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accidentallfact 3 hours ago

It's the same kind of schizm that has lead to a lot of hate and mass murder over the last century or so: Abstraction/dimensionality reduction vs. concrete logic and statistics

Concrete statistician: I can learn the problem in its full complexity, unlike the dumdum below me.

Abstract thinker: I understand it, because I can reduce its dimensity to a small number of parameters.

CS: I can predict this because I have statistics about its past behavior.

AT: I told you so.

CS: You couldn't possibly know this, because it has never happened before. You suffer from the hindsight bias.

AT: But I told you.

CS: It has never happened, you couldn't possibly have statistics of when such things occur. You were just lucky.

CS: I'm smart, I can be taught anything

AT: You are stupid because you need to be taught everything.

War (or another sort of mass death or other kind of suffering) emerges.

dcre 3 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Incredibly ironic to make this argument using such an abstract and low-dimensional framework.

iammjm 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

What are some concrete examples of wars that you believe emerged due to this schism?

accidentallfact 3 hours ago | parent [-]

It seems that a large majority of conflicts did:

The revolutionary war: CS America vs AT british empire.

The french revolution: CS revolutionaries vs AT aristocracy.

American Civil war: CS North, vs AT South

WWII: AT Nazis, vs CS jews.

Probably many more.