mattnewport

Karma: 4,171

mattnewport 23 Mar 2009 6:14 UTC
8 points
on: I’m confused. Could someone help?
Treating money as a linear measure of value breaks down when the amounts get sufficiently large. The marginal utility of $10,000,000 is not simply 10 x the marginal utility of $1,000,000 for one thing (for someone who is not already wealthy). Also, for really large amounts of money such that they represent a significant fraction of the total money supply the linear relationship does not even hold ignoring the marginal utility—owning all the money in the world is not simply 100 x more valuable than owning 1% of all the money in the world.

Then of course there is the problem that nobody would take the bet with you since they would know you can’t possibly pay if they were to win. Unless it’s Goldman Sachs taking the bet and they know the government will print the money and bail you out if they win.

mattnewport 26 Mar 2009 5:42 UTC
8 points
on: Why *I* fail to act rationally
This touches on what for me is one of the big open questions on what it means to act rationally. I question the common position that the kinds of ‘irrational’ decisions you describe are actually all that irrational. Many such decisions seem to be rational decisions for an agent with a high time preference at the moment of decision. They may seem irrational from the perspective of a future self who looks back on the decisions when dealing with the consequences but I see the problem as more one of conflicting interests between present selves and past/future selves than one strictly of rationality. As the recent post discussed, rationality doesn’t provide goals, it only offers a system for achieving goals. Many apparently irrational decisions are I suspect rational responses to short term goals that conflict with longer term goals.

If I decide to eat a chocolate bar now to satisfy a current craving, I am not really acting irrationally. I have a powerful short term drive to eat chocolate and there is nothing irrational in my actions to satisfy that short term goal. Later on I may look at the scales and regret eating the chocolate but that reflects either a conflict between short term and long term goals or a conflict between the goals of my present self and my past self (really just alternative ways of looking at the same problem). It is not a failure of rationality in terms of short term decision making, it is a problem of incentives not aligning across time frames or between present and future selves. In order to find solutions to such dilemmas it seems more useful to look to micro-economics and the design of incentive structures that align incentives across time scales than to ways to improve the rationality of decisions. The steps I take to acquire chocolate are perfectly rational, the problem is with the conflicts in my incentive structure.

mattnewport 26 Mar 2009 7:01 UTC
2 points
in reply to: Furcas’s comment on: Why *I* fail to act rationally
I suspect there’s a bit of both going on but I’m fairly sure it’s not as dramatic a discounting as an 80% to 1% change (I realize your numbers were only illustrative of the idea). My feeling based on introspection of the decision making process when making a choice that favours short term gain over the more ‘rational’ longer term choice is that I am still fully aware of the negative consequences, I just discount them heavily.

If there’s one area where my judgements are distorted it is in my estimate of how likely I am to be able to ‘make up’ for present choices in the future. I think this is a fairly universal phenomenon and is also reflective of conflicts between present and future selves—I may eat the chocolate bar and commit my future self to exercise or a healthier eating regime but I am far too trusting of my future self and consistently underestimate his incentive to renege on any commitments I attempt to bind him to in the present.

In my personal history I have an unusually explicit example of present/future self conflict. When I was at university I made short term decisions which I explicitly justified to myself and others on the basis that I was making choices that my future self would have to pay for but that I anticipated my future self being a person who my present self would have no qualms about taking advantage of. I was aware of the fact that political views tend to move further to the right with age, as best expressed by the line “Show me a young conservative and I’ll show you someone with no heart. Show me an old liberal and I’ll show you someone with no brains.” and as a young liberal anticipated an older and wealthier conservative self who might not believe in wealth transfer. By taking out student loans I could commit my future self to a wealth transfer that suited my purposes at the time but that my future self would likely not approve of.

As it turns out, I was at least partially right about where my political views would move (though of course if I met my younger self now I would attempt to point out the many rational reasons why my views now are in fact more correct, and the many ways in which his understanding was overly simplistic). Overall I don’t begrudge my younger self the choices he made however, though that may only be because the commitments did not prove to be overly burdensome.

mattnewport 9 Apr 2009 22:24 UTC
14 points
on: Extreme Rationality: It’s Not That Great
An understanding of ‘x-rationality’ has helped me find the world a little less depressing and a little less frustrating. Previously when observing world events, politics and some behaviours in social interactions that seemed incomprehensible without assuming depressing levels of stupidity, incompetence or malice I despaired at the state of humanity. An appreciation of human biases and evolutionary psychology (some of which stems from an interest in both going back well before I ever started reading OB) gives me a framework in which to understand events in the world which I find a lot more productive and optimistic.

