I understand your point. Perhaps I am being irrational here. A rationality priesthood may be entirely the wrong approach. I do not deny a certain mysticism about what I'm proposing; as Yvain pointed out in the original thread, Eliezer comes across as rather mystical at times, and I share that inclination. I just find that there is great power in mystical modes of thought, and I suspect that incorporating a bit of that would not hurt the efforts of the masters. In fact, it probably has a lot to do with why Eliezer enjoys the following that he does. Like Vulcans, Eliezer is part logician, part mystic, and it seems to work for him.
There are goals, such as fascinating an audience, for which the trappings of mysticism are useful.
There are goals, such as breaking out of fixed mental sets and opening oneself to creative insights, for which the actual practice of mysticism is useful.
I agree that Eliezer uses the former a fair bit. He may also use the latter; I wouldn't know.
The impression I'm getting is that you are not considering the two to be distinct things.
I would say that's an error.
Today's post, A Sense That More Is Possible was originally published on 13 March 2009. A summary (taken from the LW wiki):
Discuss the post here (rather than in the comments to the original post).
This post is part of the Rerunning the Sequences series, where we'll be going through Eliezer Yudkowsky's old posts in order so that people who are interested can (re-)read and discuss them. The previous post was Raising the Sanity Waterline, and you can use the sequence_reruns tag or rss feed to follow the rest of the series.
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