“A witty saying proves nothing.”—Voltaire
I’ve always found that useful to keep in mind when reading threads like this.
“A witty saying proves nothing.”—Voltaire
I’ve always found that useful to keep in mind when reading threads like this.
Nah, garlic is for protecting against vampires. It’ll be no use if this turns out to be the zombie-universe.
Out of curiosity, on what basis do you consider him a great philosopher, especially if you describe him as insane (and tend to disagree with his conclusions, and then necessarily, his reasoning)?
I ask because I’m trying to figure out the same thing about myself, i.e. intuitively I do think of him as a great philosopher, even though I disagree with so much of what he’s said. Is it just a matter of how well-known or influential he is, or maybe even of how controversial he is?
That’s a good point. I don’t think the creationists would agree to such an arrangement, because they can only lose or break even: if he wins the debate, people will say “Great, he can out-argue some random college student, so what?”; if he loses, people will say “Hah! He can’t even win a debate with some random college student!” There would seem to be very little incentive for a prominent creationist to submit to that.
20-year-old non-smoking male with proper world-saving ambitions here. I’m in New York and a minimum of an hour and a half from anywhere in MA; not sure if you’d consider that commuting distance.
Are you going to the Singularity Summit?
Do you go to Hampshire by some chance?
However, there is the possibility of re-framing LW it so that it appeals more to women. Perhaps we need to re-frame saving the world as a charitable sacrifice?
Is there a way to re-frame LW as being about “charitable sacrifice” without significantly straying the general goal of “refining the art of human rationality” (which may or may not be charitable/sacrificial)?
What do you see as the essence of its current framing, and what is the evidence that women would respond better to the charitable-sacrifice frame?
(Normally I’d respond to the quoted comment with “That’s sexist nonsense” and leave it at that, but I am trying to be socratic about it.)
(Also, if anybody knows or can estimate, are the gender ratios similar in the relevant areas of academia?)
I’m going to go back in time and take credit for that cheat sheet.
I don’t think this requires anthropic reasoning.
Here is a variation on the story:
One day, you and the presumptuous philosopher are walking along, arguing about the size of the universe, when suddenly Omega jumps out from behind a bush and knocks you both out with a crowbar. While you’re unconscious, she builds a hotel with 1,000,001 rooms. Then she makes a million copies of both of you, sticks them all in rooms, and destroys the originals.
You wake up in a hotel room, in bed with the presumptuous philosopher, with a note on the table from Omega, explaining what she’s done.
“Which room are we in, I wonder?” you ask.
“Any of them is equally likely,” says the presumptuous philosopher. “Because it’s bloody obvious and all that. Million to one odds for any given room.”
“Rubbish!” you scream. “Rubbish and poppycock! We have a 50% chance of being in room 870,199, and a 50% chance of being in one of the other rooms.”
After the presumptuous philosopher stands in baffled silence for a moment, he says, “In that case, I’ll make a deal with you. We’ll go outside and check, and if we’re in room 870,199 I’ll give you ten bucks. If we’re in one of the other rooms, I’ll just smile smugly.”
“Hah!” you say. “You just lost an expected five bucks, sucker!”
You run out of the room to find yourself surrounded by throngs of yourselves and smug looking presumptuous philosophers; you turn around and look at your door, labeled 129,070.
If I’m not mistaken (am I?), this version of the story is exactly isomorphic to PlaidX’s original version; the only difference is that it’s easier to see why the friend is wrong before you get to the end.
To anyone who agrees with the friend in the original story—that the most reasonable estimate is that there is an even chance of being in either hotel—would you disagree that this version is isomorphic to the original?
There are non-metaphysical treatments of causality. I’m not sure if any particular interpretations are favoured around here, but they build on Bayes and they work. (I have yet to read it, but I’ve heard good things about Judea Pearl’s Causality.)
It’s a “psychological projection” inasmuch as probability itself is, but as with probability, that doesn’t mean it’s never a useful concept, as long as it’s understood in the correct light.
Oh, I wasn’t agreeing with taw on that. Just responding to your association of causation with metaphysics. I don’t see Omega breaking any causality, whether in a metaphysical or statistical sense.
As for excluding backwards causation and causality loops—I’m not sure why we should necessarily want to exclude them, if a given system allows them and they’re useful for explaining or predicting anything, even if they go against our more intuitive notions of causality. I was just recently thinking that backwards causality might be a good way to think about Newcomb’s problem. (That idea might go down in flames, but I think the point stands that backward/cyclical causality should be allowed if they’re found to be useful.)
It was at the Summit. He was using the example of… I forgot the percentages, but if five people witness someone having an epileptic seizure, it is less likely that they will get help than if only one person witnesses it.
