Agreed on sequences example.
For me the most valuable were e.g. that Seneca’s letters, with which I initially disagreed completely, but after several days or weeks of reflection, came to the conclusion that he was right and I was wrong.
banev
Karma: −67
What is the correlation between upvoting and benefit to readers of LW?
Thanks.
Any forecasts of any number of experts in any domain out of normal distribution (where you do not need experts, you need statistics) are worth of nothing and do worse than coinflip (in binary outcomes). You cannot predict anything in more or less complex systems except that they will change suddenly at some point of time.
(may I pls do not write IMO every time, because all I write is not truth, but only my opinion) ))
Utilitarianism and the idea of a “rational agent” are fundamentally inconsistent with reality
Hey downvoters! Did you read the article at the link? What specifically you do not like? Leave comments with your opinion, don’t be shy, I’m interested in your mode of thinking.
About domain of type: I see the reality as infinitely complex system and causal links are as much a part of this system as objects and events and actors and laws of physics and other entities and phenomenons, named and separated from the background by human’s attention. The sky is one of these objects, it doesn’t exist by itself in reality, except that in the imagination of people (as well as money, states, gods etc.), unlike living objects (subjects?) and phenomenons which do exist independently of our attention to them. While this concept of sky is useful—it is used. If people will not need it, it will disappear from existence. And for me the speaking of the truth of the some qualities of such concept is a not-correct way of looking at things.
Agreed. “Sky is blue” is quite a good model of reality, useful for some purposes, but it’s not the truth.
The problem with the truth is that many most terrific wars in the history of humankind were ignited by different concept of the truth.
And people who think they know the truth are the most intolerant as we can see here.
My principles are not in disbelieving simple statements, but to see and articulate that these statements (especially not scientific ones) are not truth as many of people even here tend to believe.
My position is: I know that I don’t know a lot, much more than I know, and the more I live the bigger my knowledge and the bigger my ignorance. And I’m quite sure of my stance here.
This position of me is not preventing you from having your own, different position, as we can see by your comments.
And you, at the other hand, just told me to stop pretending to be wise.
Rational overconfidence in the tens of billions: recent example
I was not talking that facts in fiction books are correct representation of the reality, it would be bullshit. I was talking that facts from history books which is taken for “non-fiction” often are no better and implications which you can derive from the thoughts of author of fiction are often more correct than those you can derive from the thoughts of your neighbour or friend or author at the popular magazine.
// People can certainly verify historical and biographical events.//
Certainly not. Often you cannot verify even current events, how can we talk about things what have been (or not) long ago?
History is the most fiction of all.
And science is not.
No, I’m not suggesting this, it would be strange. These are things of different domains. Science is the only domain where the knowledge can be verified by some means. E.g. by predictions.
I’m not the expert in general theory of relativity neither I am the one in theoretical physics, so I cannot speak of these fields with any confidence—how close to reality they are in their current state of development.
I’m suggesting consider all the information coming to you (except info in the scientific domain which you can and should verify by some means, including personal experiments and network/tree of trusted sources) as generally fictional, and update your beliefs correspondingly.
Exactly. “Fiction” means not real. But this doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t update your beliefs on some ideas from it. The problem is that what mainstream considers “non-fiction” has de-facto the same relation to reality as “fiction” but many people quite ready to update their beliefs on it, considering it to being the source of some facts, because this is called “non-fiction”, right?
I trust my senses if I can reasonably be sure that I’m not in the altered state of consciousness. So what?
Beliefs are important because without them you cannot act in this world.
My point was that you should not dismiss the thoughts of knowledgeable author what he put into the mouth of some character in the story just because it’s “logical fallacy” or “not real” while taking into consideration what your neighbour says on the similar matter. Of course if you are interested in being less wrong.
By excluding from the pool of knowledge of reality on which you update your beliefs any written “fiction” you deprive yourself of valuable chunk of information. This overconfidence is quite common error of rationalists and CFAR participants as I see.
The sky is not blue (pardon the obviousness)
Agreed with all said. Maybe I wrote it not clearly enough. But where is a fundamental error? I agreed with multidimensionality of any book or for that matter event, and don’t think of it as one-dimensional.
A lot of currently available “non-fiction” gives not more updates of reality than some fiction.
By the way Mathematics is one of the few fields where you can and have to check everything by yourself from the first principles. In Physics it is harder.
Kung-fu example is interesting. Let’s continue. If you speak about “actual fights” as “actual kung-fu fights” or “actual fights where one of fighters use kung-fu” then how many people saw any of that in real life or know how they are working or participated personally in one of them? And if the number of such people is really low and you do not have one of them as your instructor, then how do you know that your kung-fu class is closer to real fights than those kung-fu movies?
I do not state that kung-fu movies or Sherlock Holmes cites are correct representations of reality (it would be quite strange), I say that the most of other representations (=models of reality) are more or less the same order of magnitude of correctness, and should be considered as such. If you go to kung-fu class with hope that it will help you to fight in the dark alley with 4 thugs, you are in a problem. Your best chance there is to flee and you’d better go to the running club twice a week then. I got a one-handshake experience of that where champion has been beaten hard because of incapacitated friend whom he couldn’t leave.
The stories of SH do not make any claims about the world and nether the less represent some aspects of it quite correct while Herodotus makes such claims and represents it at least skewed and at most completely false, probably honestly mistaken.
I state that you can personally distill knowledge of reality and useful practical tricks (=more correct model of reality) from fiction books as well as from non-fiction books if you know where to look.
P.S. real fights ARE fun to watch, you can see it by the number of downloads, but even these videos are usually illegal or hard to find, so the numbers are not very representative
P.P.S. This probably do not stand for current Hollywood production, such as Marvel series, from which there is really few things to distill into knowledge, though even they could be educational in some way.
Thanks. Agreed, different places works better for different topics and styles.
I have checked and can acknowledge that a lot of downvotes are quite uncomfortable psychologically even if you are fully prepared to them and even without explicit harassment.
That could be bad:
1) to people who would like to write about some controversial topics which could be uncomfortable but finally helpful to the community (I’m not talking about myself here, but about more sensitive persons);
2) to the community as a whole and to members of the community finally, as their views less likely to be challenged in current setup;
Interesting that this downvote problem probably will matter less for the prominent members of the community who already have a lot of karma and respect. This could lead to the situation when controversial topics become discussed only at the behest of the community leaders.
I could also point that recent changes at YouTube where you cannot see dislikes now, just their percentage, work really well. They encourage more involvement and do not hinder the incentive to write.
P.S. This comment I cannot write because of the rate limit, so it will be posted later.
P.P.S. I decided to consider this not a bug, but a feature and I will answer max 1 comment per day in the following couple of months in any of my places. It should help in different ways: to choose only most valuable comments to engage with, to not spend too much time in useless discussions etc. Personal lengthy discussions could be done through DM if anyone needs them.