MrHen

Karma: 1,891

MrHen 21 Apr 2009 4:51 UTC
48 points
on: Well-Kept Gardens Die By Pacifism
(Note) This mostly has to do with karma with a minor rant/point at the end. If that doesn’t sound interesting, it probably won’t be.

Because I really do honestly think that if you want to downvote a comment that seems low-quality… and yet you hesitate, wondering if maybe you’re downvoting just because you disagree with the conclusion or dislike the author… feeling nervous that someone watching you might accuse you of groupthink or echo-chamber-ism or (gasp!) censorship… then nine times of ten, I bet, nine times out of ten at least, it is a comment that really is low-quality.

Some of the most interesting things I have registered about LessWrong thus far have to do with the karma game. I am convinced that there are huge swaths of information that can be learned if the karma data was opened for analysis.

If I had to guess at the weaknesses of the karma system I would peg two big problems. The first is that (some? most? many?) people are trying to assign an integer value to a post that is something outside of the range [-1,1] and then adjust their vote to affect a post’s score toward their chosen value. This seems to have the effect that everything is drawn toward 0 unless it is an absolutely stellar post. Then it just drifts up. I think the highest comment I have seen was in the high teens. I know there are more than twenty people visiting the site. Do they not read comments? Do they not vote on them?

The second problem spot is that I find it hard to actually use the feedback of karma. I have no way of knowing how well I am doing other a number. I have noticed that my karma has jumped lately and this leads me to believe I have made a change for the better. Unfortunately, I have no easy way of seeing which comments did well and which did poorly. Was it my tone? Did I get wiser? Are my comments more useful? Since I am new, my comment level is low and I can dig through what is there and learn, but this will simply get harder as time goes on. The karma system seems to work well on a comment by comment basis but not so much as a teaching tool. I see this as a problem because this is exactly what I need and I feel like I am squeezing a square peg into a round hole. It makes me think I am not using it correctly.

I find both of the above problems frustrating to me personally. I see a comment get voted down and think, “Okay, that was bad.” If I ask for clarification, it goes back up, which just makes it confusing. “Uh, so was it bad or not bad?” The difference between the highest rated comment of mine and the lowest is less than 10. I think the highest is 5 and the lowest was at −2 before I deleted it.

Now, don’t get me wrong, I am not complaining that my super-great-excellent posts are not voted to 20 karma in a single weekend. I am complaining that my crappy posts are all sitting at 0 and −1. I just started posting here and already have over 50 karma and the dark secret is that I am a complete poser. I barely even know the terms you guys use. I have not read much of Overcoming Bias and if you gave me a test on key points of rationality I would probably limp through the guessable stuff and start failing once the questions got hard. I can pick apart the logic within a given post, but the only real contributions I have made are exposing flaws in other comments. How in the world am I succeeding? I do not know.

To put this back into the original point, if people are shy about telling me my posts are low quality I can (a) never learn the difference between “mediocre” and “bad” and (b) any fool can limp by with comments that just repeat basic logic and use key terms in the right order. The chances of that being fun are low. One of my great paranoias is that I am the fool and no one pointed it out; I am the elephant in the room but have no mirror. I don’t want to trample on your garden and smush the roses. I want to partake in what seems to be a really awesome, fun community. If I don’t fit, kick me out.

(To be a little less harsh on myself, I do not consider myself a fool nor am I trying to play the role of a fool. If I am one, please let me know because I apparently have not figured it out yet.)

MrHen 9 Feb 2010 22:06 UTC
32 points
in reply to: PhilGoetz’s comment on: Shut Up and Divide?
I never understood how this morality worked. The problem I see with this view is that you are double counting the value of money.
- You work an hour and get $10, but the employer just killed $10 worth of people by hiring you instead of sending it for aid
- You buy a latte and just killed $10 worth of people by hiring you instead of sending it for aid
- LatteShop pays LatteBoy $10 for an hour of work and just killed $10 worth of people by hiring him instead of sending it for aid
The $10 doesn’t leave the system and everyone who touches it just killed a whole slew of people because they sent it somewhere other than aid. Why are you carrying the moral burden?

