Context changes

This is a blog post acting as an FI post.

For this specific post, I want to check my formatting skills.

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Subject: Re: [FI] Context changes (was: choice and reality)
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On Tue, Aug 4, 2015 at 2:24 PM, anonymous FI
<anonymousfallibleideas@gmail.com> wrote:

> On 4 Aug 2015, at 6:14, Rami Rustom rombomb@gmail.com [fallible-ideas]
> <fallible-ideas@yahoogroups.com> wrote:
>
>> On Sat, Aug 1, 2015 at 2:25 PM, anonymous FI
>> <anonymousfallibleideas@gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>> On 1 Aug 2015, at 5:08, Rami Rustom <rombomb@gmail.com> wrote:
>>>
>>>> On Fri, Jul 31, 2015 at 9:45 PM, Erin Minter <erinminter@icloud.com>
>>>> wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> are there better or worse ideas (within a specific context aimed at a
>>>>> problem)?

after having studied the stuff below, i have a few things to say about this:

1. there's the issue of whether we're talking about questions that can
have only one correct answer, or questions that can have more than 1.

2. there's the issue of whether there is a person making a choice, or not.


>>>> ideas that actually solve the problem they claim to solve, are better
>>>> than, ideas that don't (let's say where all the ideas claim to solve
>>>> the same problem). but i don't think that's what you're asking about.
>>>> (i say other stuff below)

here i was parochially thinking only of questions that can have only 1
correct answer.


>>> the commas and first parentheses are wrong.
>>>
>>> if you don't know how to use those, don't use them. why use something you
>>> don't know how to use?
>>>
>>> write simpler sentences that need less punctuation. aim for only periods.
>>
>>
>> here's a retry:
>>
>> ideas that actually solve the problem they claim to solve are better
>> than ideas that don't - let's say where all the ideas claim to solve
>> the same problem. but i don't think that's what you're asking about. i
>> say other stuff below.
>
>
> why would you use a dash when specifically trying to simplify and "aim for
> only periods"? (i guess apostrophes are allowed too).

i guess i didn't catch that mistake because i was more focussed on the
other stuff.


>>> NOTE: no questions asked by Rami so far.
>>
>>
>> so one question i could have asked is of the form: *here's my
>> interpretation of your question, X, did I understand correctly?*
>>
>> and: *what's interesting about this?*
>
>
> neither of those are questions about the topic with content about the topic.

atm i don't know what questions i could have asked like that.


i've changed my reference list. i changed "Ask Questions" to "Ask
Questions (content too, not just meta)".


//TRIM//

> so here i'll explain the general issue even though you didn't give useful
> information about your confusion. this is inefficient for me to guess what
> to say to you without your guidance:
>
>
> it's like you're doing a win/win arbitration. except one side is tacos and
> one is enchiladas. and the delegations from the enchilada side are like
> "well we have no objection to eating tacos today. we like tacos too". so
> there's nothing to arbitrate...

i think this is a question where there's more than 1 correct answer.
and i think there isn't a person making a choice.


> this contrasts with, say, a homeschool kid deciding to go to university or
> not. the pro-uni delegation is like "not going to uni is a bad idea. you'll
> never get a job. we object." and the anti-uni side is like "uhh learn to FI
> bro" and so there is a conflict to arbitrate.

i think this is a question where there's only 1 possible correct
answer. and i think there is a person making a choice.


//TRIM//
>> like, is it unclear which problems P1 or P2 that I'm
>> referring to in each case that i use the word problem? i think no
>> because the first paragraph is talking about the first problem P1, and
>> it ends explaining that we've moved on to a new problem P2. and the
>> second paragraph is only talking about P2. so it's not like i switch
>> back and forth and it's hard to track which problem i'm referring to.
>> i also used qualifiers like 'new' and 'old' to refer to the problems
>> which i think helps clarify which one i mean.
>>
>> how should i be thinking about this?
>
>
> why would you define stuff then not use it?

i thought that showing P1 and P2 as i did, it helped show that P2 was
an evolution of P1, because of the shared "P" and because the first
one has a "1" and the next one has a "2".


> i think it's notable and interesting that your first reaction to criticism,
> your intuition, is to go in the wrong direction and make things worse. like
> the Athenians in BoI who, when thievery doesn't bring prosperity, think they
> need even more.

i want to reply to this after seeing your reply to my answer to your
question just above.

-- Rami

PS. I just went through my whole post and I notice that I didn't ask
any questions. does anybody see a problem with this for this specific
email? if so, why?

Anger: And How to Change

i'm converted this into a book.

it's not for available yet.

What’s Next For The Arab World?

What’s Next For The Arab World?

