I don’t think I have any unusual epistemic skills except for unusually broad curiosity and the ability to take arguments seriously even if their source and ultimate conclusion are low-status, unpleasant, ideologically hostile to my values and preferences, etc.
Considering the source of the arguments, they most likely have not been seriously evaluated by many other careful thinkers, so you must have very high confidence in your ability to distinguish between good and bad arguments from object-level considerations alone. If you can actually, on your own, synthesize a wide-ranging contrarian theory from such diverse and not pre-filtered (and hence low in average quality) sources that is also correct, I would say that you have extremely unusual epistemic skills.
Whereas in reality, on controversial and ideologically charged questions, there is much less consistency within individuals, and people whose rationality is sterling as judged by the LW public opinion (often not without good reason) typically have at least some horribly naive and biased views, while much good insight comes from people whom LW would judge (also often with good reason) as overall hugely biased and irrational.
I agree with your assessment of this as a problem and an opportunity. But instead of trying, by oneself, to gather such good insights from otherwise biased and irrational people, it would be a better idea to do it as a community. If it seems too difficult or dangerous to try to change LW’s community norms to be more receptive to your mode of investigation, you should build your own community of like-minded people. (From Konkvistador’s not entirely clear description in the parallel thread, it sounds like you’ve already tried it via a mailing list, but you can probably try harder?)
(From Konkvistador’s not entirely clear description in the parallel thread, it sounds like you’ve already tried it via a mailing list, but you can probably try harder?)
I guess I should clarify, I organized a mindkiller discussion mailing list with interested thinkers from LessWrong, that was active for some time. Anyone who was invited was also invited to propose new members, we tried to get a mix of people with differing ideological sympathies who liked discussing mind killing issues and where good rationalists. The vast majority of people contacted responded, the end result was about 30 LWers. I don’t feel comfortable disclosing who opted to join. I think I did send you a PM with an invitation to join.
The reason I thought such a mailing list might be a good idea was partially because I’ve had very interesting email correspondences with several LWers in the past (this includes Vladimir_M).
Considering the source of the arguments, they most likely have not been seriously evaluated by many other careful thinkers, so you must have very high confidence in your ability to distinguish between good and bad arguments from object-level considerations alone. If you can actually, on your own, synthesize a wide-ranging contrarian theory from such diverse and not pre-filtered (and hence low in average quality) sources that is also correct, I would say that you have extremely unusual epistemic skills.
I agree with your assessment of this as a problem and an opportunity. But instead of trying, by oneself, to gather such good insights from otherwise biased and irrational people, it would be a better idea to do it as a community. If it seems too difficult or dangerous to try to change LW’s community norms to be more receptive to your mode of investigation, you should build your own community of like-minded people. (From Konkvistador’s not entirely clear description in the parallel thread, it sounds like you’ve already tried it via a mailing list, but you can probably try harder?)
I guess I should clarify, I organized a mindkiller discussion mailing list with interested thinkers from LessWrong, that was active for some time. Anyone who was invited was also invited to propose new members, we tried to get a mix of people with differing ideological sympathies who liked discussing mind killing issues and where good rationalists. The vast majority of people contacted responded, the end result was about 30 LWers. I don’t feel comfortable disclosing who opted to join. I think I did send you a PM with an invitation to join.
More information here.
The reason I thought such a mailing list might be a good idea was partially because I’ve had very interesting email correspondences with several LWers in the past (this includes Vladimir_M).