Philosophy is a useful discipline, but there's a chronic trap in it shown historically: getting way too high on your own supply. It's possible to build a logic

Philosophy is a useful discipline, but there's a chronic trap in it shown historically: getting way too high on your own supply. It's possible to build a logical chain that reaches some very solid conclusions that turns out to be way far out from where evidence or measurable reality lies, and (especially when the stories in those conclusions are fun or compelling) they can sometimes overshadow the reality they initially set out to explore. The Greeks are credited for conceiving of atoms originally, but it's always worth remembering that they had few tools to investigate their idea, and it was just one of dozens of ideas at the time of the true nature of reality, the rest of which are now known as outlandish. Besides, our modern understanding of atoms as envelopes of quantized probability in a semi-measurable universe bears little resemblance to their concept of them. The LessWrong philosophy on AI would be useful... If AI looked anything like that.