William Godwin by Elton Edward Smith and Esther Greenwell Smith, p 121

When time came for the widow of Percy Bysshe Shelley to choose a school for their surviving son, someone suggested that he should go to a school where he would be free to think for himself. "To think for himself!" exclaimed the woman who was the daughter of the unique Mary Wollstonecraft and the unique William Godwin, the widow of the unique Percy Shelley, and the author of the unique Frankestein. "Oh my God, teach him to think like other people!" Mary Shelley knew the joys and the perils of independence, and she wanted something different for her boy. Everyone she knew intimately had been an independent thinker, heroic, never ceasing "from mental fight." But for her son she desired the settled calm of an ordinary boyhood and a commonplace life.[1]

[1] The citation is J. Middleton Murry, Heaven--and Earth (London, 1938), p. 254.

This is interesting in several ways. One is as an example of someone renouncing freedom of thought.

It also means that Godwin was right in his dispute with Mary and Shelley about their elopement. It turns out that Mary did not like the results of the lifestyle Godwin warned them against. Earlier in this book, it says most commentators think Shelley was right, and the book itself sides with Shelley. How can it do that when it contains this evidence?

That is not the only oddity of the book. Another is that it openly insults, without argument or substantial comment, three of Godwin's books, including one I've read and enjoyed (Damon and Delia). That is a theme I have observed in most books about Godwin: they are disrespectful towards Godwin.

Another common theme is that books about Godwin usually disagree with and misunderstand some of Godwin's major ideas. Why do people who don't like Godwin write about him, and where are the books by people who do like Godwin?

_Objective Knowledge_ by Karl Popper, p 221

physical determinism implies that every physical event in the distant future (or in the distance past) is predictable (or retrodictable) with any desired degree of precision, provided we have sufficient knowledge about the present state of the world.

This is false. Physical determinism does not imply that we can calculate what the past was like based on the present.

The reason is that some functions are not reversible. Knowing the function used, and the output, does not let you calculate the input.

An example is addition. If you know two numbers were added, and the result was four, you cannot work out what the original numbers were. The output of addition has less information than the input.

To predict the past based on the present, one needs to posit both physical determinism and that all the laws of physics are reversible.

_Objective Knowledge_ p 141

Bayesians (as the adherents of the subjective interpretation of the probability calculus now call themselves) ...

This ... I have combated for thirty-three years. Fundamentally, it springs from the same epistemic philosophy which attributes to the statement 'I know that snow is white' a greater epistemic dignity than to the statement 'snow is white'.

I do not see any reason why we should not attribute still greater epistemic dignity to the statement 'In the light of all the evidence available to me I believe that it is rational to believe that snow is white.' The same could be done, of course, with probability statements.

Objective Knowledge p 115

A man who reads a book with understanding is a rare creature.

http://www.forbes.com/2006/08/23/Marriage-Careers-Divorce_cx_mn_land.html

So why not just stay single? Because, academically speaking, a solid marriage has a host of benefits beyond just individual "happiness." There are broader social and health implications as well. According to a 2004 paper titled "What Do Social Scientists Know About the Benefits of Marriage?," marriage is positively associated with "better outcomes for children under most circumstances" and higher earnings for adult men, and "being married and being in a satisfying marriage are positively associated with health and negatively associated with mortality." In other words, a good marriage is associated with a higher income, a longer, healthier life and better-adjusted kids.

A word of caution, though: As with any social scientific study, it's important not to confuse correlation with causation. In other words, just because married folks are healthier than single people, it doesn't mean that marriage is causing the health gains. It could just be that healthier people are more likely to be married.

In English he just said:

1) I advise you to get married. Studies show it's a good idea.

2) But actually, bear in mind the studies didn't show anything of the sort. They could mean getting married will help, or they could mean it won't help. They are also consistent with it hurting.

Why would he say (1) if he seriously meant (2)?


Social scientists, in a sense, know their studies are mostly worthless, but in another sense refuse to know it and are in denial. Sometimes they use the excuse, "it was the best we could do!" as if that made the results truer.

Imagine a physicist using a grain of sand instead of a single atom and saying, "Sorry, it was the best I had available. My results should still be pretty accurate, right?"

