When Enlightenment thinkers developed the theories that serve as the foundation for the hard sciences today, they were able to use simple models to explain a vast diversity of phenomena. However difficult were the questions answered by men like Newton, Mendeleev, or Darwin, the theories they developed were low-hanging fruit: single, first order explanations for a diversity of previously unexplained phenomena.
As science continues to progress into the soft domains like sociology, medicine, economics, or psychology, major effects are the exception rather than the rule. Granted, one still does get lucky even in those fields, as Charles Spearman did a hundred years ago with the discovery of g - but this was still a discovery made early on in the history of its field, and since then there has been nothing with comparable explanatory power to emerge in the entire field of psychology.
My own findings in the soft sciences are that, if there are five imaginable explanations for some effect - five reasonable answers to some question - then at least four of them are true to some degree. So I definitely endorse your position, in contrast to the skeptics and naysayers of all stripes: If one desires to understand a world where virtually every idea has some explanatory power, the wiser course is, inevitably, to remember more than we forget.
(Edit: This post references an earlier draft of the article and no longer really makes any sense. I would delete it, but the blog owner informs me that killing posts is a sin.)
"For that reason, I think killing an idea is a sin"
Wow lady you are hard core. Seriously, killing ideas is sinful? If it's a sin, what do we do after we kill an idea? Undertake a pilgrimage or ritual cleansing? Make a memorial?
Incidentally I'm reminded of those poor Georgia Guidestones which now only exist on Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georgia_Guidestones . I think whoever blew them up was the kind of person I'd personally rather didn't exist, and I'm glad the ideas written down on those guidestones are still around in electronic form. So I'm with you 90%. I'm a big fan of keeping far-out, off-the-wall, unpopular ideas around. But this talk about sin is itself really far out. Yes, even bad ideas are mostly worth keeping around - but not all ideas.
So this response I'm writing right here is me, challenging you, to justify your idea that throwing away ideas is sinful. Hard mode: Follow through and justify the idea that throwing away obvious stupid ideas like "2 + 4 = 9" is a sin. I don't think you can do it.
When Enlightenment thinkers developed the theories that serve as the foundation for the hard sciences today, they were able to use simple models to explain a vast diversity of phenomena. However difficult were the questions answered by men like Newton, Mendeleev, or Darwin, the theories they developed were low-hanging fruit: single, first order explanations for a diversity of previously unexplained phenomena.
As science continues to progress into the soft domains like sociology, medicine, economics, or psychology, major effects are the exception rather than the rule. Granted, one still does get lucky even in those fields, as Charles Spearman did a hundred years ago with the discovery of g - but this was still a discovery made early on in the history of its field, and since then there has been nothing with comparable explanatory power to emerge in the entire field of psychology.
My own findings in the soft sciences are that, if there are five imaginable explanations for some effect - five reasonable answers to some question - then at least four of them are true to some degree. So I definitely endorse your position, in contrast to the skeptics and naysayers of all stripes: If one desires to understand a world where virtually every idea has some explanatory power, the wiser course is, inevitably, to remember more than we forget.
(Edit: This post references an earlier draft of the article and no longer really makes any sense. I would delete it, but the blog owner informs me that killing posts is a sin.)
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"For that reason, I think killing an idea is a sin"
Wow lady you are hard core. Seriously, killing ideas is sinful? If it's a sin, what do we do after we kill an idea? Undertake a pilgrimage or ritual cleansing? Make a memorial?
Incidentally I'm reminded of those poor Georgia Guidestones which now only exist on Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georgia_Guidestones . I think whoever blew them up was the kind of person I'd personally rather didn't exist, and I'm glad the ideas written down on those guidestones are still around in electronic form. So I'm with you 90%. I'm a big fan of keeping far-out, off-the-wall, unpopular ideas around. But this talk about sin is itself really far out. Yes, even bad ideas are mostly worth keeping around - but not all ideas.
So this response I'm writing right here is me, challenging you, to justify your idea that throwing away ideas is sinful. Hard mode: Follow through and justify the idea that throwing away obvious stupid ideas like "2 + 4 = 9" is a sin. I don't think you can do it.