JQuinton

Karma: 1,311

JQuinton 6 Nov 2013 18:35 UTC
71 points
on: Rationality Quotes November 2013

A newspaper is better than a magazine. A seashore is a better place than the street. At first it is better to run than to walk. You may have to try several times. It takes some skill, but it is easy to learn. Even young children can enjoy it. Once successful, complications are minimal. Birds seldom get too close. Rain, however, soaks in very fast. Too many people doing the same thing can also cause problems. One needs lots of room. If there are no complications, it can be very peaceful. A rock will serve as an anchor. If things break loose from it, however, you will not get a second chance.

Is this paragraph comprehensible or meaningless? Feel your mind sort through potential explanations. Now watch what happens with the presentation of a single word: kite. As you reread the paragraph, feel the prior discomfort of something amiss shifting to a pleasing sense of rightness. Everything fits; every sentence works and has meaning. Reread the paragraph again; it is impossible to regain the sense of not understanding. In an instant, without due conscious deliberation, the paragraph has been irreversibly infuesed with a feeling of knowing.

Try to imagine other interpretations for the paragraph. Suppose I tell you that this is a collaborative poem written by a third-grade class, or a collage of strung-together fortune cookie quotes. Your mind balks. The presense of this feeling of knowing makes contemplating alternatives physically difficult.

Robert Burton, from On Being Certain: Believing You’re Right Even When You’re Not reminding me of Epiphany Addictions

JQuinton 1 Apr 2014 13:00 UTC
43 points
on: Rationality Quotes April 2014
Now, one basic principle in all of science is GIGO: garbage in, garbage out. This principle is particularly important in statistical meta-analysis: because if you have a bunch of methodologically poor studies, each with small sample size, and then subject them to meta-analysis, what can happen is that the systematic biases in each study — if they mostly point in the same direction — can reach statistical significance when the studies are pooled. And this possibility is particularly relevant here, because meta-analyses of homeopathy invariably find an inverse correlation between the methodological quality of the study and the observed effectiveness of homeopathy: that is, the sloppiest studies find the strongest evidence in favor of homeopathy. When one restricts attention only to methodologically sound studies — those that include adequate randomization and double-blinding, predefined outcome measures, and clear accounting for drop-outs — the meta-analyses find no statistically significant effect (whether positive or negative) of homeopathy compared to placebo.
- Alan Sokal, What Is Science

JQuinton 22 Nov 2013 16:47 UTC
43 points
on: 2013 Less Wrong Census/Survey
I took the survey. I didn’t really know how to answer the “relationship” part since I’m not really poly right now, but have a number of “friends with benefits”. So I answered it zero.

JQuinton 6 Jan 2014 22:15 UTC
42 points
in reply to: knb’s comment on: [LINK] Why I’m not on the Rationalist Masterlist

Only 3% of LWers surveyed described themselves as conservatives.

Interesting. I wonder why LW has so few conservatives. Surely, just like there isn’t masculine rationality and feminine rationality, there shouldn’t be conservative rationality and liberal rationality. It also makes me wonder how valid the objections are in the linked post if the political views of LW skew vastly away from conservative topics.

Full disclosure: I’m a black male who grew up in the inner city and I don’t find anything particularly offensive about topics on LW. There goes my opposing anecdote to the one(s) presented in the linked blog.

JQuinton 29 Oct 2014 15:04 UTC
38 points
on: 2014 Less Wrong Census/Survey
Took it.

This is my second year taking the survey. I wish I remembered what my answers were last year so I could see how I’ve changed.

JQuinton 13 May 2015 13:53 UTC
33 points
on: LW should go into mainstream academia ?
A lot of LW content is based on stuff already in academia.

JQuinton 7 Oct 2014 16:41 UTC
30 points
on: Rationality Quotes October 2014
When I was 16, I wanted to follow in my grandfathers footsteps. I wanted to be a tradesman. I wanted to build things, and fix things, and make things with my own two hands. This was my passion, and I followed it for years. I took all the shop classes at school, and did all I could to absorb the knowledge and skill that came so easily to my granddad. Unfortunately, the handy gene skipped over me, and I became frustrated. But I remained determined to do whatever it took to become a tradesman.

