I would consider meditation and circling to have the same relationship to “discovering the truth” as art. The insights can be real and profound but are less rigorous and much more personal.
I think we need more than two categories here. We can’t allocate credit for input, only output. People can learn things by carefully observing stuff, but we shouldn’t get to mint social capital as rationalists for hours meditating any more than Darwin’s reputation should depend directly on time spent thinking about tortoises.
Discerning investors might profit by recognizing leading indicators of high productivity, but that only works if incentives are aligned, which means, eventually, objective tests. In hindsight it seems very unfortunate that MIRI was not mostly funded by relevant-to-its-expertise prediction markets.
Good art seems like it should make people sexy, not credible.
I would consider meditation and circling to have the same relationship to “discovering the truth” as art. The insights can be real and profound but are less rigorous and much more personal.
I think we need more than two categories here. We can’t allocate credit for input, only output. People can learn things by carefully observing stuff, but we shouldn’t get to mint social capital as rationalists for hours meditating any more than Darwin’s reputation should depend directly on time spent thinking about tortoises.
Discerning investors might profit by recognizing leading indicators of high productivity, but that only works if incentives are aligned, which means, eventually, objective tests. In hindsight it seems very unfortunate that MIRI was not mostly funded by relevant-to-its-expertise prediction markets.
Good art seems like it should make people sexy, not credible.