I think that this sounds like too much work to learn manually, so I am embracing transhumanism and making a compass belt.
apophenia
Karma: 489
How to make your intuitions cost-sensitive
Hello, Less Wrong.
My name is Zachary Vance. I’m an undergraduate student at the University of Cincinnati, double majoring in Mathematics and Computer Science—I like math better. I am interested in games, especially board and card games. One of my favorite games is Go.
I’ve been reading Less Wrong for 2-3 months now, and I posted once or twice under another name which I dropped because I couldn’t figure out how to change names without changing accounts. I got linked here via Scott Aaronson’s blog Shtetl-Optimized after seeing a debate between him and Eliezer. I got annoyed at Eliezer for being rude, forgot about it for a month, and followed the actual link on Scott’s site over here. (In case you read this Eliezer, you both listen to people more than I thought (update, in Bayesian) and write more interesting things than I heard in the debate.) I like paradoxes and puzzles, and am currently trying to understand the counterfactual mugging. I’ve enjoyed Less Wrong because everybody here seems to read everything and usually carefully think about it before they post, which means not only articles but also comments are simply amazing compared to other sites. It also means I try not to post too much so Less Wrong remains quality.
I am currently applying to work at the Singularity Institute.
The best 15 words
For me, the deciding factor is cost. I would be willing to sign up for cryonics at 1⁄3 the current cost. However, this is unlikely, since I had to negotiate to get the smaller amount of life insurance I actually needed—my cost would currently be about $15/month life insurance and $10/month CI fee. No matter how much we cut the cost of cryonics, my life insurance refuses to charge less. One solution is a cryonics group willing to take care of the life insurance themselves—go under $100,000 -- then this would help cut the bottleneck cost.
Oh, also I’ll commit to signing up for cryonics when it drops below $10/month. And perhaps before, since there’s a good chance cryonics prices slowly drop or a singularity occurs before I’m 40.
“Because this is the Internet, every argument was spun in a centrifuge instantly and reduced down into two wholly enraged, radically incompatible contingents, as opposed to the natural gradient which human beings actually occupy.” -Tycho, Penny Arcade
Cross-posted from Seven Shiny Stories
5. Contradiction
Penny knows she’s not perfect. In fact, some of her traits and projects seem to outright contradict one another, so she really knows it. She wants to eat better, but she just loves pizza; she’s trying to learn anger management, but sometimes people do things that really are wrong and it seems only suitable that she be upset with them; she’s working on her tendency to nag her boyfriend because she knows it annoys him, but if he can’t learn to put the toilet seat down, maybe he deserves to be annoyed. Penny decides to take a serious look at the contradictions and make decisions about which “side” she’s on. Eventually, she concludes that if she’s honest with herself, a life without pizza seems bleak and unrewarding; she’ll make that her official exception to the rule, and work harder to eat better in every other way without the drag on motivation caused by withholding her one favorite food. On reflection, being angry—even at people who really do wrong things—isn’t helping her or them, and so she throws herself into anger management classes with renewed vigor, looking for other, more productive channels to turn her moral evaluation towards. And—clearly—the nagging isn’t helping its ostensible cause either. She doesn’t endorse that, but she’s not going to let her boyfriend’s uncivilized behavior slide either. She’ll agree to stop nagging when he slips up and hope this inspires him to remember more often.
I’ve just introduced myself.
Applied Rationality: Group Problem Solving Session
Friendly, but Dumb: Why formal Friendliness proofs may not be as safe as they appear
Chip & Dan Heath, Made to Stick:
Communicate one thing.
Cross-posted from Seven Shiny Stories
4. Typing
George is trying to figure out who he is. He’s trying really hard. But when he tries to explain his behaviors and thoughts in terms of larger patterns that could answer the question, they inevitably sound suspiciously revisionist and self-serving, like he’s conveniently forgetting some parts and artificially inflating others. He thinks he’s generous, fun at parties, a great family man, loyal, easygoing. George decides that what he needs to do is catch what he’s thinking at the moment he’s thinking it, honestly and irrevocably, so he’ll have an uncorrupted data set to work with. He fires up a word processor and starts typing, stream of consciousness. For a few paragraphs, it’s mostly “here I am, writing what I think” and “this is kind of dumb, I wonder if anything will come of it”, but eventually that gets old, and content starts to come out. Soon George has a few minutes of inner monologue written down. He writes the congratulatory things he thinks about himself, but also notes in parentheses the times he’s acted contrary to these nice patterns (he took three helpings of cake that one time when there were fewer slices than guests, he spent half of the office celebration on his cellphone instead of participating, he missed his daughter’s last birthday, he dropped a friend over a sports rivalry, he blew up when a co-worker reminded him one too many times to finish that spreadsheet). George writes the bad habits and vices he demonstrates, too. Most importantly, he resists the urge to hit backspace, although he freely contradicts himself if there’s something he wants to correct. Then he saves the document, squirrels it away in a folder, and waits a week. The following Tuesday, he goes over it like a stranger had written it and notes what he’d think of this stranger, and what he’d advise him to do.
