“Science is a way of trying not to fool yourself. The first principle is that you must not fool yourself, and you are the easiest person to fool.”
Richard Feynman
albert
Karma: 23
Thanks!
How do you measure a coastline? Isn’t it a subjective measurement depending on the scale of precision/resolution (since the actual geometry is fractal)
I skipped that question since I couldn’t figure out the standard
See this for instance: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coastline_paradox
Can anyone link to me a website that tests my confidence accuracy? I’m looking for the sort of test where you answer random questions giving your range of probability of being right, and preferably at the end of the test it will give you a graph comparing your estimates of confidence with actual prediction results, and if the lines perfectly match then you get are perfectly calibrated (neither over nor under confident in your skills).
A nice A.I. themed movie for those who’ve never seen it: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vn0cz7vYOcc all 10 parts on youtube
Best site on IF: http://www.leangains.com/
I have gone on and off this diet for the last few months and found it better to do intermittently. In other words, if you are in a constant IF mode, your body will adapt and gains will stop, but if you do it irregularly and just when you feel like it, then it works great. Main point of the philosophy is not being afraid to skip a lot of meals. Never eat when you are not hungry just because it’s a certain time a day and you HAVE to eat. Also, skipping breakfast will not make you unhealthy.
In the first example of this article (Gurkha x British prediction), doesn’t having the data of the outcome change your ex-ante estimate of what the probability was? Since it’s a data point you now have and you can’t erase it from your mind, it’s rational to update your estimates no? The bias in my mind would be if you OVERLY adjust your probability distribution based on the outcome.
thx, just said a nice hello!
I was brought up to be a “traditional rationalist”. My parents were atheists/traditional rationalists and never tried to indoctrinate me with any mysticism, spirituality, ‘mystery’ explanations or fairy tales (i.e. Santa Claus). Being a very small child I think my intuition was that some form of god was true with a probability of 25%. That number went creeping down until basically 1% (for “intelligent design”) and much less than that for an interventionist god. Also, even as a child, I always had the intuition (and still do) that reality has always existed (or time is an illusion and past and future are just different parts of some atemporal symmetry that exists). I’ve recently started reading a lot of popular physics books on that matter but it’s taking a lot of repetition and effort to be able to grasp concepts which are well above my IQ level. In far mode, I’ve always valued rationality and tried to be as responsive to evidence and reality as possible. In near-mode, however, only fairly recently (last 7-10 years, now being 27) have I considered myself rational. My memories of childhood of social relationships, responding to life challenges, making (practical) life goals, etc. were all very instinctive, emotional, and VERY sub-optimal. During adolescence it got worse, and I made every cognitive error possible (science as attire, blue vs green, pure tribalism, hatred for different ideas, wanting to “win” debates, etc etc.) most of it was emotional rage due to hormones I think.
Then when I reached about 19 years of age, my life changed a lot. I quit college to play become an professional poker player (which I was VERY successful, even though in retrospect I think it was 75%opportunity/being at the right time at the right moment, 20% discipline and just 5% IQ), and at the same time made a side-goal of striving to learn and self-improve (so as to not fall behind other people in terms of cognition. Since most of my friends continued to study and/or had more mentally stimulating jobs). I got into politics debates and study groups and was instantly drawn towards anarcho-capitalism and libertarianism (according to the popular saying “a young person who is not a socialist has no heart, a old person who is not a capitalist has no brain” I was an Ice-cold rationalist!), but somewhere along the line I started to think I was being dishonest to myself and was falling into the trap of having beliefs in order to signal being a contrarian, have a tribal mentality and dismiss any argument of differing beliefs. So I made probably the rarest political-mentality journey of them all of starting out as a strict libertarian to being a moderate libertarian, and from being a moral absolutist (like Ayn Rand) to a moral relativist (or amoralist depending on definitions). Then about 2 years ago some other relevant things happened. Poker ceased being profitable to me (after some good 6 solid years) so I retired from that, and a bit after that I met Patri and David Friedman on a visit they made to Brasil. Having conversations with them, I immediately saw that they were at a whole other level of rationality (one that I haven’t encountered in ANYONE in my local country). So In the last year, I started reading Overcoming Bias and found out that all my intellectual interests (rationality, economics, evolutionary biology, philosophy of mind, future tech) were all closely related in certain academic circles, notably the link between GMU economists, Singularity Institute, Future of Humanity institute, Humanity+, etc… So I got the opportunity to come to GMU and spend some time here and I have to say, this is the most interesting, brilliant and imo unbiased group of social scientists anywhere in the world at the moment. I don’t have any long term life goals and am currently just living the present and satiating my intellectual appetite. I feel I have to somehow be involved with this group of people/community but I am insecure about my intelligence (I saw the results of the last LW poll and everyone had 140+ IQs) and sometimes I think I’m way over my head in terms of my interests. I feel it takes a LOT of time reading and re-reading the same concepts over and over for them to assimilate. I wish I could upgrade my brain, I would trade almost any amount of money to be able to read G.E.B. without having to skip over the parts where logical code is presented. Only the simplest kinds of notation are manageable to me! My inference machine however is very well calibrated intuitively. I now work part-time with trading/investments and dabbled successfully with pro sports betting also, so these are practical skills to have on these jobs. Maybe I should just give up on formalism/logic/physics, trust the relevant experts, and stick with what I’m better at?
Anyway, I’m just rambling now! I hope to go to some LW meetups now that I’m living temporarily in the U.S.
So, first post in LW!
New TED Talks video about the role of Bayesian inference in controlling human movement: http://www.ted.com/talks/daniel_wolpert_the_real_reason_for_brains.html
I’m writing from Albert account, I’m his brother. I’m living in São Paulo and will probably be there!