I think we most certainly do. A lot of the early posts by Eliezer contain such warnings, justifiably so if you look at the comments sections of those early Overcoming Bias articles. There are a lot of warnings against using what you’ve learned as a fully general excuse in argumentation, for example.
To continue with the martial arts analogy, which is apt, people who have read the sequences and share that background knowledge are black belt rationalists. Now the black belt isn’t an award for mastery, it is an indication to the other practice partners in training that you have enough background that the gloves can come off without risk of hurting yourself. It’s when the real training begins.
LessWrong, today, is a club for black belt rationalists. We don’t need warnings and disclaimers because there is an assumed level of competence. But to someone new? We point them to the sequences and ask them to come back after they’ve absorbed that. Without that background we would absolutely need more warnings and liability waivers.
Edit: I should probably mention that I don’t think rationality like martial arts by analogy. Rather, rationality IS a martial art. They’re both training the neural nets inside our brains to take action based on evidence available with an intent to win. There’s a reason Eliezer often quotes Miyamoto Musashi. The only thing that is different is what that “winning” represents, combat vs. life in general. There’s a lot that one can learn by cross-training in both arts. I was very fortunate that my instructor in the martial arts was himself an accomplished rationalist. We talked as much about heuristics and biases as we did muscles and pressure points.
I think we most certainly do. A lot of the early posts by Eliezer contain such warnings, justifiably so if you look at the comments sections of those early Overcoming Bias articles. There are a lot of warnings against using what you’ve learned as a fully general excuse in argumentation, for example.
To continue with the martial arts analogy, which is apt, people who have read the sequences and share that background knowledge are black belt rationalists. Now the black belt isn’t an award for mastery, it is an indication to the other practice partners in training that you have enough background that the gloves can come off without risk of hurting yourself. It’s when the real training begins.
LessWrong, today, is a club for black belt rationalists. We don’t need warnings and disclaimers because there is an assumed level of competence. But to someone new? We point them to the sequences and ask them to come back after they’ve absorbed that. Without that background we would absolutely need more warnings and liability waivers.
Edit: I should probably mention that I don’t think rationality like martial arts by analogy. Rather, rationality IS a martial art. They’re both training the neural nets inside our brains to take action based on evidence available with an intent to win. There’s a reason Eliezer often quotes Miyamoto Musashi. The only thing that is different is what that “winning” represents, combat vs. life in general. There’s a lot that one can learn by cross-training in both arts. I was very fortunate that my instructor in the martial arts was himself an accomplished rationalist. We talked as much about heuristics and biases as we did muscles and pressure points.