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PaperclipPerfector  6d ago (text post)   1629 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for September 22, 2024

Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?

This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.

Culture war topics are accepted, and proposals for a better intro post are appreciated.

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Does anyone have tips on how to use to internet to gain wisdom? I know there is content that will make me wiser, or have some beneficial impact on my life, but what I’m looking for is very ill-defined and non-specific.

Searching for this type of content feels like a slot machine where most pulls pay nothing, but very occasionally you hit a nice payoff that keeps you addicted.

For example, finding Scott Alexander or John Vervaeke had highly positive outcomes to me, but I had to wade through a ton of internet garbage to find them.

This search is also complicated by other factors:

  • Once you find and engage with the gems you get sorted into an algorithm that keeps feeding you similar content and then it can switch from being helpful to just being confirmation bias.
  • The garbage isn’t easily identifiable because most content is knowledge that helps you stay current and connected with other people that consume it.
  • Other people can’t reliably help you find the gems because they are driven by tribalism/jealousy/biases. For instance, I can’t rely on the New York Times or rationalwiki to decide if Scott Alexander belongs in the gem or internet garbage bucket.
  • Some wise people seem weird when you first encounter them because their ideas are different than your own. Yet, sometimes their weird perspective is exactly what you need to gain wisdom.

Personally I think a lot of "wisdom" is over rated. My recommendation is to look for stuff backed by math, like game theory. This lecture series by Yale is great: https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PL6EF60E1027E1A10B

I also recommend the book "Algorithms to Live By".

but what I’m looking for is very ill-defined and non-specific.

Aristotle defined wisdom as the knowledge of general causes and underlying prinicples.

[T]he man of experience is thought to be wiser than the possessors of any perception whatever, the artist wiser than the men of experience, the master-worker than the mechanic, and the theoretical kinds of knowledge to be more of the nature of wisdom than the productive.

If most of the internet is shallow, that's because it floods you with the lowest form of knowledge, perception. Wisdom is knowledge of underlying causes, and that's what SlateStarCodex focused on in its heyday. Rather than honing in on particulars, he attempted to create sweeping principles like Moloch that explain phenomena across all walks of life. It's not a new approach, the late 19th century especially was a golden age for this type of exploration. So I would recommend you do some deep dives there, and abandon your hopes that the internet has any more of it. This is a very rare style of thinking. Most people of any era are dogmatists who cling to failing theories because they lack the ability to make their own. You could show them all the examples that led to Moloch, but they wouldn't generate the theory because they can't do that. It's a real hopeless quest trying to find people who can nowadays. Ditch the 'net, read books.

I like how you clarified what wisdom is. The content that I like the most is attempting to explain underlying causes across time, perspectives, and often domains. I agree that it is hard to find this on the internet.

read books

Do you have any tips on determining which books contain useful wisdom? I still run into the problem of sorting out the good content from the garbage.

The other problem with books is that they often aren't timely/relevant unless you have the ability to connect them to modern knowledge/issues. Social media and other technological advancements have significantly changed the world.

The wisdom in many books no longer directly applies to the current world because it is optimized for environments that no longer exist. Some people have the ability to connect/adapt that wisdom to today's world. If you lack that ability then it could make more sense to focus only on current content where other people make those connections for you.

Do you have any tips on determining which books contain useful wisdom?

Know thyself. Also, know your methodology. If you're deep into statistics and not big on deduction, you're going to be locked out of nearly all intellectual history. That a book covers something you care about is irrelevant if its type of logic is meaningless to you.

The other problem with books is that they often aren't timely/relevant unless you have the ability to connect them to modern knowledge/issues. Social media and other technological advancements have significantly changed the world.

If you care about "underlying causes across time, perspectives, and domains", then timeliness doesn't matter. Time is the vector that allows us to see meaningful change in our world, so if you want to know things like "Why do humans go to war?" or "Why do we have money?" you need to study history. It will not have immediate practical advantage, but it's knowledge in the true sense and helps you build up a grasp of underlying causes. If some knowledge becomes outdated, it is not wisdom. Modern scholars would accuse the classics of being outdated, yet Napoleon studied Alexander and took over Europe.

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