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The prerequisite for "mental liquidity" is articulated by Aristotle: "It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it.

The prerequisite for "mental liquidity" is articulated by Aristotle: "It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it." If you entertain the thought, this gives you the chance to try out a new belief network. If you find your belief network would be strengthened by its inclusion, then you adopt it. Otherwise, you reject it. In this way, ones interconnected set of beliefs grows monotonically stronger. And this is right and good. EDIT: got downvoted! I would love love love to know why! Not offended, just curious.

kubanczyk 3y ago
You cannot say belief. Say hypothesis while leaving rest of your argument intact. If you value that kind of score in your life.
- javajosh 3y ago
  What is a belief it not the highest-ranked hypothesis of all possible options? Obviously beliefs are more complex than that, since we have a default set installed in us as children, and only a subset of humans are taught the rational methods of improving those beliefs over time. I consider myself a member of that subset. (Quoting Aristotle always puts me in the mood to rank things.)
  - theredfury 3y ago
    I do believe a hypothesis to be different than a belief. A belief performs a different function than a hypothesis. A hypothesis can be defined as a “proposition made as a basis for reasoning, without any assumption of its truth” (Oxford Languages definition). Typically a function you perform to unearth a truth. A belief on the other hand holds some position on the spectrum of truth. To believe is to make an assertion about truth. A hypothesis is somewhat of a precursor to that. But hey, regardless of our stance on the definitions of these words, I heavily jive with the idea that we should improve our beliefs over time and I have mad respect for Aristotle.
    - javajosh 3y ago
      I don't think we disagree. A hypothesis is upgraded to "belief" and therefore to the "spectrum of truth" only because it's the best you know of, not because it's the only one. It's a matter of degree, not kind. And a belief's position as the best one is always precarious; it can be unseated at any time by a better hypothesis. Axioms are different, but over time I've found that even those weaken and become "merely" strong beliefs (or, more usually, only True within the context you're working in, e.g. mathematics). Even "I think therefore I am" is not axiomatic, I have come to believe. In fact I doubt it's important to identify some sort of root cause, which is rationalist heresy. Oh well.
rgrieselhuber 3y ago
[flagged]
- javajosh 3y ago
  That seems a bit trite. I was thinking it was a misclick, but hopefully whoever did it will chime in, and they will NOT themselves get down-voted, whatever their reason.
- dang 3y ago
  Your experiment has a confounding variable—it broke the penultimate guideline. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
Etrnl_President 3y ago
“One can not learn what one thinks one already knows” —Epictetus
saiya-jin 3y ago
> And this is right and good. I disagree (without down-voting). This is basically 1-man echo chamber, you take what you like (it doesn't matter how many eloquent words you use to describe this, result is same), reject what would challenge your beliefs and would make them weaker. That's the opposite of critical thinking so needed in real world, and prime source why the current world, particularly west, is so torn to pieces about shit like russia, trump, guns, migrants and so on. Stuff in life is complex, always, almost at fractal level. You keep learning, if you actually want, about new viewpoints that will challenge your current ones, every effin' day. Maybe at the end conclusion is don't trust anybody, people are generally a-holes etc. That's still fine as long as it represents truth.
- javajosh 3y ago
  It seems like you misread what I was saying. I am not advocating a "1-man echo chamber" - that would be a person who never changes their beliefs. When I say "weaker" and "stronger" I am referring to the whole of the belief network, not individual beliefs. This means, generally, that every change reduces inconsistency and increases cohesion of the entire network. The ignorant people in the world pay no attention to consistency, only to feeling, which makes their network intrinsically weak, and they become emotional and ultimately resort to violence rather than resolve to improve their beliefs. (The internet makes this kind of interaction more common, even encouraged, since it drives "engagement" - one of the great tragedies of our time.) Stuff in life is complex, people are assholes, but even assholes have good ideas sometimes. I recommend listening to everyone who speaks for themselves in good faith. Anyone can cook!
  - kbenson 3y ago
    I think you're making assumptions about people and their capability to judge consistency over large chunks of information, when that information is at least internally consistent and common in their experience. If I believe the Clinton's are pedophiles and murderers and are part of a ring of like minded people, and I'm inundated with information from people and organizations which support this (or at least carefully don't refute it), then when I'm presented with information about a pizza parlor that is supposedly holding children in the basement, is that consistent with my beliefs? I think what you're presenting is just what everyone already does. Instead of assessing thi gs based on how well they fit our beliefs, we should assess them based on a consistent objective standard, and then alter our beliefs if it meets that standard but conflicts with our beliefs. This may in fact be what you belief, because you belive in facts and the importance of the truth. The problem is that you get wildly different results when someone that values different things applies the same system.
byteware 3y ago
I am curious how one would measure if their "belief network would be strengthened"
ABCLAW 3y ago
There's a common issue in philosophy and epistemology over how we come to know things. We wanted to know what 'knowledge' was, and settled upon the concept of a 'justified true belief' for a fairly long period of time. However, one day, a philosopher found a situation in which a justified true belief was incorrect. This is the Gettier problem. What you describe is something akin to a network of baysian conditionals attached to certain proposition, which upon confrontation with new information update their relative weights. We know with certainty that this process has significant benefits in general (it's certainly better than most systems not internalizing new information), but can and does create false reasoning. In short, it's good but not sufficient to create knowledge. The problem of individuals creating ideological filter bubbles around themselves is very related to the idea that their evidentiary priors become more and more rigid as they note confirmatory evidence over time that justifies their views over time. The issue isn't that they stop intaking new information, but that their priors and the new information are interpreted based upon that belief network. Thankfully, as a super-organism, we have a great solution for that mental ossification. We die. New people who have less evidentiary accumulation can address the issue with new priors and often that's all that's needed for huge breakthroughs.
- neerajsi 3y ago
  Thanks for your point about death. Death forces our species wide belief set to go through the constrained channel of education and communication, the same way that our bodily attributes go through the constrained channel of our germ-line genes. This process lossily compresses the signals, which allows for drift or attenuation when the next generation reconstructs the beliefs and associated behaviors. Transmission also applies stress that acts as a filter to weed out beliefs that are no longer adaptive.
  - JakkTrent 3y ago
    Pfft, death isn't necessary to evolution in the sense your implying. Transmission of ideas and wealth - even societal restructuring doesn't require all the old people to first die. Adapt or die. We cease to adapt and so we die. We're we as a species to overcome death individually, we would still collectively be bound by the same mantra. Not that our evolution would stop - rather I think the opposite. Assuming cellular commission is similar to a 30 year old and as healthy/mentally capable as a 30 something; so truly overcoming those obstacles - a 300 year old version of me would be better than the me now. Taxi drivers brain composition changed by driving around London - I'll bet an extra 200 years will do something. As long as our populace remain "Mentally Liquid" we will be fine - something 300 years of seeing and living constant changes should all but guarantee. Can't be yelling at the kids on the lawn for 200 years right? I think elongation human life will be necessary in the not so distant future and I expect it to happen.
MrPatan 3y ago
The mind that doesn't want to risk entertaining "wrong" truths can't stand being reminded of the fact.
varelse 3y ago
[dead]

