Twelve Virtues of Rationality

[ciphergoth]

Twelve Virtues of Rationality

Eliezer S. Yudkowsky, 2006

The first virtue is curiosity. A burning itch to know is higher than a solemn vow to pursue truth. To feel the burning itch of curiosity requires both that you be ignorant, and that you desire to relinquish your ignorance. If in your heart you believe you already know, or if in your heart you do not wish to know, then your questioning will be purposeless and your skills without direction. Curiosity seeks to annihilate itself; there is no curiosity that does not want an answer. The glory of glorious mystery is to be solved, after which it ceases to be mystery. Be wary of those who speak of being open-minded and modestly confess their ignorance. There is a time to confess your ignorance and a time to relinquish your ignorance.

Read on...

I've been absolutely captivated by Yudkowsky's writing on rationality for ages now; it's given me a lot of new tools with which to think about and talk about the world, and shaken me out of a lot of comfortable assumptions about my own rationality. I'd love to know what people who read here think about it.

Comments

[lizw.livejournal.com]

Okay, since I'm at home with flu today, let me have a go.

"Mystery" isn't a term I use much, so please don't assume I attach any great significance to the views I'm about to set out; I've largely worked them out specifically for the purposes of this discussion, so they aren't particularly settled opinions and may well change.

I think I do agree with Yudkowsky that mystery is a property of questions. I probably wouldn't have phrased it that way myself unprompted; I'd probably go for a Wittgensteinian approach and say that mystery is an artefact of our attempts to construct a coherent worldview, and specifically of the role of language in those attempts. From a Wittgensteinian point of view, some of these "questions" are never going to have answers because it's only the way we have constructed language that makes us think there's a question to ask at all. All language is ultimately analogy and metaphor; we'd be better off looking for better metaphors than for "answers".

I'm not going to address your edit, though I do appreciate the invitation, because I think it's just too big a subject for an LJ discussion. It's more like a PhD thesis, and I know I don't have time or spoons for one of those.

[ciphergoth.livejournal.com]

Thanks, that's an enlightening answer.

As you indicate, I meant the edit as an open-ended invitation rather than a challenge - I'm sure that setting out all your differences in detail with close argument would take volumes! I'm sure we'll get the chance to learn more about it in future discussions.