Why I Use Epistemology and Heuristics to Understand Anything

by | Apr 25, 2024 | Lifehacks

I do podcasts on a wide range of topics – from history and investing, to geopolitics and AI. I’m usually – nay, always – talking about topics I’m not an expert in. I’m not an expert in anything, so I have had to develop a strategy to allow me to quickly get my head around the core issues of many complicated topics. And I think most people could benefit from a similar approach. Nobody can be an expert on everything and life often forces us to make decisions about complicated topics. Decisions that could have serious consequences, for us personally, for our families, and for the world (eg the COVID vaccines).

Epistemology and Heuristics

So, I use a system. It’s not complicated, but it works for me. It’s based on two things: epistemology and heuristics. Sounds fancy, but it’s not.

Epistemology, Or How I Figure Out What’s Bullshit

Epistemology is just a highbrow word for figuring out how you know what you think you know. In any area, whether it’s geopolitics, history, or science, there are ways to figure out what’s most likely to be true. Of course, the “truth” in most subjects is a moving target. As we get more information, better tools, better interpretation of data, we can make more accurate analysis. But at any given point in time, there is a theory that is most likely to be true, based on what we know right now.

Each domain has its own methods, its ways to sift the wheat from the chaff. Science has its experiments and peer review. Journalism has source verification and corroboration. History has primary and secondary evidence. So we need to first work out how truth is determined in the particular domain or subject we are thinking about.

I ask myself simple questions: How do we know this is true? Who says so? What’s their evidence?

Heuristics, Or How I Keep From Being Overwhelmed

Then there’s heuristics, which is a fancy word for “a rule of thumb”. This is about taking shortcuts to understanding through trusted sources and established knowledge. It’s about not reinventing the wheel every time you need to know something new. I find a few experts I trust, see where the consensus lies, and start there. Sure, experts can be wrong, but let’s face it, it’s the best place to start.

Ideally I’d like to find a group of experts in some kind of body or association, that has long standing credibility. Not some organisation that was invented yesterday to promote a particular agenda – and there are always hundreds of those. I want a body that’s been around for a decade or more, and that existed before the current subject of interest was even a thing. The body should be credible and a little boring (meaning they tend to stick to the consensus of experts). A consensus of experts is important because that’s usually how “truth” is determined in most fields. This person or that person will have their own interpretation of the evidence, and you’ll usually find an opinion of every possible flavour, and they all contradict each other. So we need to find out which interpretations have the most support – by experts, and by experts I mean people who are active professionals in the field. Not professionals from another field. Not former professionals who are retired from the field. Not someone on YouTube or a podcaster. Professionals. Experts. Active in the field.

If I can’t find a suitable credible body of long standing, my next source is going to be an individual expert. But, again, they should have long standing credibility in the field, ideally decades. For example, Noam Chomsky is, I believe, a credible source for topics involving America’s geopolitical agenda or American domestic politics.

So I don’t need to “do my own research” or watch hundreds of hours of YouTube videos. I just need to find out the consensus opinion of credible experts.

Ah, I hear you say “but expert bodies can be corrupted!”

Sure, that’s true. They can be. They are. But if you’re going to dismiss an expert body with that claim, you should really be able to first provide credible evidence for your claim. Otherwise, it sounds like you just don’t like what the experts are saying.

“But science can be wrong!” Yes, as I said earlier, better tools lead to better data and better interpretation of the data, which gets us closer to the truth. But the consensus opinion today is the consensus opinion based on the best data we have. Science makes progress by new theories and experiments and tools providing new data, which leads to new interpretations and conclusions, which are then peer reviewed and become the new consensus opinion. Rogue opinions sometimes lead, over time, to the new consensus, but until they do, they are just that – rogue opinions. If you prefer the rogue opinion to the consensus, you have to ask yourself why.

Why All This Matters

Using these tools, I can quickly form a decently informed opinion on a wide range of topics. This method isn’t perfect – no method is. You have to be ready to update your views when better information comes along. That’s key. Stay flexible, stay skeptical, and keep digging when it matters. Above all, care about getting as close to the truth as you can, wherever it may lead. Don’t let your personal ideology or identity get in the way of searching for the truth.

This approach has kept me sane in a world drowning in information. Maybe it’s a bit rough and ready, but it’s better than getting swept away by every new headline or latest theory. And in this era of misinformation, having a solid method to filter what you consume is more crucial than ever.

Israel and Iran 

by | Apr 15, 2024 | geopolitics, Iran, israel, Uncategorized

The West has been attacking Iran for defending itself and its allies since the early 1950s. To understand the issues between the two countries we have to go back to the roots.

