Aristotelian logic was mistaken both in details and overall conception, yet its key ideas survive in contemporary rationalism.| Meta-rationality
Propositions are whatever sort of thing it is you can believe. Nothing can play that role; so we need a different understanding of belief.| Meta-rationality
From the small amount I actually read, it seems you have not considered the context of a particular sentence in relation to what its actual meaning is. Few sentences exist in isolation. Those that do are open to subjective interpretation. Language is not a rigid logical structure that can be objectively analysed for definite universal meaning. I live in New Zealand and the indigenous language spoken here is almost all poetry i.e. The word for knife is the same as the word for cut. Meaning is ...| metarationality.com
Probabilistic rationalism encourages you to view the whole world as a gigantic casino—but mostly it is not like that.| Meta-rationality
If probability theory were an epistemology, we’d want it to tell us how confident to be in our beliefs. Unfortunately, it can’t do that.| Meta-rationality
Rationalism responds to its failures, in the face of nebulosity, by making more complicated formal theories.| Meta-rationality
Routine activity usually goes smoothly overall, despite frequent minor glitches, because we have methods for repairing trouble.| Meta-rationality
We actively work to perceive aspects of the world as meaningful, in terms of our purposes, in context.| Meta-rationality
I was asked by the funders of Better without AI to give opinions about several specific recent reports on AI safety. These are considered major texts in the field.| Better without AI
... about how to think, act, or live well — however much we wish it were so 😢| meaningness.substack.com
Its methods yield mainly wrong or nonsensical conclusions. We can and should do better.| meaningness.substack.com
Thanks, excellent question!| metarationality.com
A glossary of unfamiliar words, and words used in uncommon ways, on this site.| Meta-rationality
A pragmatic understanding of how systematic rationality works in practice can help you level up your technical work.| Meta-rationality
Open-ended curiosity gives you the freedom to interact with the world without metaphysical presuppositions.| Meaningness
A bridge from systematic rationality to fluid meta-rational understanding may be necessary to prevent civilizational collapse.| Meta-rationality
[The philosophical meat of this article is under the section “Current threads and questions”. Feel free to skip to that.] This tweet has had a big impact on my life: 🧵 Trying to Figure Out Where @DavidDeutschOxf's Critical Rationalism and @Meaningness's Meta-rationality Disagree (for the very small niche of people that find this interesting) — Jake Orthwein (@JakeOrthwein) April 24, 2021 When I stumbled upon it, I had spent about a year being deeply entrenched in the philosophical wo...| kasra.io
Defining the subject matter: rationality, rationalism, reasonableness, and meta-rationality.| Meta-rationality
Explore the ideas of Meaningness in greater depth by reading the books that inspired it| Meaningness
Improving artificial intelligence research with scientific testing, design practice, and meta-rational choice of methods and criteria| Better without AI
So-called “neural networks” are extremely expensive, poorly understood, unfixably unreliable, deceptive, data hungry, and inherently limited in capabilities.| Better without AI
Modernity was built on certainty in science and mathematics. That was revealed as delusional during the early 20th century.| Meaningness
The rationalist theory of justified action leads to nihilism. Understand your activity as a vivid, variegated landscape instead.| Meaningness
Nihilistic claims about subjectivity, inherent meaning, universal meaning, and scientific objectivity do not hold up.| Meaningness
Intuitions of “cosmic meaning” root in hunger for personal significance, and in encounters with vastness.| Meaningness
The many justifications for nihilism rely on a handful of mistaken patterns of reasoning.| Meaningness
A world of total license: the catastrophe some fear if nihilistic views become widespread.| Meaningness
Are you adult enough to accept that the world offers no absolute guarantees?| Meaningness
It's natural to react to meta-rationalism with skepticism or hostility initially. You may come to delight in it.| Meta-rationality
“The map is not the territory”—what is it then? How do rational models actually work?| Meta-rationality
In lojban “Jam?” would be translated as <rutpesxu au pei>, meaning| metarationality.com
This fits what I’ve been thinking about in terms of the meaning of “meaning.” Meaning is a connection between things: between words and what they refer to, between actions and intentions, etc. Reasonableness preserves these connections, even if it doesn’t always attend to all of them (e.g. butterfly effects).| metarationality.com
Rationalist theories of action try to deduce optimal choices from true beliefs. This is rarely possible in practice.| Meta-rationality
The mistaken belief that statistical methods can tell you what to believe drove the science replication crisis.| Meta-rationality