This is part 2 of our dialogue series on the question "What is the next level of rationality?".

Yoav Ravid

Last we left off, we listed the shortcomings of Eliezer's level of rationality that the next level of rationality would have to deal with, we focused on "how to collaborate as rationalists or be more rational as a pair or a group", you suggested that Socratic Dialogues are an important tool for this purpose, and we planned to start with "a Socratic dialogue about how to do a Socratic dialogue".

I'll let you start :)

lsusr

What do you know about Socratic dialogues?

Yoav Ravid

That it is a dialogue where one side asks the other side questions that challenge their claim to knowledge. It is basically asking someone the Fundamental Question of Rationality over and over again.

lsusr

That's not a bad place to start. If you're new to Socratic dialogue, then following the rule "just ask questions" can very well get the job done.

Performed artfully, questions don't always end in a question mark. They often take the form of a joke, a parable, or even a statement of fact.

Yoav Ravid

Right, but the goal is always to sow some doubt or challenge the claim the other side makes, so they have to reconsider it or make their position more sophisticated/nuanced.

lsusr

When encountering over-confidence, a Rationalist's duty is to sow doubt. When encountering under-confidence, a Rationalist's duty is to sow confidence.

Yoav Ravid

Yep, I agree with that, and I think the second part was missing in the original Socratic Dialogues.

lsusr

Indeed. Plato's works are a curated sample. It could be that those dialogues just weren't written down. Or perhaps Socrates just didn't encounter any under-confidence.

Yoav Ravid

Probably a combination of the two, and also because they had so little capacity to know at the time relative to today, levels of confidence that we would consider low today would have probably been considered high by Socrates.

Yoav Ravid

And I think Nassim Taleb's critique is also correct: that just because you don't know how to justify your knowledge doesn't mean you don't know, but Socrates equivocated the two.

lsusr

They knew the Sun rose in the east. They knew how to grow wheat. I don't know how to grow wheat.

The inverse is true too: just because you can justify your claims doesn't mean they're correct.

Yoav Ravid

Right, I mean as a society. I don't know how to grow wheat as well,

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