The Nonlinear Library LW - The Sense Of Physical Necessity: A Naturalism Demo (Introduction) by LoganStrohl
Feb 24, 2024
09:08
Welcome to The Nonlinear Library, where we use Text-to-Speech software to convert the best writing from the Rationalist and EA communities into audio. This is: The Sense Of Physical Necessity: A Naturalism Demo (Introduction), published by LoganStrohl on February 24, 2024 on LessWrong.
Note on genre: This sequence is a demonstration of a complete naturalist study, as described in Intro to Naturalism and The Nuts and Bolts Of Naturalism. I think of naturalism demos as reference material. I've tried to make it readable, but like a dictionary or a user manual, I only expect it to be of interest to people who already have a reason to consult it.
Epistemic status: The explicit concepts I'm building around what I've learned are still under construction. I think the framing emphasized in this demo is askew, or incomplete, or some-other-how flawed. Perhaps I will come back in a future year to describe how my concepts have evolved. However, I stand pretty firmly behind the broad strokes of the process-level stuff.
Goals
"
Hug the Query" is an essay by Eliezer Yudkowsky advocating a certain discipline of rationality that he calls closeness to the issue: "trying to observe evidence that is as near to the original question as possible, so that it screens off as many other arguments as possible."
I set out to study this discipline, and to perform a naturalism demo along the way.
In this sequence, I will try to tell you what I learned, and also how I learned it. By the end, if I've accomplished my goals, readers who would like to reproduce my results with "Hug the Query" in particular will be well prepared to do so; and readers in the midst of some other naturalist study on an entirely different topic will find supportive illustrations.
If you haven't read the original essay lately, I recommend pausing to do that before you read this one. It's about a two minute read.
Motivation
Why "Hug the Query"? Why was that worth so much of my time? (And might it be worth yours?)
The simple straightforward tool-type skill discussed in "Hug the Query" is maybe not all that profound or important to me. "Remember that less central evidence is a distraction when you have ready access to more direct means of evaluation." Yes, fine.
But the generator of that skill really matters. What is it that causes someone to "hug the query", when they have never been told to?
When I encounter a creek, I might leap from stone to stone to make my way across. It's not that I've been instructed in stone leaping, and thus execute the skill reliably when faced with a series of stones; it's just that facing the creek, and intending to cross, this method is immediately obvious to me.
What disposition inclines someone to stay "close to the issue" just because it feels obvious and natural to do so? With what creeks is such a person so familiar that they do not need to be taught how to cross?
Whatever the answer, I think it probably cuts right to the heart of Yudkowskian rationality.
Sometimes when an essay (or book, or lecture) seems to have an important point, I have gone, "Oh, that's really important!" and then changed basically nothing about how I think or behave in practice. I think this is pretty common for humans in general. In fact, it might be the default human response to insightful essays.
One way to remedy this mistake (supposing it is a mistake) is to generate at least one
TAP whenever something in an essay seems "important". This is akin to reading about creek crossing, and then declaring, "If I encounter a series of stones spanning a creek, then I will consider leaping from stone to stone."
But the TAP extraction technique strikes me as pretty superficial. When an essay contains something deeply important, it may be worth more than quickly tossing a new tool into your toolbox, to rattle around with all the other insightful tidbits you've gathered over the years. It might be worth seeking
mastery. It might be worth becoming
the source of the thought, so that if yo...
Note on genre: This sequence is a demonstration of a complete naturalist study, as described in Intro to Naturalism and The Nuts and Bolts Of Naturalism. I think of naturalism demos as reference material. I've tried to make it readable, but like a dictionary or a user manual, I only expect it to be of interest to people who already have a reason to consult it.
Epistemic status: The explicit concepts I'm building around what I've learned are still under construction. I think the framing emphasized in this demo is askew, or incomplete, or some-other-how flawed. Perhaps I will come back in a future year to describe how my concepts have evolved. However, I stand pretty firmly behind the broad strokes of the process-level stuff.
Goals
"
Hug the Query" is an essay by Eliezer Yudkowsky advocating a certain discipline of rationality that he calls closeness to the issue: "trying to observe evidence that is as near to the original question as possible, so that it screens off as many other arguments as possible."
I set out to study this discipline, and to perform a naturalism demo along the way.
In this sequence, I will try to tell you what I learned, and also how I learned it. By the end, if I've accomplished my goals, readers who would like to reproduce my results with "Hug the Query" in particular will be well prepared to do so; and readers in the midst of some other naturalist study on an entirely different topic will find supportive illustrations.
If you haven't read the original essay lately, I recommend pausing to do that before you read this one. It's about a two minute read.
Motivation
Why "Hug the Query"? Why was that worth so much of my time? (And might it be worth yours?)
The simple straightforward tool-type skill discussed in "Hug the Query" is maybe not all that profound or important to me. "Remember that less central evidence is a distraction when you have ready access to more direct means of evaluation." Yes, fine.
But the generator of that skill really matters. What is it that causes someone to "hug the query", when they have never been told to?
When I encounter a creek, I might leap from stone to stone to make my way across. It's not that I've been instructed in stone leaping, and thus execute the skill reliably when faced with a series of stones; it's just that facing the creek, and intending to cross, this method is immediately obvious to me.
What disposition inclines someone to stay "close to the issue" just because it feels obvious and natural to do so? With what creeks is such a person so familiar that they do not need to be taught how to cross?
Whatever the answer, I think it probably cuts right to the heart of Yudkowskian rationality.
Sometimes when an essay (or book, or lecture) seems to have an important point, I have gone, "Oh, that's really important!" and then changed basically nothing about how I think or behave in practice. I think this is pretty common for humans in general. In fact, it might be the default human response to insightful essays.
One way to remedy this mistake (supposing it is a mistake) is to generate at least one
TAP whenever something in an essay seems "important". This is akin to reading about creek crossing, and then declaring, "If I encounter a series of stones spanning a creek, then I will consider leaping from stone to stone."
But the TAP extraction technique strikes me as pretty superficial. When an essay contains something deeply important, it may be worth more than quickly tossing a new tool into your toolbox, to rattle around with all the other insightful tidbits you've gathered over the years. It might be worth seeking
mastery. It might be worth becoming
the source of the thought, so that if yo...