Even if you did send it to aid you can blame them for charging $10 for their work instead of $9. (Or whatever company that is selling the rice, nets, stoves, filters, bottles, condoms.)

You could even blame the person receiving the aid for using the aid instead of giving it to someone less fortunate. Or using less of it. Or selling it for $11 and putting the extra money back into aid.

Somewhere in here something goes horribly wrong and it gets ridiculous. Where did I misstep?

EDIT: I really don’t want to give the impression that you shouldn’t give money or help people less fortunate than yourself. I think these are great things. I just don’t understand the jump from “I bought a latte” to “I killed people.”
What links here?
- Grognor's comment on The Best Comments Ever by Grognor (18 Mar 2012 13:10 UTC; 8 points)

MrHen 29 Jan 2010 23:02 UTC
32 points
in reply to: Blueberry’s comment on: The Meditation on Curiosity
Here’s a mind dump. I don’t have a lot of time right now, but here goes.

If you don’t expect to lose it, why are you so scared of critically examining it?

Err… I’m not scared?
Than examine it.
No. I decided not to do that.
Why?
Hmm… what have I said on that subject…

If I am holding an irrational belief I find it less likely that it will shift.

Going after the irrational beliefs directly doesn’t do anything. They are in their little walled areas and are immune to mere arguments and inquiries. I have to knock down the walls first.

Okay, sure that makes sense, but what if the wall is merely a creation of fear?
Okay, do I have any fear of changing away from Theism.
I want to say no...
But I have to say yes because I feel fear.
What is the fear of?
Potentials:
- Fear of losing a belief
- Fear of social implications
- Fear of the unknown
- Fear of judgement/punishment
- Fear of being wrong
- Fear of admitting mistakes
Let’s go down the list: Fear of losing a belief.
I don’t fear losing a belief.
A belief or any belief?
Mmm… most beliefs? I don’t know.
Can I think of a belief I would fear losing?
Can I think of a belief I don’t fear losing?
Sure, that’s easy.
Than name it.
Uh… I guess I need a list of beliefs…
- My name is my name
- 2 + 2 = 4
- The show tonight will be a success
- I am getting more rational
The first two have no fear.
The third has more emotional attachment, but I don’t fear losing that belief. I’d rather the show tonight be a success, but losing that belief doesn’t scare me.
The last… well, it’s true or not. I would rather lose that belief if it were incorrect so I could change what I needed to become more rational. So no, I don’t fear losing it.
Is it more accurate to say that I fear keeping it when I shouldn’t?
Yes.
Is this a good fear?
Yes, in as much as fear can ever be good.
Can I think of a more valid fear?
We are getting off subject.
Okay. Do I fear losing Theism?
Which part?
All of it.
Uh… I don’t see how that can happen as of yet.
So? It doesn’t matter if you can imagine it. Does it scare you?
This wasn’t the original question:

If you don’t expect to lose it, why are you so scared of critically examining it?

Okay. But this answer matters.
Why?
Because it eliminates a potential cause for being scared of critically examining it.
Okay, what are the other causes?
- Fear of losing Theism
- Time wasted on other things
- Fear of confirming Theism and dealing with the social consequences
- Preemptive rejection of Rationality and/or Reality
Okay. So do I fear losing Theism?
I don’t know.
You don’t know or you don’t want to know?
Well, what would be the point in not wanting to know?
- Meta-belief
- Belief in belief
- Convenient ignorance
(Ooh, Convenient Ignorance may be a good subject for a top-level post...)
Okay… so do I believe in my belief of Theism?
Sure, in the sense that I believe I believe in Theism.
Is that the same thing?
Err… no, I guess not.
So, do I believe in my belief?
What is the definition again?

You can much more easily believe that it is proper, that it is good and virtuous and beneficial, to believe that the Ultimate Cosmic Sky is both perfectly blue and perfectly green. Dennett calls this “belief in belief”.

Okay, no, I do believe Theism.
Do you believe in your belief of Theism?
I don’t think so, since I don’t begrudge others their disbelief.
You match the description: “It is good and virtuous and beneficial to believe God exists.”
Only in the sense that if it is true it is good to believe.
So if it wasn’t true, you wouldn’t want to believe?
Correct.
So go find out if it is true.
Yeah, okay, show me how.
Critically examine it.
I can’t.
Why not?
There is a wall. That belief isn’t accessible through critical examination.
If it were, would you examine it?
I don’t know.
You don’t know, or you don’t want to know?
What difference does it make if I can’t examine it anyway?
Because you may be able to examine it and you are lying to yourself about not being able to.
Oh.

