KPier

Karma: 1,393

Teenage Rationalists and Changing Your Mind

KPier5 Aug 2011 18:19 UTC

87 points

31 comments3 min readLW link

Theory of Knowledge (rationality outreach)

KPier9 Aug 2011 21:36 UTC

86 points

82 comments2 min readLW link

KPier 28 Nov 2021 3:19 UTC
74 points
on: Frame Control
I appreciate this post. I get the sense that the author is trying to do something incredibly complicated and is aware of exactly how hard it is, and the post does it as well as it can be done.

I want to try to contribute by describing a characteristic thing I’ve noticed from people who I later realized were doing a lot of frame control on me:

Comments like ‘almost no one is actually trying but you, you’re actually trying’ ‘most people don’t actually want to hear this, and I’m hoping you’re different’.′ I can only tell you this if you want to hear it’ ‘it feels like you’re already getting it, no one gets that far on their own’ ‘almost everyone is too locked into the system to actually listen to what I’m about to say’ ‘I’ve been wanting to find the right person to say this to, but no one wants to listen, but I think you might actually be ready to hear it’: the common thread is that you, the listener, are special, and the speaker is the person who gets to recognize you as special, and the proof of your specialness is that you’re going to try/going to listen/going to hear them out/ not going to instantly jump to conclusions
Counterexamples: ‘you’re the only Political Affiliation X I’ve ever found worth listening to’ does not at all seem to come from the same kinds of motivations as the above. Some people have said “[x writing] demonstrated a rare ability to Actually Get It” and weren’t doing weird manipulative shit at all; people who said it publicly in fact I think have in every case just been sincere/being nice/recommending a thinker they think highly of. The frame control people all said it privately or semiprivately, possibly because that way they can reuse the compliment on lots of people, possibly I’m just overgeneralizing from a small number of data points.

KPier 7 Sep 2023 20:56 UTC
58 points
7
in reply to: KatWoods’s comment on: Sharing Information About Nonlinear
Cross posting from the EA Forum:

It could be that I am misreading or misunderstanding these screenshots, but having read through them a couple of times trying to parse what happened, here’s what I came away with:
On December 15, Alice states that she’d had very little to eat all day, that she’d repeatedly tried and failed to find a way to order takeout to their location, and tries to ask that people go to Burger King and get her an Impossible Burger which in the linked screenshots they decline to do because they don’t want to get fast food. She asks again about Burger King and is told it’s inconvenient to get there. Instead, they go to a different restaurant and offer to get her something from the restaurant they went to. Alice looks at the menu online and sees that there are no vegan options. Drew confirms that ‘they have some salads’ but nothing else for her. She assures him that it’s fine to not get her anything.

It seems completely reasonable that Alice remembers this as ‘she was barely eating, and no one in the house was willing to go out and get her nonvegan foods’ - after all, the end result of all of those message exchanges was no food being obtained for Alice and her requests for Burger King being repeatedly deflected with ‘we are down to get anything that isn’t fast food’ and ‘we are down to go anywhere within a 12 min drive’ and ‘our only criteria is decent vibe + not fast food’, after which she fails to find a restaurant meeting those (I note, kind of restrictive if not in a highly dense area) criteria and they go somewhere without vegan options and don’t get her anything to eat.

It also seems totally reasonable that no one at Nonlinear understood there was a problem. Alice’s language throughout emphasizes how she’ll be fine, it’s no big deal, she’s so grateful that they tried (even though they failed and she didn’t get any food out of the ¹²⁄₁₅ trip, if I understand correctly). I do not think that these exchanges depict the people at Nonlinear as being cruel, insane, or unusual as people. But it doesn’t seem to me that Alice is lying to have experienced this as ‘she had covid, was barely eating, told people she was barely eating, and they declined to pick up Burger King for her because they didn’t want to go to a fast food restaurant, and instead gave her very limiting criteria and went somewhere that didn’t have any options she could eat’.

On December 16th it does look like they successfully purchased food for her.

