Arjun Khemani

Amjad Masad

daniel

Phil Filippak

Thibault

Aaron Stupple

Chris Turner

ben chugg

Samuel Kuypers

Martin Thaulow

Sarah Fitz-Claridge

manveer

Aashay Mody

Ronen V

surbhi

Moritz Wallawitsch

Jay Topp

Nivi

Brett Hall

Oubi

Lulie

David Kedmey

Jack Mielke

Logan Chipkin

Carlos De la Guardia

 Most phenomena are not the same. History doesn't repeat itself. Assuming an

 analogous relationship requires a good explanation as to why the phenomenon are analogous.

 This is also why I dislike this concept of mentor models which has been popularized by

 the business book and self-help literature in the last few years.

 One example being Shane Parrish who wrote I think three books on the topic.

 For example, on a blog post on mental models, he explains this mental model of inertia,

 which is essentially making the analogy between Newton's first law, inertia, and the status

 quo bias, but it's a much shallower explanation of these two distinct concepts.

 Shane writes in his blog post on meta-models, inertia, an object in motion 

 a certain vector, wants to continue moving in that direction unless acted upon.

 This is a fundamental physical principle of motion, however 

 individual systems and organizations display the same effect.

 It allows them to minimize the use of energy 

 but can cause them to be destroyed or eroded.

 and argued that learning the two distinct concepts is more efficient because they 

 are a deeper explanation and also easier to learn because they're closer to the truth.

 The first one being Newton's first law and then the second one being 

 quo bias which is kind of a mix mash of other heuristics such as loss 

 aversion, sunk cost fallacy and the behavioral tendency to reduce cognitive load.

https://raypeat.com/articles/articles/howdoyouknow.shtml

 I also recently came across this article by Ray Peat about epistemology, education and medical research.

 We brought up this idea before in a different form.

 Basically, the idea is that some ideas are so mimetic that they spread virally or they're

 so stubborn that they stay in your head regardless of whether they're true or not.

 And I think there is some truth to that, but not a lot.

 will over time get weeded out by ideas that do

 have higher truth content because higher truth content means better adaptability, better

 survival, better fitness. And so people who adopt the 

 ideas that have higher truth content are more likely to survive

 and propagate those ideas. So although in the short term, 

 there are mimetic advantages to spreading quickly and to staying

 embedded. In the long term, it's very hard to 

 separate those out from truth content because low truth

 content but high mimesis means you do eventually get weeded out.

 And things like stubbornness to adopt new ideas is essentially trying to resist this

 mimesis that other ideas are attacking you with.

 So I think of mimesis and stubbornness as secondary components. Truth content is a higher component.

 And I know that organized religion is a popular 

 whipping boy, and I don't mean to fully defend it,

 but there is survival value to organized religion. If you think of organized religion as basically

 just a belief in, you know, monkey god in the 

 sky, then yeah, it does seem ludicrous. But if you

 look at it as a cultural operating system 

 humans to work together, where I can reliably

 signal that I am an honest and hardworking and 

 sacrificing person because I go to church every

 Sunday and I take care of the poor, then that 

 is a valuable part of community to be in. So you

 sort of pay lip service to it and you play along 

 and you have to play along to be part of this group.

 And this allows you to cooperate and gang up 

 against other monkeys who don't do this and to

 have beneficial trade and survival and trust and 

 so forth. So, you know, as long as it has a fitness

 component to it, and by truth, I don't mean 

 existential truth, I don't mean rational truth,

 I just mean truth as in it helps you survive 

 and it maps to the constraints of the real world,

 then as long as it is truth content, then it will 

 override anything that is purely mimetic or purely stubborn.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ivqalKnKOwg

By Charles Alexandre Bédard.In celebration of David Deutsch's 70th birthday.

Explanations as Programs?

https://twitter.com/MoritzW42/status/1662208070041366528?s=20

“.@naval on freedom, consensus, zone of genius, identity, and the evolution of truth (@getairchat export part 2) 

feat. @shl, @RonenV, @astupple, and @ToKTeacher

search for my podcast "Scaling Knowledge" for part 1 (available on all podcast platforms)”

Moritz Wallawitsch 🗽 on Twitter

 Hey guys, I just released the second part of my AirChat export.

 The first one I already released last week focused on topics ranging from business, product

 and design. And in this episode I focused on topics on economics, epistemology, innovation and I'd

 appreciate your feedback and if you could help spread this content.

https://twitter.com/danieljhannan/status/433732507612098560?s=46&t=6bmgJLyVr8uTNg8ezilWtw

“The debate about what "creates" poverty is bizarre. Poverty was mankind's primordial condition. Trade and exchange create wealth.”

Daniel Hannan on Twitter

 Rand has made this point, Adam Smith has made this point.

 My favourite exponent of this, Yaron Brook aside, that I go on about quite a bit,

 perhaps even a more eloquent speaker than Yaron Brook, is Daniel Hannan.

 I've said before, I have scant praise, basically none, for any politician ever,

 except this guy. I think he's fantastic.

The rich are getting richer, and the poor are... also getting richer. What's driving this wealth creation process? In this video, Daniel Hannan explains why ...

