I do irrational things. The other day I bought a flight interstate, somewhat impulsively, to a conference I knew next to nothing about for complicated reasons. Instantregret, but the cancellation fee is about half the price of the ticket. I also got some art professionally designed for a few hundred dollars, that I didn’t need or want. I’ve also lost thousands gambling and on the stock exchange. I’m stupid in many ways, but I’m also capable enough to be able to share insights from the other side of sanity with the real world, or so I’d like to think. There are some things which I do that aren’t rational, for which the term irrational isn’t very useful, in the same what that people can be ‘not even wrong’, perhaps. But enough self-indulgent psychopity and self-handicapping.
I’m finding it hard recently to concentrate on anything other than surgery—particular self surgery and how and why I ought to perform it. But, Im not a surgeon. And, for this to be rational I ought to have a terminal goal. I don’t have one. In fact, at best I can rationalise that in case I get in a survival situation and have no one to help, I can do it myself. But, that’s extremely unlikely. It’s not even rationalisation since I haven’t made the decision, it’s merely optimism. Being crazy is hard, so looking on the bright side keeps me from feeling like killing myself. At least this new found interest is somewhat amusing and something that is somewhat learnable. Sometimes I get interested in areas for which I have no where near the pre-requisite knowledge to understand, often some technical something in economics or computer science. In those cases, I just end up learning things incorrectly. At least with surgery, it’s somewhat of a practical skill and medical students are often taught things superficially (this leads to this, or this is connected to that) rather than say, (this is proven by that the rem, or demonstrated by this experiment). To celebrate my 100 karma (and it was a difficult journey!) I just thought I would document this experience and what I’m compelled to research to give the more rational among you some insight in what its like to be on the far other side of rationality, and aware of it.
See examples of self-surgery for inspiration. Examples
desensitise yourself by snooping on actual surgeries. From experience in psychiatric wards, it shouldn’t be very hard to sneak into surgical viewing theatres. Minimal social engineering required. Hospitals are shocking with security. Note: Don’t actually do this. Remember, this is just to explain my thinking process which as I mentioned is off the beaten path of sensisbility)
read this guide which is the only guide to self-surgery I can find. Though it suggests reading textbooks, the medical textbooks in the surgery section of my local university’s library don’t seem to be very useful at all in actually how to do surgery. Maybe one has to learn how to do it by watching.
Ok. At this point. Looks like I’ve somehow managed to overcome this little excursion from sensibility. I don’t really care for self-surgery anymore. My testicles feel kinda sore for no apparent reason, but it feels good knowing that at least they’re there and not in a medical waste bin instead.
In the spirit of radical honesty, I’m going to be posting this highly embarrassing comment then try not to think about it. Certainly won’t be my most embarrassing post so far.
Here’s what I currently suspect, but I don’t have the present of mind to be confident in this assessment. I’m particularly vulnerable to gambling and sexual and aesthetic impulses like compulsively listening to music, or staring at art. For instance, just I recently signed up for an international share trading account because I intended to bet about 1⁄4 of my assets (yes, I still am not convinced by either the kelly criterion nor modern portfolio theory since no free lunches!) on this one stock where I had very little knowledge of. Luckly for me, it takes 5 days to process the int. trading account application and I found it hard to get my mind of the stock so I started looking up more in depth information and realised it’s not the undervalued, cheap, super awesome stock I thought it would be.
When I’m with people, I also tend to be less goal-oriented and give into impulses more readily. Another consideration for me is whether these impulses are the same class as say the surgical impulse, since that sounds more delusional than impulsive. None of these categorisations are clear. You’ve inspired me to sit down properly in the near future and map out different behaviours then try to summarise underling commonalities and potential control measures note to self.
The times when irrational impulse fades, in contrast, is times when I can use strict decision theoretic tools to explain to myself why it’s irrational. That’s why LessWrong is my scaffold out of insanity. If I can analyse a particular scenario and see that one particular choice dominates another, or I can model a particular impulse as my tendency to compensate for a sunk cost when I ought to be thinking at the margin, for instance, I can grit my way out of it.
Perhaps things are hardest when I’m dealing with extremely high subjective value options (e.g. jerking off to porn when I’m really horny), or betting a whole lot of money, I get carried away. Temporally, I discount at several orders of magnitude above hyperbolic, perhaps. But honestly, I don’t really know. I’m just chucking intuitions into this comment box. I’ll probably add to this answer at some point for my own reference.