In my last essay I explored the question: What’s Holding Arabs Back?[1] The conclusion I drew is that not enough Arabs have embraced Enlightenment values, like progress, criticism, freedom of speech, freedom of the pursuit of happiness, tolerance of dissent, respect for reason and science, and respect for the rule of law. I also pointed out that this is a soluble problem. But what exactly would it take to solve it? What would it take for a critical mass of Arabs to embrace Enlightenment values and usher in a new era of progress for them? To address this question it’s important to point out some fundamental differences between the Arab world and the West.

Philosophy

One major difference between us is in how we understand morality - the branch of philosophy about how people should live their lives. In the Arab world the dominant worldview says morality is about avoiding doing what you want - following a set of obligations dictated by God or society. It's about living a life of suppressing your desires for fear of punishment. Many Westerners, on the other hand, have embraced a very different worldview that says morality is about getting what you want, while first checking if what you want is good. It's about living a life of embracing your rationally-considered desires in search of reward - where reward comes in the form of mutual benefit.

This is a clash of cultures, and it boils down to a fundamental difference in how each worldview understands reality. The fear-oriented morality hinges on the false premise that conflicts of interest between people are inherent to human nature. So people with this worldview mistakenly think that in any human interaction there must be a winner and a loser - that it's impossible for everybody involved to win. So they think that there is always someone taking advantage of someone else. They think there is always the oppressor and the oppressed. 

In contrast, the merit-oriented mentality explains that there is a natural harmony between humans. That conflicts of interest are not inherent to human nature. That any human interaction can be win/win - where everybody gets what they want and nobody sacrifices anything. You go after a win/win with somebody or you avoid interacting with him at all. So, a win/lose can and should always be avoided. And if a win/lose occurs it is because somebody acted irrationally and immorally.

Effects on psychology 

This difference in understanding makes a huge impact on people. Ones philosophy greatly affects how he thinks, how he feels, and how he acts. As an example, consider that somebody who doesn’t believe that mutual benefit is possible will misinterpret the intentions of somebody who is striving for mutual benefit with him.

Take me and this essay as an example. I am writing this essay for mutual benefit. I benefit from writing it, explaining my ideas, exposing them to criticism so that I can improve my understanding. And others benefit from learning from it. 

But some Arab Muslims will misinterpret my intentions because of their unquestioned, and in many cases, subconscious assumption that there always has to be a loser. They will think that I’m trying to cheat them. That I’m trying to hurt them by encouraging them to betray their way of life. They will cling to the age old conspiracy theory that Jews have paid me off - that I don’t actually believe what I’m saying and that I’m doing it only for money. 

But they are wrong. I only want good for people. I want good for everybody, even the evil people in the world. I want them to turn good. That’s better for everybody! I don't want them to be harmed. I don't want punishment. Punishment itself is evil. It's the win/lose morality that views punishment as righteous. And it's the merit-oriented win/win morality that implies that punishment is evil. 

It’s sad that they misunderstand me. I wish they would take my words at face value, that they believe me when I say that I don't want to hurt them, that I don't want them to lose. I want all of us to be winners! That's better for me.

Now keep in mind that the West hasn't fully embraced the win/win mentality. There are still lots of Westerners who believe the false premise that conflicts of interest are inherent to human nature. Or they don't have this belief explicitly but many of their ideas contradict the win/win mentality as if they did have a belief that humans are inherently at odds - for example some westerners don't value freedom or criticism.

Here's a summary of the two opposing worldviews:

Win/lose worldview	Win/win worldview
People are naturally at odds	Natural harmony between people
Fear-oriented	Merit-oriented
Status-seeking	Truth-seeking
Run from shame	Eager for self-improvement
Hide ones mistakes	Find and fix ones mistakes
Stagnation	Unbounded progress
Hates criticism	Loves criticism

The bare minimum of agreement

With such a striking difference in how we understand the world, how can we get along? Well that's sort of the point. In order to get along with each other we must agree on a bare minimum of things. For example if we don't agree that murder, rape, and theft are wrong, then we can’t get along. If we don't agree that initiation of violence and threats of violence are wrong then we can’t live in peace. This is why governments made up of people who value Enlightenment traditions put murderers, rapists, and thieves in jail, to protect people’s freedom to live peacefully, to live in harmony with others.

Now a lot of people in the West defend the Arab world saying that the West props up dictators there. Yes, a dictatorship is bad compared to a democracy. But a democracy isn’t even a possibility yet in the Arab world. Most Arabs today don't even know the basics of self-governance and democracy. So when they have the opportunity to replace a secular dictator, they end up replacing him with a religious dictator. This is a major barrier. Democracy has no chance in a country where most people align themselves politically by their tribe and religion instead of aligning themselves by their ideas.

