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#3898·Zelalem Mekonnen, 1 day agoHave you thought about quite quitting?
Could you also come up with the reasons you dislike your job? Is it because of co-workers, managers or the work you actually do? In either case, the calculation in the calculated risk of quitting your job might be mentally checking out from it, but reaping the good thing about it, which is the financial stability.
You need to mark your submission as a criticism if you want it to be eligible for a payout from the bounty.
#3898·Zelalem Mekonnen, 1 day agoHave you thought about quite quitting?
Could you also come up with the reasons you dislike your job? Is it because of co-workers, managers or the work you actually do? In either case, the calculation in the calculated risk of quitting your job might be mentally checking out from it, but reaping the good thing about it, which is the financial stability.
quite
quiet
#3898·Zelalem Mekonnen, 1 day agoHave you thought about quite quitting?
Could you also come up with the reasons you dislike your job? Is it because of co-workers, managers or the work you actually do? In either case, the calculation in the calculated risk of quitting your job might be mentally checking out from it, but reaping the good thing about it, which is the financial stability.
Tyler explained what he dislikes about his job in the ‘About’ section of the discussion, which is quoted in the bounty terms:
Many of the tasks I am assigned seem eminently automatable, and performing them is excruciating for me (though I recognize my good fortune overall). Even when there are micro-problems which require creativity to solve, I still find the process painful, given that they are other people's problems rather than my own. It is the same pain of school: creativity forced to work toward answers to questions not asked.
#3638·Tyler MillsOP, 10 days agoOption 1: Continue working the day job and balancing the other pursuits on the side.
Have you thought about quite quitting?
Could you also come up with the reasons you dislike your job? Is it because of co-workers, managers or the work you actually do? In either case, the calculation in the calculated risk of quitting your job might be mentally checking out from it, but reaping the good thing about it, which is the financial stability.
#3874·Tyler MillsOP revised 2 days agoThe Fountainhead is on my list. Listened to ‘The Simplest Thing in the World’. One message seems to be that one's creativity will continuously resist attempts to coerce it into doing something it doesn't want. A will of its own. I feel such resistance acutely at this current job, more so but no differently than during previous jobs and assignments, as we all have. But what is the import of the story to the present debate? My creative muse will continue fighting me so long as I'm trying to steer it towards other things? I have no doubt. The questions here are over what is practical, secure and strategic, all largely in the financial sense--or so I think. Where does one draw the line between passion and security? Maybe there is no general-purpose explanation. I will continue reflecting.
But what is the import of the story to the present debate?
‘The Simplest Thing in the World’ has themes about fear and safety vs self-actualization. For example:
What’s the quality that all the people you know have got, the outstanding quality in all of them? Their motive power? Fear. Not fear of anyone in particular, just fear. Just a great, blind force without object. Malicious fear. The kind that makes them want to see you suffer. Because they know that they, too, will have to suffer and it makes it easier, to know that you do also. The kind that makes them want to see you being small and funny and smutty. Small people are safe. It’s not really fear, it’s more than that. Like Mr. Crawford, for instance, who’s a lawyer and who’s glad when a client of his loses a suit. He’s glad, even though he loses money on it; even though it hurts his reputation. He’s glad, and he doesn’t even know that he’s glad. God, what a story there is in Mr. Crawford! If you could put him down on paper as he is, and explain just why he is like that, and . . .
… people go their whole lives resisting their passions, and are secure.
Physically maybe. I can’t look into those people’s minds but I suspect they don’t ever really feel psychologically secure. It takes a certain kind of mind to have physical security, rather than fulfillment, as one’s main concern for one’s whole life. https://aynrandlexicon.com/lexicon/self-esteem.html
… people go their whole lives resisting their passions, and are secure.
Physically maybe. I can’t look into those people’s minds but I suspect they don’t ever really feel psychologically secure. It takes a certain kind of mind to have physical security, rather than fulfillment, as one’s main concern for one’s whole life. https://aynrandlexicon.com/lexicon/self-esteem.html
It’s essentially living like an animal.
#3881·Tyler MillsOP revised 2 days agoStill learning the art of Veritula (my bad for combining ideas in #3819). From the top, this branch seems to be:
Go on hiatus?
- No hiatus, compress activates
----- Yes hiatus, can't compress. No hiatus because resume gap.
--------- No to resume gap -- So YES hiatus. But currently #3834 flows up and flips to a no-hiatus criticism (because I melded a yes and a no idea in one comment, and Dennis criticized the latter).
------------- Yes hiatus via this comment to correct"It’s best to write only one criticism at a time."
