116 chunks · 71 episodes
A useful mindset to search for disconfirming evidence is to make it a game. In every conversation, challenge yourself to find the hidden great insight lurking within your conversation partner's mind. No ...
...re we will have no side-channel conversations". Now you now have no way to have disconfirming evidence. Side-channel conversations allow people to de-risk, "am I the only one who sees this disconfirming evidence? Or will I at least be backed up by othe...
...you might fail to realize where your limits are, and you might become closed to disconfirming evidence. If you're powerful, sometimes your friends are smarter than you… but still defer to you even when they're right. People are spiky; no one is the mos...
...tion." They push back but want the thing to be successful. When we receive that disconfirming evidence, we have to trust the intentions of the bearer to be loyal. If we don't we interpret it like the devil's advocate–easier to discard. In general, be v...
...time in spaces that allow mental and emotional yoga; to contend with nuance and disconfirming evidence.
.... This approach is powerful but brittle. It gets weaker as it is bombarded with disconfirming evidence. Emergent techniques: create the conditions where good outcomes emerge. Will take some time to get going. If you have to converge on one coherent out...
... to apply. They require patience, comfort with abstraction, openness to finding disconfirming evidence. This takes time–if you're mad or scared or stressed you won't feel like it's available to you. AI is patient and very comfortable with abstraction, ...
..., that implies some dimension or shade of gray you can't yet sense. 2) You meet disconfirming evidence with openness and curiosity. When you see something surprising you don't lean back and say with a frown, "oh… that's interesting…" but instead lean i...
.... Self-ratcheting. Antifragile. The system has to be open-ended. Able to absorb disconfirming evidence and new ideas to improve itself. LLMs, as they exist today, cannot. They are closed systems, sealed off at the time of training. But you can still us...
I'm reading Harari's new Nexus book and I love it. I'm only a third of the way through currently. One big idea is the tension between order and truth. They can co-occur, but they are actually orthogonal, and often at odds. In one of the chapters I just read, he talks about the auto-catalyzing behavi
...nsus is about averaging. The enlightened version of consensus is one that seeks disconfirming evidence and interesting eddies of gradient to surf to achieve a distinct, interesting, valuable North Star vision. An auteur choosing which interesting detai...
... auteur's vision is what helps the idea get stronger and more powerful the more disconfirming evidence it absorbs.
...scendent synthesis of something contained inside yourself. That's why absorbing disconfirming evidence, steelmanning others' positions, leaning into your contradictions is the way to finding game-changing ideas. Take them in yourself and allow the synt...
...hs, but hard truths calibrate you to innovate as an individual. Hard truths are disconfirming evidence. They calibrate your gut instinct. And yet the swarm that finds amazing things is full of individuals with massive egos that don't learn. Why? The fo...
...'ve already collected is much less valuable than a unit of time of sourcing new disconfirming evidence by getting more information from outside the cave, or even better, sharing the idea in the outside world and seeing if it's viable. It can be very sc...
When there's a scarce resource people want, they'll fight over it, even if you don't see them fighting. Imagine you are a very powerful person. Everyone would love to get your attention and be in your good graces. Most of that jockeying for position will be completely outside your view. If you don't
...ver you can. To constantly try to extend the boundary of "us", bringing in more disconfirming evidence to make "us" stronger. After all, all of us are shared passengers on this spaceship earth.
...tion where members can be fired, it is extremely hard as the leader to get good disconfirming evidence. States are unlike companies in that states, except in egregious cases, can't fire their citizens. Non-dictator states inherently get disconfirming e...
If you are a powerful person looking for confirming evidence, you will find it. If it doesn't exist, it will be created for you by the people around you earnestly trying to do the thing they know you want.
Disconfirming evidence need not come in a "no, but" stance. It can also come in a "I wonder..." or "How might we..." form, that allows a "yes, and" engagement. Not all disc...