I emailed this to some MIRI people and others related to Less Wrong.

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I believe I know some important things you don't, such as that induction is impossible, and that your approach to AGI is incorrect due to epistemological issues which were explained decades ago by Karl Popper. How do you propose to resolve that, if at all?

I think methodology for how to handle disagreements comes prior to the content of the disagreements. I have writing about my proposed methodology, Paths Forward, and about how Less Wrong doesn't work because of the lack of Paths Forward:

http://curi.us/1898-paths-forward-short-summary

http://curi.us/2064-less-wrong-lacks-representatives-and-paths-forward

Can anyone tell me that I'm mistaken about any of this? Do you have a criticism of Paths Forward? Will any of you take responsibility for doing Paths Forward?

Have any of you written a serious answer to Karl Popper (the philosopher who refuted induction – http://fallibleideas.com/books#popper )? That's important to address, not ignore, since if he's correct then lots of your research approaches are mistakes.

In general, if someone knows a mistake you're making, what are the mechanisms for telling you and having someone take responsibility for addressing the matter well and addressing followup points? Or if someone has comments/questions/criticism, what are the mechanisms available for getting those addressed? Preferably this should be done in public with permalinks at a venue which supports nested quoting. And whatever your answer to this, is it written down in public somewhere?

Do you have public writing detailing your ideas which anyone is taking responsibility for the correctness of? People at Less Wrong often say "read the sequences" but none of them take responsibility for addressing issues with the sequences, including answering questions or publishing fixes if there are problems. Nor do they want to address existing writing (e.g. by David Deutsch – http://fallibleideas.com/books#deutsch ) which contains arguments refuting major aspects of the sequences.

Your forum ( https://agentfoundations.org ) says it's topic-limited to AGI math, so it's not appropriate for discussing criticism of the philosophical assumptions behind your approach (which, if correct, imply the AGI math you're doing is a mistake). And it states ( https://agentfoundations.org/how-to-contribute ):

It’s important for us to keep the forum focused, though; there are other good places to talk about subjects that are more indirectly related to MIRI’s research, and the moderators here may close down discussions on subjects that aren’t a good fit for this forum.

But you do not link those other good places. Can you tell me any Paths-Forward-compatible other places to use, particularly ones where discussion could reasonably result in MIRI changing?

If you disagree with Paths Forward, will you say why? And do you have some alternative approach written in public?

Also, more broadly, whether you will address these issues or not, do you know of anyone that will?

If the answers to these matters are basically "no", then if you're mistaken, won't you stay that way, despite some better ideas being known and people being willing to tell you?

The (Popperian) Fallible Ideas philosophy community ( http://fallibleideas.com ) is set up to facilitate Paths Forward (here is our forum which does this http://fallibleideas.com/discussion-info ), and has knowledge of epistemology which implies you're making big mistakes. We address all known criticisms of our positions (which is achievable without using too much resources like time and attention, as Paths Forward explains); do you?

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Update (Dec 2019):

One person from MIRI responded the day I sent out the letter (Nov 9, 2017). He didn't answer anything I asked, but I decided to add the quotes for better completeness and record keeping. Below are Rob Bensinger's 3 emails, quoted, and my replies. After that he stopped responding.

Hi, Elliot. My short answer is that I think Popper is wrong; inductive reasoning works just as well as deductive in principle, though in practice we often have to rely on heuristic approximations of ideal inductive and deductive reasoning. The traditional problems with in-principle inductive reasoning (e.g., infinite hypothesis spaces) are well-addressed by Solomonoff's theory of algorithmic probability (http://world.std.com/~rjs/tributes/rathmannerhutter.pdf).

Have you written a serious and reasonably complete answer to Popper, or do you know of one that you will endorse, take responsibility for (if it's mistaken, you were mistaken), and address questions/criticisms/etc regarding?

And where is the Path Forward if you're mistaken?

I feel comfortable endorsing Solomonoff induction and Garrabrant induction (https://intelligence.org/2016/09/12/new-paper-logical-induction/) as philosophically unproblematic demonstrations that inductive reasoning works well in principle.

