I think Nick is actually an example of how rationality isn’t that useful for making philosophical progress. I’m a bit reluctant to say this (for obvious social reasons, which I’m judging to be outweighed by the strategic importance of this issue) but his work (PhD thesis) on anthropic reasoning wasn’t actually very good. I know that at least one SI Research Associate agrees with my assessment.
ETA: I should qualify this by saying that while his proposed solution wasn’t very good (which you can also infer from the fact that nobody ever talks about or builds upon it around here despite strong interest in the topic) he did come up arguments/considerations/thought experiments, such as the Presumptuous Philosopher, that we still discuss.
I’ll freely admit that I haven’t actually read any of his work, and I was mainly making the comment due to the generally fanboyish response he gets ’round these parts. I found your comment very interesting, and may investigate further.
I think Nick is actually an example of how rationality isn’t that useful for making philosophical progress. I’m a bit reluctant to say this (for obvious social reasons, which I’m judging to be outweighed by the strategic importance of this issue) but his work (PhD thesis) on anthropic reasoning wasn’t actually very good. I know that at least one SI Research Associate agrees with my assessment.
ETA: I should qualify this by saying that while his proposed solution wasn’t very good (which you can also infer from the fact that nobody ever talks about or builds upon it around here despite strong interest in the topic) he did come up arguments/considerations/thought experiments, such as the Presumptuous Philosopher, that we still discuss.
I’ll freely admit that I haven’t actually read any of his work, and I was mainly making the comment due to the generally fanboyish response he gets ’round these parts. I found your comment very interesting, and may investigate further.
Just in case this refers to me: I agree with your assessment of Bostrom’s thesis, but I’m no longer a SI research associate :-)