One criticism of LessWrong as an intellectual community is that it reinvents ideas "in-house" that already exist in academia. What are some examples of this?
I'd also be interested to see comments about whether you agree with this impression and what the examples tell us about how to improve the community.
Comparative advantage - and even worse, EY didn't even fully reinvent it. He just lined up a bundle of things that fall under the umbrella and called it a job well done. This particular instance also checks the boxes for arrogance and lack of rigor. That post was a fun read, but the embedded disdain for economics textbooks was particularly galling since economics textbooks handle the concept just fine.
I mean, you can argue the post is badly written, but I don't think it counts as a reinvention is my point.