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?

It occurred to me that our biases might not matter very much lots of the time. They matter if you want to maximize your chances of finding the truth, but not if you are interested in maximizing the chances the chances of someone finding the truth.

Take science as an example, scientists aren't always free from biases when it comes to thinking about their own theories. They look for ways to confirm what they believe, not discomfirm it. But does that matter? As long as their rivals are looking for ways to falsify those theories then overall the system should work well.

In fact it might work better:

Imagine that there is a prize (a really big prize) at the end of a maze. Several of you are sent into the maze and the first person to find the prize gets to keep it. You all head down the corridor and come to three doors, there are some clues written on the wall, but before you can even begin to read them, someone dashes through door 1. Someone else follows then another through door 2 and a few take door 3. What do you do? You could be methodical and try to solve the clues. This would maximize your chance of finding the right path. However, it will not maximize your chances of being the first one to find the prize. For this, you need to pick a door and run.

Likewise, in science, if you want to get the prize (nobel prize, or a good job, or fame, or a best-selling book), then you might be better off coming up with a new theory and running with it (anecdotally, this seems to be what a lot of successful scientists have done). Having lots of people making leaps in different directions might also make science progress faster overall.

What does all this mean for biases? Are they best thought of on an individual level or group level? Is it really a bias if it is the best thing to do? Can you think of other examples where individual biases might produce better results for the group?

For example, if you say, "The rational belief is X, but the true belief is Y" then you are probably using the word "rational" in a way that means something other than what most of us have in mind

This was copied from here.

Surely it is obvious that there are lots of examples when one might say this. Consider this:

Rob looks in the newspaper to check the football scores. The newspaper says that United won 3-2, but it is a misprint because City actually won 3-2. In this case, the rational belief is that United won, but the true belief is that City won.

Am I missing something?