I think your supposition that most people have trouble critiquing arguments they’re encountering for the first time is incorrect. I don’t find this hard myself. Learning how to critique arguments is a skill you can study. Even just googling “how to critique an argument you’ve never seen before” gives some reasonable starting points. I’m not surprised a background in Evangelical Christianity has left you lacking this skill, as unquestioning belief is favored there.
Seeking out and listening to podcasts from several distinct but not obviously incorrect philosophies might give your a better perspective on alternative values you might apply to the Rationalist approach. (My favored alternative happens to be ecological approaches.)
Singularity.FM has some good interviews with people with contrary views to mainstream singularitian thought, and some of those have useful alternative lenses to view the world through, even when you don’t agree with their conclusions.
Reading about those who have taken Rationalist-style approaches to get to obviously crazy conclusions is also useful, for seeing where people are prone to going off the rails, so you can avoid the same mistakes, or recognize the signs when others do.
As for perfectionism… As an interview with a specialist in innovation pointed out, if you aren’t failing, you aren’t taking big enough risks to find something new.
“When I was a kid, I thought mistakes were simply bad, and to be avoided. As an adult I realized many problems are best solved by working in two phases, one in which you let yourself make mistakes, followed by a second in which you aggressively fix them.”—Paul Graham
I hope some of this helps, and good luck in your journey!
Learning how to critique arguments is a skill you can study.
I suppose that large portions of The Sequences are devoted to precisely the task of critiquing arguments without requiring a contrary position. It’s kind of an extension of a logical syntax check, but the question isn’t just whether it’s complete and deductively sound, but also whether it’s empirically sound and bayesianly sound.
It’s gonna take me a while to master those techniques, but it’s a worthy goal. Not 100% sure I can do it on the timeline I need, but I can at least practice and start developing the habits.
Reading about those who have taken Rationalist-style approaches to get to obviously crazy conclusions is also useful, for seeing where people are prone to going off the rails, so you can avoid the same mistakes, or recognize the signs when others do.
I love reading about failure modes! Not sure why I find it so fascinating. Maybe it’s connected to the perfectionism? Speaking of...
if you aren’t failing, you aren’t taking big enough risks to find something new.
I consider my greatest failure in life to be that I haven’t failed enough. I have too few experiences of what works and what doesn’t, I failed to make critical course-corrections because they lay outside my info bubble, and I missed out on many positive life experiences along with the negative ones.
[1] I consider my greatest failure in life to be that I haven’t failed enough.
[2] I failed to make critical course-corrections because they lay outside my info bubble,
Some day you may find you’ve taken on too many tasks, and that trying to succeed at all of them means you will fail all of them. At that point if “giving up”** (enough of them) to succeed at the rest is outside your info bubble***/the realm of acts you consider taking*, things might not go well—and perfectionism can mean taking failure really hard.
It may be tricky, balancing this against trying more things—to move away from not doing enough things at once for there to be any “failure”** (to learn from). Or it might be easy—if you’re doing things that other people have done before you might be able to get an estimate of difficulty, and useful advice.
(If someone knows X, Y and Z are crazy hard, then if you ran your plan to do all of them on the same day by them, maybe they’ll hear “I’m going to run a 100 miles and climb a mountain and fight a bear.” and say “don’t do that, that’s crazy hard and too many things. If you want all 3, start by trying to run 1 mile, climbing a tree/small hill, and learning about the right form for punching, and get started on a punching bag.”)
*This theory is oversimplified—failure stems from multiple causes, present and absent. Perhaps this means success requires a bunch of things to go right. Perhaps it means the opposite—failure requires a bunch of things to go wrong.
Perhaps there are many good changes, any one of which can improve things radically, or outright lead to success directly (or via spiraling—like if adding a good habit led to getting better at adding good habits, etc. ). And likewise, many bad changes which can make things a lot worse (not getting enough sleep → sleep deprivation → not doing things as well + not making as good of decisions (~per unit of time) → things get worse, etc.)
**Framing/mindset may effect perception and action. (Recognizing this/changing mindset might help.) If you see something as “giving up” you may be unlikely to do it.
“(Classes with lots of) Tests are amazing—you get to fail so much!”—no one says this.
“I can see how well my program is working right now by having it tell me what it’s thinking.” Sounds a bit more positive.
***I’m not sure this is what you meant by info bubble, and I’m curious about what it actually means.
What I meant by “info bubble” is just all the things I’m aware of at this point in time. Presumably there are actions outside of my info bubble which are more beneficial (or more harmful) than any inside, simply because things I’m unaware of encompasses a much larger expanse of possibility space. This is more true the more insular my life has been up to the present moment. The fact that I didn’t “sow my wild oats”, as the expression goes, did spare me from some harm, but it also stopped me from discovering things that could have set my life on a different, more optimal path.
