There's a important distinction between people I might actually interact with - where social knowledge like 'he gets belligerent when drinking' serves a practical purpose - versus discussing ideas. Requiring idea discussions to attribute the idea to an author and then list their personal failings creates unnecessary overhead and distracts from the discussion at hand.
There's a important distinction between people I might actually interact with - where social knowledge like 'he gets belligerent when drinking' serves a practical purpose - versus discussing ideas. Requiring idea discussions to attribute the idea to an author and then list their personal failings creates unnecessary overhead and distracts from the discussion at hand.
My natural inclination is to agree with you here, but this in practice becomes more complicated when the person's private views may have had a very real impact on their more abstract ideas - look at, for instance, research on gender equality in early hunter gatherer bands. The evidence is pretty thin in general, and one's pre-existing views seem to have a pretty big impact on how that evidence is interpreted. Holden Karnofsky did a good summary (linked below), and he's a pretty rigorous thinker, but he's also pretty pro Progress (with a capital P) in general going by his other writinga, so could be inclined to find that things have gotten better.
There's a important distinction between people I might actually interact with - where social knowledge like 'he gets belligerent when drinking' serves a practical purpose - versus discussing ideas. Requiring idea discussions to attribute the idea to an author and then list their personal failings creates unnecessary overhead and distracts from the discussion at hand.
My natural inclination is to agree with you here, but this in practice becomes more complicated when the person's private views may have had a very real impact on their more abstract ideas - look at, for instance, research on gender equality in early hunter gatherer bands. The evidence is pretty thin in general, and one's pre-existing views seem to have a pretty big impact on how that evidence is interpreted. Holden Karnofsky did a good summary (linked below), and he's a pretty rigorous thinker, but he's also pretty pro Progress (with a capital P) in general going by his other writinga, so could be inclined to find that things have gotten better.
https://www.cold-takes.com/hunter-gatherer-gender-relations-seem-bad/