Adventures in Thought Space

    The following is based on a talk I gave on Tuesday September 17th  ( Holistic thinking to life and beliefs ) Tonight’s talk is about the holism of life management. It’s holistic because it applies holistic  thinking  to  all  areas of life. More than anything else, however, it’s about the holistic management of  beliefs .    ( Tonight’s theme: avoiding wrong beliefs ). An increasingly important theme in my works is the idea that it’s at least  wise to believe  that ascertaining correct answers is harder and less necessary than most people think--but that wrong beliefs are more dangerous. I’ll explain why this is the case and why it’s not an entirely natural way of thinking. This is one of the major ways ER reengineers peoples thinking. I act on this through concerted efforts to minimize the number of premature and unnecessary beliefs I have, which I’ll elaborate on. The general message is not to not have or care about your ...

One of ER’s central axioms is that ascertaining correct answers is harder and less necessary than most think—but that wrongness is more dangerous. Extralogical reasoners avoid wrong answers by concerted efforts to minimize unnecessary and premature beliefs, while working harder on the beliefs they do have. They otherwise prefer to rely on data or utilize belief POLICIES that I’ll come to call   pragmatic preferences .     Reality is simplified by what ER calls “ artificial Resonance ” (see t hird part of the intro or l ast post ). Confusion and distractions are often almost as detrimental to an animal’s dealings with reality as understanding it is BENEFICAL. To minimize confusion, animal thinking organs reflectively simplify reality by twisting related events into causational relationships, helping fit reality into a “harmonious narrative.” In other words, humans see reality through an artificial lens of cause and effect. In artificially creating a clearer picture, howev...

  The thesis of  The Epistemology of Irrationality  was that insanity/irrationality is a lack of integrated understanding of one’s overall body of beliefs, necessitating holistic management of one’s thinking and psychology. I posited that it’s wise to believe that the definition of rationality is  not being irrational , making the post a treatise on both.  The Holism of Life Management and Learning  compliments that treatise. It reintroduces the puzzle of life (POL) as a complex system of variables, explaining why it can only be understood by holistic analysis. Since ER is my solution to the POL, this will also serve as an informal intro to extralogical reasoning.        First, one must understand the origins of the need for a POL.     In the third part of the ER intro, I asserted that self-delusion was an inevitable consequence of naturally selected self-awareness. In other words, even ignoring the total impossibilit...