I think there is something like a Platonic “ultimate textbook of human rationality” that may be written in the future, but we don’t actually know its contents. That’s why the visitor can’t give us the book. We have a dual problem: not only the challenge of spreading the ideas, but actually pinning down what the ideas are in the first place.
Actually, I think “pinning down” has entirely the wrong connotations, because human rationality seems more like a living and breathing process rather than a list of maxims chiseled in stone, and to a degree culturally dependent.
I will say that I don’t think you need to answer #0 concretely before you set out. We can guess at the contents of the Platonic rationality textbook, and then iterate as we converge upon it.
I think there is something like a Platonic “ultimate textbook of human rationality” that may be written in the future, but we don’t actually know its contents. That’s why the visitor can’t give us the book. We have a dual problem: not only the challenge of spreading the ideas, but actually pinning down what the ideas are in the first place.
Actually, I think “pinning down” has entirely the wrong connotations, because human rationality seems more like a living and breathing process rather than a list of maxims chiseled in stone, and to a degree culturally dependent.
I will say that I don’t think you need to answer #0 concretely before you set out. We can guess at the contents of the Platonic rationality textbook, and then iterate as we converge upon it.