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First Principles LandMimesis Land
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High-Level ExplanationPeople know everything from causal chains rooting down to first principles. This video of Elon Musk explaining this here is a decent short explanation. This is related to a "rational agent" model of human behavior. Note that "100% First Principles Thinking" would be infeasable for humans without perfect memories and thousands of years for study.People copy almost all of their beliefs from others who are successful. See the ideas of mimesis (I liked this short explanation), and the book The Secrets of Our Success by Joseph Henrich. This is also related to Chesterton's fence.
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BeliefsArriving at beliefsPeople understand their beliefs and the results of these beliefs. Everything is constructed from first principles.People choose what to believe by looking at what successful people around them seem to believe.
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BeliefsWhen individually updating a belief,... they systematically change every other belief that depends on this belief. This takes an extremely long time but produces a fully updated worldview.... they simply change this belief and don't look around for others. This is near instantaneous.
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BeliefsWhen new evidence emerges,... people individually apply this evidence to their worldview and recalculate all dependencies.... propagation happens on a community level. A few people may slowly incorporate new evidence into their beliefs. Others will watch to see how they do. After several iterations, if those who incorporate the beliefs continually do well in society, then these beliefs will gradually be spread out.
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BeliefsWhen people find specific truths to be inconvient and want to change themIt's possible to change beliefs, but it's a deliberate and costly choice. This is a highly challenging project to reconcile, so these deviations are handled with care. It would essentially be the maintenance of an elaborate lie. Complicated alternative explanations would have to be established.Beliefs were originally selected for convenience, so many are expected to not make sense anyway. Sometimes the most convenient belief is the most accurate, but only sometimes. Little work needs to be expended to select inaccurate but convenient beliefs, especially when one's peers also optimize for these.
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BeliefsWhen new evidence emerges that seems useful to believe, but produces substantial downsidesEveryone in society updates on this evidence, then experiences those downsides. (Let's ignore EV calculations and First Principles Land self-concluding to transform into Light-1st-Principles Land)Propagation will happen slowly, so it's likely that the downsides will be noticed before being globally accepted.
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BeliefsWhen a potential catastrophe is discovered and announcedIndividuals will quickly update their beliefs and their actions accordinglyIndividuals will look closely at those who are successful, and these people will look closely at others in their clusters. Some of these people may start taking actions, and this may slowly proliferate.
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IntrospectionWhen they lack evidence for a beliefWhen they lack evidence for a belief, they recognize that they have limited certainty. The fact that one lacks evidence is itself a belief. In many cases, the "more successful people" seem to believe they do know things, even without much evidence. Therefore, many people in this world don't realize that they lack evidence. They assume they have good reasons and evidence, even if they don't.
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IntrospectionHow it feels to make decisionsIt's clear that decisions are being madeNo one really understands the world or human decisions, but people do things and life goes on as long as rapid changes aren't needed. Humans generally go along with a very long list of specific and critical decisions without a deep understanding behind any of them. They don't realize they are doing this because they don't think of these things as decisions, but typically as self evident things that no one around them has questioned.
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DisagreementWhen two people disagree...they isolate the core reasons for the disagreements and address them. This may take an extremely long time. If they have different worldviews, they will spend a lot of time sharing information and updating said worldviews.they can't well articulate why they disagree, and they don't realize they can't articulate their reasons. They say a lot of things to each other that successful people say when they seem to disagree.
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Belief originsLearningIf learning individually, each person would need to undergo hundreds of years, or more, of advanced study. They would need a fantastic memory for this. They would probably need a combination of intense software and intense collaboration and copying of belief structures.Individuals would try to spend a lot of time with the most successful people they can and copy an amalgamation of their beliefs. Maybe they would focus on those who seem successful particularly because of their useful beliefs.
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Cultural DefectsAquiring a mistaken beliefIf there is a mistake deep in the belief of someone, it will likely percolate throughout their beliefs and decisions. If this mistake is different from that of their peers, it will lead to dramatically different behaviors than their peers.If someone aquires a new mistaken belief, it doesn't change much. People's beliefs aren't correct or correlated in particular anyway. This belief is unlikely to change any of their other beliefs.
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Cultural Defects
When society realizes that someone has a strange belief
Society will investigate. Either the belief is true and everyone should adjust or it, or it is false, and it's possible that the belief will cascade into actions that are deeply suboptimal for that one person.If the person is high status and seem to do well after having the belief, they are likely to copy it. If the belief seems dangerous for many people to copy, then officials may intervene and try to censor it. If the person is low status, no one will care.
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DefinitionsUnderstanding of terminologyPeople use terminology that's carefully defined and completely understood. When people say, "justice", they mean something precise that they've reasoned about ahead of time.People use mimesis to select vocabulary. If saying "justice" has worked out for others, people do it, not because people they deeply understand what it means, but because it seems to result in good things.
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DefinitionsWhen saying, "I believe candidate X will lead to global flourishing"...People have a specific definition of what global flourishing is and a clear definition of what "will" means in a probabilistic sense. There is possible evidence that will convince them that they are wrong, and it's clear what being wrong means.People are expecting that the combination of these sounds result in positive things happening to them. This is similar to a Chinese Room thought experiment, there doesn't have to be a deep understanding for some semblance of communication. It's possible that saying these sounds results in friends liking them more or sound recipients seeming impressed.
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DefinitionsWhen people write an article...... it makes sense to question the claims of the article. There are specific claims being made in the article that can possibly be refuted. Often readers are interested in these specific claims and in updating their own thoughts on them. ... interpretation shouldn't treat the text literally. Specific claims aren't necessarily being made. There are bound to be severe paradoxes and inconsistencies if judged by people without the same biases. Therefore, interpretations must focus on the culture the authors come from, and their expected mental states at the time.
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MotivationWhat people want/desirePeople aren't totally sure what they should be aiming for in their actions. First principles thinking combined with existing evidence doesn't do a great job answering some of these questions. They hope to invest in studying this extensively.People typically believe that they want (and should work on obtaining) the same things as those that are successful. Wanting these things often works out satisfactorily for them. (See: Mimetic Desire)
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OtherWhen visiting the other landIf someone from First Principles Land visits Mimesis Land, there are a few ways this could go. They could reveal and stick to their beliefs in public, in which case they will likely be declared a heretic and attacked. They could also either lie about their beliefs or stay low. If the right people from Mimesis Land discovered them (and few others), they could do quite well.If someone from Mimesis Land visits First Principles land, they will likely be studied as a case study of the specific set of beliefs that happen to do well under certain circumstances. It would be seen as unlikely that they would themselves be able to articulate the reasons for their beliefs, or contribute to discussions of what beliefs are true, but they would be asked a lot of questions to better understand their culture and practices.
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