Social scientists know they don't control for a lot of factors in their studies. They know lots of ways their results could be wrong. But because they don't know how to fix it, or can't afford to do things better, they hope and pray that it will be pretty accurate anyway.

In May 2007, I posted to the TCS list a Sad Story:

Show: Lizzie McGuire

Background: Lizzie is a pretty normal girl, about age 14. Larry
Tudgman is a nerd her age and one episode he asks her out. She feels
bad about rejecting him and decides to go on a date, but then he
tells people at school that they are boyfriend and girlfriend. She
breaks up with him and says they aren't compatible. She expects him
to cry. The conversation continues as follows:

Tudgman: I guess you're right. We're living a lie. I need a
girlfriend who's into astrophysics, amphibian skeletal systems, and
rotisserie baseball.

Lizzie: Yeah. And I need a boyfriend who's into
...
(pause)
...
"stuff". (small laugh)

The show then cuts to Lizzie's thoughts, and she thinks:

"Maybe I should develop some interests."

But then she adds:

"And then I could join a club and meet a boy there."

Someone replied:

I don't think that's necessarily a sad story at all.

Inexplicitly Lizzie is into a lot of things ... like figuring out
relationships, attraction, cultural ideas and expectations for girls.

These things are at least as important as amphibian skeletal systems.

And David Deutsch wrote:

In a way, yes. But in practice that's not really comparing like with like. There's 'figuring out' and there's 'figuring out'.

For instance, if the boy's figuring out leads him to the conclusion that existing ideas about amphibian skeletal systems are fundamentally flawed, and if he's right (or even interestingly wrong), then it will lead him to *gain* exactly what he's looking for: more and more chances of being entertained, respected, mentally enriched -- and indeed paid -- for doing that very kind of thinking, which he is already doing for the intrinsic fun of it even today.

But if Lizzie's figuring out leads her to the conclusion that existing ideas about relationships, attraction, cultural ideas and expectations for girls are fundamentally flawed, then whether she's right or wrong, this will lead her to *lose* all the things she is currently looking for. She will only get those things if her thinking ends up with the same conclusions as most of the other girls who are doing it.

I think the story is indeed sad because of the pause, and her subsequent thoughts, during which she did *not* say that she found those cultural ideas wonderful to think about -- nor anything else, for there was no such thing. It was precisely because Lizzie recognized her own life as being devoid of the kind of interests the boy had, that there was a painful gap. Which she eventually filled by deciding to do *more* of what she's not intrinsically interested in.

People commonly make appeals to authority in arguments. But how do you know how much authority there is on each side of an issue?

You'll have to think about it. Make conjectures, use criticism, and so on.

If you're going to do that, why not just do it about the issue directly? If it's hard because you don't know about the issue, you aren't going to be much good at judging who the proper authorities are either. You'll just have to go on what people tell you. In other words, find an authority on authority, like a university that grants certificates of authority (degrees).

An authority on authority does not solve the dilemma. How do you know he/it truly has the authority to make the pronouncements he/it does? Better ask an authority on authorities on authority. So you have a turtles all the way down dilemma (infinite regress).

So this appeal to authority approach fails.

But there's more. Isn't this a lot of trouble to avoid thinking and learning about stuff yourself?

It fails in that way, too! Trying to make it work, and defend it, and make judgments about who has authority, is itself a way of approaching issues that takes a lot of thought. So you haven't saved any thinking or effort.

You could always not think and hope that works. But then appeals to authority still make no sense. If you pick who to call an authority thoughtlessly or pick which side has more authority thoughtlessly, you are no better off than if you just directly pick a side of the issue thoughtlessly.

The TCS email list has not had much discussion for several years now. I am creating a new list with the goal of more active discussion. This list will not have moderation.

The list is intended for discussion of TCS principles, and for help and advice with parenting problems. Anyone can join, so please don't post private material. List archives are not saved.

Of course I will still be on the old TCS list. There is no problem being on both.

You can sign up at the group website:

http://groups.google.com/group/taking-children-seriously

Or you can subscribe by sending a blank email to:

[email protected]

EDIT: This is superseded by the Fallible Ideas list: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/fallible-ideas/