Guys, these are students in an intro philosophy class who looked at a few introductory and recently promoted articles. Expecting them to genuinely struggle with the weird views expressed here would require them to a) encounter the weird views which they likely didn't do and b) feel that they in any way have the expertise to challenge those views. What is noteworthy about this is that the comments were mandatory. If you make everyone who read a few introductory articles write comments these are about the results you're going to get. The people who write comments on the internet are the small minority who feel strongly about something said here and competent enough to add or criticize. But that is a small fraction of the possible audience. So seeing comments that don't pattern match to the comments one normally reads on the Internet is not a good reason to conclude the students did not have genuinely positive reaction to what they read.

Most intro to philosophy classes are not made up of kids with any significant CS, cog sci, mathematical or physics background. Yes, they're taking Less Wrong to be authoritative. But they read a bunch of good, non-controversial articles and have little prior expertise to fall back on. Yeah, the comments are written in bullshitty language and tone because that's how one writes for authority figures you can't trust yet. That does not mean the sentiments expressed are bullshit- it is very common for undergrads to criticize assigned reading.

Many of the negative comments in this thread strike me as spouting cached thoughts about higher education, in many cases from people who may not have a lot of experience with higher ed.