Providing a clear explanation of your theories would be useful. You don’t seem to even really try, and instead write comments and posts that don’t even attempt to bridge the inferential distance. At the same time, you do frequently write content where you talk about how you feel superior to LWers. In other words, you say you’re better than us because you don’t give us a real chance to catch up with your thoughts.
That’s kinda rude.
It also makes one suspect that you either don’t actually have a theory that was coherent enough to formulate clearly, or that you prefer to bask in your feeling of superiority instead of bothering to discuss the theory with us lowly LW-ers. Acting in a way to make yourself immune to criticism hardly fits the claim of being “a few levels above nearly any other aspiring rationalist”. Rather, it shows that you’re failing even the very rudiments of rationalist practice 101.
Acting in a way to make yourself immune to criticism hardly fits the claim of being “a few levels above nearly any other aspiring rationalist”. Rather, it shows that you’re failing even the very rudiments of rationalist practice 101.
Being levels above in rationalism means doing rationalist practice 101 much better than others as much as being a few levels above in fighting means executing a basic front-kick much better than others.
Being levels above in rationalism means doing rationalist practice 101 much better than others as much as being a few levels above in fighting means executing a basic front-kick much better than others.
To follow the analogy further if you are a few levels above in fighting then you should not find yourself face-planting every time you attempt a front kick. Or, at least, if you know that front kicks are the one weakness in your otherwise superb fighting technique then you don’t use front kicks.
Before I vote on this post, please clarify whether you think being a few levels above in fighting means executing a basic front-kick much better than others.
Ceteris paribus, being better at front-kicking makes one a better fighter. One would probably need mastery of more than the one technique to be considered levels up: rationalism 102, 103, etc. I just used one example of a basic fighting technique because the sentence flowed better that way; I didn’t put much time in thinking about and formulating it.
But the point was that no advanced techniques are needed to be many levels above normal. I see now that the comment might imply it’s enough to be several levels up with one skill alone. At 45 seconds into this video is a fight between a master of grappling and a regular MMA fighter. If they had made it to the ground together and conscious, Gracie would have won easily. He needed a more credible striking threat so Gomi would have had to defend against that too, and thereby weaken his defense against being taken down.
I meant something like:
I fear not the man who has practiced 10,000 kicks once, but I fear the man who has practiced one kick 10,000 times.
~ Bruce Lee
I have probably heard that quote before, but wasn’t consciously thinking of it.
How do fights end? Not with spinning jumping back-kicks to the head, but with basic moves better executed than basic counters to them. Right cross, arm-bar, someone running away, simple simple.
By analogy, for rationalism I’m emphasizing the connection between basic and advanced rationality mentioned by Kaj_Solata. If you don’t have the basics, you have nothing, and you can’t make up for it with moderate facility at doing advanced things.
We should perhaps formalize norms for upvoting based on this kind of comment. In any case, I’m doing so. And then going back to read the context to make sure I agree.
I find that the increased attention given to the context combined with the positive priming is more than enough.
In this case, however I am finding that the comment backfired. It is Kaj’s comment, not lessdazed’s. Lessdazed’s comment isn’t bad as an independent observation but does miss the point of its parent. This means Eliezer’s “upvote MOAR” comment is a red herring and I had to downvote it and lessdazed in responsed where I would otherwise have left it alone.
You could instead make a post more explicitly about how rationality is a set of skills that must be trained. I keep trying to get this into people’s heads but you are in a much better position to do so than I am, and it’s an important thing to be aware of. Like, really important.
(I always end up making analogies to chess or guitar, perhaps you could make analogies to computer programming?)
You’re still operating under the assumption that Will_Newsome cares, beyond a certain very low fundamental threshold, what we think about him and/or his theories.
Can someone tell me what my theories are? Maybe it’s the sleep deprivation but I don’t remember having any theories qua theories. I talk about other peoples’ theories sometimes, but mostly to criticize them, e.g. my decision theoretic arguments against naive interpretations of academic theism (of the sort that Mitchell Porter rightly finds misguided).
They don’t have to be your theories in the sense that you originated them, we just mean “your theories” as in the theories/models/beliefs/maps you personally use, and that you often mention in passing in your posts, but without much detail.
For example: what does Aquinas have to do with TDT? That’s not a specific question (though I’d like to hear your answer!) so much as a hint as to the sort of things that come across as empty statements to us; it’s not at all obvious (to me, at least) how you are relating together the various things you mention in a given sentence, or how you are arriving at your conclusions. It’s like there’s a bunch of big invisible “this lemma left as an exercise for the reader” sentences in the middle of your paragraphs.
