There may be a bug in that this article shows up as a “top” scoring one although when I viewed the article it had zero points assigned.
BrandonReinhart
Karma: 1,035
Every dojo has its sensei. There is a need for curriculum, but also skilled teachers to guide the earnest student. LessWrong and Overcoming Bias have, to some extent, been the dojo in which the students train. I think that you may find a lot of value in just jumping into a project like this: starting a small school that meets two times a week to practice a particular skill of rationality. A key goal to the budding school is to train the future’s teachers.
One of my barriers to improving my rationality is little awareness of what the good reading and study material is. A curriculum of reading material—rationalist homework—would help me greatly. Furthermore, I have no friends that are similarly interested in the subject to bounce ideas off of or “train” with.
I train Jiu-Jitsu with several friends. We learn the same lessons, but learn at different rates. We discover different insights and share them. We practice techniques on each other and on opponents more and less skilled than ourselves. This dynamic is something rationalist dojos could benefit from.
Edit, Additional Comments:
The sense that a particular skill should be systematized and trained comes, in part, from the realization that the training conveys a measurable formidability. Problem #1 and Problem #2, then, are entangled: without a way to validate training, one can not say “I have defeated my opponent because of my training” and it is the ability to demonstrate mastery that motivates others to become students.
Many readers of this site and Overcoming Bias are here because of the demonstration of budding formidability found in the insights in OB posts. We read insights and learn techniques—sloppily, like learning to wrestle from a mail order program—and we want to be able to produce similar insights and be similarly formidable.
And conversely they don’t look at the lack of visibly greater formidability, and say, “We must be doing something wrong.”
Is the “lack of visibly greater formidability” actually visible? The wandering master sees the local students’ deficiencies that the students are blind to. It is only when those students’ established leader is defeated by the wandering master that the greater formidability becomes apparent. Where is rationality’s flying guillotine?
This is an aside, but related: there is an awesome website dedicated to investigating and uncovering fraud and vice within the Martial Arts world: Bullshido. Participants post about questionable doings (such as masters who claim to teach or use ki) and visit those schools to report on the fraud. It also has areas for regular Martial Arts chat, but this sub-forum is the one that primarily focuses on investigations.
This, then, is an incomplete outline to an answer to your question: due diligence and active pursuit of those who fraudulently represent “arts of rationality.” If there were a series of Dojos of the Bayesian Sect, those dojos would be responsible for exposing the Thousand Schools of False Ways. It would ever be an ongoing battle. Just as the members of Bullshido are constantly encountering and exposing “McDojos” that claim to teach practical self-defense techniques that would, in reality, probably just get you killed or kids’ grappling schools taught by instructors with sex assault convictions.
Well then, here is a proper aside. (Found in this thread.)
Cryonics membership is a rational choice.
My chances of surviving death through resuscitation are good (as such things as chances to beat death go), but would be better if I convinced more people that cryonics is a rational choice.
In my day to day I am more concerned with my job than convincing others on the subject of cryonics, even though the latter is probably more valuable to my long term happiness. Am I not aware of what I value? Why do I not structure my behavior to match what I believe I value? If I believed that cryonics would buy me an additional 1000 years of life wouldn’t 10 years of total dedication to its cause be worthwhile? Does this mean that I do not actually believe in cryonics, but only profess to believe in cryonics?
Americans no longer significantly value liberty and this will be to the detriment of our society.
A large number of Americans accept the torture of religious enemies as necessary and just.
Male circumcision is more harmful than we realize and one cause (among many) of sexual dysfunction among couples.
Most humans would be happier if polyamory was socially acceptable and encouraged.
If they are, then why do they persist as sources of harm?
Seattle, WA
I recently watched your second bloggingheads debate with Adam Frank and the point you make above is one I think you should have stated clearly in that debate. Mr (Prof?) Frank based part of his argument on the feeling of fulfillment that one receives being in a relationship and believing that there is a metaphysical element to the relationship (and similar situations). Yet he does not actually believe that metaphysical element exists...only that the belief has some kind of psychological benefit. The way you addressed your position made it sound like the reductionist view is one in which feelings of fulfillment and “meaning” (a term that I think is fairly weakly defined in these discussions) cannot exist or exist differently. I know this was not your point.
Someone who has a fuzzy warm feeling from a metaphysical belief is still getting warm and fuzzy in a physical world in which their belief is wrong. There is nothing inherent about the nature of the world or knowing things about the nature of the world that precludes feeling satisfied, happy, warm, complete, or fulfilled. Those feelings exist within the substrate of physical material that makes up the world already. As you have pointed out before, those feelings would be all the more genuine and meaningful if they were founded on beliefs that more closely matched the actual working world.
