If only I had personally postulated astrological mysteries and then discovered Newtonian mechanics, postulated alchemical mysteries and then discovered chemistry, postulated vitalistic mysteries and then discovered biology. I would have thought of my Mysterious Answer and said to myself: No way am I falling for that again.
If you read EY's Jeffreyssai sequence, he takes this to a weirdtopia-level extreme.
What would be really nice is a way to learn the lesson without actually having to postulate alchemy in the first place.
Today's post, Failing to Learn from History was originally published on August 30, 2007. A summary (taken from the LW wiki):
There are no inherently mysterious phenomena, but every phenomenon seems mysterious, right up until the moment that science explains it. It seems to us now that biology, chemistry, and astronomy are naturally the realm of science, but if we had lived through their discoveries, and watched them reduced from mysterious to mundane, we would be more reluctant to believe the next phenomenon is inherently mysterious.
Discuss the post here (rather than in the comments to the original post).
This post is part of the Rerunning the Sequences series, where we'll be going through Eliezer Yudkowsky's old posts in order so that people who are interested can (re-)read and discuss them. The previous post was My Wild and Reckless Youth, and you can use the sequence_reruns tag or rss feed to follow the rest of the series.
Sequence reruns are a community-driven effort. You can participate by re-reading the sequence post, discussing it here, posting the next day's sequence reruns post, or summarizing forthcoming articles on the wiki. Go here for more details, or to have meta discussions about the Rerunning the Sequences series.