Four Philosophy Traits – Which Is Your Best?

[Elliot Temple]

So you want to learn philosophy? Here are four key traits that help:

1. integrity

2. friendliness (including answering questions, trying suggestions, and being curious about stuff people bring up even if you don’t immediately see the point)

3. smarts, logic, knowledge

4. effort, patience, perseverance (for this trait, you should have a lot of time and/or money to support your effort. it’s not a purely intellectual trait about work ethic, it’s also about your life circumstances to enable the intellectual trait.)

I’ve ordered them by a *very rough* estimate of their importance.

All of these are learnable skills. They’re all things you can get better at. But you gotta start somewhere and work with what you have now.

To make much progress with philosophy, it really helps if you’re really good at at least *one* of the traits. It gives you – and people you discuss with – something to work with, a tool to use.

**Which trait of the four traits do you think you’re the best at?**

I think everyone should answer this question. My personal answer is integrity. We can call each trait by the first word.

If you don’t think you’re really good at any of the four, still answer which one you’re the best at. And consider if there is one you think you could realistically get really good at in the near future?

When you have FI conversations, review them to see if you did well on the one trait you think is your best one. You could review how you did on all four traits if you want. But just focusing on one is fine and easier. You can try to be good at, and improve at, one at a time. You can tell people which one it is and they can focus more their criticism on that one.


Elliot Temple
www.elliottemple.com

[Kate Sams]

On Sep 26, 2019, at 3:17 AM, Elliot Temple <cu...@curi.us> wrote:

> So you want to learn philosophy? Here are four key traits that help:
>
> 1. integrity

Why do you think integrity is more important than honesty?

http://aynrandlexicon.com/lexicon/integrity.html

> Integrity is loyalty to one’s convictions and values; it is the policy of acting in accordance with one’s values, of expressing, upholding and translating them into practical reality.

Is this what you think of as integrity?

HB has said something along these lines: You need to actually *have* principles and convictions in order to be loyal to them (i.e. exercise integrity). The opposite of integrity is something like self-betrayal. Pragmatists (i.e. people who lack principles) don't lack integrity because they don't even have the principles to be loyal to. There's a minimum there to get up to the level of being judged as having something to betray.

How does this mesh with your meaning of integrity?

> 2. friendliness (including answering questions, trying suggestions, and being curious about stuff people bring up even if you don’t immediately see the point)
>
> 3. smarts, logic, knowledge
>
> 4. effort, patience, perseverance (for this trait, you should have a lot of time and/or money to support your effort. it’s not a purely intellectual trait about work ethic, it’s also about your life circumstances to enable the intellectual trait.)
>
> I’ve ordered them by a *very rough* estimate of their importance.
>
> All of these are learnable skills. They’re all things you can get better at. But you gotta start somewhere and work with what you have now.
>
> To make much progress with philosophy, it really helps if you’re really good at at least *one* of the traits. It gives you – and people you discuss with – something to work with, a tool to use.
>
> **Which trait of the four traits do you think you’re the best at?**

Effort

[Elliot Temple]

On Sep 26, 2019, at 5:23 AM, 'Kate Sams' via Fallible Ideas <fallibl...@googlegroups.com> wrote:

> On Sep 26, 2019, at 3:17 AM, Elliot Temple <cu...@curi.us> wrote:
>
>> So you want to learn philosophy? Here are four key traits that help:
>>
>> 1. integrity
>
> Why do you think integrity is more important than honesty?

I don’t. Integrity and honesty are synonyms. The first definition of integrity in the first definition I checked begins "the quality of being honest”. I checked 4 thesauruses and they all had honesty as a synonym of integrity (3 as the first word listed). You should learn English and learn to use dictionaries and thesauruses. Learning those things means not just being capable of doing it (which you are plenty capable of in this case), but integrating it into your life so you actually do it when appropriate.

Your question is unnecessarily aggressive socially in addition to being false and ridiculous (and hiding its false claims in the form of a question).

You are pressuring me by putting words in my mouth. You made it hard not to reply to you. This is not OK. You’re mistreating me.

You could have asked e.g. “What about honesty?” and then if I don’t reply nothing happens. That would be a neutral, non-pressuring question.

You made a false statement about what I think which pressured me to contradict it.

You seem to think there is some logical argument to get from what I said to the conclusion you put in my mouth. You did not state this argument. And you could have put the argument and conclusion in your own mouth instead of mine, since its yours.

Leave me alone. Don’t do this.

You didn't need to say “you” and talk to me directly, or to say what I think. Don’t do that unless you have a *really* important reason that you *really* thought through – which you ought to explain.

Every time you write a post to me, from now on, and it’s personalized to me in any way, stop and think about what it looks like if I don’t reply and whether it’s pressuring. Put effort into being easy to ignore. Because your social habits are so nasty, you need significant active effort just to get to neutral and be able to leave me alone instead of mistreating me.

What you did is in the same ballpark as misquoting me. There are few things that pressure me, but that is one of them. As you know, I don’t want people lying about my beliefs on my forums. If anyone has a criticism of my position, and some way to not care about it, please let me know. I’d like it if this issue didn't matter. I’d like some way to just ignore people doing this. But I think spreading misinformation about my philosophy, on my own forums (where I believe many readers would expect me to contradict errors like this), is not safely ignorable.

(Note for newer members: these comments related to lots of discussion history for context, not just to this one example. In addition to a lot of other stuff Kate has done wrong, I think she’s done this specific thing to me before and I’ve criticized it and asked her to stop. If not, other people have done it *and she’s read my responses explaining the problem*.)

Elliot Temple
www.elliottemple.com

[Augustine L]

I think for me it is friendliness. I try to answer questions to the best of my ability and I try suggestions as much as I can. I would say it is my best trait but I’m not ready to say I am really good at it yet.

[Andy Dufresne]

On Sep 26, 2019, at 12:17 AM, Elliot Temple <cu...@curi.us> wrote:

> So you want to learn philosophy? Here are four key traits that help:
>
> 1. integrity
>
> 2. friendliness (including answering questions, trying suggestions,
> and being curious about stuff people bring up even if you don’t
> immediately see the point)
>
> 3. smarts, logic, knowledge
>
> 4. effort, patience, perseverance (for this trait, you should have a
> lot of time and/or money to support your effort. it’s not a purely
> intellectual trait about work ethic, it’s also about your life
> circumstances to enable the intellectual trait.)
>
> I’ve ordered them by a *very rough* estimate of their importance.
>
> All of these are learnable skills. They’re all things you can get
> better at. But you gotta start somewhere and work with what you have
> now.
>
> To make much progress with philosophy, it really helps if you’re
> really good at at least *one* of the traits. It gives you – and
> people you discuss with – something to work with, a tool to use.
>
> **Which trait of the four traits do you think you’re the best at?**

I think I’m best at integrity, but I don’t have a lot of confidence
about that. My guess for second place is smarts, and I’m pretty
confident about that being either second or first place.

