I did have some difficulty resolving all tensions, but I was able to do so. I found that there were often alternate interpretations of a statement that would resolve a tension but were still plausible interpretations. For example, one that I remember was interpreting some of the questions about “physical body” more generally as “physical substrate”. Sometimes the tension page didn’t offer the question that needed reinterpretation, in which case I deferred the tension until I saw a tension that contained the statement to be reinterpreted.
It definitely does need a lot of work, but I can imagine a tool like this having profound effects on people when all the bugs are worked out and it is applied to mind killers and beliefs/habits where cognitive biases figure prominently.
One major thing that needs to be improved if they intend normal people to use it for normal issues like politics, abortion, etc., is to make the tension page much friendlier. Most LWers have probably studied logic, and can pretty easily interpret the tension explanation, but most people have no clue about logic and won’t understand the implicit implications that aren’t explained (like that contrapositive of “A → B” is valid).
I did have some difficulty resolving all tensions, but I was able to do so. I found that there were often alternate interpretations of a statement that would resolve a tension but were still plausible interpretations. For example, one that I remember was interpreting some of the questions about “physical body” more generally as “physical substrate”. Sometimes the tension page didn’t offer the question that needed reinterpretation, in which case I deferred the tension until I saw a tension that contained the statement to be reinterpreted.
It definitely does need a lot of work, but I can imagine a tool like this having profound effects on people when all the bugs are worked out and it is applied to mind killers and beliefs/habits where cognitive biases figure prominently.
One major thing that needs to be improved if they intend normal people to use it for normal issues like politics, abortion, etc., is to make the tension page much friendlier. Most LWers have probably studied logic, and can pretty easily interpret the tension explanation, but most people have no clue about logic and won’t understand the implicit implications that aren’t explained (like that contrapositive of “A → B” is valid).