A while back, I set myself the project of figuring out how much of the MIT undergrad physics curriculum could be taught from free online books. The answer, so far, is more than I had anticipated but much less than what we deserve. But working on that, along with a few other conversations, has got me to wondering. We’ve seen TESCREAL types be just plain wrong about science many times over the years. Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality botches Punnett squares and pretty much everything more advanced than that. LessWrong demonstrably has no filter against old-school math crankery. The (ahem) leading light of “effective accelerationism” just plays Mad Libs with physics words. Yudkowsky’s declarations about organic chemistry boggle the educated mind. They even manage to be weird about theoretical computer science — what we might call the “lambda calculus is super-Turing!” school of TESCREAL.
Sometimes, the difference between a TESCREAL understanding of science and a legitimate one comes from having studied the subject in a formal way. But not every aspiring autodidact with an interest in molecular biology or the theoretical limits of computation is a lost cause!
So, then: What books come down upon the superficial TESCREAL version of cool things like a ton of scientific bricks? What are the texts that one withdraws from an inside coat pocket and slides across the table, saying “This here is the good shit”?
Oh geez, just saw this response, feel really bad I missed it- you put a ton of effort into it! (And I’m overwhelmed with work right now, so I can’t reply in the depth it deserves, alas!)
In short, though: Your arguments largely make sense to me, and I’m reasonably persuaded by them! I too also think Kuhn has been treated worse than he deserves- yes, others have surpassed him since, but few of them are as approachable to laymen as he is, and that’s worth something, imho. (I’m also kinder to Jared Diamond than many folks for similar reasons. Yeah, he fucked a lot of stuff up, but he got a lot of laymen- including me, before I started by studies in geology- interested in environmental history, so at the very least he deserves that nod.) And I’d agree that Feyerebend did better than Kuhn! (Maybe not on layman approachability, but he’s not that much tougher than Kuhn- I certainly had no trouble, and I’m a dilettante in philosophy of science.)
Wish I had time for a longer (and very belated) reply, but thanks for the great response!
And is the “beam of pink energy from the future” a reference to Philip K Dick’s Valis, by any chance?