I have put significant effort into improving in integrity and
friendliness since joining FI. I think I’m much better at those than I
used to be.

I think my overall effort has become worse since joining FI. I used to
be more interested and engaged in FI than I am now.

--Andy

[Kate Sams]

On Sep 26, 2019, at 12:19 PM, Elliot Temple <cu...@curi.us> wrote:

> On Sep 26, 2019, at 5:23 AM, 'Kate Sams' via Fallible Ideas <fallibl...@googlegroups.com> wrote:
>
>> On Sep 26, 2019, at 3:17 AM, Elliot Temple <cu...@curi.us> wrote:
>>
>>> So you want to learn philosophy? Here are four key traits that help:
>>>
>>> 1. integrity
>>
>> Why do you think integrity is more important than honesty?
>
> I don’t. Integrity and honesty are synonyms. The first definition of integrity in the first definition I checked begins "the quality of being honest”. I checked 4 thesauruses and they all had honesty as a synonym of integrity (3 as the first word listed). You should learn English and learn to use dictionaries and thesauruses. Learning those things means not just being capable of doing it (which you are plenty capable of in this case), but integrating it into your life so you actually do it when appropriate.

Rand distinguishes between integrity and honesty. In Oism, they are separate virtues. Because you're a fan of Oism, I assumed that you also made a distinction between them. I’ve now learned that this assumption is mistaken. (BTW, the purpose of the personalized statement “Because you’re a fan of Oism” is to explain why I made the assumption I did.)

At this point, I don’t think I'm going to spend much time thinking about the assumption I made. The assumption ended up being wrong in this case, but I don’t see a good reason to prioritize improving my general policy of making assumptions (over other topics I could work on). Any criticisms of that?

However, one thing I do want to focus on is how I asked my question.

> Your question is unnecessarily aggressive socially in addition to being false and ridiculous (and hiding its false claims in the form of a question).
>
> You are pressuring me by putting words in my mouth. You made it hard not to reply to you. This is not OK. You’re mistreating me.
>
> You could have asked e.g. “What about honesty?” and then if I don’t reply nothing happens. That would be a neutral, non-pressuring question.
>
> You made a false statement about what I think which pressured me to contradict it.
>
> You seem to think there is some logical argument to get from what I said to the conclusion you put in my mouth. You did not state this argument. And you could have put the argument and conclusion in your own mouth instead of mine, since its yours.
>

> Leave me alone. Don’t do this.
>
> You didn't need to say “you” and talk to me directly, or to say what I think. Don’t do that unless you have a *really* important reason that you *really* thought through – which you ought to explain.
>
> Every time you write a post to me, from now on, and it’s personalized to me in any way, stop and think about what it looks like if I don’t reply and whether it’s pressuring. Put effort into being easy to ignore. Because your social habits are so nasty, you need significant active effort just to get to neutral and be able to leave me alone instead of mistreating me.

Ok. FWIW, I don’t think I was in a bad mindset where I was trying to catch you out or pressure you. I assumed that you saw the two virtues as being distinct, and I wrote what came to my mind, which was something like "why integrity instead of honesty?".

As for the form of the question, I see your point about putting words into your mouth. I see how the way I wrote it *does* pressure you to reply. And this is mistreatment. I’m sorry. I will try to keep my thoughts non-personalized, e.g. “Why is integrity on the list instead of honesty?”

> What you did is in the same ballpark as misquoting me.

That’s fair.

> There are few things that pressure me, but that is one of them. As you know, I don’t want people lying about my beliefs on my forums. If anyone has a criticism of my position, and some way to not care about it, please let me know. I’d like it if this issue didn't matter. I’d like some way to just ignore people doing this. But I think spreading misinformation about my philosophy, on my own forums (where I believe many readers would expect me to contradict errors like this), is not safely ignorable.

————


Side question: *Why* should integrity and honesty be thought of as synonyms? Did Rand make a distinction that is unnecessary?

http://aynrandlexicon.com/lexicon/integrity.html

> Integrity is the recognition of the fact that you cannot fake your consciousness, just as honesty is the recognition of the fact that you cannot fake existence—that man is an indivisible entity, an integrated unit of two attributes: of matter and consciousness, and that he may permit no breach between body and mind, between action and thought, between his life and his convictions—that, like a judge impervious to public opinion, he may not sacrifice his convictions to the wishes of others, be it the whole of mankind shouting pleas or threats against him—that courage and confidence are practical necessities, that courage is the practical form of being true to existence, of being true to truth, and confidence is the practical form of being true to one’s own consciousness.

end quote

[Elliot Temple]

On Sep 26, 2019, at 11:57 AM, 'Kate Sams' via Fallible Ideas <fallibl...@googlegroups.com> wrote:

> On Sep 26, 2019, at 12:19 PM, Elliot Temple <cu...@curi.us> wrote:
>
>> On Sep 26, 2019, at 5:23 AM, 'Kate Sams' via Fallible Ideas <fallibl...@googlegroups.com> wrote:
>>
>>> On Sep 26, 2019, at 3:17 AM, Elliot Temple <cu...@curi.us> wrote:
>>>
>>>> So you want to learn philosophy? Here are four key traits that help:
>>>>
>>>> 1. integrity
>>>
>>> Why do you think integrity is more important than honesty?
>>
>> I don’t. Integrity and honesty are synonyms. The first definition of integrity in the first definition I checked begins "the quality of being honest”. I checked 4 thesauruses and they all had honesty as a synonym of integrity (3 as the first word listed). You should learn English and learn to use dictionaries and thesauruses. Learning those things means not just being capable of doing it (which you are plenty capable of in this case), but integrating it into your life so you actually do it when appropriate.
>
> Rand distinguishes between integrity and honesty. In Oism, they are separate virtues. Because you're a fan of Oism, I assumed that you also made a distinction between them. I’ve now learned that this assumption is mistaken. (BTW, the purpose of the personalized statement “Because you’re a fan of Oism” is to explain why I made the assumption I did.)
>
> At this point, I don’t think I'm going to spend much time thinking about the assumption I made. The assumption ended up being wrong in this case, but I don’t see a good reason to prioritize improving my general policy of making assumptions (over other topics I could work on). Any criticisms of that?
>
> However, one thing I do want to focus on is how I asked my question.
>
>> Your question is unnecessarily aggressive socially in addition to being false and ridiculous (and hiding its false claims in the form of a question).
>>
>> You are pressuring me by putting words in my mouth. You made it hard not to reply to you. This is not OK. You’re mistreating me.
>>
>> You could have asked e.g. “What about honesty?” and then if I don’t reply nothing happens. That would be a neutral, non-pressuring question.
>>
>> You made a false statement about what I think which pressured me to contradict it.
>>
>> You seem to think there is some logical argument to get from what I said to the conclusion you put in my mouth. You did not state this argument. And you could have put the argument and conclusion in your own mouth instead of mine, since its yours.
>>
>
>> Leave me alone. Don’t do this.
>>
>> You didn't need to say “you” and talk to me directly, or to say what I think. Don’t do that unless you have a *really* important reason that you *really* thought through – which you ought to explain.
>>
>> Every time you write a post to me, from now on, and it’s personalized to me in any way, stop and think about what it looks like if I don’t reply and whether it’s pressuring. Put effort into being easy to ignore. Because your social habits are so nasty, you need significant active effort just to get to neutral and be able to leave me alone instead of mistreating me.
>
> Ok. FWIW, I don’t think I was in a bad mindset where I was trying to catch you out or pressure you.

