Here is a list of all my public writings and videos.
If you want to do a dialogue with me, but I didn’t check your name, just send me a message instead. Ask for what you want!
Here is a list of all my public writings and videos.
If you want to do a dialogue with me, but I didn’t check your name, just send me a message instead. Ask for what you want!
There’s something about the way you write introductions that reminds me of good YouTube videos. It’s a combination of easy-to-understand illustrations, simple words, and starting with an interesting question.
I like these kinds of posts.
To measure the period of a pendulum, the pendulum must leave a position and then return to it. The pendulum is not leaving its current position. Therefore it is incorrect to conclude that the pendulum’s period is 0.0 seconds.
The students should continue monitoring the pendulum until it leaves its position and then returns to it.
The secret is out. Ben’s secret identity is Ben Pace.
These are good guidelines.
I think the Dialogue feature is really good. I like using it, and I think it nudges community behavior in a good direction. Well done, Lightcone team.
How do you know that this approach doesn’t miss entire categories of error?
The points you bring up are subtle and complex. I think a dialogue would be a better way to explore them rather than a comment thread. I’ve PM’d you.
I tried that too. It didn’t work on my first ~1 hour attempt.
I want to express appreciation for a feature the Lightcone team implemented a long time ago: Blocking all posts tagged “AI Alignment” keeps this website usable for me.
I will bet at odds 10:1 (favorable to you) that I will not let the AI out
I too am confident enough as gatekeeper that I’m willing to offer similar odds. My minimum and maximum bets are my $10,000 USD vs your $1,000 USD.
I was wondering how long it would take for someone to ask these questions. I will paraphrase a little.
Socratic-style dialogue is a very broad umbrella. Pretty much any question-focused dialogue qualifies. A public schoolteacher asking a class of students “What do you think?” is both “Socratic” and ineffective at penetrating delusion.
The approach gestured at here is entirely within the domain of “Socratic”-style dialogue. However, it is far more specific. The techniques I practice and teach are laser-focused on improving rationality.
Here are a few examples of techniques I use and train, but which are not mandatory for a dialogue to be “Socratic”:
If, while asking questions, you are asked “what do you believe” in return, you must state exactly what you believe.
You yield as much overt frame to the other person as possible. This is especially the case with definitions. In all but the most egregious situations, you let the other person define terms.
There are basic principles about how minds work that I’m trying to gesture at. One of my primary objectives in the foundational stages is to get students to understand how the human mind lazily [in the computational sense of the word “lazily”] evaluates beliefs and explanations. Socrates himself was likely aware of these mechanics but, in my experience, most teachers using Socratic methods are not aware of them.
I use specific conversational techniques to draw attention to specific errors. Which brings us to….
It depends on your goal. There are established techniques for selling things, seducing people, telling stories, telling jokes, negotiating, and getting your paper accepted into an academic journal. Truth in Comedy: The Manual of Improvisation is a peerless manual for improvisation. But it’s not a rationalist handbook.
I have been assembling a list of mistakes and antidotes in my head, but I haven’t written it down (yet?).
Here are a few quick examples.
The way to get an us-vs-them persuasion-oriented rambler to notice they’re mistaken is via an Intellectual Turing Test. If they’re a Red and assume you’re a Blue, then you let them argue about why the Blues are wrong. After a while, you ask “What do you think I believe?” and you surprise them when they find out you’re not a Blue. They realized they wasted their reputation and both of your time. One of my favorite sessions with a student started with him arguing against the Blues. He was embarrassed to discover that I wasn’t a Blue. Then he spent an hour arguing about why I’m wrong for being a Green. The second time I asked “What do you think I believe?” was extra satisfying, because I had already warned him of the mistake he was making.
If someone is making careless mistakes because they don’t care about whether they’re right or wrong, you ask if you can publish the dialogue on the Internet. The earnest people clean up their act. The disingenuous blowhards slink away.
If someone does a Gish gallop, you ask them to place all their chips on the most important claim.
If someone says “Some people argue ” you ask “Do you argue ”? If yes, then they now have skin in the game. If no, then you can dismiss the argument.
Thanks. ❤️
I stole that line from Eric Raymond who stole it from Zen.
I skipped two years of math in grade school. That saved me two years of class time, but the class was still too easy. That’s because the speed of the class was the same. Smart kids don’t just know more. They learn much faster.
For smart students to learn math at an appropriate speed, it’s not enough to skip grades. They need an accelerated program.
Personal counterfactual: I was smarter than my peers and didn’t skip any grades.
Result: I didn’t physically play with or date the other students.
Exceptions: I did play football and did Boy Scouts, but those were both after-school activities. Moreover, neither of them were strictly segregated by age. Football was weight-based, and Boy Scouts lumped everyone from 11 to 17 into the same troop.
Putting students in the same math class based on age (ignoring intelligence) is like putting students on the same football team based on age (ignoring size).
Different people have different preferences regarding translation. Personally, I’m okay with you translating anything I write here as long as you include a link back to my original here on Less Wrong.
I don’t believe this website has any official English-only policy. However, English is the primary language used here. I recommend you just post it in Russian, but include a short note in English at the top explaining something like “This is a Russian translation of …. The original can be found at ….”
The video can be summarized by these two lines at timestamp 5:39.
Justin: How do you feel genuine love towards those that cause—you know—monumental suffering for others?
Lsusr: How can you not? They’re human beings.
I use the word “love” but, as you noted, that word has many definitions. It would be less ambiguous if I were to say “compassion”.
That’s funny. When I read lc’s username I think “that username looks similar to ‘lsusr’” too.
I don’t plan to read David Chapman’s writings. His website is titled “Meta-rationality”. When I’m teaching rationality, one of the first things I have to do is tell students repeatedly is to stop being meta.
Empiricism is about reality. “Meta” is at least one step away from reality, and therefore at least one step farther from empiricism.
I know all of those words. I’m not super-comfortable with “chicanery”, but it didn’t cause any issues with my reading. Please click [agree] on my comment if you know all three words and [disagree] if there is at least one you don’t know.