badger

Karma: 2,465

badger 27 Feb 2009 7:23 UTC
5 points
on: Tell Your Rationalist Origin Story
I had a broad interest in science and philosophy as an adolescent, but the first issue I really had to confront was religion. My parents are Mormon, and the town I grew up in predominantly LDS, so I felt an enormous pressure against expressing the most basic doubts. It took a significant amount of research before I felt confident leaving my religion behind. Once I had broken the initial barrier, my mind was made up quickly, but I wanted to form an airtight case I thought should convince anyone. The friction this generated between myself and my family, girlfriend, and friends felt almost unbearable at the time, but now I feel much more resilient against social pressure.

Carl Sagan’s The Demon-Haunted World was my first exposure to traditional rationality. I took this book to heart as a teen. I progressed through some of the standard canon of Plato, Aristotle, Descartes, Locke, Hume, Rand, Shermer, Dawkins, Hofstadter, and Dennett. I discovered transhumanism through Anders Sandberg’s site, which helped me flesh out some of the ideals I picked up in science fiction. I think I came upon Overcoming Bias soon after it formed through Tyler Cowen or Bryan Caplan and their enthusiastic praise of Robin. I’ve been a daily reader since then.

As far as recent influences, Eliezer has been by far the single strongest shaper of my beliefs. Jaynes, Gary Drescher’s Good and Real, and Keith Stanovich’s The Robot’s Rebellion have also been major contributors over the past couple months. I’m becoming more aware of my biases and still acquiring new insights daily.

Addendum: The posts that first brought me to OB were We Can’t Foresee to Disagree and The Modesty Argument. The article that really clarified the distinction between Bayesian and traditional rationality was A Technical Explanation.
What links here?
- badger's comment on Welcome to Less Wrong! by MBlume (16 Apr 2009 19:08 UTC; 2 points)

badger 27 Feb 2009 22:56 UTC
12 points
in reply to: Eliezer Yudkowsky’s comment on: Tell Your Rationalist Origin Story
I agree with Eliezer here, but Robin also has a point. I think we should distinguish between the transition away from one position and the transition towards another. Because falsification is relatively easier than confirmation, once the right evidence falls into place, a rationalist should expect to quickly abandon prior beliefs. The problem arises if something else quickly fills the void without being thoroughly tested. I saw a couple high school friends fall into the trap of thinking the opposite of stupidity is intelligence after leaving religion behind.

Beware a slow transition away from old beliefs as much as a sharp transition to new ones.

badger 27 Feb 2009 23:10 UTC
8 points
on: Issues, Bugs, and Requested Features
Four thoughts:
1. Show the number of comments on posts from the front page.
2. Add a favicon. I usually have at least 20 tabs open in Firefox at once, and favicons are invaluable navigation aids.
3. I like the tree view because it allows direct comment, but a flat view would be helpful to catch new posts.
4. Display the full text of a post in the RSS feed. I’m glad the feed shows the number of comments though.
What links here?
- thomblake's comment on Issues, Bugs, and Requested Features by Eliezer Yudkowsky (28 Feb 2009 2:58 UTC; 1 point)

badger 27 Feb 2009 23:30 UTC
14 points
on: The Most Important Thing You Learned
The most important thing I can recall is conservation of expectation. In particular, I’m thinking of Making Beliefs Pay Rent and Conservation of Expected Evidence. We need to see a greater commitment to deciding in advance which direction new evidence will shift our beliefs.

Most frequently referenced concepts:
1. Mind projection fallacy and “The map is not the territory.”
2. “The opposite of stupidity is not intelligence.”

badger 28 Feb 2009 4:37 UTC
1 point
in reply to: badger’s comment on: Issues, Bugs, and Requested Features
Is anyone else having issues with logging in? After I log in, it doesn’t appear to have succeeded until I click off the main page. Not sure if there is an issue, but seems confusing.

I’m also not sure if the ‘remember me’ checkbox is working.

badger 28 Feb 2009 20:10 UTC
10 points
on: The Most Frequently Useful Thing
On the previous thread I mentioned the Mind-Projection fallacy and “the opposite of stupidity != intelligence” as being most frequently referenced, but on reflection, I think a reminder of the strictness of rationality makes the biggest difference in practice.

