Vaniver comments on Conceptual Analysis and Moral Theory - Less Wrong

60 Post author: lukeprog 16 May 2011 06:28AM

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Comment author: Vaniver 18 November 2014 07:29:01PM 3 points [-]

and its not too iimportant what the community is crystallized around?

Of course it's important. What gives you another impression?

Believing in things you can't justify or explain is something that an atheist community can safely borrow from religion?

It's not clear to me where you're getting this. To be clear, I think that the LW perspective has different definitions of "believe," "justify," and "explain" from traditional philosophy, but I don't think that it gets its versions from religion. I also think that atheism is a consequence of LW's epistemology, not a foundation of it. (As a side note, the parts of religion that don't collapse when brought into a robust epistemology are solid enough to build on, and there's little to be gained by turning your nose up at their source.)

In this particular conversation, the religion analogy is used primarily in a social and historical sense. People believe things; people communicate and coordinate on beliefs. How has that communication and coordination happened in the past, and what can we learn from that?

Comment author: TheAncientGeek 18 November 2014 08:13:18PM -1 points [-]

We can learn that "all for the cause, whatever it is" is a failure of rationality.

To be clear, I think that the LW perspective has different definitions of "believe," "justify," and "explain" from traditional philosophy,

I think the LW perspective has the same definitions...but possibly different theories from the various theories of traditional philosophy. (It also looks like LW has a different definition if "definition", which really confuses things)

the parts of religion that don't collapse when brought into a robust epistemology

Religious epistemology - dogmatism+vagueness - is just the problem

Comment author: Vaniver 19 November 2014 02:55:09PM 2 points [-]

We can learn that "all for the cause, whatever it is" is a failure of rationality.

Entirely agreed.

Religious epistemology - dogmatism+vagueness - is just the problem

I don't see the dogmatism you're noticing--yes, Eliezer has strong opinions on issues I don't think he should have strong opinions on, but those strong opinions are only weakly transmitted to others and you'll find robust disagreement. Similarly, the vagueness I've noticed tends to be necessary vagueness, in the sense of "X is an open problem, but here's my best guess at how X will be solved. You'll notice that it's fuzzy here, there, and there, which is why I think the problem is still open."

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