I remember Bas van Fraassen (probably quoting or paraphrasing someone else, but I remember van Fraassen’s version) saying that the requirements for finding truth were, in decreasing order of importance, luck, courage, and technique (and this surely applies to most endeavours, not just the search for truth). But although technique comes last, it’s the one you have the most control over, so it makes sense to focus your attention there, even though its effect is the smallest. Of course, he is, like me, a philosopher, so perhaps we just share your bias toward caring about rationality.
the requirements for finding truth were, in decreasing order of importance, luck, courage, and technique (and this surely applies to most endeavours, not just the search for truth)
Perhaps this might be the order of importance of these factors in the quest of finding any particular truth, but in the aggregate, I would expect technique (i.e., basic principles of rationality that tell you what truth is, what it should imply, how to look for it, what can justifiably change your view about it, etc) to be the most important one in the long run. This is mostly because it is the one that scales best when the world around us changes such that there is a greater supply of information out there from which important insights can be drawn.
I remember Bas van Fraassen (probably quoting or paraphrasing someone else, but I remember van Fraassen’s version) saying that the requirements for finding truth were, in decreasing order of importance, luck, courage, and technique (and this surely applies to most endeavours, not just the search for truth). But although technique comes last, it’s the one you have the most control over, so it makes sense to focus your attention there, even though its effect is the smallest. Of course, he is, like me, a philosopher, so perhaps we just share your bias toward caring about rationality.
Perhaps this might be the order of importance of these factors in the quest of finding any particular truth, but in the aggregate, I would expect technique (i.e., basic principles of rationality that tell you what truth is, what it should imply, how to look for it, what can justifiably change your view about it, etc) to be the most important one in the long run. This is mostly because it is the one that scales best when the world around us changes such that there is a greater supply of information out there from which important insights can be drawn.