I… if I had to list a million different things I expect I might one day be asked, I don’t think “Are you from the church of scientology?” would ever occur to me. I have no idea what ’Narconon” is.
physics is a classification of knowledge, and DI is a technique for communicating knowledge.
Well, DI is a way of applying a classification of knowledge to creating effective communications of other knowledge, but that’s not the point. The analogy wasn’t meant to be expanded beyond that, because it’s not an argument by analogy, just explaining what this difficulty feels like from my perspective.
And the only obvious possible way I’ve been able to see around the difficulty so far, the only thing that could make it easier to convince you that DI is awesome than it would be to convince a Roman general (who thinks ballistas are the apex of possible military technology) that physics is awesome is that you already have generalized concepts of things like “science” and “rationality” that I can activate with verbal tags like “science” and “rationality”.
So I’m trying to leverage that.
The only thing I’m trying to sell you is that you try to get a copy of Theory of Instruction yourself from a local university library and at least try to start reading the section/chapter summaries. And even if you can’t get it at a library, the book is forty dollars at the ADI store, which is a damn cheap text book.
The reason you should care if DI is effective is that showing you the results from the Project Follow-Through graphs and the quote from the meta-analysis is the only quick clear way I’ve been able to think of to convince you that doing so is worth your time.
(And yeah, I solemnly swear that I’m not getting a cut of that $40 bucks in any way, shape, or form. I bloody well hope that if I ever tried to scam people I’d be able to come up with more effective ways than this...)
I’m pretty certain (say, 98%) that (1) you aren’t a member of the Church of Scientology and (2) the CoS has nothing to do with “Direct Instruction”, but it seems worth pointing out that after Jem asked you whether you are a member of the CoS you replied with something that strongly suggests you aren’t without actually saying so. Just for the sake of explicitness, would you care to answer the question? :-)
NO, I am not a member of the Church of Scientology, or in any way sympathetic to their views (although I do feel sorry for those poor messed up people as I do for every other person who’s living their life drowned deep beneath the sanity water line).
The only common idea on LW that I can think of offhand that I don’t think is really part of the correct contrarian cluster is the 3^^^3 dustspecks thing, and I’m damn sure many LWers would agree with me on that one.
My reply has so far gotten 3 upvotes, which somewhat suggests that your certainty of points (1) and (2) has risen from “say 98%”, without actually saying so. Just for the sake of explicitness, what is your current estimate? :P
As it happens, none of those upvotes was from me. But, also as it happens, your explicit answer does indeed raise my probability estimate for #1 and (indirectly) for #2, and the fact that no one else has chimed in to point out a Scientology-DI connection raises my probability estimate for #2 and (indirectly) for #1; my estimate for #1-and-#2 is now more like 99% or so. Not that I really trust estimates like these very much unless they’re backed up by credible calculation, which this one isn’t.
So, if I were to make you a bet that #1-and-#2 is true that you should rationally take if you believe that 99% estimate, it must be set up so that gjmgain*0.01>owengain*0.99...
So unless I’m making some embarrassing simple math mistake here, if I put up say $2000 (Canadian) for “gjmgain” (wish I had more to play with, but unpaid intern, no work visa here, etc), you should be willing to put up anything less than $20.20...
Ah! But what if rather than money you had to put up that you would read the entire Theory of Instruction and the entire Research on Direct Instruction?
We’d get it settled by a respected public figure. Someone like Eliezer obviously springs to mind in the context of LW.
And believe me, I thought of how me just offering the bet should update him above his current level. I’m just trying to get him to read books, obviously :P
That would (I’d have thought) take quite a lot more than CDN$20 worth of time. (Unless I were just skimming through it rather than reading it thoroughly enough to be any use.) Though I’d presumably expect some nonzero benefit from reading the book, at least in the “99%” scenario, and that would need factoring in.
Also, how would the bet actually get resolved? I mean, in the “1%” case you’re a Scientologist and willing to lie brazenly about the fact; conditional on that, other Scientologists are probably very unreliable too so I can’t just ask whatever gathering of Scientologists is closer to what you say is your physical location (note: actually I’m pretty sure Scientologists are very unreliable anyway); so how could I be sufficiently—well over 99% -- convinced?
That would (I’d have thought) take quite a lot more than CDN$20 worth of time. (Unless I were just skimming through it rather than reading it thoroughly enough to be any use.) Though I’d presumably expect some nonzero benefit from reading the book, at least in the “99%” scenario, and that would need factoring in.
I already thought of all that. You know I’m just trying to get you to read the books. :P
Obviously, we’d both have to give our bets (well, my money and your promise) to a respected public figure, someone like Eliezer being an obvious candidate in the context of LW, of course.
The other thing besides just trying to get you to read is that I’m annoyed that you still have such a ridiculously high estimate of me being involved in scientology as 1%. I think that from what you know of me now, and what I know of you, I should have a higher estimate of you being involved with the CoS :P
Considering that you didn’t even try to see if I was making a bluff by offering to bet me one cent against my $2000...
S=probability of scientology involvement
2000S<0.01(1-S)
2000S<0.01-0.01S
2000.01S<0.01
S<0.000004999
Again, assuming I didn’t make any embarrassingly simple math errors, that’s an over 99.9995% confidence that the ‘scientology-related’ hypothesis was wrong.
Not that this is factoring in the hassle for both of us of setting up the judging and so on, but still, right? :P
But “the hassle of setting up the judging and so on” makes something like two orders of magnitude difference to the probability estimate here. And why would I want to call your bluff in that way?