As an aside, I saw your comment this morning and was thinking about it in the shower. Recalling the ‘miracle question’ approach to problem solving made me feel empowered. Later, I listened to a song I hadn’t heard in a while just before going into the shower and realised that it would motivate me to linger less in there cause I anticipated the joy of continuing to listen to it after I got out. Then I thought about how I could suggest that approach to others who had trouble limiting their shower time, and grateful that there are places that I could share that information. At that point, I realised that my mood and anxiety had lifted a bit which I attributed to that sequence of events, cascading from you. I suspect increased self-trust in my ability to handle problems is at the heart of this (so I’ll add that to my mental health checklist in the other thread sometime). So thank you! I’m going to be investigating how I can replicate this again.I did mess it up a bit by feeling very self-congratulatory then rumminating for a while and ultimately not getting out of the shower as promptly as perhaps possible, but hopefully that wouldn’t occur in the future.
I could enunciate it, but wikipedia has an explanation. I honestly don’t understand the Wikipedia explanation, but I would expect that it explains my intuitions in a more technical way than I do. If you have a specific point of disagreement, I’m happy to map out my logic and explore the evidence with you. I vaguely remember reading an article on the topic, too.
Optimal bet sizing and expected utility
I’d expect a theorem to maximise utility via diversification would entail some prediction that the utility of subsequent/other/more investments will be greater than the utility of the first/reference investment. If that isn’t the case, it will lower the average expected utility of one’s portfolio. I don’t see the rationale behind the Kelly criterion as it related to any of my existing knowledge about maximising utility.
MPT: How can I have a specific point of disagreement with something as nonspecific as “I am not convinced by modern portfolio theory because no free lunches”? The particular but of the Wikipedia article you linked to actually says (correctly, so far as I can see) that minimising unsystematic risk through diversification (as indicated by MPT) is “one of the few free lunches available” because unsystematic risk isn’t associated with higher expected returns.
Kelley: Actually most of the paragraph ostensibly about this seems to be still about MPT. Anyway, I’m afraid your expectation is just wrong. Diversifying can be a win even if what you diversify with is (on its own) lower-utility. Suppose someone offers you a bet that will pay you $1M if some event E occurs and cost you $900k if not, and suppose you reckon E very close to 50% likely. You probably don’t take that bet because losing $900k would hurt you more than gaining $1M would help you. Now someone else offers you another bet, where you stand to gain $950k and lose $900k. Clearly you don’t take that bet either, and clearly it’s whose than the first. But now suppose the first bet party’s you when E happens and the second very party’s you when not-E happens. The two bets together are a guaranteed >=$50k gain; provided you trust your counterparties you should absolutely take them. So aging the second bet helped you even though on its own it was worse than the first.
Kelley, really: again I’m not sure what I can say to something as unspecific as “I don’t see the rationale”. I suppose I can briefly explain the rationale, so here goes. 1: if the utility you get from your money is proportional to log (amount), which may or may not be roughly true for you (I think it is for me) then placing a Kelley-sized bet is higher expected-utility than placing a bet of any other size at the same odds. (Assuming your utility I’d unaffected by the event the bet I’d on other than through its effect on your wealth.) 2: your long-term wealth is maximized (with high probability, not just in expectation) by making all your bets Kelley-sized, so if your utility is strongly affected by your wealth in the long term and indifferent to the short term then (almost regardless of exactly how utility depends on long-term wealth) you should place Kelley-sized bets.
Most people are more risk-averse than utility proportional to log wealth would justify. If you are, then your bets should be smaller than Kelley. Most people care about the short term as well as the long. If you do, then again your bets should generally be smaller than Kelley.
[EDITED some time after writing when I noticed a bunch of mobile-device autocorrect errors. Sorry.]
There was a guide online about all factors to consider when being a medical professional in a place with no medical infrastructure. it was basically a “how to do everything” guide. I can’t recall the keyword name to find it now, but it was online and free. Not sure if I should encourage you; but reading a lot more will probably satisfy your interest in the topic.
