AiresJL

How far along are you on the Path? Some say the Path has always existed and there have always been those who have walked it. The Path has many names and there are many notions of what the Path is. To some the path is called philosophy, to others it is the art of rationality. To my people, it was called science and the pursuit of truth. Physics, psychology, neuroscience, machine learning, optimal control theory. All of these are aspects to the path. It has no true name. With certainty, the only way to know whether you walk the path is by talking to those who don't walk the path. One man, Scott Alexander describes the path as, "Some people are further down the path than I am, and report there are actual places to get to that sound very exciting. And other people are around the same place I am, and still other people are lagging behind me. But when I look back at where we were five years ago, it’s so far back that none of us can even see it anymore, so far back that it’s not until I trawl the archives that realize how many things there used to be that we didn’t know. " How to tell where you are on the path? One day, a man comes up to a woman and says: > "I am further down the path than you are." In response, the woman says: > "No, I am further down the path than you are." Instantly, both people recognize the solution as they have both at least progressed some degree through the path. The man speaks: > "Only one of us can be more right than the other. Let us make a prediction about all things in this world for all time and whoever is more correct about the state of the world for all time is closer to the end of the path." Realizing the recursive time constraint of determining who is correct with infinite precision, the woman instead points to a random child. > "Whoever can guess correctly how this child behaves for the next 1 minute has walked further along the pat