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Qiaochu_Yuan comments on Falsifiable and non-Falsifiable Ideas - Less Wrong Discussion
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This post is somewhat confused. I would recommend that you finish reading the Sequences before making a future post.
One way to think about what is accomplished when you perform a thought experiment is that you are performing an experiment where the subject is your brain. The goal is to figure out what your brain thinks will happen, and statements about such things are falsifiable statements about brains.
The world is not the same either way because the dragon-believer is not the same either way. If the dragon-believer actually believes that there's a dragon in her garage (as opposed to believing in her belief that she has a dragon in her garage), that belief can affect how she makes other decisions. Truths are entangled and lies are contagious.
Why?
Can you give some examples of beliefs with this property?
Why call it a belief instead of an idea, then? (And why the emphasis on originality?)
Or at the very least, read Eliezer's new epistemology sequence, which directly addresses the questions at the heart of the OP.
The purpose of a thought experiment is to make a prediction about a real experiment. The thought experiment is as real as any other abstract object or mental process, and the prediction it makes is as real as a prediction made by any means.
And if believing a belief which is known to be false results is a higher output on your utility function, you have a nonstandard utility function. Rationalists who have radically different utility functions are very dangerous things.
I agree that I am putting a post here prematurely but I thought the criticism on some of my ideas would be worth it so I could fix things before they were ingrained. So thanks for the criticism.
Break of quotes
^from the comment below
I believe that putting truth first will help me as a Physicist
Most of the beautiful theories I know of at this point are those found in mathematics and not Physics (this is due to my math education being much greater than my physics one even though my intended career is in physics) and I don't think qualify as proper examples in this circumstance. The best I could come up with by five minutes on the clock is Einsteins theory of relativity which before experimental predictions were obtained was held as beautiful and correct.
I wanted to call it a belief instead of an idea because when i think of examples such as Timeless physics I believe its actually how the world works and it seems much more meaningful than an idea that does not color my perspective on the world. This however may simply be over definition of Idea.
You're right, it doesn't necessarily have to be original. I was thinking along the lines that it is much harder to think of an original theory and this is a goal of mine so I had it in mind while writing this.
Do you think that there are some professional Physicist who put truth first and others who don't? Do you believe that those who put truth first perform better.
What evidence do you see in the world that this is true?
I'd quite seriously like to know if you've read Making Beliefs Pay Rent it and the Mysterious Answers to Mysterious Questions sequence in general seem quite relevant I wouldn't expect you to write your post as it is now if you'd read them.
I have read them but it was a long time ago and I was not practicing using the knowledge at the time so it may not have sunk in as it was supposed to. I will go back now and reread them, thank you.
Why do you want to be a physicist? (Also, first relative to what?)
In what sense was relativity non-falsifiable at the time that Einstein described it?
I learned of Quantum mechanics when I was younger and I grew curious of it because it was mysterious. Now Quantum mechanics is not mysterious but the way the world works is and I am still deeply curious about it.
It was falsifiable but I was thinking that it was still extraordinarily beautiful
also the quote
Einstien's Arrogance
So... would you say that it makes you happy when your curiosity is satisfied?
When you said that "truth trumps happiness," it sounded like you were saying "in general, truth trumps happiness." If the reason you personally value truth is because you think it will help you as a physicist, and the reason you want to be a physicist is because you are curious about physics, then you don't have a reason to value truth which applies in general. Why should other people, who are not necessarily interested in physics or particularly curious about things, value truth above happiness?
Right, but you were giving a reason why you would have a belief that is non-falsifiable, and this is not an example of such a belief. Einstein defying the data is not Einstein thinking that relativity wasn't falsifiable, it's Einstein thinking that relativity wasn't falsifiable by just one experimental result.
Thinking about truth vs. happiness I believe that I think if given a decision of truth or happiness it is already to late for me to fully accept happiness. In short thinking about the decision made the decision. On top of this I am to curious to avoid thinking about certain topics of which i would be faced with this (not) decision so I will always embrace truth over happiness.
What I will now have to think on is given a friend who aspires to be more rational yet, not a scientist or somebody similar, and i find a thought pattern that is giving false but enjoyable results, should I intervene?
As to Einstein I was not saying how his belief was unfalsifiable but my thought process with out my conscious knowledge probably thought that Eisenstein's theory was evidence for p(truth/beauty) being higher. If so I realize that this is only weak evidence.
Why do you believe that? Even given that you believe this is currently true, do you think this is something you should change about yourself, and if not, why?
(I'm teasing you to some extent. What I regard to be the answers to many of the questions I'm asking can be found in the Sequences.)
I think you've lost track of why we were talking about Einstein. In the original post, you listed two reasons to believe non-falsifiable things. I asked you to give an example of the first one. Maybe it wasn't sufficiently clear that I was asking for an example which wasn't falsifiable, in which case I apologize, but I was (after all, that's why it came up in the first place). Relativity is falsifiable. A heuristic that beautiful things tend to be true is also falsifiable.
I know the answers to most of these questions can be found in the sequences because I read them. However the sequences include quite a bit of information and it is clear not all or probably even most made it into the way I think. You asking me these questions is extremely helpful to me filling in those gaps and I appreciate it.
I believe that because I do not have the mental discipline required to both know a belief is false and still gain happiness from that belief. It is possible that I could change this about myself but I don't see myself ever learning the discipline required to lie to myself (if doublethink is actually possible). Its also possible to go the other-way and say that something injured my brain and brought my intelligence to a level that I could no longer see why i should think one way instead of another, or not being able to see the truth vs. happiness decision which would let me pick happiness without lying to myself.
I think that most of two is based off of that heuristic which allows you to gain evidence for the claim even though it remains unfalsafiable and only weak evidence.
Glad to hear that. I was afraid I might be being a little too harsh.
I guess I should clarify what I was trying to say. If you optimize for truth and not happiness, you will seek out a whole bunch of truths whether or not you expect that knowing those truths will make you happier. If you optimize for happiness and not truth, you'll only seek truths that will help make you happier. I'm not asking you to consider explicitly lying to yourself, which is in some sense hard, but I'm asking you to consider the implications of optimizing for truth vs. optimizing for happiness.
Whether or not you do, most people do not optimize for truth. Do you think this is a good thing or a bad thing, and in either case, why?
What is this referring to?
quote break
Perhaps it would be easier for me to replace the word happiness with Awesomeness in which case I could see the argument that optimizing for awesomeness would let me seek out ways to make the world more awesome and would allow specific circumstances of what i consider awesome to be to govern which truths to seek out. In this way I can understand optimizing for awesomeness.
I think it is a good thing most people do not optimize for truth because if it were so I don't think the resulting world would be awesome. It would be a world where many people were less happy even though it would also probably be a world with more scientific advances.
I suppose that if anyone were to optimize for truth it would be a minority who wanted to advance science further to make the general population more happy while the scientist themselves were not always. Even in this case I could understand the argument that they were optimizing awesomeness not truth because they thought the resulting world would be more awesome.