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What's bad in being irrational?

Irrationality leads to stasis, unhappiness, and ultimately death.

#4552​·​Dennis HackethalOP, 1 day ago

It’s bad

Is prejudgment and conformism any good? Popper is famous for his theory of scientific revolutions, de-facto theory of accepting a fact that you have only merely a "current paradigm", that inevitable ignores observational facts in the name of infrastructural and logistical cost of maintenance more-or-less consistent consensus tradition. And readiness to throw it all away as soon as there will be just enough black swans around. Wouldn't it be more honest and humbly just to accept the inconsistency as a basis?

#4557​·​Yurii Pytomets, 1 day ago

It’s bad

Is prejudgment and conformism any good? Popper is famous for his theory of scientific revolutions, de-facto theory of accepting a fact that you have only merely a "current paradigm", that inevitable ignores observational facts in the name of infrastructural and logistical cost of maintenance more-or-less consistent consensus tradition. And readiness to throw it all away as soon as there will be just enough black swans around. Wouldn't it be more honest and humbly just to accept the inconsistency as a basis?

#4557​·​Yurii Pytomets, 1 day ago

It’s bad

Is prejudgment and conformism any good? Popper is famous for his theory of scientific revolutions, de-facto theory of accepting a fact that you have only merely a "current paradigm", that inevitable ignores observational facts in the name of infrastructural and logistical cost of maintenance more-or-less consistent consensus tradition. And readiness to throw it all away as soon as there will be just enough black swans around. Wouldn't it be more honest and humbly just to accept the inconsistency as a basis?

#4557​·​Yurii Pytomets, 1 day ago

death

Everything leads there https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u3xIs0aajN4

#4556​·​Yurii Pytomets, 1 day ago

death

Everything leads there https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u3xIs0aajN4

#4556​·​Yurii Pytomets, 1 day ago

objective

Oh well

#4558​·​Yurii Pytomets, 1 day ago

“truenesslessnessless”, “beingnesslessnessless”, “thisnesslessnesslesssness”

What? You’re rambling.

#4554​·​Dennis HackethalOP revised 1 day ago

Not better, nor worse, then anyone's else.

This stance is known as relativism. It’s bad. Popper, Deutsch, and several others philosophers have already refuted it. You’re advocating an outdated idea.

There’s an objective way to form a rational preference for one idea over another. Veritula explains that in the idea you criticize.

#4553​·​Dennis HackethalOP, 1 day ago

Not better, nor worse, then anyone's else.

This stance is known as relativism. It’s bad. Popper, Deutsch, and several others philosophers have already refuted it. You’re advocating an outdated idea.

There’s an objective way to form a rational preference for one idea over another. Veritula explains that in the idea you criticize.

#4553​·​Dennis HackethalOP, 1 day ago

What's bad in being irrational?

Irrationality leads to stasis, unhappiness, and ultimately death.

#4552​·​Dennis HackethalOP, 1 day ago

irrational

What's bad in being irrational? Ration overrated and has pretty indirect relation with the common sense. How rationality will help you to stand the right up, and do the thing? And what if you can't? In general: why not considering each judgement, as a true one? Let's talk about that: each person has it's own experience, which you will never live thru, and from their personal perception of this reality, their point absolutely have right to make sense. Not better, nor worse, then anyone's else. Could you prove that that person actually live in the same world you do? How you can be sure that everything you know make sense, and next moment you will not wake up, saying: what a weird dream I saw! How you would measure a truenesslessnessless, how can you expect that successful strategy will not fail next day? Let's touch the ground for a moment: what we ACTUALLY know about us, and the place where we are? If you like me, you know about this world only two things:
1. the World is such so it's existence, essence, the law, a form of being -- inevitable leads to appearing there of you;
2. and you, wonderfully, has an ability -- to perceive an experience, live thru time and flow of entropy, learn, learn something about your own existence, beingnesslessnessless, learn about limit of own ability to learn -- marvelously comprehend something despite all of that, something, or maybe, at least, one -- for sure -- the World is such the place you know about for sure exactly one thing -- whereinit thisnesslessnesslesssness of is allows to exist in it the you one, who able to perceive and comprehend it. And that's it. Everything behind that -- our imagination. But you are here, and I respect it, and welcoming you. So I'm totally open to trust any story of your own perspective on this journey, because: who I am to judge, what is true. And it's okay for me if you are not or notn't.
3. Because things here always falls into two items: the ones which lands in first or second.
4. And the rest ones.