And that’s all the time I have. I’ll try to add more tomorrow. If there is a better place to do this or people would rather me post a summary I am more than willing to comply.

EDIT: Part 2. (It isn’t as interesting.)
What links here?
- bgrah449's comment on Open Thread: February 2010 by wedrifid (3 Feb 2010 14:38 UTC; 0 points)

MrHen 17 Mar 2010 17:40 UTC
27 points
on: Disconnect between Stated/Implemented Preferences
As a counterpoint, my highest rated comments are huge walls of text. This could be because (a) I don’t make a lot of jokes or (b) I make crappy jokes or (c) people like my walls of text more than the typical wall of text or (d) something else.

I keep an eye on my karma and have noticed these things that I believe are related to your post:
- Talking about the karma system has fallen out of favor. I think people are getting tired of it.
- Asking why something was downvoted usually brings more upvotes unless you really, really deserved the downvotes. This latter case will probably be swarmed with downvotes.
- Some (many?) people vote with an end score in mind. These meta-voters have more affect on threshold comments that fluctuate between −2 and 2.
- Long conversations will generally pull between −1 and +2 per post. Most of my karma comes from lengthy discussions in the comments. Even if the top level post was only rated +2 I will net almost 100 karma points from the post and comments. (Note: I haven’t actually added this up. It may be closer to 75 karma.)
- Quick responses pointing out third alternatives or simple problems get upvoted and usually roam between +2 and +14. If you want to get your karma higher, this is the easiest way. Comment immediately after a post is submitted and point out the most obvious flaw respectfully and concisely. Don’t try to make a point, just note an error. If you get in before the rest of us, you will probably get +4 or higher.
- Long responses pointing out serious problems get upvoted but have a lower chance of pulling large amounts of karma than quick responses. However, after the first wave of quick responses, only the longer comments are true candidates for higher karma. I suspect that a long response to a quick comment has a good chance to do well, but haven’t really watched those comments yet.
- Jokes are upvoted when they are either extremely funny or solidly funny and on topic. Randomness is upvoted if it is an inside joke, otherwise stays around +0. Sarcasm is appreciated but has the problem of being mistaken for nonsarcasm.
- Extending the point or conversation of a top-level post gets upvoted. Most of mine get between +2 and +4. Examples would be almost every comment I have made while reading the sequences.
- Aggressiveness is generally poorly received on technical topics. Aggressiveness is easier to get away with when dealing with fuzzy topics. I attribute this mostly to margin of error. Technical topics are harder to be bulletproof. I am still having a hard time predicting which non-technical top level posts are voted up. I suspect this is because I don’t know what is already been discussed or that the issue is a technical topic that I have misidentified.
- Self-depreciation is a huge karma pull. Both my highest rated post and comment were essentially me slamming myself over and over. Each were voted higher than +20.
- Bullet point lists of extensions, ideas, questions, and so on seem to do about as well or better than long paragraphs of text. The walls of text may be harder to skim for goodies or the bullet point list better organized?
- Non-aggressive requests for clarification or information are not generally downvoted. Mine seem to roam between 0 and +2 karma. If the question and response delve into a lengthy but friendly conversation, I seem to get between 0 and +2 karma for each of my comments. If a solid agreement or conclusion is reached, the capping comment gets about double whatever the individual comments were getting.
- Posting nearby “famous” people amps up the karma action. Replying to EY, Alicorn, Vladimir_Nesov, pjeby, et al will increase the amount of people that read your comments. The reasons for this are varied. The four I used here are just names that popped into my head. Also, some people seem to vote up conversations they are in while others do not. A few downvote anyone disagreeing with them. The people that matter generally fit these criteria: (a) top contributer (b) easily recognizable name (c) frequent poster/commenter (d) abnormal amount of recent activity (e) holds atypical beliefs for the community (f) a troll.
- Better grammar, spelling, and language increases the likelihood that your comment will move upward faster.
- Comments quickly upvoted higher than typical seem to either (a) go through the roof or (b) get meta-voted back to between +1 and +3.
- Telling people to vote in a particular way tends to produce easy to predict results but not in a manner that is easy to describe.
And oh wow did that get long. Do note that this is all being typed from the top of my head using myself and the comments I read as an example. Naturally, the above does not dictate how people vote.

