Friday, March 30, 2012

Jonathan Haidt is on a roll:

Consider this gem:
The fundamental rule of political analysis from the point of psychology is, follow the sacredness, and around it is a ring of motivated ignorance.


I would say that's true for scientific analysis too.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Um, no. If by "scientific analysis" you are referring to economics, then perhaps you are right. Real science, however, has laws that are sacred (think Newton's Law of Motion, Avogadro's Law, Schrödinger equation, etc.) and proposing they are surrounded by a ring of ignorance puts you in the same league as the moon landing denialists, intelligent design advocates, etc.

Eric Falkenstein said...

I don't want to get too far into semantics, but I think the way he's using sacred here is not which assumption are used, but rather, which somewhat debatable assumptions are used. As virtually no sane person disputes the assumptions you mention, they aren't sacred facts, but simple facts.

Anonymous said...

The quote makes no sense whatsoever. If that's what you mean by a roll, then go for it.