Chris Cal

Tag: status/evergreen

  • Problem

    A problem exists when a conflict between ideas is experienced (Deutsch).

    Links to this note:
    Mental Health Depends on Knowing Which Problems to Reject
    Change the Problem Landscape
    Become More Demanding

    Needs: expand explanation

  • Being Realistic

    Being realistic isn’t taking what you hope for and then shrinking it down until it feels safe. It’s about making the story truer and closer to reality. Being realistic means using your best understanding of how things work and then trying hard to find what’s wrong with that understanding so you can improve it. A wildly ambitious plan can be more realistic than a “modest” one if it’s backed by a better explanation and has survived more criticism.

    Being unrealistic means thinking or saying, “Here is the story I’m going to believe and stick to because I like it, I’m afraid, or I just don’t know.” What’s implied is that you’re doing this not because it’s the best explanation, but because you’re avoiding looking for ways your story might be wrong.

  • You don’t have to have the prettiest things

    You don’t have to have the prettiest things. But you cannot have anything bad or ugly. No chemical blue dawn dish soap container, no lime green sponge. Remove ugliness and even a messy space will look inviting.

    – Simon Sarris

    Needs: Expand explanation

  • Knowledge

    We often think knowledge is just facts or information we’ve acquired through education or experience. But David Deutsch has thought of knowledge as information with causal power i.e. information that has the power to make things happen. I also think of knowledge this way.

    Knowledge has only ever been created by two processes: evolution and creativity.

    We can change our future by creating knowledge. In that sense, knowledge gives us a power once imagined only in magic and myth.

    See also: The Beginning of Infinity

    Links to this note:
    Explanatory Knowledge

  • The Space of Available Actions

    The laws of physics define what is possible. Our available choices are a much smaller subset, and that subset expands as we gain knowledge.

    See also:
    How to not be an NPC

    Links to this note:
    Free Will

    Needs: expand explanation

  • Agency Is Not Fundamental

    Agency is not fundamental. Knowledge creation is.

    What people call “agency” is a surface manifestation of a deeper capacity: the ability to create explanatory knowledge that expands the space of available actions.

  • What is a Rationalist

    A rationalist is simply someone for whom it is more important to learn than to be proved right; someone who is willing to learn from others – not by simply taking over another’s opinions, but by gladly allowing others to criticize his ideas and by gladly criticizing the ideas of others

    ― Karl Popper

    To be rational is to try to solve problems by seeking good explanations and actively pursue error correction by creating criticisms of both existing ideas and new proposals.

    Links to this note:
    Change the Problem Landscape

  • The Dangerous Man is the One Who has only One Idea

    “The dangerous man is the one who has only one idea, because then he’ll fight and die for it. The way real science goes is that you come up with lots of ideas, and most of them will be wrong.”

    —Francis Crick

  • Ayn Rand: The Unwilling Remain Unrewarded

    “A free market is a continuous process that cannot be held still, an upward process that demands the best (the most rational) of every man and rewards him accordingly. While the majority have barely assimilated the value of the automobile, the creative minority introduces the airplane. The majority learn by demonstration, the minority is free to demonstrate. The “philosophically objective” value of a new product serves as the teacher for those who are willing to exercise their rational faculty, each to the extent of his ability. Those who are unwilling remain unrewarded—as well as those who aspire to more than their ability produces. The stagnant, the irrational, the subjectivist have no power to stop their betters…”

    – Ayn Rand, Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal

  • Gilbert K. Chesterton: Heaven is a Playground

    “The true object of all human life is play. Earth is a task garden; heaven is a playground.”

    ― Gilbert K. Chesterton