I think your supposition that most people have trouble critiquing arguments they’re encountering for the first time is incorrect. I don’t find this hard myself. Learning how to critique arguments is a skill you can study. Even just googling “how to critique an argument you’ve never seen before” gives some reasonable starting points. I’m not surprised a background in Evangelical Christianity has left you lacking this skill, as unquestioning belief is favored there.
Seeking out and listening to podcasts from several distinct but not obviously incorrect philosophies might give your a better perspective on alternative values you might apply to the Rationalist approach. (My favored alternative happens to be ecological approaches.)
Singularity.FM has some good interviews with people with contrary views to mainstream singularitian thought, and some of those have useful alternative lenses to view the world through, even when you don’t agree with their conclusions.
Reading about those who have taken Rationalist-style approaches to get to obviously crazy conclusions is also useful, for seeing where people are prone to going off the rails, so you can avoid the same mistakes, or recognize the signs when others do.
As for perfectionism… As an interview with a specialist in innovation pointed out, if you aren’t failing, you aren’t taking big enough risks to find something new.
“When I was a kid, I thought mistakes were simply bad, and to be avoided. As an adult I realized many problems are best solved by working in two phases, one in which you let yourself make mistakes, followed by a second in which you aggressively fix them.”—Paul Graham
I hope some of this helps, and good luck in your journey!
Thanks for the tips!
I suppose that large portions of The Sequences are devoted to precisely the task of critiquing arguments without requiring a contrary position. It’s kind of an extension of a logical syntax check, but the question isn’t just whether it’s complete and deductively sound, but also whether it’s empirically sound and bayesianly sound.
It’s gonna take me a while to master those techniques, but it’s a worthy goal. Not 100% sure I can do it on the timeline I need, but I can at least practice and start developing the habits.
I love reading about failure modes! Not sure why I find it so fascinating. Maybe it’s connected to the perfectionism? Speaking of...
I consider my greatest failure in life to be that I haven’t failed enough. I have too few experiences of what works and what doesn’t, I failed to make critical course-corrections because they lay outside my info bubble, and I missed out on many positive life experiences along with the negative ones.
Some day you may find you’ve taken on too many tasks, and that trying to succeed at all of them means you will fail all of them. At that point if “giving up”** (enough of them) to succeed at the rest is outside your info bubble***/the realm of acts you consider taking*, things might not go well—and perfectionism can mean taking failure really hard.
It may be tricky, balancing this against trying more things—to move away from not doing enough things at once for there to be any “failure”** (to learn from). Or it might be easy—if you’re doing things that other people have done before you might be able to get an estimate of difficulty, and useful advice.
(If someone knows X, Y and Z are crazy hard, then if you ran your plan to do all of them on the same day by them, maybe they’ll hear “I’m going to run a 100 miles and climb a mountain and fight a bear.” and say “don’t do that, that’s crazy hard and too many things. If you want all 3, start by trying to run 1 mile, climbing a tree/small hill, and learning about the right form for punching, and get started on a punching bag.”)
*This theory is oversimplified—failure stems from multiple causes, present and absent. Perhaps this means success requires a bunch of things to go right. Perhaps it means the opposite—failure requires a bunch of things to go wrong.
Perhaps there are many good changes, any one of which can improve things radically, or outright lead to success directly (or via spiraling—like if adding a good habit led to getting better at adding good habits, etc. ). And likewise, many bad changes which can make things a lot worse (not getting enough sleep → sleep deprivation → not doing things as well + not making as good of decisions (~per unit of time) → things get worse, etc.)
**Framing/mindset may effect perception and action. (Recognizing this/changing mindset might help.) If you see something as “giving up” you may be unlikely to do it.
“(Classes with lots of) Tests are amazing—you get to fail so much!”—no one says this.
“I can see how well my program is working right now by having it tell me what it’s thinking.” Sounds a bit more positive.
***I’m not sure this is what you meant by info bubble, and I’m curious about what it actually means.
Classes with lots of tests are amazing, thanks to the testing effect.
What I meant by “info bubble” is just all the things I’m aware of at this point in time. Presumably there are actions outside of my info bubble which are more beneficial (or more harmful) than any inside, simply because things I’m unaware of encompasses a much larger expanse of possibility space. This is more true the more insular my life has been up to the present moment. The fact that I didn’t “sow my wild oats”, as the expression goes, did spare me from some harm, but it also stopped me from discovering things that could have set my life on a different, more optimal path.