Here is an example from physics: when you first learn about the speed of light, you are told that the speed of light in vacuum is constant, and its speed in other materials is slower. This tends to produce a mental model in your mind in which the speed of light in a vacuum is a special case of the speed of light in generic materials; the vacuum is just one special type of material.
Data point: it never, ever occurred to me to think about the speed of light in this way, until I read your post. It still seems weird. The other view—“the speed of light in a material is just a special case of the speed of light in vacuum”—is what I always took for granted.
This [utilitarianism vs. deontology] is a good example where the inversion, in my opinion, isn’t quite as correct as the original viewpoint, but it still sheds light on the situation.
Similarly, the former of the two viewpoints you list here didn’t occur to me at first (until I started seeing people here on Less Wrong talk about utilitarianism; before then, I knew of these ideas from academic philosophy); and, contrary to what you say, it still seems obviously wrong.
Both of the “former” views are positions I held in the past (the one about light when I was very young, and the one about morality much more recently). I agree that the latter ones are right; I’m not sure what I was thinking when I wrote for the morality example that the latter is less correct than the former.
Data point: it never, ever occurred to me to think about the speed of light in this way, until I read your post. It still seems weird. The other view—“the speed of light in a material is just a special case of the speed of light in vacuum”—is what I always took for granted.
Similarly, the former of the two viewpoints you list here didn’t occur to me at first (until I started seeing people here on Less Wrong talk about utilitarianism; before then, I knew of these ideas from academic philosophy); and, contrary to what you say, it still seems obviously wrong.
Both of the “former” views are positions I held in the past (the one about light when I was very young, and the one about morality much more recently). I agree that the latter ones are right; I’m not sure what I was thinking when I wrote for the morality example that the latter is less correct than the former.