Continuing the discussion from Applying Yes or No Philosophy with @lmf
Did you post about the problems with TCS anywhere?
Not a lot. There is a bit mixed into my explanations of my history with DD, of DD’s social climbing, of the harassment problems, etc. BTW, since I think you’re an Objectivist, I think this will interest you: Curiosity – David Deutsch Smears Ayn Rand
I have an unfinished draft criticizing a DD TCS article but some of the criticism is parochial (more about DD and what he wrote than principles). There are several issues with writing much TCS criticism, including:
- Hardly anyone knows anything about TCS, so first I’d have to explain TCS before I criticize it, or almost no one would understand it.
- Hardly anyone cares about TCS, or wants to learn some errors in order to read criticism of those errors.
- There are no pro-TCS people who will debate or address arguments.
- Writing explanations of CF is more important to me.
- DD and the others do not want criticism of TCS/FoR/BoI/etc. They interpret criticism of TCS as aggression. That kind of thing motivates them to violate my rights.
- DD and SFC have taken down multiple websites and articles. It’s problematic to comment on stuff that the authors are trying to unpublish (though without admitting it). I have saved archives of some things and live mirrors online for others, but they don’t want this stuff shared, read or talked about. They won’t clearly say a policy though and sometimes act like it’s all public and being actively shared (SFC did some podcasts and talks about TCS recently and acted like TCS had been continuously active, under her leadership, since the 90s, which is false. And around the same time she was giving talks she took down all content from her main TCS website and said that it would be back soon, but it’s still all gone with no replacement from her. I think it’s been gone for over 6 months now).
- Some things which are not available online – particularly TCS journal articles – are problematic to share due to copyright.
I remain partially pro-TCS – I still agree with some of the ideas and values. But, in short, I think TCS tried to offer a shortcut to unearned results.
The shortcut was that the parent doesn’t have to learn enough to fix their irrationalities, they just have to shield their child from the irrationalities by e.g. not frowning, punishing or coercing the child, and then allegedly the irrationalities will not hurt the child. That’s unrealistic/naive, plus children learn ideas from their society and the parents need to know a ton about all that stuff to help the child think about it well.
The only way to actually get good parenting results is to develop lots of knowledge. The more you know, the better you can do. I think people need learn a lot of philosophy, and many other things, to really high standards, in addition to learning stuff specifically about parenting (or else just be kinda normal – don’t try to do something special if you don’t know a ton).
TCS actually told people they didn’t need to read Popper, and actually didn’t even need to read Deutsch’s books, in order to be great parents. That’s trying to offer shortcuts to non-intellectuals and get them to trust the leaders, like SFC and DD, who (allegedly) know the details from the books. It’s bad to organize it so people can’t think for themselves and have to trust the experts. (EDIT: And then those experts abandoned people in the middle of their kids’ childhoods and stopped advising. And they didn’t admit to quitting, left people confused, offered no recommendations about where else to get help, and actively suppressed sharing information about resources that still existed – e.g. some people never found out that I had made a new TCS email group where they could still get answers to questions.)
children can learn language, so therefore they are universal explainers, so therefore they are morally equivalent to adults who happen to not know much
That much I basically agree with.
There were something like 60,000 TCS emails. DD wrote around 2,000 and sent each to a public group of ~1000 people (who all got copies emailed to them to be saved indefinitely on their own computers) on a listserv with archives (and instructions in the welcome message about how to download all the archived emails, including how new members could get all emails from before they joined. new members could join automatically with no screening). Nevertheless, he doesn’t want anyone to read those emails. Or at least not anyone who dislikes them. DD believes, basically, that the general public would disagree with him so much they’d never listen to him about anything again and it’d ruin his career. He didn’t explain why he changed his mind (that was not his belief when writing the emails). I do think some of his emails were extremely bad and would offend virtually everyone for good reason. I don’t believe DD is prepared to retract any of that material though – he didn’t change his mind about his claims. I think he still thinks he’s right and that other people are wrong and too irrational to listen. I have chosen, so far, to refrain from summarizing, quoting or otherwise emphasizing and spreading the worst things that DD (and a bunch of others) posted.
Anyway, there was a lot of writing. I think you’re not familiar with what TCS was actually like, so a lot of criticism of TCS wouldn’t mean much to you.