Sublime

Robin Hanson and I share a belief that two rationalists should not agree to disagree: they should not have common knowledge of epistemic disagreement unless something is very wrong.

something radically contrary to common sense must be true about the fundamental structures of the mind and the world, while leaving us poorly equipped to determine where exactly the truth lies among the various weird possibilities.

“Philosophy.” “Really?” she asked. “Really.” “Has that been”—trying not to laugh—“helpful to you?” “Inasmuch as it’s a study of how people ought to live, in theory, not at all,” I said. “But it’s useful in thinking about how people actually do behave, and why. Whether we really know what we think we know. How our minds trick us into forging false c

This builds on a growing body of work that our ‘‘mind perception’’ (which manifests as inferences of intentions, beliefs, and values) meaningfully varies across individuals and shapes our moral judgments

We live in an unfair universe. Like all primates, humans have strong negative reactions to perceived unfairness; thus we find this fact stressful. There are two popular methods of dealing with the resulting cognitive dissonance. First, one may change one’s view of the facts—deny that the unfair events took place, or edit the history to make it appe