"And it concerns me that neither the evidentialist camp nor the causalist camp seem to see a need to rebut or comment on Drescher's ideas."
Doesn't concern me in even the tiniest, most infinitesimal amount. Remind me to post on the rationalist virtue of zs'hanh at some point.
Difference between PD and one-shot Newcomb: Agree the incentives are different; agree that the logical structure of the problem is potentially more complicated because of that; suggest that the decision to expend cognitive resources searching for a way to defect could be treated as a defection or a probabilistic defection itself.
Drescher on subjunctives - I agree, this strikes me more as Drescher trying to make partial progress toward a solution than presenting something well-defined in a logical sense. I'm not sure Drescher would disagree with that.
I've spoken to Drescher at length and I think he's trying to derive way too much "ought" from TDT, to the point of thinking TDT yields morality itself.
That said, "Good and Real" is still the reductionist book for now.
Doesn't concern me in even the tiniest, most infinitesimal amount. Remind me to post on the rationalist virtue of zs'hanh at some point.
According to the provided link, zs'hanh means "contemptuous indifference to the activity of others". I'm not sure how that's supposed to apply here, since the entire subject of discussion is the activity of others (namely, Gary Drescher's writings).
If what you mean is that I should have tried to evaluate his ideas on the object level instead of depending on the opinion of others, I did say that I was unable to...
This has been discussed in passing several times, but I thought it might be worthwhile to collect a list of recommended reading for new members and/or aspiring rationalists. There's probably going to be plenty of overlap with the SingInst reading list, but I think the purposes of the two are sufficiently distinct that a separate list is appropriate.
Some requests:
Happy posting!
PS - Is there a "New Readers Start Here" page, or something similar (aside from "About")? I seem to remember someone talking about one, but I can't find it.
1"Everything Eliezer has ever written (since 2001)... twice!" while likely a highly beneficial suggestion for every single human being in existence, is not an acceptable entry. A Technical Explanation of Technical Explanation is fine. If you're not sure whether to classify something as "an essay" or "a blog post", there is a little-known trick to distinguish the two: essays contain small nuggets of vanadium ore, and blog posts contain shreds of palladium. Alternatively, just use your best judgement.