Costanza

• Costanza 1 Feb 2011 21:31 UTC

  75 points

  on: Ra­tion­al­ity Quotes: Fe­bru­ary 2011

  A long one:

  . . . once upon a time men lived among the giants, who were like themselves but far more powerful, and these giants always had a supply of bread, fruit, milk, and all that was necessary to sustain life, which they must have acquired in ways that cost them little, for they would always give away their goods to whoever knew how to please them. And the giants would also carry them wherever they wanted to go, provided they asked in the proper way. So it came about that men never thought of working, nor of walking, nor of building wagons or ships; instead they became natural orators, and spent all of their time watching the giants, figuring out what would please or displease them, smiling at them or imploring them with tears in their eyes; or else simply pronouncing the necessary words, which had to be memorized exactly, though they had no understanding of the changes of humor that would come over the giants, their brusque refusals, or their sudden willingness. Now, if some man, in those days, had tried to get something for himself by his own industry, they would have laughed him to scorn; for the results of his labor would have been puny beside the immense provisions the giants had amassed; and besides with one false step the giants could easily have crushed those little beginnings of labor out of existence. That is why all human wisdom came down to knowing how to speak and how to persuade; and, rather than move things about with great effort, men chose to learn what words it would take to get one of the giants to do their moving. In short, their main business, or rather their only business, was to please, and above all not to displease, their incomprehensible masters, who seemed nevertheless to be charged with nourishing them and housing them and transporting them, and who eventually carried out their duties, provided they were prayed to. This kind of existence, in which men never knew whether they were the masters or the slaves, lasted for a long time, so that the habit of asking, of hoping, of counting on those stronger than themselves left indelible traces in human nature. . . . That is why, as if they were still waiting for the return of the giants, men do not forget to pray and make offerings, though no giant has ever shown himself . . .

  -- “Alain” (Émile Chartier) The Gods. A meditation on childhood.

Stupid Ques­tions Open Thread

This is why we can’t have so­cial science

• Costanza 14 Jul 2014 0:14 UTC

  47 points

  in reply to: jsteinhardt’s comment on: This is why we can’t have so­cial science

  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.

• Costanza 15 Mar 2012 21:34 UTC

  38 points

  on: Please ad­vise the Sin­gu­lar­ity In­sti­tute with your do­main-spe­cific ex­per­tise!

  Given that there’s always more to learn about pretty much everything, this list didn’t bother me at all. I would have been much more alarmed if they asked for expert advice on:

  • Money laundering

  • Disposing of corpses in ways undetectable by law enforcement

  • Justin Bieber trivia

  • Obtaining visas or (better) passports to nations with no U.S. extradition treaty

• Costanza 12 May 2011 15:12 UTC

  37 points

  on: The elephant in the room, AMA

  If Joseph Smith was not a prophet, do you desire to believe that Joseph Smith was not a prophet?

  Are you a rationalist? Did you convert because you were rationally persuaded to convert?

  I swear, if you can make an ironclad rational argument for Mormonism, I will personally convert. I don’t think you can. Nothing personal (I don’t know you, wish you personally the best) but I don’t think you’re a rationalist, precisely because you converted to Mormonism. Prove me wrong!

A Fed­eral Judge on Bi­ases in the Crim­i­nal Jus­tice Sys­tem.

• Costanza 21 Dec 2011 3:58 UTC

  30 points

  in reply to: robertzk’s comment on: Talk­ing to Chil­dren: A Pre-Holi­day Guide

  I was never a child prodigy, but I took myself to be the smartest student in my junior high school class of 25 or so. Maybe I was, but if so it wasn’t by a huge margin. But I had some mildly precocious interests and was overpraised. I decided it was the natural order of life that I would always be able to coast by without effort and would always be the smartest guy in the room. In other words, I bound up my self esteem to my supposed intellectual superiority, and I had learned to be lazy. This is a very, very bad combination. My parents went to considerable trouble to send me to a high school with an excellent academic reputation. When I found out I wasn’t really all that relatively smart any more, my ego took a hit. Merely average grades were terrifying, a sign of failure. At the same time, having to work hard to get good grades seemed like a sign of failure, too. I felt like Charlie in the second half of Flowers for Algernon. I became far, far too overcautious, too ready to quit at the first hint of trouble. In LessWrong terms, I surrounded myself with ugh fields.

  I see now that I was never really that smart. I wish I’d known that earlier. In the words of Jay Leno, “A little low self-esteem is actually quite good. Maybe you’re not the best, so you should work a little harder.”