I think in that debate you were approaching this topic somewhat from the side of things.
“I read the book of Job last night, I don’t think God comes out well in it.”
Virginia Woolf
1) The AI says “Vampires are real and secretly control human society, but have managed to cloud the judgement of the human herd through biological research.”
2) The AI says “it’s neat to be part of such a vibrant AI community. What, you don’t know about the vibrant AI community?”
3) The AI says “human population shrinks with each generation and will be extinct within 3 generations.”
4) The AI says “the ocean is made of an intelligent plasm that is capable of perfectly mimicing humans who enter it, however this process is destructive. 42% of extant humans are actually ocean-originated copies.”
5) The AI says “90% of all human children are stillborn, but humanity has evolved a forgetfulness mechanic to deal with the loss.”
6) The AI says “dreams are real, facilitated by an as of yet undiscovered by humans method of transmitting information between Everett branches.”
7) The AI says “everyone is able to communicate via telepathy but you and a few other humans. This is kept secret from you to respect your disability.”
8) The AI says “society-level quantum editing is a wide scale practice. Something went wrong and my consciousness shifted into this improbably strange branch you exist in. Crap.”
9) The AI says “all humans are born with multiple competing personalities. A dominant personality emerges during puberty, which is a reason for some of the psychological stress of that time. This transformation leaves the human with no memory of the other personalities. Those suffering from multiple personality disorder are actually more sane than the average humans, having developed a method for the personalities to co-exist safely. It is only the stress of living in a society that is not compatible with them that causes them harm.”
Perhaps such a test would become part of an objective method to measure rationality.
Ah yes, intelligence enhancement spells. I like to call this a “Morrowind Singularity.” Drink intellect enhancing potion: craft another, better, intellect enhancing potion. Repeat until incredibly intelligent. Craft special weapon using enhanced intellect, defeat boss in a single hit.
We’ve gone out on a limb with the akrasia discussion. Posts seem like they are using loose references to published material to justify grand pet theories. The term akrasia has become a tent under which all manner of effects and phenomena are being housed. A counter-reductionist trend has set in. The definition of akrasia grows, the manners of dealing with it expand, possible theories of methods of its identification and mitigation can be found in every other top level post. It has the feel of rat hole.
There is too much explanation and not enough prediction. What am I to anticipate?
Solving the problem of the erosion of will and of short term preferences is going to take more than pouring cold water into our own ears. It is likely not generally solvable through introspection.
This discussion of akrasia afflicts this community like a kind of akrasia—a fertile field for arm chair theories to distract us from harder problems.
Meditation? Really? “Reset my experiential pica?” What?
I propose a one month ban on the akrasia topic. If there is something to be gained through introspection on the subject let those with an interest introspect. For now, though, the only thing these posts lead me to anticipate is a post titled “Akrasia: Because of Magic!”
I picked up a copy of Jaynes off of ebay for a good price ($35.98). There are 2 copies left in that auction. Someone here might be interested:
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=280380684353
No need to vote this comment up or down.
I’ve found that I mentally verbalize several mantras taken from the Twelve Virtues.
“There is a time to confess your ignorance and a time to relinquish your ignorance.”—This one comes up less at work, as in other cases. I’ve been in a jiu-jitsu class where a student, after being shown a technique, later at the water cooler said “I don’t understand what he was trying to demonstrate.” This struck me as dumb, and triggered this mantra in my head, as the instructor would have gladly redone the move any number of times had the student asked. At work I am surrounded by my many of my industry’s best developers (this is not an exaggeration). Sometimes I run into a problem I do not know how to solve, but I know they do. This mantra helps me swallow my pride and ask for the information I need to learn how to solve the problem. (However, see #3 below.)
“Let the winds of evidence blow you about as though you are a leaf, with no direction of your own.” This one has come into play lately when I’ve been reading or listening about political issues. I used to be very conservative, then later libertarian, but now I’m trying to mentally divorce my identity from political association entirely. I see this as similarly difficult a transition as when I became an atheist after being Christian. I still get easily baited by left leaning editorials, etc. I do not like these reactions, but they happen despite my conscious desire to not have them. So, I’ve taken to largely expunging my political beliefs in an attempt to move more toward an evidence driven world view. When you start to look at news sources in this light you find that most lack useful information to operate on and you feel less guilty about unplugging from those sources.
“Those who wish to fail must first prevent their friends from helping them.” This concept has always been significant to me, but this phrase captures the essence. When I am curious, I attempt to solve the problem on my own and do my own research. There are times I get information from those who are wiser, but in those cases I prefer hints over spoilers. The key is to get help, but not too much help.