kubanczyk 3y ago

You cannot say belief. Say hypothesis while leaving rest of your argument intact. If you value that kind of score in your life.

javajosh 3y ago
What is a belief it not the highest-ranked hypothesis of all possible options? Obviously beliefs are more complex than that, since we have a default set installed in us as children, and only a subset of humans are taught the rational methods of improving those beliefs over time. I consider myself a member of that subset. (Quoting Aristotle always puts me in the mood to rank things.)
- theredfury 3y ago
  I do believe a hypothesis to be different than a belief. A belief performs a different function than a hypothesis. A hypothesis can be defined as a “proposition made as a basis for reasoning, without any assumption of its truth” (Oxford Languages definition). Typically a function you perform to unearth a truth. A belief on the other hand holds some position on the spectrum of truth. To believe is to make an assertion about truth. A hypothesis is somewhat of a precursor to that. But hey, regardless of our stance on the definitions of these words, I heavily jive with the idea that we should improve our beliefs over time and I have mad respect for Aristotle.
  - javajosh 3y ago
    I don't think we disagree. A hypothesis is upgraded to "belief" and therefore to the "spectrum of truth" only because it's the best you know of, not because it's the only one. It's a matter of degree, not kind. And a belief's position as the best one is always precarious; it can be unseated at any time by a better hypothesis. Axioms are different, but over time I've found that even those weaken and become "merely" strong beliefs (or, more usually, only True within the context you're working in, e.g. mathematics). Even "I think therefore I am" is not axiomatic, I have come to believe. In fact I doubt it's important to identify some sort of root cause, which is rationalist heresy. Oh well.

rgrieselhuber 3y ago

[flagged]

javajosh 3y ago
That seems a bit trite. I was thinking it was a misclick, but hopefully whoever did it will chime in, and they will NOT themselves get down-voted, whatever their reason.
dang 3y ago
Your experiment has a confounding variable—it broke the penultimate guideline. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Etrnl_President 3y ago

