It seems very weird to write a whole website-book, in the 21st century, arguing against early 20th-centry logical positivism, of all things. Besides, Chapman often writes as if the “rationalists” he takes as foils are, you know, still around!
I’d say they very much are, they just aren’t as prevalent on Less Wrong (and I think there are still plenty of them on LW!). My experience is that you can’t throw a stone without hitting a logical positivist (even if they don’t know that they are, if you talk to them it’s clear those are their beliefs) in any STEM university department, engineering company, etc.
But what are those beliefs exactly? I mean, the actual, historical, early-20th-century positivists had some pretty specific beliefs, some of which were (now-)clearly wrong in their strongest forms… but do very many people believe those strongest forms now? Or are they logical positivists in the same way that Scott Alexander is a logical positivist?
This is why I find David Chapman’s “vagueblogging” so annoying. This whole conversation doesn’t need to be happening; it could all be avoided if he just, like, linked to specific people saying specific things.
Indeed, even just explicitly saying “logical positivists” instead of “rationalists” would make his writing more clear. Why say the latter if what you actually mean is the former…?
It seems very weird to write a whole website-book, in the 21st century, arguing against early 20th-centry logical positivism, of all things. Besides, Chapman often writes as if the “rationalists” he takes as foils are, you know, still around!
I’d say they very much are, they just aren’t as prevalent on Less Wrong (and I think there are still plenty of them on LW!). My experience is that you can’t throw a stone without hitting a logical positivist (even if they don’t know that they are, if you talk to them it’s clear those are their beliefs) in any STEM university department, engineering company, etc.
But what are those beliefs exactly? I mean, the actual, historical, early-20th-century positivists had some pretty specific beliefs, some of which were (now-)clearly wrong in their strongest forms… but do very many people believe those strongest forms now? Or are they logical positivists in the same way that Scott Alexander is a logical positivist?
This is why I find David Chapman’s “vagueblogging” so annoying. This whole conversation doesn’t need to be happening; it could all be avoided if he just, like, linked to specific people saying specific things.
Indeed, even just explicitly saying “logical positivists” instead of “rationalists” would make his writing more clear. Why say the latter if what you actually mean is the former…?