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Comment by danielvaughn | Hacker News Reader

No shade to you personally, but I really dislike this frame of thought.

There are mountains and mountains of literature about a great deal of things, no one human can be expected to be aware of them all.

Since that is obviously true, the lack of awareness about a single topic isn’t “ignorance” - it’s not like PG studiously ignored all of that literature. More likely he just never came across it, so the more apt word is “unaware” rather than “ignorant”.

To criticize someone merely for pondering about a subject they aren’t well-versed in is hostile gatekeeping. I think those who are educated in the relevant subject would do well to be more welcoming and informative to newcomers.

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That's true, but this essay is written with an authoritative voice, not a pondering one. PG tends to write as if he is teaching his audience something profound. So I think it's fair to call out when he is wrong or misguided.

This might just be a subjective thing then. My impression was that he was simply following a casual train of thought.

I agree with the other comment that my words “hostile gatekeeping” were too strong. I just get irritated with philosophers specifically, because philosophy itself is a normal human experience. Everyone finds themselves thinking about things that veer into philosophical subjects. To even criticize people for doing so without reading the professional literature is just so annoying to me.

I think philosophers get a bit annoyed about this because they've spent literal years and years thinking about something that might be quite esoteric/tricky, and then someone comes along and just assumes the answer as if there hasn't been decades of discourse about this exact thing.

The subtext in your comment is that everyone does philosophy all the time, and there's no difference between professional and amateur philosophers.

> then someone comes along and just assumes the answer as if there hasn't been decades of discourse about this exact thing.

I'd think that would present itself as a rather pleasant opportunity for any bypassing philosopher to stop and teach them about the "decades of discourse" on it rather than being annoyed?

Yeah that’s what I’ve seen before from chemists, biologists, geologists, physicists, etc. They’re excited, not irritated, to share their knowledge with the public.

Nobody does this stuff to those kinds of scientists.

True. But PG's authoritative status is weakened due to his lack of awareness no matter how you change the wording. This entire essay is weaker because of it as my opinion about his knowledge.

>To criticize someone merely for pondering about a subject they aren’t well-versed in is hostile gatekeeping.

The words "hostile gatekeeping" makes me classify your statement as accusatory and an actual attack. The Op's statements are just criticism. Harsh but valid, it certainly isn't hostile gatekeeping. In fact, PG is the gatekeeper here. He owns the site.

Yeah my words were too strong, I’ll own that. I didn’t mean to come across so aggressive.

Another way to phrase it: if someone were to follow a thought experiment in a another subject like biology or geology, the response from the educated community would be different. I’ve seen it on here before. The response is something akin to “hey yep that’s an interesting thought. It’s been done before, here are some links if you’re interested in reading further”.

I just tend to see a very different (much more critical) response from people in philosophy, often with overtones of condescension and smugness. Not saying OP was guilty of that, just that I mistakenly responded as if they did.

> the lack of awareness about a single topic isn’t “ignorance”

Since everybody is nitpicking here, I'll add that this is indeed ignorance. We're know what we know, and are ignorant of what we don't. Being ignorant by itself shouldn't be viewed as a flaw, but an inevitable state of our limited capacity to learn. The real flaw is being proud of staying willfully ignorant.

I agree with what you're saying, but practically speaking, using the word "ignorant" is universally interpreted as a negative term.

It is not universally interpreted as negative. I have often said in conversation; “Please explain [x] to me, as I’m ignorant as to how that fits in/works/etc.” I certainly don’t say it to demean myself.

Ignorant is unaware. I’m sure there are loads of things that you have ignorance of, such as the meaning of Ignorance:

lacking knowledge, information, or awareness about a particular thing: "they were ignorant of astronomy"

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