TL;DR: I think assembly theory has lots of merit and potential, but this particular paper frames its argument in a way which is unfortunate and, frankly, more than just a bit misleading. My personal suspicion is that this has two reasons: (1) the authors hyped up their claims to get the paper published in a glam journal, plus (2) they also overestimate the reach and power of their model in ways which may be detrimental to its proper application and interpretation.
"Unfortunately, by now, PR spectacles (or disasters) like this one abound in our field and greatly outshine any serious theoretical discussions we could be having instead. We're in pretty bad shape overall. It'd be great if more people would see this and do something about it, instead of contributing their own little turd to the whole feces-hurling exercise."
@yoginho
Well said. What sorts of things are you thinking of (as alternatives to feces-hurling)? To play on the analogy, if a tweet is turd throwing, a paper or a book is ... (I'm guessing that's not where you are heading here but I'm not sure what you are thinking).
🤣 I love a solid disagreement about scientific or philosophical matters more than anyone, as long as we don't just lecture past each other or only engage in self-promotion and posturing. There is so much of the latter today, so little true engagement.
Such pseudo-debates qualify as bullshit, in the philosophical sense defined by Harry Frankfurt. They are not even about the truth, they are only about promoting the bullshitter.
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