EDIT: I guess for fun, I predict that this comment gets ROT13orgjrra cbfvgvir gjb naq cyhf fvk xneznROT13.

EDIT 2: I would normally downvote a post such as this but elsewhere in the comments you seemed to have received the message and was wondering about deleting it. So I just left it as it is. Also relevant: I generally do not upvote jokes unless they are truly amazing.
What links here?
- RobinZ's comment on Disconnect between Stated/Implemented Preferences by Strange7 (18 Mar 2010 5:41 UTC; 0 points)

MrHen 8 Feb 2010 19:57 UTC
26 points
on: The “Outside the Box” Box
The way I would word this: The box exists in the map, not the territory. Looking “outside of the box” is still looking at the map.

MrHen 12 Jan 2010 19:32 UTC
25 points
on: High Status and Stupidity: Why?
Another way of looking at this is that the lower status person was just as stupid but no one noticed it. It is probably a lot easier to forgive/forget faults in someone who is lower status because they don’t matter as much.

So, if we have an intelligent conversation with a grad-student we pick out the good stuff and remember it. If we have a similar conversation with someone higher-status we pick out the good and the bad stuff and remember.

ETA: It would be interesting to see a compare and contrast between this and the halo effect.

MrHen 29 Jan 2010 15:57 UTC
24 points
in reply to: LongInTheTooth’s comment on: Logical Rudeness

In the old days we used to use ice cream as an inverse semaphore; the listener held the pint and the spoon, and ate and listened while the talker talked. Then the talker took the ice cream and had to shut up until the other person asked for it.

This is awesome. I would be tempted to shut up earlier than I usually would just for the reward of getting some ice cream. :)

MrHen 20 Jan 2010 18:43 UTC
23 points
on: That Magical Click
Mmm… I am a click-hunter. I keep pestering a topic and returning over and over until I feel it click. I can understand something well enough to start accurately predicting results but still refuse to be satisfied until I feel it click. Once it clicks I move on.

You and I may be describing different types of clicks, however. Here is a short list of things I have observed about the clicks in my life.
- The minor step from not having a subject click and having a subject click is enormous. It is the single greatest leap in knowledge I will likely experience in a subject matter. I may learn more in one click than with a whole semester of absorbing knowledge from a book.
- Clicks don’t translate well. It is hard to describe the actual path up to and through a click.
- What causes a subject to click for me will not cause it to click for another. Clicks seem to be very personal experiences, which is probably why it is so hard to translate.
- Clicks tend to be most noticeable with large amounts of critical study. I assume that day-in-day-out clicks are not terribly noticeable but I suspect that they exist. A simple example I can think of is suddenly discovering a quicker route through town.
- Clicks do not require large amounts of critical study, however, as I have had clicks drop on me from nowhere with all of the answers to a particular problem laying around in plain sight.
- Once a click happens, the extra perspective appears obviously true. Clicks are often accompanied with phrases like, “Oh!” or “Why didn’t I see this before?!”
- Even for complicated subjects, it takes trivial amounts of conversation to learn if the subject has clicked in another person. Once you “get it,” other people who get it know you got it.
- Some people are much better at producing clicks in others.
- Some people have no idea what a click is and have never felt one. Some of these people are very smart, but I seem to notice that they have a weakness for abstract thought or are more likely to be satisfied with stopping once they have accurate predictors. Perhaps learning why the model ended up being that particular model is extraneous and not needed to predict and so is an unwanted extra step.
- Mind-dumping helps things click. I find that if I just blah on a page, start over and blah again, and repeat the process a click will probably happen at some point in the cycle.
- There are topics that have not clicked for me yet but I suspect they would if I kept pushing them.
- Perspectives from other people help clicks happen. Listening to someone else struggle to understand the concept helps clicks happen.