My big takeaway from these exchanges is not that the Nonlinear team are heartless or insane people, but that this degree of professional and personal entanglement and dependence, in a foreign country, with a young person, is simply a recipe for disaster. Alice’s needs in the ¹²⁄₁₅ chat logs are acutely not being met. She’s hungry, she’s sick, she conveys that she has barely eaten, she evidently really wants someone to go to BK and get an impossible burger for her, but (speculatively) because of this professional/personal entanglement, she lobbies for this only by asking a few times why they ruled out Burger King, and ultimately doesn’t protest when they instead go somewhere without food she can eat, assuring them it’s completely fine. This is also how I relate to my coworkers, tbh—but luckily, I don’t live with them and exclusively socialize with them and depend on them completely when sick!!

Given my experience with talking with people about strongly emotional events, I am inclined towards the interpretation where Alice remembers the 15th with acute distress and remembers it as ‘not getting her needs met despite trying quite hard to do so’, and the Nonlinear team remembers that they went out of their way that week to get Alice food—which is based on the logs from the 16th clearly true! But I don’t think I’d call Alice a liar based on reading this, because she did express that she’d barely eaten and request apologetically for them to go somewhere she could get vegan food (with BK the only option she’d been able to find) only for them to refuse BK because of the vibes/inconvenience.
What links here?
- mayleaf's comment on A quick update from Nonlinear by KatWoods (7 Sep 2023 22:10 UTC; 11 points)

Chess and cheap ways to check day to day variance in cognition

KPier7 Jul 2021 0:08 UTC

56 points

27 comments3 min readLW link

KPier 27 Sep 2014 2:51 UTC
44 points
on: Rationality Quotes September 2014
A shipowner was about to send to sea an emigrant-ship. He know that she was old, and not over-well built at the first; that she had seen many seas and climes, and often had needed repairs. Doubts had been suggested to him that possibly she was not seaworthy. These doubts preyed upon his mind and made him unhappy; he thought that perhaps he ought to have her thoroughly overhauled and refitted, even though this should put him to great expense. Before the ship sailed, however, he succeeded in overcoming these melancholy reflections. He said to himself that she had gone safely though so many voyages and weathered so many storms, that it was idle to suppose she would not come safely home from this trip also. He would put his trust in Providence, which could hardly fail to protect all these unhappy families that were leaving their fatherland to seek for better times elsewhere. He would dismiss from his mind all ungenerous suspicions about the honesty of builders and contractors. In such a way he acquired a sincere and comfortable conviction that his vessel was thoroughly safe and seaworthy; he watched her depature with a light heart, and benevolent wishes for the success of the exiles in their strange new home that was to be; and he got his insurance-money when she went down in mid-ocean and told no tales.

What shall we say of him? Surely this, that he was verily guilty of the death of those men. It is admitted that he did sincerely believe in the soundness of his ship, but the sincerity of his conviction can in nowise help him, because he had no right to believe on such evidence as was before him. He had acquired his belief not by honestly earning it in patient investigation, but by stifling his doubts.
- W.J. Clifford, the Ethics of Belief
What links here?

KPier 30 May 2011 22:22 UTC
34 points
on: Welcome to Less Wrong! (2010-2011)
Hello Less Wrong!

I’m 16, female, and a senior in high school. Before I started reading here, I was not particularly interested in math, science, or rationality (which I had never really heard of). I stumbled on Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality in October, and fell in love immediately. I read through the whole story in one night, and finally made the leap to Less Wrong during Eliezer’s hiatus.

I started on Less Wrong by reading Mysterious Answers to Mysterious Questions and within three posts I realized that, for the first time in my life, I was surrounded by people significantly smarter than me. Some people would probably have been excited about that; I was terrified. I promised myself that I wouldn’t post—wouldn’t even create an account, to avoid the temptation of posting—until I had read all the sequences and understood everything everyone said.

In retrospect, that may have been setting the bar a little too high for myself, especially since seven more sequences were added while I was reading. I eventually revised my standard to “I will not comment until I’m sure I actually have something to add to a discussion, and until I understand the things I have read well enough to explain them convincingly to 4 of my friends.”

