djcb

Karma: 1,024

djcb 2 Dec 2011 6:48 UTC
37 points
on: Rationality Quotes December 2011

If you hit this sign, you will hit that bridge.

-- Road sign in Griffin, Georgia, showing that sometimes it’s good to have some distance between map and area.

djcb 14 Mar 2010 10:15 UTC
34 points
0
on: The Importance of Goodhart’s Law
So, in short: incentives can have unintented consequences, as the incentives influence whatever you want to influence with them.

There are a lot of examples of this in e.g. Dan Ariely’s book and Freakonomics.

But the best example must be the bizarre 1994 footbal (soccer) match between Barbados and Grenada. Barbados needed to win with a two goal difference.

The special incentive here was that any goal scored in the extra time would count double. Now, shortly before the end of the regular time, it was 2-1 for Barbados. Imagine what happened...

(edit: added the note about the two-goal difference, thanks Hook)

djcb 30 Nov 2009 19:07 UTC
29 points
on: Rationality Quotes November 2009

Today, safe flight inside clouds is possible using gyroscopic instruments that report the airplane’s orientation without being misled by centrifugal effects. But the pilot’s spatial intuition is still active, and often contradicts the instruments. Pilots are explicitly, emphatically trained to trust the instruments and ignore intuition—precisely the opposite of the Star Wars advice—and those who fail to do so often perish.

-- Gary Drescher “Good and Real”

(I really like this quote as a counterweight to the ubiquitous cliche-advise to follow you intuition. Often, your intuition may be fooled. And, it cannot be repeated often enough, Good and Real is a must-read for LW-minded folks)
What links here?
- gwern's comment on Rationality Quotes April 2014 by elharo (2 May 2014 22:29 UTC; 0 points)

djcb 1 Nov 2011 21:48 UTC
23 points
on: Rationality Quotes November 2011

The nurse recorded the time of death, 9:21 P.M. He discovered, oddly, that the clock had halted at that moment —just the sort of mystical phenomenon that appealed to unscientific people. Then an explanation occurred to him. He knew the clock was fragile, because he had repaired it several times, and he decided that the nurse must have stopped it by picking it up to check the time in the dim light.

[ James Gleick—Genius—The work and Life of Richard Feynman; this is a really chilling passage, which describes the moments just after Feynman’s wife has passed away, which devastated him. Somehow, this struck me.]

djcb 19 Nov 2010 19:12 UTC
21 points
on: Yes, a blog.
hmm… I very much enjoy reading LW, and I’d heartily recommend it to other people who are interested in the kind of subjects discussed here, but I think some humility is in order as well.

It’s hard to put my finger on it, but esp. when it comes to philosophy, I think a lot of it can be summarized as philosophy through the eyes of a computer programmer—not necessarily a bad point of view, but not the only one.

djcb 3 Jul 2011 10:28 UTC
19 points
on: Rationality Quotes July 2011

In an article in a women’s magazine many years ago we advised the readers to buy their stocks as they bought their groceries, not as they bought their perfume.

-- Benjamin Graham The Intelligent Investor, 1949.

(I really like Graham’s rational, down-to-earth approach to investing, and this quote is a good example of the kind of thinking he wants to convey)

djcb 3 Mar 2011 6:23 UTC
19 points
on: Rationality Quotes: March 2011
while enthusiasm may be necessary for great accomplishments elsewhere, on Wall Street it almost invariably leads to disaster.
- Benjamin Graham (The Intelligent Investor)
[ In The Intelligent Investor, Benjamin Graham, who was Warren Buffett’s mentor, shares his views on investing for a wider audience. I like the rationalist, no-nonsense approach he takes (as seen in this quote) esp. in a field like this ]

djcb 15 Mar 2010 6:48 UTC
19 points
on: Undiscriminating Skepticism
I think it’s also important to mention that not having a (strong) opinion on something may be the best (rational) thing to do, when things are not so clear.

