I think being eloquent is particularly unsuited to this topic because it’s the rhetorical style of those who like being pretentiously indifferent. So there are some mixed signals in the essay that the more business-like 2009 essay avoids.
Patrick
Karma: 554
There were two big rationalist cascades that I have gone through.
The first was kicked off at age 14 when I learned about the idea of a logical fallacy, which lead me to going through a binge at wikipedia in an effort to learn all of the ones listed. This directed me to the skeptic’s dictionary and Carl Sagan’s baloney detection kit, as well as some books listing common errors in thinking.
After about a year, I thought I had a pretty good grasp of what counted as a good argument, one that didn’t fall in to any of the traps that I was aware of, I was aware of hundreds of traps you see. In retrospect, that should have tipped me off to a deeper problem. Luckily, I didn’t work on anything important with that mindset, just hung about in forums and IRC showing off my “rationality”.
After doing that for about two years, on my last birthday, I received a copy of Godel Escher Bach as a present, and saw Douglas Hofstadter make an abridged version of the idea in the Principia Mathematica, an axiomatic, logically rigorous way to do number theory, and it became apparent to me that informal ways of “proving” things were just inadequate. Shortly afterward I discovered Overcoming Bias, where Eliezer’s essays greatly inspired me to think rationally when I don’t need something proved. Going through SICP and learning the mathematical basis of Newtonian mechanics hammered home the logical, axiomatic approach.
Here’s hoping the trend continues and I experience a third cascade in another few years.
I always found the arts of rationality to be fun to practice, but I think they would be a lot less fun if they didn’t lead anywhere. This is probably the reason why I enjoyed Raymond Smullyan’s puzzles more than textbook exercises, because solving Smullyan’s puzzles gave some fictional benefit that you could read about, whereas a lot of textbook exercises seem disconnected from reality.
You need to signal weakness, trying something like Obfuscating Stupidity could probably work once or twice, (although obviously not multiple times with the same opponents). The right strategy depends on things like payoffs, your relative strength, and your acting skills.
Great (somewhat incomplete) resource for learning science in general.
Critical Thinking Mini Lessons
At the Skeptic’s Dictionary, I also recommend the parent site.
I’d be interested in how exactly something like that would work, let’s be careful not to make the object of science publishing papers.
I’m afraid I must disagree kurige, for two reasons. The first is that they smack of false modesty, a way of insuring yourself against the social consequences of failure without actually taking care not to fail. The second is that the use of such terms don’t really convey any new information, and require the use of the passive voice, which is bad style.
“Evidence indicates an increase in ice cream sales” really isn’t good science writing, because the immediate question is “What evidence?”. It’s much better to say “ice cream sales have increased by 15%” and point to the relevant statistics.
I have difficulty accepting that certain theorems of calculus are true, when I recall them, I’m always uncertain and check to make sure they’re right, wasting valuable time.
The main distinction that seems to crop up is between rational reasoning and rational actions. Rational actions are about following an optimal strategy, “winning”, whereas rational reasoning is about being able to reliably generate optimal strategies.
A question that confuses the two senses. “Is it rational to sign up for cryonics because Eliezer told me to?” it’s probably a good strategy to sign up for cryonics if you don’t want to die, but doing whatever Eliezer says may not be able to reliably generate such good strategies.
So, is it rational for me to sign up for cryonics because Eliezer told me to? I don’t think predictions and actions stop being rational due to following a preferred ritual of cognition.
Mind Control and Me
Alright! a few points that I can sort of disagree on or feel were omitted in the essay. I’m being skeptical, not a cultist at all! .
My fears aren’t really that you’re trying to foster a cult, or that it’s cultish to agree with you. I got worried when you said that you wanted more people to vocalize their agreement with you and actually work towards having a unified rationalist front. For some reason, I had this mental picture of you as a supervillain declaring your intention to take over the world. So I reflected that I was doing things, somewhat unconventional things (which I focus on more) because of your advice, but hey, it’s good advise and I should probably take it (btw it’s good to hear that cryonics is less expensive than I thought it was, sorry for making your life difficult by propagating false information). I mean, I followed similar patterns when I decided to learn lisp as a first programming language.
I think I’m worried because you’re charismatic, and that makes you much more persuasive than an ineloquent and unimpressive philosopher/AI Hacker. Combined with the fact that I get really happy and a little self righteous when there’s an eloquent speaker who makes a really persuasive argument for something I agree with, makes reading you, and other charismatic people in the atheist/revolutionary/technophile cluster, a rather deep experience with uncomfortable parallels to religion.
I’ve thought it over though, and this particular pattern probably won’t cause too many problems, the reason is that Eliezer Yudkowsky isn’t the only eloquent speaker in the world. I’m betting on something similar to the “three stooges syndrome” where I get shaped by too many intelligent and charismatic people to be influenced in to making large mistakes, because they’ll probably call each other out on the more contentious claims and my bullshit detector will be reactivated.
I’m not even sure if I even agree with you more than average, but it does feel better to agree with you than usual, so that might be the source of worry, in your trip to the library of convenient rhetorical metaphors, it might be that the reason people are so anxious to say that they’re not copying you is because your deep, piercing stare and badass coffee metaphors
So other than that you’ve totally persuaded my fear of your ability to totally persuade me away. Well it’ll probably gone in a week after my subconscious stops thinking you’re a super-villain.
Ok, here’s a list, if you want more, email me at patrick.robotham2@gmail.com
The Third Alternative level 1
Procrastination level 0
Reasonable Disagreement level 1
Can Counterfactuals be True? level 2
Knowing about biases can hurt you level 1.2
Rationalization level 1.7
Modesty in a Disagreement level 2
A Fable of Science and Politics level 0
Explain/Worship/Ignore level 1
Foxes vs Hedgehogs level 2
fixed
It’s known as the Gambler’s Fallacy, the representativeness heuristic is thought to be responsible for it.
Avoiding Failure: Fallacy Finding
Ok, I’ve done one now, the link has been added to the post. I really appreciate you making me overcome my akrasia.
“Thus Aristotle laid it down that a heavy object falls faster than a light one does. The important thing about this idea is not that he was wrong, but that it never occurred to Aristotle to check it.” Albert Szent-Györgyi de Nagyrápolt, winner of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine.
Nice Dark Knight reference there, I wonder if the confessor ever ran around in clown makeup?