This passage from Technical Explanation sums it up: “But the deeper truth of Bayesianity is this: you cannot game the system. You cannot give a humble answer, nor a confident one. You must figure out exactly how much you anticipate the Sun rising tomorrow, and say that number. [...] You cannot do better except by guessing better and anticipating more precisely.”

At this stage in my life, I find it easy to avoid to dogmaticism. False modesty, uncertainty, vagueness, and skepticism are all much more seductive. I work as a policy analyst in state government, and am frequently asked to provide forecasts. The dangers of narrow prediction intervals are well known, but I am tempted to be cautious and not focus my estimate. The field I work in is notoriously uncertain, but I can’t do better just by being vague. Confidence and uncertainty have to be precisely balanced.

badger 28 Feb 2009 20:23 UTC
1 point
in reply to: Sebastian_Hagen’s comment on: Issues, Bugs, and Requested Features
Using Firefox 2, I have similar issues. The .com domain appears to be working fine, but I’m having problems with the .org domain. The same problem is also present in IE6. In IE with a screen resolution of 1024x768, the sidebar also gets pushed down below the posts and comments.

badger 1 Mar 2009 16:54 UTC
5 points
on: That You’d Tell All Your Friends
I would ideally like to see a book of concrete controversies and scenarios that illustrate the principles of rationality. I envision it almost like a set of exercises. As you’ve noted before, the knowledge that a problem has been solved before tends to kill motivation, so they would need to be framed in a way to elicit curiosity. Quantum mechanics and p-zombies worked well for me, but I was already a long time traditional rationalist. Unfortunately, math tends to be scary to my friends and concepts like p-zombies wouldn’t be considered relevant to the real world. Because an intro book has a lot of ground to cover, this may not be entirely feasible, but readers should have something to try their hand at.

For material to build up to controversies, I’d start with an explanation of guessing the teacher’s password. I bet the concept rings true with most people who have sat through American high schools. Science classes give lots of answers but few explanations. The distinction between real and fake explanations also allows you to hold out the promise of real explanations to build curiosity.

Next, standard examples like the application of Bayes to medical tests and the Wason selection task (on letters and numbers vs. ages and beverages) are good introductory problems. They quickly show the necessity of a strict approach to rationality.

Next, Bayesian scoring à la Techical Explanation. I think my friends would love this, if it were explained right. Once you have a score, the urge is to maximize it. This brings home the points that there is a definite way to judge beliefs, the importance of making a prediction before hand, and the balance that must be struck between vagueness and precision. Beliefs have to pay rent, otherwise they are messing up your score.

Once predictions have been introduced, the book has to cover “the map != the territory” and the Mind Projection fallacy. Jaynes on the physics of coin-flipping did this for me. More “real-world” examples like drug testing might be useful here.

That is a lot of ground to cover, but it feels like a solid core. After that, practice on real issues (suitably divorced from ingrained beliefs) is important, both to hone skills and to make the reader feel like these principles are useful and important.

badger 1 Mar 2009 18:54 UTC
5 points
on: Test Your Rationality
Prediction markets seem like the obvious answer, but the range of issues currently available as contracts is too narrow to be of much use. Most probability calibration exercises are focus on trivial issues. I think they are still useful, but the real test is how you deal with emotional issues, not just neutral ones.

This might not be amenable to a market, but I would like to see a database collected of the questions being addressed by research in-progress. Perhaps when a research grant is issued, if a definite conclusion is anticipated, the question can be entered in the database. The question would have to be constructed so that users could enter in definite predictions. At first glance, I think the predictions would have to remain private until after a result is published, but I’m unsure. In contrast to existing prediction sites, this would have the benefits of a broad range of questions formulated by experts who are concerned about precisely defining the issue at hand. How would a standard procedure of formulating a question for a prediction database influence the type of research done?

