Avoiding Criticism

The Taking Children Seriously quotations page (mirror) says:

In case it is not obvious, whilst many of these quotations are consistent with Taking Children Seriously, many of them are not. Sometimes it is just interesting that that person said it, or it is interesting for some other reason.

Why would it be obvious that you posted quotes you disagree with and mixed them together with quotes you agree with? That isn’t normal.

They’re purposefully making it ambiguous what they believe. This prevents criticism. They’re avoiding taking clear stands and exposing their ideas to critical analysis. This is contrary to what Karl Popper said to do, even though TCS is allegedly based on Popper’s philosophy.

Popper said to share bold theories so that the theories can more easily be criticized. Don’t hedge to make criticism more difficult. For example, Popper wrote in Conjectures and Refutations:

This is a view of science which takes its critical approach to be its most important characteristic. Thus a scientist [or rational thinker] should look upon a theory from the point of view of whether it can be critically discussed: whether it exposes itself to criticism of all kinds; and–if it does–whether it is able to stand up to it.

and

some [better] theories are more testable, more exposed to refutation, than others; they take, as it were, greater risks.

Instead of taking the risk of advocating specific ideas, Sarah Fitz-Claridge and David Deutsch have avoided sharing their conclusions. It’s weird to simultaneously, on the same topic, both:

1. Share and promote your ideas as some kind of movement you want people to join.
2. Hide your ideas.
   

They’re making it harder to critically discuss their conclusions. They want to be able to post a bunch of stuff while keeping the option of disowning any of it if someone explains that it’s bad. Instead of learning from their mistakes, like Popperians, they’re setting it up to claim they never made those mistakes in the first place.

They’ve suggested basically that you should read the quotes, and whichever ones you think are good and pro-TCS are the ones they agree with, and whichever ones you don’t like are the ones they disagree with. They’re saying to form your own opinion and use that as a guide to their opinion by assuming there are no disagreements between you and them. This approach hides disagreements and clashes with fallibilism.