jimrandomh comments on MathOverflow as an example for LessWrong - Less Wrong

37 Post author: Academian 27 April 2010 06:30PM

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Comment author: jimrandomh 27 April 2010 07:35:06PM 10 points [-]

The problem with sending people to general philosophy sites is that there is generally a lot of confusion between "philosophy" and "history of philosophy", and the latter is more common. People tend to get railroaded into reading philosophers that're old and prestigious, but much more confusing than a modern rehash of the same topics would be. A quick glance at philosophyforums.com confirmed my suspicion that it's dominated by history of philosophy. If we aren't careful to avoid that, we'll be doing people a great disservice.

Comment author: thomblake 27 April 2010 07:38:12PM 2 points [-]

Agreed. There aren't enough good modern rehashings of the same things. But 'philosophy' doesn't seem to be the right sort of thing to start folks off on anyway.