I think this is an important point. There’s a false dichotomy (and a lossy reduction in dimensionality) in “you can believe true things or you can believe useful things”. You can and should strive for useful true beliefs. If you’re not https://wiki.lesswrong.com/wiki/Making_beliefs_pay_rent , you likely have some useless beliefs, and it’s _really_ hard to define “true” for beliefs that don’t actually do anything.
You shouldn’t believe falsehoods full stop. Falsehoods are not useful beliefs, as they make incorrect predictions. You ALSO shouldn’t spend a whole lot of effort on truth of beliefs that don’t matter. You should have a LOT of topics where you don’t have strong beliefs.
I think this is an important point. There’s a false dichotomy (and a lossy reduction in dimensionality) in “you can believe true things or you can believe useful things”. You can and should strive for useful true beliefs. If you’re not https://wiki.lesswrong.com/wiki/Making_beliefs_pay_rent , you likely have some useless beliefs, and it’s _really_ hard to define “true” for beliefs that don’t actually do anything.
You shouldn’t believe falsehoods full stop. Falsehoods are not useful beliefs, as they make incorrect predictions. You ALSO shouldn’t spend a whole lot of effort on truth of beliefs that don’t matter. You should have a LOT of topics where you don’t have strong beliefs.