What we’d ask depends on the context. In general, not all rationalist teachings are in the form of a question, but many could probably be phrased that way.
“Am I winning?” This is the fundamental lesson of instrumental rationality. It’s not enough to act with Propriety or “virtue” or obey the Great Teacher. Sometimes the rules you learned aren’t applicable. If you’re not winning and it’s not due to pure chance, you did it wrong, propriety be damned. You failed to grasp the Art. Reflect, and actually cut the enemy.
Is there a chain of causality linking the evidence to the hypothesis? What else is on that chain? Can I gather more direct evidence? Have I double-counted indirect evidence?
What do I expect? (And then, “How surprised am I?”)
Assuming this failed, how surprised would I be? What’s the most obvious reason why it would fail? Can I take a step to mitigate that/improve my plans? (And repeat.)
Does this happen often enough to be worth the cost of fixing it?
Has anyone else solved this problem? Have I checked? (Web, LLMs, textbooks?)
Have I thought about this for at least five minutes?
What’s my biggest problem? What’s the bottleneck? What am I not allowed to care about? If my life was a novel, what would I be yelling at the protagonist to do? Of my current pursuits, which am I pursuing ineffectively? What sparks my interest?
What we’d ask depends on the context. In general, not all rationalist teachings are in the form of a question, but many could probably be phrased that way.
“Do I desire to believe X if X is the case and not-X if X is not the case?” (For whatever X in question.) This is the fundamental lesson of epistemic rationality. If you don’t want to lie to yourself, the rest will help you get better at that. But if you do, you’ll lie to yourself anyway and all your acquired cleverness will be used to defeat itself.
“Am I winning?” This is the fundamental lesson of instrumental rationality. It’s not enough to act with Propriety or “virtue” or obey the Great Teacher. Sometimes the rules you learned aren’t applicable. If you’re not winning and it’s not due to pure chance, you did it wrong, propriety be damned. You failed to grasp the Art. Reflect, and actually cut the enemy.
Those two are the big ones. But there are more.
Key lessons from Bayes:
How much do I currently believe this?
What’s my best guess, or upper/lower bound, or probability distribution?
Do I have sufficient cause to even entertain the hypothesis?
Is the evidence more consistent with my hypothesis, or its converse?
How ad-hoc is the hypothesis? Is there a weaker claim more likely to be true?
Is there a chain of causality linking the evidence to the hypothesis? What else is on that chain? Can I gather more direct evidence? Have I double-counted indirect evidence?
Others I thought of:
Am I confused?
What’s a concrete example?
What do I expect? (And then, “How surprised am I?”)
Assuming this failed, how surprised would I be? What’s the most obvious reason why it would fail? Can I take a step to mitigate that/improve my plans? (And repeat.)
Does this happen often enough to be worth the cost of fixing it?
Has anyone else solved this problem? Have I checked? (Web, LLMs, textbooks?)
Have I thought about this for at least five minutes?
Do I care? Should I? Why?
Wanna bet?
Can I test this?
What’s my biggest problem? What’s the bottleneck? What am I not allowed to care about? If my life was a novel, what would I be yelling at the protagonist to do? Of my current pursuits, which am I pursuing ineffectively? What sparks my interest?
Am I lying?
I’m not claiming this list is exhaustive.