Let’s check featured articles on the main page on 19 July 2014....and...there we go.
Costanza
Karma: 2,027
What is the purpose of an experiment in science? For instance, in the field of social psychology? For instance,what is the current value of the Milgram experiment? A few people in Connecticut did something in a room at Yale in 1961. Who cares? Maybe it’s just gossip from half a century ago.
However, some people would have us believe that this experiment has broader significance, beyond the strict parameters of the original experiment, and has implications for (for example) the military in Texas and corporations in California.
Maybe these people are wrong. Maybe the Milgram experiment was a one-off fluke. If so, then let’s stop mentioning it in every intro to psych textbook. While we’re at it, why the hell was that experiment funded, anyway? Why should we bother funding any further social psychology experiments?
I would have thought, though, that most social psychologists would believe that the Milgram experiment has predictive significance for the real world. A Bayesian who knows about the results of the Milgram experiment should better be able to anticipate what happens in the real world. This is what an experiment is for. It changes your expectations.
However, if a supposedly scientific experiment does nothing at all to alter your expectations, it has told you nothing. You are just as ignorant as you were before the experiment. It was a waste.
Social psychology purports to predict what will happen in the real world. This is what would qualify it as a science. Jason Mitchell is saying it cannot even predict what will happen in a replicated experiment. In so doing, he is proclaiming to the world that he personally has learned nothing from the experiments of social psychology. He is ignorant of what will happen if the experiment is replicated. I am not being uncharitable to Mitchell. He is rejecting the foundations of his own field. He is not a scientist.
I’d think that “famous experiments where the original result was clearly correct” are exactly those whose results have already been replicated repeatedly. If they haven’t been replicated they may well be famous—Stanford prison experiment, I’m looking at you—but they aren’t clearly correct.
I would like to be able to talk about politics with rational people …[but]...the problem is that crazy views get too much credence here, due to an unwillingness to criticize by more rational people.
Right. It’s those damn greens. Damn those greens, with their votes for… crazy green things! Not like us blues, who want nothing but good and rational blueness!
[ETA] My mind has been killed. This is why I don’t want party politics—as opposed to policy—on LessWrong.
1) I would like to be able to talk about politics with rational people
I’d suggest a distinction between “politics” and “policy”, at least in the American English prevalent on LessWrong. “Politics” implies party politics, blue versus green, horse races (by which I mean election horse races), and tribalism. I think your post suggested an interest in this. Personally, I don’t want this here.
If, however, you want to talk about policy, using the analytical language of policy, then I say go for it. However, your original post, with its reference to parties, made me doubtful.
I think it’s a bit silly to call it “courageous” to criticize an online forum. At worst it makes me feel slightly bad when my posts get downvoted as a result.
Well said! Well said indeed! And for that I will award you...a karma point!
Downvoted because the original post didn’t so much ask a question as make an assertion which I personally didn’t find so valuable. As you point out, why would anyone come here for political discussion in the first place? So I downvoted it, because that’s what the karma system is for. In the end, a karma point is just a karma point. Nothing personal in it.
What about targeted vaccinations and other health interventions for smart kids? I don’t think thiis is a good idea, partly because it’s going to be so much less efficient than just helping everyone, but you may.
Not at all, that sounds great, if it were possible. Certainly generally effective health interventions sound even far more likely. But if there were a health intervention that only benefited smart kids, I would definitely consider that a net plus as to not having it exist at all.
[ETA] If it imposed some extrinsic cost on everyone else, that would be a different matter, but that’s not how vaccines work, is it?
you probably do better to find existing kids with the potential to be net-positive and help them reach their potential.
I have my doubts, or rather, I think it depends on a lot of things. I take it Steve Jobs’ parents were decent average people who went out of their way to raise their brilliant adoptive son as best they could, with great success. But, of course, this involved for them almost exactly the same expense of time or money as it would to raise a biological child of their own, which nullifies a good chunk of the original argument, as I understood it. Maybe “finding existing kids with the potential to be net-positive and helping them reach their potential” is as expensive as raising children in the ordinary way.
Having kids is a special case of spending your time and money in ways that make you happy.
