Yes, being active on Lesswrong is probably superior to most undergraduate classes in philosophy. But this isn’t Lesswrong specific. Seeking knowledge on your own is almost always better than taking knowledge from a teacher.
Do you feel, for instance, that LessWrong provided you with more valuable human capital than your introductory general chemistry sequence?
No, not even a little bit. Lesswrong’s strength is philosophy, and unfortunately philosophy doesn’t generate much human capital unless you’re in some very specific fields. Lesswrong might have sharpened my philosophy skills from 90% to 95%, but really the average scientist only needs a philosophy skill level of 70% to be effective, to say nothing of other professions. And you’ve got to be at least at philosophy 75% to even start reading a lot of the material here—I don’t think it’s accessible to, say, your average redditor.
Human capital comes primarily from knowing facts and having skills.
That said, reading primary literature on my own contributed vastly more than my coursework contributed, in terms of facts. Coursework did sometimes fill in some parts I might not have taken interest in on my own—but simply talking to other scientists would have fulfilled the same function.
Knowledge which is systematically fed to you is not customized to your interests, is not customized to your abilities, and it’s not customized to your intelligence. It shouldn’t be surprising that sources of knowledge you’ve discovered on your own are superior to those which have been given to you.
For the demographic who can learn theory on their own,, school is for degrees, making connections, and hands-on experiences—not learning theory.
And you’ve got to be at least at philosophy 75% to even start reading a lot of the material here
I disagree. I came in with essentially 0% philosophy skills, I didn’t even know what consequentialism or utilitarianism meant. And I was able to understand the sequences, and don’t have a problem with the posts now.
Well, maybe uncalibrated, totally made-up percentages aren’t a good way to communicate this.
I didn’t even know what consequentialism or utilitarianism meant
Yeah, so you’d have to formally learn philosophy to know what those things mean. But that doesn’t mean you were at 0% philosophy. Human beings instinctively engage in philosophy.
Can you construct a sound logical argument? Will you reconsider if someone points out an inconsistency or logical fallacy in your argument? That alone brings you up to 40% on my totally made up scale.
Did you ever feel there was something weird about free will? Did you believe in souls? Did you know where morality comes from? Did you intuitively grasp the notion that simpler explanations are better? Did you strongly feel that beliefs must be based in evidence, and did you understand what constituted good evidence?
My sense is that most people reading LW passed one or more of these basic milestones well before they finished high school, before doing any formal training or reading in philosophy. In my arbitrary scale, merely putting thought into these things puts you at 70% and solving all of them puts you around 80%.
On my scale, 0% implies you’re likely suffering some sort of mental illness.
And I’m arguing that LW isn’t accessible to your average undergrad. The average undergrad is probably below 75% on this scale. I’m an undergrad, and the vast majority of people I know don’t care about these things.
Can you construct a sound logical argument? Will you reconsider if someone points out an inconsistency or logical fallacy in your argument?
Yes to both.
Did you ever feel there was something weird about free will? Did you believe in souls? Did you know where morality comes from? Did you intuitively grasp the notion that simpler explanations are better?
Hadn’t thought about any of those things.
Did you strongly feel that beliefs must be based in evidence, and did you understand what constituted good evidence?
Now imagine if you couldn’t do one of those things. For example, suppose you didn’t strongly feel that every belief had to be based in logic or evidence, and instead had ideas about believing some things on simple faith.
Wouldn’t the entire premise of this site just seem misguided and weird? Isn’t there a huge gap in philosophical skill between you and a person who believes in faith?
I know scientists, doctors, and lawyers who believe in faith. They are smart people with tons of human capital.
I guess the central point is that, human capital wise, there are diminishing returns on building philosophical soundness. The level at which you’d have to be at to even start reading lesswrong is already the level at which additional improvement probably won’t make a difference human-capital wise.
So while Lesswrong is certainly an extremely worthwhile thing to participate in, it’s not a college substitute. (that’s not to say that there aren’t auto-didactic practices that adequately replace college—just that lesswrong by itself is definitely not such a thing).
