For the coming semester I’m planning to emphasize in my EA university group the importance of developing habits of thought that reliably push you towards truthful beliefs. I’m still not sure what I’ll do with it, but I’m considering offering to my group a collection of media (e.g. blog posts, interviews, podcasts) that illustrate some important aspects of how one would behave when prioritizing truth-seeking.
Ideally I’d have both examples from the EA and rationalist community, but also from people from other areas to show that (we think) those habits aren’t exclusive to our own group. Here are some examples I’ve collected, with a short description of one dimension I think they’re remarkable on:
3 Things I Got Wrong About Patriarchy, Our Mistakes | GiveWell—Willingness to recognize your past and current mistakes
Something from Zeynep Tufekci on the pandemic—I recognize her mostly for being right early on and being brave enough to dissent from the expert consensus at the time
Messy personal stuff that affected my cause prioritization (or: how I started to care about AI safety) - EA Forum—Honesty, being transparent about your motivations for holding certain beliefs and aspiring towards the truth
Luisa Rodriguez’s Risk from Nuclear Weapons Sequence—Thoroughness, examining a hard question in excruciating detail and forming explicit models to answer it
If you have any example that could be worth including, just leave the link below with a short sentence of what you think is remarkable in them
I recommend anything from Julia Galef, her youtube videos, speeches, podcast interviews, or her book “The Scout Mindset,” her thought experiments are helpful, and her values shine through all her work (including her podcast Rationally Speaking), she’s a humble but sly truth seeker.
Hi Alejandro, some of the most amazing content for me, that also worked with my cohort regarding this topic are:
https://arr.am/2020/01/23/noticingconfusion/ (Noticing confusion by Arram Sabeti gives an amazing example)
https://centreforeffectivealtruism.notion.site/Aaron-s-Epistemics-Stories-ca4674a782034181bf6e3b6caf551676 (Aarons Epistemic Stories gives a very relatable story)
https://www.eaglobal.org/talks/rationality-and-effective-altruism/ (Jess Whittlestone’s talk on EA Global really is enriching about how, why and what)