Eliezer Yudkowsky

But with the rainbow, it is not even necessary to go that far.

The rainbow is still there.

Reductionism.

Almost one year ago, in April of 2007, Matthew C. submitted the following suggestion for an overcoming bias topic.

How and why the current reigning philosophical hegemon, reductionistic materialism, is obviously correct, while the reigning philosophical viewpoints of all past societies and civilizations are obviously suspect.

I remember this because I looked at the request and deemed it legitimate, but I know I couldn't do that topic until I'd started on the mind projection fallacy sequence, which wouldn't be for a while.

But now it's time to begin addressing this question.

And while I haven't yet come to the materialism issue, we can now start on reductionism.

First, let it be said that I do indeed hold that reductionism, according to the meaning I will give for that word, is obviously correct, and to perdition with any past civilizations that disagreed.

This seems like a strong statement, at least the first part of it.

General relativity seems well supported, yet who knows but that some future physicist may overturn it."

On the other hand, we are never going back to Newtonian mechanics.

The ratchet of science turns, but it does not turn in reverse.

There are cases in scientific history where a theory suffered a wound or two and then bounced back.

But when a theory takes as many arrows through the chest as Newtonian mechanics, it stays dead.

To hell with what past civilizations thought.

Seems safe enough.

When past civilizations believed in something that has been falsified to the trash heap of history.

And reductionism is not so much a positive hypothesis as the absence of belief.

In particular, disbelief in a form of the mind projection fallacy.