I really wanted to help, because you're helping me with the free will thing, but I could only manage to skim the essay. I take it that the naive view of truth is supposed to be the disquotational or deflationary view. This is to say that the assertion
'Snow is white' is true.
is identical content-wise to the assertion
Snow is white.
To say that something is true is just to assert that thing, and asserting it is sufficient to say that it's true. In other words, we can for most purposes just do without the word 'true' (though things are more complicated for 'false').
we can for most purposes just do without the word 'true'
One useful distinction is between asserting a proposition and explaining its meaning. The meaning of "snow is white" can be discussed apart from the question of whether it's true, so saying that it's true serves to indicate that we are discussing its truth and not (just) its meaning.
ErinFlight said:
Thinking about it, I realized that this might be a common concern. There are probably plenty of people who've looked at various more-or-less technical or jargony Less Wrong posts, tried understanding them, and then given up (without posting a comment explaining their confusion).
So I figured that it might be good to have a thread where you can ask for explanations for any Less Wrong post that you didn't understand and would like to, but don't want to directly comment on for any reason (e.g. because you're feeling embarassed, because the post is too old to attract much traffic, etc.). In the spirit of various Stupid Questions threads, you're explicitly encouraged to ask even for the kinds of explanations that you feel you "should" get even yourself, or where you feel like you could get it if you just put in the effort (but then never did).
You can ask to have some specific confusing term or analogy explained, or to get the main content of a post briefly summarized in plain English and without jargon, or anything else. (Of course, there are some posts that simply cannot be explained in non-technical terms, such as the ones in the Quantum Mechanics sequence.) And of course, you're encouraged to provide explanations to others!