This is an excellent post, which I’ll return to in future. I particularly like the note about the convergence between Superforecasting, Feynman, Munger, LW-style rationality, and CFAR—here’s a long list of Munger quotations (collected by someone else) which exemplifies some of this convergence. http://25iq.com/quotations/charlie-munger/
coyotespike
Karma: 125
Thanks to ScottL for writing this concise yet (apparently) thorough overview of systems theory. I’ve long been curious about systems theory, mostly because the term systems biology sounds interesting, and this helps scratch that itch.
I may “Ankify” it, at least for org-drill.
RichardKenneway’s posts here also added a lot of value. Based on this introduction, I basically agree that systems theory is a map without much predictive value. But I’ll add that a map, or a vocabulary if you will, is useful in that it lets us indicate what we’re talking about.
ScottL’s Ludwig von Bertalanff quote indicates that systems theory was invented about the time we started thinking about systems in general for real—biological systems, software systems, etc. At some point, you start needing some more precise language to use to build predictive theories.
BTW, I think of Marxism’s dialectic as more-or-less of a systems theory. Like systems theory, the dialectic has passionate adherents, and a lot of people who think it’s incoherent. I find it very moderately useful.
I applaud your thorough and even-handed wiki entry. In particular, this comment:
“One take-away is that someone in possession of a serious information hazard should exercise caution in visibly censoring or suppressing it (cf. the Streisand effect).”
Censorship, particularly of the heavy-handed variety displayed in this case, has a lower probability of success in an environment like the Internet. Many people dislike being censored or witnessing censorship, the censored poster could post someplace else, and another person might conceive the same idea in an independent venue.
And if censorship cannot succeed, then the implicit attempt to censor the line of thought will also fail. That being the case, would-be censors would be better served by either proceeding “as though no such hazard exists”, as you say, or by engaging the line of inquiry and developing a defense. I’d suggest that the latter, actually solving rather than suppressing the problem, is in general likely to prove more successful in the long run.
I thought your article on SRS in the classroom was one of the best articles produced on LW in recent years—it was a really useful case study. I’m similarly enthusiastic about this article. I’ll write down and try these clever hacks, and let you know how it goes. Thanks!
“Thinking Physics is Gedanken Physics” is a brilliantly intuitive approach to physics from mechanics to relativity.
Hmmm. The fear of hell is a tough one: as I said above, I’d largely dealt with that fear before “leaving the fold.” I suppose you somehow need to train your System 1 - to reprogram yourself, to experience that you have nothing to fear. For me, this happened over time as I gradually got more comfortable with increasing degrees of irreligion. Some other suggestions follow.
Hell and other people
For instance, it may help to think about the many non-Christians of superlative moral character. I mean, even the medieval Christians called Socrates a “Christian before Christ”—in other words, they thought so highly of Socrates that they could not really imagine him going to hell. Similarly, the more you think of really excellent, though still flawed, humans, it may become more difficult to picture a just and fair outcome where they suffer forever. It just doesn’t make moral sense. And really feeling that moral impossibility as applied to non-Christians might help give you confidence that all non-Christians do not go straight to hell. (of course, much Christian teaching aims to establish precisely such a gap between apparent and “actual” moral deserts)
Fears and Experience
If you have multiple fears, perhaps you could enumerate each of them to yourself. Churches tend to bundle together charity, social events, counseling, and parenting and marriage advice, and so a “relationship with God” is supposed to ensure all of that, and deconversion may seem to threaten all of that. For me, becoming friends with more and more perfectly well-adjusted and strong individuals who had always been secular helped disprove the notion that a good life falls apart without religious belief.
Or, to give another example, some Baptists teach that alcohol is a sure road to ruin (really) - only experience gets rid of this fear. Take a drink, feel that you’re fine in the short- and long-term, and you feel better about rejecting that moral teaching.
Conscience is the voice of the community
In the Christian world, what you believe determines who you go to church with, and thus with whom you’re friends. Scott Alexander talks about Red and Blue tribes, pointing out that secular political beliefs also determine who you’re friends with. (I find this idea similar to Robin Hanson’s “beliefs as clothing” idea—change your ideas, change your uniform, change sides) So this isn’t a religious phenomenon only, but it was just more obvious growing up. As a result, the social aspects of religious belief change can be even more obvious and pressing than other sorts of belief change. That’s all a roundabout way of saying fear of hell may be related to fear of coming out to friends and family, and thinking about how to handle the latter if you were to deconvert may help your fear fear of hell.
