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Non-teaching of explicit rationality annoys me. The most fundamental, elementary, and basic concepts of rationality are not systematically explained anywhere t
by Eliezer 16y ago
Non-teaching of explicit rationality annoys me. The most fundamental, elementary, and basic concepts of rationality are not systematically explained anywhere that I know of. It is impossible to engage the average PhD in a dialogue with agreed-upon rules of reasoning because they do not know why you can't prove things about the real world by arguing about the definitions of a word, or why it's a bad idea to pick a conclusion first and then come up with arguments for it, or the Bayesian definition of evidence that forms the foundation of all belief updates in epistemic rationality, or why violating the expected utility theorem by failing to assign consistent utilities always means leaving some value on the table.
I am writing a book to solve this problem.
- tome 16y agoI would be interested in reading your book, as well as a summary if you have one somewhere.
- barry-cotter 16y agoHe's still writing it. The huge numbers of blog posts it is a synthesis of are available at http://wiki.lesswrong.com/wiki/Sequences http://wiki.lesswrong.com/wiki/Sequences
- orangecat 16y agoAnd for a less conventional overview, see Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality: http://www.fanfiction.net/s/5782108/1/Harry_Potter_and_the_Methods_of_Rationality http://www.fanfiction.net/s/5782108/1/Harry_Potter_and_the_M...
- petercooper 16y agoor why it's a bad idea to pick a conclusion first and then come up with arguments for it Unless one had to start one's thesis with null hypotheses (increasingly less common, but still a notable approach.)
- barmstrong 16y agoInteresting, this reminds me of a book I thought about writing at one point titled something like "How To Tell What Is True" Which would cover topics like: * Peer review * Double blind experiments * Anecdotal evidence * Statistical Significance But I sort of lost interest and ended up just making it a blog post instead... http://www.startbreakingfree.com/504/how-to-tell-whats-bullshit-and-whats-true-part-1/ http://www.startbreakingfree.com/504/how-to-tell-whats-bulls...
- TheSOB88 16y agoParent's ideas are much more applicable to the general public, which is who needs this training the most.
- pjscott 16y agoNow there's an interesting question: how can you teach some low-hanging fruit of rationality to someone with maybe half an hour to spare? The best attempt at this I've seen is Carl Sagan's article "The Fine Art of Boloney Detection", from his book The Demon-Haunted World. Sagan was an engaging writer, and does a good job making it easy to understand. I found a copy here: http://dannybhoy1.tripod.com/baloney.htm http://dannybhoy1.tripod.com/baloney.htm It would be even better if we had effective sound bites. I suppose we have "Correlation does not equal causation", which rhymes nicely, but too many people think it means that correlation isn't evidence for causation, which is wrong. I guess this is a problem with soundbites in general.
- pradocchia 16y agoThis reminds me of a book I thought of writing, titled "The Limits of Certainty and the Quest for Authorization."
- nollidge 16y agoThis sounds like skepticism. Carl Sagan's "The Demon-Haunted World" is similar in nature, though hardly systematic. James "The Amazing" Randi has also written a handful of books aimed at debunking some of the more prominent results of irrational thinking (homeopathy, astrology, etc.)
- Eliezer 16y agoYes, the conflation of skepticism about UFOs with the general art of figuring out what's true and achieving your goals is part of the problem I'd like to address here.
- blasdel 16y agoYou, Eliezer Yudkowsky, annoy me with your presence here. Although your ideas aren't nearly as dire nor your followers as obnoxious, it feels like the 1960s Ayn Rand is all over Hacker News.