I didn’t think you were consciously in that mindset. I thought your automated social communication knowledge was responsible and you didn’t make an active effort to stop it.

That’s hard to do in general, all the time, while doing it cheaply and efficiently enough to be viable. But you can double check stuff and not rely on autopilot, even if it takes significant effort, just when you talk about people personally in intellectual discussion (something you don’t do all that often, usually what you say is impersonal, so most of the time that effort isn’t required).

> I assumed that you saw the two virtues as being distinct, and I wrote what came to my mind, which was something like "why integrity instead of honesty?”.

Regarding the substantive issue, the category is intended to cover multiple things including both meanings you’re talking about. Just like the smarts category has both logic skill and knowledge (which are less closely related).

> As for the form of the question, I see your point about putting words into your mouth. I see how the way I wrote it *does* pressure you to reply. And this is mistreatment. I’m sorry. I will try to keep my thoughts non-personalized, e.g. “Why is integrity on the list instead of honesty?”
>
>> What you did is in the same ballpark as misquoting me.
>
> That’s fair.
>
>> There are few things that pressure me, but that is one of them. As you know, I don’t want people lying about my beliefs on my forums. If anyone has a criticism of my position, and some way to not care about it, please let me know. I’d like it if this issue didn't matter. I’d like some way to just ignore people doing this. But I think spreading misinformation about my philosophy, on my own forums (where I believe many readers would expect me to contradict errors like this), is not safely ignorable.
>
>
> ————
>
>
> Side question: *Why* should integrity and honesty be thought of as synonyms? Did Rand make a distinction that is unnecessary?

Some distinction is necessary because Rand wanted to talk about two distinct things. But I’m not a fan of her terminology. I also dislike trying to use “morality” and “ethics” to mean different things. I don’t think the words are different enough. I think it’s confusing.

I think she should have come up with a few short phrases to specify different sub-concepts of honesty/integrity. I don’t think the distinctions she’s drawing should be done with single words.

Last time I looked into this I wrote this summary:

Honesty: Don’t think or act contrary to reality.
Integrity: Be consistent, live by your values and ideas, and don’t let anything fake in your mind.

Neither of these is standard terminology. Neither one matches the standard meaning of integrity/honesty very exactly. I think short statements like the 4 I’ve written here are better than trying to get those same points across via special jargon. Also Rand actually barely uses that jargon in her writing. She normally writes so that people with the standard meaning in mind will understand her fine. I think the jargon has been emphasized by ARI, Peikoff, and other Oists who aren’t Rand and who like jargon and wanted to make Oism easier to get a handle on by breaking it down into a bunch of keywords. Rand herself did not present Oism that way much but lots of ppl seem to want training materials to be more like that.

Elliot Temple
www.curi.us

[Anne B]

On Thu, Sep 26, 2019 at 3:17 AM Elliot Temple <cu...@curi.us> wrote:

> So you want to learn philosophy? Here are four key traits that help:
>
> 1. integrity
>
> 2. friendliness (including answering questions, trying suggestions, and being curious about stuff people bring up even if you don’t immediately see the point)
>
> 3. smarts, logic, knowledge
>
> 4. effort, patience, perseverance (for this trait, you should have a lot of time and/or money to support your effort. it’s not a purely intellectual trait about work ethic, it’s also about your life circumstances to enable the intellectual trait.)
>
> I’ve ordered them by a *very rough* estimate of their importance.
>
> All of these are learnable skills. They’re all things you can get better at. But you gotta start somewhere and work with what you have now.
>
> To make much progress with philosophy, it really helps if you’re really good at at least *one* of the traits. It gives you – and people you discuss with – something to work with, a tool to use.
>
> **Which trait of the four traits do you think you’re the best at?**

I am not excellent at any of these. I am sort of good at friendliness,
smarts (logic more than knowledge), and effort. I don't know which of
these I'm best at. I suspect I'm not good at integrity but it's hard
for me to tell.

> I think everyone should answer this question. My personal answer is integrity. We can call each trait by the first word.
>
> If you don’t think you’re really good at any of the four, still answer which one you’re the best at. And consider if there is one you think you could realistically get really good at in the near future?

I don't think I could get really good at any of them in the near
future. I could improve at all of them, but not to the point of being
really good.

> When you have FI conversations, review them to see if you did well on the one trait you think is your best one. You could review how you did on all four traits if you want. But just focusing on one is fine and easier. You can try to be good at, and improve at, one at a time. You can tell people which one it is and they can focus more their criticism on that one.

If I had to pick one to focus on it would be integrity. I care about
integrity even though I don't know much what it would look like in me
or how to get better at it. I think I need to become more honest in
order to have more integrity.

