How To Build Knowledge Skyscrapers [CF Article]

When I click this link the page doesn’t load. Nor does criticalfallibilism.com.

It’s working again now, thanks.

CR objection: Knowledge is a web not a skyscraper.

Reply: Yeah, but a skyscraper, tree or pyramid is an easier to understand mental model that makes a good, useful approximation for many purposes. CR’s arguments don’t contradict that.

Having a bad link in a web is a bit like having an overloaded bottleneck in a factory. It’s difficult to get any good knowledge out if one of the links in your web is blocking progress.

I didn’t do anything and don’t know what happened. If it recurs, you could read the copy you received by email. You might also have a copy in an RSS reader.

Another great article. I can share some of my ideas that make me feel good which might explain why some of the CR objections exist.

I think of creativity as this magical thing which can find connections which everyone else missed or it can create a guess that solves a big problem. So just like Darwin I too could end up having an insight which might solve the problem of how to make AGI. The opposite of that is I have to systematically build up knowledge in increasing order of complexity which tells me that to achieve some kind of breakthrough I have to do disciplined work to improve. This is one of the reason I like the ‘foundations don’t matter’ misinterpretation of CR.

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I really like this article. The most counter-intuitive idea to me was the bit about how focusing effort on non-error problems is an error. I only somewhat understand the concept of bottlenecks. I have net yet read Goldratt. I find the pyramid/skyscraper metaphor useful and more intuitive than the web of knowledge idea.

Revisiting older and more foundational ideas is also interesting because of the ability to bring additional context to those fundamentals.

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