I don’t advocate reading Quine directly, but rather Quinean philosophy. For example Epistemology and the Psychology of Human Judgment, which reads like a series of Less Wrong blog posts, but covers lots of material not yet covered on Less Wrong. (I made a dent in this by transposing its coverage of statistical prediction rules into a Less Wrong post.)
And I don’t advocate it for everyone. Doing research in philosophy is my specialty, but I don’t think Eliezer should waste his time poring through philosophy journals for useful insights. Nor should most people. But then, most people won’t benefit from reading through books on algorithmic learning theory, either. That’s why we have divisions of labor and expertise. The thing I’m arguing against is Eliezer’s suggestion that people shouldn’t read philosophy at all outside of Less Wrong and AI books.
I don’t advocate reading Quine directly, but rather Quinean philosophy. For example Epistemology and the Psychology of Human Judgment, which reads like a series of Less Wrong blog posts, but covers lots of material not yet covered on Less Wrong. (I made a dent in this by transposing its coverage of statistical prediction rules into a Less Wrong post.)
And I don’t advocate it for everyone. Doing research in philosophy is my specialty, but I don’t think Eliezer should waste his time poring through philosophy journals for useful insights. Nor should most people. But then, most people won’t benefit from reading through books on algorithmic learning theory, either. That’s why we have divisions of labor and expertise. The thing I’m arguing against is Eliezer’s suggestion that people shouldn’t read philosophy at all outside of Less Wrong and AI books.