Google-fu turned up PhilosophyForums.com. It seems like a decent first-order approximation of where we could send people looking to post on philosophy less analytically/technically than is typical here.
Does anyone know a better option? I only found that site just now...
ETA: Further searching for specifically rationality-oriented sites that aren’t subtitled something-about-atheism isn’t turning up much; and we might want to keep the attention of theists at least long enough to inspire some thought!
The problem with sending people to general philosophy sites is that there is generally a lot of confusion between “philosophy” and “history of philosophy”, and the latter is more common. People tend to get railroaded into reading philosophers that’re old and prestigious, but much more confusing than a modern rehash of the same topics would be. A quick glance at philosophyforums.com confirmed my suspicion that it’s dominated by history of philosophy. If we aren’t careful to avoid that, we’ll be doing people a great disservice.
Agreed. There aren’t enough good modern rehashings of the same things. But ‘philosophy’ doesn’t seem to be the right sort of thing to start folks off on anyway.
I’m not sure we should be sending people to less analytical/technical philosophy forums. Most philosophy is bullshit, and most philosophical debate, as it’s usually structured, just serves to reinforce people’s confidence in their preferred bullshit. You compared it to MathOverflow referring basic questions to Dr. Math, etc., but I’m not sure the comparison is valid, because people will still usually get the right answers when they ask their more basic math questions on more basic sites.
Whereas if someone comes here and tries to start a discussion about the nature of free will, and we refer them to a philosophy forum, they’ll probably end up with ideas about it no better than the ones they started with. If we refer them to the sequence on it without further comment, they may not bother reading it, if they don’t have some sense of what to expect or why it would be worth reading a sequence of a dozen posts.
Maybe what we need, to supplement the Less Wrong FAQ, is a Reality FAQ — something that summarizes the generally-accepted LW positions on all the big mysterious deep philosophical questions that we’ve long since answered. (It would, of course, link each question to posts/sequences on them for anyone who wants to go further into it after reading the summary of the answer.)
Well is there anywhere that focuses on say history of science issues? Even if people don’t get a heavy dose of Bayesianism they can still get a pretty decent background if they get the basic ideas of Popper, Quine and Lakatos for example. And it isn’t like LW really does focus on philosophy in the general sense.
I suspect that more people would benefit not from emphasis on philosophy but on clear thinking. If that’s what we focus on a lot of the general skeptical websites can teach simply by osmosis a lot of the basic good habits. (Yes, I know that’s a claim that a lot of people here seem to disagree with. Part of the issue is that the aims of the skeptical movement are not identical to those of the rationalists).
What would be our “Ask Dr. Math”? Wikipedia?
The Sequences, of course.
Google-fu turned up PhilosophyForums.com. It seems like a decent first-order approximation of where we could send people looking to post on philosophy less analytically/technically than is typical here.
Does anyone know a better option? I only found that site just now...
ETA: Further searching for specifically rationality-oriented sites that aren’t subtitled something-about-atheism isn’t turning up much; and we might want to keep the attention of theists at least long enough to inspire some thought!
Perhaps RobinZ’s suggestion to use the proposed open thread/discussion board/forum thing is the best.
The problem with sending people to general philosophy sites is that there is generally a lot of confusion between “philosophy” and “history of philosophy”, and the latter is more common. People tend to get railroaded into reading philosophers that’re old and prestigious, but much more confusing than a modern rehash of the same topics would be. A quick glance at philosophyforums.com confirmed my suspicion that it’s dominated by history of philosophy. If we aren’t careful to avoid that, we’ll be doing people a great disservice.
Agreed. There aren’t enough good modern rehashings of the same things. But ‘philosophy’ doesn’t seem to be the right sort of thing to start folks off on anyway.
Agreed. Let’s keep looking… or as RobinZ suggests, create it
I’m not sure we should be sending people to less analytical/technical philosophy forums. Most philosophy is bullshit, and most philosophical debate, as it’s usually structured, just serves to reinforce people’s confidence in their preferred bullshit. You compared it to MathOverflow referring basic questions to Dr. Math, etc., but I’m not sure the comparison is valid, because people will still usually get the right answers when they ask their more basic math questions on more basic sites.
Whereas if someone comes here and tries to start a discussion about the nature of free will, and we refer them to a philosophy forum, they’ll probably end up with ideas about it no better than the ones they started with. If we refer them to the sequence on it without further comment, they may not bother reading it, if they don’t have some sense of what to expect or why it would be worth reading a sequence of a dozen posts.
Maybe what we need, to supplement the Less Wrong FAQ, is a Reality FAQ — something that summarizes the generally-accepted LW positions on all the big mysterious deep philosophical questions that we’ve long since answered. (It would, of course, link each question to posts/sequences on them for anyone who wants to go further into it after reading the summary of the answer.)
Well is there anywhere that focuses on say history of science issues? Even if people don’t get a heavy dose of Bayesianism they can still get a pretty decent background if they get the basic ideas of Popper, Quine and Lakatos for example. And it isn’t like LW really does focus on philosophy in the general sense.
I suspect that more people would benefit not from emphasis on philosophy but on clear thinking. If that’s what we focus on a lot of the general skeptical websites can teach simply by osmosis a lot of the basic good habits. (Yes, I know that’s a claim that a lot of people here seem to disagree with. Part of the issue is that the aims of the skeptical movement are not identical to those of the rationalists).
Theres /r/philosophy on reddit...