Yes. It seems we should specialize in knowledge—which we can do, in some cases, with prediction markets—but all individuals ought to be more skilled in spotting and adjusting for our biases.
michaelkeenan
Karma: 1,345
Taipei, Taiwan.
Hey Yvain. I found your blog a little while ago (I think it was from an interesting comment on Patri’s LiveJournal, or maybe he linked to you). I disagree that your blog isn’t interesting to people that aren’t immediate friends (for example, I found your arguments about boycotts and children’s rights to be interesting and persuasive). I respect that you seem to not want to link to it here, so I won’t. But I urge you to change your mind!
I have a strong pain signal from lost money and from lost time. To the extent that I can introspect on the workings of my insula, I think that this is one impulse for me, rather than two as Yvain describes—one for time and one for money.
If I am correct that my brain processes the loss of time using the same moral hardware as the loss of money, what could explain why some people have one impulse covering both cases, while other people have a separate one for each?
I think this is a good suggestion. CronoDAS, you might also like to look into web design, or just design in general. I’m learning it right now—in an amateurish, inconsistent way - because it’ll help my website programming work. I’m really enjoying it even though my current skill level could be regarded as “terrible”. It involves learning tools like Photoshop (or GIMP if you like Linux), CSS and the principles of design. It helps me make things that appeal to my aesthetic sense and give me a sense of accomplishment, and I get satisfaction from improving a skill. As a self-directed exploration of this skill, it should be low-stress and there’s not really a way to fail.
It sounds like you have programming talent but don’t like getting stuck (I sympathize), but it’s hard to get actually stuck when your tools just include HTML, CSS and Photoshop.
I suspect that prizes are good for spurring technological progress. I’m thinking of the X Prize Foundation and the DARPA Grand Challenge for robotic cars. One reason I’d like to have more money is so I could donate it to prizes that would spur technological progress.
Agreed. The one that annoys me the most is in the first Spiderman movie (spoiler warning) when the Green Goblin drops Mary-Jane and a tram full of child hostages, forcing Spiderman to choose who to save. I was excited to see what his choice would be...but then he just saves everyone.
I don’t think you understand Watson’s point of view.
If I understand Watson correctly, he thinks the evidence suggests that the average IQ of native Africans is below 100. He didn’t say that all Africans have IQs below 100. I don’t know why you think he’d care that he’s descended from a black person. Presumably he thinks a substantial minority of Africans still have higher IQs than 100, so if he really cares about the IQ of his black ancestor, it’s still plausible that s/he had a high IQ.
But why would anyone care about the IQ of their ancestors? Even if you do think there are racial cognitive differences, there are better ways to measure your own IQ than to guess based on the race of your ancestors.
According to Aaron Haspel, “it is the incorruptible politician who is especially dangerous.”
I didn’t immediately see what he was getting at, but today a parallel occurred to me: a powerful, incorruptible politician is like a person with great willpower. Directing great resources to the wrong project can do a lot of harm, at individual and society-wide levels.
In this context, society’s enforcement mechanism is social pressure/shame. Your examples—speed dating, online dating, prostitution—are all considered more or less shameful (I know because I’ve seen the shamed body language of people admitting to them). This shows that society’s enforcement measures are working.
It’s been a couple of years since I heard censure of online dating too, and I agree that it’s almost completely accepted among all the relevant people. I definitely meant it on the “less shameful” end of the spectrum.
But it’s been a while since I’ve heard anyone condemn gays, or atheists, or blacks. I try to ward myself against availability bias by reminding myself that my social group is likely to be a weird little bubble relative to the whole world. If I encountered people thinking online dating is shameful a few years ago, then I can be sure that many people still think so. I’m confident I could find them if I try.
Ok, I just tried, with a google search, and found this, from March 2009. It looks like online dating is still shameful for some people.
(Apologies if this is the same question that gets asked in every thread of this kind; I freely admit to not having researched this.)
