> On the topic of things going on in other people’s heads, you seem to be arguing against a point I wasn’t trying to make at all.
Perhaps it's due to a difference in our thinking styles. You said:
>> But it seems to me that the best way to find the truth (with a small T) is by rationality; the alternative is irrationality which seems unlikely to be effective. My hope is that, by collaborating using the tools of reason combined with our own personal Truths, humanity could do our best by everyone involved. I don’t know for certain that it will work, but it seems like the best way we’ve got.
To "do our best by everyone involved", does that not involve society and the people that live within it, who act according to the virtual reality that is contained within their minds?
Now, maybe you weren't "making that point" (or in other words, thinking of it from that perspective), but this kind of gets into the distinction between Reality and Truth. (For more on that, see the 3rd video I linked here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25662949)
> When I hear “the tools to understand what is reasonable” and write of “finding the truth” and “collaborating using the tools of reason” I think of things like statistics courses and advancing the theory of systemantics. Reading your reply, it’s hard for me to tell exactly what you’ve heard, but it sounds like you may have instead understood this as my desiring to impose my beliefs of truth on others, which is not what I meant at all.
Oh no, I'm not saying that it is your (conscious) intent to "impose my beliefs of truth on others" (but I would speculate that this could manifest unintentionally, via simple democracy). My point is that you seem to hold the axiom that "things like statistics courses and advancing the theory of systemantics" are the only modalities of thinking that we have at our disposal.
As for things like Systemantics, I am a huge proponent of this sort of thinking. But you may (or may not) notice a near complete lack of this sort of thinking (that we live within a complex, semi-indeterminate system) in threads like this.
> It sounds like we’re actually in violent agreement; I also think that we should be seeking each others’ perspectives.
Yes, I would very much like for HN to adopt this culture. Alas, it seems more than people here can muster, which is one of my prime complaints. I have also suggested an experimental solution to resolve this inability in the comment I linked above. Alas, @dang seems uninterested in trying to improve things, despite his (I presume) perception that he wants HN forums to be a force for good in the world. The mind has massive capabilities for imagination, but it seems there are certain places that this imagination will not go: into itself, or one's tribe.
> but even if the things they feel strongly about cannot themselves be reconciled by reason, it is still a useful tool to effect action based on those beliefs.
True. My point is, consider the possibility that you are hitting a kind of hard limit of this approach. I believe that this is where humanity now finds itself - we are metaphorically building ever taller towers of technological capability based on our capacity for reason (science, engineering, etc), but we find ourselves unable to manage the societal consequences of the system we've built ourselves to live in. Perhaps it is indeed possible to solve this increasingly risky situation with reason - but what if it isn't? What if your intuition (which is what it is) is wrong? Disproving hypotheses is a fundamental part of the scientific process, and yet look how eager we are to skip over that part when dealing with indeterminate domains.
> Not really, no, but I also didn’t get the impression that you had done that, either
And then there is: What is True.
> so there you go.
You and me both, and the society we live in. And where are we going? I don't know, but the neighbourhood outside the window I'm looking out of is starting to get a little scary, by my standards anyways. Maybe I just have to work on my thrill seeking skills. Although, I don't get the sense from others in this thread that they're seeking thrills, so do they see something different outside their windows? Or is something else going on?
> it’s an incredibly large field, so I rely heavily on encountering them by happenstance
As do most people, and I can appreciate why: it is indeed a very large field, and it seems to take years just to get even a rough lay of the landscape. But what I can't appreciate is that "reasonable, informed" people (like my brethren here on HN, or so they tell me) seem to have no curiosity when such ideas arise. What they do have though, is downvotes. But to be clear: I don't appreciate it, but I do understand it. I propose that once one has traversed the right parts of these lands, you can begin to notice the very same, simple patterns always and everywhere (hence my suggestion in my other comment).
> Running on heuristics is all we can do; the world is too large and complex for anything else. The best we can do is tune them carefully and be prepared to change them (using, of course, more heuristics; as you noted in your first paragraph this is heavily influenced by existing priors).
These beliefs are derived from a heuristic (resting upon axioms and premises). Why not apply the very tool you are recommending: (first principles based) reasoning? Once again, is this not at least suggestive of a fundamantal shortcoming in that approach? On one hand, you surely know (in one state of mind [1] that is) that your knowledge is limited, and yet you speak as if it isn't (another one of the common patterns I refer to above).
> Any online thread is likely to be skewed towards a lack of visible curiosity
If this was /r/politics, I wouldn't complain. But this lack of curiosity combined with the abundance of self-congratulatory claims of intelligence in these threads is a bit off-putting to me - and I am a great lover of irony!
> whereas the most prolific way to produce content is by debate.
I dream of a day that we can manage a debate here on HN, on culture war topics, with the same mental discipline we demonstrate when debating determinate domains, like programming, hardware, etc. Heck, I'd even be happy if someone could agree that the noticeable degradation in quality of discourse on topics like this, combined with the gravity of the topics (ie: climate change), might be substantial enough to at least consider trying to do something about.
> But I’d still like to keep nudging things in that direction, and maybe someday we’ll get there.
That is what I have been trying to do for quite some time now: nudge people into a higher state of consciousness - to get them to at least realize what is going on in threads like this. But it seems to be an unpopular idea.
I would like to say though: despite the harshness of my tone and words, this has been the best conversation I've had on HN in a very long time, so thank you for that.
