Peter_Twieg

Karma: 139

Peter_Twieg 26 Apr 2011 20:26 UTC
0 points
on: Mini-camp on Rationality, Awesomeness, and Existential Risk (May 28 through June 4, 2011)
I put in an application. But I realize that I think I forgot to include my LW username (the site was having issues so I couldn’t check.) So here it is. I’m pretty sure you won’t have trouble attaching it to my real name. :P

(Also, feel free to delete this comment once it’s been registered with the proper authorities.)

Peter_Twieg 14 Apr 2010 18:52 UTC
2 points
on: Ugh fields
I agree with your basic analysis of how the “ugh field” works, but I wouldn’t be so quick to categorically label it as a problem—cultivating an “ugh field” could also be an effective anti-akrasia technique if honed properly. What if you manage to train your usual (wasteful) displacement activities to trigger the “ugh field”, so that your new “displacement” activities become what you originally intended to do to begin with?

I’d like to think that I’ve encountered some success by basically doing this myself—I probably avoid seductive time-wasters just by having a visceral reaction of disgust for even considering them. It’s not perfect, but it’s a habit I think can be cultivated in the right direction.

Peter_Twieg 1 Apr 2010 17:33 UTC
2 points
on: Open Thread: April 2010
I recently got into some arguments with foodies I know on the merits (or lack thereof) of organic / local / free-range / etc. food, and this is a topic where I find it very difficult to find sources of information that I trust as reflective of some sort of expert consensus (insofar as one can be said to exist.) Does anyone have any recommendations for books or articles on nutrition/health that holds up under critical scrutiny? I trust a lot of you as filters on these issues.

Peter_Twieg 8 Jan 2010 1:38 UTC
0 points
on: Are wireheads happy?
I realize that I’m late to the game on this post, but I have to say that as economist, I found the take home point about revealed preference to be quite interesting, and it makes me wonder about the extent to which further neuroscience research will find systematic disjunctions in everyday circumstances between what motivates us and what gives us pleasure. Undoubtedly this would be leveraged into new sorts of paternalistic arguments… I’m guessing we’ll need another decade or two before we have the neuropaternalist’s equivalent of Nudge, however.

Peter_Twieg 6 Oct 2009 4:00 UTC
2 points
on: Dying Outside
My sympathies.

I’ve given the occasional thought to what I’d do if I ever found myself in this kind of situation. And although I can’t speak to my will to go through with it at the time, I’d honestly probably choose to die. Not because of concerns about my human dignity or some kind of depression that comes with a diminished quality of life, but just because my discounted present value will probably be heavily negative, meaning that I’m tying up resources that could be better-used than keeping me alive. I can’t speak about whether this applies to your situation, not knowing how much treatment costs nor what you do in your life, but if it were me… yeah.

Usually I wouldn’t admit to thinking this way because it strikes people as being really bizarre, but I figure if any group would at least be able to understand where I’m coming from, it’d be here.

But I do seriously admire your ability to hold your head high in an extremely adversarial situation… keep it up.

(Oh, and the DPV concern is also why I’m skeptical of cryonics, but I’m open to arguments showing that it really is worthwhile.)

Peter_Twieg 28 Sep 2009 2:04 UTC
4 points
on: Your Most Valuable Skill
Maybe this isn’t my most valuable skill, but lately I’ve been much better at setting to a routine and sticking to it in the absence of external enforcement: “Do your readings for class over the weekend. Go into the lab to work on research several days per week. Go to the regular seminars. Keep up on RSS feeds and extra readings in the evenings.” Naturally there are virtues to flexibility as well, but just floating through my day as an optimized routine and avoiding the problems associated with time-inconsistent preferences has really helped my productivity in the past few months.

Peter_Twieg 10 Sep 2009 18:57 UTC
25 points
in reply to: Eliezer Yudkowsky’s comment on: Let Them Debate College Students
It’s a photoshopped image of a Mortal Kombat tournament ladder. Once Behe defeats Dawkins he gets to debate Motaro.

[Edit]

Actually, he’d probably go straight to Shao Kahn… I just can’t see a centaur being a good advocate for Darwinism.

Peter_Twieg 8 Sep 2009 1:13 UTC
3 points
in reply to: anonym’s comment on: Why I’m Staying On Bloggingheads.tv

I don’t know enough about all the BhTV participants to argue that it is actually the case

I’m quite sure that there are political participants who would fare worse than Behe on any of the dimensions you’d offer. I guess one could lack the expertise to evaluate more than a subset of participants, however, in which case one could apply the principle consistently..

