What is Rationality?
According to Yudkowsky, rationality is manifested in twelve virtues:
- Relinquishment: ^a212bd
- Destroy false beliefs. Everything that could be destroyed by the truth should be. Donβt attach yourself to beliefs.
- ^dc83e4
- Lightness: ^be0bb6
- Allow evidence to move you around at the whims of the new facts and information. Surrender to the truth.
- Do better look for third alternative
- Basic tenet of rationality counterargument.
- Evenness | Balance:
- Donβt have too much faith in evidence. Donβt believe at first glance a presented fact. Donβt select between facts; analyze all givens. Donβt seek the truth in the arguments or hypotheses. You are not for or against something. Your task is to see, listen, count, and come to terms first with yourself, then with the facts. In this account, you are a judge. FIND FROM KAHNEMAN ON BELIEFS
- Argument:
- Prevent your friends from helping you. And donβt deny helping yourself by saying, βI wonβt argue.β You effectively remove yourself from help. And donβt believe that you do a favor by accepting the arguments of your friends. Fairness on all sides isnβt balancing but compromise. Truth isnβt handed out in equal portions before a debate or discussion. It is somewhere there in between arguments. Seek it.
- Empiricism: ^260166
- Roots of knowledge are observation, and fruit is prediction. Belief is less important than experience. Stick to measurable facts and data. Do not let arguments wander like a leaf on the wind, and allow them to become something else. Do not be blinded by words; subtract the words and keep the figures. What fails you is not the failure to apply some high-level, intricate, complicated technique. Itβs overlooking the basics, not keeping your eye on the ball - Jerry Cleaver ΠΠ°Π·ΠΎΠ²ΡΠ΅ Π·Π½Π°Π½ΠΈΡ
- Simplicity:
- Strive to simplify your beliefs, design, planning, and justification. The more details, the bigger the chance that a belief is false. A chain always has more than one link; a complex issue also has more than one step on the path to the goal. But beware of making too many steps or links. Because in order to reach the goal, you need every step to be correct and every chain link strong. If they are not, you may arrive somewhere you havenβt planned on arriving at.
- Humility: ^09f321
- Await your own wrongness, accept it humbly, gather insights, and start a new iteration. It manifests in the way we prepare ourselves for the most devastating effects or errors of beliefs. It is impossible to achieve perfection; no one is capable of this kind of feat. ^9923aa
- Perfectionism: ^4416a7
- The impossibility of perfection couldnβt be an excuse for not trying to reach it. The more you do, the more you notice. As your mind becomes silent, you start hearing more noise. Ontological rattle ΠΎΠ½ΡΠΎΠ»ΠΎΠ³ΠΈΡΠ΅ΡΠΊΠΈΠΉ Π΄ΡΠ΅Π±Π΅Π·Π³. Cultivate zero tolerance to errors. Correcting them makes an expert. And if no mistakes are left, it is no excuse for not looking. Perfection is unreachable, but nonetheless, you must try. Do not be content with a good enough answer; seek a perfect one.
- Precision:
- Do not operate in average amounts. Be as precise as you can. Work with figures, numbers, and data as a surgeon works with a scalpel. What is exactly the right measure? Study the theory of probability. It is one of the basic skills of being right.
- Scholarship: ^550322
- Be a person of many sciences. Nothing good has come from a single place. Usually, true advancements are an achievement of conjunction from several fields, a unique alloy of opinions from different experts. Zettelkasten is basically a stand-alone scholar tool of research, as Alexey has written in one of his notes.. It allows one to put together atomic ideas from several fields.
- Void:
- Donβt fear the idea of the void. It means to be ready to make mistakes or what?
Nassim Talebβs Take on Rationality
The only definition of rationality that is empirically and mathematically correct is that: what helps you survive is rational.
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