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Eliezer_Yudkowsky comments on What we're losing - Less Wrong Discussion

52 Post author: PhilGoetz 15 May 2011 03:34AM

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Comment author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 17 May 2011 10:20:49AM 2 points [-]

Yes, you're a freak and nobody but you and a few other freaks can ever get any useful thinking done and didn't we sort of cover this territory already?

Comment author: Wei_Dai 17 May 2011 03:34:26PM 5 points [-]

I'm confused. Should I stop thinking about how exactly I'm "freaky" and how to possibly reproduce that "freakiness" in others? Has the effort already reached diminishing returns, or was it doomed from the start? Or do you think I'm just looking for ego-stroking or something?

Comment author: Davorak 17 May 2011 07:56:21PM 0 points [-]

Going meta takes resources. Resources could instead be applied directly to the problem in front of you. If not solving the problem right in front of you causes long term hard to recover from problems it makes sense to apply your resources directly to the problem at hand.

So:

(any intellectual question -> how am I supposed to answer questions like that? -> epistemology -> Bayesianism -> nature of probability -> decision theory)

Seems rational when enough excess resources are available. To make more people follow this path you need:

  • To increase the resources of those you are trying to teach.
  • Lower the resource cost of following the path

Lesswrong.com and Lesswrong meetup groups teach life skills to increase the members resources. At the same time they gather people who know skills on the path with those who want to learn lowering the resource cost of following the path. Many other methods exist, I have just mentioned two. A road is being built it has just not reached where you are yet.

Perhaps you are ahead of the road marking the best routes, or clearing the ground, but not everyone have the resources to get so far without a well paved road.