Has it occurred to anyone else that referring to quantitative scientific thought as “the Quantitative way” or capital-s “Science” may be reinforcing this type of misconception? In my experience many of the non-science crowd are slow to spot some types of humor (or satire, whatever this is properly classified as), and would take this as actual cult behavior.
Yeah, it does tend to lend sort of a cultish feel to the whole thing...I think Eliezer knows this, but underestimates how strongly people react to it. Remember, the general population is composed of the kind of people who think that dinosaurs and humans coexisted and don’t know what a year is (or at least the general population in the US, I haven’t seen similar studies from other areas). Don’t expect them to be able to detect irony (if they even know that irony isn’t an adjective relating to iron).
Has it occurred to anyone else that referring to quantitative scientific thought as “the Quantitative way” or capital-s “Science” may be reinforcing this type of misconception? In my experience many of the non-science crowd are slow to spot some types of humor (or satire, whatever this is properly classified as), and would take this as actual cult behavior.
Just my 2 cents on this kind of humor.
I agree. Actually I think that applies to the whole “Zen speaking” Eliezer often uses.
Yeah, it does tend to lend sort of a cultish feel to the whole thing...I think Eliezer knows this, but underestimates how strongly people react to it. Remember, the general population is composed of the kind of people who think that dinosaurs and humans coexisted and don’t know what a year is (or at least the general population in the US, I haven’t seen similar studies from other areas). Don’t expect them to be able to detect irony (if they even know that irony isn’t an adjective relating to iron).