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Scot’s Notes & Highlights

Book cover for The Knowledge Machine: How Irrationality Created Modern Science

The Knowledge Machine: How Irrationality Created Modern Science by Michael Strevens

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the iron rule of explanation. What the rule says is simple enough: it directs scientists to resolve their differences of opinion by conducting empirical tests rather than by shouting or fighting or philosophizing or moralizing or marrying ...more

Iron rule

Scot’s Quotes

“And yet … post-denialism is also more capable of producing an honest admission of desire than denialism. There is an odd duality here: in post-denialism, there is scope for raw, brutal acknowledgement and also wilder fantasies with little hold on reality. It is ‘sincerity’ that persists across this duality. Post-denialism can seem utterly unmoored from reality and violently unpredictable; but it has a strange integrity that means that, for those who practise it, it has a surprising coherence.”
― Keith Kahn-Harris, Denial: The Unspeakable Truth

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“Denialists are not speaking freely: they are speaking under the weight of an unspeakable burden. Restricting denialism is therefore not restricting free speech. By enabling the truly free expression of desire while simultaneously restricting denialism we could make an offer to denialists: either say what you really want or forever be silent.”
― Keith Kahn-Harris, Denial: The Unspeakable Truth

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