Comment by speak_plainly | Hacker News Reader

Comment by speak_plainly | Hacker News Reader

After spending many years studying philosophy I think that the right approach is that you don’t need to come to any conclusions about anything.

Aristotle often started with common peoples’ viewpoints on any given topic, along with looking at what experts thought and built his own ideas from there, and of course was very successful with his methodology.

Arguments are interesting and obviously some are more correct than others but everyone has good reasons for what they argue for and there is a genius to the collective thoughts of humanity even if it seems like insanity most of the time.

The best starting point is one of ignorance and asking other people what they think, you don’t need consensus but you should be looking for clues, solid ground, and inspiration.

Everyone should get more comfortable andmitting to and saying that they truly ‘don’t know’. Taking a position of ignorance will open the doors to real possibilities and actual progress.

To speak to this directly in a scientific setting I find one of the most beneficial thing I can do when exploring a new domain is to NOT read works first. But instead to first ponder how I would go about solving the problem, maybe do some naive attempts, and THEN read. An iterative cycle of this becomes successful because of a few typical outcomes: you spend more time but generally come away with a deep understanding of motivation and why the field has moved in the direction that it now exists in (which helps you understand where to go next!) and/or in this process you find assumptions made to simplify a problem but has been forgotten and can be readdressed (at worse you have a deeper appreciation for the naive assumption). I do think this process is slower, but I find it frequently results in deeper understanding. It is (for me) faster if your intent is to understand, but slower if your intent is to do things quickly. I find that with the typical method of review to catchup without the struggling generally results in me not having a good understanding of many of the underlying assumptions or nuance at play (I think this is a common outcome, beyond my own experience). YMMV and it may vary dependent on your goals with a specific area and cross-domain knowledge. But I find great pleasure in it because it causes me to consider many things beautiful and genius where I would have otherwise saw them as obvious and and mundane. That alone is enough for me because research is a grueling task with endless and frequent failure but this helps keep me motivated and keeps things "fun" (in the way I think Feynman was describing). It's not dissimilar from doing your homework, checking someone else's work/a solution manual, and then trying to figure out where your mistakes are rather than simply correcting them. Similarly, time constraints are a pain so such a process isn't always possible and certainly not as often as I'd like.

Sounds were quite familiar to this anecdote from Feynman about his learning path:

https://literature.stackexchange.com/questions/8691/in-what-...

Yeah I've actually learned a lot from Feynman about how to learn. I think a lot just comes down to acting like a kid. Fuck around and find out, but with more nuance and sometimes more direction or not haha. There's the old saying "passion is worth 10 IQ points" and I think these all are part of the same thing.

Agree completely. I think the author misses the big insight here. Rather than universal deferment to authority, I think the insights here are a) that people overstate their confidence and b) not all science should be treated equally.

The epistemic standpoint of rationality (particularly Cartesianism) assumes a static arrangement of knowledge, where one uses analytic reason to gradually unveil bits of it like finding new territory on a map. It is rooted in analytic geometry.

David Hume challenged this view. His main insight was that an object we call "A" in time T1 may not be the same object in time T2. We also need to distinguish between "A" as an idea of an object and "A" as a particular instance of object.

Along similar lines, critiques of Cartesianism in epistemology have also pointed out the heavily social aspects of knowledge construction, see situated epistemologies etc. Even epistemologists in the analytic tradition have begun to move away from Cartesianism due to its limitations.

TBH, taking an epistemic stance that's primarily cartesian these days mostly just shows that you're (likely) ignorant to basically the entire history of development and research in epistemology after Descartes. Cartesianism is a very useful perspective and method for certain things, but as a general epistemology it's quite crusty.

> I think that the right approach is that you don’t need to come to any conclusions about anything.

This reminds me of a phrase I often find myself using with people: I am not required to have an opinion about everything.

This is probably true, but not very helpful. We can shrug over historical curiosities, but in a lot of cases we have to make a decision.

Consider Linus Pauling's claim that you can prevent cancer with megadoses of vitamin C. It was never widely accepted, but Pauling is a titan of science with two Nobels and he wrote books with convincing-sounding arguments, so it's tempting to think maybe this is a case where the status quo is wrong (esp. if you have cancer).

I think that's the sort of thing Alexander is trying to navigate here - no matter how comfortable you get saying "I don't know", at the end of the day you need to take the vitamins or not take them.

The same argument can be turned against you, someone can wait for absolute expert certainty and die in the process due to lack of action. We all act pragmatically when making decisions and simply blindly trusting people is no way to live for a thinking and intelligent being.

I was not suggesting this sort of Burdian’s ass scenario where everyone is so gripped by ignorance that they can’t act. I’m suggesting instead that ignorance is a starting point, to drop your preconceived notions and opinions or at the very least challenge them and not be afraid to come to no conclusions at all— keep everything open. To see there is gold in the common opinions of people and in the arguments of experts, that no one has a monopoly on truth.

You don’t need to work yourself up to absolute certainty over the world to make a decision. You don’t need to blindly trust experts and you don’t need to be gripped by fear of uncertainty and you don’t need to be forced into action because of arguments. You really don’t need to do anything at all. There are bigger questions to ponder and a life to live that’s worth living.

I still don't see how this is relevant to the question at hand, where someone is trying to convince you of something. They either convince you or they don't; refusing to decide is equivalent to the latter. Not taking the vitamins because I'm "so gripped by ignorance that you can't act" and not taking the vitamins because I'm "not afraid to come to no conclusions at all" are not alternatives, they're the same answer!

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