CF Summary Draft (seeking feedback)

Elliot Temple
#1

This is for the CF homepage so it needs to be short (this may already be too long?).

Critical Fallibilism (CF) is a rational philosophy which explains how to evaluate ideas using decisive, critical arguments and accept only ideas with zero refutations (no known errors). An error is a reason an idea fails at a goal (in a context). CF rejects judging how good ideas, how strong evidence is or how powerful arguments are, and rejects credences and degrees of belief. CF says we learn by an evolutionary process focused on error correction, not by induction or justification. CF advocates an approach to decision making focused on qualitative differences not quantitative factors.

CF advocates publishing written policies to enable error correction that include mechanisms to reduce bias like transparency. Intellectuals actually could address public questions and criticism without spending too much time and energy. Instead, they use quality filters to reduce what they consider, but most filters are indirectly based on social status, which is irrational. Ask “If this criticism (that you don’t want to engage with) is true, by what process will your error be corrected?” and they have no answer. Intellectuals routinely stay wrong when it’s avoidable because better ideas are already known. CF proposes solutions to engage with ideas in resource-efficient ways. Here’s my debate policy.

CF explains practicing ideas in order to achieve mastery. To learn philosophy effectively and use the ideas in your life, practice activities are necessary. Practicing trains your subconscious to handle some thinking automatically, which frees up your conscious mind to think about more advanced issues.

CF has original ideas developed by Elliot Temple. It also builds on previous ideas, particularly Critical Rationalism (Karl Popper), Objectivism (Ayn Rand) and Theory of Constraints (Eli Goldratt).

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#2

The most typical answer is that maybe someone else will listen to the idea. Once some high status intellectuals accept the idea or a large number of low status people accept it, then this intellectual will be willing to consider it.

If everyone uses answers like that, then the ideas are blocked. He’s just relying on someone else’s rationality. Either there are other people who are better than him (maybe he should try being more like them? if they can do it, that proves it’s viable) or else they’re all like him and his strategy won’t work.

i don’t think i have space to go into any detail on this though.

#3

I cut this sentence to keep it shorter.

CF concludes that intellectuals who don’t commit themselves in writing to rational policies should not be trusted.

#4

Part of the inspiration for this summary was dividing CF into 3 main parts, 3 big ideas that i want to share: yesno/epistemology, paths forward and automatization. The first 2 are (IMO) really important original ideas and the third is not so original but needed for people to actually use the first 2 ideas. There are many other ways to divide up CF but this one seems OK and simple. I was trying to think if I could tell people a short list of key messages, what would i say? i came up with those 3 messages. they’re writable in one sentence each (they’re focused enough ideas, which is good) but i thought explaining a bit more on my homepage would be good.

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#5

I think you missed writing the word “are” before the first comma. It should read “CF rejects judging how good ideas are,…”

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