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Bayeswatch 2: Puppy Muffins
Fixed. Thanks.
Bayeswatch 1: Jewish Space Laser
Cladistics is useful not only for biology but also for analyzing things like cultures. If your whole experience comes from a particular clade then you a probably missing most of the picture. Systematically exploring an evolutionary tree is a simple way to gain broader perspective.
You have used the word “feel(ing)” twice. The core question isn’t whether he feels he has intellectual peers he can talk to. It is whether he genuinely does or doesn’t have intellectual peers of his caliber. I believe this high school student when he implies he doesn’t have anyone near his intellect at his school and at other programs he has tried out. You do not. I think this is the crux of our disagreement.
I put so much effort into standard deviations because “smart” papers over a broad range of intelligences. Someone with an IQ of 115 is “smart”. Someone with an IQ of 175 is “smart”. The difference between someone with an IQ of 115 and someone with an IQ of 175 is four standard deviations. Four standard deviations is huge. It is equal to the difference between a PhD in science and someone hovering on the edge of an intellectual disability. It would be absurd for a PhD in science to look for intellectual peers in the same place as someone bordering on the edge of intellectual disability. The same goes for someone with an IQ of 115 verses someone with an IQ of 175.
When you say “a smart kid in high school”, what threshold or range of are you referring to? (Insofar as “smart” refers to .) A kid with a two standard deviations below the mean isn’t smart. A kid four standard deviations above the mean is smart. Where do you draw the cutoff?
What, precisely, do you mean when you use the word “smart”?
The Art of Unix Programming helped me get into software engineering too—especially Chapter 2. Jason Crawford has written up his highlights from the Carnegie book. I replaced The Black Swan with your recommendations.
You are right about Seeing Like A State. I have removed Seeing Like A State from the list. The Secret of Our Success belongs with Seeing Like A State.
Why read old books to understand technology? Because they come for a different world-view and make very different assumptions about the direction that things are going—because they have only the context of their past, and can’t fit it to the usual narratives about WWII and post-war economic and industrial history.
Yep!
[Letter] Re: Advice for High School
I continue to be impressed by Vietnam’s success in keeping COVID out despite sharing a land border with three other countries. Resisting China for milennia seems to promote resistance.
I resisted using the word “rationalist” for a long time. But after posting lots of writing on Less Wrong I eventually needed a shorthand to explain what I’m doing to outsiders. Saying “I write on Less Wrong” doesn’t mean anything to someone who doesn’t know what Less Wrong is.
Anyone with a classical liberal education knows what rationalism is. It refers to the Enlightenment philosophers who felt that reason, as opposed to divine providence, was the chief source of knowledge.
Did rationalists differ from empiricists on the importance of data? Maybe but that isn’t important. The early Enlightenment philosophers were frequently wrong. I like the perspective of historical hindsight. It is a warning not to get too confident. Rationalism is watching slave ships from West Africa come into port, looking up at the stars and figuring out how to make a better world. With centuries of hindsight, what jumps into someone’s mind when you say “Rationalist” is the Enlightenment—a clash between science and the establishment. A collision between high ideals and muddy reality. Using an old name reminds us science is a centuries-long project.
I resisted using the word “community” for a long time too. The word “community” is overused by commercial interests attempting to manipulate people. But during over the COVID lockdown of this last year I’ve made more friends on Less Wrong than in meatspace. And the friends I’ve made are really valuable. Talking to quants I met on Less Wrong was the first time I’ve ever felt like I didn’t have to dumb down my ideas about computer science. I get better job offers here than I get at networking events.
So yeah, I’m part of the rationalist community.
Metacognitive Movement
There are two things I don’t like about “metacognitive movement”: the word “metacognitive” and the word “movement”.
The problem with “metacognitive” is it lacks the historical context of the word “rationalist”. “Rationalist” triggers the image of starry-eyed idealists living in a barbarous world. Metacognitive triggers the image of a yogi on a mountaintop or an academic in an ivory tower. I prefer the former. I’d rather be a rat than a cog.
