Re:Seven basic rules for causal inference
by 082349872349872 on Monday August 19, 2024 @04:01PM
(#41294144)
> ...it took centuries for anyone to find an alternative...
Pedantry: s/centuries/millennia/ (roughly 21 of the former, 2 of the latter?)
EDIT: does anyone remember the quote about problems patiently waiting for our understanding to improve?
See also Euclid; the fact that his geometry turns out not to be The Geometry does not diminish what it means to have blazed that trail. And it took centuries for anyone to find an alternative; that's quite an accomplishment.
If I have a backhanded criticism hiding in my comment, it actually isn't pointed at Aristotle, but at the school system that may teach some super basic logic at some point and accidentally teaches people that's all logic is, in much the same way stats class accidentally teaches people that everything is uniformly randomly distributed (because it makes the homework problems easier, which is legitimately true, but does reduce the education's value in the real world), leaving people fairly vulnerable to the lists of fallacies they may find on the internet and unequipped to realize that they only apply in certain ways, in certain cases. I don't know that I've ever seen such a list where they point out that they have some validity in a probabilistic sense. There's also the fallacies that are just plain fallacious even so, but I don't generally see them segmented off or anything.