A failure mode for “betting your beliefs” is developing an urge to reframe your hypotheses as beliefs, which harms the distinction. It’s not always easy/possible/useful to check hypotheses for relevance to reality, at least until much later in their development, so it’s important to protect them from being burdened with this inconvenience. It’s only when a hypothesis is ready for testing (which is often immediately), or wants to be promoted to a belief (probably as an element of an ensemble), that making predictions becomes appropriate.
A failure mode for “betting your beliefs” is developing an urge to reframe your hypotheses as beliefs, which harms the distinction. It’s not always easy/possible/useful to check hypotheses for relevance to reality, at least until much later in their development, so it’s important to protect them from being burdened with this inconvenience. It’s only when a hypothesis is ready for testing (which is often immediately), or wants to be promoted to a belief (probably as an element of an ensemble), that making predictions becomes appropriate.
Oh yeah like +100% this.
Creating an environment where we can all cultivate our weird hunches and proto-beliefs while sharing information and experience would be amazing.
I think things like “Scout Mindset” and high baselines of psychological safety (and maybe some of the other phenomenological stuff) help as well.
If we have the option to create these environments instead, I think we should take that option.
If we don’t have that option (and the environment is a really bad epistemic baseline) -- I think the “bet your beliefs” does good.