#4549​·​Yurii Pytomets revised 1 day ago

irrational

What's bad in being irrational? Ration overrated and has pretty indirect relation with the common sense. How rationality will help you to stand the right up, and do the thing? And what if you can't? In general: why not considering each judgement, as a true one? Let's talk about that: each person has it's own experience, which you will never live thru, and from their personal perception of this reality, their point absolutely have right to make sense. Not better, nor worse, then anyone's else. Could you prove that that person actually live in the same world you do? How you can be sure that everything you know make sense, and next moment you will not wake up, saying: what a weird dream I saw! How you would measure a truenesslessnessless, how can you expect that successful strategy will not fail next day? Let's touch the ground for a moment: what we ACTUALLY know about us, and the place where we are? If you like me, you know about this world only two things:
1. the World is such so it's existence, essence, the law, a form of being -- inevitable leads to appearing there of you;
2. and you, wonderfully, has an ability -- to perceive an experience, live thru time and flow of entropy, learn, learn something about your own existence, beingnesslessnessless, learn about limit of own ability to learn -- marvelously comprehend something despite all of that, something, or maybe, at least, one -- for sure -- the World is such the place you know about for sure exactly one thing -- whereinit thisnesslessnesslesssness of is allows to exist in it the you one, who able to perceive and comprehend it. And that's it. Everything behind that -- our imagination. But you are here, and I respect it, and welcoming you. So I'm totally open to trust any story of your own perspective on this journey, because: who I am to judge, what is true. And it's okay for me if you are not or notn't.
3. Because things here always falls into two items: the ones which lands in first or second.
4. And the rest ones.

#4549​·​Yurii Pytomets revised 1 day ago

irrational

What's bad in being irrational? Ration overrated and has pretty indirect relation with the common sense. How rationality will help you to stand the right up, and do the thing? And what if you can't? In general: why not considering each judgement, as a true one? Let's talk about that: each person has it's own experience, which you will never live thru, and from their personal perception of this reality, their point absolutely have right to make sense. Not better, nor worse, then anyone's else. Could you prove that that person actually live in the same world you do? How you can be sure that everything you know make sense, and next moment you will not wake up, saying: what a weird dream I saw! How you would measure a truenesslessnessless, how can you expect that successful strategy will not fail next day? Let's touch the ground for a moment: what we ACTUALLY know about us, and the place where we are? If you like me, you know about this world only two things:
1. the World is such so it's existence, essence, the law, a form of being -- inevitable leads to appearing there of you;
2. and you, wonderfully, has an ability -- to perceive an experience, live thru time and flow of entropy, learn, learn something about your own existence, beingnesslessnessless, learn about limit of own ability to learn -- marvelously comprehend something despite all of that, something, or maybe, at least, one -- for sure -- the World is such the place you know about for sure exactly one thing -- whereinit thisnesslessnesslesssness of is allows to exist in it the you one, who able to perceive and comprehend it. And that's it. Everything behind that -- our imagination. But you are here, and I respect it, and welcoming you. So I'm totally open to trust any story of your own perspective on this journey, because: who I am to judge, what is true. And it's okay for me if you are not or notn't.
3. Because things here always falls into two items: the ones which lands in first or second.
4. And the rest ones.

#4549​·​Yurii Pytomets revised 1 day ago

How Does Veritula Work?

Veritula (Latin for ‘a bit of truth’) can help you live a life guided exclusively by reason.

To reason, within any well-defined epistemology, means to follow and apply that epistemology. Unreason, or whim, is an undue departure from it. Epistemology is the study of knowledge – basically, the study of what helps knowledge grow, what hinders its growth, and related questions.

Veritula follows, and helps you apply, Karl Popper’s epistemology, Critical Rationalism. It’s a continuation of the Athenian tradition of criticism and the only known epistemology without major flaws.¹

Critical Rationalism says that ideas are assumed true until refuted. This approach leaves us free to make bold guesses and use the full arsenal at our disposal to criticize these guesses in order to solve problems, correct errors, and seek truth. It’s a creative and critical approach. Critical Rationalism is a fallibilist philosophy: there is no criterion of truth to determine with certainty whether some idea is true or false. We all make mistakes, and by an effort, we can correct them to get a little closer to the truth. Rejecting all forms of mysticism and the supernatural, Veritula recognizes that progress is both possible and desirable, and that rational means are the only way to make ongoing progress.

Veritula is a programmatic implementation of Popper’s epistemology.

Veritula provides an objective, partly automated way to tentatively determine whether a given idea is problematic. It does not tell you what to think – it teaches you how to think.

