Will philosophy be solved before 2123?
30
closes 2123
14%
chance

Full question:

A majority of philosophers will endorse a general sort of anti-realism, positivism, or otherwise dismissing many philosophical problems as pseudo-problems within 100 years, conditional on no AGI or population collapse.

One of the questions from https://jacyanthis.com/big-questions.

Resolves according to my judgement of whether the criteria have been met, taking into account clarifications from @JacyAnthis, who made those predictions. (The goal is that they'd feel comfortable betting to their credance in this market, so I want the resolution criteria to match their intention.)

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jacksonpolack avatar
jackson polack

the title and the description are very different. Philosophy won't be solved, there'll still be all sorts of questions

but we may dismiss a lot of the current questions as pseudoproblems and move on to new questions, which has happened quite a few times historically

hmys avatar
HMYS

Yes, because I have already solved it. Pose me a question here, or add me on discord yoohoo#1409 and I will prove this.

optimusprime avatar
optimusprime

@hmys Define knowledge

DavidMathers avatar
David Mathers

I have no idea what opinions will be in 2123, but the trend over the last hundred years in analytic philosophy has been away from these sorts of views. And many analytic philosophers see the trend away from this as becoming more scientific more naturalistic and less arrogant about the ability of philosophy to solve problems all by itself by a unique method not used in other fields. (Note that philosophers tend to care more about what scientific theories appear to say, when interpreted literally, than what scientists will claim the theories "really" amount to when thinking philosophically about the nature of knowledge.)

Jacy's credences here are crazily overconfident, given the outside view evidence about how accurate anyone ever is about philosophy. 80% in verificationism when the view was debated to death for about 20 years with a result of almost zero verificationists left in the younger generation then coming up academically, and when correctness is operationalised* in terms of long-term consensus on reflection. 99% credence that he knows what consciousness is(!) 95% confidence in 1 boxing when it's not even the standard view amongst people who study this outside of the LW bubble (and also why don't the general reasons for thinking everything is a pseudo-problem apply to 'is one or two boxing rational?'; why can't that just be 'it depends on what you mean by 'rational'' or 'since we can't verify 'one-boxing is rational', the claim is not even false'): https://survey2020.philpeople.org/survey/results/4886

Bear in mind I actually have maybe 55% credence that many philosophical problems are solvable by realizing that the terms involved have imprecise meanings, and everyone is right on some precisifications. So it's not the views I think are crazy, just the extreme confidence in them.

*'Given my views on the stance-dependence and pseudo-problem nature of most philosophical problems, the usual wording of philosophical beliefs such as, “Utilitarianism is correct” may be misleading. Therefore, I refer to such views as which is the “best” answer to the problem, where “best” means the approach that would be favored after a long period of careful reflection. This still has ambiguity, such as the likely dependence of careful reflection on the initial approach, but it seems sufficient for now'

xyz avatar
Yoav

What if a majority of philosophers believe this but it’s clearly one of those fads with a 20 year lifecycle

IsaacKing avatar
Isaac

@xyz Should still resolve YES unless I'm misunderstanding @JacyAnthis's intention.

Odoacre avatar
Odoacrebought Ṁ35 of NO

What does it even mean for philosophy to be "solved"? Philosophy is not a question that can be answered

IsaacKing avatar
Isaac

@Odoacre Read the description. :)

connorwilliams97 avatar
Connor Williams

No way. I think anyone who believes this is an accurate prediction needs to spend way more time around non-EAs, tbh. Will predict once I have a non-empty play-money balance.

MarkIngraham avatar
Mark Ingrahambought Ṁ5 of YES

Solipsism will win.

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