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whowhowho comments on Philosophical Landmines - Less Wrong
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Comments (145)
Have mainstream philosophers come up with a solution to that? Can LessWronigans learn from them? Do LessWrongians need to teach them?
Try to come up with the least controversial premise that you can use to support your argument, not just the first belief that comes to mind that will support it.
To use a (topical for me) example. someone at Giving What We Can might support effective charities "because it maximises expected utility so you're oblidged to do so, duh", but "if you can do a lot of good for little sacrifice, you should" is a better premise to rely on when talking to people in general, as it's weaker but still does the job.
Not yet I think. Maybe the OP will help us talk about the problem and come up with a solution?
I would be interested to know if this is a known thing in philosophy.
I thought you were the OP.
Insamuch as my questions were a disguised point, it is that flare-ups are rare in professional philosophy, and that this is probably because PP has a praxis for avoiding them, which is learnt by absorption and not set out explicitly.
Sorry for the ambiguous terminology. OP as in Original Post, not Original Poster.
As a first guess on the philosophy thing, I imagine it is structural and cultural. AFAIK they don't really have the kinds of discussions that someone can sneak a landmine into. And they seem civilized enough to not go off on tangents of cached thoughts. I just can't imagine stepping on a philosophical landmine while talking to a professional philosopher. Even if their ideas were wrong, it wouldn't be like that.
So I wonder what we can learn from them about handling landmines in the field, besides "sweep your area clear of landmines, and don't go into the field".
Additional ambiguity of "OP": does it refer to the top-level comment or to the article the comment is on? Does anyone have a good way to make this clear when using the term?
I've never seen that as an additional ambiguity. I've always understood "OP" to mean "the original article", and never "the top level comment". But maybe this is because I've just never encountered the other use (or didn't notice when someone meant it to refer to the top level comment).