At the very least, you could provide links back to some of your longer posts which explain your ideas in a step-by-step fashion. Inferential distance, dude.
I don’t understand your writings enough to know for sure. However, for example,
Ultimately I think that academic “the form of the good and the form of being are the same” theism is a less naive perspective on cosmology-morality than atheism is
is a conclusion that surely must have come from some nontrivial body of beliefs. Maybe that’s not what you mean by theory qua theory, but I suspect that’s what Kaj_Sotala meant.
Whatever this underlying framework is, it would be nice to evaluate someday.
Have I ever claimed to have any “theories”? I claim to have skills. I have expounded on what some of these skills are at various points. How am I acting in a way that makes myself immune to criticism? If I am trying to do that it would appear that I am failing horribly considering all the criticism I get. In other words, what you’re saying sounds very reasonable, but are you talking about reality or instead a simplified model of the situation that is easy to write a nice-sounding analysis of? That’s an honest question.
Have I ever claimed to have any “theories”? I claim to have skills. I have expounded on what some of these skills are at various points.
This certainly sounds like a theory, or a bunch of them, to me:
Ultimately I think that academic “the form of the good and the form of being are the same” theism is a less naive perspective on cosmology-morality than atheism is—you personally should expect to be at equilibrium with respect to any timeless interaction that ends up at-least-partially-defining what “right” is, and pretending like you aren’t or are only negligibly watched over by a superintelligence—whether a demiurge, a pantheonic economy, a monolithic God, or any other kind of institution—is like asking to fail the predictable retrospective stupidity test. The actual decision theory is more nuanced—you always want to be on the edge of uncertainty, you don’t want to prop up needlessly suboptimal institutions or decision policies even timelessly, &c.---but pragmatically speaking this gets swamped by the huge amount of moral uncertainty that we have to deal with until our decision theories are better equipped to deal with such issues.
Certainly you keep saying that you feel superior to LW:ers because they don’t know the things you do. You may call that knowledge, theory, skill, or just claims, however you prefer. But while you have expounded on it somewhat, you haven’t written anything that would try to systematically bridge the inferential distance. Right now, the problem isn’t even that we wouldn’t understand your reasons for saying what you do, the problem is that we don’t understand what you are saying. Mostly it just comes off as an incomprehensible barrage of fancy words.
For instance, my current understanding of your theories (or skills, or knowledge, or whatever) is the following. One, you claim that because of the simulation argument, theism isn’t really an unreasonably privileged claim. Two, this relates to TDT somehow. Three, that’s about all I understand. And based on your posting history that’s about all that the average LW reader could be expected to know about the things you’re talking about.
That’s what my claim of you making yourself immune to criticism is based on: you currently cannot be criticized, because nobody understands your claims well enough to criticize them (or for that matter, agree with them), and you don’t seem to be making any real attempt to change this.
In other words, what you’re saying sounds very reasonable, but are you talking about reality or instead a simplified model of the situation that is easy to write a nice-sounding analysis of?
I’m talking about my current best model of you and your claims, which may certainly be flawed. But note that I’m already giving you an extra benefit of doubt because you seemed sane and cool when we interacted iRL. I do still think that you might be on to something reasonable, and I’m putting some effort into communicating with you and inspecting my model for flaws. If I didn’t know you at all, I might already have dismissed you as a Time Cube crank.
I too used to have a disorder that made me occasionally write nonsense. In my case it turned out to be fixable by reading a lot of LW, in particular Eliezer’s and Yvain’s posts, and then putting a lot of work into my own posts and comments to approach their level of clarity. It was hard at first, but after a while it became easier. Have you tried that?
Right now your writings look very stream-of-consciousness to me, like you don’t even write drafts. Given all the criticism you get, this is kind of unacceptable. Many LWers write drafts and send them to each other for critique before posting stuff publicly. I often do that even for discussion posts.
Right now your writings look very stream-of-consciousness to me, like you don’t even write drafts. This is kind of unacceptable. Many LWers write drafts and send them to each other for critique before posting stuff publicly. I often do that even for discussion posts.
Errr… wait. We do that? Ooops. Sometimes I proof-read and sometimes I make edits to my comments as soon as I post them. Does that count?