----- Best, or required, to avoid errors?! (or I'm confused)
… my bad for combining ideas in #3819 …
No worries, and good catch. What you could do, to clean up this branch, is revise #3819 to remove this part:
The concerns are over the tradeoffs of leaving the day job (finances, impact to employability, etc.).
And then, before submitting the revision form, uncheck criticism #3834 underneath the form.
#3881·Tyler MillsOP revised 2 days agoStill learning the art of Veritula (my bad for combining ideas in #3819). From the top, this branch seems to be:
Go on hiatus?
- No hiatus, compress activates
----- Yes hiatus, can't compress. No hiatus because resume gap.
--------- No to resume gap -- So YES hiatus. But currently #3834 flows up and flips to a no-hiatus criticism (because I melded a yes and a no idea in one comment, and Dennis criticized the latter).
------------- Yes hiatus via this comment to correct"It’s best to write only one criticism at a time."
----- Best, or required, to avoid errors?! (or I'm confused)
It’s not strictly required – there are cases where joining multiple criticisms into one comment is fine – but I almost always recommend splitting them, especially for beginners.
#3877·Tyler MillsOP, 2 days agoThere's no security in not pursuing your passion
Do we mean by security something other than food/water/shelter? Or, resisting your passion only buys temporary security? This isn't true; people go their whole lives resisting their passions, and are secure.
… people go their whole lives resisting their passions, and are secure.
Physically maybe. I can’t look into those people’s minds but I suspect they don’t ever really feel psychologically secure. It takes a certain kind of mind to have physical security, rather than fulfillment, as one’s main concern for one’s whole life. https://aynrandlexicon.com/lexicon/self-esteem.html
#3877·Tyler MillsOP, 2 days agoThere's no security in not pursuing your passion
Do we mean by security something other than food/water/shelter? Or, resisting your passion only buys temporary security? This isn't true; people go their whole lives resisting their passions, and are secure.
You should reach far higher in life than merely ensuring food/water/shelter. It’s a pretty elementary concern and easily met.
#3876·Tyler MillsOP, 2 days agoThere exist people who's passions exclude all available paying jobs, unless this is not physically possible. Aspiring guitarists in dark ages.
who's
whose
#3876·Tyler MillsOP, 2 days agoThere exist people who's passions exclude all available paying jobs, unless this is not physically possible. Aspiring guitarists in dark ages.
Well, this is starting to sound a bit contrived. But even in the dark ages, people could be guitarists and find a job they love. Or they could create a new job they loved.
#3872·Tyler MillsOP, 2 days agoMy thought was to negate (criticize) the "if you don't" portion of your comment, which was a criticism of mine. Unrefuted, yours sits as a criticism of the original, but it isn't...
- Go on hiatus?
- No runway = bad
- Do have runway
How should criticisms with conditionals in them be handled? Is this comment a criticism?!
Well, agreement doesn’t sound like criticism. It sounds like agreement!
But I see now that you meant to say – correct me if I’m wrong – that the six-month minimum of reserves won’t be a problem for you. In which case that indeed neutralizes my criticism. I’ll counter-criticize my own.
I see why you would interpret the BoI quote in that way, but in the context of the whole philosophy your interpretation is implausible. It would go against Deutsch's own criticisms of justificationism (various chapters of BoI and FoR) as well as his criticisms of scientism – that is, the misapplication of scientific methods to philosophical problems (e.g. https://www.youtube.com/watch?app=desktop&v=tzWGfi4XhLA&t=7s).
Regardless of what Deutsch meant, though, the main point is that it's possible to talk about the virtues of explanations without falling into justificationism, for example when trying to explain progress.
I have made related points in #3883.
I think that's a misreading. If 'hard to vary' is a fixed criterion used to measure the value of an explanation, it would go against Deutsch's own criticisms of justificationism (various chapters of BoI and FoR) as well as his criticisms of scientism – that is, the misapplication of scientific methods to philosophical problems (e.g. https://www.youtube.com/watch?app=desktop&v=tzWGfi4XhLA&t=7s). I see why you would interpret the BoI quote in that way, but in the context of the whole philosophy your interpretation is implausible.
Regardless of what Deutsch meant, though, the main point is that it's possible to talk about the virtues of explanations without falling into justificationism, for example when trying to explain progress.
I have made related points in #3883.
#2540·Dennis HackethalOP, 3 months agoWe could try to save Deutsch’s terminology this way, sure. But I don’t think that’s what he means. He sees room for different gradations of ‘good’. For example, from BoI ch. 9:
[W]e should choose between policies not on the basis of their origin, but according to how good they are as explanations: how hard to vary.
I see why you would interpret the BoI quote in that way, but in the context of the whole philosophy your interpretation is implausible. It would go against Deutsch's own criticisms of justificationism (various chapters of BoI and FoR) as well as his criticisms of scientism – that is, the misapplication of scientific methods to philosophical problems (e.g. https://www.youtube.com/watch?app=desktop&v=tzWGfi4XhLA&t=7s).
