My answers to some philosophical prompts (try answering the prompts yourself in the comments below!):

Initiative means... It's important because...

Living life. Doing things instead of doing an impersonation of a rock.

Personal, individual responsibility is... It's good because...

Living life. Doing things for yourself instead of doing an impersonation of a rock.

Taking responsibility for your life means recognizing that other people won't solve your problems for you, and taking initiative to solve them yourself.

Taking responsibility also means choosing to control your own life. (You cannot be responsible for things you do not control.) That requires initiative rather than passively letting things happen – you have to actually do stuff to have any control.

Living irresponsibly-passively means letting external stuff control you, like memes, people ("authorities" or not), or even the weather (e.g. a passive person outside could live in the sun and die in the snow, the weather chooses).

One thing a responsible person does is never evade. He deals with things. Evading is irresponsible because it leaves you with no control over the evaded issue.

Criticism is... It has the following benefits...

A criticism is an explanation of a flaw an idea has. Identifying and understanding flaws makes it a lot easier to fix them (to figure out how to change your ideas to no longer have those flaws).

Persuasion is... It is good because...

Persuasion is about suggesting an idea that someone prefers over some idea(s) they already had. It's straightforwardly good if someone changes ideas to ones that they judge to be better.

Persuasion does not require multiple people. It can be self-persuasion. Persuasion, including self- and external, is how rational learning works.

Fallibility is... It is important to understand because...

People commonly make mistakes, so it's important to use methods of doing things which can identify and correct mistakes that occur along the way, rather than relying on everything going perfectly.

Learning and knowledge...

Want something? Prefer anything? What you need is knowledge. (Learning is getting knowledge.)

Learn how to get what you want. Learn how to meet your preference or goal. If you know how, you'll succeed.

The only exception is if you want something impossible or immoral. In those cases, learning is still the best approach. You can learn that it's impossible or immoral (and why), learn what a better preference/goal/want would be (and why), and learn how to change your mind to have that better preference/goal/want instead with zero hesitation or regrets.

Have any doubts about this? Any questions? The answers are all learnable knowledge. You can learn whether your doubts or correct or not and what's best to do about them. You can learn answers to questions (or learn that a question has no answer, perhaps because it's self-contradictory or nonsense, in which case you can learn how to make better questions, what related questions you'd want answers to instead, etc)

All of this is pure awesome with no drawbacks. It's the right way to live.

Reason has to do with correcting errors. What I mean is...

Rationality is commonly confused with being right. Actually, it's about how one takes into account the possibility of being wrong. Rationality is ability to find and correct errors. It's about being able to make changes going forward.

Without rationality, it doesn't matter how great one is today; long term one is screwed without change, because all people are only at the beginning of infinity. There's still unlimited progress, change and greatness ahead. However great you are today, if you don't change, you will be passed. (That you might die before this issue has maximum effect is not exactly comforting.)

Authority is... It is bad because...

Authority is the enemy of all of the above, especially life.

Following authority means not living on your own initiative. Following authority means not taking responsibility for your life and controlling it, but rather letting the authority be the primary responsible party making choices and controlling outcomes. (One would still be responsible for the choice to follow authority, thus allowing for plenty of moral guilt, but not much else.)

Authority isn't rational. It doesn't control things by having the best most persuasive ideas that have been exposed to lots of criticism in order to figure out the best ideas. It's not about learning, it's not designed for each person to control his life using his judgment and knowledge.

one meaning of the word “rational” is “has authority, is Right". even “True”, sometimes. this is a bad meaning, but a standard English meaning nonetheless.

basically ppl are justificationists and use “rational” to mean what’s good in that epistemology. and the basic point of justificationism is: if an idea doesn’t have authority, why would anyone (rationally) accept it? the "rationally" excludes reasons like arbitrarily due to taste, or chosen by self-interested bias.

what’s good in their epistemology is authority and being Right and having the Truth.

for this approach to reason, an idea can be rational. saying an idea is rational is claiming it is True, or at least has Authority.

a better approach is to see reason as a process. the point is to think about ideas in a way that can make progress. that means that if a mistake is made, the process can find out and correct it. error correcting approaches are rational, and ones which prevent error correction are irrational.


