Regarding missing gears and old books, I have recently been thinking that many EAs (myself included) have a lot of philosophical / cultural blind spots regarding various things (one example might be postmodernist philosophy). It’s really easy to developer a kind of confidence, with narratives like “I have already thought about philosophy a lot” (when it has been mostly engagement with other EAs and discussions facilitated on EA terms) or “I read a lot of philosophy” (when it’s mostly EA books and EA-aligned / utilitarianist / longtermist papers and books).
I don’t really know what the solutions for this are. On a personal level I think perhaps I need to read more old books or participate in reading circles where non-EA books are read.
I don’t really have the understanding of liberalism to agree or disagree with EA being engaged with mainstream liberalism, but I would agree that EA as a movement has a pretty hefty “pro-status quo” bias in it’s thinking, and especially in it’s action quite often. (There is an interesting contradiction here in EA views often being pretty anti-mainstream though, like thought on AI x-risks, longtermism and wild animal welfare.)
I don’t really know what the solutions for this are. On a personal level I think perhaps I need to read more old books or participate in reading circles where non-EA books are read.
I would suggest, as a perhaps easier on-ramp, reading writing by analytic philosophers defending the views of people from other traditions or eras. A few examples:
A Spirit of Trust, Robert Brandom (Hegel)
The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, Thomas Kuhn (not really a defense of premodern physics, which is of course empirically wrong, but a defense of its coherence)
Pragmatism as a Way of Life, Hilary and Ruth Putnam (American Pragmatism)
Karl Marx’s Theory of History: A Defence, G.A. Cohen (historical materialism)
Regarding missing gears and old books, I have recently been thinking that many EAs (myself included) have a lot of philosophical / cultural blind spots regarding various things (one example might be postmodernist philosophy). It’s really easy to developer a kind of confidence, with narratives like “I have already thought about philosophy a lot” (when it has been mostly engagement with other EAs and discussions facilitated on EA terms) or “I read a lot of philosophy” (when it’s mostly EA books and EA-aligned / utilitarianist / longtermist papers and books).
I don’t really know what the solutions for this are. On a personal level I think perhaps I need to read more old books or participate in reading circles where non-EA books are read.
I don’t really have the understanding of liberalism to agree or disagree with EA being engaged with mainstream liberalism, but I would agree that EA as a movement has a pretty hefty “pro-status quo” bias in it’s thinking, and especially in it’s action quite often. (There is an interesting contradiction here in EA views often being pretty anti-mainstream though, like thought on AI x-risks, longtermism and wild animal welfare.)
I would suggest, as a perhaps easier on-ramp, reading writing by analytic philosophers defending the views of people from other traditions or eras. A few examples:
A Spirit of Trust, Robert Brandom (Hegel)
The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, Thomas Kuhn (not really a defense of premodern physics, which is of course empirically wrong, but a defense of its coherence)
Pragmatism as a Way of Life, Hilary and Ruth Putnam (American Pragmatism)
Karl Marx’s Theory of History: A Defence, G.A. Cohen (historical materialism)