Shorts

Articles under 1000 words.

Shorts

Philosophy as a Secondary Skill

Philosophy can be done by itself (primary) or to support other activities (secondary). It can help you do better problem solving and learning regarding any topic. So you can pursue philosophy as a means to other ends, or as an end in itself. (There are many types of philosophy; I'm

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Do You Like Learning Philosophy?

Do you like learning philosophy? Or do you just want to be a good philosopher? Do you just want the results you imagine getting from philosophy, such as winning more arguments, having innovative ideas, having more of your solutions to problems actually work, impressing people with your cleverness, being rational,

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Mold-Finding Dog Training and Induction

I read an account of training a dog to find hidden mold problems in buildings. (It’s in Mold Controlled by John Banta.) Dogs have a better sense of smell than us, so they can sniff for mold effectively. In short, if you want an exceptionally skilled dog, it takes

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Losing Track of Discussions

In philosophy discussions, people routinely lose track of the discussion. They forget or become confused about who said what, what replies to each statement were made, what replies to replies were made, what was left unanswered, and what the current evaluation (given the statements so far) of the conclusion is

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Intentional, Focused Practice

An especially effective method of learning is intentional, focused practice. Intentional means you’re consciously, explicitly trying to learn. You have a goal to learn something. You’re trying to learn on purpose. Focused means you’re trying to learn only a couple things at once. Limiting what you learn

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Investigating Unstable Intuitions

I’ve discussed a technique for investigating your subconscious intuitions. A main way you know about intuitions is they like some things and dislike others (and have no opinion on others). Even if they won’t explain themselves in words, they express opinions – that’s a main way that you

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Todo Lists and Self-Coercion

A todo list is an organizational tool, not a motivational tool. It’s a memory aid, not a way to persuade yourself about what to do. You should put tasks on your todo list that you want to do. If you include tasks that you don’t want to do,

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Todo Lists Delegate Work Away From Your Conscious Mind

Critical Fallibilism advocates delegating work from your conscious mind to your subconscious. This takes mental load off your conscious mind, which frees up attention for other things, including creating more advanced knowledge. Your subconscious isn’t the only place you can delegate mental work to. Todo lists also reduce the

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Terminology Clarification Regarding the “Subconscious”

I’m enjoying reading Why I Left Orthodox Medicine: Healing for the 21st Century by Derrick Lonsdale. I noticed that he uses the word “subconscious” differently than I do. I wanted to clarify my terminology in case anyone is confused. In Critical Fallibilism (CF) essays, “subconscious” refers to the part

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Peer Review Is Worse than the Internet

The internet can be really smart and effective sometimes. We’ve seen examples where impressive things have been figured out by people on internet platforms like Reddit, Facebook, TikTok or 4chan. In the Netflix documentary Don't F**k with Cats: Hunting an Internet Killer, a Facebook group helps catch a

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Peer Review and Appeals to Authority

Suppose you write a blog post arguing a point. Some readers will reply (or, worse, think it without saying it): “If that was true, you would get it published in a peer reviewed journal. If you don’t do that, it’s because you’re wrong.” The assumption here is

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Peer Review Does Private, Elite Gatekeeping

Peer review prevents some ideas from being published. That’s a significant part of the point. What is published is supposed to already be filtered or gatekept to only be high quality ideas. So the public doesn’t even get to see most ideas. A small group of people have

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Ignoring Criticism and Peer Review

In peer review, part of the idea is you (the article author) don’t get to just arbitrarily ignore the criticisms of the reviewer. You’re supposed to address the issues in some way. But then once you publish, you mostly get to arbitrarily ignore your critics. The peer reviewers

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Paths Forward Could Replace Some Peer Review

Peer review lacks transparency. Paths Forward commonly involves rational, critical discussions on publicly-readable internet forums. That enables transparency and some other advantages like wider participation. Article authors could be expected to address criticisms. This is like how people have recommended a norm of sharing raw data along with articles. I

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Advocating Public Peer Review

I criticize peer review for lacking transparency. Then I talked about friendly, private editing, which is fine, and is usually used for papers before the peer review process. Private editing is fine because no one is asked to trust that it ensured high quality. It isn’t an attempt to

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Private Editing and Peer Review

I criticized peer review for lacking transparency. I suggested the process should take place publicly. (I have no objection to anonymizing the discussion until the review process is complete to help reduce bias during the discussion. I’d suggest de-anonymizing it afterwards though.) Do I ever have someone edit one

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Peer Review Lacks Transparency

Who peer reviewed an academic paper? That’s secret. More importantly, what criticisms did the peers reviewers come up with? That’s secret. What changes were made to the paper due to peer review? That’s secret. When your error correction process is secret, the public can’t see how

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Allocating Intellectual Attention

There are a few standard ways intellectual attention is allocated to ideas. There are social networks. Having allies and fans helps with getting attention. There are gatekeepers and lots of people follow their curated output. There’s popularity or virality. Saying stuff people like and share, or which seems good

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Low Quality Literature Is Hard To Discuss

I recently read Silent Spring by Rachel Carson. I liked it. I had been told it’s horrible. The book and its author have been demonized by right-wingers including the Ayn Rand Institute. It’s a really famous and controversial book. It had a significant influence on political policies. A

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Meta Criticism and Unstated Premises

It’s often hard to engage with the literature on a topic because the literature is bad in meta ways. You can criticize the methodology and the glaring omissions, but it’s hard to write about the actual object-level topic. For example, suppose some economics literature didn’t have a

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Followup for Food Packaging Grammar

Let’s talk more about my post Food Packaging Grammar Error. Summarizing the post, I commented on frozen microwave meal instructions stating “peel film back enough to stir, replace film and cook […]”. I pointed out that it doesn’t say to stir. The steps are to peel, replace and cook.

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Delegating Mental Work

People often try to become really smart by optimizing their conscious thinking. This can only take you so far. Conscious brainpower is a limited resource. To be a really effective thinker, you have to consider how to use things outside of your conscious mind to help you be smarter. What

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Question-Based Critical Fallibilism Epistemology Outline

This is a brief, question-based outline of some Critical Fallibilist epistemology. What is knowledge? Information that’s effective for (adapted to) a purpose. It has the appearance of design. It’s not arbitrary nor random. How is knowledge created? Evolution (replication with variation and selection). The explanation of why evolution

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Actors and Subconscious Automatizations

There are different acting methods which relate to different ways of dealing with subconscious automatizations. Some actors try to get into their character’s mindset and immerse themselves in the part. They’re trying to adjust a bunch of automatizations and intuitions so they actually become more like the character.

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Overthinking and Not Knowing What Success Is

A common cause of overthinking is that you’re confused, so you keep trying to do better, but you’re not really sure what’s better, so you stay confused. If you’re doing something that you don’t know how to do, you may keep retrying unsuccessfully. Then you