5 ms·

It may be easier to imagine someone trying to derive mathematics all by themselves, since it's less abstract. It's not that they won't come up with anything, it

by jerf 1y ago

It may be easier to imagine someone trying to derive mathematics all by themselves, since it's less abstract. It's not that they won't come up with anything, it's that everything that even a genius can come up with in their lifetime will be something that the whole of humanity has long since come up with, chewed over, simplified, had a rebellion against, had a counter-rebellion against the rebellion, and ultimately packaged it up in a highly efficient manner into a textbook with cross-references to all sorts of angles on it and dozens of elaborations. You can't possible get through all this stuff all on your own. The problem is less clear in philosophy than mathematics, but it's still there. It's really easy on your own terms to come up with some idea that the collective intelligence has already revealed to be fatally flawed in some undeniable manner, or at the very least, has very powerful arguments against it that an individual may never consider. The ideas that have survived decades, centuries, and even millenia against the collective weight of humanity assaulting them are going to have a certain character that "something someone came up with last week" will lack. (That said I am quite heterodox in one way, which is that I'm not a big believer in reading primary sources, at least routinely. Personally I think that a lot of the primary sources noticeably lack the refinement and polish added as humanity chews it over and processes it and I prefer mostly pulling from the result of the process, and not from the one person who happened to introduce a particular idea. Such a source may be interesting for other reasons, but not in my opinion for philosophy.)

lechatonnoir 1y ago
Well, sure, but mathematics is the domain for which this holds maybe the most true out of any. It's less true for fields which are not as old. I'm not sure if this counterpoint generalizes entirely to the original critique, since certainly LessWrongers aren't usually posting about or discussing math as if they've discovered it-- usually substantially more niche topics.
- sanderjd 1y ago
  ... philosophy is if anything older than what we call mathematics.
  - lechatonnoir 1y ago
    I suppose you're right about that, so I can't make the argument go through by saying "mathematics" vs "philosophy". Maybe what I should say instead is that as some dialectics advance/technologies develop, subfields of both such things sprout up and have a lot of low-hanging fruit to pick, and in these cases, the new work will be descended from but not too-essentially informed by the prior work. Like mathematical logic (in the intersection of math and philosophy) didn't have that many true predecessors and was developed very far by maybe only 5-10 individuals cumulatively, or information theory was basically established by Claude Shannon and maybe two other guys, or various aspects of convex optimization or Fourier analysis were only developed in the 80s or so, it stands to reason that the AI-related applications of various aspects of philosophy are ripe to be developed now. (By contrast, we don't see, as much, people on LW trying to redo linear algebra from the ground up, nor more "mature" aspects of philosophy.) (If anything, I think it's more feasible than ever before, also, for a bunch of relative amateurs to non-professionally make real intellectual contributions, like noticeably moreso than 100 or even 20 years ago. That's what increasing the baseline levels of education/wealth/exposure to information was intended to achieve, on some level, isn't it?)
    - lazyasciiart 1y ago
      Not if they refuse to read all the existing information because they think they came up with it all.
ConspiracyFact 1y ago
Just teasing here, but I presume you’re a social conservative…? ;)
- lazyasciiart 1y ago
  Generally conservatives only want to conserve the way the world is as they grow up. Whether that involves respect for prior ideas and thought depends on their current ideas - hence the book burning.

by jerf 1y ago

lechatonnoir 1y ago

Well, sure, but mathematics is the domain for which this holds maybe the most true out of any. It's less true for fields which are not as old. I'm not sure if this counterpoint generalizes entirely to the original critique, since certainly LessWrongers aren't usually posting about or discussing math as if they've discovered it-- usually substantially more niche topics.

sanderjd 1y ago
... philosophy is if anything older than what we call mathematics.
- lechatonnoir 1y ago
  I suppose you're right about that, so I can't make the argument go through by saying "mathematics" vs "philosophy". Maybe what I should say instead is that as some dialectics advance/technologies develop, subfields of both such things sprout up and have a lot of low-hanging fruit to pick, and in these cases, the new work will be descended from but not too-essentially informed by the prior work. Like mathematical logic (in the intersection of math and philosophy) didn't have that many true predecessors and was developed very far by maybe only 5-10 individuals cumulatively, or information theory was basically established by Claude Shannon and maybe two other guys, or various aspects of convex optimization or Fourier analysis were only developed in the 80s or so, it stands to reason that the AI-related applications of various aspects of philosophy are ripe to be developed now. (By contrast, we don't see, as much, people on LW trying to redo linear algebra from the ground up, nor more "mature" aspects of philosophy.) (If anything, I think it's more feasible than ever before, also, for a bunch of relative amateurs to non-professionally make real intellectual contributions, like noticeably moreso than 100 or even 20 years ago. That's what increasing the baseline levels of education/wealth/exposure to information was intended to achieve, on some level, isn't it?)
  - lazyasciiart 1y ago
    Not if they refuse to read all the existing information because they think they came up with it all.

ConspiracyFact 1y ago

Just teasing here, but I presume you’re a social conservative…? ;)

lazyasciiart 1y ago
Generally conservatives only want to conserve the way the world is as they grow up. Whether that involves respect for prior ideas and thought depends on their current ideas - hence the book burning.