Jarrod’s Introduction to Elliot Temple
I was asked what I “view as the best introduction to [Elliot Temple’s] philosophy?”
I think this is a legitimate difficulty with Elliot Temple’s work atm. Because it’s spread across heaps of stuff, there’s not one best starting point. It’s like with Rand, without Atlas Shrugged or OPAR by Peikoff, I’d find it hard to point to any single essay of hers as the best place to start. Temple is like that too. (I assume every wide-ranging philosopher is like that, really.)
That said, I can speak to what I personally find most exciting about his philosophy…
(Disclaimer: This is nowhere near a complete list of Temple’s ideas (it’s only a tiny fraction). It’s just some personal favorites that occur to me off the top of my head—and my attempt at explaining why I like them. It’s also just my current personal understanding of his ideas. I’m a new student of this philosophy so I assume I’ve made a bunch of errors in describing it. Also: the order I listed the ideas in doesn’t really matter.)
1. Paths Forward and rational debate methodologies
What is it? Many public intellectuals advance certain claims while not having a way to get corrected if they’re wrong. Paths Forward is Temple’s solution to this problem. It’s a set of ideas and methodologies for creating reliable ways (or “paths”) for intellectual progress to happen—especially for correcting errors that other people have already figured out.
Why I like it: There’s some issues where virtually everyone agrees (e.g., 2+2=4, the Earth orbiting the Sun, water consisting of hydrogen and oxygen). But then there’s so many other fields of knowledge where disagreements linger (e.g., Keynesianism vs Austrian economics, saturated fats vs seed oils, Popperianism vs induction, whether it’s better to invest in solving aging vs climate change, etc., etc.—or another example is politics where it’s just accepted that half of Congress disagrees with the other half and that they’ll never convince each other). I think if Paths Forward & rational debate methodologies were a cultural norm, it would enable the resolution of these types of lingering disagreements & massively accelerate the intellectual progress of humanity. (That’s why I’m trying to promote it.)
Some of Temple’s content on the topic:
Here’s another world-changing idea of Temple’s that I love:
2. Methodology for dealing with intuitive disagreements
What is it? Often someone will seemingly “lose” a debate—but despite “losing”, they still don’t feel convinced by the other side. They haven’t changed their mind. Or they’ll feel like they disagree but struggle to articulate exactly why they don’t agree. In our current culture, people are often jerks about this kinda thing, treating it as a “gotcha” moment or pressuring people to suppress their intuition/feelings in favor of forcing themselves to be purely “unemotional” and “rational”. None of this actually addresses/refutes the subconscious idea(s) giving rise to the intuitive disagreement though. Besides, the subconscious idea/intuition might be right!
Temple has a method for dealing with intuitive disagreements like this in debates (and other contexts). It involves imagining hypothetical situations and seeing how your intuition feels about them (does your intuition agree or disagree with the hypotheticals?). Doing this allows you to narrow in on exactly what your intuition disagrees/agrees with. Once you pinpoint your intuitive disagreement, you can use it in debate and the other side can let you know if they know why it’s wrong. If they can’t, maybe your intuition is right! (You can also help your debate partner pinpoint any intuitive disagreements he might have too.)
Why I like it: I dislike our current culture’s nasty and combative approach to debates (e.g., dunking on people, “liberal tears”, “DESTROYING” ppl with “facts” and “logic”, gotcha questions, etc., etc.). Helping people deal with their intuitive disagreements seems really kind. It’s also productive: ostensibly “beating” someone in debate but actually failing to change their mind often doesn’t really accomplish anything (except entertain a nasty & lowbrow audience, perhaps). Actually finding out why people truly disagree and aren’t convinced—and then having the opportunity to address their actual deep-seated disagreements—seems way more productive and like something that would actually help people to reach true agreement. A world/culture in which this practice was widespread would be way better.
Some of Temple’s content on the topic:
3. Decisive arguments vs weighty arguments
What it it? Most people think that being rational means carefully “weighing” the evidence and arguments and seeing which side has the most “support” for its conclusion. This is a fallacy. There is no rational way to decide how much a certain piece of evidence (or a certain argument) “weighs” (which is a bad metaphor) or how much it “supports” a certain conclusion. Also, a single piece of counterevidence (or a single counterargument) can debunk/refute a claim even if there was a mountain of evidence in its favor. (E.g., the classic example of a single black swan refuting the claim that “all swans are white”—even if you’ve seen millions of white swans.)
Instead, Temple advocates categorizing ideas not in terms of stuff like weight/likelihood/plausibility/support/strength/justification (or anything like that) but into only two categories: refuted or non-refuted. That’s it. It’s binary (rather than a spectrum that goes from “weak” to “strong” ideas or from “possible” to “probably” to “certain”).