One day, I brought home a sconce from woodshop that looked like a paramecium, and after a heavy sigh, my grandfather told me the truth. He explained that my life would be a lot more satisfying and productive if I got myself a different kind of toolbox. This was almost certainly the best advice I’ve ever received, but at the time, it was crushing. It felt contradictory to everything I knew about persistence, and the importance of “staying the course.” It felt like quitting. But here’s the “dirty truth,” Stephen. “Staying the course” only makes sense if you’re headed in a sensible direction. Because passion and persistence – while most often associated with success – are also essential ingredients of futility.

That’s why I would never advise anyone to “follow their passion” until I understand who they are, what they want, and why they want it. Even then, I’d be cautious. Passion is too important to be without, but too fickle to be guided by. Which is why I’m more inclined to say, “Don’t Follow Your Passion, But Always Bring it With You.”
- Mike Rowe

JQuinton 11 Sep 2012 14:01 UTC
27 points
on: Rationality Quotes September 2012
“If your plan is for one year plant rice. If your plan is for 10 years plant trees. If your plan is for 100 years educate children”—Confucius

JQuinton 26 Dec 2013 14:41 UTC
26 points
on: Rationality Quotes December 2013

Saying “everyone is equally to blame” is great if you want to sound reasonable and paint yourself as a moderate voice in a debate, but it doesn’t really work if you actually want to be correct.

From a commenter called “ThisIsMyRealName” over at Slate

JQuinton 24 Sep 2013 21:32 UTC
25 points
on: Open Thread, September 23-29, 2013
Is there a name for this following bias?

So I’ve debated a lot of religious people in my youth, and a common sort of “inferential drift”, if you can call if that, is that they believe that if you don’t think something is true or doesn’t exist, then this must mean that you don’t want said thing to be true or to exist. It’s like a sort of meta-motivated reasoning; they are falsely attributing your conclusions due to motivated reasoning. The most obvious examples are reading any sort of Creationist writing that critiques evolution, where they pretty explicitly attribute accepting the theory of evolution to a desire for god to not exist.

I’ve started to notice it in many other highly charged, mind-killing topics as well. Is this all in my head? Has anyone else experienced this?

JQuinton 4 Sep 2013 15:47 UTC
23 points
on: Rationality Quotes September 2013
Somebody could give me this glass of water and tell me that it’s water. But there’s a lot of clear liquids out there and I might actually have a real case that this might not be water. Now most cases when something like a liquid is in a cup it’s water.

A good way to find out if it’s water is to test if it has two hydrogens per oxygen in each molecule in the glass and you can test that. If it evaporates like water, if it tastes like water, freezes like water… the more tests we apply, the more sure we can be that it’s water.

However, if it were some kind of acid and we started to test and we found that the hydrogen count is off, the oxygen count is off, it doesn’t taste like water, it doesn’t behave like water, it doesn’t freeze like water, it just looks like water. If we start to do these tests, the more we will know the true nature of the liquid in this glass. That is how we find truth. We can test it any number of ways; the more we test it, the more we know the truth of what it is that we’re dealing with.
- An ex-Mormon implicitly describing Bayesian updates

JQuinton 18 Jun 2012 20:49 UTC
21 points
on: Thwarting a Catholic conversion?
Maybe it’s just me, but the premise of this post rubs me the wrong way. “Thwarting” a conversion? It seems kinda… I don’t know. And I’m probably one of the most anti-theistic people that I know or have interacted with on the Internet. It’s not like you’re trying to prevent her from slipping into alcoholism. As long as she stays fundamentally the same person, I don’t see what the big deal is. People should be respected for how they treat others, not what they believe.

That said, I’ve read a few “convert back to Christianity” stories and a lot of them have similar hidden/leading indicators. There’s always some sort of family/significant other factor; it was usually a huge sticking point during their deconversion from religion. I don’t really know a lot of this blogger’s backstory, but are her family and/or significant other Catholics? That would explain the jump straight from atheism to Catholicism without some sort of intermediary stage (e.g. deism, generic Christianity, etc.) based on my own personal prior probability about how these things happen.

So if that’s the case, “thwarting” again seems sort of insensitive. At least to me it would be insensitive language in this context.

JQuinton 5 Dec 2013 6:05 UTC
19 points
on: December Monthly Bragging Thread
My blog was listed as “optional reading” on the syllabus for a course on critical thinking in Hong Kong.

