✳flâneur — a map of the web's best reading

Explaining vs. Explaining Away — LessWrong

lesswrong.com · 7,649 words · saved by 1 readers

...Do not all charms fly At the mere touch of cold philosophy? There was an awful rainbow once in heaven: We know her woof, her texture; she is given In the dull catalogue of common things. Philosophy will clip an Angel's wings, Conquer all mysteries by rule and line, Empty the haunted air, and gnomed mine— Unweave a rainbow... My usual reply ends with the phrase: "If we cannot learn to take joy in the merely real, our lives will be empty indeed." I shall expand on that tomorrow. Today I have a different point in mind. Let's just take the lines: Empty the haunted air, and gnomed mine— Unweave a rainbow... Apparently "the mere touch of cold philosophy", i.e., the truth, has destroyed: Which calls to mind a rather different bit of verse: One of these things Is not like the others One of these things Doesn't belong The air has been emptied of its haunts, and the mine de-gnomed—but the rainbow is still there! In "Righting a Wrong Question", I wrote: Tracing back the chain of causality,

x Explaining vs. Explaining Away — LessWrong Reductionism 101 Causality Emotions Physics Reductionism Frontpage 116 Explaining vs. Explaining Away by Eliezer Yudkowsky 17th Mar 2008 4 min read 101 116 John Keats's Lamia (1819) surely deserves some kind of award for Most Famously Annoying Poetry: ...Do not all charms fly At the mere touch of cold philosophy? There was an awful rainbow once in heaven: We know her woof, her texture; she is given In the dull catalogue of common things. Philosophy will clip an Angel's wings, Conquer all mysteries by rule and line, Empty the haunted air, and gnomed

Explore this link on the map →

related reading