I’m not on the IRC channel; I’ll take your word for it.
It’s a strange heuristic, though. I don’t comment on topics based on their relative importance, but based on whether I actually have anything of substance to contribute (I haven’t so far commented on either keyboard layouts or on the medicine thread).
Should we care about the comment discrepancy? It seems that the complaint can be summed up as “100+ comments on a Near issue, only 23 on a Far issue! Boo!”
In particular, while I thought gwern’s article was awesome, I didn’t have anything to add to it, nor did I see any obvious thing I could do about the issue. This post is affecting plenty of individual decisions in real time.
The voting went the opposite direction of the commenting, so the voting mind (probably the conscious mind) agrees with Gwern. However, reading and writing comments may cause people to unconsciously elevate the importance of a post. On the other hand, bike-shedding is a serious concern. This isn’t a committee that requires consensus, but the danger is that the disagreement will lead people to not act (the best is the enemy of the good).
In particular, while I thought gwern’s article was awesome, I didn’t have anything to add to it, nor did I see any obvious thing I could do about the issue.
I thought it was pretty obvious that even if you had nothing to say about it or to add to it, the information would: lower estimates of medical progress, by contagion lower general estimates of progress and the Singularity, and as further ramifications, raise the values of cryonics, intermittent fasting, caloric restriction and other methods of extending longevity—all of which have pretty well-understood ‘action’ items.
It seems that the complaint can be summed up as “100+ comments on a Near issue, only 23 on a Far issue! Boo!”
I didn’t really want to get involved in the various different levels of my problems with this thread at the moment, (and hence the vagueness of the original comment) but since Festivus was yesterday perhaps I can partake in some belated airing of grievances.
The original post is entirely unsubstantiated other-optimizing, and I don’t care if the original poster got a dispensation from the Pope himself to do so. The comment threads are almost entirely worthless lumps of anecdotal evidence.
These points are made better by other people elsewhere in this thread, but I will add to them and say that they are symptoms of a larger systemic problem within the community. The community implicitly values “rational self-help” over working on the Art, and that’s a problem.
What do you mean by “rational self-help” and “working on the Art,” such that there is a distinction between them? I could guess, but I’d better just hear it from you.
“Rational self-help” is the vast majority of what Lifehacker et. al. do: they aggregate anecdotal evidence. It’s what EY railed against in the other-optimizing mini-sequence (here, talking about the Shangri-La Diet—I’m sure you’ve already read this, but it’s a particularly interesting paragraph nonetheless; some emphasis lost in the interest of time):
And what really makes this a catastrophe is that this theory has never been analyzed by controlled experiment, which drives me up the frickin’ WALL. Roberts himself is a big advocate of “self-experimentation”, which I suppose explains why he’s not pushing harder for testing. (Though it’s not like Roberts is a standard pseudoscientist, he’s an academic in good standing.) But with reports of such drastic success from so many observers, some of them reliable, outside dietary scientists ought to be studying this. What the fsck, dietary scientists? Get off your butts and study this thing! NOW! Report these huge results in a peer-reviewed journal so that everyone gets excited and starts studying the exceptions to the rule!
(I would love to add here a particularly pithy, but unrelated, tangent, though I fear I’ve already exceeded my welcome.)
“Working on the Art” is a far different beast, best summarized as developing Practical Advice Backed by Deep Theories. Of course, that’s much harder to do, but you’ve done a reasonably decent job of it in the past. Finally, I don’t buy the hypothesis that you’re anything more than a mere mortal. (For now. ^_^)
I do not think avoid other-optimizing is one of Eliezer’s more helpful memes. In many ways it is a pernicious meme, as it causes people to flinch away from useful other-optimizing.
I am particularly talented at other-optimizing. I expect to win the Quantified Health Prize. I am close to convincing Eliezer to try my current ridiculous diet, which is “eat whatever you want as long as it is from this limited subset of foods and you are getting at least 50% of calories from healthy mostly saturated fat”.
Very few people here have actually disagreed with the substance of my post, which is that ergonomics is very strikingly worth spending money on. It is almost entirely bike-shedding. I don’t believe that ergonomics will absolutely improve the lives of everyone, but that it makes a difference in the lives of people in the aggregate, some of whom actually won’t be effected or won’t have enough bodily awareness to notice a difference.
I do not think avoid other-optimizing is one of Eliezer’s more helpful memes. In many ways it is a pernicious meme, as it causes people to flinch away from useful other-optimizing.
It was pretty clearly in the class of “look, stop annoying me” posts, rather than a categorical imperative. Unfortunately, it’s in the sequences, so has attracted a “how shall we fuck off, oh Lord?” response.
I do not think avoid other-optimizing is one of Eliezer’s more helpful memes. In many ways it is a pernicious meme, as it causes people to flinch away from useful other-optimizing.
I support Eliezer’s warning about other-optimizing but certainly wouldn’t say it is a warning that applies to your post here on ergonomics.
This is getting attention from being linked at the other thread, so I’ll reply now since I’m awake. I’m not Kevin, but I talked about it with him at a nutrition seminar recently.
Glad I asked, because I was guessing that by “rational self-help” you meant something like “practical advice backed by deep theories” (e.g. How to Beat Procrastination or Explainers Shoot High; Aim Low), and by “working on the Art” you meant a subset of that which focused on self-help for improving rational thought in particular.
