bokov comments on Stupid Questions Thread - January 2014 - Less Wrong

10 Post author: RomeoStevens 13 January 2014 02:31AM

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Comment author: JoshuaFox 13 January 2014 07:42:58AM *  24 points [-]

If it turns out that the whole MIRI/LessWrong memeplex is massively confused, what would that look like?

Note that in the late 19th century, many leading intellectuals followed a scientific/rationalist/atheist/utopian philosophy, socialism, which later turned out to be a horrible way to arrange society. See my article on this. (And it's not good enough to say that we're really rational, scientific, altruist, utilitarian, etc, in contrast to those people -- they thought the same.)

So, how might we find that all these ideas are massively wrong?

Comment author: bokov 13 January 2014 05:56:29PM 1 point [-]

It would look like a failure to adequately discount for inferential chain length.