Don’t believe what you can’t explain. Understand what you don’t believe. Explain what you understand.
(If you can’t see how to make an idea legible, you aren’t ready to endorse it. Not endorsing an idea is no reason to avoid studying it. Making an idea legible doesn’t require endorsing it first, though you do need to understand it.
The antipatterns are tacit belief where merely an understanding would do for the time being and for all practical purposes; flinching away from studying the things you disbelieve or disapprove of; and holding off on explaining something until you believe it’s true or useful. These are risk factors for mystical ideologies, trapped priors, and demands forparticular kinds of proof.
That is, the failure modes are believing what happens to be mistaken but can’t be debugged without legibility; believing what happens to be mistaken but doesn’t get to compete with worthy alternatives in your own mind; and believing what happens to be mistaken but doesn’t get exposed to relevant arguments, since they aren’t being discussed.)
Decisions and predictions need to rely on the illegible, so the “belief” of this quick take is more narrowly what serves as identity/ideology/values fuel rather than decision relevant things broadly, that falls under mere “understanding” (which isn’t necessarily explainable). There is a surprising amount of legible stuff, many worldviews’ worth of it, and identifying with claims or values is the dangerous aspect. So it’s useful to curate more stringently than the practical aspects of decision making. If you include clearly disbelieved or unendorsed things under “understanding”, this illustrates that these things are not what should automatically aspire to become part of your identity (in addition to the benefits of not going blind to unfamiliar framings).
I disagree with “don’t believe what you can’t explain”. I think being successful where others have failed often requires executing on intuitions that you can’t easily justify. I think this should be encouraged, as long as you’re adequately internalizing the risk of failure. (In the sense of economic internalize, not psychological internalize.)
Adding onto this thread, this is why it is so important to practice articulating your beliefs, particularly those that are distinct from the people you surround yourself with. It is not uncommon to discover that a belief you thought you understood well and could easily defend is inconsistent when you attempt to write it down or debate it.
important to practice articulating your beliefs, particularly those that are distinct from the people you surround yourself with
What the bubble (local consensus) believes isn’t necessarily legible, and also it’s harder to get properly suspicious of. So it’s especially worth checking if you can actually articulate how you know what everybody knows, before you let yourself know it.
Don’t believe what you can’t explain. Understand what you don’t believe. Explain what you understand.
(If you can’t see how to make an idea legible, you aren’t ready to endorse it. Not endorsing an idea is no reason to avoid studying it. Making an idea legible doesn’t require endorsing it first, though you do need to understand it.
The antipatterns are tacit belief where merely an understanding would do for the time being and for all practical purposes; flinching away from studying the things you disbelieve or disapprove of; and holding off on explaining something until you believe it’s true or useful. These are risk factors for mystical ideologies, trapped priors, and demands for particular kinds of proof.
That is, the failure modes are believing what happens to be mistaken but can’t be debugged without legibility; believing what happens to be mistaken but doesn’t get to compete with worthy alternatives in your own mind; and believing what happens to be mistaken but doesn’t get exposed to relevant arguments, since they aren’t being discussed.)
It’s nice ideal to strive for, but sometimes you need to make judgement call based on things you can’t explain.
Decisions and predictions need to rely on the illegible, so the “belief” of this quick take is more narrowly what serves as identity/ideology/values fuel rather than decision relevant things broadly, that falls under mere “understanding” (which isn’t necessarily explainable). There is a surprising amount of legible stuff, many worldviews’ worth of it, and identifying with claims or values is the dangerous aspect. So it’s useful to curate more stringently than the practical aspects of decision making. If you include clearly disbelieved or unendorsed things under “understanding”, this illustrates that these things are not what should automatically aspire to become part of your identity (in addition to the benefits of not going blind to unfamiliar framings).
I disagree with “don’t believe what you can’t explain”. I think being successful where others have failed often requires executing on intuitions that you can’t easily justify. I think this should be encouraged, as long as you’re adequately internalizing the risk of failure. (In the sense of economic internalize, not psychological internalize.)
Adding onto this thread, this is why it is so important to practice articulating your beliefs, particularly those that are distinct from the people you surround yourself with. It is not uncommon to discover that a belief you thought you understood well and could easily defend is inconsistent when you attempt to write it down or debate it.
What the bubble (local consensus) believes isn’t necessarily legible, and also it’s harder to get properly suspicious of. So it’s especially worth checking if you can actually articulate how you know what everybody knows, before you let yourself know it.