5 ms·

Deutsch only has one book out, which is very good. My only warning is that half of it is sort of off topic (physics, virtual reality, computation, time travel).

by curi 19y ago

Deutsch only has one book out, which is very good. My only warning is that half of it is sort of off topic (physics, virtual reality, computation, time travel). But that's ok, because of the density of ideas fit into each chapter. http://www.amazon.com/Fabric-Reality-Parallel-Universes-Implications/dp/014027541X/ http://www.amazon.com/Fabric-Reality-Parallel-Universes-Impl... Popper has lots of books. Maybe The Myth of the Framework is a good choice. As I recall, it has content from lectures he gave to people not already familiar with his philosophy, so those parts are especially clear and accessible. Proposing an actual moral goal is tricky, because we have to be careful to keep separate the issues of whether there are true moral ideas, and whether my particular idea is true. And very strictly, my idea will not be true. It will have truth to it, but not be perfect. Which may be a confusing concept, because the prevailing epistemology says that knowledge is "justified, true belief" by which it means 100% absolutely, perfectly true. That perspective discounts any possibility of "partial truths" as knowledge. Further, it encourages people to believe they possess (final, certain) truths. But I don't claim to have any of those, nor do I think one can have those. If you're OK with all that, I can tell you some tentative guesses at moral truths.

yters 19y ago
Yeah go ahead.
- curi 19y ago
  To any disagreeable people reading this: please bear in mind that if you say the following ideas are incorrect, and that therefore I am incorrect to say morality can be approached objectively ... you will be contradicting yourself, because you will have made an assertion about the objective truth of the matter (that I am, in fact, mistaken). So some good goals, in my opinion: Long term: open-ended knowledge creation Medium term: cure aging, invent self-replicating nanobots, win war on terror, write important book, invent AI Short term: make a sandwich, be kind to one's children, quit smoking, make a useful product, solve a problem you were having, learn how to play Mario Galaxy well None of these are (I imagine) especially odd. That is because we have to start where we are. We already have goals. Most of them are good goals to pursue, for now. In the event we decide we want something better, or see a problem with them, we should seek to make (gradual) improvements. So, nothing revolutionary here. In fact, while I think most people are mistaken about moral philosophy, I don't have a problem with most of their actual ideas about how to live day to day. We have the most peaceful, cooperative, and effective civilization ever to exist; or, in other words, we have the most knowledge of morality that has ever existed. Average people have this, and use it in their routine lives. Can we do even better? Of course. But most of my suggestions are not about changing one's goals, but instead about changing how one tries to accomplish them. So, for example, it is very important to enjoy criticism. This is common knowledge, but people still have trouble with it, and often don't fully understand the reasons it's important. To sketch out my answer, criticism stabilizes true ideas (because they withstand it better than their rivals), while an environment without criticism does not differentiate truth and falsity. And criticism is a means of error correction. Error correction is the only way to reliably achieve any goal. There is no way to reliably come up with the right approach, initially, so anyone who wants to consistently succeed has to be able to find and correct errors. Why do people dislike criticism, anyway? They take it personally. They hear that they are mistaken, or bad, but they want to be right. That is an irrational and ineffective attitude towards life. If you want to be right, the only path forward is to be willing to change what you are, until you are what's right. And whether you are criticized or not does not change whether you are mistaken. It only changes whether you find out about it. That is a gift. Instead of being mistaken and ignorant, you have a change to change your mind. So to tie this back to what I was saying earlier, one of the common points for the best way to accomplish many different goals, is to enjoy criticism. Alternative approaches such as disliking and avoiding (some) criticism are immoral, because they sabotage achieving one's goals. The more distasteful you find criticism, the less reliably you can accomplish what you want to. To add to this, we could go through all the different attitudes which are important to learning and problem solving in general, and list them as important pieces of morality. They are all fundamental to how we should live.
  - thaumaturgy 19y ago
    > you will be contradicting yourself, because you will have made an assertion about the objective truth of the matter ...unless I assert that morality is subjective. :-) As for the rest of it ... well, I do disagree. I think Guy Kawasaki outlined it best in his book, "Rules for Revolutionaries". It has a section titled, if I remember correctly, "Don't let bozosity get you down". A certain amount of criticism that a person will encounter will be, well, wrong. It can even be wrong when it's coming from an expert. You see this all the time in the business world. I can't tell here if you're suggesting that a person take all criticism to heart -- I think so, because of the way you talk about changing to adapt to criticism -- but, if you are, then you're suggesting that a person allow themselves to be buffeted by the winds of the popular and the trendy. There's no way to always to always be correct, to always do the right thing. You might listen to a bunch of criticism, and a bunch of suggestions, and still make the wrong decision for all the right reasons. Listening to more criticism, and allowing that criticism to further change your habits, doesn't necessarily ameliorate that. I counter that it's important to know when to accept criticism, and when to ignore it and forge ahead. I also posit that it's impossible to know that, so you just have to make your best guess.
    - curi 19y ago
      Regarding subjectivity, if you assert morality is subjective, you don't have a leg to stand on in saying I was wrong. What would that even mean? I was right, for me, or whatever. Regarding "forging ahead": Scheduling criticism is a different issue, and one well known to writers: if you keep editing the first chapter, you'll never finish. There certainly is a place for that kind of thing. It is really a separate (and large) issue. ----- Of course you have to use your judgment about which criticism you think is correct. The point is not to dislike criticism generally, or to ignore it. Doing those things makes it harder to find and use good criticism. To use a YC example, some people have posted here asking for comments and criticism for their fledgling startup. And people have blogged about how this criticism was harsh and hard to take, but made their startup better, so they encourage others to ask for comments/criticism as well. This illustrates a few different attitudes. There are some people who are too scared of criticism to ask for any. Their startups won't get the improvement that some more bold or open minded people have gotten. And then of the people who did ask for criticism, many still partially dislike it, which makes it harder to fairly evaluate the criticism (finding it somewhat painful is distracting!), and their distaste makes them overlook some other, more subtle opportunities to get more criticism, that a person who loves criticism would have found. So this is an important and relevant issue even at an exceptionally enlightened place. There is no magic formula to always make correct decisions, but there are ways of life which are more effective and reliable.