1. ⁠The Zionist occupation of Palestine and the displacement and oppression of the mostly Muslim Arab population since the 1930s. Iran sees itself as one of the few active protectors of Palestine. Its funding of Hamas and Hezbollah are all about supporting the Palestinian fight for freedom from occupation and oppression. Here’s a recent quote from the Iranian FM: “The current crisis is rooted in the occupation of the Palestinian territories, displacement of its original inhabitants, organized killings and terrorism, looting of natural resources, apartheid and systematic discrimination and continued aggression on al-Quds in the last 75 years.”

2. ⁠Israel’s role as a US proxy in the Middle East. Ever since the US covertly overthrew the democratically elected PM of Iran, Mossadegh, in 1953, the Iranians haven’t trusted the US, the UK (who started the coup against Mossadegh over control of Iranian oil reserves, which is what is driving everything), and their allies. And with good reason. The US funded Saddam Hussein’s brutal ten year war with Iran in the 1980s, to try to overthrow the second Iranian Revolution, and have done everything they can to cripple Iran’s economy ever since through sanctions and black ops (eg Stuxnet and assassination of various nuclear scientists).

Every time anyone from the West points the finger at Iran as being the instigator of tensions without also acknowledging this history, they are selling you a fairytale.

A Million New Everythings

by | Apr 14, 2024 | nanotechnology, singularity, transhumanism

If people like Altman, Musk, Kurzweil, Hassabis, Huang, etc, are correct, then in the next 5 years (and possibly much sooner) we will start to have AI agents that are smarter than any single qualified human expert in every domain – every branch of science, medicine, comp-sci, etc.

And one of the biggest implications of this, as Altman has been pointing out, is a world where we have a million new experts on every topic, available to analyse and interpret the results of existing experiments, to conceive of and run new virtual experiments and advise humans on how to run physical experiments in the lab, then analyse those results.

And yet, outside of the occasional article in the MSM and forums like reddit, I don’t think see much discussion about this potential reality.

What does the world’s response to climate change look like when we have a million new virtual climate scientists?

What does health care look like when we have a million new virtual doctors and lab technicians?

What does mental health care look like when we have a million new virtual therapists?

What does cold fusion research look like when we have a million new virtual scientists working on that?

What does AI look like when we have a million new virtual AI programmers working on that?

What does a million new experts mean for Nano tech?

For Space travel?

For Robotics?

For Education?

For inequality in capitalism and the future of money?

What happens if AI-jet-powered science quickly helps make K. Eric Drexler’s visions of nanotech come to reality and we have nanofabricators in every house and suburb to make most of our daily food and material needs from waste products, and robots, their components made in nanofabs, to make anything requiring large-scale assembly? What happens to the cost of productions when anyone can make their friend their own nanofab and robot assistant with their own nanofab and robot?

Where are the politicians, journalists and social scientists who are discussing this in the mainstream?

There is a lot of talk about the threat of AI, either by bad actors or it becoming sentient and going all HAL2000.

But what about the age of miracles? How are we preparing for that possible eventuality in the next decade?

Using ChatGPT to Analyse The News

by | Apr 5, 2024 | Culture Jamming, israel, Lifehacks, Politics, propaganda, US politics

One of my hobbies at the moment is to use ChatGPT to help me analyse the news. I imagine this will be come pretty standard in the near future, and there will be better tools to use. At the moment it seems the ABC has blocked ChatGPT from reading its articles, so I have to copy and paste the article into GPT. But then I run a couple of prompts to get it to breakdown the story for me. My basic objective is to get GPT to act as a second brain, helping me uncover the biases in news stories and highlight the gaps in the coverage.

Here’s GPT’s analysis of a recent ABC article about the US and Israel. It gave the original article a rating of 6 our of 10 for journalistic quality.

Why the USA is Terrified of China

by | Mar 27, 2024 | geopolitics

If you want to understand why the USA is terrified of China, trying to slow it down with a trade war and banning it’s social media apps, it has less to do with “national security” and mostly to do with R&D expenditure. Have a look at the way China’s R&D has grown in the last 20 years. In 2000, their R&D was about 1/10 of the USA’s. Today, they have nearly caught up (although private R&D in the US continues to keep them ahead). And there are no signs of China slowing down, either, with a goal of a 10% YoY increase declared at the latest “Two Sessions“.

The US National Science Board recently warned that “China has now surpassed us in STEM talent production, research publications, patents, and knowledge-and technology-intensive manufacturing… China has set the goal of being the world’s leading S&E (Science & Engineering) nation and these NSB reports demonstrate that the United States is on the verge of allowing them to realize that objective. We already see this in artificial intelligence, where China out publishes us, has more patents, and produces more students than the United States.”

What happens when most of the latest technological innovation is coming out of “Communist” China?