Regardless of what Deutsch meant, though, the main point is that it's possible to talk about the virtues of explanations without falling into justificationism, for example when trying to explain progress.
I have made related points in #3883.
#3020·Dennis HackethalOP revised 2 months agoPasting #2079 here as it’s since been hidden in a resolved child thread and should have applied directly to #2074 in the first place.
My current view is that the only meaningful dichotomy is good vs. bad.
You say yourself in #2071 that one should “always avoid positive arguments.” Calling a theory “good” would be a positive argument.
As I say in #2065, Popperian epistemology has no room for ‘good’ or any other justification. I’m not aware that anyone has successfully proposed a way to measure the ‘hard-to-varyiness’ of theories anyway. We can criticize theories for being arbitrary (which is another word for ‘easy to vary’). That’d be fine. But Popper wouldn’t give them points for not being arbitrary. And arbitrariness isn’t the only type of criticism a theory might receive anyway.
If we follow Popper and get rid of justification, we can’t use ‘good vs bad’ because we can’t use ‘good’. The only dichotomy left standing is ‘has some bad’ vs ‘has no bad’. Another word for ‘pointing out some bad’ is ‘criticism’. So this dichotomy can be rephrased as: ‘has pending criticisms’ vs ‘has no pending criticisms’, or ‘has reasons to be rejected’ vs ‘has no reasons to be rejected’. Note that there’s a difference: if you think some idea is bad, you submit a criticism. If you think it’s good, you can still submit a criticism because it might not yet be as good as you want it to be. So regardless of how good a theory might be, it can still have pending criticisms, and thus reasons to reject it. Think of Newtonian physics, which (I’m told) is a superb theory, but it’s false and (as I understand it) has plenty of pending criticisms.
‘Has pending criticisms’ vs ‘has no pending criticisms’ is directly comparable whereas ‘good’ and ‘bad’ aren’t directly comparable. And ‘has n pending criticisms’ vs ‘has m’ or ‘has 0 pending criticisms’ are even numerically comparable.
Veritula does not implement Deutsch’s epistemology of good vs bad explanations. It implements Popper’s epistemology and TCS’s notion of unanimous consent.
(As an aside, I’m not sure how I could implement Deutsch’s epistemology even if I wanted to. Would I give each idea a slider where people can say how ‘good’ the idea is? What values would I give the slider? Would the worst value be -1,000 and the best +1,000? How would users know to assign 500 vs 550? Would a ‘weak’ criticism get a score of 500 and a ‘strong’ one 1,000? What if tomorrow somebody finds an even ‘stronger’ one, does that mean I’d need to extend the slider beyond 1,000? Do I include arbitrary decimal/real numbers? Is an idea’s score reduced by the sum of its criticisms’ scores? If an idea has score 0, what does that mean – undecided? If it has -500, does that mean I should reject it ‘more strongly’ than if it had only -100? And so on. Deutsch says you haven’t understood something if you can’t program it, and I don’t think he could program his epistemology.)
It seems that you've taken the idea of hard to vary as saying that the process of choosing between competing theories is just about measuring how much of this trait they have. One clearly wouldn’t get better explanations from doing that, as it would just be a mechanical way of judging theories.
But this is a misunderstanding of hard to vary, which is simply an outcome of the process of conjecture and criticism. It's not a criterion to be applied before any critical discussion has taken place.
The same goes for other aspects of good explanations, such as depth, accuracy, elegance, reach. These are things we aspire to have, but they are not criteria for judging theories, for which we need no justification.
Still learning the art of Veritula (my bad for combining ideas in #3819). From the top, this branch seems to be:
Go on hiatus?
- No hiatus, compress activates
----- Yes hiatus, can't compress. No hiatus because resume gap.
--------- No to resume gap -- So YES hiatus. But currently #3834 flows up and flips to a no-hiatus criticism (because I melded a yes and a no idea in one comment, and Dennis criticized the latter).
------------- Yes hiatus via this comment to correct
"It’s best to write only one criticism at a time."
----- Best, or required, to avoid errors?! (or I'm confused)
Still learning the art of Veritula (my bad for combining ideas in #3819). From the top, this branch seems to be:
Go on hiatus?
- No hiatus, compress activates
----- Yes hiatus, can't compress. No hiatus because resume gap.
--------- No to resume gap -- So YES hiatus. But currently #3834 flows up and flips to a no-hiatus criticism (because I melded a yes and a no idea in one comment, and Dennis criticized the latter).
------------- Yes hiatus via this comment to correct
"It’s best to write only one criticism at a time."
