Epistemics

How to know things: truth-seeking, calibration, evidence, self-deception, being wrong well

A topic in the tpot Community Archive, drawn from 15,151 posts.

Trusted voices in Epistemics

Ordered by the trust Epistemics's own network concentrates on each poster, most first.

  1. visakanv — trusted by 198 posters here
  2. nosilverv — trusted by 194 posters here
  3. DefenderOfBasic — trusted by 163 posters here
  4. eshear — trusted by 185 posters here
  5. eigenrobot — trusted by 153 posters here
  6. QiaochuYuan — trusted by 167 posters here
  7. the_wilderless — trusted by 133 posters here
  8. AskYatharth — trusted by 115 posters here
  9. RichDecibels — trusted by 128 posters here
  10. patio11 — trusted by 112 posters here
  11. Malcolm_Ocean — trusted by 117 posters here
  12. goblinodds — trusted by 109 posters here

Top posts in Epistemics

Ordered by the recorded like count from the source corpus; a like is not an endorsement.

  1. Ok, so a thing that has been BLOWING MY MIND laterly is that people seem to process words first as signifiers, not content. That is, not "what do these words mean" but "what kind of person says… (nosilverv) — 48 likes
  2. The reason to avoid lying is that the brain is not type safe. Lying to others and lying to yourself are the same motion. (RomeoStevens76) — 44 likes
  3. there’s a take i think of internally as the “minimal but respectful take” on astrology, tarot, magic, etc. which is that nothing is happening that violates known physics, but that the human mind is… (QiaochuYuan) — 42 likes
  4. A lot of woo is actually true. We just lack the mental capacity, the frameworks, the language, the ease of articulation, and the consistency of evidence to make it philosophically coherent and… (algekalipso) — 40 likes
  5. Random noise? Oh, you mean the part of the system whose dynamics are not described by your model of the world? (eshear) — 39 likes
  6. nothing is truly original but 1. ayy lmao 2. focus... (see bio) 3. joke about outcomes you want 4. optimize for survival 5. do 100 things 6. solve for distribution 7. articulate your vector 8.… (visakanv) — 39 likes
  7. the flattening of attention metrics is something that seems to trip up even the most thoughtful of people 1 follow or view from the right person is worth 10,000 casual randos, maybe 100k. this is… (visakanv) — 37 likes
  8. Modern mainstream science: There is no plausible physical basis for “auras” emanating from bodies, and certainly not for their perception by others. Human-computer interface engineers: As everyone… (davidad) — 37 likes
  9. Ok boys and girls, as promised, THE GLOSSARY: the 75 top concepts I use to navigate a world of adversarial epistemology. Politics, buddhism, sociology, psychology, philosophy, phenomenology - it's… (nosilverv) — 35 likes
  10. Meta-rats talking: metarat1: heads metarat2: I agree, but also tails metarat1: yes I agree about tails both in unison: this is the same coin metarat1: but it's good to argue the side for heads… (frideswyth) — 34 likes
  11. Just checking, but yall DO realize we're all wrong about everything, right? Like, that our lil pet ideas & systems & lineages about the cosmos are good-enough compressions of the view from… (the_wilderless) — 34 likes
  12. some people, upon seeing this, may experience a flash of insight that reconfigures their entire model of human expression and behavior https://t.co/SSwpygNcos (visakanv) — 33 likes
  13. nothing destroys your ability to learn new lessons more thoroughly in the long run than repeatedly being very very right when literally everyone thought you were wrong (eshear) — 33 likes
  14. when somebody says “nobody cares” my mind tends to autocorrect it to something like “nobody I know cares”. I probably have a hundred such little mental autocorrects that let me have a pleasant… (visakanv) — 33 likes
  15. Such a blackpill to learn that most people regarded as "really smart" are actually doing a complicated logic game of moving around abstractions that don't actually map onto the physical/social… (TylerAlterman) — 32 likes
  16. a lot of smart people are stuck on extremely easy and solvable problems because they keep shaming the system they're trying to debug "it's not SUPPOSED to work this way..." ok but it does. now what? (DefenderOfBasic) — 32 likes
  17. One of the biggest tells that someone doesn’t know what they’re talking about: glossing over addressing resource constraints, or saying things that imply infinite resources. Effectively everything… (visakanv) — 31 likes
  18. the big lesson of survivor bias is that you should optimize for being a survivor (visakanv) — 31 likes
  19. In the past I evaluated ideologies/worldviews/religions by their claims. Now I focus more on what sort of people they produce. Do adherents become more wholesome? More wise? More beautiful? More… (TylerAlterman) — 31 likes
  20. If you want to be epistemically humbled* just try to figure out nutrition/diet/health. Your own, not even generally. I used to be a training maxi (training up to 25 hours a week). Now I've been… (nosilverv) — 31 likes
  21. took me years to accept the simple truth the endless incidence of such events forces me to admit, namely that if a semantic system is used consistently and reliably demonstrates predictive power,… (pee_zombie) — 30 likes
  22. Took me long enough but there's only two things I've always been trying to say. (2) is a subset of (1), really, but I don't yet know how to say precisely how. https://t.co/6RDD6jR042 (nosilverv) — 30 likes
  23. nerd with lame attitude: Studies show im right Me: ive never read a book so my entire worldview is based on gnosis nerd: (his glasses fall off) Me: Catch you later (eigenrobot) — 29 likes