The fact that I had to set all of those hurdles for myself just to have the self-confidence to create an account probably tells you a little about myself—I’m not ordinarily insecure, but I was so excited to find something like this I was very worried about “messing it up”. I’ve now read about 90% of the sequences and 98% of everything posted on Less Wrong in the last few months, and understood almost all of it (the quantum physics and decision theory sequences still confuse me). I’m not sure “read everything before you start to contribute” is generally a good guideline for new visitors, but for me it was perfect. I changed my mind about a lot of important things along the way—if there’s enough interest, I may discuss this in a post about exposing more teenagers to rationality.

So, thank you all for this great site! I hope I’ll be able to contribute.

KPier 20 Aug 2011 18:03 UTC
30 points
on: What a practical plan for Friendly AI looks like
Not to be too harsh, but this seems like several steps backwards in designing a Friendly AI. To extend your metaphor, it’s as if NASA has started calculating the potential trajectory of a rocket and you’re running in shouting “Guys, guys, all this math is going to make the project way too confusing! We can see the moon—let’s just aim our rocket at that!”.

I think part of the problem is determining the goal of your post. Are you trying to come up with a simple, non-weird sounding explanation of FAI that LWers can explain to people without sounding low-status? If so, good job. This sounds reassuring and intuitive, and I’m fairly confident I could explain it to anyone without inferential-gap problems. Or are you trying to create a blueprint for how FAI “might be pursued in the real world”? If this is your goal, I’m concerned.

Having managers, bureaucrats, and lawyers create a set of laws for an AI to follow just won’t work. Human deliberation and consensus can’t solve simple, human created problems—why on earth do we think it’ll solve AI problems? Constraining an AI with today’s value system stifles all moral progress—possibly forever.

Then you would get your programmers and your cognitive scientists to implement that goal condition in a way such that the symbols have the meanings that they are supposed to have.

That’s the whole problem. We don’t really know what we mean by “right”, and we don’t even know what “happiness” and “freedom” and similar concepts mean to us. There’s no reason to believe doing this would be any easier than CEV, and some evidence to suggest it’s impossible.

KPier 26 Aug 2011 1:21 UTC
23 points
in reply to: SilasBarta’s comment on: Help Fund Lukeprog at SIAI
The comment you linked to doesn’t seem like a clarifying question at all. I think that conversation might be another instance where your belligerent tone hurt communication even though your point was a valid one. Luke’s answer didn’t seem particularly defensive, either (although I have seen other conversations where his tone was defensive, so I won’t challenge that point.)

I actually agree with you on this point (and upvoted all your questions about it), but the longer you argue the less sympathetic I’m getting. You asked when results would be published, and the answer was that it requires a lot of processing time. You asked if volunteers can help, and Luke answered that while volunteers can’t help on that specifically, they can contribute to other things which will speed up the process. To which you answered:

I actually have no interest in supporting your research....I think your contributions are overrated.

Which just doesn’t show a whole lot of interest in actually resolving the problem you’re concerned about.
What links here?
- lukeprog's comment on Help Fund Lukeprog at SIAI by Eliezer Yudkowsky (29 Aug 2011 18:51 UTC; 14 points)

KPier 30 Aug 2011 2:20 UTC
21 points
in reply to: SilasBarta’s comment on: Help Fund Lukeprog at SIAI
I really don’t think that’s the problem here.

You had a good point, you made it, and you pointed out the problems with the responses to it. All of these comments were upvoted, many to double digits. But then your comments turned into personal attacks on Luke (suggesting he doesn’t understand the material he posts, suggesting he is lying about not seeing an earlier comment of yours). At that point, I felt (as, I’m guessing, did others), that your comments were actively counterproductive in trying to learn more about the minicamp, as well as promoting a community norm of insulting each other and assuming bad faith.

I also tend to get annoyed by, and downvote, comments to the effect of “The fact that I was downvoted reflects badly on all of you, who obviously downvoted me for [reason]” since I usually didn’t downvote for the reason mentioned and I don’t see them as a sincere attempt to understand the source of disagreement.

KPier 9 Nov 2012 20:36 UTC
20 points
in reply to: Viliam_Bur’s comment on: PROPOSAL: LessWrong for Teenagers
I’m a freshman in college now, but a post or two analyzing the reasons for choosing an (expensive, high status) private college versus an (essentially free, low status) state college, or going to school in America versus Europe versus somewhere else, would have been immensely valuable to me a year ago.

