I think the idea of “meta-rationality” is that evaluating hypotheses using Bayes’ rule isn’t the limiting factor for humans. The hard part is coming up with good hypotheses. For that you need to make your mind a bit crazy and free, in a way that’s hard to describe in Bayesian terms. That applies to both science and art, and LW doesn’t really equip you for it.
If common sense, and its associated logic, could answer the questions it poses, there would never have been philosophy, or a desire for it. The classic philosophical questions like “where did everything come from” cannot be answered by common sense, and therefore the answer, whatever it is, must be crazy, in common sense terms.
To take an analogy, mathematicians could not answer every question in terms of integers, the counting numbers of common sense, so they had to invent fractions, and then real numbers, and eventually complex numbers, which include the notoriously crazy “imaginary” numbers.
And then there is physics...the subject that gave us, thanks to Wolfgang Pauli, the phrase “not crazy enough to be true”.
And physics gave us physicalism, the default philosophy of sensible, uncrazy philosophers. What can that tell us about the origins of the world, the nature of consciousness, or how one should live ones life? If you are lucky, the answer will be “consult science”..if not it will be “don’t ask that question”. Denial, dissolution and deflation are the fate of anything that doesn’t fit physicalism’s Procrustean bed. Consciousness is an illusion, ethics merely subjective, and so on.
Yeah, many people in the rationalist community are too eager to dissolve words and miss out on interesting thoughts as a result. It’s an unfortunate habit, but thankfully some of the most productive people in the community don’t share it. For example, Nick Bostrom, whose philosophy is pretty much LW, is interested in the nature of consciousness. Wei Dai, who created UDT, is interested in metaethics and doesn’t dismiss it. And so on. I think such “steelmanning” of philosophical ideas in search of new hypotheses is more productive than “tabooing” them. That said, we should still be wary of sliding into woo, and LW ideas are a good antidote for that.
I think the idea of “meta-rationality” is that evaluating hypotheses using Bayes’ rule isn’t the limiting factor for humans. The hard part is coming up with good hypotheses. For that you need to make your mind a bit crazy and free, in a way that’s hard to describe in Bayesian terms. That applies to both science and art, and LW doesn’t really equip you for it.
If common sense, and its associated logic, could answer the questions it poses, there would never have been philosophy, or a desire for it. The classic philosophical questions like “where did everything come from” cannot be answered by common sense, and therefore the answer, whatever it is, must be crazy, in common sense terms.
To take an analogy, mathematicians could not answer every question in terms of integers, the counting numbers of common sense, so they had to invent fractions, and then real numbers, and eventually complex numbers, which include the notoriously crazy “imaginary” numbers.
And then there is physics...the subject that gave us, thanks to Wolfgang Pauli, the phrase “not crazy enough to be true”.
And physics gave us physicalism, the default philosophy of sensible, uncrazy philosophers. What can that tell us about the origins of the world, the nature of consciousness, or how one should live ones life? If you are lucky, the answer will be “consult science”..if not it will be “don’t ask that question”. Denial, dissolution and deflation are the fate of anything that doesn’t fit physicalism’s Procrustean bed. Consciousness is an illusion, ethics merely subjective, and so on.
Yeah, many people in the rationalist community are too eager to dissolve words and miss out on interesting thoughts as a result. It’s an unfortunate habit, but thankfully some of the most productive people in the community don’t share it. For example, Nick Bostrom, whose philosophy is pretty much LW, is interested in the nature of consciousness. Wei Dai, who created UDT, is interested in metaethics and doesn’t dismiss it. And so on. I think such “steelmanning” of philosophical ideas in search of new hypotheses is more productive than “tabooing” them. That said, we should still be wary of sliding into woo, and LW ideas are a good antidote for that.
It’s usually the case that the rank and file are a lot worse than the leaders.