Philosophy is just not oriented to the outlook of someone who needs to resolve the issue, implement the corresponding solution, and then find out—possibly fatally—whether they got it right or wrong. Philosophy doesn’t resolve things, it compiles positions and arguments.
This would be why I never finished that philosophy degree. Academic philosophy does not seem particularly interested in solving the world’s problems. Tyrrell McAllister has a good point on the value of providing a way of discussing things, but if there is not even in principle a way of deciding what would constitute filling the black box, the discipline will keep juggling the boxes.
There must be some merit in games of language and logic, but they remain that: games. Sudoku and World of Warcraft are similarly structured games, and you could argue seriously about whether an issue of Games Magazine improves the world more or less than any scholarly journal J. mentioned.
That said, starting with Sturgeon’s Law, we already knew the majority was waste paper. What is your probability that the good 10% is not worth the search cost to find it?
As a meta-Overcoming Bias comment, I think this post is necessary for Eliezer. When he discusses philosophical issues, there are a half-dozen of us who cite a hundred-year history of work on, for example, meta-ethics. I must interpret this post as a case for rational ignorance, “I am not going to read all that because it is obviously waste paper,” as opposed to “I am familiar with that but I have rejected it” (or the latter with very small values of “familiar”). So this is one of those one-link responses.
We can meditate on whether it resolves the issue rather than giving a feeling of resolution. With respect to philosophy, I often find surprisingly little progress since Hume (on questions of interest to me). When an OB post arrives at a standard argument, maybe via a different door, I expect it to be able to engage standard critiques. “All standard critiques are meaningless black box juggling exercises until proven otherwise” is perhaps a viable heuristic, but it feels convenient.
This also feels a bit like the “outside view” Eliezer criticizes Robin for using to make predictions.
Philosophy is just not oriented to the outlook of someone who needs to resolve the issue, implement the corresponding solution, and then find out—possibly fatally—whether they got it right or wrong. Philosophy doesn’t resolve things, it compiles positions and arguments.
This would be why I never finished that philosophy degree. Academic philosophy does not seem particularly interested in solving the world’s problems. Tyrrell McAllister has a good point on the value of providing a way of discussing things, but if there is not even in principle a way of deciding what would constitute filling the black box, the discipline will keep juggling the boxes.
There must be some merit in games of language and logic, but they remain that: games. Sudoku and World of Warcraft are similarly structured games, and you could argue seriously about whether an issue of Games Magazine improves the world more or less than any scholarly journal J. mentioned.
That said, starting with Sturgeon’s Law, we already knew the majority was waste paper. What is your probability that the good 10% is not worth the search cost to find it?
As a meta-Overcoming Bias comment, I think this post is necessary for Eliezer. When he discusses philosophical issues, there are a half-dozen of us who cite a hundred-year history of work on, for example, meta-ethics. I must interpret this post as a case for rational ignorance, “I am not going to read all that because it is obviously waste paper,” as opposed to “I am familiar with that but I have rejected it” (or the latter with very small values of “familiar”). So this is one of those one-link responses.
We can meditate on whether it resolves the issue rather than giving a feeling of resolution. With respect to philosophy, I often find surprisingly little progress since Hume (on questions of interest to me). When an OB post arrives at a standard argument, maybe via a different door, I expect it to be able to engage standard critiques. “All standard critiques are meaningless black box juggling exercises until proven otherwise” is perhaps a viable heuristic, but it feels convenient.
This also feels a bit like the “outside view” Eliezer criticizes Robin for using to make predictions.