I am confused by the depth of feeling against my fairly mild posting which I thought many LWers would value.
One of the first postings that I read on LW was How an Algorithm Feels from Inside and another was Wrong Questions. I was so impressed that I began reading the blog regularly. What I noticed was that many of the contributors seemed to have a very different idea of what thought was than I had or that I felt those two great postings had. In particular I had trouble with two recurring areas: what is consciousness? and how are decisions made?. I have attempted a post on both. The reception has been equally hostile to both. It appears that I misjudged the group and that there is very little interest in a more scientific approach to these questions.
The big problem with your post is that it spends most of its words discussing free will and metaethics without making reference to the substantial material on those topics already posted and discussed on this site. As others have pointed out, not discussing compatibilism has weakened the post as well.
Ultimately, if you were trying to answer the question of how decisions are made, you have should have done so. Too much of the post covered material that wasn’t directly related to what you wanted to get at, and this would have been a problem even without the points mentioned above.
On a related note, you didn’t include any links in your post. Linking to a definition, discussion or explanation of a concept you’re using as a foundation is much better than reinventing the wheel.
All that said, please reconsider abandoning posting on LW. Your comments are frequently worth reading, and your reasoning (if not yet your writing) is usually pretty solid. I’m probably not the best person to make the offer, but I’d be happy to comment on drafts of future posts if you felt that might be useful.
I voted this up before reading it carefully. As is usual, admission of having made a mistake should get an upvote—if I’d read to the end first, I’d have seen the undefined claim that you’re using a more scientific approach.
Unfortunately, I don’t seem to be able to cancel my upvote, but knocking the comment down to −1 seems too harsh.
The post in question was a plea to look at and follow the neuroscience of decision making. That was the point. Don’t worry about the straw men—just follow the science. I am actually not that interested in freewill and want to get past that to something interesting. When I carefully define how I am using a word (like freewill or like consciousness in the last post) I don’t expect to be told that I cannot use the word that way. I was taken back by the reaction, that is all. Here are a bunch of reasonable, rational, intelligent people that I should be able to converse with and they appear to avoid being sensible about neuroscience. Too bad—I can still gain from following the discussions but I cannot give anything to the group except the odd comment, now and then. Don’t worry about the up vote—I can avoid ever using it.
I am confused by the depth of feeling against my fairly mild posting which I thought many LWers would value.
One of the first postings that I read on LW was How an Algorithm Feels from Inside and another was Wrong Questions. I was so impressed that I began reading the blog regularly. What I noticed was that many of the contributors seemed to have a very different idea of what thought was than I had or that I felt those two great postings had. In particular I had trouble with two recurring areas: what is consciousness? and how are decisions made?. I have attempted a post on both. The reception has been equally hostile to both. It appears that I misjudged the group and that there is very little interest in a more scientific approach to these questions.
Consider the post ‘dead in the water’.
The big problem with your post is that it spends most of its words discussing free will and metaethics without making reference to the substantial material on those topics already posted and discussed on this site. As others have pointed out, not discussing compatibilism has weakened the post as well.
Ultimately, if you were trying to answer the question of how decisions are made, you have should have done so. Too much of the post covered material that wasn’t directly related to what you wanted to get at, and this would have been a problem even without the points mentioned above.
On a related note, you didn’t include any links in your post. Linking to a definition, discussion or explanation of a concept you’re using as a foundation is much better than reinventing the wheel.
All that said, please reconsider abandoning posting on LW. Your comments are frequently worth reading, and your reasoning (if not yet your writing) is usually pretty solid. I’m probably not the best person to make the offer, but I’d be happy to comment on drafts of future posts if you felt that might be useful.
Thank you and if I even do post, I will take you up on your offer.
I would be happy to comment as well.
(Though I’m almost certainly a far worse choice.)
Thank you and if I even do post, I will take you up on your offer.
I voted this up before reading it carefully. As is usual, admission of having made a mistake should get an upvote—if I’d read to the end first, I’d have seen the undefined claim that you’re using a more scientific approach.
Unfortunately, I don’t seem to be able to cancel my upvote, but knocking the comment down to −1 seems too harsh.
The post in question was a plea to look at and follow the neuroscience of decision making. That was the point. Don’t worry about the straw men—just follow the science. I am actually not that interested in freewill and want to get past that to something interesting. When I carefully define how I am using a word (like freewill or like consciousness in the last post) I don’t expect to be told that I cannot use the word that way. I was taken back by the reaction, that is all. Here are a bunch of reasonable, rational, intelligent people that I should be able to converse with and they appear to avoid being sensible about neuroscience. Too bad—I can still gain from following the discussions but I cannot give anything to the group except the odd comment, now and then. Don’t worry about the up vote—I can avoid ever using it.
Clicking the “Vote up” link again should remove the vote.