Reality actually exists and has properties you can determine through study and experimentation.
Sure, agreed.
Conclusions follow from their premises and it’s unreasonable to expect a plurality of truths.
Sure agreed.
Our universe is consistent
Yep
your understanding of the pieces should fit together.
Why? This seems like a classic mistake of naive rationalism. Models exist for reasons, and brains have limits. Depending on my use case, It may make sense for me to have a set of heuristics I know don’t fit together becasue they’re useful.
To use an example from elsewhere in the post, tensile strength is a leaky abstraction compared to something like the universal wave function, but the former is much more useful for building bridges. Meanwhile, a firefighter is going to be using heuristics like “close to breaking” and “how much weight it can bear” or even a vague feeling of “danger” that is only a leaky abstraction of things like tensile strength.
Now, ‘should’ my understanding of all those pieces fit together? Not really, depends on what I want to use those models for.
Like Cicero, he was doing philosophy at a time when philosophy meant living a better life. He found suggestions farmed from different systems of thought, but which practically helped one live a better life, and helped form a foundation for stoicism, a set of tools and heuristics for living better. “Should” he have created a set of principles that were completely logically consistent? Well, it may have helped him generate more. But, in terms of a set of practical tools and thoughts that helped one live better, he did quite well curating using an eclectic style.
Sure, agreed.
Sure agreed.
Yep
Why? This seems like a classic mistake of naive rationalism. Models exist for reasons, and brains have limits. Depending on my use case, It may make sense for me to have a set of heuristics I know don’t fit together becasue they’re useful.
To use an example from elsewhere in the post, tensile strength is a leaky abstraction compared to something like the universal wave function, but the former is much more useful for building bridges. Meanwhile, a firefighter is going to be using heuristics like “close to breaking” and “how much weight it can bear” or even a vague feeling of “danger” that is only a leaky abstraction of things like tensile strength.
Now, ‘should’ my understanding of all those pieces fit together? Not really, depends on what I want to use those models for.
Like Cicero, he was doing philosophy at a time when philosophy meant living a better life. He found suggestions farmed from different systems of thought, but which practically helped one live a better life, and helped form a foundation for stoicism, a set of tools and heuristics for living better. “Should” he have created a set of principles that were completely logically consistent? Well, it may have helped him generate more. But, in terms of a set of practical tools and thoughts that helped one live better, he did quite well curating using an eclectic style.