If you can’t feel secure—and teach your children to feel secure—about 1-in-610,000 nightmare scenarios—the problem isn’t the world. It’s you.
-- Bryan Caplan
Nic_Smith
Karma: 855
The Controls are Lying: A Note on the Memetic Hazards of Video Games [Link]
Rationality Power Tools
“Death is the termination of life, not a creature with a scythe who has a just claim to the lives he takes. (Death hates to be anthropomorphized.)”—Ben Best, Cryonics − Frequently Asked Questions
I am reminded of a particular SMBC involving Superman.
Somewhat more seriously, I can’t help but think that this post starts with far-mode idealization: would it really be difficult to turn people away for personal reasons if you had magical healing powers? Or is it merely uncomfortable, and perhaps usually bad signalling, to admit you would?
I think that people use a rule of thumb when deciding what things in life are worth learning. Most people seek knowledge in one of the following three categories:
What many other people learn (calculus, C++, and so on)
What is easy to learn (hula-hooping, Ruby, and so on)
What has value that is easy to appreciate (thermonuclear physics, for example, or that ridiculously loud whistle where you stick your fingers in your mouth) —Land of Lisp. Conrad Barski.
The Long Now
Are you sure you didn’t write the bottom line first as to what you’re going to do? You did put “Rationality vs. the disgust factor” right in the title, after all.
Scott Sumner on Utility vs Happiness [Link]
So… does that mean that Phil saw what he was expecting to in the reactions he got? ;)
Indeed. This Popperclipping of the discussion section should cease.
I assume the usual conversation goes on from there, somehow? By what measure does it “work fine?” E.G. What happens next?
I agree with this article but am not entirely comfortable with it. I fear that it might act as applause lights for those of us who already agree with its premise. In order to fully appreciate many of the points made, I think a more abstract discussion of absolute and comparative advantage might have been useful first, or perhaps discussion of a historical example.
“It is therefore highly illogical to speak of ‘verifying’ (3.8 [the Bernoulli urn equation]) by performing experiments with the urn; that would be like trying to verify a boy’s love for his dog by performing experiments on the dog.”—E.T. Jaynes, Probability Theory
“There are two types of people: those who try to win and those who try to win arguments. They are never the same.”—Nassim Nicholas Taleb (HT: Fugitive Knowledge)
Evolution, and any plans that it might have had for us, is falling to the wayside.
There are no authoritative plans for what Homo Sapiens “should be” in thousands of years!
[Discarding game] theory in favor of some notion of collective rationality makes no sense. One might as well propose abandoning arithmetic because two loaves and seven fish won’t feed a multitude. -- Ken Binmore, Rational Decisions
Something which might be easier than completely eliminating the internal monologue would be to optimize it instead by adopting or creating a language with fast pronunciation, especially for the most common words. I looked through Wikipedia’s list of conlangs but didn’t find anything similar late last year.
“If I were not here, what would you do?” asked Holo.
“First I’d work out whether it was true or not, then I’d pretend to believe his story.”
“And why is that?”
“If it’s true, I can turn a profit just by going along with it. If it’s a lie, then someone somewhere is up to something—but I can still come out ahead if I keep my eyes and ears open.”
“Mm. And given that I am here, and I’ve told you he’s lying, then...”
Lawrence finally realized what had been eluding him. “Ah.”
“Heh. See, there was nothing over which to agonize so. Either way you’ll be pretending to accept his proposal,” said Holo, grinning. Lawrence had no retort.
-- Isuna Hasikura, Spice & Wolf [tr. Paul Starr]
A side note: All three of the quotes I’ve posted are from Binmore’s Rational Decisions, which I’m about a third of the way through and have found very interesting. It makes a great companion to Less Wrong—and it’s also quite quotable in spots.