If you’re wondering why I’m afraid of philosophy, look no further than the fact that this discussion is assigning salience to LW posts in a completely different way to I do.
I mean, it seems to me that where I think an LW post is important and interesting in proportion to how much it helps construct a Friendly AI, how much it gets people to participate in the human project, or the amount of confusion that it permanently and completely dissipates, all of this here is prioritizing LW posts to the extent that they happen to imply positions on famous ongoing philosophical arguments.
That’s why I’m afraid to be put into any philosophical tradition, Quinean or otherwise—and why I think I’m justified in saying that their cognitive workflow is not like unto my cognitive workflow.
Almost none of the items I listed have to do with famous old “problems” like free will or reductionism.
Instead, they’re stuff that (1) you’re already making direct use of in building FAI, like reflective equilibrium, or (2) stuff that is almost identical to the ‘coping with cognitive biases’ stuff you’ve written about so much, like Bishop & Trout (2004), or (3) stuff that is dissolving traditional debates into the cognitive algorithms that produce them, which you seem to think is the defining hallmark of LW-style philosophy, or (4) generally useful stuff like the work on catastrophic risks coming out of FHI at Oxford.
I hope you aren’t going to keep insisting that mainstream philosophy has nothing useful to offer after reading my list. On this point, it may be time for you to just say “oops” and move on.
After all, we already agree on most of the important points, like you said. We agree that philosophy is an incredibly diseased discipline. We agree that people shouldn’t go out and read Quine. We agree that almost everyone should be reading statistics and AI and cognitive science, not mainstream philosophy. We agree that Eliezer Yudkowsky should not read mainstream philosophy. We agree that “their” cognitive workflow is “not like unto” your cognitive workflow.
So I don’t understand why you would continue to insist that nothing (or almost nothing) useful comes out of mainstream philosophy, after the long list of useful things I’ve provided, many of which you are already using yourself, and many more of which closely parallel what you’ve been doing on Less Wrong all along, like dissolving traditional debates into cognitive algorithms and examining how to get at the truth more often through awareness and counteracting of our cognitive biases.
The sky won’t fall if you admit that some of mainstream philosophy is useful, and that you already make use of some of it. I’m not going to go around recommending people join philosophy programs. This is simply about making use of the resources that are out there. Most of those resources are in statistics and AI and cognitive science and physics and so on. But a very little of it happens to come out of mainstream philosophy, especially from that corner of mainstream philosophy called Quinean naturalism which shares lots of (basic) assumptions with Less Wrong philosophy.
As you know, this stuff matters. We’re trying to save the world, here. Either some useful stuff comes out of mainstream philosophy, or it doesn’t. There is a correct answer to that question. And the correct answer is that some useful stuff does come out of mainstream philosophy—as you well know, because you’re already making use of it.
We agree that people shouldn’t go out and read Quine. We agree that almost everyone should be reading statistics and AI and cognitive science, not mainstream philosophy.
I think it would be good for LessWrong to have a bit more academic philosophers and students of philosophy, to have a slightly higher philosophers/programmers ratio (as long as it doesn’t come with the expectation that everybody should understand a lot of concepts in philosophy that aren’t in the sequences).
I’m late, but… is there substantial chain of cause and effect between the discovery of useful conclusions from mainstream philosophy, and the use of those conclusions by Eliezer? Counter-factually, if those conclusions were not drawn, would it be less likely that Eliezer found them anyway?
Eliezer seems to deny this chain of cause and effect. I wonder to what extent you think such a denial is unjustified.
So I don’t understand why you would continue to insist that nothing (or almost nothing) useful comes out of mainstream philosophy
You still haven’t given an actual use case for your sense of “useful”, only historical priority (the qualifier “come out” is telling, for example), and haven’t connected your discussion that involves the word “useful” to the use case Eliezer assumes (even where you answered that side of the discussion without using the word, by agreeing that particular use cases for mainstream philosophy are a loss). It’s an argument about definition of “useful”, or something hiding behind this equivocation.
I suggest tabooing “useful”, when applied to literature (as opposed to activity with stated purpose) on your side.
Eliezer and I, over the course of our long discussion, have come to some understanding of what would constitute useful. Though, Philosophy_Tutor suggested that Eliezer taboo his sense of “useful” before trying to declare every item on my list as useless.
Whether or not I can provide a set of necessary and sufficient conditions for “useful”, I’ve repeatedly pointed out that:
Several works from mainstream philosophy do the same things he has spent a great deal of time doing and advocating on Less Wrong, so if he thinks those works are useless then it would appear he thinks much of what he has done on Less Wrong is uesless.
Quite a few works from mainstream philosophy have been used by him, so presumably he finds them useful.
I can’t believe how difficult it is to convince some people that some useful things come out of mainstream philosophy. To me, it’s a trivial point. Those resisting this truth keep trying to change the subject and make it about how philosophy is a diseased subject (agreed!), how we shouldn’t read Quine (agreed!), how other subjects are more important and useful (agreed!), and so on.
I can’t believe how difficult it is to convince some people that some useful things come out of mainstream philosophy. To me, it’s a trivial point.
If it’s not immediately obvious how an argument connects to a specific implementable policy or empirical fact, default is to covertly interpret it as being about status.
Since there are both good and bad things about philosophy, we can choose to emphasize the good (which accords philosophers and those who read them higher status) or emphasize the bad (which accords people who do their own work and ignore mainstream philosophy higher status).
If there are no consequences to this choice, it’s more pleasant to dwell upon the bad: after all, the worse mainstream philosophy does, the more useful and original this makes our community; the better mainstream philosophy does, the more it suggests our community is a relatively minor phenomenon within a broader movement of other people with more resources and prestige than ourselves (and the more those of us whose time is worth less than Eliezer’s should be reading philosophy journals instead of doing something less mind-numbing).
I think this community is smart enough to avoid many such biases if given a real question with a truth-value, but given a vague open question like “Yay philosophy—yes or no?” of course we’re going to take the side that makes us feel better.
I think the solution is to present specific insights of Quinean philosophy in more depth, which you already seem like you’re planning to do.
Maybe my original post gave the wrong impression of “which side I’m on.” (Yay philosophy or no?) Like Quine and Yudkowsky, I’ve generally considered myself an “anti-philosophy philosopher.”
But you’re right that such vague questions and categorizations are not really the point. The solution is to present specific useful insights of mainstream philosophy, and let the LW community make use of them. I’ve done that in brief, here, and am working on posts to elaborate some of those items in more detail.
What disappoints me is the double standard being used (by some) for what counts as “useful” when presented in AI books or on Less Wrong, versus what counts as “useful” when it happens to come from mainstream philosophy.
There are use cases (plans) that distinguish LW from mainstream philosophy that make philosophy less useful for those plans. There are other use cases where philosophy would be more useful. Making an overall judgment would depend on which use cases are important.
The concept of “useful” that leads to a classification which marks philosophy “not useful” might be one you don’t endorse, but we already discussed a few examples that show that such concepts can be natural, even if you’d prefer not to identify them with “usefulness”.
A double standard would filter evidence differently when considering the things it’s double-standard about. If we are talking about particular use cases, I don’t think there was significant distortion of attention paid for either case. A point where evidence could be filtered in favor of LW would be focus on particular use cases, but that charge depends on the importance of those use cases and their alternatives to the people selecting them. So far, you didn’t give such a selection that favors philosophy, and in fact you’ve agreed on the status of the use cases named by others.
So, apart from your intuition that “useful” is an applicable label, not much about the rules of reasoning and motivation about your claim was given. Why is it interesting to discuss whether mainstream philosophy is “useful” in the sense you mean this concept? If we are to discuss it, what kinds of arguments would tell us more about this fact? Can you find effective arguments about other people’s concepts of usefulness, given that the intuitive appeals made so far failed? How is your choice of concept of “usefulness” related to other people’s concepts, apart from the use of the same label? (Words/concepts can be wrong, but to argue that a word is wrong with a person who doesn’t see it so would require a more specific argument or reasoning heuristic.)
Since there seems to be no known easy way of making progress on discussing each other’s concepts, and the motivation seems to be solely to salve intuition, I think there is no ground for further object-level argument.
Why is it interesting to discuss whether mainstream philosophy is “useful” in the sense you mean this concept?
I love to read and write interesting things—which is why I take to heart Eliezer’s constant warning to be wary of things that are fun to argue.
