Vitalik Buterin on Warpcast

Vitalik Buterin pfp

Vitalik Buterin

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

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Vitalik Buterin pfp

Vitalik Buterin

Though ironically I think ancient philosophy is *more* valuable than 1600s stuff. Ancient philosophy is like, "these are some ideas on living a good life I've acquired by instinct". 1600s was starting to make deeper systematizations, but we were very inexperienced then, and 21st century systematizations are better.

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bigjaymes.eth 🎩 pfp

bigjaymes.eth 🎩

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.

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accountless.eth pfp

accountless.eth

@accountless.eth

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Eddy Lazzarin 🟠 pfp

Eddy Lazzarin 🟠

This is generally true but there are pre-1900 works that impacted me very differently from reading second hand accounts: - The Ancient City by Fustel de Coulanges (1864) - Nietzsche (1880s) - The Federalist Papers (1787-1788) - Capital by Marx (1867) - The Discovery and Conquest of Mexico by Díaz del Castillo (1568)

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Connor McCormick ☀️ pfp

Connor McCormick ☀️

wow I've been avoiding sequences all this time because I thought they were over hyped. reading them now

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Daniel Fernandes pfp

Daniel Fernandes

I feel this is just an excuse for bad scholarship/not citing sources/passing off old ideas as new. LessWrong did this a lot, like "continuum fallacy" became "fallacy of the grey" We also learn "wrongish" equations in Physics like 'momentum = m*v' for historical reasons (& unlearn them later).

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Brent Fitzgerald pfp

Brent Fitzgerald

This has me wondering what progress means in philosophy.

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yesyes pfp

I disagree and I am sure some others would disagree as well. Philosophy is different from other subjects. Reading older philosophy texts definitely provides me a broader perspective on things and makes me more aware of the bubble I am in.

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Idan Levin 🎩 pfp

Idan Levin 🎩

Generally a lot of the ideas we learn in modern science/economics are a chewed up version of the original idea, and losses some context In university economics you learn Keynesian economics, which is more of an interpretation of it. When you read his "General theory.." book it is very different than the interpretation

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Karpuzcan pfp

science is almost always cumulative, philosophy is not (at least not necessarily).

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USCMigs pfp

Anti-Oedipus by Deleuze and Guattari is pretty eye opening… lots of modern philosophy is pretty good but can get really abstract real quick… I think that’s why foundational philosophy focuses on the Greeks and other ancients… Hume, Descartes and Smith help root some economic principles for sure!

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▫️Onyx 📚🎩 pfp

▫️Onyx 📚🎩

@cipherscript.eth

Philosophical puzzles remain unchanged from Aristotle to Yudkowsky; unlike science, where new discoveries shift old views. Thoughts?

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Callum Wanderloots ✨ pfp

Callum Wanderloots ✨

@wanderloots.eth

Agree, though I think there is a benefit to reading the original writing of philosophy in the context of the time. If something was a problem 2000 years ago, and it's still a problem now, odds are the universalism of the issue is innate to humanity, and still valuable now. Just finished HPMOR for the third time 🪄

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ツンデレ pfp

Modern philosophers re interpret the ancients. There's nothing modern about them besides the fact they are desperately trying to make a name and a buck using someone else's 🍆 I suggest (for west): La Scienza Nuova 3 Kratylos and generally logical outlines around Pythagoras, heracletus, Socrates, Plato, Aristotle.

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three9s pfp

Wisdom != intelligence That's not too say that it can't be improved upon, just that we're more likely to find "progess" there via some monks in a temple than via technocrats, which very rarely tend to spread influence. Additionally, wisdom must come from within, rather than peer-to-peer like intellectual knowledge.

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GREENCROSS.xcp 🎩

@greencross.eth

shut up and take my 25000 $DEGEN

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fabián🎩 pfp

At the end of the day, people like Yudkowsky and Scott Alexander are doing exactly the same kind of work that philosophers were doing in the past. only difference being that academic papers became the socially “proper” way to share philosophical insight, but philosophical essays were basically blogposts.

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Lrdmnd.eth pfp

Depends on the philosophy being mentioned, still cannot compare chemistry to Alchemy infact chemistry were considered charlatans and thieves who stole from the alchemists or tried to copy a particular process but instead created something else.

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Garance pfp

It would be nice to have more modern thinkers Yet you can’t beat the selection of time Of all that was written, only the very best is still studied…

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