I agree such an object level demonstration would be good evidence (although of course one-sided, for reasons Pablo ably articulates elsewhere). I regret I canât provide this. On many of these topics (QM, p-zombies) I donât pretend any great knowledge; for others (e.g. Theism), I canât exactly find the ârationalist case for Atheismâ crisply presented.
I am naturally hesitant to infer from the (inarguable) point that diffusion of knowledge and ideas within and across fields takes time that he best explanation for disagreement is that rationalists are just ahead of the curve. I enjoyed the small parts of Drescher I read, but I assume many reasonable philosophers are aware of his work and yet are not persuaded. Many things touted in philosophy (and elsewhere) as paradigm shifting insights transpire to be misguided, and betting on some based on your personal assent on the object level looks unlikely to go well.
I consider the decision theory work a case-in-point. The view that the F- U- T- DT is this great advance on decision theoretic state of the art is a view that is very tightly circumscribed to the rationalist community itself. Of course, many decision theorists are simply ignorant of it given it is expounded outside the academic press. Yet others are not: there were academic decision theorists who attend some MIRI workshops, others who have been shown versions (via Chalmers, I understand), and a few who have looked at MIRIâs stuff on Arxiv and similar. Yet the prevailing view of these seems to be at best lukewarm, and at worst scathing.
This seems challenging to reconcile with a model of rationalists just getting to the great insights early before everyone else catches up. It could be the decision theorist community is so diseased so they cannot appreciate the technical breakthrough MIRI-style decision theory promises. Yet I find the alternative hypothesis where it is the rationalist community which is diseased and diving down a decision theory dead end without the benefit of much interaction with decision theory experts to correct them somewhat more compelling.
To be clear, Iâm not saying that the story I told above (âhere are some cool ideas that I claim havenât sufficiently saturated the philosophy community to cause all the low-hanging fruit to get grabbed, or to produce fieldwide knowledge and acceptance in the cases where it has been grabbedâ) should persuade arbitrary readers that people like Eliezer or Gary Drescher are on the right track; plenty of false turns and wrong solutions can also claim to be importing neglected ideas, or combining ideas in neglected ways. Iâm just gesturing at one reason why I think itâs possible at all to reach confident correct beliefs about lots of controversial claims in philosophy, in spite of the fact that philosophy is a large and competitive field whose nominal purpose is to answer these kinds of questions.
Iâm also implicitly making a claim about there being similarities between many of the domains youâre pointing to that help make it not just a coincidence that one (relatively) new methodology and set of ideas can put you ahead of the curve on multiple issues simultaneously (plus produce multiple discovery and convergence). A framework thatâs unusually useful for answering questions related to naturalism, determinism, and reflective reasoning can simultaneously have implications for how we should (and shouldnât) be thinking about experience, agency, volition, decision theory, and AI, among other topics. To some extent, all of these cases can be thought of as applications of a particular naturalist/âreductionist toolkit (containing concepts and formalisms that arenât widely known among philosophers who endorse naturalism) to new domains.
Iâm curious what criticisms youâve heard of MIRIâs work on decision theory. Is there anything relevant you can link to?
I donât think the account of the relative novelty of the âLW approachâ to philosophy makes a good fit for the available facts; ârelativelyâ new is, I suggest, a pretty relative term.
You can find similar reduction-esque sensibilities among the logicial positivists around a century ago, and a very similar approach from Quine about half a century ago. In the case of the logical positivists, they enjoyed a heyday amongst the philosophical community, but gradually fell from favour due to shortcomings other philosophers identified; I suggest Quine is a sufficiently âbig nameâ in philosophy that his approach was at least widely appreciated by the relevant academic communities.
This is challenging to reconcile with an account of âRationalityâs philosophical framework allows one to get to confidently get to the right answer across a range of hard philosophical problems, and the lack of assent of domain experts is best explained by not being aware of itâ. Closely analogous approaches have been tried a very long time ago, and havenât been found extraordinarily persuasive (even if we subset to naturalists). It doesnât help that when the âLW-answerâ is expounded (e.g. in the sequences) the argument offered isnât particularly sophisticated (and often turns out to be recapitulating extant literature), nor does it usually deign to address objections raised by dissenting camps.
I suggest a better fit for this data is the rationality approach looks particularly persuasive to people without subject matter expertise.
Re. decision theory. Beyond the general social epistemiological steers (i.e. the absence of good decision theorists raving about the breakthrough represented by MIRI style decision theory, despite many of them having come into contact with this work one way or another), remarks Iâve heard often target âtechnical qualityâ: Chalmers noted in a past AMA disappointment this theory had not been made rigorous (maybe things have changed since), and I know one decision theoristâs view is that the work also isnât rigorous and a bit sloppy (on Carlâs advice, Iâm trying to contact more). Not being a decision theorist myself, I havenât delved into the object level considerations.
Quineans and logical positivists have some vague attitudes in common with people like Drescher, but the analogy seems loose to me. If you want to ask why other philosophers didnât grab all the low-hanging fruit in areas like decision theory or persuade all their peers in areas like philosophy of mind (which is an interesting set of questions from where Iâm standing, and one Iâd like to see examined more too), I think a more relevant group to look at will be technically minded philosophers who think in terms of Bayesian epistemology (and information-theoretic models of evidence, etc.) and software analogies. In particular, analogies that are more detailed than just âthe mind is like softwareâ, though computationalism is an important start. A more specific question might be: âWhy didnât E.T. Jaynesâ work sweep the philosophical community?â
I agree such an object level demonstration would be good evidence (although of course one-sided, for reasons Pablo ably articulates elsewhere). I regret I canât provide this. On many of these topics (QM, p-zombies) I donât pretend any great knowledge; for others (e.g. Theism), I canât exactly find the ârationalist case for Atheismâ crisply presented.