Cross-posted from Seven Shiny Stories
2. Widgets
Tony’s performance at work is suffering. Not every day, but most days, he’s too drained and distracted to perform the tasks that go into making widgets. He’s in serious danger of falling behind his widget quota and needs to figure out why. Having just read a fascinating and brilliantly written post on Less Wrong about luminosity, he decides to keep track of where he is and what he’s doing when he does and doesn’t feel the drainedness. After a week, he’s got a fairly robust correlation: he feels worst on days when he doesn’t eat breakfast, which reliably occurs when he’s stayed up too late, hit the snooze button four times, and had to dash out the door. Awkwardly enough, having been distracted all day tends to make him work more slowly at making widgets, which makes him less physically exhausted by the time he gets home and enables him to stay up later. To deal with that, he starts going for long runs on days when his work hasn’t been very tiring, and pops melatonin; he easily drops off to sleep when his head hits the pillow at a reasonable hour, gets sounder sleep, scarfs down a bowl of Cheerios, and arrives at the widget factory energized and focused.
This is awesome. I might remove the examples, print down the rest of the list, and read it every morning when I get up and every night before going to sleep.
Interesting you should say that. About a week ago I simplified this into a more literal checklist designed to be used as part of a nightly wind-down, to see if it could maintain or instill habits. I designed the checklist based largely on empirical results from NASA’s review of the factors for effectiveness of pre-flight safety checklists used by pilots, although I chased down a number of other checklist-related resources. I’m currently actively testing effects on myself and others, both trying to test to make sure it would actually be used, and getting the time down to the minimum possible (it’s hovering around two minutes).
P.S. I’m not associated with CFAR but the checklist is an experiment on their request.
If you were to test your suggestion for two weeks, I would be interested to hear the results. My prediction (with 80% certainty) is: Lbh jvyy trg cbfvgvir erfhygf sbe n avtug be gjb. Jvguva gra qnlf, lbh jvyy svaq gur yvfg nirefvir / gbb zhpu jbex naq fgbc ernqvat vg, ortva gb tynapr bire vg jvgubhg cebprffvat nalguvat, be npgviryl fgbc gb svk bar bs gur nobir ceboyrzf. (Gur nezl anzr znxrf zr yrff pregnva guna hfhny—zl fgrerbglcr fnlf lbh znl or oberq naq/be qvfpvcyvarq.)
Figure out your goals, and then make plans for when you get off work to optimize for those. Working as a cashier doesn’t seem optimal for almost any purpose—maybe you could start by figuring out how to make money more efficiently, if that’s your goal?
Learn the major system or memory palace. This would let you store a list of things to think about or do when at work. It’s also quite easy to practice while at work, once you get the basics down. I’d recommend this first, if you really won’t be allowed to write.
Solve problems. See what problem-solving methods work and which don’t. See what kinds of problems you are worst/best at, and become better at those. Math problems, world-modeling (prediction and underlying event deduction), and introspection are especially easy to do in your head.
Try to figure out why stuff around you is the way it is. (Why did that person buy that item?). Make predictions. Calibrate and get higher accuracy as well.
Introspect. Find out why you believe what you believe, and whether you should.
Don’t improve your rationality, do something else with your time.
Optimize your job as a cashier, as much as is possible. Figure out how to do stuff in the least time. Experiment when interacting with customers to see if you can get tips or interesting conversation. Get a different job (manager?) at the same establishment somehow. A useful problem will motivate you more than a non-useful problem.
Combine all these.
