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How do you know that these practices are actually helping with anything?

By adding counter-biases, are you trying to somehow trying to tap into the Regression to the Mean?

I'm very much against this view of biases. They're very much rational and help us in the real world all the time.

It's a better question to ask, how to best employ them.

Like say, using confirmation bias to reinforce ideas that empiricism, experience & practice and the scientific method are both great things.

A comment said one needs a goal first, which is true. I'll call that goal a "question".

Doing so partially solves the problem of what I call the Delegation of Curiosity: when someone or something implants a question in your head that you feel compelled to have the answer to by passively consuming the contents proposed by the invader.

This happens because you delegate your curiosity to something external; your questions/curiosity controls you, and so delegating it means someone else controlling you.

Moreover, discovering an answer by oneself through active efforts means you'll be more grateful for it, be more likely to apply it and remember it better.


Moreover, when in a state of boredom you're susceptible to the Delegation.

It's then a good idea to exit the web browser or internet instantly. Make it a habit to be done upon Noticing. This can be done physically (preferable), by walking away from the device, or virtually, by closing it.

Beforehand, make sure the browser is as distant as possible from access, and disable any features or facilitators of access that might shorten that gap. Example, by putting it inside many folders with no shortcuts that lead there.


There's still the problem of Potentially Relevant Information, when you don't know whether info that lies beyond a question is relevant; it might be.

I found that generalizing the question and getting a grip on the terminology and history of the things involved with it help to predict whether you'll find what you seek and which words to use. Encyclopedias, such as those of Philosophy like Stanford Plato, help.

It must be media in text format, preferably with an index, so you can more easily find what you need by reading just the headers or first lines of the paragraphs.

It seems to me like this is as intended. Most people who talk about biases and fallacies do so in the veil of them being wrong and bad, instead of mere tools, more or less sophisticated and consciously knowable. I am skeptical about what good argument and reasoning entails and whether any such single instance exists.

Yeah, pop science is inaccurate and irresponsible. But overall I think this is a disservice to how interesting science and history actually are. History isn't merely a stepping stone, a tool, boring and necessary.

The wording isn't helping either. It'd be absurd trying to convince someone that something described as "settled" is interesting. It's almost inhuman.

Science is interesting because of 'semiotics', questions, answers, and what makes both valid. It's epistemology, ontology, pragmatism...

That's the same thing Plato had, idealism.

I understand, it's hip to hate fringe theories. Justified. I'm hip, so I also hate them, but blaming it on magic isn't right, and we can't just ignore them, because it was how much progress was made historically. Regardless, this isn't magic, it's magic being used as an excuse. Magic is the dominion over the self, and dominating the self means doing good things, maybe even magical ones. The alchemists were magicians, illusionists are magicians, and scientists are magicians.