This would belong on LessWrong because typical advice on this topic is either “follow your dreams, do what you love, everything will work out”, or “you’re an idiot to take on debt, if you can’t pay your own way through college you’re a lazy, entitled brat”.

A post describing how to make such a decision based on expected-value calculations, discussing value of information and college visits, and dissecting the research into the income effects of attending top colleges would be very nice.

(I could write such a post, if others think it would be of enough general interest).

KPier 2 Aug 2011 19:27 UTC
20 points
on: Teaching Suggestions?
I’ve tried explaining LW stuff to my high school friends, and had the most success explaining map and territory, cached thoughts, and what is meant by truth/evidence. But don’t try to cram too much into one hour.

A lot of people will think (due to hindsight bias, I assume) that this stuff is obvious once you’ve explained it. This means they won’t take it as seriously and are less likely to check out follow-up materials. I would start by asking them (if the format makes this possible) what they think “truth” and “evidence” mean. Usually they run out of ideas within 30 seconds, and then are more interested in what you have to say about it.

KPier 26 Oct 2011 0:41 UTC
19 points
in reply to: ArisKatsaris’s comment on: Rationality Quotes October 2011
I’ve been upvoting you (and the other commenters who’ve tried to correct sam) throughout this, but there’s a point where even rational, thoughtful rebuttals don’t help LessWrong’s signal-to-noise ratio, because they’re doing nothing but feed an obnoxious troll like sam0345.

And a debate over Star Wars seems especially unlikely to change sam’s mind.

You win. Now please drop it.
What links here?
- Jack's comment on Rationality Quotes October 2011 by MinibearRex (26 Oct 2011 6:36 UTC; -2 points)

KPier 11 May 2021 2:18 UTC
18 points
on: MIRI location optimization (and related topics) discussion
Given your described desiderata, I would think that a slightly more rural location along the coast of California ought to be up there. Large properties in Orinda are not that expensive (there are gorgeous 16-30 acre lots for about 1million on Zillow right now), and right now, for better and for worse, the Bay is the locus of the rationalist and EA communities and of the tech industry; convincing people to move to a pastoral retreat 1hour from the city everyone already lives in is a much easier sell and smoother transition than convincing them to move across the country. (I recognize that MIRI is doing this in part because of thinking that it’s bad for the Bay to be that, but I think the Bay community already has at least four distinctive sub communities with different values and norms and priorities, and a campus in more-rural California could form a distinctive one while not disrupting all existing social bonds.) I know Bay zoning is notorious, but that’s much less true as soon as you’re out of the Bay proper, and all of those properties emphasize in the listings that you have total flexibility about what to build on that land. Other nearby properties are often also for sale.

I worry that if MIRI moves to a place with no local rationalists or rationalist-inclined people, they’ll be less likely to make new friends and more likely to become very insular, as the people who valued their non-MIRI relationships most fall away; it seems like a huge advantage if a move is either to a place with a preexisting rationalist community or doesn’t require severing ties with the current ones.
The big downside of this, to my mind, would be fire, and it’s a substantial downside, but on the whole I anticipate-success much more strongly for a rural-California enclave than for the locations you describe. (Disclaimer: this may be because I have strong roots in the Bay and am not personally likely to move.)

KPier 5 Aug 2011 23:40 UTC
18 points
in reply to: [deleted]’s comment on: Teenage Rationalists and Changing Your Mind
I would agree that teaching elementary schoolers proper “rationality” is probably impossible, but I think there would be a lot of benefits to encouraging curiosity and interest in the world generally. When I was 12, my science teacher gave us all pendulums and told us to figure out how they worked. Everyone was annoyed at him—we’d plodded dutifully through the public school system for years by then, and everyone knew that the teacher had to tell you what variables to test, and which one was independent, and which one was dependent. We ended up testing lots of different stuff: how is the period of a pendulum affected by string length? weight? starting position? In the end, I learned a lot about pendulums—and even more about how to do science when you don’t even know what you’re testing. I think most 12 year old could benefit from a lesson like that.

