Hmm, I agree that the thing you describe is a problem, and I agree with some of your diagnosis, but I think your diagnosis focuses too much on a divide between different Kinds Of People, without naming the Kinds Of People explicitly but kind of sounding (especially in the comments) like a lot of what you’re talking about is a difference in how much Rationality Skill people have, which I think is not the right distinction? Like I think I am neither a hyper-analytic programmer (certainly not a programmer) nor any kind of particularly Advanced rationalist, and I think I am not particularly susceptible to this particular problem (I’m certainly susceptible to other problems, just not this one, I think). I think it’s more that people doing the salvage epistemology thing can kind of provide cover for people doing a different thing where they actually respect and believe the woo traditions they’re investigating, and especially a lack of clear signposting beliefs makes this hard to navigate.
Hmm, I agree that the thing you describe is a problem, and I agree with some of your diagnosis, but I think your diagnosis focuses too much on a divide between different Kinds Of People, without naming the Kinds Of People explicitly but kind of sounding (especially in the comments) like a lot of what you’re talking about is a difference in how much Rationality Skill people have, which I think is not the right distinction? Like I think I am neither a hyper-analytic programmer (certainly not a programmer) nor any kind of particularly Advanced rationalist, and I think I am not particularly susceptible to this particular problem (I’m certainly susceptible to other problems, just not this one, I think). I think it’s more that people doing the salvage epistemology thing can kind of provide cover for people doing a different thing where they actually respect and believe the woo traditions they’re investigating, and especially a lack of clear signposting beliefs makes this hard to navigate.