You're looking at Less Wrong's discussion board. This includes all posts, including those that haven't been promoted to the front page yet. For more information, see About Less Wrong.

ChristianKl comments on "Why Optimize?" Essay targeted at nonrationalist friends of mine - Less Wrong Discussion

1 Post author: lifelonglearner 17 January 2016 07:15PM

You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.

Comments (12)

You are viewing a single comment's thread.

Comment author: ChristianKl 18 January 2016 09:28:46AM 5 points [-]

Concepts and ideas are often much clearer in our heads than what we actually say

Quite often we also think that concepts in our head are clear when they aren't. It's very easy to delude yourself.

Comment author: lifelonglearner 18 January 2016 05:59:54PM 1 point [-]

Yeah-- I can see why that can be the case.

Writing it out/ explaining X to a friend who is either more knowledgeable about X (so you can confirm/deny what you know) or doesn't know about X (so you can see if after your explanation they are grasping what you are saying and see if it matches what's in your head) seem to be the first two options for corroborating information in our heads.

Do you have any other recommendations to straighten things out? I'd love to hear more about this-- I hadn't really considered this outside inferential distances before you brought this up.

Comment author: ChristianKl 18 January 2016 10:54:13PM 1 point [-]

In general it's important to have feedback loops. That can mean talking with other people. It can also mean actually using the ideas in a way that exposes them to empirical reality. You can make predictions based on your theories and see whether those come true.