So, the diplomatic policy of the West has been to give financial aid to the dictators that share some level of agreement with Western interests. For example, the U.S. gave billions in financial aid annually to the dictator of Egypt Hosni Mubarak because he wanted peace with Israel and economic ties with the U.S. It was a necessary step in the right direction because previous to that Egypt was in a constant state of war with Israel.

Now I’m not saying there is no reason for hope. A few years ago, immediately after the Arab Spring, King Abdullah II of Jordan made an important move towards democracy. There are now many political parties, which means that Jordanians are starting to align themselves politically by their ideas instead of by their tribe or religion. This means that any political party could have members from any tribe or religion. 

This is a start in the right direction but there's a long way to go before there is a critical mass of people good enough to operate a democratic government. The existence of a democratic government does not guarantee that the current rulers won't destroy the democratic engine by outlawing all other political parties. That's what the Nazis did, and not enough Germans opposed them.

A crucial point here is that bad rulers should be able to be replaced peacefully. If this sort of mechanism isn't in place, then people will resort to replacing bad rulers violently. But it won't work if enough people represented by a government consider violent revolution as their main tool to oust bad rulers. Violent revolution should be the last resort because it destroys any existing infrastructure necessary for non-violent replacement of rulers.

People need to respect the non-violent way of changing rulers. If you aren't happy with your current rulers, then you should make it your responsibility to vote against them in the coming elections and to persuade others to vote the same. In the mean time, be patient. Or, you could move to a country that better aligns with your values. 

Charges of hypocrisy 

Some Westerners read what I have to say about Arabs and tell me that I shouldn't be judging and condemning them. So I want to address these charges.  

First, I don't condemn people. Condemning a person means that you don't think they can improve. Like some people will say "you're going to hell." That means they are making a prediction that the person will never change for the better. I don't do that. Arabs can improve. That's one of the main themes of my essays. 

If you read this essay and come to the conclusion that I'm condemning Arabs then the problem is that you are operating under the win/lose mentality, because it's that mentality that falsely implies that people can't change their flaws. The win/win worldview explains that any person can change any part of his mind. There is no law of nature preventing it.

Second, I do judge Arabs but these people are confused about the meaning here. They act like judging is bad. Well what does it mean to judge? It means to criticize flaws. Now you can view this as a negative thing, since a flaw is negative. But a better view is that criticism is positive because learning about a flaw gives you the opportunity to correct it. So criticism is good. Judgement is good. And for the same reason, not judging people is bad because it hides flaws and causes them to persist. And pressuring me and others to stop judging people amounts to spreading evil because you are working to silence us, to stop us from helping people fix their flaws. Viewing judgement as negative is part of the win/lose mentality, and viewing judgement as positive is part of the win/win mentality.

Now a third charge that some Westerners level against me is that I shouldn't be criticizing Arabs for lack of democracy while my own country, the U.S., doesn't have the ideal democracy. This charge doesn't make sense. It's like saying that I shouldn't criticize somebody because I'm not perfect. This is a mistake because if everybody went by this standard, then nobody would ever criticize anybody else since nobody is perfect. So the criticism engine would completely halt which would usher in a new era of stagnation. Progress is made possible because of criticism! 

Take note that this anti-criticism view is part of the win/lose mentality. In contrast, the win/win mentality embraces criticism for what it is, wonderful!

A fourth charge that some Westerners level at me is that my ideas could be used as a propaganda tool resulting in future invasions by the U.S. This one I'm really shocked to hear. My essay is clear that initiation of violence and threats of violence is wrong. We should not be invading countries unless we've been invaded or there is a credible threat of attack. An example of a credible threat of attack is Iran who is making nuclear weaponry while simultaneously calling for the complete destruction of Israel. 

Other than eminent war like this, we should not be invading countries. We should not try to topple a dictator to replace it with a democracy. Instead, our governments should use diplomacy to encourage dictators to make steps towards democracy, for their own good.

Now if the people of a dictatorship revolt, and if those revolutionaries show signs of wanting a democracy and knowing how to do it, then we could consider helping them create a democracy while also helping them have a military chance against their dictator. But be clear that it is they who must make the first move. We should only play a helping role. We should not be spearheading any violent revolutions. Spearheading a violent revolution would mean going against the people of that country. We would be acting as if they want our help when we have no reason to believe that they do want our help. That would be a win/lose situation. That's evil. 

Agent of change

One thing that’s clear is that diplomacy isn’t enough. A democracy can only work if the people have the values necessary for a democracy to work. So what’s needed is something that could help Arabs learn these values. 

What's needed is an agent of change. What’s needed is ideas. Now one major hurdle here is that most Arabs only know Arabic. They can't read articles, books, or websites written in English or any other language besides Arabic. So, my idea is to bring Enlightenment values to Arabs - in their language.