Perhaps it's due to a difference in our thinking styles. You said:
>> But it seems to me that the best way to find the truth (with a small T) is by rationality; the alternative is irrationality which seems unlikely to be effective. My hope is that, by collaborating using the tools of reason combined with our own personal Truths, humanity could do our best by everyone involved. I don’t know for certain that it will work, but it seems like the best way we’ve got.
To "do our best by everyone involved", does that not involve society and the people that live within it, who act according to the virtual reality that is contained within their minds?
Now, maybe you weren't "making that point" (or in other words, thinking of it from that perspective), but this kind of gets into the distinction between Reality and Truth. (For more on that, see the 3rd video I linked here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25662949)
> When I hear “the tools to understand what is reasonable” and write of “finding the truth” and “collaborating using the tools of reason” I think of things like statistics courses and advancing the theory of systemantics. Reading your reply, it’s hard for me to tell exactly what you’ve heard, but it sounds like you may have instead understood this as my desiring to impose my beliefs of truth on others, which is not what I meant at all.
Oh no, I'm not saying that it is your (conscious) intent to "impose my beliefs of truth on others" (but I would speculate that this could manifest unintentionally, via simple democracy). My point is that you seem to hold the axiom that "things like statistics courses and advancing the theory of systemantics" are the only modalities of thinking that we have at our disposal.
As for things like Systemantics, I am a huge proponent of this sort of thinking. But you may (or may not) notice a near complete lack of this sort of thinking (that we live within a complex, semi-indeterminate system) in threads like this.
> It sounds like we’re actually in violent agreement; I also think that we should be seeking each others’ perspectives.
Yes, I would very much like for HN to adopt this culture. Alas, it seems more than people here can muster, which is one of my prime complaints. I have also suggested an experimental solution to resolve this inability in the comment I linked above. Alas, @dang seems uninterested in trying to improve things, despite his (I presume) perception that he wants HN forums to be a force for good in the world. The mind has massive capabilities for imagination, but it seems there are certain places that this imagination will not go: into itself, or one's tribe.
> but even if the things they feel strongly about cannot themselves be reconciled by reason, it is still a useful tool to effect action based on those beliefs.
True. My point is, consider the possibility that you are hitting a kind of hard limit of this approach. I believe that this is where humanity now finds itself - we are metaphorically building ever taller towers of technological capability based on our capacity for reason (science, engineering, etc), but we find ourselves unable to manage the societal consequences of the system we've built ourselves to live in. Perhaps it is indeed possible to solve this increasingly risky situation with reason - but what if it isn't? What if your intuition (which is what it is) is wrong? Disproving hypotheses is a fundamental part of the scientific process, and yet look how eager we are to skip over that part when dealing with indeterminate domains.
> Not really, no, but I also didn’t get the impression that you had done that, either
And then there is: What is True.
> so there you go.
You and me both, and the society we live in. And where are we going? I don't know, but the neighbourhood outside the window I'm looking out of is starting to get a little scary, by my standards anyways. Maybe I just have to work on my thrill seeking skills. Although, I don't get the sense from others in this thread that they're seeking thrills, so do they see something different outside their windows? Or is something else going on?
> it’s an incredibly large field, so I rely heavily on encountering them by happenstance
As do most people, and I can appreciate why: it is indeed a very large field, and it seems to take years just to get even a rough lay of the landscape. But what I can't appreciate is that "reasonable, informed" people (like my brethren here on HN, or so they tell me) seem to have no curiosity when such ideas arise. What they do have though, is downvotes. But to be clear: I don't appreciate it, but I do understand it. I propose that once one has traversed the right parts of these lands, you can begin to notice the very same, simple patterns always and everywhere (hence my suggestion in my other comment).
> Running on heuristics is all we can do; the world is too large and complex for anything else. The best we can do is tune them carefully and be prepared to change them (using, of course, more heuristics; as you noted in your first paragraph this is heavily influenced by existing priors).
These beliefs are derived from a heuristic (resting upon axioms and premises). Why not apply the very tool you are recommending: (first principles based) reasoning? Once again, is this not at least suggestive of a fundamantal shortcoming in that approach? On one hand, you surely know (in one state of mind [1] that is) that your knowledge is limited, and yet you speak as if it isn't (another one of the common patterns I refer to above).
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/State-dependent_memory
> Any online thread is likely to be skewed towards a lack of visible curiosity
If this was /r/politics, I wouldn't complain. But this lack of curiosity combined with the abundance of self-congratulatory claims of intelligence in these threads is a bit off-putting to me - and I am a great lover of irony!
> whereas the most prolific way to produce content is by debate.
I dream of a day that we can manage a debate here on HN, on culture war topics, with the same mental discipline we demonstrate when debating determinate domains, like programming, hardware, etc. Heck, I'd even be happy if someone could agree that the noticeable degradation in quality of discourse on topics like this, combined with the gravity of the topics (ie: climate change), might be substantial enough to at least consider trying to do something about.
> But I’d still like to keep nudging things in that direction, and maybe someday we’ll get there.
That is what I have been trying to do for quite some time now: nudge people into a higher state of consciousness - to get them to at least realize what is going on in threads like this. But it seems to be an unpopular idea.
I would like to say though: despite the harshness of my tone and words, this has been the best conversation I've had on HN in a very long time, so thank you for that.