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.
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.