Consider the Fallible Ideas (FI) website.[2] As far as I know, it has the best explanations advocating Enlightenment values. It helped me understand what's holding the Arabs back, hence these two essays. My plan is to translate the FI essays to Arabic, and then publish them on a website for Arabs to read. And I want to host a critical discussion group for Arabs to discuss these and other ideas amongst each other, and so that they could contribute their own ideas.

This could spawn a new era of philosophical evolution for Arabs. And if it succeeds, it would mean more mutual benefit for me and other Westerners! It would mean that our worlds will merge, becoming one.

If you’re interested to help with my translation project, please donate whatever you can at Help the Arab World Embrace Enlightenment Values.[3] Or if you are an English-to-Arabic translator and you want to donate your services, please contact me using the contact page.

[1] What’s Holding Arabs Back? [GET LINK OF THE MAGAZINE ARTICLE]

[2] Fallible Ideas website: http://fallibleideas.com

[3] Help the Arab World Embrace Enlightenment Values [NOT CREATED YET]

What's Holding the Arabs Back?

A question I've been interested in for years is: Why are so many countries making so much progress while most of the Arab countries are not? For years I explored potential answers and recently I think I've reached a good answer. I found it by learning a certain perspective - one that understands the key elements required to make progress.

If we look back in history, looking at all the cultures that made huge progress, we can see a certain feature shared between those cultures. Cultures that are exceptional in this regard are the Ancient Greeks and the Europeans during the Age of Enlightenment. The Ancient Greeks only made progress for a few centuries before they went mostly stagnant, but the Age of Enlightenment is still going strong centuries after it started and has spread across so many cultures outside of Europe.

Now before I explain the shared feature between these cultures, it's helpful to understand what these cultures were like before they started making huge progress. In Ancient Greece, schools were conducted in such a way where students were expected to learn what their teachers had to offer without any challenge from the students. Teachers tried to teach students to exactly copy the teachers' ideas. Students weren’t expected to create any new ideas, and instead the culture tried to suppress new ideas. As a result, in a typical person’s life, he didn’t see many changes to the society he lived in. Nothing much changed in the traditions of his society during his lifetime. [1]

Tolerance of dissent

But at some point in Ancient Greece a new school of thought began. One that expected students to challenge their teachers' ideas. One that expected students to invent new ideas, ideas that rivaled and even surpassed that of their teachers. Dissent was cherished instead of shunned. And as a result of this new school of thought, in a typical person’s life, he saw so many changes to the traditions of the society he lived in. And those changes were expected and encouraged.

This new tradition respected new ideas and respected criticism. The previous tradition disrespected new ideas and disrespected criticism. This tradition — ‘the tradition of criticism’ — is the key element that results in huge progress.

More than a millennium later in Europe people began to learn from the Ancient Greeks. In the minds of Europeans the tradition of criticism was born again. This was the Age of Enlightenment. This rekindled tradition spawned huge progress in politics, in science, and in all other fields. It was widely understood that people can and should expand human knowledge beyond that of their ancestors. People again expected change and welcomed it. 

To illustrate the contrast between these two kinds of attitudes, it helps to describe them a certain way. The first kind of attitude effectively believes that “I already have the full truth, so I'll rest on my current ideas. No need to challenge my ideas because the challengers are automatically wrong." The second kind believes that “I don’t have the full truth, so I’ll seek out the truth, challenging my current ideas.”

Static and dynamic societies

The first attitude is that of the static society, and the second is of the dynamic society. All static societies eventually die off - or become dynamic - because a static society cannot adapt to the changes that the world brings. In contrast, dynamic societies make huge progress and so they are able to adapt to the changing world.

In a dynamic society it’s common for people to have an attitude that respects criticism - they see criticism as a gift. In disagreements, they see themselves as equals. So someone with this attitude strives to seek out quality criticism because he knows that without it he is doomed to stagnation. 

In contrast, without the tradition of criticism, a person sees criticism as an insult, as an attack on his character. He runs away from criticism as though it is the plague, or he responds to criticism by initiating violence or making threats of violence in order to quell it. He expends his energy trying to preserve his current state of self, instead of trying to learn and improve.

This is what’s wrong with the Arab world today. They haven't embraced the tradition of criticism. It hasn’t become integral to their culture. Most Arabs still think that respecting their parents means never contradicting them. They think that dissenting implies disrespecting their ancestors. They take this even further by trying to raise their own children in the same way that their parents raised them, because they think that doing anything else amounts to disrespecting their parents. So the next generation doesn’t improve much from the previous. So stagnation is built in to their culture.

