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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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.

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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

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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

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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

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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.