If this has been discussed before, then I ask for patience, and a point in the right direction.
I have been a lurker on Lesswrong for a while, and have mostly just been reading things, and only commenting occasionally. It wasn't long before I realised that the sequences played a very important role for understanding lots of what goes on here.
I have been trying to read them, but I've been getting very frustrated. Apart from being insanely long, they are not very easy to understand.
Take the first one I came to "The Simple Truth".
It is a very long story, and it is never really explained what the point is. Is it that truth is whatever helps you to survive? If it is, that seems obviously false.
It also took me quite a while to realise that all these posts are written by one person, that struck me as a bit odd for a "community" blog. So couldn't there be some work to improve the sequences, while also making it more of a community effort?
Maybe:
* Some people could rewrite the key ones, and others could vote on them, or suggest changes
* There could be summary posts alongside the sequences listing the key claims
Any other suggestions?
Here are the main points I understood:
The only way you can be sure your mental map accurately represents reality is by allowing a reality-controlled process to draw your mental map.
A sheep-activated pebble-tosser is a reality-controlled process that makes accurate bucket numbers.
The human eye is a reality-controlled process that makes accurate visual cortex images.
Natural human patterns of thought like essentialism and magical thinking are NOT reality-controlled processes and they don't draw accurate mental maps.
Each part of your mental map is called a "belief". The parts of your mental map that portray reality accurately are called "true beliefs".
Q: How do you know there is such a thing as "reality", and your mental map isn't all there is? A: Because sometimes your mental map leads you to make confident predictions, and they still get violated, and the prediction-violating thingy deserves its own name: reality.
Everything is reality, so that is a distinction that doesn't make a difference. All illusions and errors are produced by real processes. (Or is "reality" being used to mean "external reality").
Sometimes. But being reality controlled isn't a good criterion for when, since it is never false.
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