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'

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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.

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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

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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

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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

Research

Judging and Fixing Your Own Errors

In order to make progress, you must find and fix errors. A key is being able to successfully judge, for yourself, what is an error. You’re not going to be able to fix errors if you can’t find them. Finding errors is a more important issue to focus

Research

Ideas Should Be Judged as Refuted or Non-Refuted

Ideas should be judged as refuted or non-refuted. What does this claim mean, why does it matter, and is it actually correct? People commonly believe ideas start at a score of 0, and then have to reach 0.95 to meet the burden of proof. Details can vary, e.g.

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Epistemology, Scheduling, Bias and Iteration

Epistemology is about how to learn. I know you just wanted to know about cooking or getting a raise or something specific, but you need some way of learning about those topics. Well, you already have a way – you do learn some – but it’s mediocre, so it’s worth

Research

Regular Arguments

People focus on special categories of argument. Deduction, induction, abduction, argument from authority, ad hominem argument, non sequitur argument, etc. But sometimes people are confused by the concept of regular arguments that don’t fit those special categories. Most arguments are just plain arguments, not inductive, deductive or about a

Research

Learning with Sub-Parts

The following research article is overly optimistic in some ways. I don’t think it’s exactly correct but I do think the ideas are worth considering. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- There are two intellectual tools you need to learn anything. One, you need to be able to learn simple things. Two, you

Research

Flexible, Organized Knowledge

What are we trying to get from our thinking and learning? Flexible knowledge, not fragile knowledge; knowledge we can apply to new cases instead of only to the cases we were taught to apply it to. We want to understand things ourselves so we can think for ourselves, not accept

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Digital vs. Analog Thinking

David Deutsch wrote in The Beginning of Infinity: > Another thing that they [computers] have in common is that they are all digital: they operate on information in the form of discrete values of physical variables, such as electronic switches being on or off, or cogs being at one of

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Artificial General Intelligence Speculations

There are some speculative thoughts about developing Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) which take into account Critical Rationalist philosophy. The biggest current problems for developing AGI are creating an idea data structure and resolving conflicts of ideas. A secondary problem is how to “randomly” vary ideas (including varying the null idea,

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Learning, Habits and Automation

Learning Learning a skill, which you’ll use many times, has two basic steps. First, there’s figuring out how to do it at all. Second, there’s practicing it until it’s an automatic habit. When you’re done, you can autopilot the skill without really thinking about it.

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Progress Despite Emotions and Bias; Mastery of Sentences

If you try to think much, you will sometimes get upset, be biased, get tilted, get frustrated, be sad, be angry, etc. Maybe not all of those, but you’ll have some problems like that. To deal with this well, you need some emotion-resistant and bias-resistant skills. You need skills

Research

Weighted Error Rates

People make mistakes at different rates. Some people make more mistakes than others. And one person makes more mistakes in one field (e.g. physics) than another (e.g. cooking), but that’d be reversed for someone else. Some mistakes are worse than others. Loosely, they’re bigger mistakes. They’

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Organizing Rational Discussion

Critical Rationalism (CR) says critical discussion is a major learning tool. But it doesn’t say how to have a critical discussion. What do you do, step by step? Brainstorm and criticize. That’s not much guidance. CR has other broad tips like tolerance and a viewpoint on culture clash.

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Introspection, Overreaching and Emotions

People have a hard time introspecting. That means they don’t understand themselves. That means they skipped steps when developing a bunch of their ideas and traits. They reached conclusions (like what kind of person to be, how to act, and what ideas to have) that they didn’t understand.

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Critical Fallibilism, Evolution and Digital Error Correction

Critical Fallibilism (CF) is a philosophy about knowledge, reason and learning. It begins with questions. What is knowledge? How do I learn? Which ideas are true or good? What are ideas for? What makes thinking rational? How can I use thinking to improve my life? And what is the origin

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Fallibilism and Problem Solving with Meta Levels

Philosophers have many questions. Which ideas are true or false? Good or bad? What is reason and how do we think rationally? What is knowledge and how do we get it? These questions are attempts to deal with human fallibility, which is our capacity to make mistakes. The history of

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Yes or No Philosophy and Score Systems

Ideas don’t have degrees of goodness. An idea is meant to solve a problem or, in other words, accomplish a goal. An idea either would succeed at its goal or it wouldn’t. The goal can be intellectual, e.g. answering a question or understanding an issue. It can

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Bounds, Hurdles and Progress

Bounded/limited systems/things always have small potential when you compare to an unbounded/unlimited things. Unbounded means infinite potential. A bounded system never has similar potential to an unlimited system. Limits make a huge difference; they totally transform a system into a much, much lesser system in terms of

Research

Critical Fallibilism and Critical Rationalism Bullet Points

Critical Fallibilism (CF) is a philosophy of reason. It improves on Critical Rationalism (CR), an epistemology by Karl Popper [https://criticalfallibilism.com/critical-rationalism-overview/%0A] (and refined by David Deutsch [https://www.elliottemple.com/essays/reading#david-deutsch]). CF, by Elliot Temple [https://elliottemple.com], retains CR’s major ideas and themes.