OK, I’ll give you that we might non-instrumentally value the accuracy of our beliefs (even so, I don’t know how unpack ‘accuracy’ in a way that can handle both probabilities and uncertainty, but I agree this is another discussion). I still suspect that the concept of uncertainty doesn’t help with instrumental rationality, bracketing the supposed immorality of assigning probabilities from sparse information. (Recall that you claimed Knightian uncertainty was ‘useful’.)
AlexSchell
Karma: 1,116
The only point of probabilities is to have them guide actions. How does the concept of Knightian uncertainty help in guiding actions?
Much of concern with IQ seems to be about status, or more generally is purely about evaluating people without a stated purpose of the evaluation. Is your suggestion to just evaluate people based on awesome accomplishments just your way of playing along with this game, trying to divert status from IQ to accomplishments? If not, the usefulness of your proposal likely depends a lot on the purpose for which we’re ranking people: if you want to predict future performance in domain X, then past performance in domain X might well be superior to IQ; but to predict future performance in a different domain Y, IQ is probably still the best bet.
I can’t donate blood where I live. Perhaps I should look into good old-fashioned bloodletting.
Oh, I agree. I meant modest compared to effects I expect to be detectable by casual introspection.
I’ve only read the one gwern mentions: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20414766
I’d prefer this be in the current media thread.
If you look at the relevant meta-analyses, the effect size estimates are quite modest, so much that most of nicotine’s cognitive benefits won’t be detectable by introspection. Given the lack of readily observable benefits and given the foul taste of the gum/lozenges, it can be challenging to maintain the habit. All this is in accord with my experience. I would expect that e-cigarettes are superior in this respect.
I strongly feel that true utilitarianism is a decoherent idea (it doesn’t really work mathematically, if anyone wants me to explain further, I’ll write a post on it.)
Because of interpersonal utility comparisons, or what? That might affect some forms of preference utilitarianism. Hedonistic and “objective welfare” varieties of utilitarianism seem like coherent views to me.
What you mention in your last paragraph is roughly what I had in mind when asking for examples. So I take it that IVs are a method inspired by causal graphs (or at least causal maths)? If so you’ve answered my question.
Uncertain how soon I will be able take you up on this, but thanks!
Thanks! Will not order then.
Did you ever get down to trying fumaric acid? How does it compare to citric and malic acids?
Can you point out some cool/insightful applications of broadly Pearlian causality ideas to applied problems in, say, epidemiology or econometrics?
I added Boomerang based on your recommendation. I already use Mailbox for iPhone to schedule emails to reappear at some given time. I’ve used Boomerang primarily to delay the sending of an e-mail (“Send Later”) and to schedule emails to reappear in my inbox if I don’t get a reply. I find “Send Later” particularly useful, since it removes the rationalization that “I’ll compose this e-mail later, since I can’t send it out until later”.
I usually don’t make enough eye contact with people, so I tried the eye contact exercise described by Nick Winter, which involves pairing up with someone unfamiliar and gazing into each other’s eyes for 15 minutes. This was just a week ago, and I already noticed mild improvements in my ability to maintain eye contact. I haven’t yet noticed anything as dramatic as described by Winter or Luke (who did a much more intense version of this exercise, starting over when eye contact was broken), though to be fair both accounts sound like the effect did not get noticed immediately.
I can confirm that these are very good. They’re $16 on Amazon right now.
The psychic unity of mankind should preclude the existence of a miraculous genetic ability like this in only one in four hundred people: if it’s possible, it should have achieved fixation. Ekman believes that everyone can be trained to this level of success (and has created the relevant training materials himself) but that his “wizards” achieve it naturally; perhaps because they’ve had a lot of practice.
This doesn’t follow. Just because it’s not a complex genetic adaptation doesn’t mean it’s environmental. Liar-detection-ability might just be an additive-effect quantitative trait like height or IQ, with truth-wizardry being the extreme right tail. This is consistent with evolutionary genetics, as Eliezer’s psychic unity point only applies for adaptations with multiple interdependent (and therefore non-additive) genetic parts.
I think you accidentally went up one meta level.
I’m not actually sure the concept can do all that work, mostly because we don’t have plausible theories for making decisions from imprecise probabilities (with probability we have expected utility maximization). See e.g. this very readable paper.