Thank you. I really appreciate this clarification.
I meant God Is Great as a strong endorsement of LessWrong. I am aware that establishing an analogy with religion is often used to discredit ideas and movements, but one of the things I want to push back against is that this move is necessarily discrediting. But this requires a lot of work (historical background on how religions got to occupy the place they do today within culture, classical liberal political philosophy...) on my part to explain why I think so, and why in the case of EA/LW, I think the comparison is flattering and useful. This is work I haven’t done yet, and I might be wrong about how I view this, so I guess I shouldn’t have been too surprised about the negative reaction.
I really should have written and posted something about my heterodox background assumptions first, and gotten feedback on them, before I published something building on them.
Thank you. I really appreciate this clarification.
I meant God Is Great as a strong endorsement of LessWrong. I am aware that establishing an analogy with religion is often used to discredit ideas and movements, but one of the things I want to push back against is that this move is necessarily discrediting. But this requires a lot of work (historical background on how religions got to occupy the place they do today within culture, classical liberal political philosophy...) on my part to explain why I think so, and why in the case of EA/LW, I think the comparison is flattering and useful. This is work I haven’t done yet, and I might be wrong about how I view this, so I guess I shouldn’t have been too surprised about the negative reaction.
I really should have written and posted something about my heterodox background assumptions first, and gotten feedback on them, before I published something building on them.
Framing, research, and communication are all skills that take practice! I hope you’ll ultimately find this a helpful space to build your skills :)