Sure, unanimous acceptance of the ideas would be worrying sign. Would it be a bad sign if we were 98% in agreement about everything discussed in the sequences? I think that depends on whether you believe that intelligent people when exposed to the same arguments and the same evidence should reach the same conclusion (Aumann’s agreement theorem). I think that disagreement is in practice a combination of (a) bad communication (b) misunderstanding of the subject material by one of the parties (c) poor understanding of the philosophy of science (d) emotions/signaling/dissonance/etc.
I think it’s just really difficult to have a fundamental disagreement that isn’t founded on some sort of personal value. Most disagreements can be rephrased in terms of an experiment where both parties will confidently claim the experiment will have different outcomes. By the time such an experiment has been identified the disagreement has dissolved.
Discussion is to be expected because discussions are beneficial for organizing one’s thoughts and because most of us like to discuss the subject material on LW. Persistent disagreement I see mainly as a result of insufficient scholarship.
Sure, unanimous acceptance of the ideas would be worrying sign. Would it be a bad sign if we were 98% in agreement about everything discussed in the sequences? I think that depends on whether you believe that intelligent people when exposed to the same arguments and the same evidence should reach the same conclusion (Aumann’s agreement theorem). I think that disagreement is in practice a combination of (a) bad communication (b) misunderstanding of the subject material by one of the parties (c) poor understanding of the philosophy of science (d) emotions/signaling/dissonance/etc.
I think it’s just really difficult to have a fundamental disagreement that isn’t founded on some sort of personal value. Most disagreements can be rephrased in terms of an experiment where both parties will confidently claim the experiment will have different outcomes. By the time such an experiment has been identified the disagreement has dissolved.
Discussion is to be expected because discussions are beneficial for organizing one’s thoughts and because most of us like to discuss the subject material on LW. Persistent disagreement I see mainly as a result of insufficient scholarship.