A Polemic

The beautiful fruit of LESSWRONG is corrupted. When you bite into it, a foul syrup, a horrid oil, pours black, suppurating, onto the tongue, and down the throat of the incautious.

The idea of being “less wrong” is ingenious, but only insofar as it is humble. What is humbleness? It is the virtue of confidence in one’s own incorrectness. It is the Socratic knowledge that he who knows the most knows only that he knows nothing, It is the assertion “I am wrong.”

This assertion has motivated a great deal of thoughtful contemplation on this site, but the fruits of this contemplation have rotted and yet are still being accepted. We take the words of our leader as truth when we read the sequences. We ought to be calling them wrong, stopgaps until we find better solutions.

“Fool!” I hear you say, “You misunderstand the rationalist cause! We are seeking to collaborate rationally, not through debate. Debate is evidence of an inferior form of thinking, it is Rationality that we ought to follow, it is belief grounded in evidence, that, once formed, can be trusted and built on, thanks to our honesty.”

But do not be deceived! Your honesty is limited by your own hubris. You believe that you have solved the issue, you believe that you are right, so long as you do the things. As long as you shut up and do the math. As long as you reject your intuition when you don’t have data. As long as… “Good.” I say. “You have found some things which make you less wrong, but you have not found anything which makes you right. This, is impossible.”

We have only ever had one truly revolutionary idea. Let’s not give it up.