plutonic_form's Shortform 2022-01-24T03:32:49.743Z

Comment by plutonic_form on What are some beautiful, rationalist artworks? · 2022-08-31T01:36:55.875Z · LW · GW

This might be cool but I don't see how it's beautiful.

Comment by plutonic_form on plutonic_form's Shortform · 2022-01-23T23:01:04.805Z · LW · GW

A problem, in three parts:

• I am aware that the reason I believe a good number of the things I believe is that I'm surrounded by very smart people who are full of good arguments for those things, rather than because I have done a lot of my own independent research. If I had different very smart friends who had a different set of good arguments, my beliefs would almost certainly look very different-- not because I consciously adopt the strategy "believe what my friends believe," but because my friends are smart and good at expressing themselves, and if they all believe something I have heard a lot of very good and persuasive arguments for it.
• This is really not very truth-seeking! I would like to believe things for better reasons than "all of my friends believe it and they're very smart"!
• However, all of the ways that I have to counteract this effect boil down to "discount arguments for being convincing and coming from people you trust," which is even less truth-seeking.

I have no idea what to do about this.