> Update your beliefs based on evidence --> who disagrees with this?
Like, dozens of comments in this thread?
For example, people expressing strong opinions on what Effective Altruism is actually about, when https://www.givewell.org/charities/top-charities is just one google search away... but why would anyone bother checking before they post a strong opinion?
The #1 comment says that the rationality community is about "trying to reason about things from first principle", when if fact it is the opposite.
A commenter links a post by Scott Alexander and claims that Scott predicted something and was wrong, when if fact in the linked article Scott says he gives it a probability 30% (which means he gives probability 70% to that thing not happening). Another commenter defends that as a "perfectly reasonable but critical comment".
And hey, compared to most of the internet, HN is the smart place, and the local discussion norms are better than average. But it still doesn't seem like people here actually care about being, uhm, less wrong about things, even ones that are relatively trivial to figure out.
So basically, the mind-shattering idea is to build a community that actually works like that (well, most of the time). Where providing evidence gets upvoted, and unsubstantiated accusations that turn out to be wrong get downvoted, and a few more things like this.
Plus there is the idea of trying to express your beliefs as probabilities, using actual numbers. That's why EY cannot stop talking about the Bayes' Theorem. Yes, people actually do that.
Like, dozens of comments in this thread?
For example, people expressing strong opinions on what Effective Altruism is actually about, when https://www.givewell.org/charities/top-charities is just one google search away... but why would anyone bother checking before they post a strong opinion?
The #1 comment says that the rationality community is about "trying to reason about things from first principle", when if fact it is the opposite.
A commenter links a post by Scott Alexander and claims that Scott predicted something and was wrong, when if fact in the linked article Scott says he gives it a probability 30% (which means he gives probability 70% to that thing not happening). Another commenter defends that as a "perfectly reasonable but critical comment".
And hey, compared to most of the internet, HN is the smart place, and the local discussion norms are better than average. But it still doesn't seem like people here actually care about being, uhm, less wrong about things, even ones that are relatively trivial to figure out.
So basically, the mind-shattering idea is to build a community that actually works like that (well, most of the time). Where providing evidence gets upvoted, and unsubstantiated accusations that turn out to be wrong get downvoted, and a few more things like this.
Plus there is the idea of trying to express your beliefs as probabilities, using actual numbers. That's why EY cannot stop talking about the Bayes' Theorem. Yes, people actually do that.