I used to be very skeptical of Eliezer’s ideas about improving rationality when he was posting the Sequences, but one result that’s hard to deny is that all of a sudden there is a community of people who I can discuss my decision theory ideas with, whereas before that I seemingly couldn’t get them across to anyone except maybe one or two people, even though I had my own highly active mailing list.
I’d say that being able to achieve this kind of subtle collective improvement in philosophical ability is already quite impressive, even if the effect is not very dramatic in any given individual. (Of course ultimately the improvement has to be graded against what’s needed to solve FAI and not against my expectations, and it seems to still fall far short of that.)
It’s indeed nice to have a community that discusses decision-theoretic ideas, but a simpler explanation is that Eliezer’s writings attracted many smart folks and also happened to make these ideas salient, not that Eliezer’s writings improved people’s philosophical ability.
Attracting many smart folks and making some particular ideas salient to them is no mean feat in itself. But do you think that’s really all it took? That any group of smart people, if they get together and become interested in some philosophical topic, could likely make progress instead of getting trapped in a number of possible ways?
I think it’s always helpful when a community has a vernacular and a common library of references. It’s better if the references are unusually accurate, but even bland ones might still speed up progress on projects.
an easier explanation is that Eliezer’s writings attracted many smart folks and also happened to make these ideas salient, not that Eliezer’s writings improved people’s philosophical ability
Eliezer’s writings were certainly the focus of my own philosophical development. The current me didn’t exist before processing them, and was historically caused by them, even though it might have formed on its own a few years later.
I had been considering earlier today that since I started reading lesswrong I noticed a considerable increase in my ability to spot and discern bullshit and flawed arguments, without paying much attention to really asking myself the right questions in order to favor other things I considered more important to think about.
Reading this made me realize that I’ve drawn a conclusion too early. Perhaps I should re-read those “epiphany addiction” posts with this in mind.
Looking back today, the improvement seems smaller than I thought then, and LW seems to have played a smaller role in it.
I used to be very skeptical of Eliezer’s ideas about improving rationality when he was posting the Sequences, but one result that’s hard to deny is that all of a sudden there is a community of people who I can discuss my decision theory ideas with, whereas before that I seemingly couldn’t get them across to anyone except maybe one or two people, even though I had my own highly active mailing list.
I’d say that being able to achieve this kind of subtle collective improvement in philosophical ability is already quite impressive, even if the effect is not very dramatic in any given individual. (Of course ultimately the improvement has to be graded against what’s needed to solve FAI and not against my expectations, and it seems to still fall far short of that.)
It’s indeed nice to have a community that discusses decision-theoretic ideas, but a simpler explanation is that Eliezer’s writings attracted many smart folks and also happened to make these ideas salient, not that Eliezer’s writings improved people’s philosophical ability.
Attracting many smart folks and making some particular ideas salient to them is no mean feat in itself. But do you think that’s really all it took? That any group of smart people, if they get together and become interested in some philosophical topic, could likely make progress instead of getting trapped in a number of possible ways?
I think it’s always helpful when a community has a vernacular and a common library of references. It’s better if the references are unusually accurate, but even bland ones might still speed up progress on projects.
Eliezer’s writings were certainly the focus of my own philosophical development. The current me didn’t exist before processing them, and was historically caused by them, even though it might have formed on its own a few years later.
Hmm. Thanks for that update.
I had been considering earlier today that since I started reading lesswrong I noticed a considerable increase in my ability to spot and discern bullshit and flawed arguments, without paying much attention to really asking myself the right questions in order to favor other things I considered more important to think about.
Reading this made me realize that I’ve drawn a conclusion too early. Perhaps I should re-read those “epiphany addiction” posts with this in mind.