All of Mark_Probst's Comments + Replies

I anticipate expressing free-floating beliefs would get me negative karma on Less Wrong. More seriously: I do not anticipate free-floating beliefs being useful in the same sense that maps of reality are useful. A map can turn out to be accurate or inaccurate, and insofar as it is accurate it can help me navigate and manipulate reality. My belief that "a proper belief should not be free-floating" prohibits free-floating beliefs from doing any of that. Or one might as well see it as not a belief, but as a definition. There's BeliefType1 which is grounded in reality, and BeliefType2 which is not, and we happen to call BeliefType1 a "proper belief". (Of course we still do it for a reason, because we care about our sheep, or rather, we care about our beliefs being true and thus useful.) Not sure which approach makes more sense.

One way of answering might be to say that there is no separate "belief" that beliefs should be grounded. But i'm not sure. All I know is that the question annoys me, but I can't quite put my finger on it. It reminds me of questions like (1) the accusation that you can't justify the use of logic logically, or (2) the accusation that tolerance is actually intolerant - because it's intolerant of intolerance. There might be a level distinction that needs to be made here, as in (2) - and maybe in (1) though I think that's different.