I agree this is a problem. In retrospect, reading Yudkowsky's Sequences was far more valuable to me than reading various pre-1900 philosophers' works firsthand.

I agree this is a problem. In retrospect, reading Yudkowsky's Sequences was far more valuable to me than reading various pre-1900 philosophers' works firsthand.

https://twitter.com/PradyuPrasad/status/1757745612072894477

It’s a good point, but also it can be useful to see where ideas started and how they progressed. The context is often relevant and can be eye-opening. Eg. it’s useful to understand how Newton created a model that explained/predicted a lot of things correctly, but was ultimately wrong as a description of reality.

Web3 maximalist / degenerate • Former lawyer turned fashion designer • LDN

I guess it’s a question of opportunity cost in terms of how one decides to spend their time learning. But yes no doubt that directly experiencing a step forward in any field is going to be the most beneficial.

I agree in theory, but in practice it feels like I only got a surface level understanding of "what scientific progress feels like" out of that: "we believed naive stuff, then we observed more and thought harder, now we believe better stuff"

Far more helpful was just personally living through a major ideological shift.