I agree with the orthogonality thesis, so no point disagreeing there. I’m not explaining the most widely held lesswrong beliefs—just a few that I strongly disagree with.
One issue with the post is that you didn’t convincingly point to what specifically you disagree with, as something meaningfully present on LW and not only independently described or gestured at in your post. You are making claims about what LW views are, but the claims are too far from being either clear or self-evident (in actually referring to something that’s really from LW) to stand on their own, without enough references/quotes to clarify what’s going on. (It’s an unnecessary issue, you could just describe your points, without framing them as a disagreement. Though to have a chance of meaningful engagement an LW post should be shorter and focused on fewer points.)
So I pointed to a real LW view that seems closest to what you are talking about, even though it’s clearly irrelevant to your post and isn’t what you discuss. I think LW views relevant to your post (those held by multiple people as common knowledge openly communicated here in particular) don’t say anything too surprising or specific, and are additionally confused on proper use of philosophical terms.
I didn’t want the post to be too long. I agree that not everyone on LessWrong agrees with this and exactly how prolific they are is an empirical matter that I have not investigated. However, my sense, having spent a lot of time around such people, is that they’re pretty common.
I agree with the orthogonality thesis, so no point disagreeing there. I’m not explaining the most widely held lesswrong beliefs—just a few that I strongly disagree with.
One issue with the post is that you didn’t convincingly point to what specifically you disagree with, as something meaningfully present on LW and not only independently described or gestured at in your post. You are making claims about what LW views are, but the claims are too far from being either clear or self-evident (in actually referring to something that’s really from LW) to stand on their own, without enough references/quotes to clarify what’s going on. (It’s an unnecessary issue, you could just describe your points, without framing them as a disagreement. Though to have a chance of meaningful engagement an LW post should be shorter and focused on fewer points.)
So I pointed to a real LW view that seems closest to what you are talking about, even though it’s clearly irrelevant to your post and isn’t what you discuss. I think LW views relevant to your post (those held by multiple people as common knowledge openly communicated here in particular) don’t say anything too surprising or specific, and are additionally confused on proper use of philosophical terms.
I didn’t want the post to be too long. I agree that not everyone on LessWrong agrees with this and exactly how prolific they are is an empirical matter that I have not investigated. However, my sense, having spent a lot of time around such people, is that they’re pretty common.
If it turns out the lesswrong is not anti-realistic, the post could have been half the length.