As the Rich Get Richer, the Poor Get Richer

 where he talks about how wealth was created

 and how the poorest people in the world 

 have been lifted out of poverty because of free

 markets, because of capitalism. He talks about his 

 own experience growing up in the poor areas of Peru.

 Doesn't look like he would have grown up in 

 the poor areas of Peru, but he has an interesting

 life story, back story. Anyway, he talks about this 

 modern malady where rich and wealthy people want to preserve

 ancient ways of living for primitive societies.

 They look at people scraping in existence in the jungles of Peru or in poor communities

 and they say, well, that's how they want to live.

 Who are we to come along with our Western 

 ideas and to give them industry and give them

 technology that will disrupt their traditional ways of living?

 I know this is the way that people talk in Australia about our indigenous people.

 It is so patronizing. It is the most awful, racist, 

 classist thing you can do to say, you know better as a wealthy

 person what these people in poverty want.

 They don't want to maintain their standard of living.

 They might want to maintain aspects of their culture, but they want wealth.

 They want technology. They want freedom and liberty that you have.

 Don't dare speak for them, but this is the issue with people who don't understand wealth

 creation, who does it and why they want it.


https://falliblepieces.substack.com/p/david-deutsch-eats-rationalism

Attempting to reconcile Deutsch's worldview with Less-Wrong styled rationalism

David Deutsch Eats Rationalism

 Bayesian reasoning is not how science works.

 Okay, so this chat I just searched in here is kind of...

 There's an interesting discussion going on in the biohacking chat about how you can create

 new knowledge about health and especially how can you use biomarkers to come up with

 new theories about what health is and how it... How you can increase it.

 By the way, does anyone know if David DeWage ever talked about complexity or complexity theory?

 It seems they're promising to relate these theories to each other, the theory of information

 with causal power or explanatory power and information in terms of complexity theory.

https://arjunkhemani.substack.com/p/109-the-constraints-of-money

We typically think of constraints as limiting factors to something we want to achieve. This conception is too narrow. Progress often comes from discovering constraints, and from further refining them. Moreover, the discovery of constraints is just another way to describe the growth of knowledge, and knowledge growth is the backbone of all progress. This is why constraints, when applied non-coercively, are catalysts for progress.

#109 – The Constraints of Money

 I remember this was the first room I started on 

 AirChat, and I also uploaded my first chit in this room,

 so if you're curious, go all the way back 

 to the first chit and see how it all started.

 Anyway, today I published this piece as part of my 

 Progress Good newsletter on the constraints of money,

 and it reminded me of our initial discussion in this room about 

 constraints and how they can be helpful in potentiating progress. Check it out.

 I remember when we first talked about your theory of constraints, Arjun.

 And let me ask you a couple of questions, if 

 you don't mind, after having preused your article.

 So, for example, you point out how poetry is constrained compared to prose and that

 creates a new art form, or that money is a 

 constraint on top of barter and that allows

 for better coordination of the coincidence of wants problem.

 So the first bit is, these are voluntary constraints, right, by all participants in the network.

 Now, of course, at some point, the network effect of 

 money may become so large that you end up stuck in it.

 But as you pointed out, barter is still active.

 So you can still choose to engage in barter 

 and you can still choose to engage in prose.

 It's just that poetry and money are voluntary constraints that you take on.

 Now on to the constraints themselves. Now, what is it about these 

 constraints that makes it a better outcome than not having these constraints?

 I think it's really about coordination. Isn't that correct? It allows you to coordinate.

 For example, any contract that you enter into is a mutual and 

 voluntary set of restraints that you take on to your future behavior.

 You say, if you do this, I will do that. And if 

 you do that, then I commit to doing this and so on.

 And these are voluntary constraints you take on in exchange for having better coordination.

 So, constraints lower coordination costs. Is that it?

 To stretch the analogy into the poetry case, 

 poetry you constrain the kinds of words you can

 use by saying these have to rhyme, these have to 

 be in a certain meter, these have to have a certain

 rhythm, etc. And so by doing that you actually 

 make it easier to remember and recall the poem,

 you make it easier to fill in the blanks on the 

 words because now there are less words available

 that would fit into each space, and so it 

 easier to transmit, recall, and connect with the

 poem as compared to prose. So again the constraints lower the coordination costs,

 in this case the coordination costs of remembering and conveying the poem.

 Anyway, what I'm wondering is if the next step from 

 saying that constraints, uh, you know, are useful and helpful,

 I think we can take it to constraints lower coordination 

 costs by narrowing the space, um, of things you have to consider.

 I think you're correct and you summarized it well. I like to distinguish these voluntary

 constraints from those unproductive constraints applied coercively, so taboos and dogmas those come to mind.

 You're right that voluntary constraints allow for better coordination.

 As I say in the article though, the discovery of 

 constraints is just another way to describe the growth of knowledge,

 and knowledge growth is the backbone of all progress.

 That makes more sense when referring to constraints of the physical world.

 When referring to money, for instance, it definitely allows for better coordination.

 We could go a level deeper, though, and say that money allows for faster knowledge and

 wealth creation, and I really wouldn't be surprised to see alien civilizations having

 their own forms of hard money, so money is 