Research

Ignoring “Small” Errors

Attitudes enabling ignoring “small” errors makes it significantly harder for critics to get attention and make progress. Even if they point out an error, and they are correct that it’s an error, and people agree with them … that often isn’t good enough. That makes the job of the

Research

Rationality Policies

The rule of law is one of our most important political inventions. Written rules help address problems with biased, corrupt or otherwise untrustworthy people in power. Who shouldn’t be trusted with arbitrary power? Everyone. We’re all fallible. We all have biases. We all make mistakes. If you’re

Research

Engaging with Long Articles

Reply to the first error.

Skills

Conscious and Subconscious Ideas

As a useful approximation, we can divide all our ideas into two categories. One category is conscious or explicit ideas (ideas that you can put into words). The other category is subconscious, inexplicit or intuitive ideas, including emotions. Sometimes we have no conscious awareness of a subconscious idea. However, it’

Research

My Experience with My Debate Policy

How guaranteeing debates saves time.

Research

Fallibilism, Bias, and the Rule of Law

Effective Altruism can learn from the rule of law.

Skills

Intuition Is Part of Rational Living

Your conscious and subconscious mind are like a boss and workers.

Skills

Intuition and Rational Debate

Previously I wrote Don’t Suppress Your Intuition and Intuition and Rationality. I’m now expanding on ideas in those articles. I recommend reading them first. A key to not being bullied in debates is knowing how to say “I intuitively disagree with that.” If you won’t express intuitive

Skills

Intuition and Rationality

Intuitions are part of rational thinking and debate.

Skills

Don’t Suppress Your Intuition

Intuitions aren't irrational.

Research

Grammar as Functions

Grammar concepts can be thought of like mathematical functions.

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