Staying Sane While Taking Ideas Seriously — LessWrong
We have a meme in this community that it's essential to take ideas seriously, that you'll never make epistemic, or moral, or practical progress unless you consciously try to resolve the contradictions in your beliefs, the ones that other people just shrug off. I'm not disagreeing with that meme, but I note that we have a significant number of people who get burnt out, or worse, go off into various bizarre locked-off belief systems. So how do we take ideas seriously while still keeping a saving throw for your motivation and sanity? Here's my thinking over the last few years, from epistemics to psychology to effective altruism, on how to keep a margin of safety while still aiming for the frontier of knowledge and of effectiveness. Epistemic Status: Simple point, supported by anecdotes and a straightforward model, not yet validated in any rigorous sense I know of, but IMO worth a quick reflection to see if it might be helpful to you. A curious thing I've noticed: among the friends whose