RobinHanson comments on Do Scientists Already Know This Stuff? - Less Wrong

21 Post author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 17 May 2008 02:25AM

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Comment author: RobinHanson 17 May 2008 12:25:08PM 11 points [-]

Eliezer, you have identified and articulated many important insights that most scholars could benefit from. You should continue to do so, and the world will be better for it.

The problem comes when you seem to imply that you are the first to identify or articulate them, or that the reason they are not more widely known is a particular failing in the nature of "science." To a good first approximation, there simply is no such thing as "science"; there are just many different intellectual traditions with differing mixtures of insights passed down and distorted incentives inducing disinterest and even hostility to certain important insights.

Fight the good fight, but don't presume the enemy is so singular.