On Veritula, ideas are discrete and immutable. Consider an idea I:

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              I

Since it has no criticisms, we tentatively consider I unproblematic. It is rational to adopt it and act in accordance with it. Conversely, it would be irrational to reject it, consider it problematic, or act counter to it. (See #2281 for more details on rational decision-making.)

Next, someone submits a criticism C1:

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              I
              |
              C1

The idea I is now considered problematic so long as criticism C1 is not addressed. How do you address it? You can revise I so that C1 doesn’t apply anymore, which restores the previous state with just the standalone I (now called I2 to indicate the revision):

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                   Revise
              I ------------> I2
              |
              C1

To track changes, Veritula offers beautiful diffing and version control for ideas.

If you cannot think of a way to revise I, you can counter-criticize C1, thereby neutralizing it with a new criticism, C2:

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              I
              |
              C1
              |
              C2

Now, I is considered unproblematic again, since C1 is problematic and thus can’t be a decisive criticism anymore.

If you can think of neither a revision of I nor counter-criticism to C1, your only option is to accept that I has been (tentatively) defeated. You should therefore abandon it, which means: stop acting in accordance with it, considering it to be unproblematic, etc.

Since there can be many criticisms (which are also just ideas) and deeply nested counter-criticisms, the result is a tree structure. For example, as a discussion progresses, one of its trees might look like this:

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              I
           /  |  \
         C11 C12 C13
         / \       \
       C21 C22     C23
                   / \
                 C31 C32

In this tree, I is considered problematic. Although C11 has been neutralized by C21 and C22, C12 still needs to be addressed. In addition, C23 would have neutralized C13, but C31 and C32 make C23 problematic, so C13 makes I problematic as well.

You don’t need to keep track of these relationships manually. Veritula automatically marks ideas accordingly.

Since decision-making follows the same logic as truth-seeking, you can use these trees to make decisions, too. Veritula implements unanimous consent as defined by Taking Children Seriously, a parenting philosophy that builds on Popper’s epistemology. When you’re planning your next move but can’t decide on a city, say, Veritula helps you criticize your ideas and make a rational decision – meaning a decision you’ll be happy with. Again, it’s rational to act in accordance with ideas that have no pending criticisms.

All ideas, including criticisms, should be formulated as concisely as possible, and separate ideas should be submitted separately, even if they’re related. Otherwise, you run the risk of receiving ‘bulk’ criticisms, where a single criticism seems to apply to more content than it actually does.

Again, criticisms are also just ideas, so the same is true for criticisms. Submitting each criticism separately has the benefit of requiring the proponent of an idea to address each criticism individually, not in bulk. If he fails to address even a single criticism, the idea remains problematic and should be rejected.

The more you discuss a given topic, the deeper and wider the tree grows. Some criticisms can apply to multiple ideas in the tree, but that needs to be made explicit by submitting them repeatedly.

Comments that aren’t criticisms – eg follow-up questions or otherwise neutral comments – are considered ancillary ideas. Unlike criticisms, ancillary ideas do not invert their respective parents’ statuses. They are neutral.

One of the main benefits of Veritula is that the status of any idea in a discussion can be seen at a glance. If you are new to a much-discussed topic, adopt the displayed status of the ideas involved: if they are marked problematic, reject them; if they are not, adopt them.

Therefore, Veritula acts as a dictionary for ideas.

One of the problems of our age is that people have same discussions over and over again. Part of the reason is widespread irrationality, expressed in the unwillingness to change one’s mind; another is that it’s simply difficult to remember or know what’s true and what isn’t. Discussion trees can get complex, so people shouldn’t blindly trust their judgment of whether some idea is true or problematic, whether nested criticisms have been neutralized or not. Going off of memory is too error prone.

Veritula solves this problem: it makes discussion trees explicit so you don’t have to remember each idea and its relation to other ideas. Veritula therefore also enables you to hold irrational people accountable: if an idea has pending criticisms, the rational approach is to either abandon it or to save it by revising it or addressing all pending criticisms.

Many people don’t like to concede an argument. But with Veritula, no concessions are necessary. The site just shows you who’s right.

Using Veritula, we may discover a bit of truth.

