An eccentric dreamer in search of truth and happiness for all.

Month: March 2025

A Theory Of Theories

Pretty much all of us believe in something. We have ideologies or religions or worldviews of some kind through which we filter everything that we see and hear. It’s very easy to then fall into a kind of intellectual trap where we seek information that confirms our biases, and ignore information that doesn’t fit.

For people who care about knowing the actual, unvarnished truth, this is a problem. Some people, like the Rationalists of Less Wrong or the Effective Altruists, tend to be more obsessed with the ideal of objective truth, and following wherever that leads. But, it’s my humble opinion that most of these earnest truthseekers end up being overconfident with what they think they find.

The reality is that any given model of reality, any given theory or ideology, is but a perspective that views the complexity of the universe only from a given angle based on certain principles or assumptions. Reality is exceedingly complicated, and in order to compress that complexity into words we can understand, we must, invariably, filter and focus and emphasize certain things at the expense of others.

Theories of how the world works, tend to have some grains of truth in them. They need to have some connection with reality, or else they won’t have any predictive value, they won’t be adaptive and survive as ideas.

At the same time, theories generally survive because they are mainly adaptive, rather than true. For instance, many religions help people to function pro-socially, by having a God or heavens watching them, essentially allowing people to avoid the temptations of the Ring of Gyges, or doing evil when no one is (apparently) watching.

Regardless of whether or not you believe that such a religion is true, the adaptiveness of convincing people to be honest when no one is around, is a big part of what makes them useful to society, and probably a big reason why they continue to exist in the world.

In reality though, it’s actually impossible to know with certainty that any given theory or model is accurate. We can assign some credence based on our lived experiences, or our trust in the witness of others, but generally, an intellectually honest person is humble about what we can know.

That being said, that doesn’t mean we should abandon truthseeking in favour of solipsism. Some theories are more plausible than others, and often those ones are at the same time more useful because they map the territory better.

To me, it seems important then, to try to do your best to understand various theories, and what elements of them map to reality, and also understand their limitations and blindspots. We should do this rather than whole-cloth accepting or rejecting them. The universe is not black and white. It is many shades of grey, or rather, a symphony of colours that don’t fit the paradigm of black and white or even greyscale thinking. And there are wavelengths of light that we cannot even see.

So, all theories are, at best, incomplete. They provide us with guidance, but should not blind us to the inherent complex realities of the world, and we should always be open to the possibility that our working theory is perhaps somewhat wrong. At least, that’s the theory I’m going with right now.

On Consent

I read a post on Less Wrong that I strongly agree with.

In the past I’ve thought a lot about the nature of consent. It comes up frequently in my debates with libertarians, who usually espouse some version of the Non-Aggression Principle, which is based around the idea that violence and coercion are bad and that consent and contracts are ideal. I find this idea simplistic, and easily gamed for selfish reasons.

I also, in the past, crossed paths with icky people in the Pick-Up Artist community who basically sought to trick women into giving them consent through various forms of deception and emotional manipulation. That experience soured me on the naive notion of consent as anything you will agree to.

To borrow from the medical field, I strongly believe in informed consent, that you should know any relevant bit of information before making a decision that affects you, as I think this at least partially avoids the issue of being gamed into doing something against your actual interests while technically providing “consent”. Though, it doesn’t solve the issue entirely, as when we are left with forced choices that involve choosing the least bad option.

The essay I linked above goes a lot further in analyzing the nature of consent and the performative consent that is not really consent that happens a lot in the real world. There are a lot of ideas in there that remind me of thoughts I’ve had in the past, things I wanted to articulate, but never gotten around to. The essay probably does a better job of it than I could, so I recommend giving it a read.

On The Reality Of Dreams

When I was younger, I believed strongly in the idea of having dreams to aspire to. A part of this may have come from my English name, which is of a character from the Bible who had and could interpret dreams. So, the idea of dreams, either the ones when you sleep, or the wishes you want to achieve in your life, were both things I valued.

It went so far that I often ended up a sort of hopeless romantic, choosing to do what I felt sentimentally to be right, rather than what was necessarily rational or prudent. Often, I would let my emotions get the better of me, despite being normally fairly logical.

To some extent, this is encouraged in our culture. Movies and books have protagonists who chase their dreams and get what we, the audience, think they deserve. This is, in reality, something fed to us because it sells. The idea that we will all get what we think we rightfully deserve, this notion that the universe is just and fair, is something we hope to be true.

But the truth is, in so far as anyone can tell by the evidence of the actual universe, fate and chance happen to us all. Our aims are not always met. Hard work can be thwarted by bad luck. The forces of history conspire to overturn everything from time to time, often without rhyme or rhythm.

The reality is that most of us are not significant in the grand scheme of things. And the bigger our dreams, the bigger our almost certain disappointment.

That being said, I don’t think we should abandon our dreams. Dreams do serve a purpose. They act as a guide for our decisions. They point us in a direction that we consider worth going in. Chances are, we won’t reach our destination, but we’ll get somewhere closer than if we didn’t bother. And the journey will be more meaningful than if we simply took a random walk through the universe.

Nevertheless, there needs to be a balance between dreaming and being prudent. We can, in our foolishness, ignore the real opportunities in favour of a mirage. It takes wisdom to understand this, to recognize when to satisfice.

If we search vaguely for something optimal, we will never stop searching. Eventually, you have to decide what is acceptable to you.

This is what I eventually did with my life. I started a dreamer, chasing the impossible, but ended up finding an acceptable life to live. I did this because the alternative was to forever be unsatisfied, forever chasing the wind.

In truth, what I, deep down, really really want, is not something that I can realistically see happening. My trajectory simply fell way short. I did go further towards a good life than if I’d just meandered aimlessly, but I won’t pretend my life wasn’t full of disappointments.

The more you hope, the more you will be disappointed. The only way to avoid it is to expect nothing, which is probably worse for you in the long run. Disappointment is the cost of having dreams. I believe it’s something worth paying, and I won’t pretend dreams come free.

It is fun to dream, but sometimes, for the sake of actually doing something meaningful, you have to be realistic.

We like to imagine ourselves an important person, but actually, we’re much more likely to be the average person. You’ve never heard of them. They live a mundane, somewhat interesting life, but nothing that makes the news or the history books. They probably manage to keep a job and have a family and some friends. They do normal, human things.

People like me, find being an average person somewhat unsatisfying. But the reality is, we don’t have a choice in this. Most of the things that make people super special are also things completely outside of their control, those forces of history I mentioned earlier.

So, it’s pointless to be upset that your life is only so-so, especially if you’re a dreamer with absurdly high expectations. The reality is, we’re lucky to have what we do. And we should be grateful. The universe can take everything you have away from you in an instant. It is… capricious like that.

At the end of the day, I can’t stop dreaming completely. But I can understand the limits of reality, and not allow myself to be taken by foolish fancy. I can show prudence and wisdom, and act according to reason. This way, I can eke out a good, fruitful life. As long as I stay true to my values, this should be enough.

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