MrHen 9 Feb 2010 0:00 UTC
21 points
0
in reply to: douglas’s comment on: Illusion of Transparency: Why No One Understands You
Humor probably has a higher culture per word weight. (I made up this term.)

MrHen 16 Jan 2010 8:51 UTC
20 points
in reply to: Gavin’s comment on: The Wannabe Rational
That was awesome.

MrHen 7 Feb 2010 14:48 UTC
18 points
in reply to: AngryParsley’s comment on: Belief in Belief
99% of the people I know are religious. This isn’t an exaggeration. I can think of 2 or 3 that aren’t. (This doesn’t count online interactions.)

So… I guess I will just repeat what I said earlier. I’ve never met anyone who acted like this and wasn’t blatantly lying.

You have to realize that “evidence or tests” does not mean the same thing to them as it does to you. They have been conditioned against these words. If the belief is something as vague as, “God will show up during worship.” you cannot ask the phrase, “What evidence do you have for this?” This puts them on an immediate defensive because they are used to jerks asking the questions.

This has little to do with quests for belief. It has more to do with the arguments as armies concept. This is an important point. Please don’t dismiss it without thinking about it.

The appropriate way to ask the question is to ask for details about how God is showing up and act enthusiastic. “Every time? Wow! How do you know? Does this happen at other worship services? Has it always happened here? Does he show up stronger at some than others? Which ones are the best? Does he say anything to you?”

If this sounds silly to you, than you aren’t getting it.

If you bring in an CO2 meter and expect to find God you will be called crazy by the people who believe in him. This is completely different than the dragon-in-the-garage example.

Prayer is the best example were I have seen Christians start getting frustrated. Not because they are coming up with excuses, but because they don’t understand why it isn’t working. The people I know actually expect something. If I were to ask them if we could see a statistical difference in a study on the effects of prayer they would answer, “Of course!” The problem with these people is that when the results come back negative they will start explaining away the numbers. If, later, you go back and try the same trick they will just repeat the explanations they used last time.

People who answer, “No.” are more likely to be praying without thinking it will actually work. They are praying for religious purposes.

Not that I’m saying that religious people don’t do this. If you can provide an example that would be great.

MrHen 9 Feb 2010 18:13 UTC
17 points
0
in reply to: Paul Crowley’s comment on: Priming and Contamination
Yep. This is even more obvious with kids. Asking “What happened?” is much more likely to result in the truth than asking, “What happened? Did you hit him?”

Or, “How old are you?” versus, “How old are you? Are you five?”

On the other hand, if you want to use this to your advantage, you can ask, “Do you want fries with that?” Relatedly, a server friend of mine has noticed that the easiest way to get higher tabs is to start nodding when asking if they want extras.

If you look for this behavior in interviews you will do much better. It is surprising at how much the people interviewing you want you to succeed and how often they will prime the answers to the questions they are asking. (Or not, I guess, considering if you succeed than they take that as you are a valuable asset to their company...)

MrHen 19 Jan 2010 18:52 UTC
17 points
on: Correspondence Bias

To understand why people act the way they do, we must first realize that everyone sees themselves as behaving normally. Don’t ask what strange, mutant disposition they were born with, which directly corresponds to their surface behavior. Rather, ask what situations people see themselves as being in. Yes, people do have dispositions—but there are not enough heritable quirks of disposition to directly account for all the surface behaviors you see.

Most people see themselves as perfectly normal, from the inside. Even people you hate, people who do terrible things, are not exceptional mutants. No mutations are required, alas. When you understand this, you are ready to stop being surprised by human events.

This topic is something I have noticed is easy to explain to people. They understand it; they nod their head; then they return to being surprised by human events. For some reason it never makes into their predictors.

I remember my moment of epiphany when this topic clicked into place and suddenly people were predictable. The kicking of vending machines returned expectations of, “Wow, they must be having a rough day,” instead of, “Wow, they have anger issues.”

The next step in this process is learning that someone’s output is different than yours. Not everyone kicks vending machines on bad days. Not everyone flashes their lights in road rage. People who are surprised by these events may have grasped the truth in what you have said above can never imagine themselves in a situation where they would kick a vending machine. When they see someone else kicking a vending machine, their internal self-predictor will never return “bad day” as a reason. The best they can come up with is, “angry person.”