So you're disagreeing with Popper, but without addressing his arguments. If you're mistaken, and your mistakes have already been explained decades ago, you'll stay mistaken. No Paths Forward. Right?

I've read Popper before, and I believe the SEP when it says that he considered infinite hypothesis spaces a major underlying problem for induction (if not the core problem):

Popper gave two formulations of the problem of induction; the first is the establishment of the truth of a theory by empirical evidence; the second, slightly weaker, is the justification of a preference for one theory over another as better supported by empirical evidence. Both of these he declared insoluble, on the grounds, roughly put, that scientific theories have infinite scope and no finite evidence can ever adjudicate among them (LSD, 253–254; Grattan-Guiness 2004).

My claim is that Solomonoff induction addresses this problem handily, and that it more generally provides a good formal framework for understanding how and why inductive reasoning works well in practice.

I think we're getting off-topic. Do you agree or disagree with Paths Forward? Why? Do you have alternative written procedures for having issues like this addressed? Do you have e.g. a forum which would be a good place for me to reply to what you've said?

If I point out that you're mistaken about Popper's arguments and how they may be addressed, what happens next? BTW this would be much easier if there was a direct written answer to Popper by you, or by anyone else, that you were willing to take responsibility for. Why isn't there? That would also save effort for both of us – because responding to your unwritten views will require back-and-forth emails where I ask questions to find out what they are and get clarifications on what you're actually claiming. If your reasoning is that Popper is mistaken, so you don't want to bother properly answering him ... then your fallible criticism of Popper isn't itself being exposed to error correction very well.

In my understanding, there’s no one who speaks for Less Wrong (LW), as its representative, and is responsible for addressing questions and criticisms. LW, as a school of thought, has no agents, no representatives – or at least none who are open to discussion.

The people I’ve found interested in discussion on the website and slack have diverse views which disagree with LW on various points. None claim LW is true. They all admit it has some weaknesses, some unanswered criticisms. They have their own personal views which aren’t written down, and which they don’t claim to be correct anyway.

This is problematic. Suppose I wrote some criticisms of the sequences, or some Bayesian book. Who will answer me? Who will fix the mistakes I point out, or canonically address my criticisms with counter-arguments? No one. This makes it hard to learn LW’s ideas in addition to making it hard to improve them.

My school of thought (Fallible Ideas – FI) has representatives and claims to be correct as far as is known (like LW, it’s fallibilist, so of course we may discover flaws and improve it in the future). It claims to be the best current knowledge, which is currently non-refuted, and has refutations of its rivals. There are other schools of thought which say the same thing – they actually think they’re right and have people who will address challenges. But LW just has individuals who individually chat about whatever interests them without there being any organized school of thought to engage with. No one is responsible for defining an LW school of thought and dealing with intellectual challenges.

So how is progress to be made? Suppose LW, vaguely defined as it may be, is mistaken on some major points. E.g. Karl Popper refuted induction. How will LW find out about its mistake and change? FI has a forum where its representatives take responsibility for seeing challenges addressed, and have done so continuously for over 20 years (as some representatives stopped being available, others stepped up).

Which challenges are addressed? All of them. You can’t just ignore a challenge because it could be correct. If you misjudge something and then ignore it, you will stay wrong. Silence doesn’t facilitate error correction. For information on this methodology, which I call Paths Forward. BTW if you want to take this challenge seriously, you’ll need to click the link; I don’t repeat all of it. In general, having much knowledge is incompatible with saying all of it (even on one topic) upfront in forum posts without using references.

My criticism of LW as a whole is that it lacks Paths Forward (and lacks some alternative of its own to fulfill the same purpose). In that context, my criticisms regarding specific points don’t really matter (or aren’t yet ready to be discussed) because there’s no mechanism for them to be rationally resolved.