[Elliot Temple]

On Sep 26, 2019, at 12:46 PM, Anne B <anne...@gmail.com> wrote:

> On Thu, Sep 26, 2019 at 3:17 AM Elliot Temple <cu...@curi.us> wrote:
>
>> So you want to learn philosophy? Here are four key traits that help:
>>
>> 1. integrity
>>
>> 2. friendliness (including answering questions, trying suggestions, and being curious about stuff people bring up even if you don’t immediately see the point)
>>
>> 3. smarts, logic, knowledge
>>
>> 4. effort, patience, perseverance (for this trait, you should have a lot of time and/or money to support your effort. it’s not a purely intellectual trait about work ethic, it’s also about your life circumstances to enable the intellectual trait.)
>>
>> I’ve ordered them by a *very rough* estimate of their importance.
>>
>> All of these are learnable skills. They’re all things you can get better at. But you gotta start somewhere and work with what you have now.
>>
>> To make much progress with philosophy, it really helps if you’re really good at at least *one* of the traits. It gives you – and people you discuss with – something to work with, a tool to use.
>>
>> **Which trait of the four traits do you think you’re the best at?**
>
> I am not excellent at any of these. I am sort of good at friendliness,
> smarts (logic more than knowledge), and effort. I don't know which of
> these I'm best at. I suspect I'm not good at integrity but it's hard
> for me to tell.

I think you’re decent at all 4. I don’t have in mind much of an answer for which is your best, either.

The grammar stuff has shown good smarts and effort. And I think it’s helped you improve at smarts.

An example of integrity was when you said something about not sucking in your gut, then corrected it a few days later.

You have some humility and recognition of your own ignorance. You don’t seem to make excuses about your errors and pretend you weren’t wrong. In the grammar discussions, you haven’t been resistant to being wrong, you’ve dealt with error in a rational way. It reminds me of chess analysis from childhood. The way I did it – and I think a lot of ppl do this – was to try to objectively figure out the best move, not to take it personally if your move (the one you played in the game being analyzed, or the first one you thought of in the analysis) is bad. If someone finds a reason your move is bad (e.g. there is a tactical issue so it loses a piece), you just change your mind and prefer a different move. Lots of ppl are pretty good at this kinda thing with chess but bad at it in philosophy or politics discussions. They are so bad at it in philosophy discussions that they will be dishonest and irrational about simple factual, logical or mathematical issues like whether something is or is not an accurate quote (which is getting to the same level of ease of objectively judging the matter as clear cases for chess moves like a move being bad b/c it accidentally loses a piece. btw there are other chess move comparisons where there’s more scope to disagree, there are a bunch of more subtle factors to compare.) Anyway you will totally change your mind about grammar stuff if someone has a clear reason, and you’ll admit you missed something that they bring up, etc.

Your friendliness has always been pretty good. I haven’t found you adversarial, hostile, etc. And you’ve been willing to try some FI suggestions and ideas, and learn about some of that. And I haven’t had problems with getting you to answer questions.

For your weakest area, I might say smarts. Not because you’re particularly bad but you can also consider it in terms of room for improvement or gap from you to me. And I figure there’s a ton of room for improvement there. Note that smarts includes knowledge, not just thinking skill, and e.g. you don’t know a lot about Objectivism. (I can see benefits to splitting that up so there are five traits. idk tho. they go together a decent amount.)

>> I think everyone should answer this question. My personal answer is integrity. We can call each trait by the first word.
>>
>> If you don’t think you’re really good at any of the four, still answer which one you’re the best at. And consider if there is one you think you could realistically get really good at in the near future?
>
> I don't think I could get really good at any of them in the near
> future. I could improve at all of them, but not to the point of being
> really good.
>
>> When you have FI conversations, review them to see if you did well on the one trait you think is your best one. You could review how you did on all four traits if you want. But just focusing on one is fine and easier. You can try to be good at, and improve at, one at a time. You can tell people which one it is and they can focus more their criticism on that one.
>
> If I had to pick one to focus on it would be integrity. I care about
> integrity even though I don't know much what it would look like in me
> or how to get better at it. I think I need to become more honest in
> order to have more integrity.

I was trying to write about integrity today. See my post "Integrity, Friendliness, Smarts and Effort”. It says the most about integrity. Respond to that stuff and add your own thoughts (even if you think they are simple, basic, or stuff I must already know).

Elliot Temple
www.elliottemple.com

[Kate Sams]

On Sep 26, 2019, at 3:16 PM, Elliot Temple <cu...@curi.us> wrote:

> On Sep 26, 2019, at 11:57 AM, 'Kate Sams' via Fallible Ideas <fallibl...@googlegroups.com> wrote:
>
>> On Sep 26, 2019, at 12:19 PM, Elliot Temple <cu...@curi.us> wrote:
>>
>>> On Sep 26, 2019, at 5:23 AM, 'Kate Sams' via Fallible Ideas <fallibl...@googlegroups.com> wrote:
>>>
>>>> On Sep 26, 2019, at 3:17 AM, Elliot Temple <cu...@curi.us> wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> So you want to learn philosophy? Here are four key traits that help:
>>>>>
>>>>> 1. integrity
>>>>
>>>> Why do you think integrity is more important than honesty?
>>>
>>> I don’t. Integrity and honesty are synonyms. The first definition of integrity in the first definition I checked begins "the quality of being honest”. I checked 4 thesauruses and they all had honesty as a synonym of integrity (3 as the first word listed). You should learn English and learn to use dictionaries and thesauruses. Learning those things means not just being capable of doing it (which you are plenty capable of in this case), but integrating it into your life so you actually do it when appropriate.
>>
>> Rand distinguishes between integrity and honesty. In Oism, they are separate virtues. Because you're a fan of Oism, I assumed that you also made a distinction between them. I’ve now learned that this assumption is mistaken. (BTW, the purpose of the personalized statement “Because you’re a fan of Oism” is to explain why I made the assumption I did.)
>>
>> At this point, I don’t think I'm going to spend much time thinking about the assumption I made. The assumption ended up being wrong in this case, but I don’t see a good reason to prioritize improving my general policy of making assumptions (over other topics I could work on). Any criticisms of that?
>>
>> However, one thing I do want to focus on is how I asked my question.
>>
>>> Your question is unnecessarily aggressive socially in addition to being false and ridiculous (and hiding its false claims in the form of a question).
>>>
>>> You are pressuring me by putting words in my mouth. You made it hard not to reply to you. This is not OK. You’re mistreating me.
>>>
>>> You could have asked e.g. “What about honesty?” and then if I don’t reply nothing happens. That would be a neutral, non-pressuring question.
>>>
>>> You made a false statement about what I think which pressured me to contradict it.
>>>
>>> You seem to think there is some logical argument to get from what I said to the conclusion you put in my mouth. You did not state this argument. And you could have put the argument and conclusion in your own mouth instead of mine, since its yours.
>>>
>>> Leave me alone. Don’t do this.
>>>
>>> You didn't need to say “you” and talk to me directly, or to say what I think. Don’t do that unless you have a *really* important reason that you *really* thought through – which you ought to explain.
>>>
>>> Every time you write a post to me, from now on, and it’s personalized to me in any way, stop and think about what it looks like if I don’t reply and whether it’s pressuring. Put effort into being easy to ignore. Because your social habits are so nasty, you need significant active effort just to get to neutral and be able to leave me alone instead of mistreating me.
>>
>> Ok. FWIW, I don’t think I was in a bad mindset where I was trying to catch you out or pressure you.
>
> I didn’t think you were consciously in that mindset. I thought your automated social communication knowledge was responsible and you didn’t make an active effort to stop it.

