"confusion-extinguishing" heuristic is a better one
Better than what? Better than "it seems true to me"? But I didn't ask for "Answers That Seem True".
"Confusion-extinguishing" may be the best heuristic I have now for arriving at the truth, but if someone else has come up with better heuristics, I want them to write about the answers they arrived at using those heuristics. I think I was right to identify what I actually want, which is truth, and not answers satisfying a particular heuristic.
Do you want to know whether "100 angels can dance on the head of a pin" is true, or do you want the confusion that generated that question to be extinguished?
(It's true, by the way.)
Less Wrong is a large community of very smart people with a wide spectrum of expertise, and I think relatively little of that value has been tapped.
Like my post The Best Textbooks on Every Subject, this is meant to be a community-driven post. The first goal is to identify topics the Less Wrong community would like to read more about. The second goal is to encourage Less Wrongers to write on those topics. (Respecting, of course, the implicit and fuzzy guidelines for what should be posted to Less Wrong.)
One problem is that those with expertise on a subject don't necessarily feel competent to write a front-page post on it. If that's the case, please comment here explaining that you might be able to write one of the requested posts, but you'd like a writing collaborator. We'll try to find you one.
Rules
You may either:
or...
I will regularly update the list of suggested Less Wrong posts, ranking them in descending order of votes (like this).
The List So Far (updated 02/11/11)