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Principles

Edited by Yoav Ravid last updated 5th Aug 2020

“Principles are fundamental truths that serve as the foundations for behavior that gets you what you want out of life. They can be applied again and again in similar situations to help you achieve your goals.” ― Ray Dalio, Principles: Life and Work.

Principles, Heuristics, and rules of thumb are generalizations that aim to produce an optimal outcome relative to their cheapness as decision rules. 

Not using generalizations, Rules of thumb and Heuristics isn't possible. precise decision rules such as Bayes Theorem are computationally intractable even to computers, and surely aren't feasible for humans. the question become whether you have good and effective principles to guide you.

See also: Chesterton's Fence, Conservation of Expected Evidence, Occam's razor, Goodhart's Law, More Dakka

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Posts tagged Principles
290Yes Requires the Possibility of No
Scott Garrabrant
6y
55
525Making Beliefs Pay Rent (in Anticipated Experiences)
Eliezer Yudkowsky
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269
58Respect Chesterton-Schelling Fences
Shmi
3y
17
21Truthseeking processes tend to be frame-invariant
Adele Lopez
2y
2
16On Pseudo-Principality: Reclaiming "Whataboutism" as a Test for Counterfeit Principles
Alex_Steiner
5mo
5
[Event]Joey Savoie from Charity Entrepreneurship and His Principles -- OpenPrinciples Speaker Session
2022 Oct 15th
0
192Reversed Stupidity Is Not Intelligence
Eliezer Yudkowsky
18y
122
191Beware of Other-Optimizing
Eliezer Yudkowsky
16y
119
180Incorrect hypotheses point to correct observations
Kaj_Sotala
4y
40
142Occam's Razor
Eliezer Yudkowsky
18y
55
134Beware Isolated Demands For Rigor
Scott Alexander
8y
6
126Don't Revere The Bearer Of Good Info
CarlShulman
16y
72
72Beware The Man Of One Study
Scott Alexander
11y
2
44Reflecting on building my own tools from scratch and 'inventing on principle'
Amir Bolous
4y
7
38Useful maxims
Paul Crowley
13y
111
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