One thing FI has done, which is part of Paths Forward, is it has surveyed and addressed other schools of thought. LW hasn’t done this comparably – LW has no answer to Critical Rationalism (CR). People who chat at LW have individually made some non-canonical arguments on the matter that LW doesn’t take responsibility for (and which often involve conceding LW is wrong on some points). And they have told me that CR has critics – true. But which criticism(s) of CR does LW claim are correct and take responsibility for the correctness of? (Taking responsibility for something involves doing some major rethinking if it’s refuted – addressing criticism of it and fixing your beliefs if you can’t. Which criticisms of CR would LW be shocked to discover are mistaken, and then be eager to reevaluate the whole matter?) There is no answer to this, and there’s no way for it to be answered because LW has no representatives who can speak for it and who are participating in discussion and who consider it their responsibility to see that issues like this are addressed. CR is well known, relevant, and makes some clear LW-contradicting claims like that induction doesn’t work, so if LW had representatives surveying and responding to rival ideas, they would have addressed CR.

BTW I’m not asking for all this stuff to be perfectly organized. I’m just asking for it to exist at all so that progress can be made.

Anecdotally, I’ve found substantial opposition to discussing/considering methodology from LW people so far. I think that’s a mistake because we use methods when discussing or doing other activities. I’ve also found substantial resistance to the use of references (including to my own material) – but why should I rewrite a new version of something that’s already written? Text is text and should be treated the same whether it was written in the past or today, and whether it was written by someone else or by me (either way, I’m taking responsibility. I think that’s something people don’t understand and they’re used to people throwing references around both vaguely and irresponsibly – but they haven’t pointed out any instance where I made that mistake). Ideas should be judged by the idea, not by attributes of the source (reference or non-reference).

The Paths Forward methodology is also what I think individuals should personally do – it works the same for a school of thought or an individual. Figure out what you think is true and take responsibility for it. For parts that are already written down, endorse that and take responsibility for it. If you use something to speak for you, then if it’s mistaken you are mistaken – you need to treat that the same as your own writing being refuted. For stuff that isn’t written down adequately by anyone (in your opinion), it’s your responsibility to write it (either from scratch or using existing material plus your commentary/improvements). This writing needs to be put in public and exposed to criticism, and the criticism needs to actually get addressed (not silently ignored) so there are good Paths Forward. I hoped to find a person using this method, or interested in it, at LW; so far I haven’t. Nor have I found someone who suggested a superior method (or even any alternative method to address the same issues) or pointed out a reason Paths Forward doesn’t work.

Some people I talked with at LW seem to still be developing as intellectuals. For lots of issues, they just haven’t thought about it yet. That’s totally understandable. However I was hoping to find some developed thought which could point out any mistakes in FI or change its mind. I’m seeking primarily peer discussion. (If anyone wants to learn from me, btw, they are welcome to come to my forum. It can also be used to criticize FI.) Some people also indicated they thought it’d be too much effort to learn about and address rival ideas like CR. But if no one has done that (so there’s no answer to CR they can endorse), then how do they know CR is mistaken? If CR is correct, it’s worth the effort to study! If CR is incorrect, someone better write that down in public (so CR people can learn about their errors and reform; and so perhaps they could improve CR to no longer be mistaken or point out errors in the criticism of CR.)

One of the issues related to this dispute is I believe we can always proceed with non-refuted ideas (there is a long answer for how this works, but I don’t know how to give a short answer that I expect LW people to understand – especially in the context of the currently-unresolved methodology dispute about Paths Forward). In contrast, LW people typically seem to accept mistakes as just something to put up with, rather than something to try to always fix. So I disagree with ignoring some known mistakes, whereas LW people seem to take it for granted that they’re mistaken in known ways. Part of the point of Paths Forward is not to be mistaken in known ways.

Paths Forward is a methodology for organizing schools of thought, ideas, discussion, etc, to allow for unbounded error correction (as opposed to typical things people do like putting bounds on discussions, with discussion of the bounds themselves being out of bounds). I believe the lack of Paths Forward at LW is preventing the resolution of other issues like about the correctness of induction, the right approach to AGI, and the solution to the fundamental problem of epistemology (how new knowledge can be created).

I wrote this in Feb 2009 and emailed it to Yudkowsky. He didn't reply.