  24. COVID restrictions are lifting. The end is in sight. It's time to forgive all the people you disagreed with. No one had a monopoly on the truth, good information was hard to find and kept changing,… (vividvoid) — 29 likes
  25. IN THIS HOUSE WE BELIEVE: MY EXPERIENCE IS A REASONABLE REFERENCE I MAKE CORRECT ASSESSMENTS OF THE WORLD I AM GOOD MY GROUP IS A REASONABLE REFERENCE MY GROUP IS GOOD PEOPLES ATTRIBUTES SHAPE… (the_wilderless) — 29 likes
  26. You prolly shouldn’t be allowed to study evolutionary psychology without also studying history To avoid positing just-so-stories about why humans do x that are easily dismissed by seeing that… (the_wilderless) — 28 likes
  27. like writing a novel without the letter E, you discover new things by observing the world without using a deficit frame eg "political institutions lack legitimacy as voter participation declines" ➡️… (RichDecibels) — 28 likes
  28. there’s an entire universe of experiences like this that people have been having for millennia, that a kind of “i fucking love science” devotion to scientific materialism dismisses out of hand… (QiaochuYuan) — 27 likes
  29. 4channers, with their "hypertrophied intuition of damaged man" mix being "absolutely retarded on the personal level with sociological takes from the year 3020". They have keen observation powers,… (nosilverv) — 26 likes
  30. them: nobody can do what you're suggesting me: well what if they first do A, B, C, D them: nobody does all of that me: ah you're not actually... you don't actually care about what is possible,… (visakanv) — 26 likes
  31. I guess some academic-brained people think you're not allowed to think out loud without frantically combing the literature first. this cucked impulse doesn't make you have only original thoughts, it… (myhandle) — 26 likes
  32. chaos-surfing well requires understanding a buncha things 1. how things appear to me are not necessarily how they are 2. what people say is not necessarily what they mean 3. what is said/shown is… (visakanv) — 26 likes
  33. I’m always fascinated by how people partition and label time in their mjnds. For a lot of people, forever/always is 3-7 years (visakanv) — 26 likes
  34. a lot of the people i respect the most know what it's like to feel betrayed by an ideology, and what it's like to deconvert. it's humbling to know you can be full of conviction for years and then… (QiaochuYuan) — 25 likes
  35. can never tell if I'm at the front edge of a profound cultural shift or a weird little guy with delusions of grandeur (RichDecibels) — 25 likes
  36. epistemic status: im just speculating bro potentially one reason the rationalist diaspora somewhat disrespects academia in some ways is that imo rationalism cultivated legitimately better norms… (eigenrobot) — 25 likes
  37. extremely common smart young person failure mode: 1. notice the conventional rationale for some thing is bullshit 2. conclude that therefore the thing is bad actually 3. make opposition to the thing… (eigenrobot) — 25 likes
  38. this is all fine but it's not why people think aella's research is worthless. science is a religion, scientists are priests, and aella has not been ritually permitted to wield the holy science.… (QiaochuYuan) — 25 likes
  39. deliberation was the 1st time my ideas had been tested by good faith disagreement, sustained debate, other people with different experiences & different beliefs, who were willing to stay with… (RichDecibels) — 25 likes
  40. even during Baghdad’s golden age, thinkerbros grumbled that the public preferred food bloggers: “If you write about fish and vegetables, you garner much merit in the public’s eyes, but if you… (visakanv) — 25 likes
  41. Dude I loooooooove doctors. They've mastered the trick of faking knowledge through black boxes. They just make an expression into a fancy term, add a because, and, voilà!, it sounds like an… (nosilverv) — 25 likes
  42. people really don't get how sincere the AI existential risk people are. lots of looking for ulterior motives. i promise you all the ones i've personally met and talked to literally believe what they… (QiaochuYuan) — 25 likes
  43. "Wrong" is an achievement https://t.co/H1SLzAOVVp (nosilverv) — 25 likes
  44. omg the word intelligence comes from inter + legere, literally inter legibility, ability to understand each other (exgenesis) — 25 likes
  45. How to change anybody's mind about anything: - Understand the territory - Understand their map - <make it emotionally safe for them to change their mind> - Find insightful examples of their map not… (DefenderOfBasic) — 25 likes
  46. people are always surprised that I actually do the reading. I think the default assumption is that nobody actually reads anything. not closely anyway https://t.co/XCZRvN8ARP (visakanv) — 25 likes
  47. The good news: we got much better at running The Sort. The bad news: we got much better at running The Sort. (patio11) — 25 likes
  48. I always feel vaguely bad about procrastinating but it always feels incredible when the extra wait reveals something to me that turns out to be much more powerful/critical than anything I had on my… (visakanv) — 25 likes
  49. there's actually something terrible about information being easily obtainable. in grad school i used to download textbooks from libgen and never read them, basically e-hoarding. universal… (QiaochuYuan) — 25 likes
  50. [visakanv voice] the older i get the more i'm convinced that nearly all of our beliefs were put there by some idiot. moreover that idiot's beliefs were also put there by some other idiot. we are… (QiaochuYuan) — 25 likes

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