I vastly disagree. I will just state it for now, and hopefully this will be a commitment to explain it further when I have the time. Here are my unjustified assertions about the nature of philosophy regarding OP’s topics:
Philosophy has the most huge search space known to man, it encompasses everything (a) without a good clear-cut solution and (b) which has any hope to be solved (this rules out two extremes: science and religion).
Philosophy, by its very nature, has few systematized methods for efficient search. Seems like we discovered logical and clear thinking recently, but that’s almost about it.
Because it is so difficult, philosophy is wrong 99,9% of the time.
When philosophy is right, major breakthroughs are made, sciences are created, new reasoning tools, higher moral standards and so on.
There’s a massive and astronomical hindsight bias. Once solved a problem is no longer on the realm of philosophy and the solution tend to seem extremely obvious after 1 or 2 generations.
Thus, low hanging fruits in philosophy are nowhere to be found. Most of your examples were already found, they just need to be worked on. I chalenge you to present a yet unknown low hanging fruit, one all your peers don’t know it already, one which would knock Nick’s socks off.
I will second this. It’s not that the process of theoretical discovery is inefficient due to any fault of its own, it’s that the problem is intractable (e.g. we don’t know how to do better than exhaustive search). So that linear looking search path from concept A to concept B did not take linear time to find...
I didn’t focus my post on this, but since you object, I’ll attempt to support my claim that “there are often large, unnecessary delays in theoretical discovery.” What I’m saying is that we can do this search in less time than we typically do.
That shouldn’t be surprising: there are all kinds of inefficiencies in theoretical discovery. Young researchers are incentivized to work on things that will get them tenure quickly, they often choose subject areas due to practical career concerns or personal interest rather than likely fruitfulness or social importance, they often pursue research out of momentum rather than due to an EV calculation, etc. This is all quite understandable, but it does introduce inefficiencies.
No, these are all spot-on criticisms (but I don’t think they are specific to theoretical research). I certainly agree that many problems of mainstream academia can be solved via the older patronage model, or perhaps even the newer crowdsourcing model.
I guess it is not clear to me that the failures in the OP’s list are due to a structural fault, or due to more excusable issues, like:
(a) “the scholarship coordination problem” (stuff gets forgotten and rediscovered over and over again, people don’t read other disciplines, etc.)
Yeah, as I said to joaolkf, I think my title was misleading: I wasn’t trying to contrast theoretical research with empirical research, but merely to look at these inefficiencies in the context of theoretical research, since that’s what MIRI does.
And you’re probably right that for any given example of apparently unnecessary delay in progress, it can be pretty hard to tell which inefficiencies deserve the most blame.
they often choose subject areas due to practical career concerns or personal interest rather than likely fruitfulness or social importance
Note that singling this out as a reason for inefficiency feels somewhat contradictory with the OP, where you suggested that there being no obvious profitable applications in the near-term was a reason for inefficiency. If people were choosing subjects areas based on “likely fruitfulness”, then we should expect areas with useful near-term applications to be prioritized.
I would not disagree. But then the claim seems trivial. Your comment’s second paragraph also applies to scientific research. Worse, in more applied areas graduate students have much less freedom to choose their own research topic and they seem to have a higher degree of overall social conformity.
We can then reinstate the question of what exactly about theoretical or philosophical research that makes it so particularly slow and unproductive. I say it is a huge, unknown search space, with no good search process and the fact that every time we find something, we lose it to another area. (Plus the fact that in the past our claims had political/practical consequences, as MIRI’s might have)
Oh I see what’s happening. Sorry, I think my title was accidentally misleading.
My post wasn’t trying to contrast the efficiency of theoretical research vs. empirical research. I just wanted to talk about those inefficiencies in the context of theoretical work specifically, since that’s what MIRI does. (E.g. I wanted to focus on examples from theoretical research.)
Anyway, the point about the large search space is an important one, and I hadn’t been thinking of the inefficiencies coming from political consequences until you mentioned it.
A book about Einstein and Godel claims both of them were able to identify a problem that became suddenly relevant and trackable due to other developments. I think there are certain ‘game changers’ that reshape discovery space producing low-hanging fruits. But, I do not think these low hanging fruits stay there for long. The possibility of AGI and X-Risks made some of your examples relevant, and they were addressed shortly after those game changers arose. But otherwise, some of your points seem similar to those on the Einstein-Godel book I read.