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Dear Eliezer Yudkowsky,

I am writing to criticize some of your statements regarding Karl Popper. I hope this will be of interest.

http://yudkowsky.net/rational/bayes

Previously, the most popular philosophy of science was probably Karl Popper's falsificationism - this is the old philosophy that the Bayesian revolution is currently dethroning. Karl Popper's idea that theories can be definitely falsified, but never definitely confirmed, is yet another special case of the Bayesian rules

That isn't Popper's idea because he doesn't believe in definite falsifications. Falsifications are themselves tentative conjectures which must be held open to criticism and reconsidering.

Popper also doesn't assert that confirmations are never definite, rather he denies there is confirmation at all. The reason is that any given confirming evidence for theory T is logically consistent with T being false.

More generally, Popper's philosophy is not about what we can do definitely. He does not address himself to the traditional philosophical problem of what we can and can't be certain of, or what is and isn't a justified, true belief. While he did comment on those issues, his epistemic philosophy is not an alternative answer to those questions. Rather, his positive contributions focus on a more fruitful issue: conjectural knowledge. How do people acquire conjectural knowledge? What is its nature? And so on.

BTW, conjectural knowledge does not mean the probabilistic knowledge that Bayesians are fond of. Probabilistic knowledge is just as much of an anathema to Popper as certain knowledge, because the same criticisms (for example that attempting justification leads to regress or circularity) apply equally well to each.

Your claim at the end of the quote that Popperian epistemology is a special case of Bayesian epistemology is especially striking. Popper considered the Bayesian approach and told us where he stands on it. On page 141 of Objective Knowledge he states, "I have combated [Bayesian epistemology] for thirty-three years."

To say that something which Popper combatted for over three decades is a more general version of his own work is an extraordinary claim. It should be accompanied with extraordinary substantiation, and some account of where Popper's arguments on the subject go wrong, but it is not.

Popper was a hardworking, academic person who read and thought about philosophy extensively, including ideas he disagreed with. He would often try to present the best possible version of an idea, as well as a history of the problem in question, before offering his criticism of it. I would ask that a similar approach be taken in criticizing Popper. Both as a matter of respect, and because it improves discussion.

I created https://elliottemple.com

I particularly like the header image I made which depicts the intellectual traditions I care most about:

I also created https://elliottemple.com/reason-and-morality

It had an outline of philosophy with tons of links to learn more details.

If I were president I'd cancel most of the meetings, travel, etc, etc, and make some forums which are publicly readable.

There'd be a forum where all the countries have an account with write access. And one where all US politicians have write access. And one with a lot of media and intellectuals.

I think forum discussions are actually the best thing the US president could do.

Imagine if all the politicians, media personalities, etc., with bad ideas had to actually write about them on the record on a daily basis? Imagine if you just kept following up on discussions. What would they do? What most people do currently with me is just stop responding to things, which they can get away with socially because I have low prestige. But just refusing to answer forever wouldn't be a viable answer to the president's forum, and arguments/questions from the president and his staff. That'd look really bad to the world: Nancy Pelosi has been asked the same question for 5 days in a row and just won't answer at all.

But if they did answer they'd get pinned down.

They'd have to do evasive tactics: missing the point, playing dumb, trying to create confusion, saying unclear things, trying to make the discussion go in circles, etc. All that stuff can be called out, pointed out, and basically made to look as foolish as it is. People get away with that stuff in verbal formats with little followup, and behind closed doors, but not against the best debaters over a period of weeks with every word of it in the record. None of the bad guys have any method of dealing with that level of intellectual scrutiny.

They can lie, but the lies can be documented and the canonical links documenting lies can be repetitively posted every single time a lie is repeated. Staff can be hired to do that. That would cost a hell of a lot less than a wide variety of current, unimportant government departments. It's very easy by government standards.

And how do you deal with media questions? Press briefings are so incomplete that it's hard for people to see who's right and why. What if all the bullshit the press kept bugging Trump about was on a forum where some staff members replied with canonical links over and over so everything was getting answered? How would the media continue to ignore the main points, which they currently ignore, if it was being linked in reply to them every time they talked?

I've added a new Podcast link on the top left sidebar.

I recently added: Helping The Best People or The Masses?

Today I did: Environmentalism

You can submit questions for the podcast in the comments below.

