For monks working on such problems, it is less that they sequester themselves completely for thousands of days at a time and more that, during those thousands of days, none can make demands of them.)
This initially made it sound like maybe a group of monks would go in together. Or write each other letters.
If there were indeed 1,000 literal Duncan-copies available, to found a monastery or any other endeavor, they would immediately stratify themselves into 1, 10, 100, and 1,000-day groups at the very least, and probably there would be nonzero 10,000-day Duncans as well.
The key here is that each of these strata focuses on a set of largely non-overlapping issues, with largely non-overlapping assumptions.
To a 1-day or 10-day monk, questions like “maybe this is all a simulation, though”
It seems like it would be a simulation for the copies to exist, so, what’s the fantasy work the original idea is from?
To a 1-day or 10-day monk, questions like “maybe this is all a simulation, though” are almost entirely meaningless. They are fun to ponder at parties, but they aren’t relevant to the actual working-out-of-how-things-work. 1-day and 10-day monks take reality as it seems to exist as a given, and are working within it to optimize for what seems good and useful.
Why not take a day, see if there’s anything to it? Spending more time on something that might yield no results seems to make less sense.
“believes the science”
one would expect the overall design to perhaps change with time.
Do science is an entirely different thing than believe. If you disagree, then destroy it. What can stand is better for it.
It’s also the kind of culture that … effortlessly navigates disagreement about what’s important? You don’t get criticisms of “ivory-tower nonsense” or “tunnel-visioned mundanity.” People in such a culture understand, on a deep and intuitive level, that some problems are 1000-day problems, and other problems are 1-day problems, and both are important, and both are important in very different ways.
Oh. I think that separating theory and practice can produce nonsense. Also, you’re not going to ‘fix cancer’ after spending forever in a tower. Work is required. It makes more sense as a metaphor than a method. And a better method produces better results.
Overall ‘wouldn’t it be cool if LW was split into sections’ has come up before. I think it’s reasonable to say that, to a large extent, LW will be one website that works one way. A different way of thinking—this is pretty useful in that it’s easy to implement.
This initially made it sound like maybe a group of monks would go in together. Or write each other letters.
It seems like it would be a simulation for the copies to exist, so, what’s the fantasy work the original idea is from?
Why not take a day, see if there’s anything to it? Spending more time on something that might yield no results seems to make less sense.
one would expect the overall design to perhaps change with time.
Do science is an entirely different thing than believe. If you disagree, then destroy it. What can stand is better for it.
Oh. I think that separating theory and practice can produce nonsense. Also, you’re not going to ‘fix cancer’ after spending forever in a tower. Work is required. It makes more sense as a metaphor than a method. And a better method produces better results.
Overall ‘wouldn’t it be cool if LW was split into sections’ has come up before. I think it’s reasonable to say that, to a large extent, LW will be one website that works one way. A different way of thinking—this is pretty useful in that it’s easy to implement.