I think there are three things important to understanding the universe: empiricism, logic/math, and theorizing.
I would say that you can do good empiricism without logical extrapolation or theorizing.
You can do math and formal logic without doing empirical fact-finding or theorizing.
But you should never trust theorizing that is not based in either logic/math or empiricism.
For empiricism which stood the test of time, look at Cajal’s neuron drawings which are still revered by scientists today. Those images alone moved neuroscience forward in an important way.
For logic/math, see Einstein’s theories which far preceeded the tests which were able to empirically validate them.
For theorizing without either, see the nonsensical ideas put forth by ‘armchair geologists’ before actual data had been gathered. Unlike Einstein, they did not support their ideas with math.
I don’t think this makes much sense, honestly. Taleb isn’t even a LW rationalist, so that’s the first reason to doubt that this quote alone could imply something of great importance about the essence of this site.
Is the Scientist in Eliezer’s recent anti-Empiricism dialogue not using reason and logic? Are Traditional Rationality and Science, which are spoken of as ultimately helpful but fundamentally incomplete in many parts of the Sequences (1, 2, 3, 4) having trouble because its practitioners are doing “empiricism without logic”? Because they can’t process or make sense of observations? Are they not using reason? If that were so, how on Earth would we have achieved the tremendous amount of pre-LW rationalism advances in science, engineering, and our understanding of the outside world?
As a general matter, it seems the biggest and most common problem human beings face in trying to understand the world is not how to change their credence in a particular thesis when they face new evidence, but more so how to identify what broad frames and theories to even think about in the first place, i.e., what to update, instead of how. Put differently, it is where to place to good use the limited amount of resources (time, attention, mental energy) we have to maximize the chance of stumbling upon something useful.
“One can do logic without empiricism, but one must never do empiricism without logic.”—Nassim Nicholas Taleb
I think this neatly explains why, though we cherish Empiricism, we call ourselves Rationalists.
Reason must come before observation, for without reason observation cannot be processed and made sense of.
Hmm, I disagree with Taleb’s quote.
I think there are three things important to understanding the universe: empiricism, logic/math, and theorizing. I would say that you can do good empiricism without logical extrapolation or theorizing. You can do math and formal logic without doing empirical fact-finding or theorizing. But you should never trust theorizing that is not based in either logic/math or empiricism.
For empiricism which stood the test of time, look at Cajal’s neuron drawings which are still revered by scientists today. Those images alone moved neuroscience forward in an important way.
For logic/math, see Einstein’s theories which far preceeded the tests which were able to empirically validate them.
For theorizing without either, see the nonsensical ideas put forth by ‘armchair geologists’ before actual data had been gathered. Unlike Einstein, they did not support their ideas with math.
I don’t think this makes much sense, honestly. Taleb isn’t even a LW rationalist, so that’s the first reason to doubt that this quote alone could imply something of great importance about the essence of this site.
Is the Scientist in Eliezer’s recent anti-Empiricism dialogue not using reason and logic? Are Traditional Rationality and Science, which are spoken of as ultimately helpful but fundamentally incomplete in many parts of the Sequences (1, 2, 3, 4) having trouble because its practitioners are doing “empiricism without logic”? Because they can’t process or make sense of observations? Are they not using reason? If that were so, how on Earth would we have achieved the tremendous amount of pre-LW rationalism advances in science, engineering, and our understanding of the outside world?
I absolutely disagree with the notion that LW rationalism is about using logic to process observations. On the contrary, it is about using Bayesianism to figure out what hypotheses are even worth taking seriously in the first place, keeping multiple working theories in mind, and ultimately converging to correct beliefs faster than science [1] (because the social rules of traditional scientific institutions require far too much evidence than is needed to be individually convinced of the truth of a claim).
As a general matter, it seems the biggest and most common problem human beings face in trying to understand the world is not how to change their credence in a particular thesis when they face new evidence, but more so how to identify what broad frames and theories to even think about in the first place, i.e., what to update, instead of how. Put differently, it is where to place to good use the limited amount of resources (time, attention, mental energy) we have to maximize the chance of stumbling upon something useful.
One could make the case that this hasn’t really happened in practice, but if so, it is probably because “the project of thinking more clearly has largely fallen by the wayside, and that we never did that great of a job at it anyways”.