It is more of a biography of their friendship. I don’t think is worth reading. I almost summarized all his conclusions of the matter, except he applies it in more detail to history of science.
Ok. But you did say relative inefficiency. Relative to what? And still, I think many of your low hanging fruits were retrospective. I’m not sure that they were really obviously important and easy to obtain before, say, 1995.
One easy fix would be to just could about inviting some young possibly relevant philosophers for dinner and saying “do you see these 2 equally fun abstract problems? this one is more relevant because impacts the future of humanity!”
Ok, then the mistaken interpretation was my fault, you weren’t relevantly using the theoretical/applied dimension anywhere.
About decision theory. Perhaps utility maximizers were pulled towards game theory and thence economics and more narrow minded areas, while decision theory end up being maximized for oddness sometimes. That is, people who could attend to low hanging fruits were on areas where the background assumptions were unpopular,while people who could—perhaps—understand the background assumptions couldn’t care less for utility.
It would be strange if all the greatest minds of human history had indeed merely muddle in the swamp while ignoring all those beautiful low hanging fruits. Even great scientists or mathematicians often produce absurdities when delving into philosophy. Either this is a task completely useless and difficult, or useful and difficult. But theoretical discoveries don’t seem easy at all.
Optimistically, I believe there’s a massive hindsight bias. But if this is true, philosophy is indeed a sad craft, gems continuously slip from our hands, while he are left with nothing but mud.
On the other hand, I must say sometimes I feel we are slow and stubborn independently of the difficult nature of the huge search space. Perhaps my comment bellow is evidence of that. I remember one time young-Nick said he convinced a big time philosopher of some point, I said “Well, that’s it, you should erase everything on your CV and state just that. Forget your fancy PhD, convincing a philosopher triumphs all!”. Old-Nick once told sometimes he felt philosophers where only reinstating some long held “truth” they had since early on, and they would build their publications, careers and life over it. How can one be so pathological stubborn?
The weird part is that even though is difficult, hard to advance, its few breakthroughs not acknowledged, relatively low paying, it still is the most competitive academic career, by far. I say all of this, yet I’m pulling all nighters since January to mildly increase my odds of getting in a good philosophy PhD. Maybe only an anthropological/psychiatric study to find out what hell it’s wrong with it. I’m sorry if I’m inadvertently psychologising the question. I have been around our kind from birth and can’t help but relying on personal experience.
Can’t help also remembering the meme “It’s a dirty job, but somebody’s gotta do it”. Is it some kind of necessary evil? Or maybe it is just an ol’ boys’ club − 2500 years old -, and we gotta show we are tough, stubborn, ruthless and hard to join. Wonder what Robin would say of that.
Finally, although this is no longer true for English speaking contemporary philosophy, might be worth noticing philosophy has also been chiefly a highly influential political activity. Due to its political influence, sometimes you would not be finding the truth, as in science, you would be setting things to be true. That would explain the stubbornness. You are not convincing people of the truth, you are convincing people of what they ought to do, sometimes even through legislation. Today we’ve lost this powerful role, but it would seem we’ve maintained the stubbornness. But, wouldn’t MIRI “theoretical discoveries” have this moral flavour? You shouldn’t expect people to easily buy all your claims, for if they unrestrictedly do, they might be bound to abandon their lives, move to Bay Area, and research FAI. You might be in the fruit selling business instead of fruit finding. They can low hang all they want, you’ve got to convince people into buying them.
The weird part is that even though is difficult, hard to advance, its few breakthroughs not acknowledged, relatively low paying, it still is the most competitive academic career,
Which breakthrough did philosophy produce that aren’t acknowledged?
Scientific method, reason, utilitarianism, logic, subjective and objective probability. Although if asked some well-educated people would concede these might have come from philosophy, they often will still see philosophy as a failed, diseased, mislead and/or useless enterprise instead as one of the most fundamental and useful fields.
A common overlapping pattern is to agree with a subset of philosophy’s claims, say there’s nothing more to be discussed and that, hence, philosophy is useless.