For many things (say, the AGW controversy) it’s not so clear-cut as to where to find the ‘truth’ (I do happen to find it more likely that there is a thing called AGW and that it really could lead to great problems… but to what extent? Hard to say). Saying that you don’t know may sometimes be the best answer.

Now all we need is a test to separate ‘I don’t know’ from ignorance to ‘I don’t know’ because your epistemic error margins are too big...

(btw, I found this an excellent article)

djcb 9 Aug 2010 21:55 UTC
17 points
on: Book Recommendations
Wow, can’t wait for the unknown gems this discussion will bring up!

Anyway, some of my own; these are all non-fiction.
- Richard Dawkins’ The Selfish Gene is such a magnificent book, introducing all the wonderful solutions that evolution has come up with, and the insight that the battle for the ‘survival of the fittest’ takes place at the level of individual genes (or is at least a powerful model for understanding things)
- Jared Diamonds’ Guns, germs and steel which suggests that there are non-racial/non-ethnic reasons for the differences in wealth and power amongst various regions in the world. I think the writer’s claims go a bit further than his evidence warrants, but nevertheless a good way to look into this field, and provides a lot of food for thought
- As mentioned already, Hofstadters Gödel/Escher/Bach and The Mind’s I (bundle of essays of various writers, redacted together with Daniel Dennett) are playing with all these interesting concepts like conciousness, AI, meta, self-reference.
- Also Richard Feynman’s work is fantastic—the auto-biographic (You must be joking, Mr. Feynman and What do you care what other people think) are inspiring. I plan on going through some of his real physics works (like the Feynman lectures on Physics). Just seeing some of the interviews on Youtube show how well Feynman is able to make both complex and simple things understandable, at all levels; such a towering intellect.
- For computer science stuff, earlier I mentioned SICP, which I am currently re-reading.
- Then, Knuth’s The Art of Computer Programming; I have read much too little of it, but it’s such a rewarding experience to (slowly!) go through a few pages and finally the ‘click’ of understanding. I plan to read more of this. Knuth is truly the master of the field of programming and algorithms, and while reading it, I can almost feel how it sharpens my brain.
- Finally, a lot of bad things can be said about pop-psy, but I really liked Dan Ariely’s books (Predictably irrational and The upside of irrationality) that show where the classical picture of people being rational, homo economicus, has its limitations, and all the weird biases we have. He has some interesting TED-talks as well.

djcb 21 Jan 2012 17:03 UTC
15 points
in reply to: Jayson_Virissimo’s comment on: The Dark Arts: A Beginner’s Guide
Some other books for dark artists:
- The 48 Laws of Power, which is somewhat of a modernized The Prince. Writer Robert Greene loves anecdotes a bit too much (same in his other books), but still it’s a nice, light read.
- The Game; Neil Strauss’ book on picking up women, and the various forms of manipulation used in doing so. Again, not a work of science, but a light read that some people take way too serious.
- The Annals of Gullibility—about the many ways in which people can be duped (and how to avoid those).
- Anything by Derren Brown is really worth checking out
In general I agree with faul_sname that it’s good to recognize the tricks; sometimes it seems I meet people really took the tricks from those books...

djcb 3 Aug 2010 21:33 UTC
15 points
in reply to: DSimon’s comment on: Rationality quotes: August 2010

Superstition produces bad luck

-- Anonymous

djcb 1 May 2010 13:56 UTC
15 points
on: Rationality quotes: May 2010

Men ought to know that from nothing else but the brain comes joy, delights, laughter, and sports, and sorrows, griefs, despondency, and lamentations. And by this, in an especial manner, we acquire wisdom and knowledge, and see and hear and know what are foul and what are fair, what are bad and what are good, what are sweet, and what are unsavory. … And by the same organ we become mad and delirious, and fears and terrors assail us. … All these things we endure from the brain. …In these ways I am of the opinion that the brain exercises the greatest power in the man.

-- Hippocrates, On the sacred disease (ca. 4th century BCE).

