Dennis Hackethal

How to Be Rational: https://x.com/dchackethal/status/2091272979791659054

The Blind Truth-Seeker:
https://libertythroughreason.com/the-blind-truth-seeker/

~All previous methods of preference formation focus too much on what the ideas say; on their content.

Nobody really knows just how simple an idea is (Occam’s razor) or how likely (Bayesianism), for example. In some cases it’s obvious how ideas compare, but in others not so much.

Adherents of those epistemologies are all fooling themselves into thinking they’re being rational when really they’re still acting on whim. Just fancier whim.

Focus instead on how the ideas relate, on the structure of the current state of the discussion, and preference formation gets much easier and simpler.

Then you can easily see which ideas you can adopt and which you can’t. You can even see exactly which criticisms you’d need to address to change someone’s mind, say.

Beautiful.

Idea: rational discussion graph with recursive criticism evaluation, like Veritula does now. Except the ideas are programs, not natural-language text. And they execute when they have no pending criticisms.

Experimental Controls Aren’t What You Think:
https://libertythroughreason.com/experimental-controls-arent-what-you-think/

I should write a blog post about intellectual dementia soon…

I’ve been using Spotify for over a decade.

Every few months I try Apple Music only to run into bugs and switch back.

But this most recent switch is actually decent.

Transferring my favorited songs from Spotify finally worked.

AutoMix song transitions are fantastic.

Spatial Audio is a win.

Fingers crossed I won’t have a reason to return to Spotify this time.

Taking Popper Too Far, Again: https://libertythroughreason.com/taking-popper-too-far-again/

Rationality as Computation: https://libertythroughreason.com/rationality-as-computation/

Another way to approach AGI? (Very early, preliminary thoughts.)

Say you write an evolutionary algorithm, like the ones that have been written before. Then DD would argue it’ll get stuck because all it can do is explore a given landscape for its best features. Whereas real evolution creates new landscapes.

To address this issue, you subject your algorithm itself to variation and selection, by wrapping it in another evolutionary algorithm. But this approach just kicks the can down the road because now it’s the space of programs that’s limited.

How do you break out of this limitation?

You can’t just keep wrapping your programs in evolutionary algorithms like that because that only keeps kicking the can down the road. It’s like adding more and more entries to a multiplication table. It’s not the same as a multiplication algorithm. But for evolution, the problem is harder, in a way, because not even recursion solves the issue, and the starting point wasn’t as ‘flat’ as a multiplication table. The starting point is already an algorithm, not just a list.

What’s needed, in DD’s lingo, is a jump to universality. But a jump to what kind of universality, exactly?

cc @tyler-mills

Freedom of Association Maxxing:
https://libertythroughreason.com/freedom-of-association-maxxing/

Interesting insight from TheBentist on Instagram. He’s a dentist making a new toothpaste.

He says cavities are caused by a bacterium called strep mutans. A popular misconception says cavities are caused by sugar. That’s not exactly right: strep mutans feeds on sugar and then ‘poops’ out an acid that corrodes your teeth. But sugar itself does not cause cavities – it only feeds strep mutans that’s already there.

The thing is, people aren’t born with strep mutans in their mouths. And they don’t get it from food. They get it from other people who already have it. Like when parents kiss their kids or share food. I’m guessing things like ‘double dipping’, sharing utensils, or drinking from the same bottle are especially problematic.

TheBentist made a toothpase called ‘Zero Pro’ that supposedly kills strep mutans. Conventional toothpastes just scrub it off your teeth. Zero Pro is said to actually kill it. So my understanding is that you could never get cavities again as long as the strep mutans is dead.

That would also eliminate the need for mouthwash, which he calls a ‘scorched-earth approach’ that kills a lot of good bacteria.

Fact-check me on this stuff. I’m not a dentist myself. I’m not giving any medical advice. But this toothpaste sounds interesting and promising to me. Somebody is actually thinking about the root cause of oral disease, and trying to fix it rather than find ways to live with it.

How to tell you’re ahead, objectively:
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/-hwx-mUfjAg

This comprehensive playlist of Karl Popper videos is sure to have some videos of his you haven’t seen: https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLIQtm033Fi_N1ZCu2ElpqrJ_pXNWLk3WW

Simple Refutation of David Deutsch’s ‘Hard to Vary’:
https://libertythroughreason.com/simple-refutation-of-david-deutschs-hard-to-vary/

Beating procrastination is simpler than you think:
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/a_UTkkSZhzs

Rereading some of BoI and I noticed some passages missing citations.

For example, chapter 12:

… [P]hysicist Ernst Mach (father of Ludwig Mach of the Mach–Zehnder interferometer), who was also a positivist philosopher, influenced Einstein, spurring him to eliminate untested assumptions from physics – including Newton’s assumption that time flows at the same rate for all observers.

Citation needed. Where and when and how did Mach influence Einstein? How does Deutsch know this?

That happened to be an excellent idea. But Mach’s positivism also caused him to oppose the resulting theory of relativity, essentially because it claimed that spacetime really exists even though it cannot be ‘directly’ observed.

Need to quote Mach opposing Einstein. It would have to be something to the effect of: ‘I disagree with Einstein about spacetime because it can’t be directly observed.’

Mach also resolutely denied the existence of atoms, because they were too small to observe.

Where did Mach say that? Specifically, how does DD know Mach denied atoms “resolutely”? If there are no primary sources, maybe there are some secondary ones? Skipping some:

… [W]hen the physicist Ludwig Boltzmann used atomic theory to unify thermodynamics and mechanics, he was so vilified by Mach and other positivists that he was driven to despair, which may have contributed to his suicide…

Need a quote by Mach showing how he vilified Boltzmann, and another showing that Boltzmann was indeed driven to despair.

We could just take DD’s word for it and assume he’s right on all of these counts. But we can’t know for a fact. Without citations, it’s harder for us as readers to verify these claims. Maybe DD used citations and just didn’t specify them. Or maybe he didn’t use any in the first place and just went off memory, which is error prone.

A contradiction in The Beginning of Infinity by David Deutsch? 🤔
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/xmngAmZMEuo

Steve Jobs was a good writer.
He wrote clearly and simply.
Anyone can understand him.

From https://x.com/WebDesignMuseum/status/2049544240213196807

You probably missed this in The Beginning of Infinity by David Deutsch: https://www.youtube.com/shorts/gTvuzxY-SXg

Follow me on Instagram for more fitness tips: https://www.instagram.com/lets.recomp/