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Vladimir_Nesov comments on How do you tell proto-science from pseudo-science? - Less Wrong Discussion
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Whatever decisions or factual judgments about such claims you need to make, it seems better to formulate them more precisely, without using these categories. The examples in the post seem mostly useless (as in waste of cognition, low value of information).
Could you offer an example of what you would feel is an example that's useful?
I think Vladimir is making the point that the categories you're using don't give much useful information when applied to your examples. It would be better to narrow down and make precise various different criteria for judging whether an idea is worth pursuing or not.
Hm... As an alternative category, how about "worth the effort of spending a few hours reading up on the details and implications" as opposed to "sufficiently unlikely that my time would be better spent looking for new rationalist (fan)fiction"?
Worth the effort to what end? For example, educational value of settled science is greater than that of almost any topic for which the question of being pseudoscience or "protoscience" even comes up (judged at the level where you are ready to study the topic).
I'm familiar with any given popularization of a scientific topic, and have read through and assimilated enough of the Sequences to start really understanding that there is always going to be a higher level of rationalism to aspire to. I also only have so many hours per day to devote to any given reading topic, and can only focus on any particular topic for so many months at a time before my concentration will flag. Thus, I'm hoping to get a head start now on what's most likely to become settled physics in the future - which will, of course, bring advantages of its own.
Really?