But interestingness was not the point of my post. Utility to FAI and other Less Wrong projects was the point. My point was that mainstream philosophy sometimes offers things of utility to Less Wrong. And I gave a long list of examples. Some of them are things (from mainstream philosophy) that Eliezer and Less Wrong are already making profitable use of. Others are things that Less Wrong had not mentioned before I arrived, but are doing very much the same sorts of things that Less Wrong values—for example dissolution-to-algorithm and strategies for overcoming biases. Had these things been written up as Less Wrong posts, it seems they’d have been well-received. And in cases where they have been written up as LessWrongposts, they have been well-received. My continuing discussion in this thread has been to suggest that therefore, some useful things do come from mainstream philosophy, and need not be ignored simply because of the genre or industry they come from.
By “useful” I just mean “possessing utility toward some goal.” By “useful to Less Wrong”, then, I mean “possessing utility toward a goal of Less Wrong’s/Eliezer’s.” For example, both reflective equilibrium and Epistemology and the Psychology of Human Judgment possess that kind of utility. That’s a very rough sketch, anyway.
But no, I don’t have time to write up a 30-page conceptual analysis of what it means for something to be “useful.”
But I think I still don’t understand what you mean. Maybe an example would help. A good one would be this: Is there a sense in which reflective equilibrium (a theory or process that happens to come from mainstream philosophy) is not useful to Eliezer, despite the fact that it plays a central role in CEV, his plan to save humanity from unfriendly AI?
Another one would be this: Is there a sense in which Eliezer’s writing on how to be aware of and counteract common cognitive biases is useful, but the nearly identical content in Bishop & Trout’s Epistemology and the Psychology of Human Judgment (which happens to come from mainstream philosophy) is not useful?
I think this community is smart enough to avoid many such biases if given a real question with a truth-value, but given a vague open question like “Yay philosophy—yes or no?” of course we’re going to take the side that makes us feel better.
Isn’t the smart move there not to play? What would make that the LW move?
If it’s not immediately obvious how an argument connects to a specific implementable policy or empirical fact, default is to covertly interpret it as being about status.
Sounds plausible, and if true, a useful observation.
A lot of the “nay philosophy” end up doing philosophy, even while they continue to say “nay philosophy”. So I have a hard time taking the opinion at face value.
Moreover it’s not like there is one kind of thinking, philosophy, and another kind of thinking, non-philosophy. Any kind of evidence or argument could in principle be employed by someone calling himself a philosopher—or, inversely, by someone calling himself a non-philosopher. If you suddenly have a bright idea and start developing it into an essay, I submit that you don’t necessarily know whether, once the idea has fully bloomed, it will be considered philosophy or non-philosophy.
I don’t know whether it’s true that science used to be considered a subtopic of philosophy (“natural philosophy”), but it seems entirely plausible that it was all philosophy but that at some point there was a terminological exodus, when physicists stopped calling themselves philosophers. In that older, more inclusive sense, then anyone who says “nay philosophy” is also saying “nay science”. Keeping that in mind, what we now call “philosophy” might instead be called, “what’s left of philosophy after the great terminological exodus”.
Of course “what’s left” is also called “the dregs”. In light of that, what we all “philosophy” might instead be called “the dregs of philosophy”.
I don’t know whether it’s true that science used to be considered a subtopic of philosophy (“natural philosophy”), but it seems entirely plausible that it was all philosophy but that at some point there was a terminological exodus, when physicists stopped calling themselves philosophers.
That is exactly true. The old term for what we nowadays call “natural science” was “natural philosophy.” There are still relics of this old terminology, most notably that in English the title “doctor of philosophy” (or the Latin version thereof) is still used by physicists and other natural scientists. The “terminological exodus” you refer to happened only in the 19th century.
This is still happening, right? I once had a professor who suggested that philosophy is basically the process of creating new fields and removing them from philosophy—thence logic, mathematics, physics, and more recently linguistics.
That’s true, I may have overstated his suggestion—the actual context was “why has philosophy made so little progress over the past several thousand years?” (“Because every time a philosophical question is settled, it stops being a philosophical question.”)
This provides a defense of the claim that luke was attacking earlier on the thread, that
“It’s totally reasonable to expect philosophy to provide several interesting/useful results [in one or a few broad subject areas] and then suddenly stop.”
Possibly, yes, but I’d expect philosophy to stop working on a field only after it’s recognized as its own (non-philosophy) area (if then) - which, for example, morality is not.
Errr… it seems to me that theology in many ways acts like philosophy, with the addition of stuff like exegesis and apologetics… but any particular religion’s theology is distinct from the set of things we’d call “philosophy” as a monolithic institution. This is far from my area of expertise, however!
I’m worried part of this debate is just about status. When someone comes in and says “Hey, you guys should really pay more attention to what x group of people with y credentials says about z” it reminds everyone here, most of whom lack y credentials that society doesn’t recognize them as an authority on z and so they are some how less valuable than group x. So there is an impulse to say that z is obvious, that z doesn’t matter or that having y isn’t really a good indicator of being right about z. That way, people here don’t lose status relative to group x.
Conversely, members of group x probably put money and effort into getting credential y and will be offended by the suggestion that what they know about doesn’t matter, that it is obvious or that their having credential y doesn’t indicate they know anything more than anyone else.
Me, I have an undergraduate degree in philosophy which I value so I’m sure I get a little defensive when philosophy is mocked or criticized around here. But most people here probably fit in the first category. Eliezer, being a human being like everybody else, is likely a little insecure about his lack of a formal education and perhaps particularly apt to deny an academic community status as domain experts in a fields he’s worked in (even though he is certainly right that formal credentials are overvalued).
I think a lot of this argument isn’t really a disagreement over what is valuable and what isn’t- it’s just people emphasizing or de-emphasizing different ideas and writers to make themselves look higher status.
I’ve read Quine and you haven’t so obviously Quine’s insights were huge leaps forward and no progress is possible without standing on his shoulders. Most of what you’ve said here was said earlier and better by other people I’ve read.
...
I haven’t read Quine and you have? Well in that case everything he ever said was obvious and I totally came up with it on my own. What’s actually impressive coming up with these interesting ideas over here based on those obvious ideas Quine thought up. Any philosophers do that? No? That’s what I thought.
These statements have no content they just say “My stuff is better than your stuff”.
I think such debates unavoidably include status motivations. We are status-oriented, signaling creatures. Politics mattered in our ancestral environment.
Of course you know that I never said anything like either of the parody quotes provided. And I’m not trying to stay Quinean philosophy is better than Less Wrong. The claim I’m making is a very weak claim: that some useful stuff comes out of mainstream philosophy, and Less Wrong shouldn’t ignore it when that happens just because the source happens to be mainstream philosophy.
Of course you know that I never said anything like either of the parody quotes provided. And I’m not trying to stay Quinean philosophy is better than Less Wrong. The claim I’m making is a very weak claim: that some useful stuff comes out of mainstream philosophy, and Less Wrong shouldn’t ignore it when that happens just because the source happens to be mainstream philosophy.
Yes. But you’re right so that side had to be a strawman, didn’t it?
Since I hold a pretty strong pro-mainstream philosophy position (relative to others here, perhaps including yourself) I was a little more creative with that parody than in the other. I was attempting to be self-deprecating to soften my criticism (that the reluctance to embrace your position stems from status insecurities) so as to not set of tribal war instincts.
Though on reflection it occurs to me that since I didn’t state my position in that comment or in this thread and have only talked about it in comments (some before you even arrived here at Less Wrong) it’s pretty unlikely that you or anyone else would remember my position on the matter, in which case my attempt at self-deprecation might look like a criticism of you.
Yeah… I’ve apparently missed something important to interpreting you.
For the record, if you hold “a pretty strong pro-mainstream philosophy position” then you definitely are more in favor of mainstream philosophy than I am. :)
I agree that you’ve agreed on many specific things. I suggest that the sense of remaining disagreement is currently confused through refusing to taboo “useful”. You use one definition, he uses a different one, and there is possibly genuine disagreement in there somewhere, but you won’t be able to find it without again switching to more specific discussion.
Also, taboo doesn’t work by giving a definition, instead you explain whatever you wanted without using the concept explicitly (so it’s always a definition in a specific context).
For example:
Quite a few works from mainstream philosophy have been used by him, so presumably he finds them useful.
