If you are publishing philosophy that misdirects about important questions, or harms readers' mental health (for example by making them afraid), you are causing massive damage to the world.

If you really must pose a depressing question, at least also propose an answer.

The reason a person typically poses depressing questions without answering them is because they want help answering them; not because they want to make readers depressed. Requiring people to answer depressing questions when they are posed does two things

• It causes people who come up with the question to suffer in silence (and, if you look at historical philosophers, you'll see a lot of mental health issues)
• It reduces the number of people working on those questions only do those who independentally come up with them (which reduces the likelihood that they'll ever get answered)
• Philosophers discussing depressing questions have attempted to answer them. Camus' "The Myth of Sisyphus" is an example of one such attempt.

We are in the situation where the dream of literally everyone is that some kind of "superhero," whether you understand that to be some AGI or superintelligence, an actual superhero, prayers suddenly being answered in a timely manner, or even just wanting some "normal person" to come and save them from the absolute disaster that is today's world.

• "Magically getting all your problems solved" has literally always been the dream forever because it's literally a) a complete fantasy and b) the best possible thing that could ever happen. Please don't claim that our situation is unique in this regard.
• While some people would like a superintelligence to save the world (and this was a bigger problem 20 years ago), the common consensus when discussing AGI isn't "I dream that it'll save us all"; it's "I dream that, when it inevitably happens, it won't catastrophically destroy humanity and everything we care about." So no, that's not the situation.

And if you don't understand any of that, I thought,

you must be living in constant fear.

Fear - because, if you don't have an accurate world-model then from your perspective, anything can happen.

I disagree that not having an accurate world model causes constant fear. There's a critically important, fundamental system that we really on every day that both breaks down in horrifying ways all the time and that barely anyone understands: it's called the human body. My family has a history of kidney stones and I don't live in constant fear. You're gonna have to explain how the non-negligible possibility of suddenly and unexpectedly succumbing to agonizing pain for hours of a time (as I deal with) is less scary than the the hard-to-understand tech of modern society so that the former doesn't cause constant fear and the latter does.

1. Less confusion means that people have better models of their environment,

2. which means they have better control over their environment,

3. which reduces uncertainty and fear,

2. is false. Having an understanding of kidney stones doesn't give me any more control over kidney stones. Understanding kidney stone treatments doesn't give me any more control over kidney stones. Getting treatment from people who have the tools to treat kidney stones gives me a little bit of control.

3. is false. You can be absolutely terrified of something you are absolutely certain about -- for instance a painful surgery that you know you're going to have to undertake. It's also bad framing -- uncertainty and fear are different things even if they are related.

Switching things around: if you are, or want to call yourself, a philosopher, is it a good idea to deliberately publish things which increase the amount of fear in the world?

Sometimes, yes. Sometimes having a more accurate world model actually inceases fear because more accurate world models can be more uncertain than less accurate world models. After all, ignorance is bliss. Pragmatic philosophers way the irrationality caused by fear against the irrationality caused by having less accurate world models. Then they make the appropriate trade-off.

The dream of women is for some rich man to come and sweep them off their feet so they don't have to worry so much about life. The dream of men is to somehow strike it rich so that they don't have to worry so much about life, and can do the expected foot-sweeping for the women.

Okay, so I left this to the end because I wanted to engage with the meaning of the text first. Yes. I get it. We all want to worry less about life. This is a normal human thing that lots of humans have always wanted.

But NO, THAT IS NOT THE DREAM OF WOMEN. Seriously. I bet for every woman out there who's genuinely dreaming for a rich man to come and sweep them off their feet, there are way more women genuinely dreaming for just a guy to marry who won't ruin their lives. So, yes. Most women have considered that the "rich guy sweeps them off their feet" scenario might not happen.

Your purported Dream of Men is also very much off-base but it at least isn't proposing a belief system that erases the extremely unpleasant lived experiences of (what I think is) a massive chunk of women.

Note: This comment is long, and mostly point by point.

TL:DR; I recommend the last section of the post above, To Be a Student of the Art [LW · GW], if you don't intend to read the rest of the post. Also, the post recommends Gigerenzer's work, which pertains to bounded rationality and decision making.

The obvious answer is, they got things[1] basically correct[2] and had pretty good methods[3].

There aren't footnotes that match 1, 2, and 3. There are links though.

Did they have gobs of modern mathematical theory, massive networks of hugely capable machines, mass and individual transport, near-instant global communication?

No, they had human and animal power and natural resources.

How many people today have modern mathematical theory? More than calculus? (Yes we have negative and imaginary numbers now. A small change.) They had massive networks. Chariots and ships, and fleets. Global communication networks are new, but some say we're saying less than ever today - and not because it is already known.

Perhaps the greek's philosophy is old and "requires no maintenance" because it is not modern - cars and buildings, and our global systems require maintenance. Our cars are "better" than chariots, as are our skyscrapers. But what maintenance does philosophy require - if it is teaching, then the greeks may have the moderns beat in philosophy because us moderns teach the greek's philosophy.