How to perform surgery on yourself with Clarity
I do irrational things. The other day I bought a flight interstate, somewhat impulsively, to a conference I knew next to nothing about for complicated reasons. Instantregret, but the cancellation fee is about half the price of the ticket. I also got some art professionally designed for a few hundred dollars, that I didn’t need or want. I’ve also lost thousands gambling and on the stock exchange. I’m stupid in many ways, but I’m also capable enough to be able to share insights from the other side of sanity with the real world, or so I’d like to think. There are some things which I do that aren’t rational, for which the term irrational isn’t very useful, in the same what that people can be ‘not even wrong’, perhaps. But enough self-indulgent psychopity and self-handicapping.
I’m finding it hard recently to concentrate on anything other than surgery—particular self surgery and how and why I ought to perform it. But, Im not a surgeon. And, for this to be rational I ought to have a terminal goal. I don’t have one. In fact, at best I can rationalise that in case I get in a survival situation and have no one to help, I can do it myself. But, that’s extremely unlikely. It’s not even rationalisation since I haven’t made the decision, it’s merely optimism. Being crazy is hard, so looking on the bright side keeps me from feeling like killing myself. At least this new found interest is somewhat amusing and something that is somewhat learnable. Sometimes I get interested in areas for which I have no where near the pre-requisite knowledge to understand, often some technical something in economics or computer science. In those cases, I just end up learning things incorrectly. At least with surgery, it’s somewhat of a practical skill and medical students are often taught things superficially (this leads to this, or this is connected to that) rather than say, (this is proven by that the rem, or demonstrated by this experiment). To celebrate my 100 karma (and it was a difficult journey!) I just thought I would document this experience and what I’m compelled to research to give the more rational among you some insight in what its like to be on the far other side of rationality, and aware of it.
See examples of self-surgery for inspiration. Examples
people who do it are heroic. Don’t be half assed
desensitise yourself by snooping on actual surgeries. From experience in psychiatric wards, it shouldn’t be very hard to sneak into surgical viewing theatres. Minimal social engineering required. Hospitals are shocking with security. Note: Don’t actually do this. Remember, this is just to explain my thinking process which as I mentioned is off the beaten path of sensisbility)
read this guide which is the only guide to self-surgery I can find. Though it suggests reading textbooks, the medical textbooks in the surgery section of my local university’s library don’t seem to be very useful at all in actually how to do surgery. Maybe one has to learn how to do it by watching.
Ok. At this point. Looks like I’ve somehow managed to overcome this little excursion from sensibility. I don’t really care for self-surgery anymore. My testicles feel kinda sore for no apparent reason, but it feels good knowing that at least they’re there and not in a medical waste bin instead.
In the spirit of radical honesty, I’m going to be posting this highly embarrassing comment then try not to think about it. Certainly won’t be my most embarrassing post so far.
Voted up for honesty.
Do you know anything about the difference between the times when your irrational impulses fade and the times when you act on them?
Ahh, the miracle question. I had forgotten about those. Thank you for asking.
My answer is currently no.
Here’s what I currently suspect, but I don’t have the present of mind to be confident in this assessment. I’m particularly vulnerable to gambling and sexual and aesthetic impulses like compulsively listening to music, or staring at art. For instance, just I recently signed up for an international share trading account because I intended to bet about 1⁄4 of my assets (yes, I still am not convinced by either the kelly criterion nor modern portfolio theory since no free lunches!) on this one stock where I had very little knowledge of. Luckly for me, it takes 5 days to process the int. trading account application and I found it hard to get my mind of the stock so I started looking up more in depth information and realised it’s not the undervalued, cheap, super awesome stock I thought it would be.
When I’m with people, I also tend to be less goal-oriented and give into impulses more readily. Another consideration for me is whether these impulses are the same class as say the surgical impulse, since that sounds more delusional than impulsive. None of these categorisations are clear. You’ve inspired me to sit down properly in the near future and map out different behaviours then try to summarise underling commonalities and potential control measures note to self.
The times when irrational impulse fades, in contrast, is times when I can use strict decision theoretic tools to explain to myself why it’s irrational. That’s why LessWrong is my scaffold out of insanity. If I can analyse a particular scenario and see that one particular choice dominates another, or I can model a particular impulse as my tendency to compensate for a sunk cost when I ought to be thinking at the margin, for instance, I can grit my way out of it.
Perhaps things are hardest when I’m dealing with extremely high subjective value options (e.g. jerking off to porn when I’m really horny), or betting a whole lot of money, I get carried away. Temporally, I discount at several orders of magnitude above hyperbolic, perhaps. But honestly, I don’t really know. I’m just chucking intuitions into this comment box. I’ll probably add to this answer at some point for my own reference.