Instead of debating this point of the definition (and what constitutes “being used”), consider the questions of whether Eliezer agrees that he was influenced (in any sense) by quite a few works from mainstream philosophy (obviously), whether they provided insights that would’ve been unavailable otherwise (probably not), whether they happen to already contain some of the same basic insights found elsewhere (yes), whether they originate them (it depends), etc.
It’s a long list, not as satisfying as the simple “useful/not”, but this is the way to unpack the disagreement. And even if you agree on every fact, his sense of “useful” can disagree with yours.
I’ll wait to see if Eliezer really thinks we aren’t on the same page about the meaning of ‘useful’.
If reflective equilibrium, which plays a central role in Eliezer’s plan (CEV) to save humanity, isn’t useful, then I will be very surprised, and we will seem to be using different definitions of the term “useful.”
Has he repudiated the usefulness of reflective equilibrium (or of the concept, or the term)? I recall that he’s used it himself in some of the more recent summaries of CEV.
It seems to me that the disagreement might be over the adjective “mainstream”. To me, that connotes what’s being mentioned (not covered in detail, merely mentioned) in broad overviews such as freshman introductory classes or non-major classes at college. As an analogy, in physics both general relativity and quantum mechanics are mainstream. They get mentioned in these contexts, though not, of course, covered. Something like timeless physics does not.
How much of the standard philosophy curriculum covers Quinean Naturalism?
I dunno, I think Eliezer and I are clear on what mainstream philosophy is. And if anything is mainstream, it’s John Rawls and Oxford University professors whose work Eliezer is already making use of.
I listed about a dozen close comparisons on matters that are highly controversial in mainstream philosophy.
That does not make me think that “mainstream philosophy” as a whole is doing useful work. Localized individuals and small strains appear to be. But even when the small strains are taken seriously in mainstream philosophy, that’s not the same as mainstream philosophy doing said work, and labeling any advances as “here’s mainstream philosophy doing good work” seems to be misleading.
No, mainstream philosophy “as a whole” is not doing useful work. That’s what the central section of my original post was about: Non-Quinean philosophy, and how its entire method is fundamentally flawed.
Even quite a lot of Quinean naturalistic philosophy is not doing useful work.
I’m not trying to mislead anybody. But Eliezer has apparently taken the extreme position that mainstream philosophy in general is worthless, so I made a long list of useful things that have come from mainstream philosophy—and some of it is not even from the most productive strain of mainstream philosophy, what I’ve been calling “Quinean naturalism.” Useful things sometimes come from unexpected sources.
I’m not trying to mislead anybody. But Eliezer has apparently taken the extreme position that mainstream religion in general is worthless, so I made a long list of useful things that have come from mainstream religion—and some of it is not even from the most productive strain of mainstream religion, what I’ve been calling “Christian naturalism.” Useful things sometimes come from unexpected sources.
In the above quote the following replacements have been made.
philosophy → religion
Quinean → Christian
There are many ideas from religion that are not useless. It is not often the most productive source to learn from either however. Why filter ideas from religion texts when better sources are available or when it is easier to recreate them in within in a better framework; a framework that actual justifies the idea. This is also important because in my experience people fail to filter constantly and end up accepting bad ideas.
I do not see EY arguing that main stream philosophy has not useful nuggets. I seem him arguing that filtering for those nugets in general makes the process too costly. I see you arguing that “Quinean naturalism” is a rich vien of philosophy and worth mining for nuggets. If you want to prove the worth of mine “Quinean naturalism” you have to display nuggets that EY has not found through better means already.
If you want to prove the worth of mine “Quinean naturalism” you have to display nuggets that EY has not found through better means already.
I did list such nuggets that EY has not found through other means already, including several instances of “dissolution-to-algorithm”, which EY seems to think of as the hallmark of LW-style philosophy.
I wouldn’t call mainstream philosophy a “rich vein” that is (for most people) worth mining for nuggets. I’ve specifically said that people will get far more value reading statistics and AI and cognitive science. I’ve specifically said that EY should not be mining mainstream philosophy. What I’m saying is that if useful stuff happens to come from mainstream philosophy, why ignore it? It’s people like myself who are already familiar with mainstream philosophy, and for whom it doesn’t take much effort to list 20+ useful contributions of mainstream philosophy, who should bring those useful nuggets to the attention of Less Wrong.
What seems strange to me is to draw an arbitrary boundary around mainstream philosophy and say, “If it happens to come from here, we don’t want it.” And I think Eliezer already agrees with this, since of course he is already making use of several things from mainstream philosophy. But on the other hand, he seems to be insisting that mainstream philosophy has nothing (or almost nothing) useful to offer.
I did list such nuggets that EY has not found through other means already, including several instances of “dissolution-to-algorithm”, which EY seems to think of as the hallmark of LW-style philosophy.
In that post you labeled that list as “useful contributions of mainstream philosophy:” Which does not fit the criteria of nuggets not found by other means. Nor “here are things you have not figured out yet” or “see how this particular method is simpler and more elegant then the one you are currently using.” This is similar to what I think EY is expressing in: Show me this field’s power!
At list of 20 topics that are similar to LW is suggestive but not compelling. Compelling would be more predictive power or correct predictions where LW methods have been known to fail. Compelling would be just one case covered in depth fitting the above criteria. Frankly, and not ment to reflect on you, listing 20 topics that are suggestive reminds me of fast talk manipulation and/or an infomercial. I want to see a conversation digging deep on one topic. I want depth of proof not breadth, because breadth by itself is not compelling only suggestive.
What I’m saying is that if useful stuff happens to come from mainstream philosophy, why ignore it?
I see you repeating this in many places, but I have yet to see EY suggest the useful parts of philosophy should be ignored.
What seems strange to me is to draw an arbitrary boundary around mainstream philosophy and say, “If it happens to come from here, we don’t want it.”
I see EY arguing philosophy is a field “whose poison a novice should avoid”. Note the that novices should avoid, not that well grounded rationalists should ignore. I have followed the conversations of EY’s and I do not see him saying what you assert. I see you repeatedly asserting he or LW in general is though. In theory it should not be hard to dissolve the problem if you can provide links to where you believe this assertions have been made.
Explanation of cognitive biases and how to battle against them on Less Wrong? “Useful.”
Explanation of cognitive biases and how to battle against them in a mainstream philosophy book? “Not useful.”
Dissolution of common (but easy) philosophical problem like free will to cognitive algorithm on Less Wrong? “Useful, impressive.”
Dissolution of common (but easy) philosophical problems in mainstream philosophy journals? “Not useful.”
Is this seriously what is being claimed? If it’s not what’s being claimed, then good—we may not disagree on anything.
Also: as I stated, several of the things I listed are already in use at Less Wrong, and have been employed in depth. Is this not compelling for now?
I’m planning in-depth explanations, but those take time. So far I’ve only done one of them: on SPRs.
As for my interpretation of Eliezer’s views on mainstream philosophy, here are some quotes:
One: “It seems to me that people can get along just fine knowing only what philosophy they pick up from reading AI books.” But maybe this doesn’t mean to avoid mainstream philosophy entirely. Maybe it just means that most people should avoid mainstream philosophy, which I agree with.
Two: “I expect [reading philosophy] to teach very bad habits of thought that will lead people to be unable to do real work.”
Three: “only things of that level [dissolution to algorithm] are useful philosophy. Other things are not philosophy or more like background intros.” Reflective equilibrium isn’t “of that level” of dissolution to cognitive algorithm, in any way that I can tell, and yet it plays a useful role in Eliezer’s CEV plan to save humanity. Epistemology and the Psychology of Human Judgment doesn’t say much about dissolution to cognitive algorithm, and yet its content reads like a series of Less Wrong blog posts on overcoming cognitive biases with “ameliorative psychology.” If somebody claims that those Less Wrong posts are useful but the Epistemology book isn’t, I think that’s a blatant double standard. And it seems that Eliezer in this quote is claiming just that, though again, I’m not clear what it means for something to be “of that level” of dissolution to algorithm.
And then, in his first comment on this post, Eliezer opened with: “I’m highly skeptical.” I took that to be a response to my claim that “rationalists need not ignore mainstream philosophy,” but maybe he was responding to some other claim in my original post.
But if I’ve been misinterpreting Eliezer this whole time, he hasn’t told me so. I’d sure appreciate that. That would be the simplest way to clear this up.