There’s a good possibility that happened. I have some bad social communication knowledge that's still a part of me. I notice those ideas relatively often.

I’m unable to conclude that it happened, though. One reason is because there are often emotional hints associated with this happening (e.g. a feeling of antagonism and a feeling of wanting to look smart, and then afterwards a feeling of being tight, anxious, and defensive and also a feeling of uncleanliness). But, in this case, I felt good will towards you. And I felt light and nice. So, I don’t know for sure what happened.

Regardless, making the statement be about “you” was pressuring and wrong. I’ll make a good effort to try to depersonalize my thoughts. I’ve never put effort into trying to do that before. Even in my last post, I initially wrote "*Why* do you think integrity and honesty should be thought of as synonyms?”. But then I noticed the “you”, and I changed it to "*Why* should integrity and honesty be thought of as synonyms?”.

Actually, here’s another comment regarding mindset: Even if my mindset was fine (which it easily may not have been), it’s reasonable for you to initially guess that it wasn’t fine because of my history of being in a bad mindset. I understand that, and it doesn’t bother me. That’s a fair initial guess to make. Maybe over time, you won’t make that initial guess. But right now, I think it’s reasonable.

> That’s hard to do in general, all the time, while doing it cheaply and efficiently enough to be viable. But you can double check stuff and not rely on autopilot, even if it takes significant effort, just when you talk about people personally in intellectual discussion (something you don’t do all that often, usually what you say is impersonal, so most of the time that effort isn’t required).

Yes. However, if we are talking about social communication knowledge that does dishonest and pressuring social stuff, then I want to try to make an active effort to stop it most of the time.

>> I assumed that you saw the two virtues as being distinct, and I wrote what came to my mind, which was something like "why integrity instead of honesty?”.
>
> Regarding the substantive issue, the category is intended to cover multiple things including both meanings you’re talking about. Just like the smarts category has both logic skill and knowledge (which are less closely related).

Makes sense. I might reply to the other details you wrote about honesty and integrity in a separate post.

[Elliot Temple]

When you were new I think friendliness was your weakest trait. Today I think it’s effort.

Elliot Temple
www.fallibleideas.com

[Elliot Temple]

To be clear I mean effort *as applied to philosophy*, and which is *available as a resource for use in philosophy learning*. Effort in your career or something else doesn’t count for this evaluation.

Elliot Temple
www.curi.us

[Anne B]

On Thu, Sep 26, 2019 at 4:00 PM Elliot Temple <cu...@curi.us> wrote:

> You have some humility and recognition of your own ignorance. You don’t seem to make excuses about your errors and pretend you weren’t wrong. In the grammar discussions, you haven’t been resistant to being wrong, you’ve dealt with error in a rational way. It reminds me of chess analysis from childhood. The way I did it – and I think a lot of ppl do this – was to try to objectively figure out the best move, not to take it personally if your move (the one you played in the game being analyzed, or the first one you thought of in the analysis) is bad. If someone finds a reason your move is bad (e.g. there is a tactical issue so it loses a piece), you just change your mind and prefer a different move. Lots of ppl are pretty good at this kinda thing with chess but bad at it in philosophy or politics discussions. They are so bad at it in philosophy discussions that they will be dishonest and irrational about simple factual, logical or mathematical issues like whether something is or is not an accurate quote (which is getting to the same level of ease of objectively judging the matter as clear cases for chess moves like a move being bad b/c it accidentally loses a piece. btw there are other chess move comparisons where there’s more scope to disagree, there are a bunch of more subtle factors to compare.) Anyway you will totally change your mind about grammar stuff if someone has a clear reason, and you’ll admit you missed something that they bring up, etc.

Sometimes in my grammar study I notice myself being emotionally
attached to my original idea when someone suggests a better one. I
feel like I have to prove I was more right than the other person. Then
I tell myself that if I switch, I can have the better idea and be
better off. Once I have that better idea, it's mine in addition to
being the other person's.

This helps me move forward.

[Elliot Temple]

This post admits a lack of integrity. Not a *big* lack, but it’s admitting the integrity takes some ongoing effort instead of being easy and automatic.

This post itself, by sharing this problem, shows substantial integrity. Most people would not want to write anything like it. Especially when they weren’t caught in some way and pushed into it. It’s not like I was speculating on what Anne revealed. I hadn’t somehow figured it out from hints. I wasn’t going to investigate further.

Elliot Temple
www.fallibleideas.com

[Justin Mallone]

On Sep 26, 2019, at 3:17 AM, Elliot Temple <cu...@curi.us> wrote:

> So you want to learn philosophy? Here are four key traits that help:
>
> 1. integrity
>
> 2. friendliness (including answering questions, trying suggestions, and being curious about stuff people bring up even if you don’t immediately see the point)
>
> 3. smarts, logic, knowledge
>
> 4. effort, patience, perseverance (for this trait, you should have a lot of time and/or money to support your effort. it’s not a purely intellectual trait about work ethic, it’s also about your life circumstances to enable the intellectual trait.)
>
> I’ve ordered them by a *very rough* estimate of their importance.
>
> All of these are learnable skills. They’re all things you can get better at. But you gotta start somewhere and work with what you have now.
>
> To make much progress with philosophy, it really helps if you’re really good at at least *one* of the traits. It gives you – and people you discuss with – something to work with, a tool to use.
>
> **Which trait of the four traits do you think you’re the best at?**

I’m gonna try 1-10 scale to get an answer cuz i got stuck just trying to rank.

integrity - 2

friendliness - 4

smarts, logic, knowledge - 5

effort, patience, perseverance - 3

smarts it is.

> I think everyone should answer this question. My personal answer is integrity. We can call each trait by the first word.
>
> If you don’t think you’re really good at any of the four, still answer which one you’re the best at. And consider if there is one you think you could realistically get really good at in the near future?
>
> When you have FI conversations, review them to see if you did well on the one trait you think is your best one.

