Of those who have learned about heuristics and biases, a nontrivial minority have gotten confused to the point that they offer Kahnemann and Tversky’s research as justification for the self-arbitrages they’ve set up!
Suggested alternative wording:
“Of those who have learned about heuristics and biases, a nontrivial minority are so confused as to point to the biases research as justifying their exhibition of a bias!”
I would guess that it’s because comments are shorter and tend to express a single idea. Posts tend to have a series of ideas, which means a voter is less likely to think all of them are good/worthy of an upvote.
I strongly agree. As an anecdotal data point, I understood the suggested alternative but not the original wording. And it is a powerful point to miss because I haven’t heard of Kahnemann and Tversky.
Also, if mentioning specific researchers were central to the point, I would recommend linking to a resource about them, or better yet, create entries for them on the Less Wrong Wiki and link to those.
Seconded! Those names didn’t ring a bell for me either, though I’m familiar with the results from Prespect Theory (I probably read about them on OB), and that’s probably what talisman was refering to.
Definitely worth reading up. K & T are the intellectual fathers of the entire modern heuristics and biases program. There was some earlier work (e.g. Allais) but from what I hazily recall that work was fairly muddled conceptually.
Completely agree that people just use methods such as tabu search a*, etc… without understanding them at all, same happens with machine learning techniques, or even statistic ones. Mostly they get by using the recommended algorithm/meta heuristic for the domain they are working at.
I strongly recommend python for doing this, it is the best language to begin programming with, I have several programs I did by myself, I can collaborate with the project.
I strongly recommend python for doing this, it is the best language to begin programming with, I have several programs I did by myself, I can collaborate with the project.
Not disagreeing with you here, but you seem to have missed the implication; the reason Python was mentioned is because LessWrong is written in it.
Suggested alternative wording:
“Of those who have learned about heuristics and biases, a nontrivial minority are so confused as to point to the biases research as justifying their exhibition of a bias!”
It’s interesting that this correction has a higher score than the post itself.
People don’t seem to vote posts up or down with the same enthusiasm as they vote on comments. Why? I do not know.
I would guess that it’s because comments are shorter and tend to express a single idea. Posts tend to have a series of ideas, which means a voter is less likely to think all of them are good/worthy of an upvote.
I strongly agree. As an anecdotal data point, I understood the suggested alternative but not the original wording. And it is a powerful point to miss because I haven’t heard of Kahnemann and Tversky.
Also, if mentioning specific researchers were central to the point, I would recommend linking to a resource about them, or better yet, create entries for them on the Less Wrong Wiki and link to those.
Done, thanks for the feedback!
I made the mistake I’m talking about—assuming certain things were well-known.
Seconded! Those names didn’t ring a bell for me either, though I’m familiar with the results from Prespect Theory (I probably read about them on OB), and that’s probably what talisman was refering to.
Definitely worth reading up. K & T are the intellectual fathers of the entire modern heuristics and biases program. There was some earlier work (e.g. Allais) but from what I hazily recall that work was fairly muddled conceptually.
Completely agree that people just use methods such as tabu search a*, etc… without understanding them at all, same happens with machine learning techniques, or even statistic ones. Mostly they get by using the recommended algorithm/meta heuristic for the domain they are working at.
I strongly recommend python for doing this, it is the best language to begin programming with, I have several programs I did by myself, I can collaborate with the project.
Not disagreeing with you here, but you seem to have missed the implication; the reason Python was mentioned is because LessWrong is written in it.
Thanks for clarifying, I did not know it, I guess I have to read the introduction first.