Sure, but “It can’t be stated in a mathematical framework that already does a good job of answering a lot of these questions, maybe we should try to adopt it so it can be, or maybe we should conclude that the idea really is confused if we have other information indicating it has problems, or maybe we should wait until experts have hashed out a bit more exactly what they mean and come back to the idea then” are not the same thing as just throwing an idea out because it isn’t mathematically precise.
I think in general that LW should pay more attention to mainstream philosophy. I find it interesting how often people on LW don’t realize how much of the standard positions here overlap with Quine’s positions, and he’s clearly mainstream. It is possible that people on LW overestimate the usefulness of the “can this be mathematicized?” question, but that doesn’t stop it from being a very useful question to ask.
Well, I’d argue that in essence, all of the alternative scenarios you list for dealing with non-mathematicized problems do constitute throwing an idea out, insofar as they represent a reshaping of the question by people who didn’t initially propose it, i.e., a type of misrepresentation, although the last one (“maybe we should wait until experts have hashed out a bit more exactly what they mean and come back to the idea then”) is an adequate way to deal with such problems.
“It can’t be stated in terms of maths, so throw it out” is not useful.
Sure, but “It can’t be stated in a mathematical framework that already does a good job of answering a lot of these questions, maybe we should try to adopt it so it can be, or maybe we should conclude that the idea really is confused if we have other information indicating it has problems, or maybe we should wait until experts have hashed out a bit more exactly what they mean and come back to the idea then” are not the same thing as just throwing an idea out because it isn’t mathematically precise.
I think in general that LW should pay more attention to mainstream philosophy. I find it interesting how often people on LW don’t realize how much of the standard positions here overlap with Quine’s positions, and he’s clearly mainstream. It is possible that people on LW overestimate the usefulness of the “can this be mathematicized?” question, but that doesn’t stop it from being a very useful question to ask.
Well, I’d argue that in essence, all of the alternative scenarios you list for dealing with non-mathematicized problems do constitute throwing an idea out, insofar as they represent a reshaping of the question by people who didn’t initially propose it, i.e., a type of misrepresentation, although the last one (“maybe we should wait until experts have hashed out a bit more exactly what they mean and come back to the idea then”) is an adequate way to deal with such problems.