I talk with Alkjash about valuing original thinking vs getting things right. We discuss a few main threads:

What are the benefits of epistemic specialisation? What about generalism?
How much of the action in an actual human mind is in tweaking your distribution over hypotheses and how much over making sure you're considering good hypotheses?
If your hope is to slot into an epistemic process that figures out what's correct in part by you coming up with novel ideas, will processes that are out to get you make you waste your life?

Intellectual generals vs supersoldiers

alkjash

Over time I've noticed that I care less and less about epistemic rationality - i.e. being correct - and more and more about being original. Of course the final goal is to produce thoughts that are original AND correct, but I find the originality condition more stringent and worth optimizing for. This [...]

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Outline:

(00:43) Intellectual generals vs supersoldiers

(12:43) Bayes optimality vs Discovering new hypothesis classes

(24:39) Correctness as defence against the dark arts

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First published:
December 6th, 2023

Source:
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/AnhwbEisrPXEw9d5g/originality-vs-correctness

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

“Originality vs. Correctness” by alkjash, habryka

LessWrong (30+ Karma)