The standard sequences explanation of cognitive biases and how to battle against them on Less Wrong? “Useful.”
Yet another explanation of cognitive biases and how to battle against them in a mainstream philosophy book? “Not useful.”
Dissolution of difficult philosophical problem like free will to cognitive algorithm on Less Wrong? “Useful, impressive.”
Dissolution of common (but easy) philosophical problem arising from language misuse in mainstream philosophy journals? “Not useful.”
Yeah, if that’s what’s being claimed, that’s the double standard stuff I was talking about.
Good stuff of various kinds, surrounded by error, confusion, and nonsense in mainstream philosophy journals? “Not useful.”
Of course there’s error, confusion, and nonsense in just about any large chunk of literature. Mainstream philosophy is particularly bad, but of course what I plan to do is pluck the good bits out and share just those things on Less Wrong.
Explanation of cognitive biases and how to battle against them on Less Wrong? “Useful.”
Explanation of cognitive biases and how to battle against them in a mainstream philosophy book? “Not useful.”
Dissolution of common (but easy) philosophical problem like free will to cognitive algorithm on Less Wrong? “Useful, impressive.”
Dissolution of common (but easy) philosophical problems in mainstream philosophy journals? “Not useful.”
Is this seriously what is being claimed? If it’s not what’s being claimed, then good—we may not disagree on anything.
I no longer remember your original post did you get that format from Perplexed? Or did he get it from you?
You state Perplexed example i a double standard here. Perplexed discribes what is happen LW as different from what happens in mainstream philosophy, which does not fit the standard definition of double standard. Double standard: a rule applied differently to essentially the same thing/idea/group. Perplexed statements imply that LW and mainstream philosophy are considerably different which does not fit the description of a double standard.
As of yet I have not interpreted anything on LW as meaning the content of the quote above.
Also: as I stated, several of the things I listed are already in use at Less Wrong, and have been employed in depth. Is this not compelling for now?
No it is not compelling. In science a theory which merely reproduces previous results is not compelling only suggestive. A new theory must have predictive power in areas the old one did not or be simpler(aka:more elegant) to be considered compelling. That is how you show the power of a new theory.
Your assertion was:
What seems strange to me is to draw an arbitrary boundary around mainstream philosophy and say, “If it happens to come from here, we don’t want it.”
Your quote one does not seem to support your assertion by your own admission. My interpretation was most people should avoid mainstream philosophy, perhaps the vast majority and certainly novices. If possibly learn from a better source, since there is a vast amount from better sources and there is a vast amount of work to be done with those sources why focus on lesser sources?
Two: “I expect [reading philosophy] to teach very bad habits of thought that will lead people to be unable to do real work.”
This does not support your assertion either. It only claims the methods of mainstream philosophy are bad habits for people who want to get things done.
Three: …
This one does not seem to a “daw arbitrary boundary” either so it does not support your assertion. Maybe a boundary but then EY then does on to describe the boundary so you have not supported your discriptor of arbitrary.
I think the difference more and less useful is defiantly being claimed. Having everything in one self consistant system has many advantages. Only one set of terminology to learn. It is easier to build groups when everyone is using or familiar with the same terminology.
Out of your three quotes I do not see any “arbitrary boundry” being drawn by EY. He is drawing a boundary, but in no way do I see it as arbitrary. This boundary and why it is draw is a point that you do not seem to understand EY’s reasoning on, otherwise you would do your best to describe the algorithm that EY used to draw the boundary and then show how it is wrong rather then just calling it arbitrary.
And then, in his first comment on this post, Eliezer opened with: “I’m highly skeptical.” I took that to be a response to my claim that “rationalists need not ignore mainstream philosophy,” but maybe he was responding to some other claim in my original post.
Really I would have thought you main assertion was:
Yudkowsky once wrote, “If there’s any centralized repository of reductionist-grade naturalistic cognitive philosophy, I’ve never heard mention of it.”
When I read that I thought: What? That’s Quinean naturalism! That’s Kornblith and Stich and Bickle and the Churchlands and Thagard and Metzinger and Northoff! There are hundreds of philosophers who do that!
You have not shown Quinean naturalism and the rest are a “centralized repository of reductionist-grade naturalistic cognitive philosophy” and you will have to do a proof with depth, which you have not provided but are working on, to show this. So his skepticism is warranted, justified, prudent and seems like a reasonable barrier to unproven ideas.
But if I’ve been misinterpreting Eliezer this whole time, he hasn’t told me so. I’d sure appreciate that. That would be the simplest way to clear this up.
I think he has pointed it out. The three quotes above do not support your assertion or “arbitrary”. The difference is at a basic definition and methodological level.
And I just read your resolution as I was writing this post. Frankly It really seem like you jumped to conclusions on EY’s position and level of arbitrariness to a degree which caused inefficiency. My main curiosity is now why you think you jumped to conclusions and what you are going to do to prevent it from happening again.
Yeah, I just disagree with your comment from beginning to end.
Perplexed discribes what is happen LW as different from what happens in mainstream philosophy, which does not fit the standard definition of double standard.
Yeah, and my claim is that LW content and some useful content from mainstream philosophy is not relevantly different, hence to praise one and ignore the other is to apply a double standard. Epistemology and the Psychology of Human Judgment, which reads like a sequence of LW posts, is a good example. So is much of the work I listed that dissolves traditional philosophical debates into the cognitive algorithms that produce the conflicting intuitions that philosophers use to go in circles for thousands of years.
No it is not compelling. In science a theory which merely reproduces previous results is not compelling only suggestive. A new theory must have predictive power in areas the old one did not or be simpler(aka:more elegant) to be considered compelling.
This is a change of subject. I was talking about the usefulness of certain work in mainstream philosophy already used by Less Wrong, not proposing a new scientific theory. If your point applied, it would apply to the re-use of the ideas on Less Wrong, not to their origination in mainstream philosophy.
The strongest support for my interpretation of EY comes from quote #3, for reasons I explained in detail and you ignored. I suspect much of our confusion came from Eliezer’s assumption that I was saying everybody should go out and read Quinean philosophy, which of course I never claimed and in fact have specifically denied.
In any case, EY and I have come to common ground, so this is kinda irrelevant.
You have not shown Quinean naturalism and the rest are a “centralized repository of reductionist-grade naturalistic cognitive philosophy” and you will have to do a proof with depth...
I’m fine with that. What counts as a ‘centralized repository’ is pretty fuzzy. Quinean naturalism counts as a ‘centralized repository’ in my meaning, but if Eliezer means something different by ‘centralized repository’, then we have a disagreement in words but not in fact on that point.
Yeah, and my claim is that LW content and some useful content from mainstream philosophy is not relevantly different, hence to praise one and ignore the other is to apply a double standard.
In the mind of EY, i assume, and some others there is a difference. If the difference is not relevant there would be a double standard. If there is a relevant difference no double standard exists. I did not see you point out what that difference was and why it was not relevant before calling it a double standard.
This is a change of subject. I was talking about the usefulness of certain work in mainstream philosophy already used by Less Wrong, not proposing a new scientific theory.
Not a change of subject at all. Just let you know what standards I use for judging something suggestive vs compelling and that I think EY might be using a similar standard. Just answering your question “Is this not compelling for now?”, a no with exposition. I was giving you the method by which I often judge how useful a work is and suggesting that EY may use a similar method. If so it would explain some of why you were not communicating well.
If your point applied, it would apply to the re-use of the ideas on Less Wrong, not to their origination in mainstream philosophy.
It is to be applied within the development of an individuals evolving beliefs. So someone holding LW beliefs then introduce to mainstream philosophy would use this standard before adopting mainstream philosophy’s beliefs.
I explained in detail and you ignored.
I do not like the idea, I think it is unproductive, of having conversation with people who think they magically know what I pay attention to and what I do not. If you meant that I did not address your point please say so and how instead.
I did not ignore it. I did think it supported an argument that EY draws a boundary between mainstream philosophy and LW, but did not support the argument that he drew a arbitrary boundary.
I’m fine with that. What counts as a ‘centralized repository’ is pretty fuzzy. Quinean naturalism counts as a ‘centralized repository’ in my meaning, but if Eliezer means something different by ‘centralized repository’, then we have a disagreement in words but not in fact on that point
My interpretation was that he skeptical with the grade of repository not the centralness of it.
