I have an intuition that the mud-rock spectrum is a very important concept to pay attention to, and the rationality community leaned too hard on muddiness and muddy rationalist techniques, and that this is underemphasized among rationalists. (for example, metacognitivestrategies, a CFAR situation, the fact that you have to quickly replace some of your assumptions as you become a rationalist, the quick development of rationality and foundational beliefs on LessWrong in general, …) I personally feel like some of the framing of the concept in the mud-rock post isn’t quite right (muddiness/rockiness probably isn’t best described as a state of mind), but the conceptual understanding behind it basically is. In a very rough summary, things are “muddier” when they change deeper/more foundational beliefs/assumptions, and things are “rockier” when they harden them instead. I think that paranoia is a good step in the right direction here, and that people should develop more rationality techniques in the general rocky direction. (something something Chesterton’s fence?)
I have an intuition that the mud-rock spectrum is a very important concept to pay attention to, and the rationality community leaned too hard on muddiness and muddy rationalist techniques, and that this is underemphasized among rationalists. (for example, metacognitive strategies, a CFAR situation, the fact that you have to quickly replace some of your assumptions as you become a rationalist, the quick development of rationality and foundational beliefs on LessWrong in general, …) I personally feel like some of the framing of the concept in the mud-rock post isn’t quite right (muddiness/rockiness probably isn’t best described as a state of mind), but the conceptual understanding behind it basically is. In a very rough summary, things are “muddier” when they change deeper/more foundational beliefs/assumptions, and things are “rockier” when they harden them instead. I think that paranoia is a good step in the right direction here, and that people should develop more rationality techniques in the general rocky direction. (something something Chesterton’s fence?)