The thing about citations and against derivations from first principles is deliberate and (so long as participation is open to everybody) I think removing it could do more harm than keeping it: it's hard to tell if a derivation from first principles in a field you're not familiar with is valid, so short of somehow magically increasing the number of (say) editors with a PhD in physics by a factor of 10, allowing OR would essentially give free rein to crackpots, since there wouldn't be that many people around who could find the flaws in their reasoning. Right now, they (at least in principle) would have to find peer-reviewed publications supporting their arguments, which is not as easy as posting some complicated derivation and hoping no-one finds the errors.
One big problem with Wikipedia (which I'm not sure could be fixed even in principle) is that sometimes you're not allowed to taboo words, because you're essentially doing lexicography. If the question is “Was Richard Feynman Jewish?”, “He had Jewish ancestry but he didn't practise Judaism” is not a good-enough answer if what you're deciding is whether or not the article about Feynman should be in the category for Jewish American physicists; if the question is “Was an infant who has since become a transsexual woman a boy?”, answering “it had masculine external genitalia but likely had feminine brain anatomy” is not good enough if what you're deciding is whether the article should say “She was born as a boy”; and so on and so forth. (There once was an argument about whether accelerometers measure inertial acceleration even though both parties agreed about what an accelerometer would read in all of the situations they could come up with, because they meant different things by inertial acceleration. What happened is that someone come up with other situations such as magnetically levitating the accelerometer or placing it somewhere with non-negligible tidal forces, and the parties did disagree about what would happen. (My view is that then you're just misusing the accelerometer, and drawing any conclusions from such circumstances is as silly as saying that resistance is not what ohmmeters measure because if you put a battery across an ohmmeter, what it reads is not the internal resistance of the battery. But IIRC, rather than pointing that out I just walked away and left Wikipedia, even though I later came back with a different user name.)
Agreed that removing the condition against first principles would perhaps screw stuff up more.
But the attitude against original research is uncalled for. When there's someone who misunderstands the quoted articles, you can't just go ahead and refer to first principles, noooo thats original research, and the attitude is: i'm not ashamed i'm instead proud i don't understand topic we're talking about, i'm proud i don't (because can't) do original research. Non experts come up with all sorts of weird nonsense interpretations of what experts say, that experts would never even feel need to publish anything to dispel. And then you can't argue with them rationally, they proudly reject any argumentation from first principles.
- lessdazed
- Bruce Lee
Recently, when Eliezer wanted to explain why he thought Anna Salamon was among the best rationalists he knew, he picked out one feature of Anna's behavior in particular:
For me, the ability to reliably get curious is the basic front-kick of epistemic rationality. The best rationalists I know are not necessarily those who know the finer points of cognitive psychology, Bayesian statistics, and Solomonoff Induction. The best rationalists I know are those who can reliably get curious.
Once, I explained the Cognitive Reflection Test to Riley Crane by saying it was made of questions that tempt your intuitions to quickly give a wrong answer. For example:
If you haven't seen this question before and you're like most people, your brain screams "10 cents!" But elementary algebra shows that can't be right. The correct answer is 5 cents. To get the right answer, I explained, you need to interrupt your intuitive judgment and think "No! Algebra."
A lot of rationalist practice is like that. Whether thinking about physics or sociology or relationships, you need to catch your intuitive judgment and think "No! Curiosity."
Most of us know how to do algebra. How does one "do" curiosity?
Below, I propose a process for how to "get curious." I think we are only just beginning to learn how to create curious people, so please don't take this method as Science or Gospel but instead as an attempt to Just Try It.
As with my algorithm for beating procrastination, you'll want to practice each step of the process in advance so that when you want to get curious, you're well-practiced on each step already. With enough practice, these steps may even become habits.
Step 1: Feel that you don't already know the answer.
If you have beliefs about the matter already, push the "reset" button and erase that part of your map. You must feel that you don't already know the answer.
Exercise 1.1: Import the feeling of uncertainty.
Exercise 1.2: Consider all the things you've been confident but wrong about.
Step 2: Want to know the answer.
Now, you must want to fill in this blank part of your map.
You mustn't wish it to remain blank due to apathy or fear. Don't avoid getting the answer because you might learn you should eat less pizza and more half-sticks of butter. Curiosity seeks to annihilate itself.
You also mustn't let your desire that your inquiry have a certain answer block you from discovering how the world actually is. You must want your map to resemble the territory, whatever the territory looks like. This enables you to change things more effectively than if you falsely believed that the world was already the way you want it to be.
Exercise 2.1: Visualize the consequences of being wrong.
Exercise 2.2: Make plans for different worlds.
Exercise 2.3: Recite the Litany of Tarski.
The Litany of Tarski can be adapted to any question. If you're considering whether the sky is blue, the Litany of Tarski is:
Exercise 2.4: Recite the Litany of Gendlin.
The Litany of Gendlin reminds us:
Step 3: Sprint headlong into reality.
If you've made yourself uncertain and then curious, you're now in a position to use argument, empiricism, and scholarship to sprint headlong into reality. This part probably requires some domain-relevant knowledge and an understanding of probability theory and value of information calculations. What tests could answer your question quickly? How can you perform those tests? If the answer can be looked up in a book, which book?
These are important questions, but I think the first two steps of getting curious are more important. If someone can master steps 1 and 2, they'll be so driven by curiosity that they'll eventually figure out how to do step 3 for many scenarios. In contrast, most people who are equipped to do step 3 pretty well still get the wrong answers because they can't reliably execute steps 1 and 2.
Conclusion: Curiosity in Action
A burning itch to know is higher than a solemn vow to pursue truth. If you think it is your duty to doubt your own beliefs and criticize your own arguments, then you may do this for a while and conclude that you have done your duty and you're a Good Rationalist. Then you can feel satisfied and virtuous and move along without being genuinely curious.
In contrast,
My recommendation? Practice the front-kick of epistemic rationality every day. For months. Train your ape-brain to get curious.
Rationality is not magic. For many people, it can be learned and trained.