Yeah, some of us do. Your posts are pretty good as they are, but hey, now you know a way to make them even better! I volunteer to read drafts anytime :-)
I remember thinking it was ironic how in the Wikipedia article on learned helpnessness when they talk about the dogs the tone is like “oh, how sad, these dogs are so demoralized that they don’t even try to escape their own suffering”, but when it came to humans it was like “oh look, these humans seem to have a choice about whether or not they suffer but they’re acting as if they don’t have that choice so as to avoid blame and avoid putting forth effort to change their situation”; which if taken seriously sort of undermines the hypothesis about how the behavioral mechanisms are largely the same for both animals. But you could tell it was totally unconscious on the part of the writers, and if you’d tried to point it out to them they could just backpedal in various ways, and so there’d be no point in trying to point out the change in perspective, it’d just look like defensiveness. And going meta like this probably wouldn’t help either.
Providing a clear explanation of your theories would be useful. You don’t seem to even really try, and instead write comments and posts that don’t even attempt to bridge the inferential distance. At the same time, you do frequently write content where you talk about how you feel superior to LWers. In other words, you say you’re better than us because you don’t give us a real chance to catch up with your thoughts.
That’s kinda rude.
It also makes one suspect that you either don’t actually have a theory that was coherent enough to formulate clearly, or that you prefer to bask in your feeling of superiority instead of bothering to discuss the theory with us lowly LW-ers. Acting in a way to make yourself immune to criticism hardly fits the claim of being “a few levels above nearly any other aspiring rationalist”. Rather, it shows that you’re failing even the very rudiments of rationalist practice 101.
Being levels above in rationalism means doing rationalist practice 101 much better than others as much as being a few levels above in fighting means executing a basic front-kick much better than others.
To follow the analogy further if you are a few levels above in fighting then you should not find yourself face-planting every time you attempt a front kick. Or, at least, if you know that front kicks are the one weakness in your otherwise superb fighting technique then you don’t use front kicks.
Before I vote on this post, please clarify whether you think being a few levels above in fighting means executing a basic front-kick much better than others.
Ceteris paribus, being better at front-kicking makes one a better fighter. One would probably need mastery of more than the one technique to be considered levels up: rationalism 102, 103, etc. I just used one example of a basic fighting technique because the sentence flowed better that way; I didn’t put much time in thinking about and formulating it.
But the point was that no advanced techniques are needed to be many levels above normal. I see now that the comment might imply it’s enough to be several levels up with one skill alone. At 45 seconds into this video is a fight between a master of grappling and a regular MMA fighter. If they had made it to the ground together and conscious, Gracie would have won easily. He needed a more credible striking threat so Gomi would have had to defend against that too, and thereby weaken his defense against being taken down.
I meant something like:
I have probably heard that quote before, but wasn’t consciously thinking of it.
How do fights end? Not with spinning jumping back-kicks to the head, but with basic moves better executed than basic counters to them. Right cross, arm-bar, someone running away, simple simple.
By analogy, for rationalism I’m emphasizing the connection between basic and advanced rationality mentioned by Kaj_Solata. If you don’t have the basics, you have nothing, and you can’t make up for it with moderate facility at doing advanced things.
If you do it right, the same way they start: A single king hit.
Gotcha. Upvoted.
I regret that I only have one upvote to give this comment.
That’s why we’ve given you a karmic wake, brother.
The technical term is bro.
Bro as in Kamina.
We should perhaps formalize norms for upvoting based on this kind of comment. In any case, I’m doing so. And then going back to read the context to make sure I agree.
I find that the increased attention given to the context combined with the positive priming is more than enough.
In this case, however I am finding that the comment backfired. It is Kaj’s comment, not lessdazed’s. Lessdazed’s comment isn’t bad as an independent observation but does miss the point of its parent. This means Eliezer’s “upvote MOAR” comment is a red herring and I had to downvote it and lessdazed in responsed where I would otherwise have left it alone.
I have an idea...(begins writing discussion post draft)
You could instead make a post more explicitly about how rationality is a set of skills that must be trained. I keep trying to get this into people’s heads but you are in a much better position to do so than I am, and it’s an important thing to be aware of. Like, really important.
(I always end up making analogies to chess or guitar, perhaps you could make analogies to computer programming?)
You’re still operating under the assumption that Will_Newsome cares, beyond a certain very low fundamental threshold, what we think about him and/or his theories.
Can someone tell me what my theories are? Maybe it’s the sleep deprivation but I don’t remember having any theories qua theories. I talk about other peoples’ theories sometimes, but mostly to criticize them, e.g. my decision theoretic arguments against naive interpretations of academic theism (of the sort that Mitchell Porter rightly finds misguided).
They don’t have to be your theories in the sense that you originated them, we just mean “your theories” as in the theories/models/beliefs/maps you personally use, and that you often mention in passing in your posts, but without much detail.
