Skills

Projects, Activities and Using Discussion Forums

The difference between projects and activities. And how to use discussion forums.

Research

Attention to Detail

What does it mean to be detail oriented, to have good attention to detail, or to have good memory? It can’t just mean paying a lot of attention to every detail. There are way too many details. There are actually infinitely many details one could consider, but people have

News

Newsletter July 2022

Updates from Elliot.

Research

Being Open to Debate (and Judging Intellectuals)

Ways to be open to debate, ways I'm open, and ways I might not be.

Research

Uncertainty and Binary Epistemology

The way to correct errors involves looking for errors – for causes of failure – and trying to fix them. Fixing means changing from failure to success. It does not involve increasing the goodness of factors. Most factors had no error anyway, so an increase won’t change an error to a

Research

Evolution and Epistemology

How evolution relates to intelligent thinking and error correction

Practice Thinking in Terms of Error Correction

A way to improve your philosophy skills.

Research

Similarity and Contextual Conversion Between Dimensions

In Multi-Factor Decision Making Math [https://criticalfallibilism.com/multi-factor-decision-making-math/], I discussed converting (measurements or judgments of) decision-making factors to other dimensions. I said that this broadly can’t be done and we need other approaches to decision making. However, I said, the narrower the context you care about, the more

Research

Learning With and Without Two-Way Communication with Others

Reading a book is learning “alone” in some sense, even though the author is involved in your learning process. You don’t have a back-and-forth discussion with the author. There’s a worthwhile division of learning into two to four types. The main two types are learning with two-way communication

News

Newsletter April 2022

I have announcements about stuff I’ve made. I made a new video called Learn Dependency Grammar Trees [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hAMqLDPywfU]. I’ve been researching software tools and I’m happy with the animations. I lowered the prices on my digital educational products [https://curi.us/

Research

Positively Presenting Ideas and Negatively Arguing about Ideas

There are two parts of debate or critical thinking. First, you present an idea. Second, you make and evaluate arguments. After some arguing you can still do more presenting. You can’t start with arguing before any presenting, though. When presenting, you say what an idea is. You explain what

Research

Debate, Criticism, Argument Strengths and Intuitions

Critical Fallibilism (CF) loosely separates debate into two parts. First, you explain your idea. You present it and say what it is and how it works. This is not arguing how great or strong it is, nor arguing that your idea is correct. Sharing ideas is different than arguing. You

Research

Weighty Arguments or Decisive Arguments

The standard view of debate uses weighted factors. Arguments are factors which add support (or strength, weight, points, justification, etc.) for a side. Critical arguments subtract instead of adding. Arguments have different weights which determine how much they add or subtract (some arguments are stronger than others). A debate is

Research

Kialo and Indecisive Arguments

Kialo [https://www.kialo.com/tour] claims to be an online “debate platform powered by reason” and explains: > Kialo enables you to visualize discussions as an interactive tree of pro and con arguments. At the top is the thesis, which is supported or weakened by pro and con arguments

Research

People Use Weighted Factors

The weighted factor epistemology, which is criticized by Critical Fallibilism, is widespread. It’s talked about in many terms including score systems, strengths of arguments, weight of evidence, or the power of a case. People also use it intuitively or subconsciously. Here are some ways people talk about weighted factors

Research

Optimize Limiting Factors

Critical Fallibilism says it’s important to differentiate ideas in terms of success and failure at goals rather than differentiating them by degree of goodness. Why? It’s technically correct [https://criticalfallibilism.com/multi-factor-decision-making-math/] and I’ve explained various reasons [https://criticalfallibilism.com/yes-or-no-philosophy-and-score-systems/]. Here I’ll focus on one

Research

Accumulating Progress

You have to keep track of what you learn. And the more you learn, the more you have to keep track of. You have to organize it, review it, remember stuff, be able to effectively search for stuff, etc. You want to have the most important and most used ideas

Research

Proper Knowledge

We need to have goals, to try to succeed at them, and to judge success and failure at them. Judging lets us make changes when things aren’t working. But judging well can be hard. Being able to objectively, confidently and reliably judge success and failure is a key to

Research

Rational Confidence and Standards for Knowledge

If I hold up a fruit and ask you "Which fruit is this?”, you will know the answer immediately and automatically. And you'll have full confidence in your answer. You'll say “That's an apple.” and you will be right and know you'

Research

Demand For Intellectual Discussion

Demand for rational discussion with public intellectuals is near zero. Therefore, public intellectuals can talk with the public without being overloaded with demands on their time. People find this claim implausible. I have tested it. I offer rational discussion at my forum. I’ve also sought it out extensively elsewhere.

Research

How To Build Knowledge Skyscrapers

Knowledge skyscrapers are a metaphor to help explain how learning works. Floors contain ideas. Higher floors build on ideas from previous floors. When learning, floors (new knowledge) are constructed one at a time on top of previous floors. There is advanced, complex knowledge at the top of the skyscraper. Here’

Research

Complex World

People don’t realize how much complexity is around them. Pick up a rock. Simple? Think again. The rock is made of trillions of atoms. The rock is mostly empty space. When you touch it, lots of what’s going on is electrons from atoms in your hand repelling electrons

Research

Brainstorming Advice

People have trouble brainstorming. The main reason is suppression. They don’t want to write down half-ideas. They don’t want to say ideas that might be wrong. They want to screen their ideas for quality, acceptability, clarity, not being embarrassing, not being half-baked, etc. People spend their whole adult

Research

Learning Critical Fallibilism

Critical Fallibilism (CF) is primarily a set of ideas about how to think. Thinking includes coming up with ideas, evaluating ideas, learning, making decisions, and taking actions guided by ideas. CF has philosophical principles and concepts, methods of doing things, and secondary implications. It has both abstract theory and practical

Research

Error Correction Math and Types

In this article, I try to better think through how error correction works and what types there are. I explore several ideas. There’s explanatory error correction. You explain an error and then come up with a different solution that no longer has that error. And there’s quantitative error