I think I understand now thank you.

You're right Einstien was not relevant to your original question. I brought him up because I did not understand the question until

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.

Thanks for leading me to the conclusion truth does not trump awesomeness and yes I now agree with this.

I also have in mind things like finding out whether you were adopted

Good point

How does attacking Eliezer here add to the argument?

What is this referring to?

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.

quote break

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?

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.

(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 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.

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 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.

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.

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 want to be a physicist?

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.

In what sense was relativity non-falsifiable at the time that Einstein described it?

It was falsifiable but I was thinking that it was still extraordinarily beautiful

also the quote

In 1919, Sir Arthur Eddington led expeditions to Brazil and to the island of Principe, aiming to observe solar eclipses and thereby test an experimental prediction of Einstein's novel theory of General Relativity. A journalist asked Einstein what he would do if Eddington's observations failed to match his theory. Einstein famously replied: "Then I would feel sorry for the good Lord. The theory is correct."

Einstien's Arrogance

This post is somewhat confused. I would recommend that you finish reading the Sequences before making a future post.

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.

I responded with truth trumps happiness Why?

Break of quotes

I often find myself torn between epistemic rationality as a terminal value and its alternative. My thoughts are learning how to treat truth as the highest goal would be more useful to my career in physics and would be better for the world then if I currently steered to my closer less important values.

^from the comment below

I believe that putting truth first will help me as a Physicist

Can you give some examples of beliefs with this property?

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.

Why call it a belief instead of an idea, then?

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.

And why the emphasis on originality?

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.