At least some high school kids could learn (and understand) everything on LessWrong. I’ll focus in my next few posts on how to tell which ones, and how to reach them.

KPier 16 Jul 2011 23:57 UTC
18 points
on: The limits of introspection
I’ve noticed on your last posts that most of the studies cited are decades old; is that because this is considered a settled question in behavioral science, because a lot of these experiments wouldn’t pass modern ethics standards, or something else?

typo:

when the subject was holding on two one cord ey couldn’t reach the other.

KPier 2 Dec 2017 0:38 UTC
16 points
in reply to: DragonGod’s comment on: Cash transfers are not necessarily wealth transfers
That is, of course, consistent with it being net neutral to give people money which they spend on school fees, if the mechanism here is ‘there are X good jobs, all of which go to people who’ve had formal education, but formal education adds no value here’. In that scenario it’s in anyone’s interest to send their kid to school, but all of the kids being sent to school does not net improve anything.
It seems kind of unlikely to me that primary school teaches nothing—and even just teaching English and basic literacy and numeracy seems really valuable—but if it does, that wouldn’t make this woman irrational while it would make cash transfers spent on schooling poorly spent overall.

KPier 26 Nov 2011 17:24 UTC
16 points
on: Welcome to LessWrong (For highschoolers)
1. I’m 17, a senior in high school.
2. I read a lot of nonfiction on my own when i have time, but lately I almost never have time. I’ve also learned a ton from doing competitive debate, though I’m not sure it’s made me a better rationalist—I’m planning a post on this after I finish applying to college.
3. My family and friends tolerate my interest in rationality, and say “that’s really cool!” whenever I explain things, but I haven’t been able to convince them to read the Sequences or even the occasional post. My best friend learned Bayesian statistics for science fair and loves philosophy and debate—he’d be a fantastic rationalist if he wasn’t Catholic. I’m working on that.
4. I take seriously the argument for giving what we can, and intend to go into a high earning career so I can donate what I can to charity (probably x-risk reduction). I haven’t mentioned this before on LessWrong, because without a concrete plan for how to achieve it it seems like an applause light. I would love to talk with someone (CarlShulman?) about how best to do this, because I’m really not sure.
5. Nope. I learn well in an academic environment, and I still have a lot to learn.
As for the other things you suggest in your post: there are no meetups where I live, and I would love to just talk with rationalists occasionally. I’ve read all the Sequences, though I still have trouble with the quantum physics one, and I would also be interested in sharing tips on getting the most out of high school.

See also my posts.

KPier 3 Nov 2011 18:21 UTC
16 points
in reply to: roland’s comment on: 9/11 Survey
In that case, your survey should have asked something along the lines of the following: What do you estimate is the probability that the United States government had a role in the 9/11 attacks? Which can be easily adapted for Prediction Book: Evidence will become public in the next 10 years demonstrating that the US government had a role in the attacks.

But instead you went with a yes-no question and a meaningless “inside job/outside job” dichotomy. The Outside Job category includes a lot of conspiracy theories itself (Israel did it; the Illuminati did it, etc) so you aren’t asking whether people “believe the official story” so much as whether they believe that the US government did it.

In a few years when more information about 9/11 becomes public it could be helpful to look back and see how LW stood on the issue.

I take it from this you expect that in a few years evidence to support your theory will surface. Accordingly, will you update in favor of “no conspiracy” if this evidence fails to surface? Have you updated based on the fact that it has been more than 10 years and no evidence has surfaced?

KPier 27 Jul 2011 22:25 UTC
16 points
in reply to: Alicorn’s comment on: New Post version 1 (please read this ONLY if your last name beings with a–k)
I would love to see a post on hacking yourself poly from a woman’s perspective. To be honest, I’m a little frustrated with the extent to which all dating advice on LessWrong is aimed at those attracted to females. (Luke’s post is great and well considered, though).

KPier

Teenage Ra­tion­al­ists and Chang­ing Your Mind

The­ory of Knowl­edge (ra­tio­nal­ity out­reach)

Chess and cheap ways to check day to day var­i­ance in cognition

Teenage Rationalists and Changing Your Mind

Theory of Knowledge (rationality outreach)

Chess and cheap ways to check day to day variance in cognition