> something more rigorous than tends to happen in this area.
This is a great example of an ad-hominem attack, but against a whole profession, that tends to pop up fairly regularly on HN. I saw somebody else call it "hackers are better X" or something like that.
So yes, there is this whole profession, that do nothing else but debate the subtleties of said profession. That's what they do, they go to great length, setting up experiments, writing papers, and trying to outshine their opponents at conferences. They have been doing this for decades.
But they couldn't think if a simple counter-argument? How likely is that?
So, I work in this profession. I teach in academia for a living. And I don't think it's particularly controversial to say you can find lots of examples where yes, the whole state-of-the-profession is wrong for long periods of time.
There's nothing necessarily wrong with that, in a way it's kind of the point -- come up with ideas, beat them up a bit, see what's left, sometimes very little.
They have, and did, and many psychologists, psychopedagosists, and other people in the cognitive sciences agree with the OP. I don't see how they were being arrogant and snarky when the exact argument he said does indeed show up in academia.
This is a great example of an ad-hominem attack, but against a whole profession, that tends to pop up fairly regularly on HN. I saw somebody else call it "hackers are better X" or something like that.
So yes, there is this whole profession, that do nothing else but debate the subtleties of said profession. That's what they do, they go to great length, setting up experiments, writing papers, and trying to outshine their opponents at conferences. They have been doing this for decades.
But they couldn't think if a simple counter-argument? How likely is that?