An example from politics: it is hard to make any rational sense of drug prohibition when looking at the evidence of the costs and benefits. This would tend to lead to an inevitable conclusion that politicians and the voting public are either irredeemably stupid or actively seeking negative outcomes. Understanding how institutional incentives to maintain the status quo, confirmation bias and signaling effects (politicians and voters needing to be ‘seen to care’ and/or ‘seen to disapprove’) can lead to basically intelligent and well meaning people maintaining catastrophically wrong beliefs at worst allows for accepting the status quo without assuming the worst about one’s fellow man and at best maps out plausible paths for achieving political change by recognizing the true nature of the obstacles.

An example from social interactions: I suffered a fair amount of personal emotional stress reconciling what I had been led to believe ‘ought’ to work when interacting with others and the apparently much less pleasant realities of what seemed to be successful in reality. The only conclusion I could draw was that everyone deliberately lied about the way human interactions worked for their own mysterious and possibly malicious reasons. Coming to an understanding of evolutionary psychology and signaling explanations for many common patterns of human behaviour allows me to reconcile ‘doing what works’ with a belief that most people are not consciously misleading or malicious most of the time. Many people don’t appear to be aware of the contradictions inherent in social interactions but as someone who saw them but could not explain them without assuming the worst, discovering explanations that did not require imputing conscious malice to others allowed for a much more positive outlook on the world.

I could give a number of examples of how ‘regular’ rationality rigorously applied to areas of life where it is often absent have also directly helped me in my life but they seem slightly off topic for this thread.

mattnewport 10 Apr 2009 4:21 UTC
29 points
on: The uniquely awful example of theism
The ‘war on drugs’ is the obvious example that sprang to mind and has already been mentioned. It has cropped up a number of times without objection.

I suspect that one of the reasons theism has ‘special status’ is that it requires little domain specific knowledge to recognize its irrationality. Basic scientific and historical knowledge and experience of the world are enough to throw up serious doubts for anyone who starts down the path of rationality. Other examples that spring to mind require a little more specialist knowledge.

An example: there is some overlap between the ‘economist blogger’ community and the OB readership. Economics bloggers have on occasion discussed the fact that there are certain uncontroversial truths accepted within economics that are not uncontroversial amongst non-economists. Examples are the benefits of free trade over protectionism, the ineffectiveness of price controls, the general efficiency benefits of markets and the net benefits of relatively open immigration policies. I had to learn a bit about economics and be presented with the results of studies to be fully persuaded by some of these arguments—unlike atheism it was not obvious to me from my direct experience that they were true. Perhaps someone more rational than myself could have deduced these truths from first principles and direct observation but as a general rule I would not assume that someone who had not a passing familiarity with economics would have found these truths to be self evident.

Another, and perhaps more troubling, reason is that I suspect a certain amount of self-censorship is at work in order not to risk fragmenting the community with examples that while less controversial in the general population might be more controversial within the self-selecting subset of Less Wrong readers. The Larry Summers affair might be an example of the kind of belief that might be self-censored in a burgeoning rationalist community, despite the noticeable lack of representation of a certain demographic within that community.
What links here?
- magfrump's comment on Open Thread: February 2010 by wedrifid (3 Feb 2010 18:53 UTC; 2 points)

mattnewport 10 Apr 2009 4:46 UTC
2 points
in reply to: CronoDAS’s comment on: Beware of Other-Optimizing

I have a tendency to divide activities into “things I want to do” and “things I do because other people make me do them”, and I try to optimize the former at the expense of the latter.

Sounds like a description of the discounting principle. You’d think that being aware of it should help to avoid it but of course it’s not that simple.

mattnewport 10 Apr 2009 6:08 UTC
4 points
in reply to: HughRistik’s comment on: Extreme Rationality: It’s Not That Great
I agree that there’s some level missed by the distinction between ‘normal’ rationality and ‘x-rationality’ and it’s in that middle ground that I feel I’ve derived the most practical benefits from rationality. The examples you give are good ones. Other examples I could give from my own experience are personal finance and weight loss.