I don’t know, maybe a very special case. I’d say rather it’s a way of creating new people with their own utility [I see now Lumifer made this point before me], and ideally their own contributions to overall utility. Alternatively, some new people may represent losses to overall utility overall.
If you think you can produce net-positive children...parents of Isaac Newton, I’m looking at you...it’s worthwhile to spend all the time and effort and money to raise them. It may be immoral not to have kids. If your children are likely to be sociopaths, or merely net drains on society, then maybe you should just get a cat or something.
But how do you tell in advance whether a child is going to be extraordinarily good or bad in advance? Probably you can’t, but I’d bet you can take a good Bayesian guess in advance as to whether the product of a given union is going to be above or below some given point for contributions to society.
“The Navy is a master plan designed by geniuses for execution by idiots. If you’re not an idiot, but find yourself in the Navy, you can only operate well by pretending to be one.” -Herman Wouk, The Caine Mutiny
I think I’m seconding this when I say that one of the most rational of Muggle studies has been magic, in the sense of stage illusionism. There’s a long history of stage magicians—beginning at least with Houdini—debunking self-declared spiritualists and psychics and so on. James Randi, Penn and Teller, and even Johnny Carson spring to mind.
“A soldier will fight long and hard for a bit of colored ribbon”—Napoleon Bonaparte
You could check out Wikipedia on public choice theory and organizational theory .
For a more humorous approach, you could read The Peter Principle . You could also check out Jerry Pournelle’s Iron Law of Bureaucracy .
It may be that the benefit of LessWrong skews towards autodidacts—after all, EY himself famously is self-taught. With that said, I’d say hell yeah a studious reading of LessWrong can teach you more than a “typical core college class.” Sorry to say a typical core college class is far less than it should be. There are a few excellent teachers of core classes out there, but the academic system just is not set up to provide proper incentives for introductory undergraduate teaching.
I’d agree with your exception for technical classes such as general chemistry, not closely related to the core mission of LessWrong. However, if you choose to get involved in computer science related discussions on this forum, you had better punch your weight.
A second related question is whether there’s a possibility of building a college course—or college-like course, perhaps a MOOC—specifically revolving around mastery of the content in LessWrong (perhaps starting with the Sequences).
Aha, mastery is the question, isn’t it? I have no full answer for that. I hope some other LessWrongers will have.
With that said, the stupid questions forum is potentially better for specific questions than you could get from most graduate student tutors.
I’m at least mildly creeped out by occasional cultish behavior on LessWrong. But every cause wants to be a cult
Eliezer said so, so therefore it is Truth.
Not sure if it involves supply of executive function , but I’m reminded of Kaj_Solata’s own post to like each other, sing and dance in synchrony . He specifically mentioned military drill as an example.
I suspect that “executive function” as an individual is very different from executive function in the context of a highly collective institution like a military unit.
Personally, I’m desperately hoping for a near-term Gattaca solution, by which ordinary or defective parents can, by genetic engineering, cheaply optimize their children’s tendencies towards all good things, at least as determined by genotype, including ethical behavior and competence, in one generation. Screw this grossly inefficient and natural selection nonsense.
I know the movie presented this as a dystopia, in which the elite were apparently chosen mostly to be tall and good-looking. Ethan Hawke’s character, born naturally, was short and was supposedly ugly. Only in the movies, Ethan. But he had gumption and grit and character, which (in the movie) had no genetic component, enabling him to beat out all his supposed superiors. I call shenanigans on that philosophy. I suspect that gumption and grit and character do have a genetic component, which I would wish my own descendants to have.
The infamous Steve Sailer has written a lot about cousin marriage , which, in practice, seems to be correlated with arranged marriage in many cultures (including the European royals in past centuries). Perhaps a lot of arranged marriages in practice may lead to inbreeding, with the genetic dangers that follow.
I’m also wondering about the effects of anonymous sperm banks, where relatively well-off women may pay to choose a biological father on the basis of—whatever available information they may choose to consider. What factors, in a man they will never meet, do they choose for their offspring?
There’s an app for that, at least on the IT Crowd.