WRONG!

[recursivelyenumerable]

http://blog.plover.com/risk.html

(Advice to people wishing to become smarter: Get in the habit of assuming that everything is more complex than you imagine.)

This hasn't made me smarter, it's just made me more miserable.  Anticipating complexity doesn't actually equip me to deal with that complexity.  I'd rather be blissfully unaware and falsely confident in the adequacy of my knowledge and abilities.  If anything, I'd be more effective that way since I could bullshit in good faith

[Reb]

But what if this situation is more complicated then you assume?

[recursivelyenumerable]

I thought of that.

[Mandark]

The first post of the Becker-Posner blog justified preventive war by implicitly using the expected-value theory.

Max Sawicky wrote a really short, derisive response to it on his site and I never bothered with them again.  Tangentially related is this from three months before that.



Anyway, we should totally repurpose this thread into a discussion of political epistemology.  Who's with me?

[Bildi]

I think I'd rather assume nothing, and just get the fucking thing done.  I agree assumptions like this can get you down before you even start the task.