Common errors:
“Try and X” should be “Try to X”.
“X and not Y” should be “X, not Y”.
Your donation tiers are hard to find. I could remember seeing something about them somewhere and I only found this post after looking for a while (I looked at curi.us, elliottemple.com, and criticalfallibilism.com first and couldn’t see a link).
The link in your post also doesn’t link to any useful information about it, it just links to the main page. I had to search the CF site (which only worked once I knew “donation” was a keyword). This is the only page that seems to talk about it:
Critical Fallibilism Site Updates, March 2023
It was only after seeing that page that I found out I needed an account to see the donation options. I had no reason to make an account previously and I expect that applies to most people.
I think it’s worth making this much more easy to find. You’re making it difficult for people to find out how to pay you. Perhaps an explanation at the bottom of the CF main page and the About page? A link in the elliottemple.com store page might make sense too.
I’d suggest renaming “Digital Products” on the eliottemple.com site to “Store”. I think it’s more intuitive to scan for (sites with products to sell usually use “shop” or “store” or something like that.)
https://twitter.com/jacyanthis/status/1655203928760360966
Many people who reply critically to Yudkowsky about AI risk have worse positions than he does.
I still wear N95 masks and reduce contact with people. Rates of long term problems from COVID are substantial (usually milder than the video).
IIRC 100% of people who posted a written debate or paths forward policy, other than me, were lying. They wouldn’t actually follow the rules as written. This undermines what I’m doing – it tells people not to trust mine either.
Most people are willing to carelessly, voluntarily make guarantees in writing, then break them. Or carelessly, voluntarily bind themselves to follow certain rules, then break those rules.
(I sympathize much more when people break stuff they were coerced into. Also the issue I’m concern with isn’t trying but failing, nor is it ambiguity. It’s choosing to break the rules.)
People simply breaking their word or breaking rules (that they agreed to follow) is a major problem for approaches that involve using written rules to guide one’s own behavior or guide what happens within a debate.
People are sometimes confused about why my debate policy has qualifiers and limits in it – they don’t seem to actually think about what it means to guarantee stuff to anyone in the public. They don’t realize that’s a big deal or else they would see the importance of limits and see that my limits are minimal.
This is related to how we live in a fairly high trust society, but many people are undermining that. E.g. selling bad or fraudulent products works partly because consumers tend to trust businesses to usually be pretty good and non-fraudulent. By exploiting the public’s trust that it’s safe to buy stuff, people can make some money while reducing trust levels. This is sort of like the public good problem and free rider problem – trust levels are a resource that benefits everyone, and if everyone behaves well then everyone wins, but some bad actors can get a better deal for themselves while harming the group. That’s actually like the Prisoner’s Dilemma too. (I’m writing this from an American perspective, and it applies to some other countries too, but not all countries. There are places where people are more suspicious about buying and selling, so transaction costs are higher because people put more work into avoiding frauds and other problems.)
So rather than inspire more people to have good debate or paths forward policies and help spread the idea, I have inspired a small number of people to have dishonest debate or paths forward policies, which is counter-productive. I don’t think I’ve inspired anyone to make a good policy yet. Also there’s been near-zero interest in using my policies even by people who really want my attention. (Please don’t rush to make a policy-based request just because you read this paragraph, not because you have a good reason to use the policy. Dishonest, bad or abusive uses of my policies are counter-productive.)
After some searches on YouTube and Twitch, I’m wondering if there is a single other English language philosopher, besides me, who has ever live streamed themselves doing philosophy work. (Excluding a few of my fans.) There’s almost zero philosophy streaming of any kind.
I also tried searching for anyone streaming any kind of non-philosophy writing. I quickly found three different people, but only one of them actually showed their screen so you could see them write anything… lol. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SIqWO52-7RI (And I had to look through their video history to even find that. The first thing I saw, which said it was a writing stream, did not appear to show any actual writing.)
The streaming situation is much, much, much better with gaming and drawing. It’s also better with video editing and animating. The situation with gaming is so good that some people will live stream themselves learning new things (and making lots of mistakes in the process).
There are tons of videos about how to write philosophy essays. But none of those creators want to show their own, real writing process. (Similarly, videos with scripted tips or tutorials about how to do video editing are much more common than videos of someone actually doing real editing.)
It’s also hard to find anything non-live that shows people’s actual working process for philosophy instead of being e.g. scripted, heavily edited, or more like a podcast where they just chat. This kind of thing is uncommon though somewhat more available for many other topics. I’d have some interest in it for writing, math, science, and various other things.
Does anyone know of any videos/creators I might like?
Maybe this could be of interest to you.
Disclaimer: I have not watch it. Just thought Sanderson might have done some live writing. According to the video information it might be what you are looking for re writing.