OK.

-JM

[anonymous FI]

Is this falsely low self-esteem or would you rate other people with a
lot of 1s and 2s? How many adults do you think have better integrity
than you? Try rating some other people.

Rate curi. That'll give some info about your scale. Like is straight 10s
or is 10 perfection (no one gets a 10 on anything) or what.

We're all at some finite number out of infinity, so using that method
you could rate us all a 0 on everything. 0% of the way to perfection.
You're not doing that but idk very clearly what you are doing. I mention
that as a limiting case where it's fairly easy to define the method. It
could be useful for comparison.

[Justin Mallone]

On Sep 27, 2019, at 2:52:59 AM, anonymous FI <anonymousfa...@gmail.com> wrote:

> On Sep 26, 2019, at 8:36 PM, Justin Mallone <just...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> On Sep 26, 2019, at 3:17 AM, Elliot Temple <cu...@curi.us> wrote:
>>
>>> So you want to learn philosophy? Here are four key traits that help:
>>>
>>> 1. integrity
>>>
>>> 2. friendliness (including answering questions, trying suggestions, and being curious about stuff people bring up even if you don’t immediately see the point)
>>>
>>> 3. smarts, logic, knowledge
>>>
>>> 4. effort, patience, perseverance (for this trait, you should have a lot of time and/or money to support your effort. it’s not a purely intellectual trait about work ethic, it’s also about your life circumstances to enable the intellectual trait.)
>>>
>>> I’ve ordered them by a *very rough* estimate of their importance.
>>>
>>> All of these are learnable skills. They’re all things you can get better at. But you gotta start somewhere and work with what you have now.
>>>
>>> To make much progress with philosophy, it really helps if you’re really good at at least *one* of the traits. It gives you – and people you discuss with – something to work with, a tool to use.
>>>
>>> **Which trait of the four traits do you think you’re the best at?**
>>
>> I’m gonna try 1-10 scale to get an answer cuz i got stuck just trying to rank.
>>
>> integrity - 2
>>
>> friendliness - 4
>>
>> smarts, logic, knowledge - 5
>>
>> effort, patience, perseverance - 3
>>
>> smarts it is.
>
> Is this falsely low self-esteem or would you rate other people with a lot of 1s and 2s?

lots of people would be 1’s with maybe a 2-4 here or there for individual trait.

> How many adults do you think have better integrity than you? Try rating some other people.
>
> Rate curi. That'll give some info about your scale. Like is straight 10s or is 10 perfection (no one gets a 10 on anything) or what.

scale is something like "10 = what i currently have some sense is reasonably achievable", not God/perfection.

> We're all at some finite number out of infinity, so using that method you could rate us all a 0 on everything. 0% of the way to perfection. You're not doing that but idk very clearly what you are doing. I mention that as a limiting case where it's fairly easy to define the method. It could be useful for comparison.

I’m hesitant to rate others cuz it seems kinda mean unless i’m gonna give them a high rating. I don’t think that’s a rational reaction, and I have a judgment about people’s relative merits, but the reaction I’m having is that it seems mean to say it publicly. But I don’t think it’d seem mean if somebody else says it. So something weird/bad is going on there, some thought like “who am I to judge?”

-JM

[Justin Mallone]

The “who am I to judge?”-type reaction is kinda silly cuz the judgments *exist*, so I already judged! The hesitancy I have is in expressing them.

-JM

[GISTE]

On Sep 26, 2019, at 2:17 AM, Elliot Temple <cu...@curi.us> wrote:

> So you want to learn philosophy? Here are four key traits that help:
>
> 1. integrity
>
> 2. friendliness (including answering questions, trying suggestions,
> and being curious about stuff people bring up even if you don’t
> immediately see the point)
>
> 3. smarts, logic, knowledge
>
> 4. effort, patience, perseverance (for this trait, you should have a
> lot of time and/or money to support your effort. it’s not a purely
> intellectual trait about work ethic, it’s also about your life
> circumstances to enable the intellectual trait.)
>
> I’ve ordered them by a *very rough* estimate of their importance.
>
> All of these are learnable skills. They’re all things you can get
> better at. But you gotta start somewhere and work with what you have
> now.
>
> To make much progress with philosophy, it really helps if you’re
> really good at at least *one* of the traits. It gives you – and
> people you discuss with – something to work with, a tool to use.

I vaguely recall that curi said that my best trait is friendliness. I
found that interesting. I didn’t know that he thought that about me. I
also didn’t see myself as especially friendly. Though, I didn’t view
friendliness like he explains. I do now though.

So like there’s friendliness as viewed by social-reality. I didn’t
think I was especially friendly in that sense. people find my comments
socially rude often.

And then there is friendliness as viewed by reality-reality. I never
thought of this concept before until curi explained it (in the text
above).

The friendliness concept that curi explains makes sense from a win/win
worldview. Like if I correct someone on something, it’s often
considered socially rude. That’s the win/lose attitude. The win/win
attitude sees it as good because then there’s opportunity for people
to change their mind, for disagreement to become agreement, for
progress, for people to go from wrong to right. So if I don’t correct
somebody, that is unfriendly (from a win/win worldview).

> **Which trait of the four traits do you think you’re the best at?**
>
> I think everyone should answer this question. My personal answer is
> integrity. We can call each trait by the first word.
>
> If you don’t think you’re really good at any of the four, still
> answer which one you’re the best at. And consider if there is one
> you think you could realistically get really good at in the near
> future?

It seems to me that integrity should be easy to improve quickly.

> When you have FI conversations, review them to see if you did well on
> the one trait you think is your best one. You could review how you did
> on all four traits if you want. But just focusing on one is fine and
> easier. You can try to be good at, and improve at, one at a time. You
> can tell people which one it is and they can focus more their
> criticism on that one.

I want to improve on integrity.

I think understanding evasion would help a lot, so I want to work on
that. I’ve been discussing evasion on FI discord server. Something
I’ve noticed is that evasion has a particular look on a discussion
tree, at least in the one or two discussions that I made a tree for and
thought I recognized evasion.

Here’s an example of a discussion with evasion:
https://my.mindnode.com/V5Yyf79SugWuqUyyHHbzxyVzQhBFf9pfgxysHgUd

These are examples of discussions without evasion:
https://my.mindnode.com/aCMv1DPo9xAzLL7fcSfQebR9ZTxuUSg3z15zeqWm
https://my.mindnode.com/e9uPDkh9xaq8177SMqcBsdbocWDzPX4Fg6X4Ze92

In the evasion example, notice the 4 lines of discussion that terminate
without resolution. And notice that they are all basically getting at
the same thing. We were asking for VSE to provide written criticism of
Popper’s epistemology. VSE never provided it. Some of us asked if VSE
knew that such written criticism existed. He wouldn’t answer that
either. Like only one of these lines of discussion was needed, but we
kept trying to help him by repeating the point in different ways, hoping
that he would engage with one of the versions.

