Yesterday I finished a draft of Part II of my book on meta-rationality, yay! I was able to take part of November and most of December out to write; the first extended period since August 2018, when I finished the draft of Part I.
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The current book structure: I. Rationalism (why it doesn’t work) II. Mere reasonableness III. Rationality (how we make it work) IV. Meta-rationality V. Practical applications Plus introduction, conclusion, and some Interludes.
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This makes the book long, which is an obstacle for me, and might be for readers too. Why not cut to the chase and just explain meta-rationality? Super tempting! But…
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You can’t understand meta-rationality without an accurate understanding of how rationality actually works. And you can’t get that until you understand why rationalism is wrong, and also how everyday reasonableness works.
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The "parable of the pebbles" is a nearly complete explanation of how rationality actually works. It's just metaphors, but if you've got the prerequisites already, you may be able to extrapolate to the whole 100+ page understanding.https://meaningness.com/eggplant/pebbles …
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Replying to @Meaningness
Tldr: Given a carved, crisp model of the world, rationality tells you what to do. But translating from the world (nebulous) to those models (context dependent) is a different matter altogether?
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Replying to @ArtirKel
Yes! Plus, the relationship between the math and world has to be on-goingly maintained, which requires reworking the world to fit the math. (There’s lots of methods for doing this.) And also you have to somehow figure out what sort of math could work. Also, actually doing math!
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Most of Part III is about the “circumrational work” required to continually adjust the math/world interface so the model works well enough to be practically useful. This relies on non-rational (“merely reasonable”) judgements, which is why Part II was necessary.
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