Waygate Foundation was proud to host a Write-a-thon featuring the creation of a new work of fiction by Brandon Sanderson. Over $1,300 was raised during the 4-hour live event to support Worldbuilders’ annual campaign for Heifer International.
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In a better world, I could be hired by an AI company to defend the safety of ChatGPT or other AI technologies. Basically, I’d debate against people who think it’s going to kill us all. They don’t have anyone effectively arguing that their technology is safe. People liked Yudkowsky aren’t being countered very effectively.
(ChatGPT has lots of flaws and can do harm, but version 5.0 or even 20.0 is absolutely not going to exterminate humanity. I could defend against that specific concern which has been getting major publicity/attention. One reason they wouldn’t hire me is I would be honest about negatives, not just say ChatGPT is super awesome and be a fully biased tribalist. But I don’t think that’s the primary blocker.)
This would have mutual benefit. It’d solve the problem of getting attention for me. Right now, I can’t get anyone at all to have a serious, organized debate about this topic. No one will even try. If I was hired to officially speak/debate for a company, then I’d easily get more attention.
Also, I have other topics I’m prioritizing currently, but AI safety is fun enough for me, and fits my skillset well (I’m great at debate and epistemology, and also an experienced programmer), so I’d be happy to work on it if paid. And having public debates would provide some good, relevant examples for CF.
There are many other imaginable things that’d make a lot of sense to hire me for where, like this, I’m skeptical that pursuing the opportunity is a good use of my time because I fear people are too unreasonable.
This problem doesn’t necessarily need to be solved. I have plenty to do. But it’d be nice if there was a way I could work with companies better and provide specialized skills that they don’t have.
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I changed the banners, description text and links on both my YouTube channels. Nothing special but I think it’s an improvement.
Does anyone know anything bad about the Internet Archive? I have a high opinion of it and I’d like to know if there’s anything majorly wrong with it.
Not sure but copyright infringement looks like a possible issue:
Goldratt’s books seem to have gotten a lot less attention or discussion at my forums than Rand’s or Popper’s. And that’s true looking only at the time period after I started strongly recommending them; I’m not talking about the total quantity over time which gives an advantage to stuff I found earlier.
I’d be interested in comments on why people either haven’t been interested in reading Goldratt or haven’t discussed what they read. I think Goldratt is significantly easier to read than Rand or Popper and he has a ton of great ideas that are relevant to CF. Goldratt also has fewer downsides/errors/quirks than Rand or Popper (that I know of). In my opinion, in general, the best things for learners to read first are me and Goldratt (or start with fun fiction just to get more reading experience).
In the post Cycle Between Learning Critical Fallibilism and Its Prerequisites you said:
Learning the ideas of Karl Popper, Ayn Rand and Eli Goldratt could be categorized as part of CF philosophy or as advanced intellectual prerequisites.
I thought it would be a good idea to focus on some of the simpler prerequisites.
It seems like you’re recommending him as the most beginner-friendly of the 3 though. Would you recommend starting with “The Goal”?
I read Goldratt before I started posting at the forum, but I did find out about him from Elliot. I have read The Goal, It’s Not Luck, The Choice, partially Critical Chain. I have put studying them aside (along with most books) to further develop more basic skills, so that I can read them better. I don’t actually have a good idea on how to effectively study a book yet, but that is something I am building up to. I have great relationship with reading, like I love reading and can read for hours and hours, but I think I have some bad habits like skipping over things I don’t understand too well and not following up. In fact, feeling like I was not approaching reading properly and that I should somehow be doing it better and more productively is one of the main problems motivating me to learn CF.
Yes, The Goal is a good first Goldratt book.
Have any of you researched the alleged ongoing oppression of Africa by Western countries? I don’t know if it’s true and I don’t really have spare energy to investigate it currently.
If you want to message me personally, please use PMs or email, not the chat feature. Thanks.
I’m consolidating domains.
https://www.yesornophilosophy.com is going away. I’ve redirected it to https://yesornophilosophy.elliottemple.com which has the same information.
https://www.learnobjectivism.com/ is going away. I’ve redirected it to Essays · Elliot Temple where I’ve put the Atlas Shrugged outline and chapters 1 and 2 close readings.
Redirects will probably work in a few hours.
I also own randquotes.com (which I never used) until September in case anyone wants to buy it.
I gathered some things I’ve written related to rationality policies:
- Rationality Policies
- Using Intellectual Processes to Combat Bias · Elliot Temple
- Fallibilism, Bias, and the Rule of Law
- My Experience with My Debate Policy
- Debate Policy · Elliot Temple
- Curiosity – My Paths Forward Policy
- Taking Personal Responsibility for Debating Your Ideas
- Curiosity – Hard and Soft Rationality Policies
- Curiosity – Rationality Policies Tips
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