No, mainstream philosophy “as a whole” is not doing useful work.
mainstream philosophy in general is worthless,
I don’t understand the distinction you’re making. These two statements mean the exactsame thing to me: in general, mainstream philosophy is useless, though exceptions exist.
Useful things sometimes come from unexpected sources.
Admittedly. That’s not a good reason to look there, until the expected sources are exhausted.
What I’m trying to say is that the vast majority of mainstream philosophy is useless, but some of it is useful, and I gave examples.
I’ve also repeatedly agreed that most people should not be reading mainstream philosophy. Much better to learn statistics and AI and cognitive science. But for those already familiar with philosophy, for whom it’s not that difficult to name 20 useful ideas from mainstream philosophy, then… why not make use of them? It makes no sense to draw an arbitrary boundary around mainstream philosophy and say “If it comes from here, I don’t want it.” That’s silly.
No, mainstream philosophy “as a whole” is not doing useful work.
mainstream philosophy in general is worthless,
I don’t understand the distinction you’re making. These two statements mean the exactsame thing to me: in general, mainstream philosophy is useless, though exceptions exist.
I mean, it seems to me that where I think an LW post is important and interesting in proportion to how much it helps construct a Friendly AI, how much it gets people to participate in the human project...
I’ve frequently been criticized for suggesting that you hold that attitude. The usual response is that LW is not about friendly AI or has not much to do with the SIAI.
I don’t think you’re being fair to a lot of philosophers. I think you’re being fair to some philosophers, the ones who are sowing confusion. But you can’t just wave away the sophists, the charlatans, with a magic wand. They are out there creating confusion and drawing people away from useful and promising lines of thought. There are other philosophers out there who are doing what they can to limit the damage.
It’s a bit like war. Think of yourself as a scientist who is trying to build a rocket that will take us to Mars. But in the meantime there is a war going on. You might say, “this war is not helpful, because a stray missile might blow up my rocket, damn those generals and their toys.” But the problem is, without the generals like Dennett who are protecting your territory, your positions, the enemy generals will overrun your project and strip your rocket for parts.
You may think that the philosophers don’t matter, that they are just arguing in obscurity among themselves, but I don’t think that’s the case. I think that there is a significant amount of leakage, that ideas born and nurtured in the academy frequently spread to the wider society and infect essentially everyone’s way of thinking.
If you’re wondering why I’m afraid of philosophy, look no further than the fact that this discussion is assigning salience to LW posts in a completely different way to I do.
I mean, it seems to me that where I think an LW post is important and interesting in proportion to how much it helps construct a Friendly AI, how much it gets people to participate in the human project, or the amount of confusion that it permanently and completely dissipates, all of this here is prioritizing LW posts to the extent that they happen to imply positions on famous ongoing philosophical arguments.
That’s why I’m afraid to be put into any philosophical tradition, Quinean or otherwise—and why I think I’m justified in saying that their cognitive workflow is not like unto my cognitive workflow.
With this comment at least, you aren’t addressing the list of 20+ useful contributions of mainstream philosophy I gave.
Almost none of the items I listed have to do with famous old “problems” like free will or reductionism.
Instead, they’re stuff that (1) you’re already making direct use of in building FAI, like reflective equilibrium, or (2) stuff that is almost identical to the ‘coping with cognitive biases’ stuff you’ve written about so much, like Bishop & Trout (2004), or (3) stuff that is dissolving traditional debates into the cognitive algorithms that produce them, which you seem to think is the defining hallmark of LW-style philosophy, or (4) generally useful stuff like the work on catastrophic risks coming out of FHI at Oxford.
I hope you aren’t going to keep insisting that mainstream philosophy has nothing useful to offer after reading my list. On this point, it may be time for you to just say “oops” and move on.
After all, we already agree on most of the important points, like you said. We agree that philosophy is an incredibly diseased discipline. We agree that people shouldn’t go out and read Quine. We agree that almost everyone should be reading statistics and AI and cognitive science, not mainstream philosophy. We agree that Eliezer Yudkowsky should not read mainstream philosophy. We agree that “their” cognitive workflow is “not like unto” your cognitive workflow.
So I don’t understand why you would continue to insist that nothing (or almost nothing) useful comes out of mainstream philosophy, after the long list of useful things I’ve provided, many of which you are already using yourself, and many more of which closely parallel what you’ve been doing on Less Wrong all along, like dissolving traditional debates into cognitive algorithms and examining how to get at the truth more often through awareness and counteracting of our cognitive biases.
The sky won’t fall if you admit that some of mainstream philosophy is useful, and that you already make use of some of it. I’m not going to go around recommending people join philosophy programs. This is simply about making use of the resources that are out there. Most of those resources are in statistics and AI and cognitive science and physics and so on. But a very little of it happens to come out of mainstream philosophy, especially from that corner of mainstream philosophy called Quinean naturalism which shares lots of (basic) assumptions with Less Wrong philosophy.
As you know, this stuff matters. We’re trying to save the world, here. Either some useful stuff comes out of mainstream philosophy, or it doesn’t. There is a correct answer to that question. And the correct answer is that some useful stuff does come out of mainstream philosophy—as you well know, because you’re already making use of it.
I think it would be good for LessWrong to have a bit more academic philosophers and students of philosophy, to have a slightly higher philosophers/programmers ratio (as long as it doesn’t come with the expectation that everybody should understand a lot of concepts in philosophy that aren’t in the sequences).
I’m late, but… is there substantial chain of cause and effect between the discovery of useful conclusions from mainstream philosophy, and the use of those conclusions by Eliezer? Counter-factually, if those conclusions were not drawn, would it be less likely that Eliezer found them anyway?
Eliezer seems to deny this chain of cause and effect. I wonder to what extent you think such a denial is unjustified.
You still haven’t given an actual use case for your sense of “useful”, only historical priority (the qualifier “come out” is telling, for example), and haven’t connected your discussion that involves the word “useful” to the use case Eliezer assumes (even where you answered that side of the discussion without using the word, by agreeing that particular use cases for mainstream philosophy are a loss). It’s an argument about definition of “useful”, or something hiding behind this equivocation.
I suggest tabooing “useful”, when applied to literature (as opposed to activity with stated purpose) on your side.
Eliezer and I, over the course of our long discussion, have come to some understanding of what would constitute useful. Though, Philosophy_Tutor suggested that Eliezer taboo his sense of “useful” before trying to declare every item on my list as useless.
Whether or not I can provide a set of necessary and sufficient conditions for “useful”, I’ve repeatedly pointed out that:
Several works from mainstream philosophy do the same things he has spent a great deal of time doing and advocating on Less Wrong, so if he thinks those works are useless then it would appear he thinks much of what he has done on Less Wrong is uesless.
Quite a few works from mainstream philosophy have been used by him, so presumably he finds them useful.
I can’t believe how difficult it is to convince some people that some useful things come out of mainstream philosophy. To me, it’s a trivial point. Those resisting this truth keep trying to change the subject and make it about how philosophy is a diseased subject (agreed!), how we shouldn’t read Quine (agreed!), how other subjects are more important and useful (agreed!), and so on.
If it’s not immediately obvious how an argument connects to a specific implementable policy or empirical fact, default is to covertly interpret it as being about status.
Since there are both good and bad things about philosophy, we can choose to emphasize the good (which accords philosophers and those who read them higher status) or emphasize the bad (which accords people who do their own work and ignore mainstream philosophy higher status).
If there are no consequences to this choice, it’s more pleasant to dwell upon the bad: after all, the worse mainstream philosophy does, the more useful and original this makes our community; the better mainstream philosophy does, the more it suggests our community is a relatively minor phenomenon within a broader movement of other people with more resources and prestige than ourselves (and the more those of us whose time is worth less than Eliezer’s should be reading philosophy journals instead of doing something less mind-numbing).
I think this community is smart enough to avoid many such biases if given a real question with a truth-value, but given a vague open question like “Yay philosophy—yes or no?” of course we’re going to take the side that makes us feel better.
I think the solution is to present specific insights of Quinean philosophy in more depth, which you already seem like you’re planning to do.
Maybe my original post gave the wrong impression of “which side I’m on.” (Yay philosophy or no?) Like Quine and Yudkowsky, I’ve generally considered myself an “anti-philosophy philosopher.”
But you’re right that such vague questions and categorizations are not really the point. The solution is to present specific useful insights of mainstream philosophy, and let the LW community make use of them. I’ve done that in brief, here, and am working on posts to elaborate some of those items in more detail.
