The foundations of knowledge.

post by archeon · 2023-06-18T00:05:43.707Z · LW · GW · 4 comments

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We all have knowledge, ideas and beliefs that rest on a solid foundation and those that sit on shifting sand. The trouble is they all look the same to us, if we knew which was sound and which not we would change things. Before we reach a age of reason, well meaning adults hot wire us full of their biases and that is especially hard to shift.

Debating an issue with our peers is a good way to sort out the wheat from the chaff. If we can defend a position, at least to our own satisfaction, we have more confidence in the foundation underpinning it. But when someone grabs us by the scruff of the neck and shakes until we realize the position we hold is indefensible, then we were wrong. And now we know it.  Bruised ego aside, we now have a clearer view of the world, new avenues of knowledge open up. Win, lose or draw, we always end a debate with more knowledge than we started with.

For this process to work we need protagonists, people of opposing views. Those who agree with us may give confidence in our foundations but do not challenge them. A good debate has us strain every neuron, raid every memory bank and finding reserves we never knew we had. Passion, sound and fury, within reason, give the brain a good workout and keep the audience engaged.

I have bad karma for a post stating that AI was going to prove that humanity and science were incompatible by ending us. Bad karma is a good sign, I have found my protagonists, lots of them it would seem. They may help me prune back the old dead growth of false data to a few healthy branches, sun and air can circulate and  new growth and fruits will appear.

On lesswrong bad karma is punished by restricting posts to one a week which is more than I will ever need. More troubling, comments are restricted to one a day which is a good way to kill debate stone dead, not that there has been any. Edit, bad karma of more than 15 restricts comments to 1 every 3 days. Access to the drafting facility is restricted which is self defeating, the more time spent in draft the better the quality is likely to be, but it is a minor inconvenience.

Why would a blog dedicated to reason and rationality restrict their protagonists ability to tell them they are wrong? It is irrational to restrict information about how our opponents view our position, how will we know they are wrong if we do not listen to their objections?

Of course it is normal to congeal in clots of like minded people and exclude those who do not share their interests. Reading 99 or 999 ill thought out theories to find a gem or two is tedious, hard work, but this is not American idol. Popularity is a poor way to judge rationality.

By restricting unpopular posts and promoting popular ones there is surely a danger of forming a choir, different voices, different tones, all singing much the same tune.

I went back again to read Eliezer Judkowski's Lonely Dissent, of course my ego tells me I am a lonely dissenter after 40 years of saying humanity and science are incompatible. While common sense informs I am more likely one of the 999 howling at the moon. This is not about me, I am great full that lesswrong gives me any voice at all.

If there is a genuine lonely dissenter coming to lesswrong for the first time then by definition their views will be unpopular, their ability to break through the defenses will determine their ability to be heard by the herd. Is this rational? Popularity is a poor way to judge rationality and this is not American idol.

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