I appreciate the argument for clarifying principles, but I’m still not quite sure exactly how you think it’s best to find out what they are, or to write a principle-declaration statement. What all goes into such a thing? Are there lists of principles to pick and choose from? Or a pattern language for building your own?
Good question! This is probably several blogposts. A rough answer, just saying how I personally ended up with principles:
I think the main thing was hanging out with people with principles, and arguing with people-with-principles on the internet. This
a) gave me some object level ideas on principle-directions that might be important (i.e. them arguing for principles I decided were good),
b) gave anti-examples where they argued for things that seemed off/wrong to me, but which got me thinking through complex domains that I realized I’d need to come up with my own principles to navigate.
c) gave me a general flavor of “what is it like to have principles, generally”, in ways that generalized.
Concretely, at the LessWrong team we read through Ray Dalio’s Principles, as sort of a meditation on “what it’s like to have Principles”.
It definitely mattered that I work in domains where having principles matters, and comes up often enough to provide some feedback loop.
I appreciate the argument for clarifying principles, but I’m still not quite sure exactly how you think it’s best to find out what they are, or to write a principle-declaration statement. What all goes into such a thing? Are there lists of principles to pick and choose from? Or a pattern language for building your own?
Good question! This is probably several blogposts. A rough answer, just saying how I personally ended up with principles:
I think the main thing was hanging out with people with principles, and arguing with people-with-principles on the internet. This
a) gave me some object level ideas on principle-directions that might be important (i.e. them arguing for principles I decided were good),
b) gave anti-examples where they argued for things that seemed off/wrong to me, but which got me thinking through complex domains that I realized I’d need to come up with my own principles to navigate.
c) gave me a general flavor of “what is it like to have principles, generally”, in ways that generalized.
Concretely, at the LessWrong team we read through Ray Dalio’s Principles, as sort of a meditation on “what it’s like to have Principles”.
It definitely mattered that I work in domains where having principles matters, and comes up often enough to provide some feedback loop.