As an aside, I saw your comment this morning and was thinking about it in the shower. Recalling the ‘miracle question’ approach to problem solving made me feel empowered. Later, I listened to a song I hadn’t heard in a while just before going into the shower and realised that it would motivate me to linger less in there cause I anticipated the joy of continuing to listen to it after I got out. Then I thought about how I could suggest that approach to others who had trouble limiting their shower time, and grateful that there are places that I could share that information. At that point, I realised that my mood and anxiety had lifted a bit which I attributed to that sequence of events, cascading from you. I suspect increased self-trust in my ability to handle problems is at the heart of this (so I’ll add that to my mental health checklist in the other thread sometime). So thank you! I’m going to be investigating how I can replicate this again.I did mess it up a bit by feeling very self-congratulatory then rumminating for a while and ultimately not getting out of the shower as promptly as perhaps possible, but hopefully that wouldn’t occur in the future.
How do you get from “no free lunches” to disagreement with either Kelley or portfolio theory?
No free lunches & MPT
I could enunciate it, but wikipedia has an explanation. I honestly don’t understand the Wikipedia explanation, but I would expect that it explains my intuitions in a more technical way than I do. If you have a specific point of disagreement, I’m happy to map out my logic and explore the evidence with you. I vaguely remember reading an article on the topic, too.
Optimal bet sizing and expected utility
I’d expect a theorem to maximise utility via diversification would entail some prediction that the utility of subsequent/other/more investments will be greater than the utility of the first/reference investment. If that isn’t the case, it will lower the average expected utility of one’s portfolio. I don’t see the rationale behind the Kelly criterion as it related to any of my existing knowledge about maximising utility.
MPT: How can I have a specific point of disagreement with something as nonspecific as “I am not convinced by modern portfolio theory because no free lunches”? The particular but of the Wikipedia article you linked to actually says (correctly, so far as I can see) that minimising unsystematic risk through diversification (as indicated by MPT) is “one of the few free lunches available” because unsystematic risk isn’t associated with higher expected returns.
Kelley: Actually most of the paragraph ostensibly about this seems to be still about MPT. Anyway, I’m afraid your expectation is just wrong. Diversifying can be a win even if what you diversify with is (on its own) lower-utility. Suppose someone offers you a bet that will pay you $1M if some event E occurs and cost you $900k if not, and suppose you reckon E very close to 50% likely. You probably don’t take that bet because losing $900k would hurt you more than gaining $1M would help you. Now someone else offers you another bet, where you stand to gain $950k and lose $900k. Clearly you don’t take that bet either, and clearly it’s whose than the first. But now suppose the first bet party’s you when E happens and the second very party’s you when not-E happens. The two bets together are a guaranteed >=$50k gain; provided you trust your counterparties you should absolutely take them. So aging the second bet helped you even though on its own it was worse than the first.
Kelley, really: again I’m not sure what I can say to something as unspecific as “I don’t see the rationale”. I suppose I can briefly explain the rationale, so here goes. 1: if the utility you get from your money is proportional to log (amount), which may or may not be roughly true for you (I think it is for me) then placing a Kelley-sized bet is higher expected-utility than placing a bet of any other size at the same odds. (Assuming your utility I’d unaffected by the event the bet I’d on other than through its effect on your wealth.) 2: your long-term wealth is maximized (with high probability, not just in expectation) by making all your bets Kelley-sized, so if your utility is strongly affected by your wealth in the long term and indifferent to the short term then (almost regardless of exactly how utility depends on long-term wealth) you should place Kelley-sized bets.
Most people are more risk-averse than utility proportional to log wealth would justify. If you are, then your bets should be smaller than Kelley. Most people care about the short term as well as the long. If you do, then again your bets should generally be smaller than Kelley.
[EDITED some time after writing when I noticed a bunch of mobile-device autocorrect errors. Sorry.]
There was a guide online about all factors to consider when being a medical professional in a place with no medical infrastructure. it was basically a “how to do everything” guide. I can’t recall the keyword name to find it now, but it was online and free. Not sure if I should encourage you; but reading a lot more will probably satisfy your interest in the topic.
I’m interested in the guide and haven’t found it without several related google searches. Are you sure the guide wasn’t on a tangential topic?