Wouldn’t the entire premise of this site just seem misguided and weird? Isn’t there a huge gap in philosophical skill between you and a person who believes in faith?
I think most smart people who do have a concept of faith can imagine that there are people who don’t and engage in arguments with them.
Don’t confuse the positions that someone takes with his general skill level in navigating arguments.
Don’t confuse the positions that someone takes with his general skill level in navigating arguments.
I didn’t intend to communicate that.
I meant to communicate that logical thinking and evaluating arguments is a level one skill, while understanding the nature of evidence and parsimony is a level two skill.
Having “faith” means that your skill level in philosophy doesn’t exceed level one, however well you may have mastered level one (well, maybe not strictly true since you can derive notions of parsimony from logic)
By the way, there is one benefit of a systematically fed knowledge—it prevents you from getting into selection spiral, where you want to learn about something, find the first piece of knowledge belonging to some small subset of what you want to learn, become impressed and learn the whole subset… mistakenly believing that you actually learned the whole set.
For example, one can learn programming in Java and believe that “programming in Java” equals “programming”, and there is nothing useful to be learned outside. Or one can learn behaviorism and believe that behaviorism is the only and the complete answer to psychology. Or learn one economical theory, or learn one political view, or...
In such situations, the best part of the systematically fed knowledge is that it usually starts with a roadmap: it shows you a list of subsets. That’s the best part… and probably from that point on you could again be better by learning those subsets on your own. (Supposing you are able to update about the existence and importance of the other subsets; many people aren’t.)
For the things I believed to be important, I leaned more on my own than in school. But the school taught me a few things I didn’t consider important… until I learned them. (And also many things I still consider unimportant.)
Personally I have always chosen the self learning path, only going to college to obtain the ‘proof’ for work requirements but have been very impressed with the recent MOOC offerings (e.g. Machine Learning, Model Thinking).
The format is very flexible and works well for people who like the self learning path.
By the way, there is one benefit of a systematically fed knowledge—it prevents you from getting into selection
spiral, where you want to learn about something
This is a valid point, but each individual has different levels of understanding prior to starting, yet the content usually covers all grounding material meaning that many people end up with boring subjects.
I don’t think most schools explicitly give roadmaps. A list of courses and especially a list of required courses is a roadmap. Courses often start with a syllabus. But I don’t think most students notice either roadmap. And why should they? If being systematically fed knowledge, the student has no need to know the system.
Added: Yes, the advice to autodidacts to seek roadmaps is good, but you imply that a student who starts at school and drops out is well-equipped for self-study, which I think is false.
Yes, being active on Lesswrong is probably superior to most undergraduate classes in philosophy. But this isn’t Lesswrong specific. Seeking knowledge on your own is almost always better than taking knowledge from a teacher.
No, not even a little bit. Lesswrong’s strength is philosophy, and unfortunately philosophy doesn’t generate much human capital unless you’re in some very specific fields. Lesswrong might have sharpened my philosophy skills from 90% to 95%, but really the average scientist only needs a philosophy skill level of 70% to be effective, to say nothing of other professions. And you’ve got to be at least at philosophy 75% to even start reading a lot of the material here—I don’t think it’s accessible to, say, your average redditor.
Human capital comes primarily from knowing facts and having skills.
That said, reading primary literature on my own contributed vastly more than my coursework contributed, in terms of facts. Coursework did sometimes fill in some parts I might not have taken interest in on my own—but simply talking to other scientists would have fulfilled the same function.
Knowledge which is systematically fed to you is not customized to your interests, is not customized to your abilities, and it’s not customized to your intelligence. It shouldn’t be surprising that sources of knowledge you’ve discovered on your own are superior to those which have been given to you.
For the demographic who can learn theory on their own,, school is for degrees, making connections, and hands-on experiences—not learning theory.
I disagree. I came in with essentially 0% philosophy skills, I didn’t even know what consequentialism or utilitarianism meant. And I was able to understand the sequences, and don’t have a problem with the posts now.
Well, maybe uncalibrated, totally made-up percentages aren’t a good way to communicate this.
Yeah, so you’d have to formally learn philosophy to know what those things mean. But that doesn’t mean you were at 0% philosophy. Human beings instinctively engage in philosophy.
