ialdabaoth comments on Rationality Quotes December 2013 - Less Wrong

7 Post author: Cyan 17 December 2013 08:43PM

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Comment author: ialdabaoth 19 December 2013 04:22:16PM 6 points [-]

I don't know whether an epistemology can be true or false.

That's because "true" or "false" are aspects of maps, and epistemologies aren't maps - they're mapmaking tools.

You don't judge tools based on their truth or falsehood; you judge them based on their usefulness towards a certain purpose.

In humans' case, I think that an epistemology's job is to act as a bridge between our naive map-making and the world - that is, an epistemology's usefulness is measured by how well humans can use it to generate maps of their territory, and how well the maps it generates conform to their territory when read by humans. (Where "territory" can mean something as bare and ephemeral as raw qualia, barring any deeper assertion of the epistemology in question).

Comment author: ChristianKl 20 December 2013 01:27:31AM 1 point [-]

You don't judge tools based on their truth or falsehood; you judge them based on their usefulness towards a certain purpose.

Yes.

To the extend that's your paradigm Dennett's truth centered paradigm is misguided.