A recent experience reminded me that basics are really important. On LW we talk a lot about advanced aspects of rationality.
If you would have to describe the basics, what would you say?
What things are so obvious for you about rationality that they usually go without saying?
You can frequently make your life better by paying attention to what you’re doing, looking for possible improvements, trying your ideas, and observing whether the improvements happen.
I run on hardware that was optimized by millions of years of evolution to do the sort of things my ancestors did tens of thousands of years ago, not the sort of things I do now.
This might be useful for staying honest to yourself and perhaps your allies, but it’s also useful to keep in mind that most people give different kinds of lies different degrees of moral weight.
Nice list, even a bit that’s basic enough that I can put it into an Anki deck about teaching rationality (a long term project of mine but at the moment I doesn’t have enough cards for release).
I’d like to hear about the experience if you’re willing to share it. How basic are we talking about?
This older discussion thread seems to ask a similar question and some answers are relevant to your question. If you think your question phrased in a more specific way would elicit different kinds of responses, it might deserve its own thread.
I’d like to hear about the experience if you’re willing to share it.
The experience wasn’t about the domain of rationality but another subject and the relationships of concepts in that framework. If don’t think it’s useful for people without the experience of the framework.
How basic are we talking about?
As basic as you can get. What is the most basic thing you can say about rationality. If your reaction is: “Duh, I don’t know nothing comes to mind”, that’s exactly why it might be worthwhile to investigate the issue.
Recently there was a discussion about vocabulary for rationality and someone made the point that things can be said either implicit or explicit.
Implicitness and explicitness are pretty basic concepts.
A recent experience reminded me that basics are really important. On LW we talk a lot about advanced aspects of rationality.
If you would have to describe the basics, what would you say? What things are so obvious for you about rationality that they usually go without saying?
You can frequently make your life better by paying attention to what you’re doing, looking for possible improvements, trying your ideas, and observing whether the improvements happen.
There is no magic.
I am not in a story.
Words are detachable handles.
Brilliant.
I run on hardware that was optimized by millions of years of evolution to do the sort of things my ancestors did tens of thousands of years ago, not the sort of things I do now.
People can change (e.g. update on beliefs, self-improve).
How to choose your actions—think about your goals, think what steps achieve them in the best way, act on those steps.
There is such a thing as objective truth.
Amazing how the basic pillars of rationality are things other people so often don’t agree with, even though they seem so dead obvious to me.
This is a fun exercise. The list could be a lot longer than I originally expected.
belief is about evidence
0 and 1 are not probabilities
Occam’s razor
strawman and steelman
privileging the hypothesis
tabooing
instrumental-terminal distinction of values
don’t pull probabilities out of your posterior
introspection is often wrong
intuitions are often wrong
general concept of heuristics and biases
confirmation and disconfirmation bias
halo effect
knowing about biases doesn’t unbias you
denotations and connotations
many more
“not technically lying” is de facto lying
This might be useful for staying honest to yourself and perhaps your allies, but it’s also useful to keep in mind that most people give different kinds of lies different degrees of moral weight.
Nice list, even a bit that’s basic enough that I can put it into an Anki deck about teaching rationality (a long term project of mine but at the moment I doesn’t have enough cards for release).
I’d like to hear about the experience if you’re willing to share it. How basic are we talking about?
This older discussion thread seems to ask a similar question and some answers are relevant to your question. If you think your question phrased in a more specific way would elicit different kinds of responses, it might deserve its own thread.
The experience wasn’t about the domain of rationality but another subject and the relationships of concepts in that framework. If don’t think it’s useful for people without the experience of the framework.
As basic as you can get. What is the most basic thing you can say about rationality. If your reaction is: “Duh, I don’t know nothing comes to mind”, that’s exactly why it might be worthwhile to investigate the issue.
Recently there was a discussion about vocabulary for rationality and someone made the point that things can be said either implicit or explicit. Implicitness and explicitness are pretty basic concepts.