It is philosophy, real philosophy, which says, “Well, if leapfrogging worked out, why not try it again?”

And we find that whether people are idiots depends on what, exactly, you care about. They may be idiots at doing formal science. This is roughly true. They’re not idiots at doing the stuff they care about.

You don’t actually have to be taught Bayes’ theorem. Most of the belief systems already work using exactly it. (They did studies, I may be able to dredge them up.) It’s just the professed beliefs that sometimes wildly deviate from Bayesian calculations.

Or, people buying lotto tickets know they’re not going to win. They’re not looking for positive financial expected value, or else they’d give up after a few tries. They’re buying hope, or a rush, or some other non-financial good.

People addicted to the one-armed bandit know it isn’t good for their wallet. They could at any time just compare today’s bank balance to the one a couple months ago. They carefully avoid doing that, which implies they already know it would challenge their rationalizations.

You know what’s idiotic? Blanket statements about who is an idiot. You know what’s insane? Blanket statements about who is insane.

Philosophy, real philosophy, also asks, “Well, leapfrogging worked. But under what conditions won’t it work? What specifically lead to its success in this case?”

It is science which leapfrogs the obvious, claiming to have seen-through the obvious, regarding virtually all humans pre-1700 and at least three-quarters of humans alive today, as credulous idiots, deluded nut-cases or manipulative hypocrites.

Well, that’s a strong way of putting it, but I don’t see what’s wrong with saying that three-quarters of humans alive today are wrong. For example, the scientific method does indeed leapfrog obvious ways of thinking. You have to be taught Bayes’ theorem, how to spot quacks, etc.

I am an atheist (please no accusations of “scientism”), and before I encountered reactionary thought and the reactionosphere (starting with Moldbug), I was an enthusiastic reader of RichardDawkins.net and Ben Goldacre’s “Bad Science”: the skeptic community. Now, perhaps coincidentally, I find it boring, but I still agree with it: they’re still basically right. I have never been a Leftist/liberal, but I can see that being a skeptic is a much like being a leftist, applied to a different domain. They certainly love signalling to each other how great they are. But they’re still basically right.

It is atheism which leapfrogs the obvious, claiming to have seen-through the obvious, regarding virtually all humans pre-1700 and at least three-quarters of humans alive today, as credulous idiots, deluded nut-cases or manipulative hypocrites.

(I was an atheist myself until recently, and I know what it feels like. Much like being a Leftist/ liberal – albeit applied to a different domain.)

Still, with Charlton’s obvious ulterior motive dealt with, leapfrogging seems like its a handy word and concept.

The “transcendental leapfrog” is also what makes anyone give credence to such distant abstractions as… statistics. And the rest of modern science.