What disappoints me is the double standard being used (by some) for what counts as “useful” when presented in AI books or on Less Wrong, versus what counts as “useful” when it happens to come from mainstream philosophy.
I don’t think there is double standard involved.
There are use cases (plans) that distinguish LW from mainstream philosophy that make philosophy less useful for those plans. There are other use cases where philosophy would be more useful. Making an overall judgment would depend on which use cases are important.
The concept of “useful” that leads to a classification which marks philosophy “not useful” might be one you don’t endorse, but we already discussed a few examples that show that such concepts can be natural, even if you’d prefer not to identify them with “usefulness”.
A double standard would filter evidence differently when considering the things it’s double-standard about. If we are talking about particular use cases, I don’t think there was significant distortion of attention paid for either case. A point where evidence could be filtered in favor of LW would be focus on particular use cases, but that charge depends on the importance of those use cases and their alternatives to the people selecting them. So far, you didn’t give such a selection that favors philosophy, and in fact you’ve agreed on the status of the use cases named by others.
So, apart from your intuition that “useful” is an applicable label, not much about the rules of reasoning and motivation about your claim was given. Why is it interesting to discuss whether mainstream philosophy is “useful” in the sense you mean this concept? If we are to discuss it, what kinds of arguments would tell us more about this fact? Can you find effective arguments about other people’s concepts of usefulness, given that the intuitive appeals made so far failed? How is your choice of concept of “usefulness” related to other people’s concepts, apart from the use of the same label? (Words/concepts can be wrong, but to argue that a word is wrong with a person who doesn’t see it so would require a more specific argument or reasoning heuristic.)
Since there seems to be no known easy way of making progress on discussing each other’s concepts, and the motivation seems to be solely to salve intuition, I think there is no ground for further object-level argument.
I love to read and write interesting things—which is why I take to heart Eliezer’s constant warning to be wary of things that are fun to argue.
But interestingness was not the point of my post. Utility to FAI and other Less Wrong projects was the point. My point was that mainstream philosophy sometimes offers things of utility to Less Wrong. And I gave a long list of examples. Some of them are things (from mainstream philosophy) that Eliezer and Less Wrong are already making profitable use of. Others are things that Less Wrong had not mentioned before I arrived, but are doing very much the same sorts of things that Less Wrong values—for example dissolution-to-algorithm and strategies for overcoming biases. Had these things been written up as Less Wrong posts, it seems they’d have been well-received. And in cases where they have been written up as Less Wrong posts, they have been well-received. My continuing discussion in this thread has been to suggest that therefore, some useful things do come from mainstream philosophy, and need not be ignored simply because of the genre or industry they come from.
By “useful” I just mean “possessing utility toward some goal.” By “useful to Less Wrong”, then, I mean “possessing utility toward a goal of Less Wrong’s/Eliezer’s.” For example, both reflective equilibrium and Epistemology and the Psychology of Human Judgment possess that kind of utility. That’s a very rough sketch, anyway.
But no, I don’t have time to write up a 30-page conceptual analysis of what it means for something to be “useful.”
But I think I still don’t understand what you mean. Maybe an example would help. A good one would be this: Is there a sense in which reflective equilibrium (a theory or process that happens to come from mainstream philosophy) is not useful to Eliezer, despite the fact that it plays a central role in CEV, his plan to save humanity from unfriendly AI?
Another one would be this: Is there a sense in which Eliezer’s writing on how to be aware of and counteract common cognitive biases is useful, but the nearly identical content in Bishop & Trout’s Epistemology and the Psychology of Human Judgment (which happens to come from mainstream philosophy) is not useful?
(I edited the grandparent comment substantially since publishing it, so your reply is probably out of date.)
Okay, I updated my reply comment.
Isn’t the smart move there not to play? What would make that the LW move?
Sounds plausible, and if true, a useful observation.
“Yay philosophy—yes or no?” and questions of that ilk seem like an interesting question to actually ask people.
You could, for instance, make a debate team lay out the pro and con positions.
A lot of the “nay philosophy” end up doing philosophy, even while they continue to say “nay philosophy”. So I have a hard time taking the opinion at face value.
Moreover it’s not like there is one kind of thinking, philosophy, and another kind of thinking, non-philosophy. Any kind of evidence or argument could in principle be employed by someone calling himself a philosopher—or, inversely, by someone calling himself a non-philosopher. If you suddenly have a bright idea and start developing it into an essay, I submit that you don’t necessarily know whether, once the idea has fully bloomed, it will be considered philosophy or non-philosophy.
I don’t know whether it’s true that science used to be considered a subtopic of philosophy (“natural philosophy”), but it seems entirely plausible that it was all philosophy but that at some point there was a terminological exodus, when physicists stopped calling themselves philosophers. In that older, more inclusive sense, then anyone who says “nay philosophy” is also saying “nay science”. Keeping that in mind, what we now call “philosophy” might instead be called, “what’s left of philosophy after the great terminological exodus”.
Of course “what’s left” is also called “the dregs”. In light of that, what we all “philosophy” might instead be called “the dregs of philosophy”.
That is exactly true. The old term for what we nowadays call “natural science” was “natural philosophy.” There are still relics of this old terminology, most notably that in English the title “doctor of philosophy” (or the Latin version thereof) is still used by physicists and other natural scientists. The “terminological exodus” you refer to happened only in the 19th century.
This is still happening, right? I once had a professor who suggested that philosophy is basically the process of creating new fields and removing them from philosophy—thence logic, mathematics, physics, and more recently linguistics.
Thats an interesting definition of philosophy, but I think philosophy does far more than that.
That’s true, I may have overstated his suggestion—the actual context was “why has philosophy made so little progress over the past several thousand years?” (“Because every time a philosophical question is settled, it stops being a philosophical question.”)
This provides a defense of the claim that luke was attacking earlier on the thread, that
“It’s totally reasonable to expect philosophy to provide several interesting/useful results [in one or a few broad subject areas] and then suddenly stop.”
Possibly, yes, but I’d expect philosophy to stop working on a field only after it’s recognized as its own (non-philosophy) area (if then) - which, for example, morality is not.
Is theology a branch of philosophy?
Errr… it seems to me that theology in many ways acts like philosophy, with the addition of stuff like exegesis and apologetics… but any particular religion’s theology is distinct from the set of things we’d call “philosophy” as a monolithic institution. This is far from my area of expertise, however!
I’m worried part of this debate is just about status. When someone comes in and says “Hey, you guys should really pay more attention to what x group of people with y credentials says about z” it reminds everyone here, most of whom lack y credentials that society doesn’t recognize them as an authority on z and so they are some how less valuable than group x. So there is an impulse to say that z is obvious, that z doesn’t matter or that having y isn’t really a good indicator of being right about z. That way, people here don’t lose status relative to group x.
Conversely, members of group x probably put money and effort into getting credential y and will be offended by the suggestion that what they know about doesn’t matter, that it is obvious or that their having credential y doesn’t indicate they know anything more than anyone else.
Me, I have an undergraduate degree in philosophy which I value so I’m sure I get a little defensive when philosophy is mocked or criticized around here. But most people here probably fit in the first category. Eliezer, being a human being like everybody else, is likely a little insecure about his lack of a formal education and perhaps particularly apt to deny an academic community status as domain experts in a fields he’s worked in (even though he is certainly right that formal credentials are overvalued).
I think a lot of this argument isn’t really a disagreement over what is valuable and what isn’t- it’s just people emphasizing or de-emphasizing different ideas and writers to make themselves look higher status.
...
These statements have no content they just say “My stuff is better than your stuff”.
I think such debates unavoidably include status motivations. We are status-oriented, signaling creatures. Politics mattered in our ancestral environment.
Of course you know that I never said anything like either of the parody quotes provided. And I’m not trying to stay Quinean philosophy is better than Less Wrong. The claim I’m making is a very weak claim: that some useful stuff comes out of mainstream philosophy, and Less Wrong shouldn’t ignore it when that happens just because the source happens to be mainstream philosophy.
Yes. But you’re right so that side had to be a strawman, didn’t it?
I’m sorry; what do you mean?
Since I hold a pretty strong pro-mainstream philosophy position (relative to others here, perhaps including yourself) I was a little more creative with that parody than in the other. I was attempting to be self-deprecating to soften my criticism (that the reluctance to embrace your position stems from status insecurities) so as to not set of tribal war instincts.