Ayaan Hirsi Ali explained this contrast in her book Infidel. She's from Somalia, which isn't an Arab country but it has the same missing key element that the Arab world is missing. She explained that Somalians don’t criticize their own country among outsiders because that is seen as an insult, a lowering of their reputation, while Westerners do criticize their own countries because they know that criticism is necessary for progress. She said that the same thing happens within smaller circles too. The typical Somalian wouldn’t criticize his own family while someone outside the family is present to hear it. And he wouldn't publicly admit his own mistakes, and instead he would take those secrets to his grave. They think that admitting mistakes means ruining ones reputation.

Honor/shame culture

This tradition, known as honor/shame culture, which I'll call 'the tradition of honor,' is integral to Arab culture. People with this attitude think in terms of their social status instead of in terms of the truth. They care about their reputation, and the reputation of their family, tribe, country, and religion, while not really caring about the truth. So if somebody criticizes them, their family, tribe, country, or religion, they see this as an attack on their honor, instead of as an opportunity to learn something. This attitude greatly affects the way they think, feel, and act. They would rather hide the truth in order to preserve their reputation, than to let the truth be heard.

What they misunderstand is that truth-seekers do not respect status-seekers, so status-seekers already have a bad reputation in the eyes of truth-seekers. We do not respect people that would rather hide the truth for fear of ruining their reputation. We respect people precisely because they are willing to publicly admit when they are wrong. Admitting when one is wrong, and also admitting the fact that one might be wrong, is what creates a good reputation among truth-seekers. [2]

This tradition literally competes with the tradition of criticism. A person cannot fully embrace the tradition of criticism without fully rejecting the tradition of honor. So this tradition stands in the way of Arabs embracing the tradition of criticism.

Part of the problem is that these traditions are part of Islam, which is the dominant religion across the Arab world. Now I’m not saying that Islam invented these traditions. They existed long before Islam. But because the traditions were incorporated into Islam, this caused these anti-criticism traditions to spread more and last longer. And it acts as a barrier for the spread of the tradition of criticism.

New inventions against criticism

Another part of the problem is that with Islam also came new inventions that were even more antithetical to the tradition of criticism than compared to pre-Islamic Arab culture. Consider that Islam instructs Muslims to kill those who leave Islam. Muhammad, the prophet of Islam, said: “Whoever changed his Islamic religion, then kill him." [3] This invention is one of the worst barriers for the spread of the tradition of criticism.

Islam effectively says “My way of making my ideas survive is to literally kill anybody who has competing ideas. I will not let ideas compete by merit because in that arena my ideas would die off.” This is one of the most effective ways to stop new ideas from forming and spreading, by literally killing the minds that create and contain them. 

This is not just something in ancient history. Even in the 21st century one of the most influential Islamic scholars, Qaradawi, leader of the Muslim Brotherhood, said: “If they had gotten rid of the apostasy punishment Islam wouldn’t exist today." So he is admitting that Islam cannot win by merit. It can only "win" by force. The effect of this tradition is to make people fear voicing their dissenting opinions, so most people decide to censor themselves for fear of being killed. 

To make matters worse is Islam’s idea of punishment in hell for the "crime" of questioning or even doubting Islam. This is clarified in so many verses in the Quran that it's not worth quoting here. This belief results in most Muslims fearing even *thinking* of having dissenting opinions, of questioning their ancestors belief system. So most Muslims end up censoring not only their voices, but also their critical and dissenting thoughts, simply because of their false belief that they will burn in hell for thinking differently than what the Quran instructs them to think.

There is another invention playing a role preventing the adoption of the tradition of criticism - and Islam did not create it. Islam did bring it back stronger though. It's a phenomenon where people value the afterlife more than life on earth. So they don't value progress in this life. This means that criticism has no value too since you only need criticism so that you can make progress. Some Islamic traditions even teach that suffering on Earth buys credit in the afterlife. So it's treating human suffering as a good thing, and progress as something that isn’t awesome. These things are inextricably connected - you have to value progress in this life in order to have any reason at all to value criticism.

How to move forward

Now this doesn’t mean that Islam must die in order for Arabs to adopt the tradition of criticism. It's quite possible for the Arab world to embrace the tradition of criticism while they remain Muslims. Some changes will need to take place, but Islam does not need to end in order for progress to be made.

There was a time when people from the Islamic world embraced criticism. They made advancements in math, science, medicine, architecture, etc. It was a time when Europe was in a deep sleep after Ancient Greece went stagnant and before Europeans rekindled the tradition of criticism by learning from the Ancient Greek texts. And actually it was those people from the Islamic world that preserved the Ancient Greek texts and reintroduced them to Europe. This helped Europeans rekindle the tradition of criticism. And we should return the favor. 

