This is hilarious. Nothing gets DLP angry like having its intelligence attacked. LessWrong riles us up so much because we assume him to be intelligent too. We look at his website and think "maybe he is pretty intelligent". And suddenly it's not some arrogant author attacking us like all that have come before. We allow him the position of a peer in our minds, and accordingly get more offended when he insults us. But guys, you gotta remember something pretty important here:
LessWrong isn't a scientist. He isn't an academic (and his inability to take criticism in a good hint as to why. If he went through peer review, he'd probably shank someone). He isn't even really a philosopher, for his work contains little analysis - just exegesis. All he does is spread ideas and produce speculation about the pseudo-philosophical "methods of rationality" with an uncritical eye possessed only by the religious fanatic. I would name him an educator, but I think a more accurate word would be priest or missionary.
So basically, we need to stop being so defensive. We think we're being attacked by a heavyweight, so we're going into full troll mode. But there's no need. We're being slandered by a
research assistant. Oh noes. He might fetch-us-a-coffee to death.
We also need to recognise that Methods of Rationality (the story)
is not a story. We're criticising it for it's poor flow, characterisation, realism, and so on (all the things Silens mentioned and LessWrong promptly dismissed as completely irrelevant to fiction writing) but all our criticism goes nowhere. Why? Here's the clue:
Quote:
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Or respect the work enough to pay any close attention, which is why other forums have done far more accurate analyses of the hidden information in Methods.
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LessWrong's idea of a good review is not one that mentions any of the things related to the mechanics of writing fiction. He doesn't care about the kind of things that an editor would say if he tried to get a story like this published. He is only interested in his religious message, and the ability of people to root out his (not so) "hidden meaning" like theologians studying a holy text.
And that's the crux of the matter: Methods of Rationality will never get into the library because it's not a story, and the library is for stories. It's closer to an essay than a story, in LessWrong's mind. Calling it a parable would, I think, be most accurate.
(It's not even really such a great parable, either. It has one trick that it performs over an over again. Here's how it goes: "Look, Harry Potter mentioned a term like 'planning fallacy'. I know what that is! Aren't I clever?".)
It's not that he won't interact with DLP because we're not smart enough, it's because we judge his work by a standard which he does not recognise as valid. But even if we were to use his standard, I should imagine that we'd find the parable lacking. All of the information contained within is pretty basic. For those interested in philosophy of science, science, cognitive psychology, behavioural psychology or epistemology (all areas with which the story "touches base") the story would be extremely unsatisfying. It contains no new information or analysis for anyone who has even a very basic education in these matters.
And some of it is so basic that it is harmfully over-simplified, particularly those parts on scientific method. Most philosophers of science (good ones, at least), and most scientists agree: there is no defining science. There is no single characteristic which all areas of scientific investigation share, except perhaps mathematisation (a topic not touched upon at all in this parable, despite being perhaps the key part of science, and the most interesting mystery in philosophy of science - the "unreasonable effectiveness of mathematics").
In the end all you can say is that science is as science does. You can try to pigeon-hole it, but science has a way of escaping pigeon-holes and talking about those things that used to be sacred (oh hey there, space and time), and in ways you couldn't have anticipated. For example, the methods presented in this story are entirely experimental, so would completely discount theoretical science and computer-based simulation and model-based science.
TL;DR: We judge Methods of Rationality as a work of fiction, and it fails in this regard. However, LessWrong wants us to judge his work by a different standard - that of academia. Unfortunately, it also fails by this standard. It possesses the unenviable position of being half way between academics and fiction, and therefore succeeding in neither.