Another broad test I’ve considered is whether your judgment of the quality of an individual’s claims is correlated with their social club affiliations. To me, political party stands out as the most relevant example of a social club for this purpose. If you find yourself disagreeing with Republicans more frequently than with Democrats over factual issues, that appears to be a sign of confirmation bias. Because association with social clubs tends to be caused by how you were raised, social class, or the sheer desire to be part of a group, there is no reason to think that affiliation should be a strong predictor of quality. Any thoughts?

badger 2 Mar 2009 0:03 UTC
4 points
in reply to: pwno’s comment on: Test Your Rationality
I agree that people that try to self-improve have more potential to be rational, but I don’t think significantly more are in practice. If your goals are misplaced, achieving them could be worse than if you did nothing. On the subject of New Year Resolutions, my parents are apt to make goals like “attend religious services more frequently” and “read scripture more frequently”, and they often succeed.

badger 2 Mar 2009 1:49 UTC
3 points
in reply to: badger’s comment on: Issues, Bugs, and Requested Features
One last suggestion: would it be possible to set personal time zones?

badger 2 Mar 2009 3:05 UTC
2 points
in reply to: NQbass7’s comment on: The Most Frequently Useful Thing
I agree. I find it funny that you lead your list of examples with “cached thoughts”, because that exactly what these are. Not that that’s a bad thing.

If that’s the case though, maybe we need to be proactive in preventing them from becoming cached thoughts of the bad kind. Eliezer’s posts serve as a good introduction, but I don’t think they are the ideal reference. Maybe a rationalist dictionary would do the trick. I envision something like urban dictionary where multiple definition/explanations can be submitted and voted on.

badger 2 Mar 2009 3:18 UTC
2 points
in reply to: AnnaSalamon’s comment on: Test Your Rationality
I wonder to what degree this is a problem of poor calibration vs. poor motivation. Maybe commitment mechanisms like Stikk.com would have a greater marginal benefit than better calibration. I don’t know about you, but that seems to be the case with regards to similar issues on my end.

badger 2 Mar 2009 3:40 UTC
1 point
in reply to: AnnaSalamon’s comment on: That You’d Tell All Your Friends
I admit I don’t remember exactly what Eliezer’s intentions for his book are, so I just outlined what I would write. If only I had time right now (although that’s not saying much, considering how much time I spent sites like this). Any thoughts on possible issues that are controversial enough to be interesting, but not enough to bring out biases and cached thoughts?

badger 5 Mar 2009 15:43 UTC
3 points
in reply to: thomblake’s comment on: Rationality and Positive Psychology
I think I am using them in their standard senses. Something has intrinsic value) if you directly desire or value it, and it has instrumental value or extrinsic value if it is a means to achieving something with intrinsic value. Instrumental value is often only contingently valuable as a result.

badger 22 Mar 2009 21:37 UTC
65 points
on: Eliezer Yudkowsky Facts
Everything is reducible—to Eliezer Yudkowsky.

Scientists only wear lab coats because Eliezer Yudkowsky has yet to be seen wearing a clown suit.

Algorithms want to know how Eliezer Yudkowsky feels from the inside.

badger 22 Mar 2009 21:41 UTC
65 points
in reply to: badger’s comment on: Eliezer Yudkowsky Facts
Teachers try to guess Eliezer Yudkowsky’s password.

badger 22 Mar 2009 21:53 UTC
20 points
in reply to: badger’s comment on: Eliezer Yudkowsky Facts
P-zombies gain qualia after being in the presence of Eliezer Yudkowsky.

badger 22 Mar 2009 22:35 UTC
26 points
on: When Truth Isn’t Enough
This is one of my favorite posts yet, but I’m not sure I understand your full chain of reasoning. I understand you to be arguing that we should only be affected by the denotational content of a statement, and ignore connotations as best we can. I entirely agree we shouldn’t confuse the two, but I don’t see how to go from that to your full conclusion. Is the danger of confusion so great it is worth giving up the extra expressiveness of connotation? I’d appreciate some clarification.

I really like the idea of an acronym, but I’d like one that can be used naturally as a verb. My best shot is “agree denotationally but oject connotatively”, e.g I adboc that the rich party while the poor starve.
What links here?

badger 22 Mar 2009 22:44 UTC
3 points
in reply to: bentarm’s comment on: When Truth Isn’t Enough
I can’t think of a word that sits well between eccentric and crazy, but the following works similarly:

I’m eccentric. You’re unusual. He’s a freak.