Using personal finance as an example: I consider myself to have always possessed an above average level of intelligence and ‘normal’ rationality. I have a scientific education and make my living as a computer programmer. Until fairly recently though I let my emotional dislike of form filling get in the way of organizing my personal finances effectively. A general desire to more rigorously apply ‘normal’ rationality in my life to improve my outcomes led me to recognize that I was irrationally allowing my negative reaction to paperwork to have a significant financial impact. By comparing the marginal utility of a few hours of unpleasant labour optimizing my tax situation to a few hours of tedious paid employment I realized I was making an irrational choice and recognizing that was an aid in overcoming the obstacle. Recognizing the logical flaws in the kinds of rationalizations I’d used to justify my previous lack of organization was also helpful. Often I would use clever-sounding arguments to justify avoiding a task which was simply unpleasant.

mattnewport 10 Apr 2009 6:13 UTC
5 points
in reply to: MBlume’s comment on: Extreme Rationality: It’s Not That Great
This is largely the basis of the whole online sub-community of ‘Game’ and the ‘Seduction Community’. It may well fall under what Eliezer refers to as ‘the dark arts’ but many participants are fairly explicit about applying a rational/scientific approach to success with women.

mattnewport 10 Apr 2009 6:49 UTC
6 points
in reply to: HughRistik’s comment on: Extreme Rationality: It’s Not That Great
I’ve also learned some useful things from my more limited familiarity with the community. I’d tend to agree with your criticisms but I think the emphasis on rigorous ‘field testing’ and on ‘doing what works’ in much of the community shows some common ground with general efforts at rationality. As you say, this is an area (like many areas of day to day life) that is not easily amenable to controlled scientific experiment for a number of reasons but one of the lessons of Bayesian thinking/‘x-rationality’ that I’ve found useful is the emphasis on being comfortable with uncertainty, fuzzy evidence and making the best decisions given limited information.

It’s treacherous terrain for anyone seeking truth since, like investment or financial advice or healthcare, there is a lot of noise along with the signal. It’s certainly an interesting area with many cross-currents to those interested in applying rationality though.

mattnewport 10 Apr 2009 7:12 UTC
6 points
in reply to: MBlume’s comment on: Extreme Rationality: It’s Not That Great
Many but by no means all in the community share that concern. I’m finding it interesting to note my own reluctance to link to some of the material since even among those who do share that concern there is discussion of some techniques that might be considered objectionable. One of the cornerstones of much of the material is that people are so conditioned by conventional beliefs about what ‘should’ work that they are liable to find what actually does work highly counter-intuitive at first. Reactions to the challenging of strongly held beliefs can be equally strong and I’ve often observed this in comment threads on the material.

The most mainstream introduction to the community is probably “The Game” by Neil Strauss. I’m not sure it’s the best starting point from the point of view of connections to rationality but it’s an entertaining read if nothing else.

I certainly believe it’s possible to benefit from some of the ideas while maintaining your definition of ‘winning’ but equally there are some parts of the community which are less appealing.

mattnewport 10 Apr 2009 7:20 UTC
12 points
in reply to: AnnaSalamon’s comment on: Extreme Rationality: It’s Not That Great
One common theme is recognizing when your theories aren’t working and updating in light of new evidence. Many people are so sure that their beliefs about what ‘should’ work when it comes to dating are correct that they will keep trying and failing without ever considering that maybe their underlying theory is wrong. A common exercise used in the community to break out of these incorrect beliefs is to force yourself to go out and try things that ‘can’t possibly work’ 10 times in a day, and then every day for a week or a month, until the false belief is banished.

I actually think the LW crowd could learn something from this approach—sometimes all the argument in the world is not as convincing as repeated confrontations with real world results. When it comes to changing behaviour (a key aspect of allowing rationality to improve results in our lives), rational argument is not usually the most effective technique. Rational argument may establish the need for change and the pattern for new behaviour but the most effective way to change behavioural habits is to just start consciously doing the new behaviour until it becomes a habit.

mattnewport 10 Apr 2009 8:27 UTC
7 points
in reply to: Paul Crowley’s comment on: The uniquely awful example of theism
I fear you give politicians too much credit. The implication of this is that politicians are more rational on average than voters. I don’t see much evidence to support that theory. The facts seem more easily explained by politicians being on average no more rational than the population as a whole.