I vastly disagree. I will just state it for now, and hopefully this will be a commitment to explain it further when I have the time. Here are my unjustified assertions about the nature of philosophy regarding OP’s topics:
Philosophy has the most huge search space known to man, it encompasses everything (a) without a good clear-cut solution and (b) which has any hope to be solved (this rules out two extremes: science and religion).
Philosophy, by its very nature, has few systematized methods for efficient search. Seems like we discovered logical and clear thinking recently, but that’s almost about it.
Because it is so difficult, philosophy is wrong 99,9% of the time.
When philosophy is right, major breakthroughs are made, sciences are created, new reasoning tools, higher moral standards and so on.
There’s a massive and astronomical hindsight bias. Once solved a problem is no longer on the realm of philosophy and the solution tend to seem extremely obvious after 1 or 2 generations.
Thus, low hanging fruits in philosophy are nowhere to be found. Most of your examples were already found, they just need to be worked on. I chalenge you to present a yet unknown low hanging fruit, one all your peers don’t know it already, one which would knock Nick’s socks off.
I will second this. It’s not that the process of theoretical discovery is inefficient due to any fault of its own, it’s that the problem is intractable (e.g. we don’t know how to do better than exhaustive search). So that linear looking search path from concept A to concept B did not take linear time to find...
I didn’t focus my post on this, but since you object, I’ll attempt to support my claim that “there are often large, unnecessary delays in theoretical discovery.” What I’m saying is that we can do this search in less time than we typically do.
That shouldn’t be surprising: there are all kinds of inefficiencies in theoretical discovery. Young researchers are incentivized to work on things that will get them tenure quickly, they often choose subject areas due to practical career concerns or personal interest rather than likely fruitfulness or social importance, they often pursue research out of momentum rather than due to an EV calculation, etc. This is all quite understandable, but it does introduce inefficiencies.
Do you disagree?
No, these are all spot-on criticisms (but I don’t think they are specific to theoretical research). I certainly agree that many problems of mainstream academia can be solved via the older patronage model, or perhaps even the newer crowdsourcing model.
I guess it is not clear to me that the failures in the OP’s list are due to a structural fault, or due to more excusable issues, like:
(a) “the scholarship coordination problem” (stuff gets forgotten and rediscovered over and over again, people don’t read other disciplines, etc.)
(b) the standard exponential search for insight
Yeah, as I said to joaolkf, I think my title was misleading: I wasn’t trying to contrast theoretical research with empirical research, but merely to look at these inefficiencies in the context of theoretical research, since that’s what MIRI does.
And you’re probably right that for any given example of apparently unnecessary delay in progress, it can be pretty hard to tell which inefficiencies deserve the most blame.
Note that singling this out as a reason for inefficiency feels somewhat contradictory with the OP, where you suggested that there being no obvious profitable applications in the near-term was a reason for inefficiency. If people were choosing subjects areas based on “likely fruitfulness”, then we should expect areas with useful near-term applications to be prioritized.
I would not disagree. But then the claim seems trivial. Your comment’s second paragraph also applies to scientific research. Worse, in more applied areas graduate students have much less freedom to choose their own research topic and they seem to have a higher degree of overall social conformity.
We can then reinstate the question of what exactly about theoretical or philosophical research that makes it so particularly slow and unproductive. I say it is a huge, unknown search space, with no good search process and the fact that every time we find something, we lose it to another area. (Plus the fact that in the past our claims had political/practical consequences, as MIRI’s might have)
Oh I see what’s happening. Sorry, I think my title was accidentally misleading.
My post wasn’t trying to contrast the efficiency of theoretical research vs. empirical research. I just wanted to talk about those inefficiencies in the context of theoretical work specifically, since that’s what MIRI does. (E.g. I wanted to focus on examples from theoretical research.)
Anyway, the point about the large search space is an important one, and I hadn’t been thinking of the inefficiencies coming from political consequences until you mentioned it.
A book about Einstein and Godel claims both of them were able to identify a problem that became suddenly relevant and trackable due to other developments. I think there are certain ‘game changers’ that reshape discovery space producing low-hanging fruits. But, I do not think these low hanging fruits stay there for long. The possibility of AGI and X-Risks made some of your examples relevant, and they were addressed shortly after those game changers arose. But otherwise, some of your points seem similar to those on the Einstein-Godel book I read.