Finally, I forget which writer commented that Enlightenment Europe didn’t think religion could become a non-issue; it seemed it was one of the “eternal questions.” But in fact Europe’s over that now, and despite the social prevalence of religion in the States, in any professional circles I’ve ever been in, religion simply can’t be mentioned. For us individuals also, religion can simply fade into our rearview mirror. Except for this comment, I don’t think about or miss Christianity anymore. I don’t experience tension that “it might be true,” as some undecidable and imposing question. It’s a rather boring topic. Now I spend my mental energy not on reconciling abstruse and dusty doctrines, but on learning actually useful things (there is so much knowledge left to create!). You only need to deconvert once.
Which fears can you deal with by living through others, and which through direct experience? That might be a path forward. Good luck!
Thanks for the paper, and that’s a fantastic quote.
Sadly, you can no longer see the full version on Khan Academy.
The Exercise Dashboard is not as helpful for highlighting dependencies: https://www.khanacademy.org/exercisedashboard
You may be able to find other knowledge maps; Khan wasn’t the first to have the idea. I like Kaj’s idea as well. I compared the curricula of several majors at MIT to come up with a core curriculum, useful across engineering, computer science, and biology.
Thanks for the writeup, and an excellent article. Note that the students do still live together, in quasi-dorms—a smart move for motivation and for network-building. I believe the students are supposed to spend a significant amount of time in the other locations Minerva is opening around the world: a year here, a year there, and so on.
I find Minerva an exciting experiment. Law schools have a similar, if much lower-tech, philosophy about classes. In law school, ideally classes focus less on covering content (which you must do prior to class) and more on questioning and debating. This “Socratic method” often works less well in practice than in theory, but when done right it’s far more exciting and stimulating than most undergraduate classes.
I like this question, because I should get better at this myself. Since this sort of thing does require some time and effort, I’ll focus on low-hanging fruit—the traits I most want to improve. While we’re waiting for someone who has more experience with this, here are two nice articles I found:
http://quantifiedself.com/2011/04/how-to-self-experiment/
http://hplusmagazine.com/2012/11/14/quantified-self-how-to-designing-self-experiments/
How flattering; I’ve now done so. Also, I very much like your approach to learning math by grounding it in concrete subjects. Many people say they learned calculus best by learning it alongside physics, since calculus appears much more concrete when you look at the velocity and arc of, say, a fired cannonball.
Finally, here’s an excellent article from Barbara Oakley, who learned math starting about age 26 after getting out of the Army. She’s now an engineering prof, and teaches a MOOC called “Learning How to Learn” (I have not taken it, but I have reviewed the topics, and it appears to hit all the correct points): http://nautil.us/issue/17/big-bangs/how-i-rewired-my-brain-to-become-fluent-in-math-rd
I also agree with Ilya on the important algorithmic ideas, with one addition: algorithmic analysis. Just as you can describe the movement of the planets with a few simple equations, and that’s beautiful, you can describe any sequence of steps to finish a task as an algorithm. And you can mathematically analyze the efficiency of that sequence: as the task gets larger, do the number of steps required to finish it grow linearly, quadratically, logarithmically (we hope)?
This is a broadly applicable and powerful idea, since pretty much everything (even learning) involves a sequence of steps or process.
I am currently enjoying Tim Roughgarden’s course on algorithms: https://www.coursera.org/course/algo. Luay Nakhleh’s course on Algorithmic Thinking is also excellent: https://www.coursera.org/course/algorithmicthink.
As Ilya recommended, a great choice for programming in general is the legendary Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs (aka SICP, aka “the wizard book”). Here is an interactive version: https://xuanji.appspot.com/isicp/. (You can find solutions to the problems here, but of course use sparingly if at all: http://community.schemewiki.org/?sicp-solutions)
If you benefit from more instruction than a solo journey through SICP, I cannot recommend highly enough MIT’s Introduction to Computer Programming course, which remains one of the best educational experiences I have ever had: https://www.edx.org/course/mitx/mitx-6-00-1x-introduction-computer-5626
+1 for Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs (aka SICP, aka “the wizard book”) - this is a legendary programming book. Here is an interactive version: https://xuanji.appspot.com/isicp/.
I also agree on the important algorithmic ideas, with one addition: algorithmic analysis. Just as you can describe the movement of the planets with a few simple equations, and that’s beautiful, you can describe any sequence of steps to finish a task as an algorithm. And you can mathematically analyze the efficiency of that sequence: as the task gets larger, do the number of steps required to finish it grow linearly, quadratically, logarithmically (we hope)? This is a broadly applicable and powerful idea, since pretty much everything (even learning) involves a sequence of steps or process.
