We have a large body of collected philosophical thought available to us. At least some of those concepts are adaptable to everyday problems and therefore useful things to carry around in your mind. However, biases exist that make many people hesitant to listen to historical sources: “In the past, people had less technology than we do” is often conflated into “in the past, people were less intelligent than we are.”
I think the more serious issue is that the body of collected philosophical thought is too large. That is:
given that examining an already-stated hypothesis is a lot easier than going out and finding one.
It’s not obvious to me that this is true. I think there’s a large benefit from a single person doing a deep dive on something, and reporting the results: “This is what I learned reading Rousseau that’s relevant to rationality.” This way all the community needs to do to learn about Rousseau’s connection to rationality (on a conversational level, at least) is read the post, and if they see a specific idea and think “I want to read more about that,” then they know exactly where to start.
(I follow this advice and write reviews of books for LW; my interests are in decision-making, and so that’s where my reviews are. If your interests are in philosophy, that’s a good way to contribute significant value to the community, and earn a bunch of karma in the process.)
I think the more serious issue is that the body of collected philosophical thought is too large. That is:
It’s not obvious to me that this is true. I think there’s a large benefit from a single person doing a deep dive on something, and reporting the results: “This is what I learned reading Rousseau that’s relevant to rationality.” This way all the community needs to do to learn about Rousseau’s connection to rationality (on a conversational level, at least) is read the post, and if they see a specific idea and think “I want to read more about that,” then they know exactly where to start.
(I follow this advice and write reviews of books for LW; my interests are in decision-making, and so that’s where my reviews are. If your interests are in philosophy, that’s a good way to contribute significant value to the community, and earn a bunch of karma in the process.)