Research

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,

Research

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’

Research

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.

Research

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.

Research

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

Research

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.

Research

Critical Rationalism Overview

Critical Rationalism (CR) is an epistemology developed by 20th century philosopher Karl Popper [http://fallibleideas.com/books#popper]. “Epistemology” means the philosophy of knowledge. An epistemology is a philosophical framework to guide effective thinking, learning, and evaluating ideas. Reasonable epistemologies say what reason is and how it works. Epistemology is

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Introduction to Reason

You use your mind to guide your life. You think about every decision you make. Even if the thinking is quick or unconscious, your stomach or heart doesn’t literally make the decision. Your mind is what enables you to learn and use skills. It’s what lets you do

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Challenging Paths Forward Questions

Questions Suppose that you’re a high status, popular intellectual. (Most of this will also apply if you’re low or medium status or popularity. It has less relevance for non-intellectuals – people who aren’t interested in ideas, rationality or truth-seeking. But you don’t need any credentials to count

Research

Paths Forward to Correct Errors

The Problem If I’m mistaken about this idea, how will I find out? A Path Forward is an answer to this question. It’s a way to make progress – a way to find out about and correct a mistake. You should ask this question often because without a good

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Evolution Summary

Walking through the forest, you find a wristwatch and a rock. You think the watch must have had a designer. It’s complex and wouldn’t appear in nature randomly. It has the appearance of design for a purpose. But the rock doesn’t stand out and require explanation, and

Research

Yes or No Philosophy

A “binary” issue is one with only two answers, e.g. yes or no. Epistemology is fundamentally binary. E.g. you can accept an idea, or not. You can reject an idea, or not. You can decide a criticism refutes an idea, or not. You can decide an idea solves

Research

Integrating Conceptual Units and Combining Dimensions

Dimensions or units are a type of idea or concept. Two or more of them can be integrated together into a single conceptual unit. This follows the general rules of integration of ideas. Any group of ideas can be integrated together, but most groupings and combination methods result in nonsense.

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Brandolini’s Law

I read a tweet [https://twitter.com/g_s_bhogal/status/1438972536465809409]: > Brandolini's Law (aka the Bullshit Asymmetry Principle): It takes a lot more energy to refute bullshit than to produce it. Hence, the world is full of unrefuted bullshit. I considered and analyzed the tweeted idea.

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Most Factors Aren’t Borderline

When trying to evaluate an issue, there are many, many factors that could be considered. As a matter of logic, the solution space is huge, and the number of things you could look at is huge. Most factors are irrelevant. Of the relevant factors, most are not close calls. They

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Breakpoints, Categories and Margins of Error

There are infinitely many quantitative differences between analog factors. But there are only a small number of relevant qualitative differences for a particular context with a few goals. Qualitative, notable, important, meaningful differences – differences that connect to some kinda relevant intellectual concept – are sparse and rare. There are also digital

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Chat about Decision Making Math

I had this discussion in August 2021 while working on my article, Multi-Factor Decision Making Math [https://criticalfallibilism.com/multi-factor-decision-making-math/]. Justin [https://justinmallone.com] was studying math. I saw an opportunity to explain the issue he was working on and also relate it to my article. Justin had not seen

Critical Fallibilism

Multi-Factor Decision Making Math

Explaining the math and philosophy for reaching decisive conclusions.

Classics

Rationality Links

This is some of my older writing about rationality that I wanted to share. Objectivist and Critical Rationalist Epistemology [https://curi.us/1579-objectivist-and-popperian-epistemology] discusses similarities and differences between Karl Popper and Ayn Rand. They agree more than most people realize. Conflict, Criticism, Learning, Reason [https://curi.us/1583-conflict-criticism-learning-reason] discusses rationality

Classics

Resolving Conflicting Ideas

I’ve written a lot about how to rationally resolve conflicts between ideas. It’s one of the most important issues in philosophy. We have lots of ideas, and they disagree/conflict/contradict with each other, so what should we do about that? How do we evaluate the ideas and