I get the impression, reading this and the way you and commenters classify people, that the magnitude of days is to some extent just equivalent to an evaluation of somebody’s intellectual ability, and the internal complexity of their thoughts.
So if I said your article “Ruling Out Everything Else” is the 10-day version of a 10000-day idea, you might agree, or you might disagree, but I must observe that if you agree, it will be taken as a kind of intellectual humility, yes? And as we examine the notion of humility in this context, I think it should be noticed the implication of superiority; a 10000 day idea is a superior idea to a 10 day idea. (Otherwise, what would there to be humble about?) And if you felt like it was a more profound article than that, you’d find it somewhat offensive, I think.
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Except that it is equally plausible that none of that is actually true, and that you’re pointing at something else, and this interpretation is just one that wasn’t ruled out. If another equally plausible interpretation is correct: A 10-day monk is wrong more often than a 1-day monk, yes? A 100-day monk is wrong more often than a 10-day monk? The number of days matter; when other commenters point out that you need to bounce an idea off reality to avoid being wrong, are they criticizing your point, or glimpsing a piece of it? Is it accurate to say that a significant piece of the idea represented here is that the number of days is in some sense equivalent to a willingness to be wrong about more?
equivalent to an evaluation of somebody’s intellectual ability
No
equivalent to … the internal complexity of their thoughts
Closer
I think there’s going to be a higher minimum bar for higher magnitudes; I think that there are fewer people who can cut it wrestling with e.g. fundamental philosophical questions about the nature of existence (a 100,000+ day question) than there are who can cut it wrestling with e.g. questions of social coordination (a 10-100 day question in many cases).
But I think that there are a very large number of people who could, in principle, qualify to be higher-order monks, who instead apply prodigious intelligence to smaller questions one after the other all the time.
So, like, higher orders will have a higher density of smarter people, but there are ~equally upper-echelon smart people at all levels.
The 10-day version of a 10,000-day idea is an unusually valuable thing; as the old adage goes, “if I had had more time, I would have composed a shorter letter.” Distillations are difficult, especially distillations that preserve all of the crucial elements, rather than sacrificing them.
So to the extent that I might sometimes write 10-day distillations of 10,000-day ideas, this is a pretty > high-status claim, actually. It’s preserving the virtues of both orders.
A 10-day monk is wrong more often than a 1-day monk, yes? A 100-day monk is wrong more often than a 10-day monk?
It’s more that they are wrong about different things, in systematically different ways. A 10-day monk is right, about 10-day concerns viewed through 10-day ontologies, about as often as a 1-day monk or a 100-day monk, in their respective domains.
I get the impression, reading this and the way you and commenters classify people, that the magnitude of days is to some extent just equivalent to an evaluation of somebody’s intellectual ability, and the internal complexity of their thoughts.
So if I said your article “Ruling Out Everything Else” is the 10-day version of a 10000-day idea, you might agree, or you might disagree, but I must observe that if you agree, it will be taken as a kind of intellectual humility, yes? And as we examine the notion of humility in this context, I think it should be noticed the implication of superiority; a 10000 day idea is a superior idea to a 10 day idea. (Otherwise, what would there to be humble about?) And if you felt like it was a more profound article than that, you’d find it somewhat offensive, I think.
...
Except that it is equally plausible that none of that is actually true, and that you’re pointing at something else, and this interpretation is just one that wasn’t ruled out. If another equally plausible interpretation is correct: A 10-day monk is wrong more often than a 1-day monk, yes? A 100-day monk is wrong more often than a 10-day monk? The number of days matter; when other commenters point out that you need to bounce an idea off reality to avoid being wrong, are they criticizing your point, or glimpsing a piece of it? Is it accurate to say that a significant piece of the idea represented here is that the number of days is in some sense equivalent to a willingness to be wrong about more?
No
Closer
I think there’s going to be a higher minimum bar for higher magnitudes; I think that there are fewer people who can cut it wrestling with e.g. fundamental philosophical questions about the nature of existence (a 100,000+ day question) than there are who can cut it wrestling with e.g. questions of social coordination (a 10-100 day question in many cases).
But I think that there are a very large number of people who could, in principle, qualify to be higher-order monks, who instead apply prodigious intelligence to smaller questions one after the other all the time.
So, like, higher orders will have a higher density of smarter people, but there are ~equally upper-echelon smart people at all levels.
The 10-day version of a 10,000-day idea is an unusually valuable thing; as the old adage goes, “if I had had more time, I would have composed a shorter letter.” Distillations are difficult, especially distillations that preserve all of the crucial elements, rather than sacrificing them.
So to the extent that I might sometimes write 10-day distillations of 10,000-day ideas, this is a pretty > high-status claim, actually. It’s preserving the virtues of both orders.
It’s more that they are wrong about different things, in systematically different ways. A 10-day monk is right, about 10-day concerns viewed through 10-day ontologies, about as often as a 1-day monk or a 100-day monk, in their respective domains.