I am quite happy about this post. It appears to be easily digestible by readers, and it points to a very important problem.
Rationalists can be great, but if there’s one thing we’re vulnerable to, then it is probably to get carried away with theories about things that turn out to be detached from reality.
One type of work that I would like to see more of in the rationalist community is comprehensive empirical work, to help work against the problem described here. Of course, it’s much easier to ask for that than to provide it. It might also be good to develop more rationalist theory about how to efficiently pick the relevant empirical things to work on.
I am quite happy about this post. It appears to be easily digestible by readers, and it points to a very important problem.
Rationalists can be great, but if there’s one thing we’re vulnerable to, then it is probably to get carried away with theories about things that turn out to be detached from reality.
One type of work that I would like to see more of in the rationalist community is comprehensive empirical work, to help work against the problem described here. Of course, it’s much easier to ask for that than to provide it. It might also be good to develop more rationalist theory about how to efficiently pick the relevant empirical things to work on.