Cross-posted from Seven Shiny Stories
6. Community
Billy has the chance to study abroad in Australia for a year, and he’s so mixed up about it, he can barely think straight. He can’t decide if he wants to go, or why, or how he feels about the idea of missing it. Eventually, he decides this would be far easier if all the different nagging voices and clusters of desire were given names and allowed to talk to each other. He identifies the major relevant sub-agents as “Clingyness”, which wants to stay in known surroundings; “Adventurer”, which wants to seek new experiences and learn about the world; “Obedience to Advisor”, which wants to do what Prof. So-and-So recommends; “Academic”, who wants to do whatever will make Billy’s résumé more impressive to future readers; and “Fear of Spiders”, which would happily go nearly anywhere but the home of the Sydney funnelweb and is probably responsible for Billy’s spooky dreams. When these voices have a chance to compete with each other, they expose questionable motivations: for instance, Academic determines that Prof. So-and-So only recommends staying at Billy’s home institution because Billy is her research assistant, not because it would further Billy’s intellectual growth, which reduces the comparative power of Obedience to Advisor. Adventurer renders Fear of Spiders irrelevant by pointing out that the black widow is native to the United States. Eventually, Academic and Adventurer, in coalition, beat out Clingyness (whom Billy is not strongly inclined to identify with), and Billy buys the ticket to Down Under.
Cross-posted from Seven Shiny Stories
3. Text
Dot reads about an experiment in which the subjects receive phone calls at random times and must tell researchers how happy they feel. Apparently the experiment turned up some really suboptimal patterns of behavior, and Dot’s curious about what she’d learn that she could use to improve her life. She gets a friend to arrange delayed text messages to be sent to her phone at intervals supplied by a random number generator, and promises herself that she’ll note what she’s doing, thinking, and feeling at the moment she receives the text. She soon finds that she doesn’t enjoy watching TV as much as she thinks she does; that it’s probably worth the time to cook dinner rather than heating up something in the microwave because it’s considerably tastier; that she can’t really stand her cubicle neighbor; and that she thinks about her ex more than she’d have ever admitted. These thoughts were usually too fleeting to turn into actions; if she tried to remember them hours later, they’d be folded into some large story in which these momentary emotions were secondary. But treating them as notable data points to be taken into account gives them staying power. Dot starts keeping the TV remote under the book she’s reading to remind herself what entertainment is more fulfilling. She buys fewer frozen meals and makes sure she’s stocked up on staple ingredients. She agrees to swap cubicles with a co-worker down the hall. There’s not all that much she can do about the ex, but at least when her friends ask her if everything’s okay between them, she can answer more accurately.
This is the Litany of Gendlin
Cross-posted from Seven Shiny Stories
7. Experiment
Eva bursts into tears whenever she has a hard problem to deal with, like a stressful project at work or above-average levels of social drama amongst her friends. This is, of course, completely unproductive—in fact, in the case of drama, it worsens things—and Eva wants to stop it. First, she has to figure out why it happens. Are the tears caused by sadness? It turns out not—she can be brought to tears even by things that don’t make her sad. The latest project from work was exciting and a great opportunity and it still made her cry. After a little work sorting through lists of things that make her cry, Eva concludes that it’s linked to how much pressure she feels to solve the problem: for instance, if she’s part of a team that’s assigned a project, she’s less likely to react this way than if she’s operating solo, and if her friends embroiled in drama turn to her for help, she’ll wind up tearful more often than if she’s just a spectator with no special responsibility. Now she needs to set herself up not to cry. She decides to do this by making sure she has social support in her endeavors: if the boss gives her an assignment, she says to the next employee over, “I should be able to handle this, but if I need help, can I count on you?” That way, she can think of the task as something that isn’t entirely on her. When next social drama rears its head, Eva reconceptualizes her part in the solution as finding and voicing the group’s existing consensus, rather than personally creating a novel way to make everything better. While this new approach reduces the incidence of stress tears, it doesn’t disassemble the underlying architecture that causes the tendency in the first place. That’s more complicated to address: Eva spends some time thinking about why responsibility is such an emotional thing for her, and looks for ways to duplicate the sense of support she feels when she has help in situations where she doesn’t. Eventually, it is not much of a risk that Eva will cry if presented with a problem to solve.
Judea Pearl, Causality:
If two things are correlated, there is causation. Either A causes B, B causes A, they have common cause, or they have a common effect you’re conditioning on.
Edit: If two variables are correlated, there is causation. Either A causes B, B causes A, they have common cause, or they have a common effect you’re conditioning on.