A lot of things that amount to context and particulars of the world we live in. It’s my perception that LWers in general know very little about stuff like ecology, infrastructure, history, culture, and downrate their importance when trying to understand how the world works, how a given pattern has developed, ways in which it might change in the future, or to what degree and how one might seek to deliberately change some facet of that.
If anything user Konkvistador seems remarkably interested and knowledgeable about history, culture and politics.
I also seems to recall several academically trained biologists, doctors and even ecologists being prominent members of the community. Are you really bothered by a lack of knowledge or skill, or are you bothered by how they are applied?
I would argue that you are actually bothered by LW not paying attention to them and discussing them as you think appropriate. At least that is what I get out of the quote here:
At the very best of times it seems like, to the extent this gap is recognized at all, it’s considered a problem for FAI to solve. We don’t need to know any of this stuff or why it’s relevant to stuff like “raising the sanity waterline”, “mitigating global existential risk” or “extrapolating human value”; if it has any relevance at all, our future genie will surely determine that and implement it tidily.
But again Konkvistador dosen’t exactly shy away from the topics I mentioned. He has 6000+ karma, so he’s not exactly a pariah. He often discusses them at length. I even recall a debate about ecology now that I think about it. Do we need a smaller share of people like him?
If anything user Konkvistador seems remarkably interested and knowledgeable about history, culture and politics.
I also seems to recall several academically trained biologists, doctors and even ecologists being prominent members of the community. Are you really bothered by a lack of knowledge or skill, or are you bothered by how they are applied?
I would argue that you are actually bothered by LW not paying attention to them and discussing them as you think appropriate. At least that is what I get out of the quote here:
But again Konkvistador dosen’t exactly shy away from the topics I mentioned. He has 6000+ karma, so he’s not exactly a pariah. He often discusses them at length. I even recall a debate about ecology now that I think about it. Do we need a smaller share of people like him?