Cosmos

Karma: 728

Cosmos 26 Apr 2009 4:08 UTC
3 points
on: Where’s Your Sense of Mystery?

2: One big question I’m still uncertain about: why do some people, despite it all, find science really interesting? How come this is sometimes true of one science and not others? I have a friend who loves physics and desperately wants to solve its open questions, but whose eyes glaze over every time she hears about biology—what’s up with that?

I am one of those people who find science really interesting, although this is not limited to one or two disciplines, so I can’t shed any light for you there.

I find science to be interesting because I think that it is a process that discovers truth, meaning correct correspondence to reality. Understanding the objective world better allows us to interact with it more efficiently—look at what engineers have accomplished. Truth allows us to win.

Edit: Let me clarify: I find the results of science fascinating and revealing, but I think the actual work you have to do to further science can be quite tedious. I want to glean the insights, but I know I can direct my efforts elsewhere more effectively.

Cosmos 26 Apr 2009 20:39 UTC
1 point
in reply to: byrnema’s comment on: Where’s Your Sense of Mystery?

All scientists, mathematicians, philosophers have this same goal, they just differ in which topics and questions they think are (a) most important and (b) most effective for updating the map.

I think comparative advantage plays a role in this. If you happen to be good at numbers for whatever reason, you go into a more quantitative field, and that is how you can best contribute to the expanding frontier of knowledge.

I would have been more interested in psychology, I had a budding interest in high school, but I was uncomfortable with the shades of gray. I preferred the rigor of mathematics—even if the conclusions were just about numbers rather than something that really matters like people.

I was very mathematically inclined from a young age, but after learning calculus I began to look elsewhere to further my knowledge. I turned towards the social sciences, which led me down a less quantitative path. I think the difference is between the study of physical systems of relatively few variables, versus complex biological systems with many interactions between many individual components. That simple mathematical precision is infeasible when dealing with complexity, it requires a different set of analytical skills and tools, which I found myself much more inclined towards.

Cosmos 29 Apr 2009 17:35 UTC
2 points
on: Fighting Akrasia: Incentivising Action
I think the issue you raise here boils down to that of having a credible commitment to punish in the event of defection. It is very credible that the company you work for will indeed fire you if you don’t do your job. Roland in the comments suggests “Find a romantic partner who is willing to give you a kick in the ass if you procrastinate.” This is another external source of commitment, although it might or might not be credible—will your romantic partner want to inflict enough harm to get you motivated?

The key is to be able to generate a credible commitment with yourself, and from my own personal experience I think this is possible. I take promises very seriously—if I make an agreement with someone, I will fulfill it, which means I don’t make a promise unless I am serious about keeping it. So far, anyway, I have yet to break a promise.

In order to overcome akrasia, I hijack this obligation system for my own use. I can make a promise to myself to do something. But where is the loss aversion? After all, can I credibly punish myself if I decide to break the promise? The reason it works is because if I make this explicit promise to myself and then subsequently break it, I can no longer say I have never broken a promise.

Unfortunately, because the stakes are so high, I only rarely make these kinds of commitments. I still struggle daily with akrasia for small decisions.

Cosmos 29 Apr 2009 17:47 UTC
0 points
in reply to: Gordon Seidoh Worley’s comment on: Fighting Akrasia: Incentivising Action
I agree that I also convert these contracts to sunk costs. That service works for people who use the standard heuristics, however I doubt it would help most of us very much.

There are variants on this model you might find more attractive, however. Some services will set up a contract to donate your money to a particular charity that you strongly disagree with, if you don’t meet your goals. That gets around the sunk cost problem, since you will still take a contingent personal loss if you fail to meet your goals.

Cosmos 29 Apr 2009 19:38 UTC
2 points
in reply to: Psychohistorian’s comment on: Fighting Akrasia: Incentivising Action
I agree that discounting plays a huge role in akrasia. There are immediate costs, but longer term gains. This implies that the solution to akrasia is to lower your discount rate. Problem solved.

...now, how does one go about doing that?

Cosmos 29 Apr 2009 22:40 UTC
1 point
in reply to: Paul Crowley’s comment on: Fighting Akrasia: Incentivising Action

The fix isn’t to try to reduce k, which is obviously not directly possible[...]

Why is this obvious?

And could indirect measures do it?

Cosmos 30 Apr 2009 14:30 UTC
1 point
on: Rationalistic Losing

If I play Carcassonne against my opponents and whomp them thirty times in a row by repeating my best known strategies I will have gained nothing. If I decide to use the game as a learning experience to test new strategies I can create an opportunity to learn, but am no longer playing to win.

If you can already win consistently, why do you seek new strategies? I would seek a new game (or at least new competitors) where you don’t yet consistently win.

More generally, I think this is an example of exploration (learning) vs. exploitation (winning) strategies. Personally, I think that people are more risk adverse than is otherwise optimal, so we should attempt more exploration than we normally do before settling into an exploitation routine.

Cosmos 30 Apr 2009 15:14 UTC
1 point
in reply to: Nominull’s comment on: Rationalistic Losing
But oh, how we lose!

Cosmos 30 Apr 2009 17:39 UTC
2 points
in reply to: whpearson’s comment on: Fighting Akrasia: Incentivising Action
This just reminded me of microcredit in developing countries. The loans are often given to a group of several people, rather than one individual, and the repayments have to be made in public in the village. The group self-selects individuals likely to repay (so they don’t have to suffer for the non-repayment of others), and the public nature of the credit put their reputation on the line.

