Comment by Skylar on The Sheer Folly of Callow Youth · 2008-09-19T17:39:59.000Z · LW · GW

Eliezer, you have previously said that rationality is about "winning" and that you must reason inside of the system you have, ie our human brains. Is there a core thought or concept that you would recommend when approaching problems such as how to define your own goals? That is to say how do you improve goal systems without some goal that is either precedent or is the goal in question? I suppose that really there are no exterior judges of the performance of your goals, only your own interior performance metrics which are made by the very same goals you are trying to optimize. That doesn't seem to dissolve my confusion, just deepen it.

Comment by Skylar on Lawrence Watt-Evans's Fiction · 2008-07-22T13:07:57.000Z · LW · GW

This is tangential but does anyone know of profound, joyful or excited poets who write about rationalism or related topics like mathematics, physics, evolution, etc. I am basically looking for uplifting, witty, and positive takes on a world free of the supernatural.

Sorry to resurrect a dead thread.