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magfrump comments on "Epiphany addiction" - Less Wrong Discussion

52 Post author: cousin_it 03 August 2012 05:52PM

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Comment author: David_Gerard 03 August 2012 07:21:10PM 20 points [-]

Think of it as superstimulus to the cool-idea sensor.

Thought exercise: could all the LW/CFAR-favoured model of epistemic rationality be ineffective, even though it sounds really good and make sense? What would the world look like in this case? What would you expect if LW rationality didn't actually work, except to convince its fans that it did work? (For a value of "work" that is defined before examining the results.)

Comment author: magfrump 04 August 2012 10:47:31AM 2 points [-]

I would expect the following things to have failed:

  • Good community norms (this is a difficult problem that LW has solved admirably)
  • Using advice from LW to improve my social skills (this is actually sort of a subpoint of "if someone else does it better, LW points you to them")
  • Promotion of thinking about pet issues (this one failed by less than the others--the sequences pretty much cleaned out the god-hating but I'm constantly annoyed at people who don't have good epistemology)

there's plenty more that is substantially less tangible, and YMMV, but those first two points have created a large amount of value for me personally.

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