The problem with “movement” is that Rationalism isn’t a movement. A movement is “group of people with a common ideology, esp a political or religious one” or “the organized action of such a group”. Less Wrong doesn’t have a common ideology. I don’t want it to have one. All ideologies are wrong in some way. Ideologies suppress dissent. Suppressing dissent, when you’re wrong, obstructs the pursuit of truth. Become less wrong is the opposite of following an ideology.
Are we a metacognitive movement? I don’t think so. Making a vaccine isn’t about cognition. It’s about action. Are we a movement? If we are then I ought to be kicked out because I frequently disagree with the prevailing ideology.
Technically yes. You could increase your score on IQ tests by practicing them. But there is no point to doing so.
Your general intelligence (also known as -factor) matters. IQ is a good metric for general intelligence. IQ is such a good metric for general intelligence that it is often used as shorthand for -factor. IQ matters because it is a measurement of your general intelligence (-factor). You could increase your score on IQ tests by practicing them but that won’t increase your general intelligence. It would just cheat the metric. We treat IQ as a stable, intrinsic characteristic because general intelligence is a stable, intrinsic characteristic.
What equations are you using? Is there something special about them which makes you think your particular problem is tractable? A Bayesian optimization hyperparameter search like Facebook’s Adaptive Experimentation Platform (Ax) might help if you’re searching a continuous, differentiable space. Technically-speaking, an efficient general solution is probably impossible to construct within physical reality since it involves reversing trapdoor functions.
I think we’re on the same page. Three more people who came close to dominating the region include Napoleon Bonaparte, Adolf Hitler and Joseph Stalin. I think there are good arguments for both sides to the argument of whether Europe’s disunity comes from culture or geography.
I didn’t know West Africa is like Europe in this regard. That is interesting.
I agree with you as a whole on the fact that Rome expanding into the Levant helped cause the rise of Christianity…
It sounds like you are concerned about the rise of Christianity in Rome. Is your comment intended toward guy_from_finland? My comment is about Roman geography and the pre-Christian geopolitics of Judea under the Roman occupation.
[F]or the most part, Rome didn’t impose polytheism onto the Jews…but Rome mostly allowed the Jews to practice their religion.
It is true Rome didn’t outlaw Judaism. But I don’t think that matters. My reference point for this is when Gaius Caligula tried to get a statue of his likeness built in the Jewish temple. He failed. But an attempt to insert a statue of the emperor into a monotheistic temple is an attempted imposition of polytheism. More importantly, conflicts between Rome and the Jews produced three major Jewish rebellions. They resulted in the destruction of the Jewish polity and a Jewish exodus.
The reason Jews don’t do sacrifices anymore is because they’re required to do so in a specific temple the Romans destroyed in 70 CE. Saying “Rome mostly allowed the Jews to practice their religion” is like razing Mecca and then claiming you allow Muslims to practice their religion because you built them a new city. This is my crux when it comes to Roman treatment of the Jews.
My main point is that Jesus was a Jew rebelling against Roman occupation. Jesus wouldn’t have rebelled against Rome if Rome hadn’t conquered Judea.
I meant that the Roman Empire was an anomaly within European-Mediterranean history. It is unusual for the European-Mediterranean region specifically to be unified.
Thanks. It sounds like, the Islamic world counts as “West” and India just isn’t included on the chart.
The key technology that developed in Western Europe was the (comparatively) peaceful transfer of power from one monarch to another upon death, without lobotomizing the monarch and replacing him with a weaselly bureaucracy the way the Ottomans/Chinese harem systems solved the endless succession civil war problem.
I love wild speculation like this. (Appropriately labeled, of course.)
The common cause is Roman expansion into the Levant. Roman imposition of polytheism on the monotheistic Jews triggered rebellion including (but not limited to) Jesus Christ. The Levant also marks the eastern end of the Mediterranean. Until that point, Rome was either fighting along the Mediterranean cost or competing against the small, weak states of Gaul and Britain. Rome had reached its natural geographic limits. To continue expanding they would have had to win a land war against Persia.
Fixed the airport. Also thanks.