That's actually a position of reasonable people who engage in non-greedy reductionism, mostly replying to greedy reductionists (to use Dennett's terminology).

Trying to understand reality is futile is a narrow and trivial sense: the map will never completely match the territory. That's not the notion I'm criticizing.

In the case of Boyd, when he says "any inward-oriented and continued effort to improve the match-up of concept with observed reality will only increase the degree of mismatch," he seems to imply that the harder we work to create a model of observed reality with our concepts, the worse the match will be. That's a truly weird notion.

Maybe his quote goes from being an example of thinking gone horribly wrong, to thinking gone horribly explained, if we try to figure out what he means by "inward-oriented."

When this orderly (and pleasant) state is reached the concept becomes a coherent pattern of ideas and interactions that can be used to describe some aspect of observed reality. As a consequence, there is little, or no, further appeal to alternative ideas and interactions in an effort to either expand, complete, or modify the concept.(19) Instead, the effort is turned inward towards fine tuning the ideas and interactions in order to improve generality and produce a more precise match of the conceptual pattern with reality. (19) Toward this end, the concept—and its internal workings—is tested and compared against observed phenomena over and over again in many different and subtle ways.(19) Such a repeated and inward-oriented effort to explain increasingly more subtle aspects of reality suggests the disturbing idea that perhaps, at some point, ambiguities, uncertainties, anomalies, or apparent inconsistencies may emerge to stifle a more general and precise match-up of concept with observed reality.(19) Why do we suspect this?

If we are charitable and creative, perhaps Boyd means something like this: "given a bad theory, additional ad hoc modifications increase the mismatch between the theory and observed reality." Though I don't think that's true either: ad hoc modifications of a bad theory don't "increase" its mismatch with observation. Rather, they stretch the theory until it does match the observations, making the theory more strained.

A much better framework for discussing matches of theory with observation than Boyd's 9th grade philosophy paper is Imre Lakatos' work on "progressive" vs. "degenerating" research programs.

"...any inward-oriented and continued effort to improve the match-up of concept with observed reality will only increase the degree of mismatch...Put another way, we can expect unexplained and disturbing ambiguities, uncertainties, anomalies, or apparent inconsistencies to emerge more and more often. Furthermore, unless some kind of relief is available, we can expect confusion to increase until disorder approaches chaos— death.

Fortunately, there is a way out."

~ John Boyd, Destruction and Creation

It's not obvious that the best way to reduce existential risk is to actually work on the problem. Imagine if every farmer put down his plow and came to the university to study artificial intelligence research. Everyone would starve. It may well be that someone's best contribution is to continue to write software to do billing for health insurance, because that helps keep society running, which causes increased wealth, which then funds and supports people who specialize in researching risks among other fields.

I suspect that actually, only a small percentage of people, even of people here, could usefully learn the political truths relevant to existential risk mitigation via the kind of discussion you are proposing. Very few people are in a position to cause political change. The marginal utility gain for the average person to learn the truth on a political matter is practically zero due to his lack of influence on the political process. The many arguments against voting apply to this question as well, of seeking political truth; and even more so, because it's harder to ascertain political truths than to vote.

Most interest in politics is IMO similar to interest in sports or movies. It's fun, and it offers an opportunity to show off a bit, gives something to talk and socialize about, helps people form communities and define their interests. But beyond these kinds of social goals, there is no true value.

Most of the belief that one is in a position where knowing political truths is important, is likely to be self-deception. We see ourselves as being potentially more important and influential than we are likely ever to become. This kind of bias has been widely documented in many fields.

To me, politics is not so much the mind-killer as the mind-seducer. It leads us to believe that our opinions matter, it makes us feel proud and important. But it's all a lie. Politics is a waste of time and should be viewed simply as a form of entertainment. Now entertainment can be good, we all need a break from serious work and politics may be as valid as any other form of recreation, but we here should recognize that and not inflate its importance.