I can’t speak to Yudkowsky’s knowledge of physics, economics, psychology etc, but as someone who studies philosophy I can tell you his philosophical segments are pretty weak. It’s clear that he hasn’t read a lot of philosophy and he isverydismissive of the field as a whole. He also has a tendency to reinvent the wheel (e.g his ‘Requiredism’ is what philosophers would call compatibilism).
When I read the sequences as a teenager I was very impressed by his philosophy, but as I got older and started reading more I realized how little he actually engaged with criticisms of his favorite theories, and when he did he often only engaged with weaker criticisms. If you want some good introductory texts on philosophy as well as criticism/alternatives to some of his/rationalists most central beliefs e.g physicalism, correspondence theory, scientific realism, the normativity of classical logic (all of which I have rejected as of the moment of this writing) then I highly recommend theStanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
In fairness, my memory of the philpapers survey is that there is more consensus amongst professional philosophers on scientific realism than on almost any other philosophical theory. (Though that’s going by the old survey, haven’t looked at the more recent one yet.) Although of course there are prominent philosophers of science who are anti-realist.
53.64% accept or lean towards classical logic (although that doesn’t tell us whether the philosophers think it has normative force).
I will say that PhilPapers has a rather small sample size and mostly collects data on english speaking philosophers, so I find it probable that these results are not representative of philosophers as a whole.
I can’t speak to Yudkowsky’s knowledge of physics, economics, psychology etc, but as someone who studies philosophy I can tell you his philosophical segments are pretty weak.
It’s clear that he hasn’t read a lot of philosophy and he is very dismissive of the field as a whole. He also has a tendency to reinvent the wheel (e.g his ‘Requiredism’ is what philosophers would call compatibilism).
When I read the sequences as a teenager I was very impressed by his philosophy, but as I got older and started reading more I realized how little he actually engaged with criticisms of his favorite theories, and when he did he often only engaged with weaker criticisms.
If you want some good introductory texts on philosophy as well as criticism/alternatives to some of his/rationalists most central beliefs e.g physicalism, correspondence theory, scientific realism, the normativity of classical logic (all of which I have rejected as of the moment of this writing) then I highly recommend the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
In fairness, my memory of the philpapers survey is that there is more consensus amongst professional philosophers on scientific realism than on almost any other philosophical theory. (Though that’s going by the old survey, haven’t looked at the more recent one yet.) Although of course there are prominent philosophers of science who are anti-realist.
True, here are the results you’re talking about:
His views are moderately popular in general with:
51.37% accept or lean towards correspondence
51.93% accept or lean towards physicalism
30.56% accept or lean towards consequentialism
53.64% accept or lean towards classical logic (although that doesn’t tell us whether the philosophers think it has normative force).
I will say that PhilPapers has a rather small sample size and mostly collects data on english speaking philosophers, so I find it probable that these results are not representative of philosophers as a whole.
That’s true, I would only really trust the survey for what analytic philosophers think.