Viliam comments on Open thread, Jan. 18 - Jan. 24, 2016 - Less Wrong

4 Post author: MrMind 18 January 2016 09:42AM

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Comment author: Viliam 20 January 2016 11:33:56AM *  1 point [-]

So it seems like cybernetics was dissected and some of its parts were digested by various disciplines, but the original spirit which connected those parts together was lost.

An analogy for the rationality movement would be if in a few decades some of the CFAR or MIRI lessons will become accepted material in pedagogics, physics, or maybe even AI research, but the whole spirit of "tsuyoku naritai" will be forgotten.

Some parts that I guess are likely to survive, because they can fit in the existing education:

  • treating emotions as rational or irrational depending on whether they relate to facts (psychology)
  • planning fallacy (management)
  • illusion of transparency (pedagogics)

Some parts that I guess are likely to be ignored, because they seem too trivial, and don't fit to the existing educational system. They may be mentioned as a footnote in philosophy, but they will not be noticed, because philosophy already contains millions of mostly useless ideas:

  • making beliefs pay rent
  • noticing confusion
  • fake explanations
  • mysterious answers
  • affective spirals
  • fallacy of grey
  • dissolving the question
  • tsuyoku naritai
  • rationality as a common cause of many causes

EDIT: Reading my lists again, seems like the main difference is between things you can describe and things you have to do. The focus of academia is to describe stuff, not to train people. Which makes sense, sure. Except for the paradoxical part where you have to train people to become better at correctly describing stuff.