The goal of philosophy is less confusion in the world.

An admirable goal, but how would it lead to philosophy?

4. which increases the efficiency by which they can act toward their goals,[f#1]

A footnote which isn't missing! So philosophy is clear thinking?

So doing philosophy well will directly cause the world to improve by everyone's measure.

It's good for everyone to do their own philosophy well. Group philosophy though,...

This should at least tell us there is a lot of room for improvement.

Or a lot of (personal) demand for (good) philosophy.

If a question is so difficult to answer definitely that it hasn't been answered even by the efforts of millions or billions of people and an equivalently huge amount of resource investment, perhaps we should think about changing our approach?

Perhaps the question is wrong - or really hard.

If you are publishing philosophy that misdirects about important questions, or harms readers' mental health (for example by making them afraid), you are causing massive damage to the world.

Only if anyone reads it. But yes, bad philosophy pollutes the waters.

If you really must pose a depressing question, at least also propose an answer.

This supposes that speaking is one way.

fear directly causes almost all the world's problems today.

But who is responsible? Is bad philosophy, specifically, are bad philosophers responsible for all this? Or is that fear begets fear?

Fear - because, if you don't have an accurate world-model then from your perspective, anything can happen.

Uncertainty.

And swans are often aggressive toward humans.

What is this getting at?

For the effectiveness of simple heuristics in practice, see the work of Gerd Gigerenzer.

A throwaway example of good philosophy?

Fear suggests an inaccurate world-model which leads to exploitability by others and less value obtained for yourself.

The preceding section suggested that fear leads to (and comes from) falsehood/inaccurate models - correlation rather than causation.

Philosophy

[might mean]

love of

good decisions

Switching things around: if you are, or want to call yourself, a philosopher, is it a good idea to deliberately publish things which increase the amount of fear in the world?

A different meaning of the phrase "good idea".

Having or increasing fear is a strong signal that a person has a world-model which, at the very least, is not as good as it could be.

[emphasis mine]

This has not been established.

If you're a philosopher, you must have a love of wisdom, because otherwise you cannot call yourself a philosopher.

This is arguing by definition. It is easy to get a speaker to repeat "I am philosopher" - without the machines or the people involved having any love of wisdom.

Published philosophy which increases fear is good for absolutely nobody.

A double negative. I agree with your claim that "increasing fear is decreasing wisdom", though it hasn't been illustrated in this piece in detail.

This applies to thoughts as well. If you do actually understand something, you can generate the thought yourself from completely random input.

That seems less like generating than seeing a pattern that isn't there - though it may be accurate w.r.t. humans.

In particular, rejection sampling is a highly general technique. When something is not acceptable, do not accept it.

The wordplay was good, but I missed the meaning.

Philosophy is about teaching wisdom to others. Anyone may do this using whatever arguments, analogies, examples, or whatever technique happens to work.

But maybe we should judge whether or not it's philosophy based on the consequences - does it increase wisdom?

What is the specific thing that "teaching wisdom" actually encompasses?

Very simply, it is this:

Teaching people to reliably ask the right questions, and reliably get valuable answers, within their own context of experience.

When a problem is really important,

When it matters,

there is no alternative but to actually have an accurate world-model which you can act according to.

If you only get one shot. (If you have as many as you like, and a limited amount of time, then making shots, as many as possible, might be the best approach.) I feel like this is less about "having a good world model" and more "having a good theory of action".

Even though it is, relatively, the mostly energetically costly activity you can do.

Internally yes. Gasoline has a lot of energy and driving might use more energy than thinking, to say nothing of stuff using nuclear power. (Low quality meme: Nuclear brains.)

the future environment is both not the same as today, and more difficult to control.

So by default, if your world-model is unchanging, your fear and stress will increase over time.

An interesting point.

If you want to be in a future which has value to you, you need to have a positive theory of action which can "keep up" with the rate of change in the environment.

So, learning has to at least keep up.

You do not have a good track record.

It's not clear who the piece is directed at.

Would-be-philosophers, I now call you to action. Because this, teaching people to be wise, is your job. If you don't want

The call leans more negative "don't do this" than positive "you can make the world an amazing place".

To be a Student of the Art

This section was good. (It aimed at increasing wisdom.) While this post made sense as a whole, I could see this part having value even to someone who didn't agree with the other parts before it.

While I think, the Typical Mind Fallacy is strong with this one; the post does have some good bits. I messaged him privately my problems with it, but I up-voted since I think the post taps into something broader and good which I would like to read more about.

Controlling for iq and education I'd guess philosophers have below average life outcomes. Who has the measurably best life outcomes? Actuaries and Buddhists afaict.

The obvious answer is, they got things[1] basically correct[2]

Which is to say, they had a wide range of opinions, some of which have stood the test of time. Putting it that way, they are not obviously better than modern philosophers.