What is the best way to go about this? I have a short chapter written in a state that I am willing to show people.
kerspoon
I agree with you and your reasoning on what you should believe following that. Yet still, I find myself saying to people, “I believe that …” to emphasise that it is my belief. Maybe I am wrong in doing this but it appears to help people understand that “she is attractive” is not a property of her. I guess I could just make it explicit another way by saying “I find her attractive”.
I will concede that it is not the most sensible use of the phrase “I believe” but people will still use it and it will remain helpful to have it as one of the buckets we can separate uses of that phrase into.
The difference was very intentional. I wanted to make clear the extra level of indirection between the two phrases. In the second case John may not actually have a bridge on his map at the indicated point, all we know is that he has the note saying that he believes there is a bridge there. It should logically follow that he should only say he believe something to be on his map if is it actually on his map. The point I was trying to make is that sometimes these things do not follow.
This is my first post, I was unable to post on main.
I am also unaware of how I should decide where to post. What makes a main post?
I know facts about Zimbardo’s prison experiment because I studied it in University. I know the feeling a nail makes when I hit it with a hammer because I have done it. I know Greece has been granted a second bailout because I overheard someone talking about reading it in the news.
These are things that I know why I know them. I guess that you would be able to give me reasons why you think the world is round.
It is harder when there are many small pieces of evidence. I hadn’t thought of that. And I agree that my reccomendations are not possible to do all the time.
I would be happy to revise them to only apply when receiving facts you find surprising or you expect the other person to be surprised. That way we only need two, well defined stop signs in our system 1 thinking. Stop sign one is when we hear “I believe …” find which category it fits into. Sign two is when we are surprised by a fact reply with ” fascinating, where did you hear that”.
- 22 Feb 2012 12:43 UTC; 1 point) 's comment on I believe it’s doublethink by (
I’m honestly curious. Think of a fact, and then ask yourself why you know it. Out of 5 attempts how many did you actually have no idea why that fact is there.
I would expect if I were to ask people why do you think daffodil flowers need lots of water they would at least say something like, oh I heard it somewhere (assuming that the do indeed believe this). From this I would choose to shift my belief only very very slightly.
Please see my response to Viliam and ShardPhoenix.
I do not know how to move it. If you think it should can you please ask a moderator.
I’m planning on coming too. It will be my first less wrong meetup, anything I need to know beforehand?
Thanks, I assumed that was done automatically. I have fixed it (hopefully).
Thanks everyone for coming. It was an intense discussion with quite a few points for me to mull on (and more important a few things I will do). I hope everyone had fun.
It looks like there will be another meetup at 2pm tomorrow (Sunday 12th) in the same place (Shakespeare’s Head Holborn). I hope to see you all there.
Some of the points discussed (I’m not saying I agree, simply pointing them out):
If you can program computers then get part-time freelance ‘rent-a-coder’ work online. This is good because it will give you a strong safety net to take risks (e.g. quit work to try doing …, be able to follow through on leaving if you don’t get a raise, whatever). It is also good as you can earn while travelling the world (which you should do). I have also realised that it helps make trade-off decisions easier (e.g. I should hire a cleaner IFF the amount I pay them is less than I can earn doing freelance work in that time).
Drugs are good (unless you are an idiot or addict). Psilocybin mushrooms and weed were mentions to expand or change thoughts. Dexadrin and similar were mentioned to work well for learning (not sure if that is keeping focused, memory retention, or other).
Quick happiness hack: send thank you letters to people who you should thank.
All our special guests talked about about creating a movement, bringing together smart, dedicated people.
http://www.fhi.ox.ac.uk/ The Future of Humanity Institute (University of Oxford) is worth visiting and chatting to the people there.
There was a discussion (Rikk and others) about having another sort of meetup where we do stuff rather than talk. Or even plan stuff that we then go and do rather than talk. I am strongly in favour of this.
I’m sure there was more that I didn’t manage to hear.
Thanks Cat, Michael and Jaan.
I’d definitely go, unless it was on the weekend of the 9th Aug.
I would probably be happy to let some people stay at my house if they were traveling from outside of London. I would have to agree this part with my housemate.
It might also be worth adding to this thread on the LessWrongLondon group https://groups.google.com/forum/?fromgroups=#!topic/lesswronglondon/sLdnshaeHHg (I would certainly appreciate it as I don’t check LessWrrong.com very often)
Great stuff, see you there.
Hi, I realise you have crossed out your post but I will answer it anyway,
We are very happy for new people to turn up. It’s the first meetup of the new format but that shouldn’t matter (it will be a little new for all of us).
We are fairly easy to recognise but we also have the art lebedev paperclip on our tables http://www.artlebedev.com/everything/skrepkus/
Looking forward to seeing everyone at 2pm this Sunday. Here is a rough plan on what I plan to cover:
Finding goals for yourself.
Making them a better fit of what you actually want to do (rather than things that sound good).
Turning those goals into tasks you are actually likely to do.
Glad you could come along. Not read the article; I just found the quote fun. Hope to see you there again.
I’ve written a summary of the meetup and the files used below:
https://groups.google.com/d/msg/lesswronglondon/FfctMn33gXA/Y5Q6FfLcGAsJ
Hope you find it interesting.
One of the tactics I have heard is to pay a friend a certain amount at the start of the night. Each new person or group you start talking to they give you come of the money back. What ever is left you friend gets to keep.
I’m not sure that adding more stress would help overcome social anxiety but if you think it will work then it is probably worth a trial run of $150 of $15 per group you say hi to—that must be done in one night. It it works you can start upping the total number of group you have to talk to but keeping the $150 the same.
Hello,
I’m a 26 year old guy from the UK. I’ve finished writing my Ph.D. thesis in “Quantification of risk in large scale wind power integration” and I’m now working as a phone-app framework developer. I spent the last year on a round the world travel where I have spent a lot of my time writing practical philosophy. After coming back I found this site and read the core sequences. I loved them, they echoed a lot of my previous thoughts then took them much further. I felt like they would be easier to understand if they were one article so I have been re-writing bits of them for my own benefit. I am in two minds whether to post them here but I would appreciate the feedback to see if I have understood what was written.