so, the standard idea most people have is: knowledge = JTB (justified, true belief)

meaning you should Believe ideas which are True, but you only get credit if you believe them due to authority (justification), NOT for any other reason (b/c if they don’t have authority but turn out true, why'd you believe it? that wasn't a rational belief, you didn't know it was true, you just got lucky that it happened to be true)

i've been trying to figure out a good word that means roughly no-authority, but approaches the issue in a positive way, saying what the concept *is* rather than isn't, and not mentioning any opposing view. i don't think there is such a word! :(((

the word "freedom" isn't specific and clear enough. same for "liberal", "liberty", "reason" or "rational".

the words "humility" and "modesty" are too negative and have mistakes mixed in. their synonyms are worse.

"decentralized" doesn't get the point across well, it's too much of a special case.

"non-justificationist" would not be understood, nor would "fallibilist".

The word "independence", like some of the others, is too connected with politics not philosophy. also, like some of the others, lots of people who are pro-authority would be in favor of it and not see the contradiction

"cooperation" is too specific (not covering all the meaning) and people won't understand the connection

"no-authority" or "anti-authority" are both defining it in terms of what it's not. i want a word which means the right concept, rather than just denying an opposing view

some other potentially useful words are, "self-rule" (which sounds way too much like being your own authority), "self-determination", "autonomous"

btw if you look up the antonyms of "authority", they are terrible. they are words like weakness, powerlessness, inferiority, and disadvantage. that is what people think lack of authority is like. it tells you something about how badly they want authority, and see authority as a major goal and all around desirable thing. http://thesaurus.com/browse/authority

it's really sad, and says something about our culture, that there's no anti-authority word that is on par with the word "authority" for clarity, being well known and understood, applying broadly, and other things one would want from a word which make it easy to use effectively. like you can use "authority" for both political and epistemological discussions and people won't blink, they won't find it at all odd, weird, confusing or objectionable, it's just natural. but with a word like "independence", that's primarily a political word, and people will hesitate if they see it in a philosophy context.


one place I'd like to use this word is a slogan. something kinda like:

initiative, responsibility, criticism, persuasion, humility

the other words there are decent enough but "humility" is bad


another reason i want a no-authority word is for epistemology discussion. i've identified rejection of authority as perhaps the most important theme of the good epistemology, more than fallibilism, criticism, rationalism, objectivity, or existence (Rand considered "Existentialism" before "Objectivism", but it was taken).

i think the top two epistemology concepts are no-authority and error-correction. both are implied by fallibility but no one knows that. (nor do they know much about the relationship between the "critical" in "critical rationalism" and error-correction).

they also both imply each other. the rejection of authority entails needing to worry about error (as opposed to trusting authority to be right). and correcting errors requires considering the merits of ideas, rather than their amount of authority.


another word that would be nice is error-correction as one word. but that's not so important because error-correction is a descriptive phrase that positively identifies the right thing to do, without mentioning any opposing view.


another word I'd like is a positive word for non-TCS-coercion. "common preference finding" doesn't work well, it's too specific and is jargon.


another word I'd like is a positive word for non-force. there's "peace" but that's for groups not an individual level. there's "cooperation" but using that word does not communicate to people "no force allowed". people will consider relationships involving some force to be "cooperative". there's "voluntary" and "consensual" but they don't really capture it.


post suggestions in the comments

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It is not fitting for humans to take on parochial labor roles. Rather than divide labor, we must abolish it: labor is for machines. When we have universal machines construct according to our mind and thought, then each man will be an island, and there shall be no more division of labor.

I wrote this argument with references to four people. Who are they?

I won't say if guesses are correct unless you get all four exactly, or you explain the reasoning for your guess.

Bonus points if you can figure out what the argument is saying, analyze whether it's a good argument, and explain why I consider this puzzle worthwhile.