So he pointed to a random person in the audience and directed them to save the world, instead of directing that mandate at the audience as a whole.
That sums things up for me. To paraphrase Katie Lucas, every piece of interpersonal skills advice I’ve come across has, at its kernel, a very small section labelled “do magic here”—or at least it often seems like magic to those who need that kind of advice in the first place.
As a member of that lower caste, I’m always interested in the possibility of systematizing social/dating skills. I’m currently looking into books, videos, etc. intended for autistic and Asperger people. I am neither (as far as I know), but it seems like they’re the most likely to receive clear, algorithmic (so to speak) advice, because there’s a recognized medical need for it. Probably it’s easier for society to sympathize with them than with your run-of-the-mill geek with poor social skills, even if there are similar solutions to both of their problems. (I don’t mean to belittle the problems faced by actual autistics, who absolutely do deserve that sympathy, but I also think that there should be no shame in applying the same solutions (if they work) to similar types of problems when they are faced by non-autistics.)
I’m trying a few such books right now. I might be back with some recommendations if any of them help.
When I was recently considering signing up for OkCupid, I asked a few friends (actually on a forum, but a small intimate one) about their thoughts on this:
There’s still a stigma. That’s why people say “there’s no stigma anymore!”
(...which is what I was worried about. Of course, “a witty saying proves nothing”, but it makes sense—if there weren’t a stigma, there would be less need to defend it against claims that there’s still a stigma, and fewer people trying to.)
Okcupid is generally thought of as acceptable as long as you don’t take it too seriously. If anyone you know sees you on there, well, they have an account too.
(...which is a pretty good point too. So I took the plunge and joined.)
Not necessarily that most people are smart, but that smart people can still believe and do crazy/stupid things.
(That’s how I interpreted it, at least.)
why do these evolution polemics always attack the straw man of some imagined universally agreed-upon “Judeo-Christian” personal creator god that must be benevolent and rational?
I don’t know about the “rational” part (the God of the Old Testament, Koran, etc. is a bloodthirsty, narcissistic lunatic), but other than that, billions of people believe in such a god, and it’s worth attacking. Hardly a straw man.
Of course there are the Sophisticated Theologians with their moving-target god whom they’re constantly redefining so as to avoid subjecting it to any empirical study or allowing it to have observable effects on the world, but why waste time with them? They’re not the ones willing or able to start a nuclear war to defend their god, or to fly planes into buildings for his glory, or to oppress people in his name. They write books and give talks, and they’re mostly harmless.
has anyone ever provided persuasive evidence for the explanatory power of Hinduism? yes. they’re called hindus. etc.
I’d be delighted to see this persuasive evidence. Presumably, “persuasive” includes “persuasive to people who aren’t already Hindus”, right?
try as you might, persuasion will never be the exclusive domain of the rational scientist, and there will never be a time when everyone is persuaded by one explanation.
Truth is not defined by persuasiveness. One of the big themes of this site is understanding the ways we come to be persuaded of things that are demonstrably untrue… and there are a lot of them. Reason and empiricism and may not be able to discover every truth (hence the name “Less Wrong” rather than “Never Wrong”), but it’s the best we have. Religion—the central point of which is faith, belief in the unknowable—is exactly such a “zero knowledge” mechanism. If you can have faith in x, you can just as easily have faith in ~x, with precisely as much justification. You have gained no knowledge.
I’m seeing tons of this on Facebook regarding Haiti relief. A proliferation of groups and events like “Wear Red for Haiti” and “Pray for Haiti” and “For every person who joins this group, I’ll give $1 for Haiti, because I’m a millionaire attention whore, and hey look someone wrote ‘gullible’ on the ceiling” (paraphrasing, granted) and “Sending Reiki Energy Healing to Haiti” (*RAGE*). I feel like they could all have the same title: “Join here to feel better about not donating actual money to actual people doing actual helpful work in Haiti.”
Just so I understand this part of your point, what do you mean by “hero” (as in “I am a hero” but also the previous paragraph where you talk about who is and isn’t a hero)? Is that a reference to some earlier article I missed, maybe?
Yeah, maybe a better term to use in this context would be something like “revolutionary” (a bit aggrandizing, but so is “hero”, and I’d say it’s well-deserved). That would be for those who are actively trying, whether or not they have personally made any significant, lasting contributions — the heroes would be those who have.
(Not that we’d want this to turn into a status game, of course. The only point of debate here is whether clearer terminology could be used.)
Eh, it’s pretty clear that it was only intended to be a hyperbolically strong recommendation of a book. No need to interpret it literally. (Still, despite that, and despite its status as one of my favourite books, I agree that it doesn’t really fit as a “rationality quote”.)