Jack Murphy wrote good tweets about Social Justice Warriors in the workplace:

We read about SJW insanity everywhere but somehow it still doesn't seem real. I began new day job recently which brought it all home to me.

On the first day they gave me the organizational goals for the year. One of them was: "Rid the org of bias through implicit bias training."

They made everyone take the implicit bias test online and then dedicated a required two-day retreat to reprogramming all the employees.

There were working groups which produced new goals such "reduce the number of white people." and "rid org of white supremacy bias."

They circulated pre-work reading materials with such titles as "Finding White Supremacy at work" and "How white culture creates injustice."

Apparently, insisting on promptness for meetings is now considered white supremacy.

What's interesting is that these ideas are bubbling up from the staffer level, + forcing management to respond. It's ground up not top down

Management said they hoped hiring me would help break the org of the mind virus. I'm not sure they know exactly what they're getting w/ me.

Some things which are now white supremacist: Objectivity. Individualism. "Worship of the written word." Sense of urgency. Perfectionism.

I walked into a room that had "too many white people" written on the white board. The culture war seems unreal until you see that at work.

I wouldn't ordinarily subject myself to this stuff, but a) the work itself is fascinating and I'm expert and b) it's like being undercover

I'm getting an inside look at shit I thought only existed in paranoid alt-right delusions. It's intriguing to see the mind virus at work.

I suspect at some point after the book comes out, my two worlds will collide. That'll be something. Maybe I'll get fired for truth.

If I get fired from the job for writing, that'll be good for the book. I'll cause a shit storm and the word will spread farther.

And until then, the pay is good, the work is even better, and I get real world confirmation of the culture war at work. Personal experience.

I'll keep cataloging the SJW craziness. If they fire me, I'll have a comprehensive list of EEO violations and file a civil rights case.

Plus, it's great fodder for the current book and future work. They're paying me to get a valuable dose of culture war reality.

I've resisted accepting the culture war as real. I don't want to think along gender divides or racial ones. But they leave me no choice.

I wrote this months ago and now I'm living it today:

For more content like this, make sure you buy my forthcoming book: #DemocratToDeplorable Sign up here for more!

These are replies to Ed Powell discussing IQ. This follows up on my previous posts: IQ and IQ 2.

Thanks for writing a reasonable reply to someone you disagree with. My most important comments are at the bottom and concern a methodology that could be used to make progress in the discussion.

I think we both have the right idea of "heritable." Lots of things are strongly heritable without being genetic.

OK, cool. Is there a single written work – which agrees “heritable” doesn’t imply genetic – which you think adequately expresses the argument today for genetic degrees of intelligence? It’d be fine if it’s a broad piece discussing lots of arguments with research citations that it’s willing to bet its claims on, or if it focuses on one single unanswerable point.

I think you take my analogy of a brain with a computer too far.

It's not an analogy, brains are literally computers. A computer is basically something that performs arbitrary computations, like 2+3 or reversing the letters in a word. That’s not nearly enough for intelligence, but it’s a building block intelligence requires. Computation and information flow are a big part of physics now, and if you try to avoid them you're stuck with alternatives like souls and magic.

I don't pretend to understand your argument above, and so I won't spend time debating it, but you surely realize that human intelligence evolved gradually over the last 5 or so million years (since our progenitors split from the branch that became chimps), and that this evolution did not consist of a mutant ADD Gate gene and another mutant NOT Gate gene.

There are lots of different ways to build computers. I don't think brains are made out of a big pile of NAND gates. But computers with totally different designs can all be universal – able to compute all the same things.

Indeed, if intelligence is properly defined as "the ability to learn", then plenty of animals have some level of intelligence. Certain my cats are pretty smart, and one can, among the thousands of cute cat videos on the internet, find examples of cats reasoning through options to open doors or get from one place to another. Dogs are even more intelligent. Even Peikoff changed his mind on Rand's pronouncement that animals and man are in different distinct classes of beings (animals obey instinct, man has no instinct and thinks) when he got a dog. Who knew that first hand experience with something might illuminate a philosophical issue?

