BoI wrong about dealing with bad philosophy

[Elliot Temple]

BoI:

> Bad philosophy is philosophy that denies the possibility, desirability or existence of progress. And progress is the only effective way of opposing bad philosophy.

this is wrong b/c progress is open to interpretation, and bad philosophy (irrational) interpretations may contradict reality. what you will consider progress depends on what you want to accomplish, what you think is good, how you interpret world events, etc

here are some of the best examples of massive progress, massive success, where the massive good is about as "obvious" (low amount of interpretation needed) as it gets:

golden rice, coal power plants, vaccines, computer screens

all of these are strongly opposed, vilified, even hated, by tons of people.

Elliot Temple
www.fallibleideas.com
www.curi.us

[Alisa Zinov'yevna Rosenbaum]

Progress isn’t a surefire way of opposing bad philosophy, and it may not be the “only” way as DD writes. However, I think making progress can have the *effect* of opposing bad philosophy, even if that is not its primary purpose. This is because some people will notice the progress and be inclined to investigate the ideas associated with it. Progress is good for its own sake (for the people who make it) but it also has a kind of aura or glow that inspires others to pay attention when they otherwise wouldn’t. Such people will think things like, ‘If I learn about this philosophy, I can get more of thing X, Y, and Z that I already like. Let me investigate more about this.’ Then they might learn a bit of good philosophy, and this opposes bad philosophy.

[Lulie Tanett]

They're hated, but aren't they nonetheless considered to be "progress"? Often people say, "yes technically they're progress, but is all 'progress' good?"

When new stuff is made, regardless of what you think about it, you can point at it and go, hey look, new stuff. The thing that's disagreed on is sometimes which particular ideas lead to that new stuff, or, more often, on whether the new stuff is good.

--
Lulie Tanett

[Elliot Temple]

On Jun 8, 2014, at 11:04 AM, Lulie Tanett <lu...@LULIE.ORG> wrote:

>
> On 7 Jun 2014, at 06:59, Elliot Temple cu...@curi.us [fallible-ideas] <fallibl...@yahoogroups.com> wrote:
>
>> BoI:
>>
>>> Bad philosophy is philosophy that denies the possibility, desirability or existence of progress. And progress is the only effective way of opposing bad philosophy.
>>
>> this is wrong b/c progress is open to interpretation, and bad philosophy (irrational) interpretations may contradict reality. what you will consider progress depends on what you want to accomplish, what you think is good, how you interpret world events, etc
>>
>> here are some of the best examples of massive progress, massive success, where the massive good is about as "obvious" (low amount of interpretation needed) as it gets:
>>
>> golden rice, coal power plants, vaccines, computer screens
>>
>> all of these are strongly opposed, vilified, even hated, by tons of people.
>
> They're hated, but aren't they nonetheless considered to be "progress"? Often people say, "yes technically they're progress, but is all 'progress' good?"

if people doubt progress is good, then making progress isn't going to be super duper automatically convincing to them.

so if opponents agree to call it "progress", that terminology concession doesn't really help what BoI was going for.

> When new stuff is made, regardless of what you think about it, you can point at it and go, hey look, new stuff. The thing that's disagreed on is sometimes which particular ideas lead to that new stuff, or, more often, on whether the new stuff is good.

so do you agree BoI's position on this is mistaken?

Elliot Temple
www.fallibleideas.com
www.curi.us