---

1. Popperian epistemology has some flaws, like verisimilitude, but Veritula doesn’t implement those.

#4471​·​Dennis HackethalOP revised 14 days ago

Ayn Rand on why middle-of-the-roaders can be worse than outright opponents:

[Page 1]
August 21, 1946

Mrs. Rose Wilder Lane
Route 4, Box 42
Danbury, Connecticut

[…]

Now to your second question: “Do those almost with us do more harm than 100% enemies?” I don’t think this can be answered

[Page 2]
Page 2 Mrs. Rose Wilder Lane August 21, 1946

with a flat “yes” or “no”, because the “almost” is such a wide term and can cover so many different attitudes. I think each particular case has to be judged on his own performance, but there is one general rule to observe: those who are with us, but merely do not go far enough, yet do not serve the opposite cause in any way, are the ones who do us some good and who are worth educating. Those who agree with us in some respects, yet preach contradictory ideas at the same time, are definitely more harmful than the 100% enemies. The standard of judgement here has to be the man’s attitude toward basic principles. If he shares our basic principles, but goes off on lesser details in the application of these principles, he is worth educating and having as an ally. If his “almost” consists of sharing some of the basic principles of collectivism, then we ought to run from him faster than from an out-and-out Communist.

As an example of the kind of “almost” I would tolerate, I’d name Ludwig von Mises. His book, “Omnipotent Government”, had some bad flaws, in that he attempted to divorce economics from morality, which is impossible; but with the exception of his last chapter, which simply didn’t make sense, his book was good, and did not betray our cause. The flaws in his argument merely weakened his own effectiveness, but did not help the other side.

As an example of our most pernicious enemy, I would name Hayek.[**] That one is real poison. Yes, I think he does more harm than Stuart Chase. I think Wendell Willkie did more to destroy the Republican Party than did Roosevelt. I think Willkie and Eric Johnston have done more for the cause of Communism than Earl Browder and The Daily Worker. Observe the Communist Party technique, which asks their most effective propagandists to be what is known as “tactical non-members”. That is, they must not be Communists, but pose as “middle-of-the-roaders” in the eyes of the public. The Communists know that such propagandists are much more deadly to the cause of Capitalism in that “middle-of-the-road” pretense.

Personally, I feel sick whenever I come up against a compromising conservative. But my attitude is this: if the man compromises because of ignorance, I consider him worth enlightening. If he compromises because of moral cowardice (which is the reason in most cases), I don’t want to talk to him, I don’t want him on my side, and I don’t think he is worth converting.

As to George Peck, I don’t know enough about him to be able to tell whether he is worth educating or not. I have just received a letter from him in answer to mine. It is a very nice letter, in that he tries to answer criticism honestly, but I am appalled by his mental confusion. He maintains, for instance, that Hitler is worse than Stalin. I don’t know by what possible standard one can establish degrees of evil as between dictators representing exactly the same

[Page 3]
Page 3 Mrs. Rose Wilder Lane August 21, 1946

principle. I am afraid that George Peck means well, but has not given our cause a serious study. Perhaps, he is worth educating. But stay away from Hayek, if you want my opinion; he is worse than hopeless.

Now, am I a good correspondent?

With best regards,

Sincerely,

Ayn Rand

p.s.
I had just finished this letter to you, when, strangely enough, I received an appalling answer to the question you asked me—a final proof that our “almost” friends are our worst enemies. It was the worst shock in all my experience with political reading. I received the Economic Council Letter of August 15th. (Incidentally, I subscribed to that Letter mainly in order to get your book reviews.) And I read that Merwin K. Hart, a defender of freedom and Americanism, is advocating a death penalty for a political offense.

I am actually too numb at the moment to know what to say. I don’t have to explain to you that once such a principle is accepted, it would mean the literal, physical end of Americans; nor to ask you to guess who would be the first people executed under such a law; nor to remind you that the crucial steps on the road to dictatorship, the laws giving government totalitarian powers, were initiated by Republicans—such as the draft bill, or the attempt to pass a national serfdom act for compulsory labor.

I know that you know all that. What I wonder is: is it in your spiritual power to discuss this with Hart? If you can, if you have arguments that would reach him—please do it. I confess I’m helpless in such an instance. It’s too monstrous.

[…]

**F. A. Hayek, who shared the 1947 Nobel Prize in Economics. For AR’s marginal comments on Hayek’s best-known work, The Road to Serfdom, see Mayhew ed., Ayn Rand’s Marginalia, pp. 145–60. 

In her August 24, 1946, response, Lane wrote, “That Council Letter gave me the same shock…. I can take it up with Hart and I shall.”

Source

#4524​·​Dennis Hackethal, 7 days ago

Most ridiculous are takes about so-called Turing test, which, AFAIK, originally was just a bad misogynic joke. Some kind of evolutionary psychology experiments, which people already have set up to study limits of different animals cognitive abilities and abilities to make judgements (e.g. role-playing, like: what ones know about other know about them, and vice versa), or a development of infant children's abilities to interpret concepts like geometry of space, cause and consequence -- would be way better criteria for the AGI system metrics evaluation.

#4541​·​Yurii Pytomets, 1 day ago