I’ve also read the book and agree that it is totally compatible with what EY is saying. I’ve also met many people who sound like founder 1.
My theory is that founder 1s don’t exist in the wild because of confusion about epistemology. Rather, I think most people don’t like and / or are bad at top-down reasoning from first principles. I think that if you are good at it, and try to do things in the real world, your epistemology will automatically gravitate towards being reasonable. And if you are bad at it / don’t do it, it doesn’t matter how many articles you read about how to theorize or experiment… they’ll all get compressed into various heuristics that will sometimes work and sometimes fail, and you won’t know when to use which.
So, I am skeptical about the existence of readers of this essay who don’t intuitively grasp the point already, but who can be pursuaded by rational argument to adopt it.
I think the challenge of teaching the skill of top down reasoning from first principles is an interesting one. I am not sure I have seen evidence that it is a teachable skill, to be honest, but would be interested in finding some.
I’ve also read the book and agree that it is totally compatible with what EY is saying. I’ve also met many people who sound like founder 1.
My theory is that founder 1s don’t exist in the wild because of confusion about epistemology. Rather, I think most people don’t like and / or are bad at top-down reasoning from first principles. I think that if you are good at it, and try to do things in the real world, your epistemology will automatically gravitate towards being reasonable. And if you are bad at it / don’t do it, it doesn’t matter how many articles you read about how to theorize or experiment… they’ll all get compressed into various heuristics that will sometimes work and sometimes fail, and you won’t know when to use which.
So, I am skeptical about the existence of readers of this essay who don’t intuitively grasp the point already, but who can be pursuaded by rational argument to adopt it.
I think the challenge of teaching the skill of top down reasoning from first principles is an interesting one. I am not sure I have seen evidence that it is a teachable skill, to be honest, but would be interested in finding some.