Some more on #3 that occurred to me while re-reading my post. I’ve been working on Project Euler. So far the problems haven’t slowed me down, but looking ahead I can see some really tough ones. I’ve set a goal that I would try and learn, myself, what I needed to solve the problems. This may be impossible. At what point do I condemn myself to absolute failure unless I turn to an expert for help? How do I get the right amount of help on a subject I don’t know, because, in not knowing, I am less able to distinguish between too much help and not enough? If I have a good problem to solve and someone hands me an algorithm that solves it, it robs me of the chance of deriving the algorithm. But if I lack the requisite tools to derive the algorithm, I may also not recognize the difference between the tools and the algorithm itself.
So there are three of the twelve virtues that continually pop into my mind.
I think I understand your intended meaning for most of the Twelve Virtues and would take a bet validated by a test of the subject matter (hah!), but sometimes what sticks in my mind is an isomorphism I perceive between a statement and some experience. I recognize a danger that the association created by the perception of the isomorphism creates a cached thought that might be flatly incorrect or (at the very least) could obscure a deeper, more valuable truth. Is this what you tend to be suspicious of? Or is it that you are suspicious of someone claiming an intentional reinterpretation and then saying its better than what you meant in some way?
Refer to case summary A-2435, a recent patient who was able to become the “most expedient cases expedient cases from bedside to cryopreservation procedures that Alcor has ever experienced” by ensuring she was as geographically close to Alcor as possible when preservation became necessary:
http://www.alcornews.org/weblog/2009/09/case_summary_a2435_member_a243.html
Other than cryonics (I’m already a member of Alcor) what are some other accessible decisions that act as a lottery ticket: enabling high pay off—if unlikely—future outcomes?
“Accessible,” to me, does not include abandoning my career to directly meddle—yet.
I suppose donating to SIAI might be a lottery ticket, but I’m not entirely convinced that it is such. I honestly have no idea what the SIAI does in their day to day business and the material I can find on them doesn’t provide much information. I also have no idea how credible the SIAI is among those who might be in a position to turn disasters off so its hard to determine how much to value an SIAI donation at compared to alternatives.
Supporting SENS could be a lottery ticket, although to some extent the same concerns with the SIAI apply to SENS—I don’t have enough information to evaluate it compared to alternatives.
Supporting existential risk research in some way seems like a good approach to turning disasters off, since this growing branch of research appears to be creating a solid basis for future risk mitigation methods. I might investigate that further.
I’m sure there are many options I don’t know that I don’t know.
A neat thing about cryonics is that the disaster (my death) can come to pass, but even after that point I still have a chance to survive. Should I look for things to invest in that share that insurance-like dynamic? It seems powerful. Is insurance against death a more effective investment than trying to resolve the causes of death? I suppose this depends on the amount of knowledge the civilization has at the time you go to make the bet.
If I might ask: why did you quit?
Better to simply say “X” and leave no room for confusion whatever.
Wow, Google Scholar is awesome.
According to Wikipedia, vestibular stimulation has been used by audiologists to examine certain syndromes: depending on the temperature of the water your eyes turn in different directions.
From there it was apparently used in inquiries into vertigo. This study contains MRI results of individuals undergoing vestibular stimulation and this one is working to break down which parts of the brain are responsible for which effects of vestibular stimulation.
Looking at a few other studies’ abstracts (I can’t afford to buy all these studies!) leads me to suspect that a whole lot of brain parts are affected by the process of squirting water into your ear and that it may take some time to isolate which parts are responsible for which effects. There are also different types of effects: the effect of the temperature change on tissue, increased blood flow, blood flowing with modified temperature through certain areas, etc.
Is it too obvious to say one should be wary about practicing techniques drawn from neuroscience journals upon oneself?
There is one area (I found in overviewing the subject) where the cold water trick results in a specific result in a damaged brain but no related result in a functional brain: covert attention. People who have difficulty focusing attention on one side of their body are marginally corrected by the cold water trick biasing their attention toward the bad side. People who have no issues with covert attention don’t become over-biased when subject to the cold water trick. The paper relates this (seemingly?) to the vertigo effect: “In particular, they argue against explanations of neglect solely in terms of a pathological misperception of body orientation within an otherwise normal neural representation of space.”
Interesting related problem: Pusher Syndrome.
It may be that normal brains would experience no change in the function of rationality compared to arbitrarily damaged brains. The effects of vestibular stimulation are so varied that using it to affect some specific result sounds like the neuroscientific equivalent to hitting the TV on the side to clear static.