Key Takeaways
The Rabbit Hole is written by Blas Moros. To support, sign up for the newsletter, become a patron, and/or join The Latticework. Original Design by Thilo Konzok.
- Tools:
- Labels - warning labels
- Analogies
- Staging
- Intuition pumps - thought experiments. Carefully crafted persuasion tool
- Going meta - thinking about thinking, what philosophers do
- Make mistakes - become a connoisseur of your mistakes
- Know history of philosophy as it has many valuable lessons and teachings about how to think and observe the world around you
- Algorithms are full proof
- Turing was one of the first to stipulate that the mind was like a computer. Took input and instructions and acted upon that. Brains take in info from sense organs and then act
- Original / intrinsic intentionality - our thoughts and beliefs mean what they mean independent of any outside forces or interpreters
- Wandering two bicester (intuition pump) - meaning is always relative to the context or function
- Reductio ad absurdem argument - showing something is true by proving that its denial leads to an absurd situation
- Our intentionality is derived from our genes. Our original raison d'etre is to preserve our genes but then we have become intelligent enough to also pursue other initiatives
- No substitute for intentional stance
- 2 ways intuition pumps may prove valuable - If intuition pump is well made, intuition pumps are reliable or intuition still seems dubious and helps you focus on what is wrong
- Evolution is smarter than you are
- Skyhooks vs cranes - divine creator vs brute force of evolution and survival of the fittest
- Sorites Paradox - also known as a little by little argument - when does a bunch of individual grains of sand become a heap? No one grain can be said to create a heap and therefore no amount of wheat can make a heap. Paradox since from an apparently true premises one arrive at an apparently false conclusion
What I got out of it
- It was an interesting book and I never really thought or knew about intuition pumps and how many higher-level thinkers utilize them. It taught me some tools that you can use to come to conclusions by indirectly thinking and observing. Not my favorite book as it became quite technical and slow at times but still happy I read it.