User:Gyrodiot/Virtues
This is a draft for the article Virtues of rationality.
In his essay Twelves Virtues of Rationality, Eliezer Yudkowsky identifies the main components of the rationalist mindset. We detail his view and link to relevant concepts.
Curiosity
The first virtue is curiosity. A burning itch to know is higher than a solemn vow to pursue truth.
Curiosity is tied to the intuitive notion that you don't know everything, and that one should expand one's knowledge. The first component of curiosity is to recognize what you are ignorant about. The second component is the will to relinquish your ignorance: you should strive to gain more knowledge, to form more accurate beliefs, and when your doubt is clear, to move on to the next unknown and never stop learning.
Why is this important? Accurate beliefs enables one to anticipate reality better, to have better control over the consequences of your actions. Acknowledging your ignorance is one thing, but without the will to eliminate it, you admit you will fail at some point without doing anything to prevent it. Conversely, you have to know what you don't know (conscious incompetence) to be able to learn something about it.
Relinquishment
The second virtue is relinquishment. P. C. Hodgell said: “That which can be destroyed by the truth should be.” Do not flinch from experiences that might destroy your beliefs.
Relinquishment is the will to get outside your comfort zone, to be wary of feeling right and grow complacent about our own beliefs. In the same way curiosity leads where you know nothing, relinquishment pushes you towards situations where you may be wrong.
Why is this important? Being wrong is inevitable at some point, but not considering the other side(s), you end up deceiving yourself in favour of your current views. Relinquishment is accepting you might be wrong and explore other possibilities, refusing to build elaborate justifications to support beliefs that don't match with reality.
Lightness
The third virtue is lightness. Let the winds of evidence blow you about as though you are a leaf, with no direction of your own.
Complementary to relinquishment, lightness is the will to let go easily of our own beliefs if they turn out to be wrong. As you're striving to be right, you should seize the opportunity to be right when evidence is against you.
Why is this important? Compare a wrong belief to ignorance. Given the same evidence, the ignorant forms an accurate belief without resistance. Your should be able to form the same accurate belief regardless of your previous standpoint. To this effect, you should be able to abandon your former conclusions if they turn out to be inaccurate, or you will find yourself in a worse-than-ignorant state.