‘The Useful Idea of Truth’ will be included in another future ebook—one that collects the contents for Highly Advanced Epistemology 101 for Beginners.
I don’t think the posts serve similar functions, even though they cover some similar topics. ‘The Simple Truth’ I think works best as a light-hearted summary of (and slight elaboration on) issues that have already been raised, crystallizing and tying together existing ideas. ‘The Useful Idea of Truth’ is more introductory, though it also feels like it’s building up to a discussion of cognition and metaphysics—of ‘what kinds of sentences can be meaningful’—rather than closely connecting with the content of Fake Beliefs, Mysterious Answers, and How To Actually Change Your Mind.
Sure! Plans aren’t super concrete yet. The Highly Advanced Epistemology 101 for Beginners ebook may come out sooner than the print versions of Rationality: From AI to Zombies, because it was quite popular and may turn out to be a more useful quick-and-dirty introduction to MIRI researchers’ philosophical outlook.
What occurs to me that The Simple Truth seems to be about using knowledge for getting things done vs. using knowledge to gain status—isn’t that the whole point of being a “Sophisticus Maximus”? Yet I don’t see this difference stressed a lot in the sequences: I think Eliezer is highly used to the Silicion Valley type of people where using knowledge for getting things done is taken for granted. Putting it differently, they live in a culture where you cannot gain status from knowledge if you don’t use it for getting things done. Also—Dijkstra relevant, but I will put that into the quotes thread.
I’m curious about why The Simple Truth was included in Rationality as opposed to The Useful Idea of Truth.
‘The Useful Idea of Truth’ will be included in another future ebook—one that collects the contents for Highly Advanced Epistemology 101 for Beginners.
I don’t think the posts serve similar functions, even though they cover some similar topics. ‘The Simple Truth’ I think works best as a light-hearted summary of (and slight elaboration on) issues that have already been raised, crystallizing and tying together existing ideas. ‘The Useful Idea of Truth’ is more introductory, though it also feels like it’s building up to a discussion of cognition and metaphysics—of ‘what kinds of sentences can be meaningful’—rather than closely connecting with the content of Fake Beliefs, Mysterious Answers, and How To Actually Change Your Mind.
more info, pls
Sure! Plans aren’t super concrete yet. The Highly Advanced Epistemology 101 for Beginners ebook may come out sooner than the print versions of Rationality: From AI to Zombies, because it was quite popular and may turn out to be a more useful quick-and-dirty introduction to MIRI researchers’ philosophical outlook.
What occurs to me that The Simple Truth seems to be about using knowledge for getting things done vs. using knowledge to gain status—isn’t that the whole point of being a “Sophisticus Maximus”? Yet I don’t see this difference stressed a lot in the sequences: I think Eliezer is highly used to the Silicion Valley type of people where using knowledge for getting things done is taken for granted. Putting it differently, they live in a culture where you cannot gain status from knowledge if you don’t use it for getting things done. Also—Dijkstra relevant, but I will put that into the quotes thread.