In an art that works, the true function of a theory is to provide a convincing REASON for you to take the action that has been shown to work. The “truth” of that theory is irrelevant, so long as it provides motivation and a usable model for the purposes of that art.… Is that compatible with the OB/LW picture? The top-down culture here appears to be one of using science and math—not real-world performance or self-experimentation.
Trying to interpret this charitably, I’ll suggest a restatement: what you call a “theory” is actually an algorithm that describes the actions that are known to achieve the required results. In the normal use of the words, theory is an epistemic tool, leading you to come to know the truth, and a reason for doing something is explanation of why this something achieves the goals. Terminologically mixing opaque heuristic with reason and knowledge is a bad idea, in the quotation above the word “reason”, for example, connotes more with rationalization than with anything else.
what you call a “theory” is actually an algorithm that describes the actions that are known to achieve the required results.
No, I’m using the term “theory” in the sense of “explanation” and “as opposed to practice”. The theory of a self-help school is the explanation(s) it provides that motivate people to carry out whatever procedures that school uses, by providing a model that helps them make sense of what their problems are, and what the appropriate methods for fixing them would be.
In the normal use of the words, theory is an epistemic tool, leading you to come to know the truth, and a reason for doing something is explanation of why this something achieves the goals.
I don’t see any incompatibility between those concepts; per DeBono (Six Thinking Hats, lateral thinking, etc.) a theory is a “proto-truth” rather than an “absolute truth”. Something that we treat as if it were true, until something better is found.
Ideally, a school of self-help should update its theories as evidence changes. Generally, when I adopt a technique, I provisionally adopt whatever theory was given by the person who created the technique, unless I already have evidence that the theory is false, or have a simpler explanation based on my existing knowledge.
Then, as I get more experience with a technique, I usually find evidence that makes me update my theory for why/how that technique works. (For example, I found that I could discard the “parts” metaphor of Core Transformation and still get it to work, ergo falsifying a portion of its original theoretical model.)
Also, I sometimes read about a study that shows a mechanism of mind that could plausibly explain some aspect of a technique, for example. Recently, for example, I read some papers about “affective asynchrony”, and saw that it not only experimentally validated some of what I’ve been doing, but that it provided a clearer theoretical model for certain parts of it. (Clearer in the sense of providing a more motivating rationale, and not just because I can point to the papers and say, “see, science!”)
Similar thing for “reconsolidation”—it provides a clear explanation for something that I knew was required for certain techniques to work (experiential access to a relevant concrete memory), but had no “theoretical” justification for. (I just taught this requirement without any explanation except “that’s how these techniques work”.)
There seems to be a background attitude on LW though, that this sort of gradual approximation is somehow wrong, because I didn’t wait for a “true” theory in a peer-reviewed article before doing anything.
In practice, however, if I waited for the theory to be true instead of useful, I would never have been able to gather enough experience to make good theories in the first place.
Trying to interpret this charitably, I’ll suggest a restatement: what you call a “theory” is actually an algorithm that describes the actions that are known to achieve the required results. In the normal use of the words, theory is an epistemic tool, leading you to come to know the truth, and a reason for doing something is explanation of why this something achieves the goals. Terminologically mixing opaque heuristic with reason and knowledge is a bad idea, in the quotation above the word “reason”, for example, connotes more with rationalization than with anything else.
No, I’m using the term “theory” in the sense of “explanation” and “as opposed to practice”. The theory of a self-help school is the explanation(s) it provides that motivate people to carry out whatever procedures that school uses, by providing a model that helps them make sense of what their problems are, and what the appropriate methods for fixing them would be.
I don’t see any incompatibility between those concepts; per DeBono (Six Thinking Hats, lateral thinking, etc.) a theory is a “proto-truth” rather than an “absolute truth”. Something that we treat as if it were true, until something better is found.
Ideally, a school of self-help should update its theories as evidence changes. Generally, when I adopt a technique, I provisionally adopt whatever theory was given by the person who created the technique, unless I already have evidence that the theory is false, or have a simpler explanation based on my existing knowledge.
Then, as I get more experience with a technique, I usually find evidence that makes me update my theory for why/how that technique works. (For example, I found that I could discard the “parts” metaphor of Core Transformation and still get it to work, ergo falsifying a portion of its original theoretical model.)
Also, I sometimes read about a study that shows a mechanism of mind that could plausibly explain some aspect of a technique, for example. Recently, for example, I read some papers about “affective asynchrony”, and saw that it not only experimentally validated some of what I’ve been doing, but that it provided a clearer theoretical model for certain parts of it. (Clearer in the sense of providing a more motivating rationale, and not just because I can point to the papers and say, “see, science!”)
Similar thing for “reconsolidation”—it provides a clear explanation for something that I knew was required for certain techniques to work (experiential access to a relevant concrete memory), but had no “theoretical” justification for. (I just taught this requirement without any explanation except “that’s how these techniques work”.)
There seems to be a background attitude on LW though, that this sort of gradual approximation is somehow wrong, because I didn’t wait for a “true” theory in a peer-reviewed article before doing anything.
In practice, however, if I waited for the theory to be true instead of useful, I would never have been able to gather enough experience to make good theories in the first place.