“Please don’t roll your own crypto” is a good message to send to software engineers looking to build robust products. But it’s a bad message to send to the community of crypto researchers, because insofar as they believe you, then you won’t get new crypto algorithms from them.
In the context of metaethics, LW seems much more analogous to the “community of crypto researchers” than the “software engineers looking to build robust products”. Therefore this seems like a bad message to send to LessWrong, even if it’s a good message to send to e.g. CEOs who justify immoral behavior with metaethical nihilism.
You may have missed my footnote, where I addressed this?
To preempt a possible misunderstanding, I don’t mean “don’t try to think up new metaethical ideas”, but instead “don’t be so confident in your ideas that you’d be willing to deploy them in a highly consequential way, or build highly consequential systems that depend on them in a crucial way”. Similarly “don’t roll your own crypto” doesn’t mean never try to invent new cryptography, but rather don’t deploy it unless there has been extensive review, and consensus that it is likely to be secure.
“Please don’t roll your own crypto” is a good message to send to software engineers looking to build robust products. But it’s a bad message to send to the community of crypto researchers, because insofar as they believe you, then you won’t get new crypto algorithms from them.
In the context of metaethics, LW seems much more analogous to the “community of crypto researchers” than the “software engineers looking to build robust products”. Therefore this seems like a bad message to send to LessWrong, even if it’s a good message to send to e.g. CEOs who justify immoral behavior with metaethical nihilism.
You may have missed my footnote, where I addressed this?