What motive would the conspirators have for demolishing WTC7 with explosives? If they wanted to start a war or increase wiretapping or get Bush re-elected, or whatever the motive was, flying planes into the towers was enough. Blowing up WTC7, and especially blowing up WTC7 without arranging a plausible explanation (like “a plane flew into it”, as they did with the towers) seems careless and unnecessary—out of character for a group of people careful and competent enough to arrange 9/11 and get away with it.
This bias is ridiculously pervasive among economists.
You should bet against economists about the predictive accuracy of their models. If you can do better, you’ll be rich.
I used to argue with a more strident, arrogant tone than I try to adopt now. One influence in changing my tone was Ben Franklin’s autobiography:
“I wish well-meaning, sensible men would not lessen their power of doing good by a positive, assuming manner, that seldom fails to disgust, tends to create opposition, and to defeat everyone of those purposes for which speech was given to us, to wit, giving or receiving information or pleasure. For, if you would inform, a positive and dogmatical manner in advancing your sentiments may provoke contradiction and prevent a candid attention.”
He describes how he cultivated “the habit of expressing myself in terms of modest diffidence; never using, when I advanced any thing that may possibly be disputed, the words certainly, undoubtedly, or any others that give the air of positiveness to an opinion; but rather say, I conceive or apprehend a thing to be so and so; it appears to me, or I should think it so or so, for such and such reasons; or I imagine it to be so; or it is so, if I am not mistaken.
...
When another asserted something that I thought an error, I deny’d myself the pleasure of contradicting him abruptly, and of showing immediately some absurdity in his proposition; and in answering I began by observing that in certain cases or circumstances his opinion would be right, but in the present case there appear’d or seem’d to me some difference, etc. I soon found the advantage of this change in my manner; the conversations I engag’d in went on more pleasantly. The modest way in which I propos’d my opinions procur’d them a readier reception and less contradiction; I had less mortification when I was found to be in the wrong, and I more easily prevail’d with others to give up their mistakes and join with me when I happened to be in the right.”
Another influence was Yvain’s How To Not Lose An Argument. The common part of Franklin and Yvain’s advice is to phrase your message in such a way that minimal status will be lost by your opponent agreeing with you. Your opponent must not see (consciously or subconsciously) your rhetoric as an attempt to gain status at zir expense.
Good point. Humility and diffidence are optimal when arguing with someone who is already opposed to your position; a tone of certainty can be more effective when speaking to neutrals, especially if they won’t hear another side presented to them; and rabble-rousing demagoguery gets strong believers most excited and moved to act.
I usually find myself arguing with those opposed to me, so I usually use the first mode.
I’ve seen Arnold Kling, GMU economics blogger (colleague of Robin Hanson, I think), argue something like that.
Some of the experiments involved contagion effects from friends with high or low self-control. I wonder if we see the opposite effect when our enemies display these traits. It has previously been shown that when we see outsiders cheating, we cheat less, but when in-group members cheat, we cheat more.
No, it’s expressing the paperclip maximizer’s state in ways that make sense to readers here. If you were to express the concept of being “bothered” in a way stripped of all anthropomorphic predicates, you would get something like “X is bothered by Y iff X has devoted significant cognitive resources to altering Y”. And this accurately describes how paperclip maximizers respond to new threats to paperclips. (So I’ve heard.)
I think “bothered” implies a negative emotional response, which some plausible paperclip-maximizers don’t have. From The True Prisoner’s Dilemma: “let us specify that the paperclip-agent experiences no pain or pleasure—it just outputs actions that steer its universe to contain more paperclips. The paperclip-agent will experience no pleasure at gaining paperclips, no hurt from losing paperclips, and no painful sense of betrayal if we betray it.”
I don’t like that you are trying to mislead others.
“Promoting less than maximally accurate beliefs is an act of sabotage. Don’t do it to anyone unless you’d also slash their tires, because they’re Nazis or whatever.”—The Black Belt Bayesian
The deception you’ve described is of course minor and maybe you don’t lie about important things. But it seems a dangerous strategy, for your own epistemic hygiene, to be casual with the truth. Even if I didn’t regard it as ethically questionable, I wouldn’t be habitually dishonest for the sake of my own mind.
I would like you to persuade my friends to hold their beliefs with much less confidence than they currently have. Overcoming Bias had this effect on me.