I agree with Robin that there needs to be meta-analysis of what’s been going on in Eliezer’s recent posts and replies to those posts.
As a concrete example, Eliezer continually sets up the “silly post-modernist professor” archtype, but I haven’t seen anything even vaguely resembling a critique of more serious post-modern thought (like Foucault, for instance). In any case, post-modernism makes sense under some interpretations—e.g. if it is taken to mean that “truth” is dependent on context (since statements cannot have meaning without relation to a set of semantic primitives).
As a direct reformulation—Eliezer has not addressed how I personally think about consciousness/why I personally think it is a hard question (not that I have necessarily expressed it explicitly). I agree with Scott’s frustration that he seems to continually hark on morons. Maybe I’m a moron, too, but I’d sure like to know in what way!
This isn’t meant to be harsh—really I do enjoy Eliezer’s posts a lot and think that they are really insightful. I just haven’t been satisfied with the level of sensitivity towards other people’s opinions which has been displayed here. Eliezer says that we can turn questions understandable by asking why we think them. Well then why do I think I am conscious and that this is “special?!?” I have no clue! I can’t even imagine what an answer to that question would look like!
I agree with Robin that there needs to be meta-analysis of what’s been going on in Eliezer’s recent posts and replies to those posts.
As a concrete example, Eliezer continually sets up the “silly post-modernist professor” archtype, but I haven’t seen anything even vaguely resembling a critique of more serious post-modern thought (like Foucault, for instance). In any case, post-modernism makes sense under some interpretations—e.g. if it is taken to mean that “truth” is dependent on context (since statements cannot have meaning without relation to a set of semantic primitives).
As a direct reformulation—Eliezer has not addressed how I personally think about consciousness/why I personally think it is a hard question (not that I have necessarily expressed it explicitly). I agree with Scott’s frustration that he seems to continually hark on morons. Maybe I’m a moron, too, but I’d sure like to know in what way!
This isn’t meant to be harsh—really I do enjoy Eliezer’s posts a lot and think that they are really insightful. I just haven’t been satisfied with the level of sensitivity towards other people’s opinions which has been displayed here. Eliezer says that we can turn questions understandable by asking why we think them. Well then why do I think I am conscious and that this is “special?!?” I have no clue! I can’t even imagine what an answer to that question would look like!