Which book?
http://www.ams.org/notices/200707/tx070700861p.pdf
It is more of a biography of their friendship. I don’t think is worth reading. I almost summarized all his conclusions of the matter, except he applies it in more detail to history of science.
Ok. But you did say relative inefficiency. Relative to what? And still, I think many of your low hanging fruits were retrospective. I’m not sure that they were really obviously important and easy to obtain before, say, 1995.
One easy fix would be to just could about inviting some young possibly relevant philosophers for dinner and saying “do you see these 2 equally fun abstract problems? this one is more relevant because impacts the future of humanity!”
Relative to financial markets, to which I was analogizing.
Ok, then the mistaken interpretation was my fault, you weren’t relevantly using the theoretical/applied dimension anywhere.
About decision theory. Perhaps utility maximizers were pulled towards game theory and thence economics and more narrow minded areas, while decision theory end up being maximized for oddness sometimes. That is, people who could attend to low hanging fruits were on areas where the background assumptions were unpopular,while people who could—perhaps—understand the background assumptions couldn’t care less for utility.
It would be strange if all the greatest minds of human history had indeed merely muddle in the swamp while ignoring all those beautiful low hanging fruits. Even great scientists or mathematicians often produce absurdities when delving into philosophy. Either this is a task completely useless and difficult, or useful and difficult. But theoretical discoveries don’t seem easy at all.
Optimistically, I believe there’s a massive hindsight bias. But if this is true, philosophy is indeed a sad craft, gems continuously slip from our hands, while he are left with nothing but mud.
On the other hand, I must say sometimes I feel we are slow and stubborn independently of the difficult nature of the huge search space. Perhaps my comment bellow is evidence of that. I remember one time young-Nick said he convinced a big time philosopher of some point, I said “Well, that’s it, you should erase everything on your CV and state just that. Forget your fancy PhD, convincing a philosopher triumphs all!”. Old-Nick once told sometimes he felt philosophers where only reinstating some long held “truth” they had since early on, and they would build their publications, careers and life over it. How can one be so pathological stubborn?
The weird part is that even though is difficult, hard to advance, its few breakthroughs not acknowledged, relatively low paying, it still is the most competitive academic career, by far. I say all of this, yet I’m pulling all nighters since January to mildly increase my odds of getting in a good philosophy PhD. Maybe only an anthropological/psychiatric study to find out what hell it’s wrong with it. I’m sorry if I’m inadvertently psychologising the question. I have been around our kind from birth and can’t help but relying on personal experience.
Can’t help also remembering the meme “It’s a dirty job, but somebody’s gotta do it”. Is it some kind of necessary evil? Or maybe it is just an ol’ boys’ club − 2500 years old -, and we gotta show we are tough, stubborn, ruthless and hard to join. Wonder what Robin would say of that.
Finally, although this is no longer true for English speaking contemporary philosophy, might be worth noticing philosophy has also been chiefly a highly influential political activity. Due to its political influence, sometimes you would not be finding the truth, as in science, you would be setting things to be true. That would explain the stubbornness. You are not convincing people of the truth, you are convincing people of what they ought to do, sometimes even through legislation. Today we’ve lost this powerful role, but it would seem we’ve maintained the stubbornness. But, wouldn’t MIRI “theoretical discoveries” have this moral flavour? You shouldn’t expect people to easily buy all your claims, for if they unrestrictedly do, they might be bound to abandon their lives, move to Bay Area, and research FAI. You might be in the fruit selling business instead of fruit finding. They can low hang all they want, you’ve got to convince people into buying them.
Which breakthrough did philosophy produce that aren’t acknowledged?
Scientific method, reason, utilitarianism, logic, subjective and objective probability. Although if asked some well-educated people would concede these might have come from philosophy, they often will still see philosophy as a failed, diseased, mislead and/or useless enterprise instead as one of the most fundamental and useful fields.
A common overlapping pattern is to agree with a subset of philosophy’s claims, say there’s nothing more to be discussed and that, hence, philosophy is useless.
I would love to see a justification of ‘reason’, myself. What work(s) would you point to as having made the breakthrough on reason?
taps out for now
There a lot of basic work in proability came from mathematicians like Bernoulli and Laplace.
The same goes for the “scientific method”. Most scientists just do whatever they feel make sense and that let’s them use their toys.
Can you point to breakthroughs by academic 20th/21th century philosophers?
taps out for now