This suggests a method of implementing “do stuff to avoid social status loss”—when you wish to commit yourself to doing something, you should make a public announcement to a group whose image of you matters. That way if you back down, you lose credibility in your social group.

Cosmos 3 May 2009 20:43 UTC
3 points
on: Essay-Question Poll: Dietary Choices
I’m another paleo dieter. It seems like that diet is overrepresented among rationalists and individualists from my experience, but that is just personal empiricism.

I take a positive view towards the morality of meat consumption. We are doing it because it is practical and delicious—we simply have a weaker preference for not doing unnecessary harm to animals. Once vat-grown meat becomes widely available, I predict that our cultural sentiments surrounding meat consumption will rapidly change such that only vat-grown meat will be acceptable to eat.

Cosmos 4 May 2009 17:29 UTC
3 points
in reply to: MBlume’s comment on: Return of the Survey
I ticked the boxes, out of amusement that they existed. I’m also curious if the tickers and non-tickers systematically different.

Cosmos 6 May 2009 14:40 UTC
1 point
in reply to: AdeleneDawner’s comment on: No Universal Probability Space
I thought this was based off of historical data, although I don’t remember the source and could easily be wrong.

If I am not wrong, it should be interpreted as: “It has rained 30% of the time we have had similar weather conditions in the past.”

Cosmos 8 May 2009 17:56 UTC
4 points
in reply to: brianm’s comment on: Hardened Problems Make Brittle Models
Models are also dangerously seductive. You’re gaining precision at the expense of correspondence to reality, which can only be a temporary trade off if you’re ever going to put your knowledge to work.

I most strongly object to modeling as used in economics. Modeling is no longer about getting traction on difficult concepts—building these stylized models has become a goal in and of itself, and mathematical formalization is almost a prerequisite for getting published in a major journal.

Cosmos 12 May 2009 17:22 UTC
4 points
0
on: Willpower Hax #487: Execute by Default
As far as I can tell, the trick is to remove willpower from the situation one way or the other. Brains are very good at doing things habitually, executing unconscious subroutines and freeing up willpower to do something else. If our supply of willpower is limited, then we should attempt to encode one or two good habits at a time, and once they are encoded we can move on to the next problem.

Cosmos 15 May 2009 2:03 UTC
1 point
in reply to: Scott Alexander’s comment on: Survey Results
Perhaps they are contractarians, which they think isn’t about “morality” per se?

Cosmos 23 Sep 2009 16:46 UTC
5 points
on: Against Discount Rates
Interestingly enough, Schumpeter essentially makes this argument in his Theory of Economic Development. He is against the view that humans have intrinsic discount rates, an innate time preference, which was one of the Austrian school’s axioms. He thinks that interest is a phenomenon of economic development—resources need to be withdrawn from their customary usage, to allow entrepreneurs to find new combinations of things, and that requires compensation. Once this alternative use of resources is available, however, it becomes an opportunity cost for all other possible actions, which is the foundation of discount rates.

Cosmos 29 Sep 2009 16:23 UTC
0 points
on: Your Most Valuable Skill
Learning from the mistakes of others.

Cosmos 1 Oct 2009 15:58 UTC
3 points
in reply to: CannibalSmith’s comment on: Open Thread: October 2009
I definitely agree that a forum would allow for more discussion, particularly of the less-momentous but still-beneficial topics. In particular, I think that discussions of actual strategies people have tried, what has worked and not worked, could actually be highly beneficial. I see them as data we need to collect in order to begin forming some kind of method for actually helping rationalists win in real world situations.

Cosmos 1 Oct 2009 19:30 UTC
4 points
in reply to: Eliezer Yudkowsky’s comment on: Open Thread: October 2009

1) I can’t work and starve at the same time.

That assumes you’re starving during intermittent fasting. Many practitioners actually find that they are much more clear-headed when they have not eaten recently.

My guess is that you’re equating hypoglycemia with hunger. I eat a paleo diet, which has low levels of dietary carbohydrates. This forces the body to use gluconeogenesis to meet its glucose needs. Because you’re producing it endogenously, your blood sugar remains completely steady. You only suffer from hypoglycemia when you’re dependent upon exogenous sources of glucose, forcing you to eat every few hours. I much prefer the freedom to eat whenever I want.

Cosmos 11 May 2010 15:49 UTC
13 points
on: Do you have High-Functioning Asperger’s Syndrome?
I came to the conclusion that I have autistic tendencies a long time ago—lack of understanding of social cues, constant pattern recognition, stuttering, habitual actions… Given the high autism rates in Silicon Valley, it seems likely to me that there is indeed a genetic component, and “high-functioning” autistics have a heterozygous genotype. (Although I don’t think it’s yet ruled out that it could be caused by some type of improper socialization.)

However, I seem to have an uncommon level of ability to self-modify (from my discussions with other people, including rationalists), and since discovering rationality I’ve been attempting to ruthlessly optimize various aspects of myself. For my most recent example, because I didn’t understand social cues I took a PUA seminar and within days I could successfully approach and charm people in bars and clubs, a world that I always thought would be inaccessible to me. It turns out I was just unconsciously sending low-status signals, because I never paid any attention to what myself or others were doing.

This also helps me deal with the symptoms as well. I have habitual actions, but I don’t allow myself to be disturbed if they are interrupted. (In fact, I think settling too quickly into habits means we don’t explore the possibility space thoroughly enough, so I consciously try to break up my routines and find new ways of doing things.) I have narrow interests, but I rotate between different things, in a type of serial immersion. I can even use conscious control over my mouth, tongue and throat to relax my muscles and effectively stop my stuttering.

For what it’s worth I scored a 22. I predict that number will be lower in the future.