In the non-evasion examples, notice that all the lines of discussion got
attention. And for any one line of discussion that ended with a
question, there were other lines of discussion that addressed those
issues. So like if I was able to draw extra lines, I would make a line
from one line of discussion and connect it to another line of
discussion. Notice also that there are no repeating lines of discussion
attempting to get at the same thing (like in the example described in
the previous paragraph).

Hmm. I think I should do discussion trees in every single case where
someone says I’ve evaded. Or at least I should try to reply about the
evasion (like let’s say I disagree that I evaded), and then if that
wasn’t resolved (the other person still thinks I evaded), then it’s
time to do a discussion tree. the implication is that I’ve evaded and
don’t know that I have, or something like that. Or maybe I was just
confused, but that still deserves a discussion tree.


Re Effort

I’ve been putting in a lot more effort recently. i noticed a big
change going back to 12/24/2019. curi had said that there’s a lot of
discussion happening on discord. So I went there and I think I’ve read
almost everything on there since that day. there was interesting
discussion from some new guys. Also curi was being trashed a lot and I
know that he’d rather not deal with defending himself from
dishonest/bad-faith accusations. So I wanted to do it. It met 2 goals.
(1) give me practice in discussion (and discussion text to study). (2)
Save curi the time and effort of dealing with it so he could do more
important things which I care about.

One of the discussions I had was about the value of speedrunning for
learning philosophy. I think that had the effect of increasing my
motivation to do more speedrunning (like more sessions per day, longer
sessions, which I’ve done).


-- GISTE

[GISTE]

On Sep 26, 2019, at 7:23 AM, 'Kate Sams' via Fallible Ideas

<fallibl...@googlegroups.com> wrote:

> On Sep 26, 2019, at 3:17 AM, Elliot Temple <cu...@curi.us> wrote:
>
>> So you want to learn philosophy? Here are four key traits that help:
>>
>> 1. integrity
>
> Why do you think integrity is more important than honesty?

I see them as the same (before seeing Elliot’s reply). I didn’t know
that Rand treated them as different (assuming Kate is right about this,
I didn’t study this).

Effort isn’t very effective with integrity. Integrity is like a
multiplying factor for effort. If you have low integrity, then your
effort is being put towards bad things, like evasion/lying.

But also, effort can be seen as a multiplying factor for integrity. You
have to put in effort to integrate your actions with your ideas and your
ideas with your other ideas.

>> I think everyone should answer this question. My personal answer is
>> integrity. We can call each trait by the first word.
>>
>> If you don’t think you’re really good at any of the four, still
>> answer which one you’re the best at. And consider if there is one
>> you think you could realistically get really good at in the near
>> future?
>>
>> When you have FI conversations, review them to see if you did well on
>> the one trait you think is your best one. You could review how you
>> did on all four traits if you want. But just focusing on one is fine
>> and easier. You can try to be good at, and improve at, one at a time.
>> You can tell people which one it is and they can focus more their
>> criticism on that one.

-- GISTE

[GISTE]

On Sep 28, 2019, at 11:10 AM, Justin Mallone <just...@gmail.com>

wrote:

> On Sep 27, 2019, at 2:52:59 AM, anonymous FI
> <anonymousfa...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> On Sep 26, 2019, at 8:36 PM, Justin Mallone <just...@gmail.com>
>> wrote:
>>
>>> On Sep 26, 2019, at 3:17 AM, Elliot Temple <cu...@curi.us> wrote:
>>>
>>>> So you want to learn philosophy? Here are four key traits that
>>>> help:
>>>>
>>>> 1. integrity
>>>>
>>>> 2. friendliness (including answering questions, trying suggestions,
>>>> and being curious about stuff people bring up even if you don’t
>>>> immediately see the point)
>>>>
>>>> 3. smarts, logic, knowledge
>>>>
>>>> 4. effort, patience, perseverance (for this trait, you should have
>>>> a lot of time and/or money to support your effort. it’s not a
>>>> purely intellectual trait about work ethic, it’s also about your
>>>> life circumstances to enable the intellectual trait.)
>>>>
>>>> I’ve ordered them by a *very rough* estimate of their importance.
>>>>
>>>> All of these are learnable skills. They’re all things you can get
>>>> better at. But you gotta start somewhere and work with what you
>>>> have now.
>>>>
>>>> To make much progress with philosophy, it really helps if you’re
>>>> really good at at least *one* of the traits. It gives you – and
>>>> people you discuss with – something to work with, a tool to use.

>> We're all at some finite number out of infinity, so using that method
>> you could rate us all a 0 on everything. 0% of the way to perfection.
>> You're not doing that but idk very clearly what you are doing. I
>> mention that as a limiting case where it's fairly easy to define the
>> method. It could be useful for comparison.
>
> I’m hesitant to rate others cuz it seems kinda mean unless i’m
> gonna give them a high rating. I don’t think that’s a rational
> reaction, and I have a judgment about people’s relative merits, but
> the reaction I’m having is that it seems mean to say it publicly.
> But I don’t think it’d seem mean if somebody else says it. So
> something weird/bad is going on there, some thought like “who am I
> to judge?”

Would it seem mean to you if the person in question asked you for it?

I’m asking you for evaluation of my traits.

You could give evaluation of old me and me in the past couple of weeks.

-- GISTE

[GISTE]

On Jan 5, 2020, at 7:52 AM, GISTE

<cuz.good.is.str...@gmail.com> wrote:

> On Sep 26, 2019, at 7:23 AM, 'Kate Sams' via Fallible Ideas
> <fallibl...@googlegroups.com> wrote:
>
>> On Sep 26, 2019, at 3:17 AM, Elliot Temple <cu...@curi.us> wrote:
>>
>>> So you want to learn philosophy? Here are four key traits that help:
>>>
>>> 1. integrity

>>> Integrity is loyalty to one’s convictions and values; it is the
>>> policy of acting in accordance with one’s values, of expressing,
>>> upholding and translating them into practical reality.

