even if we understand the fundamentals of neuroscience completely, we may “drop it” for more heuristics driven approaches that are less absolutely accurate.
Because of this, I maintain my questioning of a general epistemic (and the attached instrumental) project for “rational living” etc.. It seems to me a better model of how we deal with things is like collecting tools for a toolbox, swapping them out for better ones as better ones come in, rather than moving towards some ideal perfect system of thinking. Perhaps
Relatedly, in case you haven’t seen it, I’ll point you to an essay by Eliezer on this distinction: Toolbox-thinking and Law-thinking.
It’s definitely something I hadn’t read before, so thank you. I would say to that article (on a skim) that it has clarified my thinking somewhat. I therefore question the law/toolbox dichotomy, since to me it seems that usefulness—accuracy-to-perceived reality are in fact two different axes. Thus you could imagine:
A useful-and-inaccurate belief (e.g. what we call old wives tales, “red sky in morning, sailors take warning”, herbal remedies that have medical properties but not because of what the “theory” dictates)
A not-useful-but-accurate belief (when I pitch this baseball, the velocity is dependent on the space-time distortion created by earth’s gravity well)
A not-useful-and-not-accurate belief (bloodletting as a medical “treatment”)
And finally a useful-and-accurate belief (when I set up GPS satellites I should take into account time dilation)
And, of course, all of these are context dependent (sometimes you may be thinking about baseballs going at lightspeed)! I guess then my position is refined into: “category 4 is great if we can get it but for most cases category 1 is probably easier/better”, which seems neither pure toolbox or pure law
I’m not sure I understand how “red sky in morning, sailors take warning” can be both inaccurate and useful. Surely a heuristic for when to prepare for bad weather is useful only insofar as it is accurate?
Because it comes boxed with an inaccurate causal story.
For example, if I tell you not to lie because god is watching you and will send you to hell, this is somewhat useful because you’ll become more trustworthy if you believe it, but the claim about god and hell is false.
Maybe I am missing some previous rationalist discourse about the red sky saying. I remember reading it in books as a child, and do not know (except that it is listed here as a useful heuristic) whether it is actually true, or what the bundled incorrect causal story is. I have always interpreted it as “a red sunrise is correlated with a higher chance of storms at sea.” That claim does not entail any particular causal mechanism, and it still seems to me that it must be either accurate and therefore useful, or inaccurate and therefore not useful, but it’s hard to imagine how it could be inaccurate and useful.
Relatedly, in case you haven’t seen it, I’ll point you to an essay by Eliezer on this distinction: Toolbox-thinking and Law-thinking.
It’s definitely something I hadn’t read before, so thank you. I would say to that article (on a skim) that it has clarified my thinking somewhat. I therefore question the law/toolbox dichotomy, since to me it seems that usefulness—accuracy-to-perceived reality are in fact two different axes. Thus you could imagine:
A useful-and-inaccurate belief (e.g. what we call old wives tales, “red sky in morning, sailors take warning”, herbal remedies that have medical properties but not because of what the “theory” dictates)
A not-useful-but-accurate belief (when I pitch this baseball, the velocity is dependent on the space-time distortion created by earth’s gravity well)
A not-useful-and-not-accurate belief (bloodletting as a medical “treatment”)
And finally a useful-and-accurate belief (when I set up GPS satellites I should take into account time dilation)
And, of course, all of these are context dependent (sometimes you may be thinking about baseballs going at lightspeed)! I guess then my position is refined into: “category 4 is great if we can get it but for most cases category 1 is probably easier/better”, which seems neither pure toolbox or pure law
I’m not sure I understand how “red sky in morning, sailors take warning” can be both inaccurate and useful. Surely a heuristic for when to prepare for bad weather is useful only insofar as it is accurate?
Because it comes boxed with an inaccurate causal story.
For example, if I tell you not to lie because god is watching you and will send you to hell, this is somewhat useful because you’ll become more trustworthy if you believe it, but the claim about god and hell is false.
Maybe I am missing some previous rationalist discourse about the red sky saying. I remember reading it in books as a child, and do not know (except that it is listed here as a useful heuristic) whether it is actually true, or what the bundled incorrect causal story is. I have always interpreted it as “a red sunrise is correlated with a higher chance of storms at sea.” That claim does not entail any particular causal mechanism, and it still seems to me that it must be either accurate and therefore useful, or inaccurate and therefore not useful, but it’s hard to imagine how it could be inaccurate and useful.