mattnewport 10 Apr 2009 17:41 UTC
2 points
in reply to: Eliezer Yudkowsky’s comment on: The uniquely awful example of theism
True, and I did mean underrepresentation, I know there is not a complete lack of representation. Thanks for pointing out the distinction.

mattnewport 10 Apr 2009 18:05 UTC
15 points
in reply to: Eliezer Yudkowsky’s comment on: Beware of Other-Optimizing
It seems to me that for this kind of self-treatment it doesn’t really matter if it’s a placebo effect or not. It’s even a little unclear if the distinction is meaningful. Isn’t the main question whether it works or not? If the benefits are largely a placebo effect then it would be useful to pare down the techniques to ‘the simplest thing that fools me enough to work, with the minimum of mumbo-jumbo’ but the important thing is the working.

If you want to carry out a scientific study on how and why the techniques work then untangling the placebo effect is more important but if there are benefits to be gained from a not-completely-understood process then it seems worth at least considering taking them, while being aware of possible negative consequences.

mattnewport 10 Apr 2009 18:45 UTC
6 points
in reply to: Eliezer Yudkowsky’s comment on: Beware of Other-Optimizing
Which doesn’t really contradict the claim that you “could be spending substantially less money on food if [you] used an online coupon service”. That claim is probably literally true, it just ignores the fact that in your situation the monetary savings were not worth the time/effort cost.

Much not-exactly-wrong advice falls down by ignoring opportunity cost.

mattnewport 10 Apr 2009 19:38 UTC
6 points
in reply to: RobinHanson’s comment on: The uniquely awful example of theism
The stronger arguments for me are those that point to the manifest failure of prohibition to achieve its own stated ends. The experience of alcohol prohibition is strongly indicative of the general failure of prohibition. The failure of price controls also seems related—full out prohibition is in some sense a special case of price controls with the government attempting to set the price astronomically high (with jail time being the price the government attempts to set for consumption). Given the lack of evidence for prohibition being an effective strategy, the burden of proof should be on the maintenance of the existing regime. That’s even without looking at the clear harm caused by the current approach.

The recent CATO report on the success of decriminalization in Portugal is a recent piece of good supporting evidence for the failure of criminilization. Given the political climate, asking for randomized trials is demanding unrealistically high standards of evidence. Isn’t one of the goals of this whole rationality project to be able to make the best possible decisions under uncertainty?

mattnewport 10 Apr 2009 19:46 UTC
6 points
in reply to: RobinHanson’s comment on: The uniquely awful example of theism
I would also take the position that any law without clear supporting evidence should be rescinded, on the basis that all else being equal a simpler legal system would be a better legal system. I don’t believe it is necessary to take that position to conclude that drug prohibition should be rescinded however.

mattnewport 10 Apr 2009 20:36 UTC
41 points
in reply to: John_Maxwell’s comment on: Beware of Other-Optimizing
Even better would be an Amazon like recommendation system - ‘other people who benefited from this tip also benefited from...’

mattnewport 10 Apr 2009 20:40 UTC
1 point
in reply to: CronoDAS’s comment on: Beware of Other-Optimizing
Are you defending your lifestyle choices to us or to yourself? I’m sure hardly anyone on here wants to tell you your choices are wrong if you are genuinely satisfied with your situation. As you recognize though, your choices do not make you a person of high social status. If that matters to you then perhaps the arguments you are making here are rationalizations?

mattnewport 10 Apr 2009 21:50 UTC
4 points
in reply to: Eliezer Yudkowsky’s comment on: The Unfinished Mystery of the Shangri-La Diet
Bananas are flagged as a risky item by a number of paleo-type diet authors, though not by ‘The Paleo Diet’. They have a fairly high glycemic index. Not that it invalidates your point.

I lost 45lbs on the Paleo Diet and have kept most of it off 2 years later (I’ve crept up by about 8-10lbs and I’m trying to be a bit stricter to bring that back down). I didn’t avoid bananas completely but I’d read enough to be wary of them. I’m sure it doesn’t work for everybody but I find it persuasive and effective.

IF the theory that sugar and refined carbohydrates are the biggest risk factors for weight gain is true THEN learning enough to become convinced of just how bad they are, to the point that you develop a strong negative emotional response to foods containing them, is an effective technique of applying initially conscious rationality to create new habits. Of course it may not work for everybody. Variations in individual metabolism seem to be an understudied aspect of diet research.