The typical argument for vaccines is much less shaky than the typical argument for pure FP. For one, vaccine people can actually explain why vaccines are good. FP people seem to mostly just repeat variations on "it's easier to reason about" and showing trivial functions that are generally not easier to reason about.
Imagine trying to get people to accept vaccines, but in a world where we have other types of medicine that usually works well enough for all the things you've developed vaccines for, and the only argument you're allowed to make is "it's obviously better, look at how amazingly liquid the stuff in this syringe is".
You'll still get some resistance, but in our current world, pure FP is much more of a niche thing than pro-vaccine stances. There's a reason for that.
> The typical argument for vaccines is much less shaky than the typical argument for pure FP.
I suspect you aren't that knowledgeable about either.
> For one, vaccine people can actually explain why vaccines are good.
Unless you have a very particular background, I'm suspicious that you can actually follow the frontier of that argument. More likely, you're getting the ELI5 explanation.
> FP people seem to mostly just repeat variations on "it's easier to reason about" and showing trivial functions that are generally not easier to reason about.
Well-designed FP languages reify coherent low-complexity formal semantics. When FP advocates say "reason about", they mean in a (semi-)formal sense. No popular imperative language has any kind of denotational semantics, so good luck reasoning about the compositional behavior of C++ libraries, unless your definition of "reason about" is "think about informally".
> Unless you have a very particular background, I'm suspicious that you can actually follow the frontier of that argument. More likely, you're getting the ELI5 explanation.
People who actually understand complex things are able to provide ELI5 level explanations for people who haven't the background for more rigor. You're presenting a false representation of the OP's comment anyway: it never suggested the explanation for why vaccines are good required "frontier" level discourse.
> Well-designed FP languages reify coherent low-complexity formal semantics.
This is such a great example of what so many of us have noted about FP evangelists. It's so divorced from writing software as to be gibberish.
> It's so divorced from writing software as to be gibberish.
Only if the software you're writing is A) aggressively simplified, so as to be amenable to informal analysis, or B) garbage.
If you're only interested in writing garbage, or perhaps you don't even notice that's what you're doing, then the appeal of FP is significantly reduced.
Yes, in theory, and this sometimes works. But it rarely works in general.
In practice, people come to your explanation pre-conditioned with a lot of (often politicized) misinformation, Dunning-Kruger type overconfidence in their own ability, very little curiosity or openness to new ideas, and exhibit the attention span of a 26th percentile squirrel.
People tend to listen very little and are more skeptical of others than they are of their own understanding: instead of searching for ways in which their mental models need adjusting, they try to poke holes in your explanations. They'll repeat whatever objections they've seen or heard somewhere, whether or not the objection is relevant or adequate. This undermines both "ELI5" approaches (because what you gain in simplicity you lose in nuance and correctness) and more pedantic approaches (which require more prerequisite knowledge, experience, or patience).
If you disagree with me because that is not your experience, it's possible you surround yourself with unusually insightful and wise people.
It simply can't be done. It's always possible in theory but never in practice. Or at least certainly not in this special snowflake case.
Until someone bucks the trend and does it.
But for that you need someone with actual intelligence and empathy; a Feynman of that sphere so to speak.
In every gatekeeper community this is the order of things until someone finally destroys the gates to the knowledge and the monopoly of the priesthood. Until then, it's basically "blame the victim" for their own lack of understanding (e.g. "people listen very little", "people are more skeptical of others", "they try to poke holes in your explanations", "They'll repeat whatever objections they've seen or heard somewhere", etc).
Well, I don't disagree with you, but also all of these things you list in the parentheses are just how humans generally behave. They are real obstacles.
And regardless of where we place the blame, at the end of the day:
> In life, there are a lot of obvious things that are very difficult to teach.
Imagine trying to get people to accept vaccines, but in a world where we have other types of medicine that usually works well enough for all the things you've developed vaccines for, and the only argument you're allowed to make is "it's obviously better, look at how amazingly liquid the stuff in this syringe is".
You'll still get some resistance, but in our current world, pure FP is much more of a niche thing than pro-vaccine stances. There's a reason for that.