Though on reflection it occurs to me that since I didn’t state my position in that comment or in this thread and have only talked about it in comments (some before you even arrived here at Less Wrong) it’s pretty unlikely that you or anyone else would remember my position on the matter, in which case my attempt at self-deprecation might look like a criticism of you.
Yeah… I’ve apparently missed something important to interpreting you.
For the record, if you hold “a pretty strong pro-mainstream philosophy position” then you definitely are more in favor of mainstream philosophy than I am. :)
It’s all relative. Surround me with academics and I sound like Eliezer.
But yes, once or twice I’ve even had the gall to suggest that some continental philosophers are valuable.
And for that, two days in the slammer! :)
I agree that you’ve agreed on many specific things. I suggest that the sense of remaining disagreement is currently confused through refusing to taboo “useful”. You use one definition, he uses a different one, and there is possibly genuine disagreement in there somewhere, but you won’t be able to find it without again switching to more specific discussion.
Also, taboo doesn’t work by giving a definition, instead you explain whatever you wanted without using the concept explicitly (so it’s always a definition in a specific context).
For example:
Instead of debating this point of the definition (and what constitutes “being used”), consider the questions of whether Eliezer agrees that he was influenced (in any sense) by quite a few works from mainstream philosophy (obviously), whether they provided insights that would’ve been unavailable otherwise (probably not), whether they happen to already contain some of the same basic insights found elsewhere (yes), whether they originate them (it depends), etc.
It’s a long list, not as satisfying as the simple “useful/not”, but this is the way to unpack the disagreement. And even if you agree on every fact, his sense of “useful” can disagree with yours.
I’ll wait to see if Eliezer really thinks we aren’t on the same page about the meaning of ‘useful’.
If reflective equilibrium, which plays a central role in Eliezer’s plan (CEV) to save humanity, isn’t useful, then I will be very surprised, and we will seem to be using different definitions of the term “useful.”
Has he repudiated the usefulness of reflective equilibrium (or of the concept, or the term)? I recall that he’s used it himself in some of the more recent summaries of CEV.
Are you, in your view, having The Problem with Non-Philosophers again?
It seems to me that the disagreement might be over the adjective “mainstream”. To me, that connotes what’s being mentioned (not covered in detail, merely mentioned) in broad overviews such as freshman introductory classes or non-major classes at college. As an analogy, in physics both general relativity and quantum mechanics are mainstream. They get mentioned in these contexts, though not, of course, covered. Something like timeless physics does not.
How much of the standard philosophy curriculum covers Quinean Naturalism?
I dunno, I think Eliezer and I are clear on what mainstream philosophy is. And if anything is mainstream, it’s John Rawls and Oxford University professors whose work Eliezer is already making use of.
Well, when I see:
That does not make me think that “mainstream philosophy” as a whole is doing useful work. Localized individuals and small strains appear to be. But even when the small strains are taken seriously in mainstream philosophy, that’s not the same as mainstream philosophy doing said work, and labeling any advances as “here’s mainstream philosophy doing good work” seems to be misleading.
No, mainstream philosophy “as a whole” is not doing useful work. That’s what the central section of my original post was about: Non-Quinean philosophy, and how its entire method is fundamentally flawed.
Even quite a lot of Quinean naturalistic philosophy is not doing useful work.
I’m not trying to mislead anybody. But Eliezer has apparently taken the extreme position that mainstream philosophy in general is worthless, so I made a long list of useful things that have come from mainstream philosophy—and some of it is not even from the most productive strain of mainstream philosophy, what I’ve been calling “Quinean naturalism.” Useful things sometimes come from unexpected sources.
In the above quote the following replacements have been made. philosophy → religion Quinean → Christian
There are many ideas from religion that are not useless. It is not often the most productive source to learn from either however. Why filter ideas from religion texts when better sources are available or when it is easier to recreate them in within in a better framework; a framework that actual justifies the idea. This is also important because in my experience people fail to filter constantly and end up accepting bad ideas.
I do not see EY arguing that main stream philosophy has not useful nuggets. I seem him arguing that filtering for those nugets in general makes the process too costly. I see you arguing that “Quinean naturalism” is a rich vien of philosophy and worth mining for nuggets. If you want to prove the worth of mine “Quinean naturalism” you have to display nuggets that EY has not found through better means already.
I did list such nuggets that EY has not found through other means already, including several instances of “dissolution-to-algorithm”, which EY seems to think of as the hallmark of LW-style philosophy.
I wouldn’t call mainstream philosophy a “rich vein” that is (for most people) worth mining for nuggets. I’ve specifically said that people will get far more value reading statistics and AI and cognitive science. I’ve specifically said that EY should not be mining mainstream philosophy. What I’m saying is that if useful stuff happens to come from mainstream philosophy, why ignore it? It’s people like myself who are already familiar with mainstream philosophy, and for whom it doesn’t take much effort to list 20+ useful contributions of mainstream philosophy, who should bring those useful nuggets to the attention of Less Wrong.
What seems strange to me is to draw an arbitrary boundary around mainstream philosophy and say, “If it happens to come from here, we don’t want it.” And I think Eliezer already agrees with this, since of course he is already making use of several things from mainstream philosophy. But on the other hand, he seems to be insisting that mainstream philosophy has nothing (or almost nothing) useful to offer.
In that post you labeled that list as “useful contributions of mainstream philosophy:” Which does not fit the criteria of nuggets not found by other means. Nor “here are things you have not figured out yet” or “see how this particular method is simpler and more elegant then the one you are currently using.” This is similar to what I think EY is expressing in: Show me this field’s power!
At list of 20 topics that are similar to LW is suggestive but not compelling. Compelling would be more predictive power or correct predictions where LW methods have been known to fail. Compelling would be just one case covered in depth fitting the above criteria. Frankly, and not ment to reflect on you, listing 20 topics that are suggestive reminds me of fast talk manipulation and/or an infomercial. I want to see a conversation digging deep on one topic. I want depth of proof not breadth, because breadth by itself is not compelling only suggestive.
I see you repeating this in many places, but I have yet to see EY suggest the useful parts of philosophy should be ignored.
I see EY arguing philosophy is a field “whose poison a novice should avoid”. Note the that novices should avoid, not that well grounded rationalists should ignore. I have followed the conversations of EY’s and I do not see him saying what you assert. I see you repeatedly asserting he or LW in general is though. In theory it should not be hard to dissolve the problem if you can provide links to where you believe this assertions have been made.
I don’t understand.
Explanation of cognitive biases and how to battle against them on Less Wrong? “Useful.”
Explanation of cognitive biases and how to battle against them in a mainstream philosophy book? “Not useful.”
Dissolution of common (but easy) philosophical problem like free will to cognitive algorithm on Less Wrong? “Useful, impressive.”
Dissolution of common (but easy) philosophical problems in mainstream philosophy journals? “Not useful.”
Is this seriously what is being claimed? If it’s not what’s being claimed, then good—we may not disagree on anything.
Also: as I stated, several of the things I listed are already in use at Less Wrong, and have been employed in depth. Is this not compelling for now?
I’m planning in-depth explanations, but those take time. So far I’ve only done one of them: on SPRs.
As for my interpretation of Eliezer’s views on mainstream philosophy, here are some quotes:
One: “It seems to me that people can get along just fine knowing only what philosophy they pick up from reading AI books.” But maybe this doesn’t mean to avoid mainstream philosophy entirely. Maybe it just means that most people should avoid mainstream philosophy, which I agree with.
Two: “I expect [reading philosophy] to teach very bad habits of thought that will lead people to be unable to do real work.”
Three: “only things of that level [dissolution to algorithm] are useful philosophy. Other things are not philosophy or more like background intros.” Reflective equilibrium isn’t “of that level” of dissolution to cognitive algorithm, in any way that I can tell, and yet it plays a useful role in Eliezer’s CEV plan to save humanity. Epistemology and the Psychology of Human Judgment doesn’t say much about dissolution to cognitive algorithm, and yet its content reads like a series of Less Wrong blog posts on overcoming cognitive biases with “ameliorative psychology.” If somebody claims that those Less Wrong posts are useful but the Epistemology book isn’t, I think that’s a blatant double standard. And it seems that Eliezer in this quote is claiming just that, though again, I’m not clear what it means for something to be “of that level” of dissolution to algorithm.