In the future, I think Islam will evolve like Christianity did. Criticism in the form of words or cartoons will no longer result in people reacting with violence. Muslims will embrace the tradition of criticism and reject the tradition of honor, and this will usher in a new era of progress for the Arab world.

[1] For more on this and related topics in epistemology, morality, science, politics, and more, see _The Beginning of Infinity_, by David Deutsch. This book is currently being translated into Arabic.

[2] For more on the tradition of honor and it’s effects on a person’s thoughts, emotions, and actions, see my essay Honor Violence: And why nobody should demand respect. It’s currently being translated into Arabic to be published in the Arab Atheist Broadcasting magazine.

[3] Bukhari 9.84.57 

Gaming the ACT. Is that the right way?

Lots of tutors tell students that scoring high on standardized tests is more about ‘gaming the system’ and less about actually understanding the concepts that the test is supposed to be testing for. I think they have a point. But I think their understanding is incomplete.

The game-the-system camp are right that the test makers try to trick you with their multiple-choice questions. But what they misunderstand is that real life works the same way. In real life it’s easy to get tricked. And it’s especially easy to fool yourself.

The test makers aren’t so much trying to trick you, as much as they are trying to present you with types of test questions that you’ve never encountered before. It’s their only means of separating the exceptional people from the not so exceptional.

So, what are these so-called “tricks”? The “trick” is just to try to get you to misinterpret the question and it’s answer options. That’s it. That’s the goal.

And there are an infinite number of possible ways to achieve that goal. So you can’t just try to learn a handful of types of test questions and think you can cover all of them or even most of them. There will always be new one’s you haven’t encountered. The test makers will continue to invent new ways to try to trick you. And you’ll always encounter new ones, even if it’s only new to you and not to the rest of the world.

The solution here is to learn how to catch more mistakes in interpreting the questions and the answer options. More generally, it’s to learn how to catch more mistakes of any kind. In other words, we’re talking about improving your general reasoning skill. That’s the focus of my book _How to Get More Right Answers: on standardized tests like the ACT, SAT, MCAT, LSAT, GMAT, etc_.

This reminds me of my college years studying Physics at Bradley. I remember students complaining that their professor would put problems on the test that weren’t covered in the lectures or homework. They thought that their professors were being unfair. But they’re wrong. That’s the point of the test! It’s to check your understanding of the concepts by changing up the situations so that you can’t just memorize your way through the material. It requires that you understand the abstract concepts thoroughly enough so that you can apply them to any situation that the concepts apply to. Any! That’s an infinite set.

Why do it that way? Because that’s actually how the real world works!! Like for those guys that locate utilities underground, there’s no such thing as studying every single possible situation and getting tested on all of them. These guys don’t have an infinite amount of time to train. They only have 3 weeks. So it’s an infinite set of possible situations, and what these locators do during training is learn all the necessary general-purpose information about electricity and other physics concepts, meant to be applied universallyto any possible situation that a locator can find himself in.

How to study effectively

Rote memorization versus integrating your knowledge

One of the most important issues about learning has to do with the contrast between rote memorizing and actual learning. If you do lots of your thinking by rote memorization, then you’ll fail to learn much useful knowledge. This can be expected to lead to failing your tests and failing at life in general.

Now it’s important to understand that there is a process involved with learning and that not doing this process makes it easy to fall into the trap of rote memorizing. So what is that process?

The process involves solving a problem — guessing and criticizing your way to the solution. Now if it’s a problem that you don’t care about — one that you’re not interested in — then you’re already starting out in a bad situation. 

Without interest, you are working against yourself. If you try to learn something that you’re not interested in, then what you’re doing is setting yourself up to spend time hating what you’re doing — which can only be expected to lead to failure. A common response to hating what you’re doing is to take shortcuts — like rote memorizing.

So if you’re taking a standardized test and you find yourself bored out of your mind, then you’re in a dangerous situation. You’ve started on a path towards a goal which involves learning things that you don’t find interesting — so failure is the expected result. There are two broad ways to fix this. Find out what’s interesting about the problems within the path you’ve chosen, or reconsider your chosen path.

What does it look like to not be doing rote memorization?

Now let’s say that somebody is not doing rote memorization. What does that look like? Well it implies a couple of things.

One implication is that you’re creating useful information that can be reused later. The fact that the knowledge is reusable is what makes it useful.

A second implication is that you’re creating information that you can readily correct in the future when you find flaws in it.

I discuss these two implications in the following two sections.

Explanations have reach

Creating useful and reusable information implies that the information has a lot of reach. This means that instead of only being able to use the information for the purpose that it was originally created for, it can be used for lots of other situations too, even ones that you’ve never encountered before.

Now I’ll do an example of an idea that is not very reusable in it’s current state, and then I’ll explain how to make a reusable version of it.