People find creationism more disturbing than ghost hunters because (among other reasons) creationism is making inroads in the educational system in USA, which could have very serious effects. I’m not sure why I even have to mention this

You have to mention this precisely because it’s disingenuous to hide behind the purely non-political justifications of the boycott—you end up trying to draw up a non-political dividing line which just so happens to exclude the viewpoints you have political objections to. This is precisely why I expressed skepticism that there’s a non-arbitrary principle for the unique objection to Behe, because if the political considerations are a necessary factor in the boycott, there isn’t one, unless one wants to get into a broader defense of one’s particular political sympathies… which most people will avoid because they realize that “people who I dislike sufficiently shouldn’t be given platforms to speak on” is a principle that isn’t going to sway one’s opponents.

Peter_Twieg 8 Sep 2009 0:06 UTC
−2 points
in reply to: SforSingularity’s comment on: Why I’m Staying On Bloggingheads.tv
Of course it isn’t.

Peter_Twieg 8 Sep 2009 0:06 UTC
3 points
in reply to: anonym’s comment on: Why I’m Staying On Bloggingheads.tv
It sounds like those are reasons to avoid engaging Creationists, not BhTV in general. If this is going to expand into a point about lowering BhTV’s intellectual standards like you mentioned above… then I find it odd to argue that one podcast could have such a powerful marginal effect on the enjoyment one derives from the site, unless you’re using some weird criteria where your overall evaluation of BhTV is based on the least intellectual podcast it hosts at any given time.

And I would be surprised if the worst podcast on BhTV by the criteria you described were Behe’s—rom a lot of comments on Sean and Carl’s posts, plenty of people would love to see Megan McArdle boycotted as well. I’d imagine that most people’s list of “least rational” targets to successively knock off would end up looking awfully partisan (get Megan, and then Jonah Goldburg, and then that annoying Will Wilkinson!), which fuels my skepticism here. I’d submit that if a diavlog with a “ghost hunter” was uploaded, people would find it annoying but the reaction would be otherwise subdued.

Peter_Twieg 7 Sep 2009 23:11 UTC
0 points
in reply to: anonym’s comment on: Why I’m Staying On Bloggingheads.tv
because those sorts of dialogues affect the general reputation of the site and thus the reputation of those who speak there.

So is it necessitated for consistency’s sake that those who would boycott BhTV over this incident must also boycott all other forums with lower intellectual standards… which would basically include all mainstream organizations? Somehow I don’t believe that it’s this simple.

The question I’m curious about is why a Creationist video on BhTV apparently creates reputational pollution in a way that a Creationist video on Youtube does not. My guess is that this has to do with BhTV being a smaller and more-exclusive community than Youtube, and this confers some benefits to “insiders”.

Peter_Twieg 7 Sep 2009 22:59 UTC
0 points
in reply to: Vladimir_Nesov’s comment on: Why I’m Staying On Bloggingheads.tv
A “thematic forum”? Could you elaborate on this?

Peter_Twieg 7 Sep 2009 22:44 UTC
3 points
on: Why I’m Staying On Bloggingheads.tv
Wow, I haven’t seen Phil Plait’s post until now. Bloggingheads “called Creationism science”? I can only guess what tortured reasoning gave rise to this claim.

But I think, Eliezer, that you’re being too charitable to those who are jumping ship. Sean and Carl aren’t doing so because they’re anti-accomodationist, they just can’t stand the thought of being within 300 internet meters of Creationists if they don’t think they can leverage the situation against them. Whether this particularized form of distaste is justifiable is an interesting issue and one I look forward to losing more karma points arguing here. Suffice to say, I would be surprised if there’s a non-arbitrary standard that would dictate that advocating Creationism is the most boycott-worthy of all views represented on BhTV.

But this does raise a lot of issues that I’d like to see developed here a little more. We talk about “raising the sanity waterline”, but there’s not much discussion of how exactly this would be done, what exact institutions and rules of rhetorical engagement tend to actually promote becoming less wrong. One thought that I was toying around with was that irrationality, like many other problems of insufficient virtue, is something that should be attacked from the demand side, not the supply side—meaning that boycotts on ideologies should be looked upon skeptically. I suspect that much of my discomfort with “silencing” tactics arises from my background in the social sciences, where politics frequently manages to honest inquiry because of well-intentioned tactics such as those employed by those who would boycott Bloggingheads for daring to host a podcast they found irresponsible.

Peter_Twieg 2 Sep 2009 4:42 UTC
−1 points
in reply to: eirenicon’s comment on: Open Thread: September 2009
I haven’t seen BhTV endorse Creationism as science in any official capacity.