[ In this and other of his writings, Hippocrates shows such an incredible early sense for rationality and against superstition that was only rarely seen in the next 2000 after that—and in addition, he was not just a armchair philosopher, he actually put these things is practice. So, hats off for Hippocrates, even when his medicine was not without faults of course...]

djcb 22 Jul 2009 17:45 UTC
15 points
on: Deciding on our rationality focus
I’d like to add a third kind of rationality that seems popular in these circles: ″recreational rationality″. This would include things like the Prisoner’s Dilemma, Newcomb’s Paradox, the Monty Hall Problem, the “rationality quotes”-series and so forth.

Even though they are seldom useful in real-world decision making, they are simply ″interesting″ for many people that visit LW, I suspect—including myself.

djcb 25 Jan 2012 17:12 UTC
14 points
on: Occam alternatives
- Diax’s Rake Never believe a thing simply because you want it to be true
(the non-sentimental prior—the universe doesn’t care about you)

djcb 2 Apr 2010 12:20 UTC
14 points
on: Rationality quotes: April 2010

The white line down the center of the road is a mediator, and very likely it can err substantially towards one side the other before the disadvantaged side finds advantage in denying its authority.

Source:
-- Schelling, Strategy of conflict, p144

[The book was mentioned a couple of times here on LW, and is a nice introduction to the use of game theory in geopolitics]

djcb 3 Jul 2010 10:41 UTC
13 points
on: Rationality Quotes: July 2010

Their judgment was based more upon blind wishing than upon any sound prevision; for it is a habit of mankind to entrust to careless hope what they long for, and to use sovereign reason to thrust aside what they do not fancy.

-- Thucydides, Greek Historian, ca. 5th century BCE (Book IV, 108)

I like Thucydides for the way he tries to explain history in terms of real-politik, people, their drives and especially without including the gods in an explanation, somewhat similar to Hippocrates.

Interestingly, a modern version of this appeared in Neal Stephenson’s Anathem:

Never believe a thing simply because you want it to be true

where it’s called Diax’s Rake.

Anathem is a great book, I’d like to add, and quite well aligned with many of the LW themes.
What links here?

djcb 3 Feb 2012 20:23 UTC
12 points
in reply to: Douglas_Knight’s comment on: Fireplace Delusions [LINK]
Sadly, the paper it is based on seems to be behind a pay wall; but indeed, it seems to be about the properties of the properties of wood smoke and the potential problems it could cause—rather than an investigation into actual health consequences.

So, until further notice, I’m filing this story under “Cocktail party factoids”...

EDIT: actually, it seems the paper mentioned is available online—see RichardKennaway’s comment. I’m reading it now—and notice the acute danger of confirmation bias to somehow not contradict my pre-EDIT comment… In short it seems there is indeed a real danger coming from wood smoke, however the examples all seem to be from bush fires etc., and the gasses that fireplaces put in the atmosphere, less so from people looking at a fireplace (but obviously inhaling the smoke won’t do you much good).

Abstracting this a bit, I did not have the non-rational reactions that Harris predicted; instead (like many people here), my first reaction was skepticism. After reading the paper, I’m a bit less skeptical. But I’d still like to know specifically about the health effects of using a fireplace in one’s house.

djcb 6 Aug 2009 17:15 UTC
12 points
on: Rationality Quotes—August 2009

There is no opinion so absurd that some philosopher will not express it.

-- Marcus Tullius Cicero

[ while in general I value philosophy, there is also much nonsense and, especially, little progress ]

djcb 31 Jul 2009 20:40 UTC
12 points
on: Thomas C. Schelling’s “Strategy of Conflict”
Slightly related (talking about game theory), one of the most bizarre things was the 1994 football/soccer match between Grenada and Barbados, in which both teams tried to win the game by deliberately score against themselves (and the opponents trying to prevent that).

djcb 10 Jul 2009 22:32 UTC
12 points
on: Recommended reading for new rationalists
For deep understanding of how computers and especially computation works: “Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs”

(available freely online: http://mitpress.mit.edu/sicp/)
What links here?
- Richard_Kennaway's comment on Recommended reading for new rationalists by XFrequentist (17 Jul 2009 18:59 UTC; 3 points)