• Costanza 23 Dec 2011 22:25 UTC

  25 points

  on: His­tor­i­cal ex­am­ples of flinch­ing away

  World War II seems to have some possible examples. Many Jews who didn’t think about escaping until it was too late, because it was too horrible to believe. Neville Chamberlain thinking he could appease the war away. Possibly Stalin’s reaction to Hitler’s invasion:

  Accounts by Nikita Khrushchev and Anastas Mikoyan claim that, after the invasion, Stalin retreated to his dacha in despair for several days and did not participate in leadership decisions.[145] However, some documentary evidence of orders given by Stalin contradicts these accounts, leading some historians to speculate that Khrushchev’s account is inaccurate.

  Hitler’s delusions of a German victory toward the end of the war. The Japanese holdouts.

  These are the first things I thought of, anyway, although it now occurs to me that comparing your audience to Hitler would have some rhetorical drawbacks.

• Costanza 24 Mar 2012 4:08 UTC

  21 points

  on: Non­mind­kil­ling open questions

  I tentatively suggest there’s a pattern here.

  By default, and in practice for the great majority, no factual question can be regarded as popular or important unless it provides an opportunity for status signaling or mind killing.

  However, if there is something like a prediction market, a tiny minority will adapt to become specialists in making accurate and profitable predictions.

  This applies to sports and stock trades. Most people will be happy to be a [LOCAL SPORTS TEAM] fan, and will happily remained biased for signaling purposes, maybe making penny-ante bets to show loyalty. Professional bookmakers in Vegas and professional coaches of sports teams have to look at reality, or else find another job. Similarly, people in finance may have strong political opinions on their own time, but if they don’t make money, they’ll be out of a job.

  This doesn’t necessarily help if you’re trying to “explain to people how beliefs should be expressed in probabilities” to the vast majority of people who don’t have skin in the game. But you could appeal to their imagination.

• Costanza 4 Feb 2011 1:23 UTC

  21 points

  on: Scott Adams: ‘Mock­a­bil­ity Test’

  ’It’s nearly impossible to humorously mock something that is reasonable.

  Nonsense. Humor is lots of fun, but it’s far, far from the measure of reason. I’m under the impression that, in every country, a reliable source of mockability is alien-seeming accents. I’m told that, in mainland China, at least 50 percent of TV humor consists of Chinese people mocking each other’s regional dialects. I could give any number of examples in English, but is it really necessary?

  Other sources of humor would include: people falling down, big noses, and—at least in English—words with a difficult ‘K’ sound.

• Costanza 4 Jan 2012 3:17 UTC

  20 points

  in reply to: James_Miller’s comment on: Utili­tar­i­ans prob­a­bly wast­ing time on recreation

  As Adam Smith said:

  Let us suppose that the great empire of China, with all its myriads of inhabitants, was suddenly swallowed up by an earthquake, and let us consider how a man of humanity in Europe, who had no sort of connexion with that part of the world, would be affected upon receiving intelligence of this dreadful calamity. He would, I imagine, first of all, express very strongly his sorrow for the misfortune of that unhappy people, he would make many melancholy reflections upon the precariousness of human life, and the vanity of all the labours of man, which could thus be annihilated in a moment. He would too, perhaps, if he was a man of speculation, enter into many reasonings concerning the effects which this disaster might produce upon the commerce of Europe, and the trade and business of the world in general. And when all this fine philosophy was over, when all these humane sentiments had been once fairly expressed, he would pursue his business or his pleasure, take his repose or his diversion, with the same ease and tranquillity, as if no such accident had happened. The most frivolous disaster which could befall himself would occasion a more real disturbance. If he was to lose his little finger to-morrow, he would not sleep to-night; but, provided he never saw them, he will snore with the most profound security over the ruin of a hundred millions of his brethren, and the destruction of that immense multitude seems plainly an object less interesting to him, than this paltry misfortune of his own.

• Costanza 8 Oct 2013 20:51 UTC

  19 points

  in reply to: James_Miller’s comment on: Ra­tion­al­ity Quotes Oc­to­ber 2013

  “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

• Costanza 24 Dec 2011 0:32 UTC

  19 points

  on: His­tor­i­cal ex­am­ples of flinch­ing away

  The fall of Dan Rather.

  His rise to fame was in the days when a few broadcast TV channels and the local newspaper was The News to almost everyone. By 2004, he was an established and powerful elder statesman-type at CBS. To make a long story short, his people were given a set of documents that seemed to substantiate what would have been a scandal regarding George W. Bush’s time in the Air National Guard. Rather went with the story. Almost immediately, a lot of people—especially bloggers—noticed that the documents not only looked like fakes, but really amateurish, silly fakes.