Consider the math idea of solving for a variable (y) by getting it all by itself on one side of the equation, like so:

x = y * 4

Most people would know that we should divide both sides of the equation by 4, thereby leaving y all by itself on the right side, like so:

x / 4 = y * 4 / 4, which leaves… 

y = x / 4, and we’re done.

Now if you’ve only memorized this, then you won’t know where else this idea applies. You won’t know the reach of the explanation. You won’t be able to apply it in other types of situations. 

Consider this other type of situation:

x = e^y

What should we do here to get y on one side all by itself? Well some people have already memorized what to do, but again that’s not a good way to learn. It doesn’t help you apply the knowledge to other situations.

What I’m going to do is generalize what we did in the first situation, and then I’m going to explain how that generalized idea can apply to both the old situation and the new situation.

What we did before was to figure out what operator is being done to y (it was multiplication), and then we figured out the inverse to that operator (division), and then we applied that inverse operator to both sides of the equation. It can be written like so:

Take y and operate on it with operator O, then take the result from that operation and operate on it with the inverse operator I, and the result is y.

In short notation we have:

(y ^o O) ^o I = y, where I is the inverse operator of operator O.

Now let’s see how this general idea applies in the first situation.

In the first situation, the operator was “*” (multiplication), and the inverse of that operator is “/“ (division). So we have:

(y * 4) / 4 = y

This is what we used to get y all by itself on one side. The equation was x = y * 4, and we took y * 4 and used this universal theory (an explanation that has a lot of reach) to figure out that we should divide both sides of the equation by 4 so that we can get rid of everything around the y.

Now let’s see how this general idea applies to the second situation.

x = e^y

So “e” is the operator. And the inverse operator to that is “ln” which means “log base e”, or “log_e”. So we take both sides of the equation and do this inverse operator to it, which gives us:

ln x = ln e^y, which reduces to… 

y = ln x, and we’re done.

Notice how I took an idea that applied to one situation, then I generalized it so that it applies to lots more situations, then I reused the general idea in a situation that was slightly different than the first situation.

So instead of memorizing what to do in these two types of situations, I’ve created an explanation that applies to lots of situations — it applies to all operators, not just the multiplication operator. And without having created this universal explanation, I’d just be rote memorizing specific methods to be used in specific situations. This kind of knowledge is not very reusable, and it’s very fragile, in the sense that it’s not designed well enough to make it easy to find and correct flaws in it.

In the next section I talk about a special case of the general idea in this section. The general idea is explanations have reach. The special case idea is criticisms have reach. It’s a special case because a criticism is a type of explanation. A criticism is an explanation of a flaw in an idea.

Criticisms have reach

When you create a new criticism to an idea, often times that criticism does not only apply to just that one idea, and instead it applies to lots of ideas. In this sense, criticisms have reach. 

This idea of having reach is crucial to learning. Without ideas having reach, they couldn’t be reused. You’d “learn” an idea for one situation and never be able to apply that idea to any other situation. That means you’re not learning much. It’s just rote memorization.

If you memorize answers to questions so that you can get through tests, you’ll fail horribly. Analogously, if you memorize specific methods for solving specific problems (as I explained in the last section), you’ll fail horribly. But instead, if you actually learn, by integrating new information with the rest of your knowledge, then you’ll be able to reuse it throughout your life, and you’ll have the potential to succeed (at tests and at life in general).

So when you create a new criticism to an idea, you should make a concerted effort to figure out the reach of that criticism too. In other words, you should try to figure out the situations that that criticism applies to. Let’s do an example.

Say you are working on a practice test and you answered a question wrong. Then you go to the answer guide and you find out what it is that you missed while working on that question. You learned about a flaw in one of the answer options — a flaw that you never knew about beforehand. So you’ve learned a new criticism. Let’s say that the criticism was that whenever you have the words “the boy swim,” if the words “boy” and “swim” are in grammatical disagreement, then that’s a mistake. 

Now if you apply this criticism only to situations where you have the words “the boy swim,” never thinking about what other situations the criticism can apply to, then you’re not learning much. You’re basically just memorizing one mistake and its fix. You’re not organizing your knowledge in a way that can help you fix this type of mistake going forward. What you should do is figure out the reach of this new criticism. And part of doing that is to generalize the criticism. So let’s do that.

Whenever you have a subject and a verb, they should agree grammatically. For example, they should either both be singular or both plural. Note that this applies to “the boy swim,” as well as it applies to any other subject-verb combination. It applies to all possible incorrect subject-verb combinations. How many is that? I don’t know but maybe it numbers in the millions. So this criticism applies to millions of ideas.