Want to learn more philosophy? Got questions? Got Ideas? Want criticism? Want to read philosophy discussions? There is now a single best place online to go: The Fallible Ideas discussion group.

http://www.amazon.com/Influence-Psychology-Persuasion-Business-Essentials/dp/006124189X

this book doesn't use critical thinking. it takes some evidence and tells a story to explain it and doesn't tell us how it knows that story is correct and not some other story. it doesn't consider and criticize rival explanations. it just gives selective attention, over and over, to favored explanations. why are those explanations favored? it never says.

each influence tactic it discusses it acknowledged as fallible. but there's no extensive discussion about when and why they fail. the author doesn't seek explanations about what differentiates the successes and failures, instead he simply accepts and ignores the failure rate. the "scientists" involved in the field try to argue that X causes Y by doing an experiment where X happens and Y results, with a control with no X and no Y. they don't consider the Z and W that also differed between the test group and the control. but they also don't consider what A, B or C could be added to stop it from working anymore, or what background factors D, E, and F are required to be present for the X/Y relationship to work.

generally, the book is concerned with selective positive claims and not with error, correcting error, or considering everything.

the book is also sometimes wrong, incompetent or dishonest about technical details. in one case it described a drop from 38% to 10% as impressive. but it was in circumstances where we would have expected a 2/3 drop anyway. a 2/3 drop already gets us down to 12.66% so the observed drop could easily be within the margin of error, but that isn't mentioned. there was also a straightforward reason for a greater than 2/3 drop. yet the 38% to 10% drop was simply presented as a large drop scientifically proving the point – it was treated as evidence of the author's particular story about why there would be a drop in this case.

another issue is the book doesn't try to apply what it claims we're learning. it will raise some point, e.g. that people are biased in a particular way in a particular kind of situation. then it won't go looking for what other situations that applies to. for example it talked about fraternity hazing and how people try to act consistent with their sunk costs, so if they already went through tough hazing then they try to like the group they joined. hazing is an easy target but why not consider whether the same principle can be used to criticize some less well known target? for example people with PhDs is a group with high costs to enter it, so should people with PhDs watch out for bias regarding how much they think their PhD was worth the price and how nice life in the PhD recipient group is? the book consistently doesn't go the extra mile to consider anything controversial, it keeps just discussing psychological factors to make points that are already popular.

the book has other flaws too.

This was originally written in a March 2012 email:

Having a bit of knowledge about physics is important to most fields.

For example: tennis, chess, hockey, baseball, architecture, chemistry, biology, cooking, cleaning, building computers, building chairs, and so on.

The amount of physics knowledge needed for basic competence in this fields is small: the large majority of people in our culture have enough already.

You don't see people trying to heat their food in the freezer.

You don't see people losing tennis tournaments because they were confused about physics.

You don't see people doing chemistry experiments using only water and expecting each portion of water to transmute into the right chemicals because they want it to.

So, people take for granted having some understanding of physics as background knowledge. That knowledge still matters and it's still correct to say physics has a lot of reach even if people take it for granted.

If you get this basic physics stuff wrong, you can be really screwed. All sorts of stuff can go horribly wrong. Getting it right does matter a lot.

In general you don't need to know the details of quantum physics. That has less reach. It's quite important for some stuff like building nanometer-scale computer chips. But you don't need to know any quantum physics to win a tennis tournament or cook dinner or even to build a skyscraper.


To do basic science you do need to know some physics, but often not quantum physics, and often not any physics that goes beyond the background knowledge your average scientist will have and get right. If they messed up the physics they need, it could easily invalidate all their experiments in their field and make all their conclusions wrong, but in practice this rarely comes up because they don't get it wrong.

There are people who get a lot of basic physics wrong. We call them superstitious or gullible or stuff like that. It matters. But they are a minority. And a lot of the people watching science TV shows or getting fooled by bending spoons or talking about "crystal energy" or "dreamcatchers" aren't actually getting physics wrong, they are making different kinds of mistakes like they think it helps provide meaning for their life and they intentionally don't think about whether the physics is right or not.


Epistemology is a lot like physics in this regard. A relatively small amount of epistemology knowledge is relevant and important to pretty much every human endeavor. It matters to tennis, chess, hockey, baseball, architecture, and all the rest, same as with physics.

