> 6. Academics often prefer writing papers to blog posts. Papers can seem more prestigious and don’t get annoying negative comments. To the degree that prestige is directly valuable this is useful, but for most things I prefer blog posts / Facebook posts. I think there are a bunch of “mid-tier” LessWrong/ EA Forum writers who I value much dramatically than many (far more prestigious) academics.
What are examples of comparisons between far more prestigious academics and mid-tier LW/EAF writers? Curious about what the baselines here are because it’s definitely a bit harder for me to make this comparison.
As a very simple example, I’d compare Gwern to Yann LeCun. LeCun has done some great work historically, but when it comes to overall judgement on most things, I far prefer Gwern.[1]
Or, in philosophy, I think it’s understood among some of our crowd that lot of modern philosophy work really isn’t that interesting or great. Being a professor in philosophy is very prestigious, but that doesn’t mean they’re doing great work. I think it’s telling just how few modern philosophy (and really, humanities) talks or papers people here pay attention to. Some of that is ignorance, but I think a fair bit is justified.
[1] My point isn’t that Gwern is “mid-tier”, but he’s well known here. So take less successful/prominent versions of both Gwern and Yann LeCun for a more relevant example.
But then I guess you end up with something like Kat Woods vs. Uri Hasson or something like that, and that’s not a comparison I’d necessarily make. And separately, what Yann lacks in holistic reasoning, he does make up for with the technical work he’s done (though he definitely peaked in ’96).
The same for philosophy. What are some examples where theory of philosophy on the forums is significantly better than e.g. the best book on the topic of that year? I can totally buy this, but my philosophy studies during cognitive science were definitely extremely high quality and much better than most work on the forums.
Then of course add that EAs are also present in academia and maybe the picture gets more muddled.
Quickly: ”What are some examples where theory of philosophy on the forums is significantly better than e.g. the best book on the topic of that year?” -> I think the word “better” here is oversimplifying. I’d expect that published work in formal philosophy will represent more labor and often more skills of certain kinds than blog posts. But I’d also expect this to come with certain assumptions and focus areas that I disagree with.
I’d notice that I’m finding it awkward to be specific here, because then I feel like I’d be calling out some writers as “mid-tier”, and also calling out specific academics that I know.
I didn’t mean to make a very controversial or strong point here.
Yeah, makes a lot of sense! I think of mid-tier not as offensive since it’s also just about Gwern spending all his time on writing vs. Kat Woods running an organization as well—huge respect to both of course for what they do.
Great post, hadn’t seen that one before.
I’ll also mention that I don’t think SoTA philosophy happens in any way within any of the areas that Luke mentions. If this is classified as academic philosophy, then that’s definitely fair. But if you look at where philosophy is developed the most (outside of imaginary parallel worlds) in my eyes, it’s the summaries of academic work on consciousness (The Conscious Mind), computer science (Gödel, Escher, Bach), AI (Superintelligence), genetic foundations for morals (Blueprint for Civilization), empirical studies of human behavior in moral scenarios (Thinking, Fast and Slow), politics (Expert Political Judgment), cognitive enhancement (Tools for Thought), and neuroscience (The Brain from Inside Out), all of which have academic centres of excellence that are very inspiring.
Like, the place philosophers who truly want to understand the philosophical underpinnings of reality go today looks very very different than it did during the renaissance, in the sense that we now have instruments and mathematics that can measure ethics, morals, and the fundamental properties of reality.
My point wasn’t at all that bloggers are better than the best academics. More I was highlighting that there are situations like those in what’s known as contemporary “Philosophy”, which features people who are well-respected within certain niches, but whom most of us wouldn’t find that exciting.
Great post and I agree! Curious about one point:
> 6. Academics often prefer writing papers to blog posts. Papers can seem more prestigious and don’t get annoying negative comments. To the degree that prestige is directly valuable this is useful, but for most things I prefer blog posts / Facebook posts. I think there are a bunch of “mid-tier” LessWrong/ EA Forum writers who I value much dramatically than many (far more prestigious) academics.
What are examples of comparisons between far more prestigious academics and mid-tier LW/EAF writers? Curious about what the baselines here are because it’s definitely a bit harder for me to make this comparison.
As a very simple example, I’d compare Gwern to Yann LeCun. LeCun has done some great work historically, but when it comes to overall judgement on most things, I far prefer Gwern.[1]
Or, in philosophy, I think it’s understood among some of our crowd that lot of modern philosophy work really isn’t that interesting or great. Being a professor in philosophy is very prestigious, but that doesn’t mean they’re doing great work. I think it’s telling just how few modern philosophy (and really, humanities) talks or papers people here pay attention to. Some of that is ignorance, but I think a fair bit is justified.
[1] My point isn’t that Gwern is “mid-tier”, but he’s well known here. So take less successful/prominent versions of both Gwern and Yann LeCun for a more relevant example.
But then I guess you end up with something like Kat Woods vs. Uri Hasson or something like that, and that’s not a comparison I’d necessarily make. And separately, what Yann lacks in holistic reasoning, he does make up for with the technical work he’s done (though he definitely peaked in ’96).
The same for philosophy. What are some examples where theory of philosophy on the forums is significantly better than e.g. the best book on the topic of that year? I can totally buy this, but my philosophy studies during cognitive science were definitely extremely high quality and much better than most work on the forums.
Then of course add that EAs are also present in academia and maybe the picture gets more muddled.
Quickly:
”What are some examples where theory of philosophy on the forums is significantly better than e.g. the best book on the topic of that year?”
-> I think the word “better” here is oversimplifying. I’d expect that published work in formal philosophy will represent more labor and often more skills of certain kinds than blog posts. But I’d also expect this to come with certain assumptions and focus areas that I disagree with.
I’d point people to this previous post:
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/FwiPfF8Woe5JrzqEu/philosophy-a-diseased-discipline
And maybe:
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/LcEzxX2FNTKbB6KXS/train-philosophers-with-pearl-and-kahneman-not-plato-and
I’d notice that I’m finding it awkward to be specific here, because then I feel like I’d be calling out some writers as “mid-tier”, and also calling out specific academics that I know.
I didn’t mean to make a very controversial or strong point here.
Yeah, makes a lot of sense! I think of mid-tier not as offensive since it’s also just about Gwern spending all his time on writing vs. Kat Woods running an organization as well—huge respect to both of course for what they do.
Great post, hadn’t seen that one before.
I’ll also mention that I don’t think SoTA philosophy happens in any way within any of the areas that Luke mentions. If this is classified as academic philosophy, then that’s definitely fair. But if you look at where philosophy is developed the most (outside of imaginary parallel worlds) in my eyes, it’s the summaries of academic work on consciousness (The Conscious Mind), computer science (Gödel, Escher, Bach), AI (Superintelligence), genetic foundations for morals (Blueprint for Civilization), empirical studies of human behavior in moral scenarios (Thinking, Fast and Slow), politics (Expert Political Judgment), cognitive enhancement (Tools for Thought), and neuroscience (The Brain from Inside Out), all of which have academic centres of excellence that are very inspiring.
Like, the place philosophers who truly want to understand the philosophical underpinnings of reality go today looks very very different than it did during the renaissance, in the sense that we now have instruments and mathematics that can measure ethics, morals, and the fundamental properties of reality.
Yep, I agree with most of that.
My point wasn’t at all that bloggers are better than the best academics. More I was highlighting that there are situations like those in what’s known as contemporary “Philosophy”, which features people who are well-respected within certain niches, but whom most of us wouldn’t find that exciting.
Yep, probably agree with this. Then it’s definitely good to lead a promising researcher away from the bad nichés and into the better ones!