  At this point, Rather could have cut his losses. He could have gone on the air and said, “Folks, I’m really sorry. We were lied to, and we retract the whole story. My staff and I would never deliberately try to deceive you, our viewers, but we just didn’t check this story out properly ahead of time. Ultimately, I’m the boss, so it’s my responsibility. I deeply regret the error, and I personally promise that this will never happen again.” This would have been extremely embarrassing, but Rather had a lot of stature, and if he handled it well, he might even have gained some respect.

  But no, he decided to double down.

• Costanza 12 May 2011 16:19 UTC

  19 points

  in reply to: Richard_Kennaway’s comment on: The elephant in the room, AMA

  ...but if your sureness is based only on the arguments you have seen, how sure can you really be that there isn’t an argument that you would accept as refuting all of that?

  If Joseph Smith was a prophet, then I desire to believe that Joseph Smith was a prophet.

  Right now, I’m very confident that Joseph Smith was a lecherous, manipulative, lying charlatan who patched together his church doctrine out of whatever superstitions he happened to have come across in his life. But I can’t prove this to a 100% degree of certainty. So I have some doubt, and so I can be persuaded to change my mind.

• Costanza 21 Jan 2011 18:44 UTC

  19 points

  on: Poli­tics is a fact of life

  Science is a fact of life, one which nobody can really afford to ignore. But a steady diet of science news is bad for you: You are what you eat, and if you eat only science reporting on fluid situations, without a solid textbook now and then, your brain will turn to liquid. Or so I’ve heard.

  Matters of policy and governance and economics are important. But typically, “politics” tends to mean “political news”—election horseraces, poorly-designed opinion polls, and general show business for ugly people. That’s why it’s the mind-killer.

  I would not automatically downvote a serious analysis of policy or governance on this site. Something like an examination of a RAND study.

Ra­tion­al­ist Lord of the Rings fan­fic­tion, newly trans­lated from Russian

• Costanza 12 May 2011 23:43 UTC

  18 points

  in reply to: Normal_Anomaly’s comment on: The elephant in the room, AMA

  I’d want to see some or all of the points brought up here addressed. For example:

  The detailed history and civilization described in the Book of Mormon does not correspond to anything found by archaeologists anywhere in the Americas. The Book of Mormon describes a civilization lasting for a thousand years, covering both North and South America, which was familiar with horses, elephants, cattle, sheep, wheat, barley, steel, wheeled vehicles, shipbuilding, sails, coins, and other elements of Old World culture. But no trace of any of these supposedly very common things has ever been found in the Americas of that period. Nor does the Book of Mormon mention many of the features of the civilizations which really did exist at that time in the Americas. The LDS church has spent millions of dollars over many years trying to prove through archaeological research that the Book of Mormon is an accurate historical record, but they have failed to produce any convincing pre-columbian archeological evidence supporting the Book of Mormon story. In addition, whereas the Book of Mormon presents the picture of a relatively homogeneous people, with a single language and communication between distant parts of the Americas, the pre-columbian history of the Americas shows the opposite: widely disparate racial types (almost entirely east Asian—definitely not Semitic, as proven by recent DNA studies), and many unrelated native languages, none of which are even remotely related to Hebrew or Egyptian.

  The source is overtly an ex-Mormon site. But if Mormon doctrine is what they say it is, and the archeology is what they say it is, then it woudn’t look good for Mormonism.

• Costanza 15 Mar 2011 17:06 UTC

  18 points

  in reply to: bentarm’s comment on: The Friendly AI Game

  Comment upvoted for starting the game off! Thanks!

  ---

  Q: Is the answer to the Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe, and Everything 42?

  A: Tricky. I’ll have to turn the solar system into computronium to answer it. Back to you as soon as that’s done.

• Costanza 15 Mar 2012 23:58 UTC

  17 points

  in reply to: Bugmaster’s comment on: Please ad­vise the Sin­gu­lar­ity In­sti­tute with your do­main-spe­cific ex­per­tise!

  In all seriousness, I once took it for granted that, assuming perfect good faith and honesty on the part of the filer, and assuming perfectly complete and accurate records, there would automatically be one precise and correct figure for the amount of (say) income tax to be filed, at least in theory. Since that time, I have learned that, while arithmetic may be straightforward, within the tax code and even within generally accepted accounting principles, there are always huge areas of ambiguity, even for the average person filing a 1040EZ.