“One can not learn what one thinks one already knows” —Epictetus

saiya-jin 3y ago

> And this is right and good. I disagree (without down-voting). This is basically 1-man echo chamber, you take what you like (it doesn't matter how many eloquent words you use to describe this, result is same), reject what would challenge your beliefs and would make them weaker. That's the opposite of critical thinking so needed in real world, and prime source why the current world, particularly west, is so torn to pieces about shit like russia, trump, guns, migrants and so on. Stuff in life is complex, always, almost at fractal level. You keep learning, if you actually want, about new viewpoints that will challenge your current ones, every effin' day. Maybe at the end conclusion is don't trust anybody, people are generally a-holes etc. That's still fine as long as it represents truth.

javajosh 3y ago
It seems like you misread what I was saying. I am not advocating a "1-man echo chamber" - that would be a person who never changes their beliefs. When I say "weaker" and "stronger" I am referring to the whole of the belief network, not individual beliefs. This means, generally, that every change reduces inconsistency and increases cohesion of the entire network. The ignorant people in the world pay no attention to consistency, only to feeling, which makes their network intrinsically weak, and they become emotional and ultimately resort to violence rather than resolve to improve their beliefs. (The internet makes this kind of interaction more common, even encouraged, since it drives "engagement" - one of the great tragedies of our time.) Stuff in life is complex, people are assholes, but even assholes have good ideas sometimes. I recommend listening to everyone who speaks for themselves in good faith. Anyone can cook!
- kbenson 3y ago
  I think you're making assumptions about people and their capability to judge consistency over large chunks of information, when that information is at least internally consistent and common in their experience. If I believe the Clinton's are pedophiles and murderers and are part of a ring of like minded people, and I'm inundated with information from people and organizations which support this (or at least carefully don't refute it), then when I'm presented with information about a pizza parlor that is supposedly holding children in the basement, is that consistent with my beliefs? I think what you're presenting is just what everyone already does. Instead of assessing thi gs based on how well they fit our beliefs, we should assess them based on a consistent objective standard, and then alter our beliefs if it meets that standard but conflicts with our beliefs. This may in fact be what you belief, because you belive in facts and the importance of the truth. The problem is that you get wildly different results when someone that values different things applies the same system.

byteware 3y ago

I am curious how one would measure if their "belief network would be strengthened"

ABCLAW 3y ago

There's a common issue in philosophy and epistemology over how we come to know things. We wanted to know what 'knowledge' was, and settled upon the concept of a 'justified true belief' for a fairly long period of time. However, one day, a philosopher found a situation in which a justified true belief was incorrect. This is the Gettier problem. What you describe is something akin to a network of baysian conditionals attached to certain proposition, which upon confrontation with new information update their relative weights. We know with certainty that this process has significant benefits in general (it's certainly better than most systems not internalizing new information), but can and does create false reasoning. In short, it's good but not sufficient to create knowledge. The problem of individuals creating ideological filter bubbles around themselves is very related to the idea that their evidentiary priors become more and more rigid as they note confirmatory evidence over time that justifies their views over time. The issue isn't that they stop intaking new information, but that their priors and the new information are interpreted based upon that belief network. Thankfully, as a super-organism, we have a great solution for that mental ossification. We die. New people who have less evidentiary accumulation can address the issue with new priors and often that's all that's needed for huge breakthroughs.

neerajsi 3y ago
Thanks for your point about death. Death forces our species wide belief set to go through the constrained channel of education and communication, the same way that our bodily attributes go through the constrained channel of our germ-line genes. This process lossily compresses the signals, which allows for drift or attenuation when the next generation reconstructs the beliefs and associated behaviors. Transmission also applies stress that acts as a filter to weed out beliefs that are no longer adaptive.
- JakkTrent 3y ago
  Pfft, death isn't necessary to evolution in the sense your implying. Transmission of ideas and wealth - even societal restructuring doesn't require all the old people to first die. Adapt or die. We cease to adapt and so we die. We're we as a species to overcome death individually, we would still collectively be bound by the same mantra. Not that our evolution would stop - rather I think the opposite. Assuming cellular commission is similar to a 30 year old and as healthy/mentally capable as a 30 something; so truly overcoming those obstacles - a 300 year old version of me would be better than the me now. Taxi drivers brain composition changed by driving around London - I'll bet an extra 200 years will do something. As long as our populace remain "Mentally Liquid" we will be fine - something 300 years of seeing and living constant changes should all but guarantee. Can't be yelling at the kids on the lawn for 200 years right? I think elongation human life will be necessary in the not so distant future and I expect it to happen.

MrPatan 3y ago

The mind that doesn't want to risk entertaining "wrong" truths can't stand being reminded of the fact.

varelse 3y ago

[dead]