit.com/r/badmathematics/comments/alkklu/anyone_can_write_a_book_the_story_of_julian_von/) might warrant a thread of its own. but there's a lot of more pedestrian nonsense as well.
Medieval history is not generally taught before the university level
because it is really quite complicated.
History is likely the largest difference between US and European
educational systems. I feel like most of our history is the
medieval period (hyperbole, but like a good year of it). It is very
important for the national myths:)
I agree that there’s elements of SSC that need to be called out, but
this feels more like the poster only skimmed the first part of the blog
post.
She has a point that Scott is spouting of about a topic he doesn’t
know much about, but he is responding to a cracked article. And both she
and Scott seem to agree that making value judgements on history are a
bad idea. He also admits that he’s discussing the dark ages to make a
wider point, he’s not really trying to get into the real facts of the
case. So anyone who goes running off saying ‘Scott thinks he proved that
the dark ages are real!’ completely missed the point.
He did argue that you could make the case for a dark age based on the fact that he couldn't find any significant books or philosophers or maps etc. He then goes on to say:
>I like this debate because it’s so pointless, but also reveals some of the basic structure of these kinds of arguments. Like most language questions, we act like we’re debating facts, when in fact we’re debating fuzzy category boundaries that are underdetermined by facts. See previous work on is Pluto a planet?, is obesity a disease?, are transgender people their chosen gender?, etc.
>There’s no strict criteria for what makes something a Dark Age or whether the term should be used at all. We’re left to wonder whether using it conveys more useful information than it does misinformation.
And then later
>I think I know why this question bothers me so much, and it’s because I hate when faux-intellectuals give stupid black-and-white narratives that are the tiniest sliver more sophisticated than the stupid black-and-white narratives that the general population believes, then demand to be celebrated for their genius and have everyone who disagrees with them shunned as gullible science-denying fools.
>(I know a lot of people accuse me and this blog of doing exactly this, and I’m sorry. All I can say is that I’m at the odd-numbered levels of some signaling game you’re at the even-numbered levels of, and it sucks for all of us.)
Bear in mind that he's responding to the cracked article to make a point that if you're going to say that the dark ages didn't exist because they weren't bad, then you'll have to re-evaluate terms like Alexander the 'great' etc., not a serious historian who argues that the period known as the dark ages only looks that way because it was so divided that it's quite complex to study properly.
Edit: I will say that he can be rightly skewered for the arrogance and pompous righteousness of his language, but lampooning his position on the dark ages I feel misses the point.
> Edit: I will say that he can be rightly skewered for the arrogance and pompous righteousness of his language, but lampooning his position on the dark ages I feel misses the point.
Scott has used examples in other that actually counter his point in the past. I'm thinking specifically of a time he discussed the Northern Ireland conflict in an article about how being nice is the best way to win when the situation (or Situation if you prefer) was precipitated by state sponsored violence against peaceful protest and ended because of sustained terrorist violence forced them to the negotiating table.
You can argue about the moral implications of both stances as well as the specific actions undertaken but he has a history of misconstruing examples to support some point. In this case the historian is totally right for taking him to task - if he had an issue with the Cracked article he should have talked to historians to see what they actually think of the topic instead of assuming the example supports his point.
That I can get behind, and using the cracked article as a straw man is a much better accusation. If you just go with a 'he thinks the dark ages is real!,' he's going to think that a boilerplate up the top absolves him because that's not what he actually cares about.
“I can almost certainly say that whoever wrote this blog would never dream of writing off an entire branch of science based on his limited understanding of the subject”
And you would be wrong lmao
One of the early things that broke me out of my SSC-reading days was reading his posts about an area I’m fairly well-versed in (neurobiology) and thinking that his argument was not very well-founded. And that was in an area he (theoretically) has some background in…
“Would the guy who wrote this think that Fox was a reliable narrator of the Obama presidency? The two sentiments are exactly the same.”
I love this. Also I feel the author’s pain: just spent a day dealing with a client asking why they pay us for the job we do (creative sector - people love to shit on us just as much as historians).
Why DO people like SSC shit on the humanities as much as they do? They seem to think it’s easy, and I just don’t understand why, when it seems to me that a little experience with any of these disciplines would immediately make ’em take their words back! (At least I hope it would…)
History is likely the largest difference between US and European educational systems. I feel like most of our history is the medieval period (hyperbole, but like a good year of it). It is very important for the national myths:)
I agree that there’s elements of SSC that need to be called out, but this feels more like the poster only skimmed the first part of the blog post.
She has a point that Scott is spouting of about a topic he doesn’t know much about, but he is responding to a cracked article. And both she and Scott seem to agree that making value judgements on history are a bad idea. He also admits that he’s discussing the dark ages to make a wider point, he’s not really trying to get into the real facts of the case. So anyone who goes running off saying ‘Scott thinks he proved that the dark ages are real!’ completely missed the point.
Is this blogger a rationalist? That is indeed a pretty dumb post but what’s the connection?
I wish this blogger would address the actual arguments of the post. (S)he only addresses a meta-point, and a fairly strawman-looking one at that.