I think it’s pretty obvious that monogamy isn’t built into human nature, but I object to the post pretty vehemently. Do you have any examples of vehement objections by people who insist that polyamory is ‘bad’ as opposed to by people who think that bad reasoning is ‘bad’?
I even said I planned to read the book some day, as it sounded interesting but badly reasoned. However, a short summary of an interesting but badly reasoned book, when the summary itself doesn’t comment on the bad reasoning but instead endorses said reasoning, on a rationality blog, seems to indicate to me that the author of the summary needs more practice before they can talk rationally about the subject.
Do you have any examples of vehement objections by people who insist that polyamory is ‘bad’ as opposed to by people who think that bad reasoning is ‘bad’?
Not specifically, no, nor did I expect to see objections on those grounds. LW generally frowns on unjustified moral absolutes, so far as I can tell. What I did expect to see (and do see) is motivated arguing that ignores my repeated protestations that this is the introductory first post in a sequence.
It is certainly true that I erred in mentioning the proposed hypothesis before showing the evidence that had gone into locating it. Yes, my bad. But the intended purpose of the post was not so obtuse that no one could comprehend it.
Why are you so convinced that Sex at Dawn (and my belief in its conclusion) is badly reasoned? You haven’t seen the reasoning yet! Would it be an unendurable annoyance if I were to ask you to hold off on forming a conclusion for another 12 hours, while I finish the second post? It won’t contain all the evidence I’m planning to present, but there’s a chance it’ll convince you that there was at least some amount of reasoning involved in this whole process.
Strong disagreements with Pinker are strong evidence for poor reasoning, but much weaker evidence for being wrong.
The blog post itself and its comments are pretty compelling evidence for poor rationality skills under stress, most notably the Malthus bit, as people other than myself have mentioned.
I endorse lots of books with fairly bad reasoning.
I think it’s pretty obvious that monogamy isn’t built into human nature, but I object to the post pretty vehemently. Do you have any examples of vehement objections by people who insist that polyamory is ‘bad’ as opposed to by people who think that bad reasoning is ‘bad’?
I even said I planned to read the book some day, as it sounded interesting but badly reasoned. However, a short summary of an interesting but badly reasoned book, when the summary itself doesn’t comment on the bad reasoning but instead endorses said reasoning, on a rationality blog, seems to indicate to me that the author of the summary needs more practice before they can talk rationally about the subject.
Not specifically, no, nor did I expect to see objections on those grounds. LW generally frowns on unjustified moral absolutes, so far as I can tell. What I did expect to see (and do see) is motivated arguing that ignores my repeated protestations that this is the introductory first post in a sequence.
It is certainly true that I erred in mentioning the proposed hypothesis before showing the evidence that had gone into locating it. Yes, my bad. But the intended purpose of the post was not so obtuse that no one could comprehend it.
Why are you so convinced that Sex at Dawn (and my belief in its conclusion) is badly reasoned? You haven’t seen the reasoning yet! Would it be an unendurable annoyance if I were to ask you to hold off on forming a conclusion for another 12 hours, while I finish the second post? It won’t contain all the evidence I’m planning to present, but there’s a chance it’ll convince you that there was at least some amount of reasoning involved in this whole process.
What claims are do you think are being made and how do you identify them as motivated arguments?
So you haven’t read the book, but you know it’s badly reasoned, and anyone who endorses it must not be good at rationality?
Strong disagreements with Pinker are strong evidence for poor reasoning, but much weaker evidence for being wrong.
The blog post itself and its comments are pretty compelling evidence for poor rationality skills under stress, most notably the Malthus bit, as people other than myself have mentioned.
I endorse lots of books with fairly bad reasoning.
I’m also surprised and confused by Michael Vassar’s reaction to this post.