One of the benefits I’ve drawn from Less Wrong so far—via posts like The Simple Truth—is more solid foundations for my beliefs. Since I study physics, I wasn’t particularly worried about philosophical arguments against the scientific method anymore—science seemed to work, after all—but of those doubts that remained, many more still got (apparently) dispelled or dissolved.
That said, I never had doubts that fundamental. Could anybody really live that way? I don’t have a coherent mental model for such a situation. Take Mad-Eye Moody in HPMoR with his constant paranoia, as in “Unless, of course, that’s what they want you to think.”—could such a character really function in the real world? Could they eat food without starving themselves to death out of paranoia? If you are paranoid about both X → Y and X → ~Y, how do you decide whether to do Y or ~Y? (It seems more plausible to me that Moody doesn’t actually exhibit doubts that fundamental, than that he or anyone else could function properly despite those doubts.)
One of the benefits I’ve drawn from Less Wrong so far—via posts like The Simple Truth—is more solid foundations for my beliefs. Since I study physics, I wasn’t particularly worried about philosophical arguments against the scientific method anymore—science seemed to work, after all—but of those doubts that remained, many more still got (apparently) dispelled or dissolved.
That said, I never had doubts that fundamental. Could anybody really live that way? I don’t have a coherent mental model for such a situation. Take Mad-Eye Moody in HPMoR with his constant paranoia, as in “Unless, of course, that’s what they want you to think.”—could such a character really function in the real world? Could they eat food without starving themselves to death out of paranoia? If you are paranoid about both X → Y and X → ~Y, how do you decide whether to do Y or ~Y? (It seems more plausible to me that Moody doesn’t actually exhibit doubts that fundamental, than that he or anyone else could function properly despite those doubts.)