I’m just turning 30. I spent my 20s in education (undergraduate and law school) and the Army. I’m now interested in technology and entrepreneurship. For several years, I was extremely frustrated that I didn’t know any math or programming: my humanities background felt like a huge waste of time. In other words—I really feel your frustration at being “behind the curve.”
However, even a third of the way through life isn’t too late to change course—remember, you and I are only a decade past the normal college years, when most people learn their trade. It’ll be challenging to catch up, but not impossible. I finished my legal job a few months ago, and now I’m living out of my home country in a cheaper location, taking MOOCs to learn to program.
(I couldn’t agree more with your definition of failure, by the way: if people find meaning in joining a corporate giant and working their way up, great, it is actually quite impressive, but it would kill me.)
From reading your post, it sounds as though you more-or-less know what you would like (am I wrong?): to make some more money, hold a more-or-less prestigious position, get published more, and/or get into a good graduate program in journalism (?). But you struggle with the effects of your past, and you don’t see a clear position forward, since you lack money and credentials. Those are real challenges.
I think posting your question on LW is a great first step. You, and your chosen path, are not “normal,” and family and friends often just are not open to alternative career paths. Many people simply cannot imagine legitimate careers that stray from the beaten path. Getting a sanity check by finding like-minded people can be encouraging and strengthening. I don’t know how many friends you have who are supportive of your desire not to work in a soul-crushing job for 30 years...excuse me, I mean, your desire not to “work responsibly”...but if you don’t have many, then please keep reaching out. There are lots of people like you. (feel free to message me)
In fact, perhaps you should travel elsewhere, long-term. In a new place, with new people, a different schedule, things might look different. Scandinavia sounds nice...
Finally, I have often read that daily writing is the single best practice for a writer. So you could set yourself the project of figuring out motivation/self-modding to get yourself to do that. The writer’s redemption: if you write something well, then who cares about the rest of your life?
As Dorikka ackowledges above, personal notes often use a hard-to-read shorthand (I know mine do). I have roughly translated this note to a form I can more easily understand, below.
“Mind-states are non-stable with respect to attributes valued by some agents.” People change their minds and selves, in important ways.
“This is true not only with respect to death, etc but also biological/chemical changes that occur perpetually, causing behaviors in the presence of identical stimuli/provocations to differ substantially.” People’s minds change, not only when they die and hence cease to exist, but also when they just, you know, change their minds and behaviours, so they act differently at different times, even though everything else is the same.
“The English language (and many other human languages) seem to hide this by their use of “pronouns” and names (handles) for humans and other objects deemed sentient which do not change from the moment the human/animal/etc is born or otherwise appears to come into existence.” If you change your mind, you are a little bit different than before. But we still call you by the same name. Something has been lost—some unique constellation of thought, some pattern of behaviour, personality attribute—but language “hides” the loss by pretending you are the same person.
“As a result of this, efforts to preserve mind-states are unsuccessful while they allow mind-states to change (replacing one state with another, without retaining the pre-change state). Even given life-extension technology such that biological death is prevented, this phenomenon would likely continue—technology to preserve all mind-states as they came into existence would likely be more difficult to engineer than such required to attain mere immortality.” What we need is GitHub for minds! Version control would let us change who we are, without losing the old selves. (For those who don’t know, Git (among other version control systems) allows you to save (and preserve) file changes as you go. You can easily see the difference between old and new code, merge two different codes, and other cool stuff I don’t know about.) But making Git for minds will probably be much harder than immortality.
“Yet agents may also value the existence (and continued existance) of mind-states which have never existed, necessitating a division of resources between preserving existing mind-states and causing new ones to exist (perhaps variants of existing ones after they “have a (certain) experience”)). Agents with such values face an engineering/(resource allocation) problem, not just a “value realization” problem.” And if we did make GitBrains, we’d have to decide whether to forge new paths ahead, mentally speaking, or spend time and resources backing up our current/past minds. Tough choices.
“Also consider that humans do not appear to exist in a state of perpetual optimization/strategizing; they execute, and the balance between varying methods of search and execution does not appear to be the result of such a process...” As we know, we’re not always very strategic about how we change ourselves. We just sort of act—or rather, we are acted on as we encounter behavioural cues which cause us to change. If your mind and behaviour are being changed by environmental cues in ways that don’t further your values, you could get a lot of benefit by changing your environment.