by curi 19y ago

yters 19y ago

Yeah go ahead.

curi 19y ago
To any disagreeable people reading this: please bear in mind that if you say the following ideas are incorrect, and that therefore I am incorrect to say morality can be approached objectively ... you will be contradicting yourself, because you will have made an assertion about the objective truth of the matter (that I am, in fact, mistaken). So some good goals, in my opinion: Long term: open-ended knowledge creation Medium term: cure aging, invent self-replicating nanobots, win war on terror, write important book, invent AI Short term: make a sandwich, be kind to one's children, quit smoking, make a useful product, solve a problem you were having, learn how to play Mario Galaxy well None of these are (I imagine) especially odd. That is because we have to start where we are. We already have goals. Most of them are good goals to pursue, for now. In the event we decide we want something better, or see a problem with them, we should seek to make (gradual) improvements. So, nothing revolutionary here. In fact, while I think most people are mistaken about moral philosophy, I don't have a problem with most of their actual ideas about how to live day to day. We have the most peaceful, cooperative, and effective civilization ever to exist; or, in other words, we have the most knowledge of morality that has ever existed. Average people have this, and use it in their routine lives. Can we do even better? Of course. But most of my suggestions are not about changing one's goals, but instead about changing how one tries to accomplish them. So, for example, it is very important to enjoy criticism. This is common knowledge, but people still have trouble with it, and often don't fully understand the reasons it's important. To sketch out my answer, criticism stabilizes true ideas (because they withstand it better than their rivals), while an environment without criticism does not differentiate truth and falsity. And criticism is a means of error correction. Error correction is the only way to reliably achieve any goal. There is no way to reliably come up with the right approach, initially, so anyone who wants to consistently succeed has to be able to find and correct errors. Why do people dislike criticism, anyway? They take it personally. They hear that they are mistaken, or bad, but they want to be right. That is an irrational and ineffective attitude towards life. If you want to be right, the only path forward is to be willing to change what you are, until you are what's right. And whether you are criticized or not does not change whether you are mistaken. It only changes whether you find out about it. That is a gift. Instead of being mistaken and ignorant, you have a change to change your mind. So to tie this back to what I was saying earlier, one of the common points for the best way to accomplish many different goals, is to enjoy criticism. Alternative approaches such as disliking and avoiding (some) criticism are immoral, because they sabotage achieving one's goals. The more distasteful you find criticism, the less reliably you can accomplish what you want to. To add to this, we could go through all the different attitudes which are important to learning and problem solving in general, and list them as important pieces of morality. They are all fundamental to how we should live.
- thaumaturgy 19y ago
  > you will be contradicting yourself, because you will have made an assertion about the objective truth of the matter ...unless I assert that morality is subjective. :-) As for the rest of it ... well, I do disagree. I think Guy Kawasaki outlined it best in his book, "Rules for Revolutionaries". It has a section titled, if I remember correctly, "Don't let bozosity get you down". A certain amount of criticism that a person will encounter will be, well, wrong. It can even be wrong when it's coming from an expert. You see this all the time in the business world. I can't tell here if you're suggesting that a person take all criticism to heart -- I think so, because of the way you talk about changing to adapt to criticism -- but, if you are, then you're suggesting that a person allow themselves to be buffeted by the winds of the popular and the trendy. There's no way to always to always be correct, to always do the right thing. You might listen to a bunch of criticism, and a bunch of suggestions, and still make the wrong decision for all the right reasons. Listening to more criticism, and allowing that criticism to further change your habits, doesn't necessarily ameliorate that. I counter that it's important to know when to accept criticism, and when to ignore it and forge ahead. I also posit that it's impossible to know that, so you just have to make your best guess.
  - curi 19y ago
    Regarding subjectivity, if you assert morality is subjective, you don't have a leg to stand on in saying I was wrong. What would that even mean? I was right, for me, or whatever. Regarding "forging ahead": Scheduling criticism is a different issue, and one well known to writers: if you keep editing the first chapter, you'll never finish. There certainly is a place for that kind of thing. It is really a separate (and large) issue. ----- Of course you have to use your judgment about which criticism you think is correct. The point is not to dislike criticism generally, or to ignore it. Doing those things makes it harder to find and use good criticism. To use a YC example, some people have posted here asking for comments and criticism for their fledgling startup. And people have blogged about how this criticism was harsh and hard to take, but made their startup better, so they encourage others to ask for comments/criticism as well. This illustrates a few different attitudes. There are some people who are too scared of criticism to ask for any. Their startups won't get the improvement that some more bold or open minded people have gotten. And then of the people who did ask for criticism, many still partially dislike it, which makes it harder to fairly evaluate the criticism (finding it somewhat painful is distracting!), and their distaste makes them overlook some other, more subtle opportunities to get more criticism, that a person who loves criticism would have found. So this is an important and relevant issue even at an exceptionally enlightened place. There is no magic formula to always make correct decisions, but there are ways of life which are more effective and reliable.