I… if I had to list a million different things I expect I might one day be asked, I don’t think “Are you from the church of scientology?” would ever occur to me. I have no idea what ’Narconon” is.
Well, DI is a way of applying a classification of knowledge to creating effective communications of other knowledge, but that’s not the point. The analogy wasn’t meant to be expanded beyond that, because it’s not an argument by analogy, just explaining what this difficulty feels like from my perspective.
And the only obvious possible way I’ve been able to see around the difficulty so far, the only thing that could make it easier to convince you that DI is awesome than it would be to convince a Roman general (who thinks ballistas are the apex of possible military technology) that physics is awesome is that you already have generalized concepts of things like “science” and “rationality” that I can activate with verbal tags like “science” and “rationality”.
So I’m trying to leverage that.
The only thing I’m trying to sell you is that you try to get a copy of Theory of Instruction yourself from a local university library and at least try to start reading the section/chapter summaries. And even if you can’t get it at a library, the book is forty dollars at the ADI store, which is a damn cheap text book.
The reason you should care if DI is effective is that showing you the results from the Project Follow-Through graphs and the quote from the meta-analysis is the only quick clear way I’ve been able to think of to convince you that doing so is worth your time.
(And yeah, I solemnly swear that I’m not getting a cut of that $40 bucks in any way, shape, or form. I bloody well hope that if I ever tried to scam people I’d be able to come up with more effective ways than this...)
I’m pretty certain (say, 98%) that (1) you aren’t a member of the Church of Scientology and (2) the CoS has nothing to do with “Direct Instruction”, but it seems worth pointing out that after Jem asked you whether you are a member of the CoS you replied with something that strongly suggests you aren’t without actually saying so. Just for the sake of explicitness, would you care to answer the question? :-)
Ha, upvoted cuz this one made me laugh! =]
NO, I am not a member of the Church of Scientology, or in any way sympathetic to their views (although I do feel sorry for those poor messed up people as I do for every other person who’s living their life drowned deep beneath the sanity water line).
The only common idea on LW that I can think of offhand that I don’t think is really part of the correct contrarian cluster is the 3^^^3 dustspecks thing, and I’m damn sure many LWers would agree with me on that one.
My reply has so far gotten 3 upvotes, which somewhat suggests that your certainty of points (1) and (2) has risen from “say 98%”, without actually saying so. Just for the sake of explicitness, what is your current estimate? :P
As it happens, none of those upvotes was from me. But, also as it happens, your explicit answer does indeed raise my probability estimate for #1 and (indirectly) for #2, and the fact that no one else has chimed in to point out a Scientology-DI connection raises my probability estimate for #2 and (indirectly) for #1; my estimate for #1-and-#2 is now more like 99% or so. Not that I really trust estimates like these very much unless they’re backed up by credible calculation, which this one isn’t.
So, if I were to make you a bet that #1-and-#2 is true that you should rationally take if you believe that 99% estimate, it must be set up so that gjmgain*0.01>owengain*0.99...
So unless I’m making some embarrassing simple math mistake here, if I put up say $2000 (Canadian) for “gjmgain” (wish I had more to play with, but unpaid intern, no work visa here, etc), you should be willing to put up anything less than $20.20...
Ah! But what if rather than money you had to put up that you would read the entire Theory of Instruction and the entire Research on Direct Instruction?
If you seriously made such a bet, then gjm would probably update on that evidence and revise his 99% probability upwards.
[But as gjm says the bet is impractical anyway because it’s too hard to resolve]
We’d get it settled by a respected public figure. Someone like Eliezer obviously springs to mind in the context of LW.
And believe me, I thought of how me just offering the bet should update him above his current level. I’m just trying to get him to read books, obviously :P
That would (I’d have thought) take quite a lot more than CDN$20 worth of time. (Unless I were just skimming through it rather than reading it thoroughly enough to be any use.) Though I’d presumably expect some nonzero benefit from reading the book, at least in the “99%” scenario, and that would need factoring in.
Also, how would the bet actually get resolved? I mean, in the “1%” case you’re a Scientologist and willing to lie brazenly about the fact; conditional on that, other Scientologists are probably very unreliable too so I can’t just ask whatever gathering of Scientologists is closer to what you say is your physical location (note: actually I’m pretty sure Scientologists are very unreliable anyway); so how could I be sufficiently—well over 99% -- convinced?
I already thought of all that. You know I’m just trying to get you to read the books. :P
Obviously, we’d both have to give our bets (well, my money and your promise) to a respected public figure, someone like Eliezer being an obvious candidate in the context of LW, of course.
The other thing besides just trying to get you to read is that I’m annoyed that you still have such a ridiculously high estimate of me being involved in scientology as 1%. I think that from what you know of me now, and what I know of you, I should have a higher estimate of you being involved with the CoS :P
I did say that the 99% figure was very rough and I wouldn’t trust it much. But yeah, I’m probably mostly “privileging the hypothesis”.
Considering that you didn’t even try to see if I was making a bluff by offering to bet me one cent against my $2000...
S=probability of scientology involvement
2000S<0.01(1-S)
2000S<0.01-0.01S
2000.01S<0.01
S<0.000004999
Again, assuming I didn’t make any embarrassingly simple math errors, that’s an over 99.9995% confidence that the ‘scientology-related’ hypothesis was wrong.
Not that this is factoring in the hassle for both of us of setting up the judging and so on, but still, right? :P
But “the hassle of setting up the judging and so on” makes something like two orders of magnitude difference to the probability estimate here. And why would I want to call your bluff in that way?