Sunday, December 29, 2019

Simplifying too soon

I got halfway through The Righteous Mind by Haidt before duty called me away.

My first reaction is that the philosophical systematizers (e.g. Kant with his categorical imperative, or Bentham with maximized happiness, or Thales and his water all were missing the forest for the trees. They wound up indulging in what computer programmers call "premature optimization."

You've got part of the problem, wring it for all it's worth and hope that solves the whole thing. Hammer on that screw; it'll go in somehow!

Even the three commandments (Micah 6:8) or the two commandments (Matthew 22:36-40), though they seem simple distillations, do not tell the whole story unless you know the shape of love, and the 10 commandments help reveal the shape.

In physics, it turns out that instead of simply the electromagnetic force as the Victorian sci-fi writers knew, we have at least 3 (gravity, electro-weak, and strong). As noted (disparagingly) before, it isn't just philosophers trying to oversimplify--so do some physicists. And politicians. God preserve us from planners with their "simple, obvious, and wrong" solutions. I include self-driving car designers here.

1 comment:

Assistant Village Idiot said...

One of the tells is when they say "It just stands to reason." Bad sign. Run away.