“I have read 100 books about chess,” I said, “Surely I must be a grandmaster by now.”
A nice argument; but looking back at it the second time, I think I actually expect someone who’s read 100 books on how to play chess to be better than me at chess. I expect someone who’s read the Sequences to be significantly better than baseline at being sane and to at least share some common assumptions about important things that would allow to have more productive communication. Even if one doesn’t have the skills to notice flaws in their thinking, reading the Sequences significantly increases the chance they’ll approach a bunch of stuff well, or if specific flaws are pointed out, will notice and try to correct them. (E.g., even if they can’t notice that an argument is about definitions, if you point this out, they’ll understand it; if they updated towards some belief after an event even though it happens just as often, relatively, in works where it’s true as in worlds where it’s false, they might understand why they should rollback the update.)
Being increasingly good at rationality means being wrong less and less. It doesn’t mean immediately stopping having any holes in beliefs. Noticing holes in your beliefs takes time and practice and reflection, and the skill of it is, indeed, not automatically downloaded from the Sequences. But it’s not really about holes in models in a moment of time; it’s about whether the models predict stuff better as time passes.
I guess, my point is people shouldn’t feel bad about having holes in beliefs or understanding “little” after reading the Sequences. It’s the derivative that matters
A nice argument; but looking back at it the second time, I think I actually expect someone who’s read 100 books on how to play chess to be better than me at chess. I expect someone who’s read the Sequences to be significantly better than baseline at being sane and to at least share some common assumptions about important things that would allow to have more productive communication. Even if one doesn’t have the skills to notice flaws in their thinking, reading the Sequences significantly increases the chance they’ll approach a bunch of stuff well, or if specific flaws are pointed out, will notice and try to correct them. (E.g., even if they can’t notice that an argument is about definitions, if you point this out, they’ll understand it; if they updated towards some belief after an event even though it happens just as often, relatively, in works where it’s true as in worlds where it’s false, they might understand why they should rollback the update.)
Being increasingly good at rationality means being wrong less and less. It doesn’t mean immediately stopping having any holes in beliefs. Noticing holes in your beliefs takes time and practice and reflection, and the skill of it is, indeed, not automatically downloaded from the Sequences. But it’s not really about holes in models in a moment of time; it’s about whether the models predict stuff better as time passes.
I guess, my point is people shouldn’t feel bad about having holes in beliefs or understanding “little” after reading the Sequences. It’s the derivative that matters