Why I like it: I think it can help debates reach conclusions as it eliminates people’s ability to just say stuff like “well, we have lots of evidence/argument/studies/etc on our side” while refusing to engage with decisive counterarguments. So a world/culture that accepted this epistemological point would be more rational and have more conclusive debates. Also, it just makes sense.
Some of Temple’s content on the topic:
4. Unbounded discussion and criticism
What is it? Current debates/discussions are usually just limited to one topic/“proposition”. In those debates/discussions, people often want to stick to the initial topic and resent it if someone goes meta or brings up other issues. But often people are not just wrong about the initial topic—they’re also wrong about underlying assumptions, epistemology, debate methodology, something they’re unwittingly betting their career on (as I talk about below), or even the way they’re living their whole life(!), etc, etc. (In other words, their whole approach to ideas and their life in general is full of known errors.) And these other errors can prevent the discussion from reaching a conclusion about (or are more important & urgent than) the initial topic. So rather than viewing it as bad (or inconvenient, a hassle, a painful imposition) when a critic or discussion partner brings up meta/other issues, a rational person should embrace unbounded discussion so that no part of their life is left unimproved by the awesome power of reason & discussion & criticism. Their whole life and approach to ideas and everything they do should be open to rational discussion & criticism. Not just one narrow topic/“proposition”.
Why I like it: I don’t think I’m yet psychologically able to handle unbounded criticism, but I find the idea darkly appealing because I like the idea of being perfectly rational in every aspect of my life & not having any part of my life that’s unimproved by the power of philosophy/rationality. If everybody was radically transparent and open to—and sought out (e.g., via Paths Forward)—unbounded criticism, I think everybody’s personal & intellectual growth would be off the charts. That’d be a great world!
Some of Temple’s content on the topic:
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Breaking People (The title refers to the fact that most people “break” (and hate it/experience it as painful/embarrassing) if offered too much constructive criticism despite the fact that a rational person should delight in criticism because it allows them to improve and get better and get closer to the truth.)
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Do You Really, Actually, Genuinely Want Unbounded Discussion?
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Reason is Urgent; Now or Never (not exactly the same topic but still cool)
5. Betting your career
What is it? Many intellectual professionals bet their careers on premises they haven’t investigated. For example, approximately all activists and politicians bet their careers on the idea that their anti-capitalist policies are good and will improve the world while being unable to refute the arguments of capitalist thinkers like Mises. As a result, they end up wasting their life making the world worse—even if they actually had good intentions. Likewise, >50% of scientists waste their careers betting that Karl Popper’s epistemology is wrong without actually being able to explain why he’s wrong. Etc., etc.
Why I like this perspective: This idea shines a light on the colossal amount of wasted effort in the world. So many smart, well-intentioned people spend their entire lives working hard on projects that are ineffective, or even harmful, because the foundational ideas they took for granted were wrong. A culture where people were expected to identify and rationally defend their core premises would be radically more productive. Instead of wasting decades on a flawed path, people could correct their course early on. Combining this perspective with Paths Forward (including unbounded discussion) would save countless individuals from the tragedy of a wasted career and redirect all that human talent towards projects that can actually succeed and improve the world.
Some of Temple’s content on the topic:
6. Overreaching
What is it? Overreaching means trying to do things that are too hard for your current skill level—taking on projects where you’ll make errors faster than you can correct them. When your error rate exceeds your error correction rate, problems pile up. You become overwhelmed, start ignoring criticism (because you can’t handle more problems), and either fail or struggle inefficiently. The solution is to do easier things that you can succeed at, build skills through repeated successes (see “Practice and mastery” below), and gradually work your way up to more complex things as your skill level increases. This allows you to gradually and sustainably increase your problem-solving/error-correction “budget” over time, so that things which were once hard eventually become easy.
Some of Temple’s content on the topic:
7. Practice and mastery
What is it? It’s the idea that learning isn’t complete when you can do something once, or even do it successfully most of the time while concentrating hard. True mastery is achieved when a skill or idea becomes second-nature—automatic, intuitive, and easy. It’s when you can apply an idea correctly with very little conscious attention, freeing up your mind to focus on more complex problems. Many people stop practicing too early, leaving skills in an effortful, high-attention state where they are difficult to use and easy to forget.
Some of Temple’s content on the topic:
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Practice and Mastery (has some nice Ayn Rand quotes at the end)
And so so much more!
As I said, this is just a teeny tiny sample of some of Temple’s ideas. It’d take many books to go through everything.