“Behaviors (actions following, or in anticipation of, certain c/p) are often not the result of conscious strategy/optimization...” Finally, you don’t always act in a strategic and well-planned manner. Even if you have such plans, your methods of searching and exploiting good opportunities for yourself may not take into account your irrational subconscious and emotions, which don’t have such strategic plans. Bugger.
All of this adds up to: no good ways of preserving your self at any one time, and great difficulty in changing your self in ways you want to change yourself. So you can’t easily go back to a better previous version of yourself, and you can’t be sure you will successfully make a better future version of yourself. This formulation of the problem is clear, though not original—but I agree that version control for my self could come in handy. “Boy, am I irritating...I’m backdating to Self −2 years. Let me try that again.”
“Indoctrination seems to plant a seed that is (almost) immune to purely rational debunking...You have to find a way to examine the indoctrination itself, not its manifestations.” I like this concise way of putting it a lot, and it’s heartening to hear someone else had this same difficult-to-articulate experience.
BTW, I think the people downvoting may have mistaken which side these posts are on, due to skimming through the thread.
I’m going to chime in here as well. I was also raised by an extremely devout family—they are pastors and Christian counselors, and have religious degrees. As an adult, I began the process of becoming a Catholic—this is not a very good Protestant move, but I was attracted by the relative sophistication of the theology, and a certain contemplative approach one can find there. So until I was 27, while I was finishing graduate school, I was a committed Christian.
You sound like you are already on the fence. You can put the arguments on both sides with greater depth and power than those who have never been on the fence ever can (it’s hard for someone who’s always been secular to really get it, honestly. Not a bad thing, just different). I got to the point where I was on the fence—both sides seemed equally possible. In that situation, your theology/philosophy can get quite sophisticated, since it has to grapple with so many tensions and contradictions. It was a lot of work.
In the end, I realized my gut was driving my head—my intellectual quest was intimately intertwined with and motivated by rather complex emotions. For one thing, I was afraid I would simply have a bad life. A good relationship with God, putting Him first, was the foundation of a happy marriage, the guardian of a sturdy moral life. Would I lose myself in drugs, become a mean person?
I now believe that pinpointing a gut-level bias, an irrational belief that conjures up truly plausible reasoning, and targeting that gut feeling instead of the reasoning, is an extraordinarily difficult and valuable skill. I have done it twice now (once with religion). I think few people have done this, rationalist or otherwise. I think you may need to do this. Focus on your emotional fears rather than the complex intellectual doubts, and with a bit of time you may find things look different.
At least, for myself, when I stopped needing to believe in it so much, I thought about it much less. My religion just sort of fell away, over the next year or so. There were times I missed it, a lot. Mostly not, though. Life is easier without religion, a little more prosaic at times, until I learned to care more about real things than abstract theology/philosophy. There was some anger—evangelicals attach so much baggage to some really trivial things, things that just don’t actually matter to your psyche.
As for the miracles, learning about how modern cults spread was very eye-opening. You can watch baby religions get born, and you can see the elements of human psychology that cause people to believe in miracles and to believe other people who believe in miracles. It’s not just “oh, you can debunk some miracles”—it’s that you can see precisely how miracles get born and their stories spread. If it happens this way now, it probably happened that way then. I found this to be empirical evidence against miracles. An argument in favor of miracles must not only establish a probabilistic argument about the universe, but it must also establish that observable tendencies of humans did not occur on this occasion.
One last thing. I felt more freedom to stop believing, because I had come to believe two things about hell (these may sound like gibberish to non-former-Christians). First, the freedom to say yes includes the freedom to say no. God wants our real yes, therefore God will not punish an honest no. Second, God’s grace comes in subtle, lengthy, drawn-out ways. If God were there and loved us, then our lifelong evolution into the people He meant us to be is precisely what Christ came to accomplish. Rejection of God must mean rejecting these tender workings of grace—not just doubting or rejecting His existence. In other words, a bad Christian is more likely than an honest atheist to go to hell.
I hope it’s not cheeky to say I think you’ll deconvert. The transition can be hard, but I have found it worth it, though not the be-all end-all. I might advise talking with someone sympathetic, like the folks Brillyant recommends. Best of luck. Please update with progress. Message me if I can help.
This is a very good point, actually. It’d be better to get an instant hit without destroying the ol’ teeth, and Gwern’s material through your link is fascinating. I’ll report back if I try it out.
Me! Me! I totally took the survey!