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 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