Can you construct a sound logical argument? Will you reconsider if someone points out an inconsistency or logical fallacy in your argument? That alone brings you up to 40% on my totally made up scale.
Did you ever feel there was something weird about free will? Did you believe in souls? Did you know where morality comes from? Did you intuitively grasp the notion that simpler explanations are better? Did you strongly feel that beliefs must be based in evidence, and did you understand what constituted good evidence?
My sense is that most people reading LW passed one or more of these basic milestones well before they finished high school, before doing any formal training or reading in philosophy. In my arbitrary scale, merely putting thought into these things puts you at 70% and solving all of them puts you around 80%.
On my scale, 0% implies you’re likely suffering some sort of mental illness.
And I’m arguing that LW isn’t accessible to your average undergrad. The average undergrad is probably below 75% on this scale. I’m an undergrad, and the vast majority of people I know don’t care about these things.
Yes to both.
Hadn’t thought about any of those things.
Yes and yes.
Now imagine if you couldn’t do one of those things. For example, suppose you didn’t strongly feel that every belief had to be based in logic or evidence, and instead had ideas about believing some things on simple faith.
Wouldn’t the entire premise of this site just seem misguided and weird? Isn’t there a huge gap in philosophical skill between you and a person who believes in faith?
I know scientists, doctors, and lawyers who believe in faith. They are smart people with tons of human capital.
I guess the central point is that, human capital wise, there are diminishing returns on building philosophical soundness. The level at which you’d have to be at to even start reading lesswrong is already the level at which additional improvement probably won’t make a difference human-capital wise.
So while Lesswrong is certainly an extremely worthwhile thing to participate in, it’s not a college substitute. (that’s not to say that there aren’t auto-didactic practices that adequately replace college—just that lesswrong by itself is definitely not such a thing).
I think most smart people who do have a concept of faith can imagine that there are people who don’t and engage in arguments with them.
Don’t confuse the positions that someone takes with his general skill level in navigating arguments.
I didn’t intend to communicate that.
I meant to communicate that logical thinking and evaluating arguments is a level one skill, while understanding the nature of evidence and parsimony is a level two skill.
Having “faith” means that your skill level in philosophy doesn’t exceed level one, however well you may have mastered level one (well, maybe not strictly true since you can derive notions of parsimony from logic)
Okay, yeah. We just had different ideas on what 70% means.
By the way, there is one benefit of a systematically fed knowledge—it prevents you from getting into selection spiral, where you want to learn about something, find the first piece of knowledge belonging to some small subset of what you want to learn, become impressed and learn the whole subset… mistakenly believing that you actually learned the whole set.
For example, one can learn programming in Java and believe that “programming in Java” equals “programming”, and there is nothing useful to be learned outside. Or one can learn behaviorism and believe that behaviorism is the only and the complete answer to psychology. Or learn one economical theory, or learn one political view, or...
In such situations, the best part of the systematically fed knowledge is that it usually starts with a roadmap: it shows you a list of subsets. That’s the best part… and probably from that point on you could again be better by learning those subsets on your own. (Supposing you are able to update about the existence and importance of the other subsets; many people aren’t.)
For the things I believed to be important, I leaned more on my own than in school. But the school taught me a few things I didn’t consider important… until I learned them. (And also many things I still consider unimportant.)
Personally I have always chosen the self learning path, only going to college to obtain the ‘proof’ for work requirements but have been very impressed with the recent MOOC offerings (e.g. Machine Learning, Model Thinking). The format is very flexible and works well for people who like the self learning path.
This is a valid point, but each individual has different levels of understanding prior to starting, yet the content usually covers all grounding material meaning that many people end up with boring subjects.
I don’t think most schools explicitly give roadmaps. A list of courses and especially a list of required courses is a roadmap. Courses often start with a syllabus. But I don’t think most students notice either roadmap. And why should they? If being systematically fed knowledge, the student has no need to know the system.
Added: Yes, the advice to autodidacts to seek roadmaps is good, but you imply that a student who starts at school and drops out is well-equipped for self-study, which I think is false.