----- Best, or required, to avoid errors?! (or I'm confused)
Still learning the art of Veritula (my bad for combining ideas in #3819). From the top, this branch seems to be:
Go on hiatus?
- No hiatus, compress activates
- Yes hiatus, can't compress. No hiatus because resume gap.
- No to resume gap -- So YES hiatus. But currently #3834 flows up and flips to a no-hiatus criticism (because I melded a yes and a no idea in one comment, and Dennis criticized the latter).
- Yes hiatus via this comment to correct
"It’s best to write only one criticism at a time."
- Best, or required, to avoid errors?! (or I'm confused)
Still learning the art of Veritula (my bad for combining ideas in #3819). From the top, this branch seems to be:
Go on hiatus?
- No hiatus, compress activates
----- Yes hiatus, can't compress. No hiatus because resume gap.
--------- No to resume gap -- So YES hiatus. But currently #3834 flows up and flips to a no-hiatus criticism (because I melded a yes and a no idea in one comment, and Dennis criticized the latter).
------------- Yes hiatus via this comment to correct
"It’s best to write only one criticism at a time."
----- Best, or required, to avoid errors?! (or I'm confused)
#3834·Dennis Hackethal, 4 days agoFWIW, if I was hiring, and I was looking at a resume of someone who always ‘played it safe’ and was very concerned about what others think, I wouldn’t hire them. Whereas I would hire someone who takes smart risks and cares about truth over popularity, even if they have a resume ‘gap’.
Still learning the art of Veritula (my bad for combining ideas in #3819). From the top, this branch seems to be:
Go on hiatus?
- No hiatus, compress activates
- Yes hiatus, can't compress. No hiatus because resume gap.
- No to resume gap -- So YES hiatus. But currently #3834 flows up and flips to a no-hiatus criticism (because I melded a yes and a no idea in one comment, and Dennis criticized the latter).
- Yes hiatus via this comment to correct
"It’s best to write only one criticism at a time."
- Best, or required, to avoid errors?! (or I'm confused)
#3826·Dennis Hackethal, 4 days agoThe questions here are over what is practical, secure and strategic, all largely in the financial sense--or so I think.
There’s nothing practical about working a job you hate. There’s nothing practical about fighting yourself.
Where does one draw the line between passion and security?
There’s no security in not pursuing your passion, and there’s no need to make this kind of tradeoff anyway.
There's no security in not pursuing your passion
Do we mean by security something other than food/water/shelter? Or, resisting your passion only buys temporary security? This isn't true; people go their whole lives resisting their passions, and are secure.
#3856·Dennis Hackethal, 3 days agoYou could play the guitar and have a well-paying job you enjoy as well.
There exist people who's passions exclude all available paying jobs, unless this is not physically possible. Aspiring guitarists in dark ages.
#3848·Dennis Hackethal, 3 days agoBut what is the import of the story to the present debate?
That sounds like a criticism. It implies that you don’t see the import.
Only that I didn't see it, not that there wasn't any, but I see that this is effectively the same. Edited the comment to be a criticism.
The Fountainhead is on my list. Listened to ‘The Simplest Thing in the World’. One message seems to be that one's creativity will continuously resist attempts to coerce it into doing something it doesn't want. A will of its own. I feel such resistance acutely at this current job, more so but no differently than during previous jobs and assignments, as we all have. But what is the import of the story to the present debate? My creative muse will continue fighting me so long as I'm trying to steer it towards other things? I have no doubt. The questions here are over what is practical, secure and strategic, all largely in the financial sense--or so I think. Where does one draw the line between passion and security? Maybe there is no general-purpose explanation. I will continue reflecting.
The Fountainhead is on my list. Listened to ‘The Simplest Thing in the World’. One message seems to be that one's creativity will continuously resist attempts to coerce it into doing something it doesn't want. A will of its own. I feel such resistance acutely at this current job, more so but no differently than during previous jobs and assignments, as we all have. But what is the import of the story to the present debate? My creative muse will continue fighting me so long as I'm trying to steer it towards other things? I have no doubt. The questions here are over what is practical, secure and strategic, all largely in the financial sense--or so I think. Where does one draw the line between passion and security? Maybe there is no general-purpose explanation. I will continue reflecting.
#3853·Dennis Hackethal, 3 days agoWhat is one to do until they resolve it? Surely it is rational to work to make money... Yet in this case, this requires forcing oneself to do something unpleasant; hence the rational thing to do in this case requires discipline.
Well yeah, acting without a solution is self-coercive. But that’s not a refutation of the idea that problems are soluble.
So we could say working via discipline to make money tentatively, as part of a problem solving process, is not irrational? I suppose that's what I'm doing now...