For example: what does Aquinas have to do with TDT? That’s not a specific question (though I’d like to hear your answer!) so much as a hint as to the sort of things that come across as empty statements to us; it’s not at all obvious (to me, at least) how you are relating together the various things you mention in a given sentence, or how you are arriving at your conclusions. It’s like there’s a bunch of big invisible “this lemma left as an exercise for the reader” sentences in the middle of your paragraphs.
At the very least, you could provide links back to some of your longer posts which explain your ideas in a step-by-step fashion. Inferential distance, dude.
I don’t understand your writings enough to know for sure. However, for example,
is a conclusion that surely must have come from some nontrivial body of beliefs. Maybe that’s not what you mean by theory qua theory, but I suspect that’s what Kaj_Sotala meant.
Whatever this underlying framework is, it would be nice to evaluate someday.
Have I ever claimed to have any “theories”? I claim to have skills. I have expounded on what some of these skills are at various points. How am I acting in a way that makes myself immune to criticism? If I am trying to do that it would appear that I am failing horribly considering all the criticism I get. In other words, what you’re saying sounds very reasonable, but are you talking about reality or instead a simplified model of the situation that is easy to write a nice-sounding analysis of? That’s an honest question.
This certainly sounds like a theory, or a bunch of them, to me:
Certainly you keep saying that you feel superior to LW:ers because they don’t know the things you do. You may call that knowledge, theory, skill, or just claims, however you prefer. But while you have expounded on it somewhat, you haven’t written anything that would try to systematically bridge the inferential distance. Right now, the problem isn’t even that we wouldn’t understand your reasons for saying what you do, the problem is that we don’t understand what you are saying. Mostly it just comes off as an incomprehensible barrage of fancy words.
For instance, my current understanding of your theories (or skills, or knowledge, or whatever) is the following. One, you claim that because of the simulation argument, theism isn’t really an unreasonably privileged claim. Two, this relates to TDT somehow. Three, that’s about all I understand. And based on your posting history that’s about all that the average LW reader could be expected to know about the things you’re talking about.
That’s what my claim of you making yourself immune to criticism is based on: you currently cannot be criticized, because nobody understands your claims well enough to criticize them (or for that matter, agree with them), and you don’t seem to be making any real attempt to change this.
I’m talking about my current best model of you and your claims, which may certainly be flawed. But note that I’m already giving you an extra benefit of doubt because you seemed sane and cool when we interacted iRL. I do still think that you might be on to something reasonable, and I’m putting some effort into communicating with you and inspecting my model for flaws. If I didn’t know you at all, I might already have dismissed you as a Time Cube crank.
I keep bringing this up only to have it ignored completely, but: THAT IS NOT A PSYCHOLOGICALLY REALISTIC OPTION.
I too used to have a disorder that made me occasionally write nonsense. In my case it turned out to be fixable by reading a lot of LW, in particular Eliezer’s and Yvain’s posts, and then putting a lot of work into my own posts and comments to approach their level of clarity. It was hard at first, but after a while it became easier. Have you tried that?
Right now your writings look very stream-of-consciousness to me, like you don’t even write drafts. Given all the criticism you get, this is kind of unacceptable. Many LWers write drafts and send them to each other for critique before posting stuff publicly. I often do that even for discussion posts.
Errr… wait. We do that? Ooops. Sometimes I proof-read and sometimes I make edits to my comments as soon as I post them. Does that count?
Yeah, some of us do. Your posts are pretty good as they are, but hey, now you know a way to make them even better! I volunteer to read drafts anytime :-)
I remember thinking it was ironic how in the Wikipedia article on learned helpnessness when they talk about the dogs the tone is like “oh, how sad, these dogs are so demoralized that they don’t even try to escape their own suffering”, but when it came to humans it was like “oh look, these humans seem to have a choice about whether or not they suffer but they’re acting as if they don’t have that choice so as to avoid blame and avoid putting forth effort to change their situation”; which if taken seriously sort of undermines the hypothesis about how the behavioral mechanisms are largely the same for both animals. But you could tell it was totally unconscious on the part of the writers, and if you’d tried to point it out to them they could just backpedal in various ways, and so there’d be no point in trying to point out the change in perspective, it’d just look like defensiveness. And going meta like this probably wouldn’t help either.
This is the first time I see you say that, but fair enough. I can relate to that.
Why? Or did I accidentally stumble across a private forum with secrets?
Why? Or did I accidentally stumble across a private forum with secrets?