So creating criticisms is crucial to learning, and so is figuring out the reach of criticisms because that’s what allows you to reuse them, and it’s what helps you find and fix flaws in your knowledge.

In summary, think of an explanation as a tool. Each time you create a new explanation, that’s a new tool that goes in your toolset. So each time you create a an explanation (like a criticism), you expand your toolset, thereby expanding your error-correction ability.

What does this toolset idea imply about how you should study?

One thing it implies is that you shouldn’t spend time studying without also making a concerted effort to expand your toolset. What’s the point of spending time passively “studying” if you’re not going to learn much of anything? That would be a huge waste of time. So for example, if you spend some time doing a practice test, you should also spend the time necessary to go through each of your wrong answers, figure out what mistakes you made, and expand your toolset. 

More importantly, you want your tools to be resilient to breakage. Strong tools are the ones that have a lot of reach. Fragile tools are the ones you learn by rote memorizing.

How should you study?

When you study, do you also study your mistakes? If not then you’re missing out on a huge opportunity to find and fix gaps in your knowledge. And without finding and fixing gaps in your knowledge then you’re just rote memorizing. This means that the new ideas you learn won’t be integrated into your knowledge well enough to allow you the ability to reuse those new ideas in situations different than the situations you originally “learned” them in.

Studying your mistakes involves thinking about them critically with the goal of finding out why you're making the mistakes and creating error-correction methods to prevent you from making those mistakes in the future. Part of this process requires figuring out the reach of the criticisms that you created about your mistakes. Knowing the reach of a criticism is crucial to be able to reuse it in all the situations that it reaches to.

I’m studying but I’m not making much progress. How can I start making progress?

One thing you can do is to seek help from others. There’s something wrong with your method of thinking but your blind to that because those are your blind spots. By exposing your ideas to others, since they don’t have all the same blind spots that you do, you’re able to cover some of your own blind spots.

So let’s say you’re having some trouble with a certain passage. What you can do is expose your ideas about the passage to a discussion group and ask people to look for flaws in your thinking. This works especially well when the other group members have a good attitude towards critical discussion and where they know the things explained in this book about how knowledge is created.

Now let’s say that you’re having trouble understanding the material in this book about how to create knowledge. The thing is, it’s possible that you think you know it well when actually you don’t. This is a result of having blind spots. You’re blind to the things that you’re ignorant of. So you should expect to have lots of misunderstandings about the content of this book. And you should account for this fact by exposing your ideas to external criticism and making a concerted effort to improve that criticism.

Why is critical discussion crucial to learning?

In a previous section I made the claim that critical discussion is good for learning. Actually it’s crucial to learning. 

Without critical discussion, a person would be limited by his blind spots. With critical discussion, he would still be limited, but by a smaller set of blind spots. Having fewer blind spots implies finding more mistakes. 

Why is it a smaller set? Let’s say that John has 5 million blind spots and Paul has 6 million blind spots. Many of those blind spots aren’t the same ones, so let’s say that 4 million of John’s blind spots are ones that Paul has too. So this means that John has 1 million blind spots that Paul doesn’t have and that 2 million of Paul’s blind spots are one’s that John doesn’t have. Now since John and Paul are discussing together, that means that between the two of them, they have only 4 million blind spots. Now imagine that for every person you add to the critical discussion group, you reduce the number of shared blind spots. So each person benefits from the addition of each person sharing his ideas in the critical discussion group.

So consider what scientists do. They publish their work worldwide for all scientists (and anybody else) to review. And the review takes the form of critical analysis being published again worldwide for all scientists (and anybody else) to review the critical analysis. So each scientist is benefitting from the worldwide group discussion because a huge portion of his blind spots are being covered by other scientists who do not have those same blind spots.

Good muslims and bad muslims

Good muslims are good people — people that are against murder and rape. They are defenders of civilized society.

There are two kinds of bad people/muslims.

(1) Those that murder and rape, and

(2) Those that get more offended by people eating pig than by people committing murder and rape. These people would criticize me for criticizing the evil actions of murderers and rapists doing their work in the name of their god, and they would not criticize the evil actions of those murderers and rapists. By their actions they defend murderers and rapists and attack civilized society.

The people in the 2nd group are terrorists-in-principle. The people in the 1st group are terrorists-in-principle-and-action.

According to all the intelligence agencies across the world, the terrorist-in-principle muslims comprise 15 to 25% of all muslims. From this group is where the terrorist-in-principle-and-action muslims come from. It's just a matter of acting on the ideas that already exist in their minds.

This is very worrisome. Why is it happening?

Well, for one thing, Saudi Arabia spends millions of dollars annually to spread a brand of Islam known as Wahabism which is a terrorist philosophy.

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Is Islam a Religion of Peace?

Honor Violence: And why nobody should demand respect.