work on overcoming biases, LW's peculiar solution to free will
None of that is novel, or even peculiar. The point of Lesswrong is to make it fresh, accessable, and well written. The bias writings are derived from academic work on biases, published by people doing experiments. The "solution to free will" is just basic clear thinking - if you were confused about free will upon entering, you're encouraged to not read the solution and solve it yourself as an exercise, and then check to see if that solution matches your own - it's not claiming to be novel philosophy or anything. This is primarily a hub for the dispersal of existing good ideas in a better format.
Novel ideas tend to be more narrow, more specific formulations. Timeless decision theory, for example, is specific and fairly novel, and MIRI published it.
I agree, most writings are derived from academic works.
That may seem weird, but I don't think "basic clear thinking" should be excluded from academia. Philosophy problems should in my opinion not simply be something we "solve it ourselves", and should enter as formal as it can in academia. I may also simply be unaware of the possibly similar works on this problem too.
That said, I haven't been confused by this problem either, simply got more confused after reading LW and asking what people thought around me - that it was really something that bothered people.
And TDT has been self published ... Why not in mainstream academia ?
I feel that a lot of what's in LW (written by Eliezer or others) should be in mainstream academia. Not necessarily the most controversial views (the insistence on the MW hypothesis, cryonics, the FAI ...), but a lot of the work on overcoming biases should be there, be criticized there and be improved there.
For example, a few debiasing methods and a more formal explanation of LW's peculiar solution to free will (and more, these are only examples).
I don't really get why LW's content isn't in mainstream academia to be honest.
I get that peer review is not the best (far from it, although it's still the best we have, and post-publication peer-review is also improving, see PubPeer), that some would too readily dismiss LW's content, but not all. Lots would play by the rules and provide genuine criticisms during peer-review (which will lead to the alteration of the content of course), along with criticisms post publication. This is in my opinion something that has to happen.
LW, Eliezer, etc, can't stay on the "crank" level, not playing by the rules, publishing books and no papers. Blogs are indeed faster and reach a bigger amount of people, but I'm not arguing for only publishing in academia. Blogs can (and should) continue.
Tell me what you think, as I seem to have missed something with this topic.