I agree with Rand and I can also reach the same conclusion with independent, Popperian reasons.

I've actually had several dogs and cats. So I'm not disagreeing from lack of first hand experience.

What I would ask if I lacked that experience – and this is relevant anyway – is if you could point out one thing I'm missing (due to lack of experience, or for any other reason). What fact was learned from experience with animals that I don't know, and which contradicts my view?

I think you're not being precise enough about learning, and that with your approach you'd have to conclude that some video game characters also learn and are pretty smart. Whatever examples you provide about animal behaviors, I’ll be happy to provide parallel software examples – which I absolutely don’t think constitute human-like intelligence (maybe you do?).

Rand's belief in the distinct separation between man and animals when it comes to intellect is pretty contrary to the idea that man evolved gradually,

The jump to universality argument provides a way that gradual evolution could create something so distinct.

in the next few years the genetic basis of intelligence will in fact be found and we will no longer have anything to argue about. I don't think there's any real point arguing over this idea.

Rather than argue, would you prefer to bet on whether the genetic basis higher intelligence will be found within the next 5 years? I'd love to bet $10,000 on that issue.

In any case, even if there was such a finding, there’d still be plenty to argue about. It wouldn’t automatically and straightforwardly settle the issues regarding the right epistemology, theory of computation, way to understand universality, etc.

We all know a bunch of really smart people who are in some ways either socially inept or completely nuts.

Yes, but there are cultural explanations for why that would be, and I don't think genes can control social skill (what exactly could the entire mechanism be, in hypothetical-but-rigorous detail?).

I know a number of people smarter than myself who have developed some form of mental illness, and it's fairly clear that these things are not unrelated.

Tangent: I consider the idea of "mental illness" a means of excusing and legitimizing the initiation of force. It's used to subvert the rule of law – both by imprisoning persons without trial and by keeping some criminals out of jail.

Link: Thomas Szasz Manifesto.

The point of IQ tests is to determine (on average) whether an individual will do well in school or work, and the correspondence between test results and success in school and work is too close to dismiss the tests as invalid, even if you don't believe in g or don't believe in intelligence at all.

Sure. As I said, I think IQ tests should be used more.

The tests are excellent predictors, especially in the +/- 3 SD area

Yes. I agree the tests do worse with outliers, but working well for over 99% of people is still useful!

The government has banned IQ tests from being used as discriminators for job fitness;

That's an awful attack on freedom and reason!

Take four or five internet IQ tests. I guarantee you the answers will be in a small range (+/- 5ish), even though they are all different. Clearly they measure something! And that something is correlated with success in school and work (for large enough groups).

I agree.

My one experience with Deutsch was his two interviews on Sam Harris's podcast

For Popper and Deutsch, I'd advise against starting with anything other than Deutsch's two books.

FYI Deutsch is a fan of Ayn Rand, an opponent of global warming, strongly in favor of capitalism, a huge supporter of Israel, and totally opposed to cultural and moral relativism (thinks Western culture is objectively and morally better, etc.).

I have some (basically Objectivist) criticism of Deutsch's interviews which will interest people here. In short, he's recently started sucking up to lefty intellectuals, kinda like ARI. But his flawed approach to dealing with the public doesn't prevent some of his technical ideas about physics, computation and epistemology from being true.

But if one doesn't believe g exists,

I think g is a statistical construct best forgotten.

or that IQ tests measure anything real,

I agree that they do, and that the thing measured is hard to change. Many people equate genetic with hard to change, and non-genetic with easy to change, but I don't. There are actual academic papers in this field which say, more or less, "Even if it's not genetic, we may as well count it as genetic because it's hard to change."

or that IQ test results don't correlate with scholastics or job success across large groups, then there's really nothing to discuss.

I agree that they do. I am in favor of more widespread use of IQ testing.

As I said, I think IQ tests measure a mix of intelligence, culture and background knowledge. I think these are all real, important, and hard to change. (Some types of culture and background knowledge are easy to change, but some other types are very hard to change, and IQ tests focus primarily on measuring the hard to change stuff, which is mostly developed in early childhood.)

