Central ideas are those that matter for the discourse about the idea. In academia that means ideas in academic papers. Ideas that are important enough that they get space in textbooks.
Given low little academic papers MIRI publishes there might be central ideas that are unpublished and still important but I don’t think the basilisk is among them by any reasonable count..
The most important tenet of the Catholic Church is probably something like “Jesus died for our sins”.
The tenets of the Catholic Church that critics pay the most attention to are their beliefs on abortion, contraceptives, homosexuality, etc. even though they are widely ignored by Catholics and certainly less central than “Jesus died for our sins”. Why? Because even though the church would describe them as less important, they are the ones that get non-churchmembers the most worried. And they are consequences of the church’s core beliefs, even if not (by church standards) the most important ones.
And it’s completely legitimate to criticize the church for its stand on abortion, and not criticize it for the matters that the church considers more important.
The basilisk is every bit as central to criticsm of LW as abortion is to criticism of Catholicism, even if it’s not central to the church and most LWers don’t believe it. Most Catholics are fine with abortion too.
The Catholic Church spends a great deal of effort trying to influence the secular politics of abortion, with effects on the lives of non-Catholics. This is why non-Catholics criticize it. Less Wrong spends no time at all trying to influence the world at large with respect to Roko’s basilisk. It is an amusing episode, but not likely to cause any problems for anybody.
Use the Galileo analogy then. The Pope’s belief that Galileo, while right on the facts, shouldn’t have challenged the church has pretty much no influence on anyone’s lives, but still gets criticism.
Also, LW has as its goal influencing the world about rationality and AI, and it seems that LW or at least Eliezer is unable to disentangle the Basilisk from tthe ideas it does want to spread. (Again, Eliezer doesn’t believe in the Basilisk exactly as stated, but he does believe Basilisk-like ideas could be dangerous.)
The tenets of the Catholic Church that critics pay the most attention to are their beliefs on abortion, contraceptives, homosexuality, etc. even though they are widely ignored by Catholics and certainly less central than “Jesus died for our sins”.
If you ask a catholic priest whether the position of the church on abortion is important for him, I think he will say “yes”. I you count official speeches and writing by popes I also think that abortion will come up from time to time.
The basilisk is every bit as central to criticsm of LW
We are not talking about criticism of LW. LW as it stands is not important enough in society as a whole to warrant criticism from journalism.
We are talking about centrality to FAI under the assumption that it’s a topic that journalists want to write about. maybe in the background of Transcendence that raised the topic a bit in public awareness.
If you ask a catholic priest whether the position of the church on abortion is important for him, I think he will say “yes”.
It’s not an exact analogy, but it’s close because it’s much more important to outsiders than to insiders.
The basilisk isn’t directly a LW idea. but the basilisk follows from LW-style ideas and is close enough that Eliezer couldn’t just say “nothing like the basilisk could possibly work”. A closer analogy may be more like, oh, geocentricism. The church does not believe that geocentricism is true any more than LW believes in the basilisk. On the other hand, the man who became the current Pope has pretty much said that the church was right in its treatment of Galileo even if the church was wrong about geocentricism itself. And you still see this used to criticize the church. And I doubt that many priests would think that the way the church treated Galileo is very important compared to either abortion or Jesus dying for our sins.
Central ideas are those that matter for the discourse about the idea. In academia that means ideas in academic papers. Ideas that are important enough that they get space in textbooks.
Given low little academic papers MIRI publishes there might be central ideas that are unpublished and still important but I don’t think the basilisk is among them by any reasonable count..
The most important tenet of the Catholic Church is probably something like “Jesus died for our sins”.
The tenets of the Catholic Church that critics pay the most attention to are their beliefs on abortion, contraceptives, homosexuality, etc. even though they are widely ignored by Catholics and certainly less central than “Jesus died for our sins”. Why? Because even though the church would describe them as less important, they are the ones that get non-churchmembers the most worried. And they are consequences of the church’s core beliefs, even if not (by church standards) the most important ones.
And it’s completely legitimate to criticize the church for its stand on abortion, and not criticize it for the matters that the church considers more important.
The basilisk is every bit as central to criticsm of LW as abortion is to criticism of Catholicism, even if it’s not central to the church and most LWers don’t believe it. Most Catholics are fine with abortion too.
The Catholic Church spends a great deal of effort trying to influence the secular politics of abortion, with effects on the lives of non-Catholics. This is why non-Catholics criticize it. Less Wrong spends no time at all trying to influence the world at large with respect to Roko’s basilisk. It is an amusing episode, but not likely to cause any problems for anybody.
Use the Galileo analogy then. The Pope’s belief that Galileo, while right on the facts, shouldn’t have challenged the church has pretty much no influence on anyone’s lives, but still gets criticism.
Also, LW has as its goal influencing the world about rationality and AI, and it seems that LW or at least Eliezer is unable to disentangle the Basilisk from tthe ideas it does want to spread. (Again, Eliezer doesn’t believe in the Basilisk exactly as stated, but he does believe Basilisk-like ideas could be dangerous.)
If you ask a catholic priest whether the position of the church on abortion is important for him, I think he will say “yes”. I you count official speeches and writing by popes I also think that abortion will come up from time to time.
We are not talking about criticism of LW. LW as it stands is not important enough in society as a whole to warrant criticism from journalism.
We are talking about centrality to FAI under the assumption that it’s a topic that journalists want to write about. maybe in the background of Transcendence that raised the topic a bit in public awareness.
It’s not an exact analogy, but it’s close because it’s much more important to outsiders than to insiders.
The basilisk isn’t directly a LW idea. but the basilisk follows from LW-style ideas and is close enough that Eliezer couldn’t just say “nothing like the basilisk could possibly work”. A closer analogy may be more like, oh, geocentricism. The church does not believe that geocentricism is true any more than LW believes in the basilisk. On the other hand, the man who became the current Pope has pretty much said that the church was right in its treatment of Galileo even if the church was wrong about geocentricism itself. And you still see this used to criticize the church. And I doubt that many priests would think that the way the church treated Galileo is very important compared to either abortion or Jesus dying for our sins.