Internal rationality is using truth-preserving thought processes that output good hypotheses given good data. Examples include:

  • Identifying inconsistencies in hypotheses.
  • Having detailed models/inside views.
  • Not doing motivated reasoning.
  • Evaluating one's thought processes.

External rationality is discerning good data from bad data. Examples include:

External rationality and internal rationality intersect and build upon one another.

I like using these words instead of "inside view" and "outside view" because "outside view" tends to exclude model-based reasoning when you can have detailed models of what data is good or bad. Also "outside view" specifically refers to reference class forecasting and I don't want to overload the term. I also feel like "external rationality" and "internal rationality" are better at communicating the fuzzy intuition I'm getting at here.

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