And our culture has some good quality knowledge of epistemology which people take for granted and routinely use.

But, contrary to physics, most have large mistakes in their basic epistemology background knowledge. There are widespread mistakes in our culture. And they don't just affect some special minorities that stand out, they affect 99%.

The result? All sorts of stuff goes wrong, and people don't know why or sometimes don't even know something went wrong.

People do lose tennis tournaments due to bad epistemology. That's actually common. Top people in all types of competition face significant psychological issues. They have to keep the right kind of mindset and focus to play their best. And what happens is they get to the finals and make a mistake. Then they make 5 more mistakes. Then, some people will set it aside and continue to play their best. But other people will get frustrated and have the wrong attitude to mistakes and let it "rattle" them, and will "lose focus" and start playing worse and making more mistakes they wouldn't normally make if they were relaxed in a low pressure situation, or wouldn't make if they weren't frustrated with previous mistakes.

Sometimes these problems dealing with mistakes decide a match. Better attitudes to mistakes and learning, and better understanding of their mind and emotions -- better philosophical knowledge -- could have won the match.

Sometimes players come back the next year, get in a similar situation, but then get past it and win this time. They thought hard about it and improved their epistemological knowledge (and some other knowledge too). Without knowing the name of the field. Without having the benefit of a lot of already-known and useful stuff in the field. They have to re-invent some stuff, and pick some up in bits and pieces from advice from their coach and sports/competition-related books and so on.

Some people never get past these mental issues and never become champions. That's common too. It's hard to reinvent enough epistemology and pick it up from scattered places. More people fail at this than succeed.


Epistemology comes up, and sometimes goes wrong, in all sorts of more mundane situations too. People get frustrated while playing a video game and throw the controller at the TV and break it, or just feel bad. People get stuck playing a video game and don't improve. People fight with their friends when playing a team video game and blame each other for letting the team down. Bad epistemology (in the background knowledge of our culture that people take for granted) contributes to these problems and good epistemology could address them.


And epistemology comes up, and goes wrong, when scientists start talking philosophy and trying to draw philosophical conclusions from their work.


Just like there are some places where physics reaches more (e.g. building GPS devices) and more advanced physics is important, there are also places where epistemology reaches more and more advanced epistemology is important.

Without physics well beyond the background knowledge in our culture, you're going to have a lot of problems building a GPS device. The background knowledge isn't even close to good enough.

And without more advanced knowledge of epistemology, you're going to design schools wrong. Education is an area where epistemology very heavily reaches. The background knowledge about epistemology in our culture is faulty, but the error rate with some of the "more advanced" knowledge (like explicit versions of induction, empiricism, justificationism and other stuff you can read in philosophy books) is a lot worse.

It's a bit like using superstition to build a GPS device. It's so wrong that you make a compete and utter mess of things.

That is, by the way, why our schools are "failing". (They don't even know what succeeding would be and are judging be the wrong criteria. But our schools do happen to be bad according to better criteria too. FYI US schools are far better than all the asian countries though.)


So there are various areas where epistemology is extra relevant. You don't just need a bit, you need lots. Everything has to do with learning, but some stuff more than others.

Epistemology heavy topics include: education (including lots of parenting stuff), morality, stuff to do with organizing knowledge (like programming or organizing a library), stuff to do with brains, stuff to do with how people or animals or computers or anything think or learn or create knowledge, stuff to do with evolution, stuff to do with ideas or types of ideas (like the distinctions people draw between emotions vs theories vs values vs guesses, etc), qualia, stuff to do with fallibility, errors, mistakes, sources of error, good explanations, judging explanations, methods of interpreting observations, scientific methods (b/c the point of science is to create knowledge, so the methods for doing that are methods of creating knowledge, methods in epistemology).


When scientists try to do science to address questions about how people think and live, and how that compares with animals, and the consequences for morality, they are straying especially heavily into epistemology in multiple ways and going far beyond what cultural background knowledge can be expected to handle (sort of handle, but actually fail a fair amount). When their epistemology is grossly false, they make multiple large mistakes per substantial idea in these areas, and so all their conclusions are crap.