The point in me saying this is that acknowledging situational causes only helps when you understand the situational effects that result. Otherwise, you still get the wrong associative cause.

Another area that these predictors break down is in cultural differences. A strange example I can think of is man I knew from Africa. (I think Tanzania.) We were playing basketball and one of the American kids was constantly spitting on the ground. This utterly repulsed the African and he said, “Only pregnant women spit.” This comes as a complete WTF moment for the rest of us and there was no way to compute his disgust without learning about his culture.

So, even if you begin to infer personality from a situational response, there is a small chance that whoever is kicking the vending machine is doing so because wherever he grew up people kick vending machines for good luck. It might be stupid, but so is kicking it because it ate your money.

MrHen 22 Jan 2010 18:54 UTC
16 points
on: My Wild and Reckless Youth
I think the following should be added to the about page in some form:

Traditional Rationalists can agree to disagree. Traditional Rationality doesn’t have the ideal that thinking is an exact art in which there is only one correct probability estimate given the evidence. In Traditional Rationality, you’re allowed to guess, and then test your guess. But experience has taught me that if you don’t know, and you guess, you’ll end up being wrong.

Until I read this exact paragraph I was always a little confused as to how any of this was terribly new or eye-opening. Putting everything that I have read in the last week into a perspective that includes this paragraph makes everything significantly more potent. If this nugget was in the previous posts I either missed it or forgot it. Either way, its impact did not match its importance.

So, yeah.

MrHen 2 Mar 2010 20:33 UTC
15 points
in reply to: spencerth’s comment on: Rationality quotes: March 2010
She was talking to students at Harvard.

MrHen 9 Feb 2010 17:33 UTC
15 points
on: Expecting Short Inferential Distances
I find an easy way to get some of the complicated inferential jumps for free is to find a similar set of inferential jumps they have made in a similar subject. It is much easier to correct a “close” inferential jump than it is to create a new one out of thin air.

Example: When discussing the concept of programming you can use the concept of an assembly line to get their head into a procedural mode of thinking. Once they think about an object visiting a bunch of stations in a factory you can replace “object” with “program” and “station” with “line of code.” They still have no idea how programming works, but they can suddenly create a bunch of inferential jumps based on assembly lines.

In my experience, they now start asking questions about programming as related to assembly lines and you can fill in the gaps as you find them.

“So what happens at the end of the line?”
“Well, the program generally loops back around and starts over.”
”Oh. So it follows the same line forever?”
“Not necessarily. Sometimes the line takes a detour and heads off into a new area of the plant for awhile. But it generally will come back to the main assembly line.”
”But what’s the point? Like, how does that make my computer run?”
“Think of the computer like the company. The company owns a whole bunch of assembly lines all over the place and, periodically, it will ask a certain plant to start up and keep running. One of the stations in the assembly line is something like, ‘Give report to company’. The company looks at the report, realizes it is a visual report, and hands it to the assembly line that processes visual reports. That assembly line takes the report, breaks it down into RGB pixels, and puts it on the monitor for you to see. For that to happen, all of these programs have to keep spinning on their assembly lines and doing the work at each station and keep sending reports back to the company. You don’t have to worry about all of the lines because the computer is doing it for you.”
”Wow, that’s complicated.”
″Yeah, it can get pretty crazy. As a programmer, I design the assembly lines.”

Or whatever.

MrHen 17 Dec 2009 19:24 UTC
12 points
on: The Importance of Saying “Oops”

Not every change is an improvement, but every improvement is necessarily a change. If we only admit small local errors, we will only make small local changes. The motivation for a big change comes from acknowledging a big mistake.

I do not fully understand this last sentence. Specifically, why does a big mistake imply that a big change needs to be made? Perhaps I am not understanding the difference between a small mistake and a big mistake.

In other words, is a mistake’s “bigness” dependent on how much change is required to undo/fix/prevent the mistake? Or is is a mistake’s bigness dependent on the effects of the mistake?

A simple mathematical error can cause planes to drop out of the sky for lack of fuel. I instinctively say this is a big mistake with a small change required to fix it.