I am naturally hesitant to infer from the (inarguable) point that diffusion of knowledge and ideas within and across fields takes time that he best explanation for disagreement is that rationalists are just ahead of the curve. I enjoyed the small parts of Drescher I read, but I assume many reasonable philosophers are aware of his work and yet are not persuaded. Many things touted in philosophy (and elsewhere) as paradigm shifting insights transpire to be misguided, and betting on some based on your personal assent on the object level looks unlikely to go well.
I consider the decision theory work a case-in-point. The view that the F- U- T- DT is this great advance on decision theoretic state of the art is a view that is very tightly circumscribed to the rationalist community itself. Of course, many decision theorists are simply ignorant of it given it is expounded outside the academic press. Yet others are not: there were academic decision theorists who attend some MIRI workshops, others who have been shown versions (via Chalmers, I understand), and a few who have looked at MIRIâs stuff on Arxiv and similar. Yet the prevailing view of these seems to be at best lukewarm, and at worst scathing.
This seems challenging to reconcile with a model of rationalists just getting to the great insights early before everyone else catches up. It could be the decision theorist community is so diseased so they cannot appreciate the technical breakthrough MIRI-style decision theory promises. Yet I find the alternative hypothesis where it is the rationalist community which is diseased and diving down a decision theory dead end without the benefit of much interaction with decision theory experts to correct them somewhat more compelling.
To be clear, Iâm not saying that the story I told above (âhere are some cool ideas that I claim havenât sufficiently saturated the philosophy community to cause all the low-hanging fruit to get grabbed, or to produce fieldwide knowledge and acceptance in the cases where it has been grabbedâ) should persuade arbitrary readers that people like Eliezer or Gary Drescher are on the right track; plenty of false turns and wrong solutions can also claim to be importing neglected ideas, or combining ideas in neglected ways. Iâm just gesturing at one reason why I think itâs possible at all to reach confident correct beliefs about lots of controversial claims in philosophy, in spite of the fact that philosophy is a large and competitive field whose nominal purpose is to answer these kinds of questions.
Iâm also implicitly making a claim about there being similarities between many of the domains youâre pointing to that help make it not just a coincidence that one (relatively) new methodology and set of ideas can put you ahead of the curve on multiple issues simultaneously (plus produce multiple discovery and convergence). A framework thatâs unusually useful for answering questions related to naturalism, determinism, and reflective reasoning can simultaneously have implications for how we should (and shouldnât) be thinking about experience, agency, volition, decision theory, and AI, among other topics. To some extent, all of these cases can be thought of as applications of a particular naturalist/âreductionist toolkit (containing concepts and formalisms that arenât widely known among philosophers who endorse naturalism) to new domains.
Iâm curious what criticisms youâve heard of MIRIâs work on decision theory. Is there anything relevant you can link to?
I donât think the account of the relative novelty of the âLW approachâ to philosophy makes a good fit for the available facts; ârelativelyâ new is, I suggest, a pretty relative term.
You can find similar reduction-esque sensibilities among the logicial positivists around a century ago, and a very similar approach from Quine about half a century ago. In the case of the logical positivists, they enjoyed a heyday amongst the philosophical community, but gradually fell from favour due to shortcomings other philosophers identified; I suggest Quine is a sufficiently âbig nameâ in philosophy that his approach was at least widely appreciated by the relevant academic communities.
This is challenging to reconcile with an account of âRationalityâs philosophical framework allows one to get to confidently get to the right answer across a range of hard philosophical problems, and the lack of assent of domain experts is best explained by not being aware of itâ. Closely analogous approaches have been tried a very long time ago, and havenât been found extraordinarily persuasive (even if we subset to naturalists). It doesnât help that when the âLW-answerâ is expounded (e.g. in the sequences) the argument offered isnât particularly sophisticated (and often turns out to be recapitulating extant literature), nor does it usually deign to address objections raised by dissenting camps.
I suggest a better fit for this data is the rationality approach looks particularly persuasive to people without subject matter expertise.
Re. decision theory. Beyond the general social epistemiological steers (i.e. the absence of good decision theorists raving about the breakthrough represented by MIRI style decision theory, despite many of them having come into contact with this work one way or another), remarks Iâve heard often target âtechnical qualityâ: Chalmers noted in a past AMA disappointment this theory had not been made rigorous (maybe things have changed since), and I know one decision theoristâs view is that the work also isnât rigorous and a bit sloppy (on Carlâs advice, Iâm trying to contact more). Not being a decision theorist myself, I havenât delved into the object level considerations.
The âCheating Death in Damascusâ and âFunctional Decision Theoryâ papers came out in March and October, so I recommend sharing those, possibly along with the âDecisions Are For Making Bad Outcomes Inconsistentâ conversation notes. I think these are much better introductions than e.g. Eliezerâs old âTimeless Decision Theoryâ paper.
Quineans and logical positivists have some vague attitudes in common with people like Drescher, but the analogy seems loose to me. If you want to ask why other philosophers didnât grab all the low-hanging fruit in areas like decision theory or persuade all their peers in areas like philosophy of mind (which is an interesting set of questions from where Iâm standing, and one Iâd like to see examined more too), I think a more relevant group to look at will be technically minded philosophers who think in terms of Bayesian epistemology (and information-theoretic models of evidence, etc.) and software analogies. In particular, analogies that are more detailed than just âthe mind is like softwareâ, though computationalism is an important start. A more specific question might be: âWhy didnât E.T. Jaynesâ work sweep the philosophical community?â