JQuinton 25 Oct 2013 18:34 UTC
19 points
on: Less Wrong’s political bias
I’d gather that if there were a lot more religious people posting on Less Wrong, there might have been a similar injunction about discussing religion. More religious people might have resulted in more threads devolving into atheism vs religion debates (not really “debates” but flame wars) which would detract from the goal of the blog which is about improving rationality.

It probably doesn’t help that a lot of the initial posts on Less Wrong—meaning the Sequences—are implicitly (and sometimes explicitly) anti-religious. Which probably functioned to dissuade more religious people from joining the community initially, since religion was seen as a go-to example of irrationality.

JQuinton 10 Sep 2013 17:05 UTC
19 points
on: Military Rationalities and Irrationalities
The one thing that the military taught me, if you can even consider it “rationality”, was to not be paralyzed by indecision if you have insufficient information. This is what I was thinking of when Luke critiques the “straw rationalist” on his Facing The Intelligence Explosion website.

JQuinton 13 Aug 2013 17:37 UTC
18 points
on: What Bayesianism taught me
“Absence of evidence isn’t evidence of absence” is such a ubiquitous cached thought in rationalist communities (that I’ve been involved with) that its antithesis was probably the most important thing I learned from Bayesianism.

JQuinton 4 Mar 2015 18:10 UTC
17 points
in reply to: [deleted]’s comment on: Stupid Questions March 2015
I think the “everybody” is really an American-centric thing. As far as I can tell, all of the New Atheist types are non-European, or who focus most of their polemics on American audiences.

I’ve never lived in Europe, but this was my experience growing up in the US:
- “You don’t believe in Jesus/God? I must not have raised you right”
- “You’ve treated me better than all of my previous boyfriends/girlfriends, but you don’t believe in Jesus so I’m breaking up with you”
- “You’re new to the area? Where did you move from? Oh, Nowhereville, Alabahoma? I’m from Otherplace, Nevexico. So what church do you go to?”
- “How come you’re not going to the prayer breakfast/luncheon?”
- “You didn’t get the job/your car broke down/lost your wallet/etc.? Don’t worry, god has a plan for you”
- “Can you believe these scientists and their evolution/global warming/sciency science talk? They’ll say anything to reject god, right? My pastor says XYZ so therefore it’s true”
I’ve lived in a lot of places in the US and in my experience the places where this sort of stuff doesn’t happen are mainly large cities like NYC or San Francisco. And even then, it has to be the parts of those cities that are leaning on the more affluent side of things. It’s not just a USA Bible-Belt phenomenon… I’ve actually never lived in or visited the Bible Belt so it must be a lot worse there.

JQuinton 16 Dec 2014 2:32 UTC
17 points
on: Rationality Quotes December 2014
“They, instead, commit the fundamental attribution error, which is if something good happens, it’s because I’m a genius. If something bad happens, it’s because someone’s an idiot or I didn’t get the resources or the market moved. … What we’ve seen is that the people who are the most successful here, who we want to hire, will have a fierce position. They’ll argue like hell. They’ll be zealots about their point of view. But then you say, ‘here’s a new fact,’ and they’ll go, ‘Oh, well, that changes things; you’re right.’”
- Why Google doesn’t care about hiring top graduates

JQuinton 17 Nov 2014 21:32 UTC
17 points
on: Is this dark arts and if it, is it justified?
HPMOR is something that appeals to System 1 (an engaging story/narrative) to advertize for rationality. So I don’t think appealing to System 1 per se implicates you as a dark arts practicioner.

JQuinton 22 Oct 2013 16:57 UTC
17 points
in reply to: Richard_Kennaway’s comment on: What Can We Learn About Human Psychology from Christian Apologetics?
I answered this poll with “LessWrong has had no particular impact on my beliefs regarding religion” but that’s not really true.

Reading LessWrong actually made me less antagonistic towards religion, since I didn’t start reading about cognitive science and sociology until being prompted by reading LessWrong posts. Reading that stuff made me realize that there isn’t some “rational little homunculus inside that is being ‘corrupted’ by all these evolved heuristics and biases layered over it” but that we are biases and heuristics; religion isn’t some alien thing to be removed from the planet, but more like something that we should harness and possibly try to make healthier versions of.
What links here?
- JQuinton's comment on The Case For Free Will or Why LessWrong must commit to self determination by Troshen (7 Apr 2014 18:19 UTC; 14 points)