I think the minor differences between admitting mistakes that require big changes and admitting mistakes that have large consequences trigger different defense mechanisms. Namely, the former is laziness and the latter is shame. Knowing where the resistance comes from is useful when overcoming the resistance. It is also possible to notice the resistance before you realize that a mistake has been made. Consciously acknowledging a mistake can only happen after you begin to realize that a mistake may have been made.

The big examples you use seem to point toward large, shameful confessions, which makes perfect sense. They seem to qualify for both big effects and big changes required to fix them. These probably trigger whatever resistances would have applied to one category or the other. Which is probably why a post like this is such a useful shot in the arm to make one sit down and self-reflect for a few minutes.

All of which is to say, “Yeah, I agree,” with paragraphs instead of three words.

That being said, I don’t understand why the motivation for a big change comes from acknowledging a big mistake. Wouldn’t it be the other way around? If I want to make better, bigger changes, I could start by acknowledging big mistakes. The motivation for the acknowledgement comes from the desire to improve. If acknowledging errors provides motivation to change than I would argue that the change is based on guilt or dissatisfaction. The goal should be positive change, not alleviating pressure on your ego. If acknowledging mistakes is in the way of the higher goal than throw your ego in the fire and improve.

MrHen 7 Apr 2009 18:49 UTC
12 points
on: Of Lies and Black Swan Blowups

That whole suspiciously virtuous-sounding theory about honest people not being good at lying [...]

This is a little off-topic, but wouldn’t that theory work better the other way?

People not good at lying are honest

It’s not like lying is working out for them.

MrHen 11 Feb 2010 19:19 UTC
11 points
on: An Alien God

The human retina is constructed backward: The light-sensitive cells are at the back, and the nerves emerge from the front and go back through the retina into the brain. Hence the blind spot. To a human engineer, this looks simply stupid—and other organisms have independently evolved retinas the right way around. Why not redesign the retina?

Some of the biggest jaw dropping comments I hear have to do with taking something that is an obvious flaw and bending over backwards to come up with a reason that it isn’t flawed. Instead of saying that old elephants starving is cruel and a flaw* they say that there is a deeper purpose or design that can explain away the cruelty.

Instead of calling out a nasty thing for being a nasty thing they try to claim that our understanding is flawed. and the nasty really isn’t all that nasty. This is fuzzy enough on topics like retinas and dying elephants to trick people who don’t know much about retinas or dying elephants. But what happens if I point at something like Cerebral Palsy and say, “Explain that!”

The typical next step is to add an intelligent Super Nasty that ruined the perfectly nice world. If we keep pushing Explain we delve into huge swaths of arguments about good, evil, gods, and devils but are still left with hospital wards packed full of children inflicted with Cerebral Palsy. At some point, most people push Ignore. And then their child is born with Cerebral Palsy. It is kind of hard to ignore that. When they complain that something nasty happened, someone nearby tells them that there is a deeper purpose or design.

I can understand why people aren’t big fans of this.

And… reading back over my comment I forgot to make the point I going to make and made a different one in its stead. Ah well.

MrHen 20 Jan 2010 0:51 UTC
11 points
in reply to: MrHen’s comment on: Belief in Belief
I think I found an example of Belief in Belief that makes sense to me. The other day I met someone and they talked about how World War 3 would take place by next October. They didn’t really go into details, and I didn’t press for details, but the basic source of reasoning was the Book of Revelations.

If I had pressed for information I am sure all sorts of soft reasons would be produced about the current state of international affairs and blah, blah, blah. If I asked if America would be invaded and if there would be terrible destruction the answer would probably be, “Yes.” Yet I am positive that they are doing nothing to prepare for invasion and won’t be surprised in the slightest when October rolls around with no World War. World War 3 will still be happening “soon” and “soon” is still 18 months out. There won’t be any change in behavior, no worries about the botched prediction, no wondering if perhaps the Book of Revelations isn’t the best source material.

This is certainly a Belief in Belief. They really do think they believe it. If I asked them if they believed in an October ’11 WW3, they would say, “Yes.” But there is no conviction and no action as a result of this belief. So… do they really believe?

I think now I understand.