Of course intelligence, culture and knowledge all correlate with job and school success.

Finally, I don't think agreement is possible on this issue, because much of your argument depends upon epistemological ideas of Pooper/Deutsch and yourself, and I have read none of the source material. [...] I don't see how a discussion can proceed though on this IQ issue--or really any other issue--with you coming from such an alien (to me) perspective on epistemology that I have absolutely no insight into. I can't argue one way or the other about cultural memes since I have no idea what they are and what scientific basis for them exists. So I won't. I'm not saying you're wrong, I'm just saying I won't argue about something I know nothing about.

I'd be thrilled to find a substantial view on an interesting topic that I didn't already know about, that implied I was wrong about something important. Especially if it had some living representative(s) willing to respond to questions and arguments. I've done this (investigated ideas) many times, and currently have no high priority backlog. E.g. I know of no outstanding arguments against my views on epistemology or computation to address, nor any substantial rivals which aren't already refuted by an existing argument that I know of.

I've written a lot about methods for dealing with rival ideas. I call my approach Paths Forward. The basic idea is that it's rational to act so that:

1. If I'm mistaken
2. And someone knows it (and they're willing to share their knowledge)
3. Then there's some reasonable way that I can find out and correct my mistake.

This way I don't actively prevent fixing my mistakes and making intellectual progress.

There are a variety of methods that can be used to achieve this, and also a variety of common methods which fail to achieve this. I consider the Paths-Forward-compatible methods rational, and the others irrational.

The rational methods vary greatly on how much time they take. There are ways to study things in depth, and also faster methods available when desired. Here's a fairly minimal rational method you could use in this situation:

Read until you find one mistake. Then stop and criticize.

You’ll find the first mistake early on unless the material is actually good. (BTW you're allowed to criticize meta mistakes, such as that the author failing to say why his stuff matters, rather than only criticizing internal or factual errors. You can also stop reading at your first question, instead of criticism.)

Your first criticism (or question) will often be met with dumb replies that you can evaluate using knowledge you already have about argument, logic, etc. Most people with bad ideas will make utter fools of themselves in answer to your first criticism or question. OK, done. Rather than ignore them, you've actually addressed their position, and their position now has an outstanding criticism (or unanswered question), and there is a path forward available (they could, one day, wise up and address the issue).

Sometimes the first criticism will be met with a quality reply which addresses the issue or refers you to a source which addresses it. In that case, you can continue reading until you find one more mistake. Keep repeating this process. If you end up spending a bunch of time learning the whole thing, it's because you can't find any unaddressed mistakes in it (it's actually great)!

A crucial part of this method is actually saying your criticism or question. A lot of people read until the first thing they think is a mistake, then stop with no opportunity for a counter-argument. By staying silent, they're also giving the author (and his fans) no information to use to change their minds. Silence prevents progress regardless of which side is mistaken. Refusing to give even one argument leaves the other guy's position unrefuted, and leaves your position as not part of the public debate.

Another important method is to cite some pre-existing criticism of a work. You must be willing to take responsibility for what you cite, since you're using it to speak for you. It can be your own past arguments, or someone else's. The point is, the same bad idea doesn't need to be refuted twice – one canonical, reusable refutation is adequate. And by intentionally writing reusable material throughout your life, you'll develop a large stockpile which addresses common ideas you disagree with.

Rational methods aren't always fast, even when the other guy is mistaken. The less you know about the issues, the longer it can take. However, learning more about issues you don't know about is worthwhile. And once you learn enough important broad ideas – particularly philosophy – you can use it to argue about most ideas in most fields, even without much field-specific knowledge. Philosophy is that powerful! Especially when combined with a moderate amount of knowledge of the most important other fields.

Given limited time and many things worth learning, there are options about prioritization. One reasonable thing to do, which many people are completely unwilling to do, is to talk about one's interests and priorities, and actually think them through in writing and then expose one's reasoning to public criticism. That way there's a path forward for one's priorities themselves.

To conclude, I think a diversion into methodology could allow us to get the genetic intelligence discussion unstuck. I also believe that such methodology (epistemology) issues are a super important topic in their own right.