Hook

Karma: 151

Hook Mar 8, 2010, 6:47 PM
2 points
on: Open Thread: March 2010
Does anyone have a good reference for the evolutionary psychology of curiosity? A quick google search yielded mostly general EP references. I’m specifically interested in why curiosity is so easily satisfied in certain cases (creation myths, phlogiston, etc.). I have an idea for why this might be the case, but I’d like to review any existing literature before writing it up.

Hook Mar 5, 2010, 9:31 PM
2 points
in reply to: Morendil’s comment on: The fallacy of work-life compartmentalization
Most of the anecdotes I can recall about changing work place culture are examples of unintentionally changing it for the worse. Has there ever been a high profile positive culture change in a large corporation?

Joel Spolsky wrote an article about companies following the get-big-fast strategy or the grow-slow strategy. One of the disadvantages to the get-big-fast strategy is so many people come on board that any existing corporate culture is overrun. The implication here is that the only way to establish a good culture is to have it established in the founders and grow slowly.

Hook Mar 5, 2010, 3:40 PM
9 points
on: Welcome to Less Wrong!
Hello.
My name is Dan, and I’m a 30 year old software engineer living in Maryland. I was a mostly lurking member of the Extropian mailing list back in the day and I’ve been following the progress of the SIAI sporadically since it’s founding. I’ve made a few donations, but nothing terribly significant.

I’ve been an atheist for half my life now, and as I’ve grown older I’ve tended more and more to rational thinking. My wife recently made a comment that she specifically uses rational argument with me much more so than anyone else she has to deal with, even at work, because she knows that is what will work. (Obviously, she wins frequently enough to make it worth her while.)

I hope to have something minor to contribute to the akrasia discussion, although I haven’t fully formulated it yet. I used to be an avid video game player and I don’t play anymore. The last few times I played any games I didn’t even enjoy it. I plan to describe the experiences that led to this state. Unfortunately for general applicability, one of those experiences is “grow older and have a child.”

It’s not the most altruistic of motives, but what most draws me to this community is that I enjoy being right, and there seem to be lots of things I can learn here to help me to be right more often. What I would dream about getting out of this community is a way to find or prepare for meaningful work that helped reduce existential risk. I have a one year old daughter and I was recently asking myself “What is most likely to kill my children and grandchildren?” The answer I came up with was “The same thing that kills everyone else.”

Hook Mar 4, 2010, 8:21 PM
3 points
in reply to: gerg’s comment on: Individual vs. Group Epistemic Rationality
Adversarial legal systems were not necessarily designed to be role models of rational groups. They are more like a way to give opposing biased adversaries an incrementally fairer way of fighting it out than existed previously.

I’m guessing scientific institutions don’t do this because the people involved feel they are less biased (and probably actually are) than participants in a legal system.

Hook Mar 4, 2010, 7:11 PM
1 point
in reply to: MonBonify’s comment on: Priors and Surprise
That sounds like a decent solution. I have no idea how hard the little red dot would be to program, but I think it would be distracting for the people who don’t care about the typos. The highlighted text from previous typo-alerts makes sure that only the people who care get the information.

Hook 4 Mar 2010 16:36 UTC
4 points
in reply to: MonBonify’s comment on: Priors and Surprise
You should consider other solutions, since the first one you think of is unlikely to be the best/cheapest to implement. The “Edit” functionality already exists. Users above a certain karma level could be allowed to edit posts, as in the case of StackOverflow. The major cost is that there would need to be a way to revert changes to prevent vandalism. Morendil pointed out that DM are a bit harder to send than comments. If desired, that could be fixed cheaply. There are surely other solutions.

Hook 4 Mar 2010 15:19 UTC
0 points
in reply to: PhilGoetz’s comment on: Where are we?
In between DC and Baltimore

Hook 3 Mar 2010 16:35 UTC
1 point
in reply to: Emile’s comment on: Open Thread: November 2009
“Actually, the information needed to generate the Bible is the same as the information to locate the Bible in all those texts.”

Or to locate it in “The Library of Babel”.

Hook 3 Mar 2010 16:23 UTC
9 points
in reply to: MrHen’s comment on: Priors and Surprise
As a suggestion, maybe typos that have no substantial impact on readability should be communicated to the author through a direct message rather than a public comment.
What links here?
- Alicorn's comment on For progress to be by accumulation and not by random walk, read great books by MichaelVassar (4 Mar 2010 18:12 UTC; 8 points)

Hook 3 Mar 2010 15:01 UTC
6 points
in reply to: Morendil’s comment on: Priors and Surprise
Jaynes even uses the example of meteorites (aka thunderstones) to show that this line of reasoning, while valid by the laws of probability, can lead educated people to believe things that are not true.

The natural philosophers who knew something about gravity had a much higher prior probability for the unreliability of farmers’ reports of natural phenomena than they did for rocks falling from the sky, so every report served to reinforce the hypothesis that farmers don’t know what they are talking about. It took reports from people who were considered reliable in order for the meteorite hypothesis to be accepted.

How reliable a reporter would you need to call science in general into question?

Hook 16 Feb 2010 15:19 UTC
0 points
in reply to: Morendil’s comment on: Open Thread: February 2010
Thanks, that was exactly the sort of hint I needed (i.e. of the half dozen different approaches I’ve been working on, focus on this one). On to 3.3.

Hook 16 Feb 2010 2:24 UTC
1 point
on: Open Thread: February 2010
I’ve been reading Probability Theory by E.T. Jaynes and I find myself somewhat stuck on exercise 3.2. I’ve found ways to approach the problem that seem computationally intractable (at least by hand). It seems like there should be a better solution. Does anyone have a good solution to this exercise, or even better, know of collection of solutions to the exercises in the book?

At this point, if you have a complete solution, I’d certainly settle for vague hints and outlines if you didn’t want to type the whole thing. Thanks.