Principle 0: Error. We are all wrong a lot. Your (and my) perceived level of certainty on all positions is too high...and that's after we've corrected for this. Pretenses at knowledge about what will happen in the future make levels of certainty about other topics seem positively well-founded.
Principle 1: Feedback. The only path to success is to (a) try something (b) expect it to fail/suck (c) measure the results of the failure (d) try something different (e) repeat from b. This applies to building things, doing new things, and doing old things that other people did, but you didn't.
Principle 2: Growth. Since ALL personal values can be purchased for $, and $ can be purchased for hours...wealth is the only social metric. Because of this, economic growth is the god-metric. Economic growth is nearly equivalent to innovation + trade. It is (now) nearly unrelated to manufacturing. The baseline prediction on economic growth should be Singulitarian.
Principle 3: Game Theory. Game theory explains damn near everything. Most common exposure to game theory via evolution (how life came to be, and how it changed) and economics (the study of how people with different preferences/skills/and goals can trade to both be happier). In trade-based systems, he who has the scarcity wins. Scarcity is non-existent in capital, very rare in actual natural resources, and quickly ameliorates (usually) in skills. The only scarcities that persist in a freedom-based economy are (a) we haven't yet solved the tech problem, and (b) ones created by the government. Therefore, the primary way to make money in the world is to get governments to create artificial scarcities: like IP, or contract enforcement scarcity. Exit is the only path that avoids scarcity.
Principle 4: Monkeybrains. Your brain doesn't work how you think it does. Introspection tells you what you're evolved to believe, not how your mind actually works. People are basically monkeys, a collection of semi-independent brain-modules all chasing their independent (modular) preferences with a light layer of consciousness sitting on top, pretending to make decisions, rather than rationalizing the bubbled-up decisions. The top two modules in terms of power tend to be sex and status. The model of the future, past, and present selves as distinct entities with distinct preferences is hugely powerful.
Principle 5: Ethics. It's an evolved capacity of people. It's complicated. It's important. All ethical reasoning about the self is massively self-biased. I believe (on insufficient evidence) that it's an evolved capacity designed to keep the stupid short-term monkeybrain in check by giving good game-theory solutions (in the ancestral environment) which result in long term benefit. If pressed, I'm roughly a virtue ethics + golden rule + ethical egoism foundations guy, with heavy consequentialism at other levels, and a deep and abiding hatred of deontology.
Principle 6: Epistemology. Radical empiricism. 2+2 is inferred from observation. A = A is inferred from observation. Induction is the core of ALL knowledge.
Principle 7: Education. In learning, Motivation is 90% of everything. He who wants to win almost universally has a motivation to learn more than he who wants to learn. Practice is 90% of everything else. Talent multiplies practice, and improves motivation. Practice consists of practicing the right thing, practicing the thing right, practicing enough, and feedback. Feedback is almost universally the worst handled. Teachers get only levers in the motivation space, in showing the student what to practice, and in feedback...and in the 1% not already accounted for.
Principle 8: Methodological individualism. "We" is a bogus concept. There is me, and there is you, and our interests and preferences are different. Saying: "we want this" is wrong. Saying: "this is good for us" is wrong. When costs, especially opportunity cost are included, it's super-wrong. Normally, it's done to trick you into barbarous behaviour that you would never consider if you didn't have some convenient way of labeling the other as "not us". School Rallies, Patriotism, and Racism are all basically the same game...attempting to trick folks into dividing themselves into categories, and self-defining themselves into manipulable groups.
Principle 9: Ancient Insights. Great Eastern Insight™: Self-definition may be useful, and indeed necessary as a youth. As an adult, most pain is psychological, and it comes from one's own psychological attachment to one's own concept of self. On ethics: the Great Aristotelian Insight™: One's self is one's character; one's character is one's habits. Ancient Ethical Insight™: If you wouldn't like it done to you, don't do it to others (roughly, and considering varying preferences).
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Posts
15 comments:
Would base survival trump your principles? If you are drowning, would you put your principles under your feet?
I suggest there is a principle 00, or -1: I assume my practical term survival is assured. Otherwise, all bets are off, and I might have to sacrifice economic growth, quit learning for awhile, or join the tribal war.
RSF,
1. I don't think that any of my principles are in the way of survival. Growth is the only social metric, not the only metric. Feedback is the only path to success, regardless what I do. Game theory is the long-term strategy, which assumes short term survival.
2. Personal/family survival is distinct from long term survival of some fictional group someone wants to ascribe to me.
3. What happens if lifeboat in a lifeboat with some other folks, and insufficient food/water/air for all of us. I'm not a fan of the "shoot the other guy first" model. Other than that, it's a hard problem, and I can't tell you now how I am/will be because I've never been there.
Isn't empiricism the opposite of trusting induction? After all, the sun may have always risen, but may not rise tomorrow...
See : Taleb, Skeptical Empiricism.
Contemplationist,
Radical Empiricism is the idea that EVERYTHING we believe comes from what we see, feel, etc. (and perhaps some evolved structures in our mind). I have asserted for a little while now that any radical empiricism ALSO leads pretty quickly to the abolition of Certainty as an worthwhile idea. That suggests of course that a naive, certaintist, induction can be a big problem. However, it doesn't suggest that bayesian induction is unwise.
I have massive disagreement with Taleb on his solutions, but substantial agreement on his problem-statements.
I'll try this again.
I think I just finally understood what you're referring to with Principle 0.
I believe agnosticism is reasonable. You're saying I shouldn't be (assuming only that I haven't made a mistake deriving the logic) 100% certain agnosticism is correct.
Is that right?
Alrenous,
Basically yes.
If all people took all propositions they believed to be true-ish, and phrased them as:
p(Proposition x) = Y%.
If, for all people, and all y > 20, we set y=y-20...I think we'd me in a much better position to think.
So does that mean you believe all evidence is ambiguous?
So...I got the email note, but apparently your own comment hasn't shown up.
What do you mean by 'not fitting?'
0. At any point in time, a careful thinker holds a probabililty distribution for reality, not a fixed point.
1. I believe that all that evidence CAN DO is move the probability distribution.
2. It is well known that humans have trouble with evidence that isn't on their side...they naturally discount the evidence, or seek reasons to discount the evidence rather than (properly) revising their probability distribution.
3. On top of all that, I've reverted to something close to a homunculus theory of perception, which I'll outline soon. All theory is model of reality... reality as such is unreachable.
The homonculus theory is self-defeating. If reality per se isn't reachable, then you were mistaken about what reality is, instead the perception IS reality.
What do you do about the fact that which way the evidence should move is itself a probability distribution?
Alrenous,
1. I held that homunculus theory was self-defeating for near 20 years.
2. I clearly have to write about it.
3. No it's not. There's common usage of the word reality: What's out there. And there's philosophical usage: what we have access to. And homunculus theory pushes the two meanings apart, while Reid/Kelley Direct Access theory claims that they line up.
I get antsy when my questions aren't answered. I'm trying not to make assumptions here, and I can't not do that without questions.
Alrenous,
"What do you do about the fact that which way the evidence should move is itself a probability distribution?"
You become even more carefully uncertain?
Sounds flip, but it is indeed my answer.
Roughly...every step you take away from perception loses certainty. Very Roughly.
X is green -- pretty certain.
X is green means I should adjust the probability of Proposition Y downward is less certain.
Proposition Y is even less certain.
As a general rule.
Should work out mathematically. You factor in the uncertainty, and then uncertain uncertainty, and then the uncertain uncertain uncertainty...these terms are tending to zero, which means it probably won't work out to infinite improbability. If you had p(x) = epsilon, you'd have issues.
Post a Comment