I have also found claims that one or a few simple ideas can solve huge swaths of the world’s problems to be a sign of naivity, but another exception is when there is mass delusion or confusion due to systematic errors. Provided such pervasive and damaging errors do exist, merely clearing up those errors would be a major service to humanity. In this sense, Less Wrong and Misesian epistemology share a goal: to eliminate flawed reasoning. I am not sure why Mises chose to put forth this LW-style message as a positive theory (praxeology), but the content seems to me entirely negative in that it formalizes and systematizes many of the corrections economists (even mainstream ones) must have been tired of making. Perhaps he found that people were more receptive to hearing a “competing theory” than to having their own theories covered in red ink.
I have also found claims that one or a few simple ideas can solve huge swaths of the world’s problems to be a sign of naivity, but another exception is when there is mass delusion or confusion due to systematic errors. Provided such pervasive and damaging errors do exist, merely clearing up those errors would be a major service to humanity. In this sense, Less Wrong and Misesian epistemology share a goal: to eliminate flawed reasoning. I am not sure why Mises chose to put forth this LW-style message as a positive theory (praxeology), but the content seems to me entirely negative in that it formalizes and systematizes many of the corrections economists (even mainstream ones) must have been tired of making. Perhaps he found that people were more receptive to hearing a “competing theory” than to having their own theories covered in red ink.