A remarkably good interview. But I have a quibble. You summed up with:
These tree-falling-in-a-forest arguments are a huge distraction from talking about how the world actually works.
I would maintain that philosophers have no business deluding themselves that they can usefully discuss how the world actually works. Leave that discussion to scientists. Philosophers do their best work generating models and viewpoints about how the world works, not facts about how the world works. They create fictions (though useful fictions). And in doing so, they need to pay some attention to exactly what words they use.
I will agree, though, that they waste time if they actually begin disputing what words ought to mean.
I don't get it. You don't think philosophers should dispute what words ought to mean?
Isn't sorting out terminology one of the more important jobs of the philosophy of science?
If not philosophers, who do you think should be doing that work?
This post is a bit of shameless self-promotion, but also a pointer to an example of Yudkowskian philosophy at work that LWers may enjoy, this time concerning philosophical theories of desire.
Episode 14 of my podcast with Alonzo Fyfe, Morality in the Real World, begins to dissolve some common philosophical debates about the nature of desire by replacing the symbol with the substance, etc. Transcript and links here, mp3 here. The episode can also probably serve as a big hint of where I'm going with my metaethics sequence.
Warning: Alonzo and I are not voice actors, and my sound engineering cannot compare to that of Radiolab.