Read the original essay here.
Download the mp3 here.
Saturday, March 25, 2017
Saturday, March 18, 2017
Episode 8: The Will to Believe
Read the original essay here.
Download the mp3 here.
Part of this lecture serves as a partial response to The Ethics of Belief, the reading-fodder for the previous episode. James identifies some important psychological realities and subtle distinctions that Clifford glosses over. If you ask me to pit them against one another, then I'm with Clifford. I don't think James was quite fair. He totally ignored Clifford's Bastatian, proto-Hayekian point about the macroeffects, the subtle and distributed effects, the side effects, the unnoticed negative externalities, of promoting less than maximally true beliefs.
However. This essay's logic is, so far as I can tell, insecapable. I'm astonished that no one has ever adopted this essay's theses as a foundational epistemological principle, that I've never seen debates one way or the other on the matter. Having read the essay several times in the course of producing this episode, I must say that I agree with it.
Download the mp3 here.
Part of this lecture serves as a partial response to The Ethics of Belief, the reading-fodder for the previous episode. James identifies some important psychological realities and subtle distinctions that Clifford glosses over. If you ask me to pit them against one another, then I'm with Clifford. I don't think James was quite fair. He totally ignored Clifford's Bastatian, proto-Hayekian point about the macroeffects, the subtle and distributed effects, the side effects, the unnoticed negative externalities, of promoting less than maximally true beliefs.
However. This essay's logic is, so far as I can tell, insecapable. I'm astonished that no one has ever adopted this essay's theses as a foundational epistemological principle, that I've never seen debates one way or the other on the matter. Having read the essay several times in the course of producing this episode, I must say that I agree with it.
Saturday, March 11, 2017
Episode 7: The Ethics of Belief
Saturday, March 4, 2017
Episode 6: The Method of Multiple Working Hypotheses
It is expensive to keep track of multiple partially overlapping partially contradictory models. You must do it anyway.
— Will Newsome (@willnewsome) August 5, 2012
Hypotheses shouldn't be pet causes.
— Will Newsome (@willnewsome) January 12, 2013
Read the original essay here (PDF warning) or here.yeah, the rationalist community was way better back in '97 http://t.co/Vwcst34dIx
— kenzo (@aprayerofquiet) April 13, 2015
Download the mp3 here.
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