And then, in his first comment on this post, Eliezer opened with: “I’m highly skeptical.” I took that to be a response to my claim that “rationalists need not ignore mainstream philosophy,” but maybe he was responding to some other claim in my original post.
But if I’ve been misinterpreting Eliezer this whole time, he hasn’t told me so. I’d sure appreciate that. That would be the simplest way to clear this up.
Here is one interpretation.
The standard sequences explanation of cognitive biases and how to battle against them on Less Wrong? “Useful.”
Yet another explanation of cognitive biases and how to battle against them in a mainstream philosophy book? “Not useful.”
Dissolution of difficult philosophical problem like free will to cognitive algorithm on Less Wrong? “Useful, impressive.”
Continuing disputation about difficult philosophical problems like free will in mainstream philosophy journals? “Not useful.”
Dissolution of common (but easy) philosophical problem arising from language misuse in mainstream philosophy journals? “Not useful.”
Explanation of how to dissolve common (but easy) philosophical problems arising from language misuse in LessWrong? “Useful”.
Good stuff of various kinds, surrounded by other good stuff on LessWrong? “Useful”.
Good stuff of various kinds, surrounded by error, confusion, and nonsense in mainstream philosophy journals? “Not useful.”
I’m not sure I agree with all of this, but it is pretty much what I hear Eliezer and others saying.
Yeah, if that’s what’s being claimed, that’s the double standard stuff I was talking about.
Of course there’s error, confusion, and nonsense in just about any large chunk of literature. Mainstream philosophy is particularly bad, but of course what I plan to do is pluck the good bits out and share just those things on Less Wrong.
I no longer remember your original post did you get that format from Perplexed? Or did he get it from you?
You state Perplexed example i a double standard here. Perplexed discribes what is happen LW as different from what happens in mainstream philosophy, which does not fit the standard definition of double standard. Double standard: a rule applied differently to essentially the same thing/idea/group. Perplexed statements imply that LW and mainstream philosophy are considerably different which does not fit the description of a double standard.
As of yet I have not interpreted anything on LW as meaning the content of the quote above.
No it is not compelling. In science a theory which merely reproduces previous results is not compelling only suggestive. A new theory must have predictive power in areas the old one did not or be simpler(aka:more elegant) to be considered compelling. That is how you show the power of a new theory.
Your assertion was:
Your quote one does not seem to support your assertion by your own admission. My interpretation was most people should avoid mainstream philosophy, perhaps the vast majority and certainly novices. If possibly learn from a better source, since there is a vast amount from better sources and there is a vast amount of work to be done with those sources why focus on lesser sources?
This does not support your assertion either. It only claims the methods of mainstream philosophy are bad habits for people who want to get things done.
This one does not seem to a “daw arbitrary boundary” either so it does not support your assertion. Maybe a boundary but then EY then does on to describe the boundary so you have not supported your discriptor of arbitrary.
I think the difference more and less useful is defiantly being claimed. Having everything in one self consistant system has many advantages. Only one set of terminology to learn. It is easier to build groups when everyone is using or familiar with the same terminology.
Out of your three quotes I do not see any “arbitrary boundry” being drawn by EY. He is drawing a boundary, but in no way do I see it as arbitrary. This boundary and why it is draw is a point that you do not seem to understand EY’s reasoning on, otherwise you would do your best to describe the algorithm that EY used to draw the boundary and then show how it is wrong rather then just calling it arbitrary.
Really I would have thought you main assertion was:
You have not shown Quinean naturalism and the rest are a “centralized repository of reductionist-grade naturalistic cognitive philosophy” and you will have to do a proof with depth, which you have not provided but are working on, to show this. So his skepticism is warranted, justified, prudent and seems like a reasonable barrier to unproven ideas.
I think he has pointed it out. The three quotes above do not support your assertion or “arbitrary”. The difference is at a basic definition and methodological level.
And I just read your resolution as I was writing this post. Frankly It really seem like you jumped to conclusions on EY’s position and level of arbitrariness to a degree which caused inefficiency. My main curiosity is now why you think you jumped to conclusions and what you are going to do to prevent it from happening again.
Yeah, I just disagree with your comment from beginning to end.
Yeah, and my claim is that LW content and some useful content from mainstream philosophy is not relevantly different, hence to praise one and ignore the other is to apply a double standard. Epistemology and the Psychology of Human Judgment, which reads like a sequence of LW posts, is a good example. So is much of the work I listed that dissolves traditional philosophical debates into the cognitive algorithms that produce the conflicting intuitions that philosophers use to go in circles for thousands of years.
This is a change of subject. I was talking about the usefulness of certain work in mainstream philosophy already used by Less Wrong, not proposing a new scientific theory. If your point applied, it would apply to the re-use of the ideas on Less Wrong, not to their origination in mainstream philosophy.
The strongest support for my interpretation of EY comes from quote #3, for reasons I explained in detail and you ignored. I suspect much of our confusion came from Eliezer’s assumption that I was saying everybody should go out and read Quinean philosophy, which of course I never claimed and in fact have specifically denied.
In any case, EY and I have come to common ground, so this is kinda irrelevant.
I’m fine with that. What counts as a ‘centralized repository’ is pretty fuzzy. Quinean naturalism counts as a ‘centralized repository’ in my meaning, but if Eliezer means something different by ‘centralized repository’, then we have a disagreement in words but not in fact on that point.
In the mind of EY, i assume, and some others there is a difference. If the difference is not relevant there would be a double standard. If there is a relevant difference no double standard exists. I did not see you point out what that difference was and why it was not relevant before calling it a double standard.
Not a change of subject at all. Just let you know what standards I use for judging something suggestive vs compelling and that I think EY might be using a similar standard. Just answering your question “Is this not compelling for now?”, a no with exposition. I was giving you the method by which I often judge how useful a work is and suggesting that EY may use a similar method. If so it would explain some of why you were not communicating well.
It is to be applied within the development of an individuals evolving beliefs. So someone holding LW beliefs then introduce to mainstream philosophy would use this standard before adopting mainstream philosophy’s beliefs.
I do not like the idea, I think it is unproductive, of having conversation with people who think they magically know what I pay attention to and what I do not. If you meant that I did not address your point please say so and how instead.
I did not ignore it. I did think it supported an argument that EY draws a boundary between mainstream philosophy and LW, but did not support the argument that he drew a arbitrary boundary.
My interpretation was that he skeptical with the grade of repository not the centralness of it.
I don’t understand the distinction you’re making. These two statements mean the exact same thing to me: in general, mainstream philosophy is useless, though exceptions exist.
Admittedly. That’s not a good reason to look there, until the expected sources are exhausted.
What I’m trying to say is that the vast majority of mainstream philosophy is useless, but some of it is useful, and I gave examples.
I’ve also repeatedly agreed that most people should not be reading mainstream philosophy. Much better to learn statistics and AI and cognitive science. But for those already familiar with philosophy, for whom it’s not that difficult to name 20 useful ideas from mainstream philosophy, then… why not make use of them? It makes no sense to draw an arbitrary boundary around mainstream philosophy and say “If it comes from here, I don’t want it.” That’s silly.
I don’t understand the distinction you’re making. These two statements mean the exact same thing to me: in general, mainstream philosophy is useless, though exceptions exist.
I’ve frequently been criticized for suggesting that you hold that attitude. The usual response is that LW is not about friendly AI or has not much to do with the SIAI.
I don’t think you’re being fair to a lot of philosophers. I think you’re being fair to some philosophers, the ones who are sowing confusion. But you can’t just wave away the sophists, the charlatans, with a magic wand. They are out there creating confusion and drawing people away from useful and promising lines of thought. There are other philosophers out there who are doing what they can to limit the damage.
It’s a bit like war. Think of yourself as a scientist who is trying to build a rocket that will take us to Mars. But in the meantime there is a war going on. You might say, “this war is not helpful, because a stray missile might blow up my rocket, damn those generals and their toys.” But the problem is, without the generals like Dennett who are protecting your territory, your positions, the enemy generals will overrun your project and strip your rocket for parts.
You may think that the philosophers don’t matter, that they are just arguing in obscurity among themselves, but I don’t think that’s the case. I think that there is a significant amount of leakage, that ideas born and nurtured in the academy frequently spread to the wider society and infect essentially everyone’s way of thinking.