this post was submitted on 16 Nov 2024
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Knowledge comes from practice. Humans always did things first before they gained the knowledge. Think of apprenticeship and the natural sciences for example.
What I have a big issue with is today's notion that application follows knowledge. A top down approach where academia is isolated from the feedback of the real world. What the hell do I mean by that?
A business or an artist goes bust if they do not perform well, they have direct risks attached to their work. While we can produce 'knowledge' (institutional knowledge), new (made up) economic theories, new (un-replicable) psychological explanations and so on, without any apparent problem. The natural selective feedback is missing. Academia is gamified, most researchers know they could be doing more useful research, yet their grants and prospects of publications don't let them.
So when I hear reason and understanding casually thrown around, I smell scientism (the marketing of science, science bullshit if you will) and not actual science. Because no peer review will be able to overrule what time has proven in the real world. And traditions are such things that endured. Usually someone realizes and writes another paper, disproving the previous one, advancing science.
Don't get me wrong, there are and were many unambiguously bad traditions by modern standards, and I'm sure there will be more. But we, the people are the evolutionary filter of traditions. We decide which ones are the fit ones, which ones of the ones we inherited will we pass down and which to banish into history.
Tradition is the lowest common denominator, and relying on our collective filter for social evolution is the least efficient metric by which to evaluate productive change; tradition is the worst reason.
Just give me one example where tradition is not the worst reason for doing anything (I know you did already but I am convinced tradition is still a worse reason that sadistic pleasure, both as a valid justification and in terms of net-negative suffering outcomes).
"Because I can"
I'm not convinced this is a valid reason. It's really just another way of saying "because I want to", which is still a better than tradition.
Subjective. I think it is way worse. Or "to see the world burn", "to make humanity extinct".
Be it a moral or technical angle, there is many worse than "because our ancestors did it this way and we still came about".
As another commenter replied to you, you're conflating bad outcomes with good reasons.
"To watch the world burn" is still a better reason, even if the outcome is the same, or worse.
A 'good reason' is a useless illusion if it doesn't lead to good outcomes.
A good reason is not something that follows the form A->B.
Last I checked people don't live in Plato's abstract plane of perfection, but in the imperfect and chaotic reality. A 'good reason' is a terrible one if it leads you or me to ruin, period.
I think the problem here is you've assumed my usage of "good" and "bad" are referring to the net reduction / increase of suffering.
I've been using the term "worst" as synonymous with "least valid". So yes, within my context, good reason implicitly follows the form A->B.
Seriously, think about it for a moment. without knowing whether the OUTCOME is good or bad, what is a good REASON?
If you found your friend bleeding out, slipping in and out of consciousness, life and death situation, and a cop chases you all the way to the hospital, do you think the cop is going to think you have a good REASON for speeding?
Tradition is the least valid reason (in terms of epistemology) for doing anything.
Saying "because" is just straight up invalid.
alternatively:
You understood nothing of the meaning. You argue on a textbook definition. Do you understand what tradition is?
Can you not see the difference of evolutionary and arbitrary?
Just because != tradition.
You underestimate how much is (successfully) driven by heuristics at every moment.
And please, keep the formal logic where it belongs, the paper. I studied enough logic to know how infexible of a tool it is to deal with the problems of the real world.
We're arguing about semantics, of course I'm going to argue about the textbook definition.
I'm not denying tradition has often had a deeper meaning behind it which has resulted in good outcomes.
All I've been saying this entire time is that as far as REASONS go, tradition IS the least valid.
If you choose to conflate "good reason" with "good outcome", go argue with a dictionary.
Typical predictionist world view. "Trying to lecture birds how to fly, because we have the Navier-Stokes equations."
This is the same logical error that collapses the economy (eg. in 2008). Trying to predict the world, trying our damnedest to shoehorn it into a reductionist model. And then we act surprised, "nobody could have seen that coming", when a black swan event happens. 99% days were 'following' the rule, one day it crashed erasing all preceding. So how correct is a prediction like that, not 99% in my view. (In face of unpredictability, risk reduction and resiliency is the solution, not more prediction.)
If we want to engage in mental exercises that have no relation to the real world, then sure let's turn to the textbook. Just make sure you don't forget to look up when crossing the road, traffic rules can't overwrite physical ones. In the same vein as outcomes are real, reasons are made up.
(Just as you can find an infinite number of mathematical functions that fit a set of points. You can create an unlimited supply of models that explain an event, yet fail when a new data point is collected. Is the real world at fault then or the model?)
You're literally too stupid to argue with, I'm not wasting my time even reading this shit.