But the way you’re using the terms, it sounds like “rational self-help” means anecdote-grounded other-optimizing, while “working on the Art” means “rationally-grounded advice for self-improvement, including but not limited to improving rational thought.”
That’s a really vague criticism.
I’ll hold off on downvoting it to provide a chance to edit, but you really need to give your readers a little more to go on.
It was probably prompted by my only-partially-facetious comment in
#lesswrong:I’m not on the IRC channel; I’ll take your word for it.
It’s a strange heuristic, though. I don’t comment on topics based on their relative importance, but based on whether I actually have anything of substance to contribute (I haven’t so far commented on either keyboard layouts or on the medicine thread).
This, of course, is exactly one of the heuristics that lead to the bike-shed problem.
The question is now, how to get out of such a position.
Should we care about the comment discrepancy? It seems that the complaint can be summed up as “100+ comments on a Near issue, only 23 on a Far issue! Boo!”
In particular, while I thought gwern’s article was awesome, I didn’t have anything to add to it, nor did I see any obvious thing I could do about the issue. This post is affecting plenty of individual decisions in real time.
The voting went the opposite direction of the commenting, so the voting mind (probably the conscious mind) agrees with Gwern. However, reading and writing comments may cause people to unconsciously elevate the importance of a post. On the other hand, bike-shedding is a serious concern. This isn’t a committee that requires consensus, but the danger is that the disagreement will lead people to not act (the best is the enemy of the good).
I thought it was pretty obvious that even if you had nothing to say about it or to add to it, the information would: lower estimates of medical progress, by contagion lower general estimates of progress and the Singularity, and as further ramifications, raise the values of cryonics, intermittent fasting, caloric restriction and other methods of extending longevity—all of which have pretty well-understood ‘action’ items.
I didn’t really want to get involved in the various different levels of my problems with this thread at the moment, (and hence the vagueness of the original comment) but since Festivus was yesterday perhaps I can partake in some belated airing of grievances.
The original post is entirely unsubstantiated other-optimizing, and I don’t care if the original poster got a dispensation from the Pope himself to do so. The comment threads are almost entirely worthless lumps of anecdotal evidence.
These points are made better by other people elsewhere in this thread, but I will add to them and say that they are symptoms of a larger systemic problem within the community. The community implicitly values “rational self-help” over working on the Art, and that’s a problem.
We need both groups, but this particular ratio of them is suboptimal.
As a card-carrying member of the reds, I vote for the reduction of our numbers (less competition).
What do you mean by “rational self-help” and “working on the Art,” such that there is a distinction between them? I could guess, but I’d better just hear it from you.
“Rational self-help” is the vast majority of what Lifehacker et. al. do: they aggregate anecdotal evidence. It’s what EY railed against in the other-optimizing mini-sequence (here, talking about the Shangri-La Diet—I’m sure you’ve already read this, but it’s a particularly interesting paragraph nonetheless; some emphasis lost in the interest of time):
(I would love to add here a particularly pithy, but unrelated, tangent, though I fear I’ve already exceeded my welcome.)
“Working on the Art” is a far different beast, best summarized as developing Practical Advice Backed by Deep Theories. Of course, that’s much harder to do, but you’ve done a reasonably decent job of it in the past. Finally, I don’t buy the hypothesis that you’re anything more than a mere mortal. (For now. ^_^)
I do not think avoid other-optimizing is one of Eliezer’s more helpful memes. In many ways it is a pernicious meme, as it causes people to flinch away from useful other-optimizing.
I am particularly talented at other-optimizing. I expect to win the Quantified Health Prize. I am close to convincing Eliezer to try my current ridiculous diet, which is “eat whatever you want as long as it is from this limited subset of foods and you are getting at least 50% of calories from healthy mostly saturated fat”.
Very few people here have actually disagreed with the substance of my post, which is that ergonomics is very strikingly worth spending money on. It is almost entirely bike-shedding. I don’t believe that ergonomics will absolutely improve the lives of everyone, but that it makes a difference in the lives of people in the aggregate, some of whom actually won’t be effected or won’t have enough bodily awareness to notice a difference.
It was pretty clearly in the class of “look, stop annoying me” posts, rather than a categorical imperative. Unfortunately, it’s in the sequences, so has attracted a “how shall we fuck off, oh Lord?” response.
I support Eliezer’s warning about other-optimizing but certainly wouldn’t say it is a warning that applies to your post here on ergonomics.
What’s the diet?
This is getting attention from being linked at the other thread, so I’ll reply now since I’m awake. I’m not Kevin, but I talked about it with him at a nutrition seminar recently.
If I’m not mistaken, Kevin’s diet is similar to the diet suggested by Will Ryan of Positive Vector (a rationality training company). You can get a brief PDF about it here. (You might know Will Ryan as Cosmos, the writer of Less Wrong NYC: Case Study of a Successful Rationalist Chapter.)
Yup, thanks.
Glad I asked, because I was guessing that by “rational self-help” you meant something like “practical advice backed by deep theories” (e.g. How to Beat Procrastination or Explainers Shoot High; Aim Low), and by “working on the Art” you meant a subset of that which focused on self-help for improving rational thought in particular.
But the way you’re using the terms, it sounds like “rational self-help” means anecdote-grounded other-optimizing, while “working on the Art” means “rationally-grounded advice for self-improvement, including but not limited to improving rational thought.”
Yes.