I see this pattern a lot when the argument is for libertarianism or objectivism instead of the singularity, for example. I figure the implicit reasoning is something in the lines of the problem, coming up with a great way to run all human societies or an excellent all-encompassing philosophy, appearing to most likely be both very hard and very complex, and the advocates proposing a very simple-sounding solution. Their reasoning might well be sound starting from the initial model for reality they picked up, but the proposed solution is so all-encompassing and simplistic sounding that there is most likely something wrong with the initial assumptions.
Engaging the hidden initial assumptions of the world model is a lot trickier than engaging with the argument, since they'd involve rooting out the implicit world model, figuring out where it's getting oversimplified, and how to bring the necessary additional complexity in to illustrate the problems with the simplistic solution, all of which are really hard work and not likely to get much help from the interlocutor.
This strikes me as a reasonably good approach to most overreaching first-principles social ideologies like libertarianism or communism, but these also have the shared failure mode of being intended to run on top of human society and probably not being prepared to deal with all the messy incidental complexity present in humans. Singularity ideologies are different in that end result is not intended to run on top of a human society, but they probably still get pattern-matched into the category of too-simple solutions to the very-complex problem of human society.
no subject
Date: 2012-02-22 06:59 am (UTC)Engaging the hidden initial assumptions of the world model is a lot trickier than engaging with the argument, since they'd involve rooting out the implicit world model, figuring out where it's getting oversimplified, and how to bring the necessary additional complexity in to illustrate the problems with the simplistic solution, all of which are really hard work and not likely to get much help from the interlocutor.
This strikes me as a reasonably good approach to most overreaching first-principles social ideologies like libertarianism or communism, but these also have the shared failure mode of being intended to run on top of human society and probably not being prepared to deal with all the messy incidental complexity present in humans. Singularity ideologies are different in that end result is not intended to run on top of a human society, but they probably still get pattern-matched into the category of too-simple solutions to the very-complex problem of human society.