palladias comments on Poll - Is endless September a threat to LW and what should be done? - Less Wrong

4 Post author: Epiphany 08 December 2012 11:42PM

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Comment author: palladias 09 December 2012 01:59:41AM 8 points [-]

One issue with the LW/CFAR approach is that the focus is on getting better/more efficient at pursuing your goals, but not on deciding whether you're applying your newfound superpowers to the right goals. (There's a bit of this with efficient altruism, but those giving opportunities are more about moving people up Maslow's hierarchy of needs, not on figuring out what to want when you're not at subsistence level).

Luke's recent post suggest that almost no one here has the prereqs to tackle metaphysics or normative ethics, but that always has seemed like the obvious next topic for rationality-minded people. I was glad when Luke was writing his Desirism sequences back at CSA, but it never got to the point where I had a decent enough model of what normative claims desirism made to be able to evaluate it.

Basically, I think these topics would let us set our sights a little higher than "Help me optimize my computer use" but I think one major hurdle is that it's hard to tackle these topics in individual posts, and people may feel intimidated about starting sequences.

Comment author: Eugine_Nier 10 December 2012 03:35:25AM 3 points [-]

The problem is that there is an unfortunate tendency here, going all the way up to EY to dismiss philosophy and metaphysics.