I think you have too limited a picture of what searching for truth entails, and that we don’t have as great a difference between our views as you think.
Newton and Einstein used rationality to seek truth and bring unity to experience, not for practical results. But they were both smart enough to know they’d better check their results against experience, or they’d get the wrong answer and never be able to move further. If we’re smart, we’ll do the same, whether we’re after truth or whatever.
Someone once said there were two kinds of rich people—those who really like having luxury goods, and those for whom money is just a way to keep score. The same could apply to rationalists; there are those who want some specific practical goal or predictive ability, and there are others for whom the ability to achieve practical goals or make predictions is a way to keep score. Einstein was happy to hear his theory successfully predicted the path of light during an eclipse, I’m sure, but not because he was in it for the eclipse-light-predicting.
You’re right, we are more or less in agreement. The expression “to keep score” captures the topic perfectly. Pickup artists have attained a very accurate/predictive view of female mating psychology because they keep score. :-) I’d love to have something similarly objective for rationalism.
Newton and Einstein used rationality to seek truth and bring unity to experience, not for practical results. But they were both smart enough to know they’d better check their results against experience, or they’d get the wrong answer and never be able to move further.
In 1919, Sir Arthur Eddington led expeditions to Brazil and to the island of Principe, aiming to observe solar eclipses and thereby test an experimental prediction of Einstein’s novel theory of General Relativity. A journalist asked Einstein what he would do if Eddington’s observations failed to match his theory. Einstein famously replied: “Then I would feel sorry for the good Lord. The theory is correct.”
It seems like a rather foolhardy statement, defying the trope of Traditional Reality that experiment above all is sovereign. Einstein seems possessed of an arrogance so great that he would refuse to bend his neck and submit to Nature’s answer, as scientists must do. Who can know that the theory is correct, in advance of experimental test?
I think you have too limited a picture of what searching for truth entails, and that we don’t have as great a difference between our views as you think.
Newton and Einstein used rationality to seek truth and bring unity to experience, not for practical results. But they were both smart enough to know they’d better check their results against experience, or they’d get the wrong answer and never be able to move further. If we’re smart, we’ll do the same, whether we’re after truth or whatever.
Someone once said there were two kinds of rich people—those who really like having luxury goods, and those for whom money is just a way to keep score. The same could apply to rationalists; there are those who want some specific practical goal or predictive ability, and there are others for whom the ability to achieve practical goals or make predictions is a way to keep score. Einstein was happy to hear his theory successfully predicted the path of light during an eclipse, I’m sure, but not because he was in it for the eclipse-light-predicting.
You’re right, we are more or less in agreement. The expression “to keep score” captures the topic perfectly. Pickup artists have attained a very accurate/predictive view of female mating psychology because they keep score. :-) I’d love to have something similarly objective for rationalism.
According to EY,
A typo in the Yudkowsky’s article: Traditional Reality → Traditional Rationality.