One Quote to Rule Them All

“Our main business is not to see what lies dimly at a distance, but to do what lies clearly at hand.”

This one quote answers all of today’s most pressing questions?

Why are we here?
Will AI kill us all?

Yes we are at the beginning of infinity, but our progress still depends on growing knowledge by doing what lies clearly at hand.

Knowledge DEFINES what lies clearly at hand (adjacent possible, before the principle of roughness)

We don’t need to know exactly what our new knowledge world looks like, but we DO Need to believe that our destiny is in growing knowledge. We can never come to think we MUST stop growing knowledge (usually we fall into this trap if we think our current knowledge is perfect enough to predict that any more knowledge must doom us- Deutsch covers this in some later chapters. Separate [[note]](link to types of biblical knowledge and the desire to return to Eden is a desire for infintie progress) about Garden of Eden somehow precluding knowledge growth: au contraire, Eden is about SPECIFICALLY jumping too far ahead into the dim distance, not making knowledge into an evil)

Others have said it well too: Annie DIllard’s essay….

how to be less wrong, how to make progress, how to solve problems,

This quote allows us to have a framework for asking non-stupid questions. A good question has to do with what we can do clearly at hand and doesn’t get caught up in too dangerous next-order thinking.

A question is stupid if it lies dimly at a distance. (adjacent possible)

It is good to think upon 2nd and 3rd order effects (Economics in One Lesson), but it can go too far (population bomb, horseshit in nyc, insane AI doomers? that one is not resolved yet). Not enough and too much knock-on effect thinking. I suggest the boundary is once we identify a singularity (or once we can apply the principle of roughness), we need to make a decision using all the info at hand BEFORE the singularity.

We should choose the course that is most likely to be correct, keeping in mind that at the end of the day we are still more likely to be wrong than right. Our particular views, in politics and elsewhere, should be no more certain than our assessments of which team will win the World Series. With this attitude political posturing loses much of its fun, and indeed it ought to be viewed as disreputable or perhaps even as a sign of our own overconfident and delusional nature.
Stubborn Attachments, ch6pg113

Example from Tyler:

The correct comparison is “baby’s life vs. a froth of massive uncertainty with a gain of $5 billion tossed in as one element of that froth”.

Should I go from girl to boy or vice versa? Why don’t you first go from child to adult?

Is Jesus God (something that may require more interpretation)? Why don’t you first decide if he is the way to God (as is clearly written coming out of his mouth)?

The zone of fog helps us take useful action without shooting ourselves in the foot.

what lies dimly at a distance

Some call the point beyond prediction as the Singularity - Kurzweil

Principle of Roughness - Stubborn Attachments

Repugnant Conclusion is solved by focusing on what is at hand: we don’t get to choose (false dichotomy)

The repugnant conclusions false dichotomy is squarely in the dim distance. What lies clearly at hand

What lies clearly at hand

Progress is what brings things from dimly at a distance to clearly at hand.

and progress is the growth of knowledge

itself consisting of its creation and distribution

Annie Dillard

my guiding principles

Do what is clearly at hand not what

find, not plan

conjecture > correction > conjecture…

References

Ray Kurzweil

Tyler Cowen - Stubborn Attachments

David Deutsch - The Beginning of Infinity

Economics in One Lesson

Repugnant conclusion

Steven Johnson - Where Good Ideas Come From - “Adjacent Possible”

AI 2027

One Quote to Rule Them All#

what lies dimly at a distance#

What lies clearly at hand#

References#

One Quote to Rule Them All

what lies dimly at a distance

What lies clearly at hand

References