>>> 2. friendliness (including answering questions, trying suggestions,
>>> and being curious about stuff people bring up even if you don’t
>>> immediately see the point)
>>>
>>> 3. smarts, logic, knowledge
>>>
>>> 4. effort, patience, perseverance (for this trait, you should have a
>>> lot of time and/or money to support your effort. it’s not a purely
>>> intellectual trait about work ethic, it’s also about your life
>>> circumstances to enable the intellectual trait.)
>>>
>>> I’ve ordered them by a *very rough* estimate of their importance.
>>>
>>> All of these are learnable skills. They’re all things you can get
>>> better at. But you gotta start somewhere and work with what you have
>>> now.
>>>
>>> To make much progress with philosophy, it really helps if you’re
>>> really good at at least *one* of the traits. It gives you – and
>>> people you discuss with – something to work with, a tool to use.
>>>
>>> **Which trait of the four traits do you think you’re the best
>>> at?**
>>
>> Effort
>
> Effort isn’t very effective with integrity. Integrity is like a
> multiplying factor for effort. If you have low integrity, then your
> effort is being put towards bad things, like evasion/lying.

That first sentence should read “without integrity”

> But also, effort can be seen as a multiplying factor for integrity.
> You have to put in effort to integrate your actions with your ideas
> and your ideas with your other ideas.

-- GISTE

[GISTE]

On Sep 26, 2019, at 2:17 AM, Elliot Temple <cu...@curi.us> wrote:

> So you want to learn philosophy? Here are four key traits that help:
>
> 1. integrity
>
> 2. friendliness (including answering questions, trying suggestions,
> and being curious about stuff people bring up even if you don’t
> immediately see the point)
>
> 3. smarts, logic, knowledge
>
> 4. effort, patience, perseverance (for this trait, you should have a
> lot of time and/or money to support your effort. it’s not a purely
> intellectual trait about work ethic, it’s also about your life
> circumstances to enable the intellectual trait.)
>
> I’ve ordered them by a *very rough* estimate of their importance.
>
> All of these are learnable skills. They’re all things you can get
> better at. But you gotta start somewhere and work with what you have
> now.
>
> To make much progress with philosophy, it really helps if you’re
> really good at at least *one* of the traits. It gives you – and
> people you discuss with – something to work with, a tool to use.

My thoughts on the traits and how they affect each other.

I just thought of an analogy. Here are my unchecked thoughts about it.

Effort is like the gas peddle. Effort requires using resources.
Resources is the gas.

Smarts is like how strong the engine is.

Friendliness is like respecting other drivers on the road, respecting
the rules of the road, listening to the driving instructor when in
driving school.

Integrity is like your responsiveness to making changes with respect to:

- the gas peddle (like letting up on the gas peddle so you don’t crash
or slamming on the peddle to avoid a crash or pass a car)
—- this is about choosing where to put your effort.

- the engine (like getting the engine checked and problems fixed by a
mechanic and upgrading to a bigger engine)
—- this is about choosing to do things purposed for building up your
reasoning skill, reading comprehension skill, etc.

- road rules and adjusting to other drives (like finding out what the
rules are, and looking out for other cars around you)
—- this is about choosing to take suggestions from others instead of
only doing the ideas that you thought of.

If you do low effort (barely pressing the gas peddle), you won’t get
far quickly.

If you do high effort (slamming on the gas peddle), but low integrity,
you’re likely to crash a lot, and so you won’t get far quickly.

If you low on friendliness, you choose not to attend driving school. Or
you do but you don’t pay attention or whatever.

If you are very high on integrity, you are the mechanic. You apprenticed
under other mechanics to get to this level.

Static memes are engine problems that reduce the power of the engine and
make the engine suddenly stall.

I’m gonna send for now. More thoughts later maybe.

-- GISTE

[Augustine L]

How do I leave this email group?

________________________________________
From: fallibl...@googlegroups.com <fallibl...@googlegroups.com> on behalf of GISTE <cuz.good.is.str...@gmail.com>
Sent: Sunday, January 5, 2020 9:58 AM
To: FIGG
Subject: Re: [FI] Four Philosophy Traits – Which Is Your Best?

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Fallible Ideas" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to fallible-idea...@googlegroups.com.
To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/fallible-ideas/8214078F-3E6A-4FF2-90F4-EB7D79A3D739%40gmail.com.

[Augustine L]

NVM I got it.

________________________________________
From: fallibl...@googlegroups.com <fallibl...@googlegroups.com> on behalf of Augustine L <AugustineT...@outlook.com>
Sent: Sunday, January 5, 2020 11:47 AM

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/fallible-ideas/DM6PR01MB44099F5A78BC2D7AA9922E5BC33D0%40DM6PR01MB4409.prod.exchangelabs.com.

[Elliot Temple]

On Jan 5, 2020, at 6:58 AM, GISTE <cuz.good.is.str...@gmail.com> wrote:

> On Sep 26, 2019, at 2:17 AM, Elliot Temple <cu...@curi.us> wrote:
>
>> So you want to learn philosophy? Here are four key traits that help:
>>
>> 1. integrity
>>
>> 2. friendliness (including answering questions, trying suggestions, and being curious about stuff people bring up even if you don’t immediately see the point)
>>
>> 3. smarts, logic, knowledge
>>
>> 4. effort, patience, perseverance (for this trait, you should have a lot of time and/or money to support your effort. it’s not a purely intellectual trait about work ethic, it’s also about your life circumstances to enable the intellectual trait.)
>>
>> I’ve ordered them by a *very rough* estimate of their importance.
>>
>> All of these are learnable skills. They’re all things you can get better at. But you gotta start somewhere and work with what you have now.
>>
>> To make much progress with philosophy, it really helps if you’re really good at at least *one* of the traits. It gives you – and people you discuss with – something to work with, a tool to use.
>
> My thoughts on the traits and how they affect each other.
>
> I just thought of an analogy. Here are my unchecked thoughts about it.
>
> Effort is like the gas peddle. Effort requires using resources. Resources is the gas.
>
> Smarts is like how strong the engine is.
>
> Friendliness is like respecting other drivers on the road, respecting the rules of the road, listening to the driving instructor when in driving school.

This sounds like *social* friendliness, not intellectual friendliness which is more like active openness (curiosity, putting effort into seeking out ideas).

The good kind of openness to ideas is being interested enough to put in enough effort to reach a judgment. But it’s *not* an unlimited openness that disallows judgment. And it’s not just passively avoiding being closed minded and biased, you have to actually do stuff.

> Integrity is like your responsiveness to making changes with respect to:

I thought the integrity stuff was really lost.

I think it’s good to try to come up with models and think about things.



Elliot Temple
www.elliottemple.com