Peter_Twieg 2 Sep 2009 3:37 UTC
1 point
in reply to: eirenicon’s comment on: Open Thread: September 2009
You’re shifting the goalposts some. I’m not defending the original decision to invite Behe. I’m questioning the notion that inviting Behe is such an egregious offense against BHTV’s “respectability” that it should be boycotted. I wouldn’t boycott BHTV if 90% of the diavlogs were replaced by midget porn, if it meant that I would get the occasional episode of Free Will.

I think Behe’s critics should just admit that what’s really motivating the reaction is the notion that Creationists not only should not be given forums to speak, but those who do grant Creationists forums to speak should be actively identified and boycotted in a way which is reserved for an arguably arbitrarily-defined set of social undesirables. This isn’t an indefensible position, but people have to admit to holding this belief (or some similar belief which is constructed in a more-charitable manner) before a meaningful debate can be enjoined.

[Edit]

Reading over the comments section of the CV posts, it looks like a lot of people are quick to point to Megan McArdle as the political crackpot equivalent of Behe. Should her presence be boycotted too as detrimental to the site? Where should the line be drawn? Where do you actually think the line would be drawn, if not along questionable ideological lines? Why have a line at all?

Peter_Twieg 2 Sep 2009 2:48 UTC
−1 points
in reply to: Furcas’s comment on: Open Thread: September 2009
So BHTV can’t both enjoy the participation of respectable academics and also host the occasional crackpot? There exists no such universe where the two could possibly coincide? Is there some implicit assumption here that there’s a fixed amount of BHTV episodes, each of which will feature either crackpots or respectable academics? Even if this were so, wouldn’t the reasonable response be to skip over the crackpots rather than avoiding the entire medium? The only justifiable rationale I can see for skipping over BHTV because of this is if you just watched diavlogs at random and having crackpots degraded the signal:noise ratio of the site. But I doubt that you, I, Sean, Carl, or your average Bloggingheads viewer navigates the site in this manner.

Even though I profoundly degree with Behe’s epistemology (and theology), which should go without saying in these parts, I found the debate interesting (I think irreducible complexity is a neat topic), certainly moreso than I’ve enjoyed other diavlogs. Can anyone honestly say that Behe’s presence is less valuable than any other podcast on the website? I doubt it, and thus it strikes me as disingenuous that the unique response his presence generates can be explained away purely through outrage at the notion that somewhere, someone’s time may be wasted.

And I didn’t include the “people whom others don’t like” line as a defense of creationism per se, but as a broader point about silencing views found in contempt. To rip off Will Wilkinson, I’d probably venture to assert that unrepentant Marxists are just as high on the crackpottery scale as Creationists, but I highly doubt we’d see people abandon the site in protest in BHTV hosted some of them. “Respectability” in this context is a tricky term to use, since “respectability” tends to be conferred by social fashions just as much as actual correspondence to whatever virtues we’ve deemed to be worthy of respect. On a more base level, I suspect that many participants in this community have been dismissed as “crackpots” in some context or other before, and are skeptical of the neutrality and intellectual virtues of those who tend to yield the power of the censor. This isn’t a philosophical defense of subjectivism or postmodernism, but an institutional defense of the rough reasons why we don’t just go ahead and burn Behe at the stake.

Peter_Twieg 2 Sep 2009 1:24 UTC
0 points
in reply to: Furcas’s comment on: Open Thread: September 2009
What harm is done by bringing on an astrologer? At worst it fail to amuse.

But it’s obvious you’re not talking about the diavlog’s impact on you… you’re concerned with the poor, unwashed masses who might actually be left to form their own opinions from the available information. Well, that’s very nice of you, but I don’t think it’s unreasonable to believe that it’s safe to expose people to views which might be labeled as “crackpottery” by some.

Peter_Twieg 1 Sep 2009 23:05 UTC
1 point
in reply to: Furcas’s comment on: Open Thread: September 2009
Thanks for the link. I saw the original Behe podcast and was surprised when it suddenly disappeared with a brief note from an admin. I haven’t been able to follow up on this matter much since it hasn’t generated much buzz, but I’ll look forward to reading these links—if people are boycotting Bloggingheads for giving platforms to people whom they don’t like.… well, that’s an interesting precedent to set which should be scrutinized carefully.

Peter_Twieg 22 Jul 2009 15:33 UTC
16 points
on: Missing the Trees for the Forest
One person’s “overarching narrative” is another person’s set of Bayesian priors.

Take, for example, your pollution discussion. An economics textbook will tell you that there is an ideal level of taxation, yes. However, it won’t tell you about regulatory capture, mission creep, the Hayekian knowledge problem, etc. There is always a correct set of contextual data to be used to interpret and resolve problems in isolation, yes—but determining what this set is and how we should interpret the probabilities of various events occurring is pretty much always going to invoke an overarching narrative unless you really, really think that this screws everything up.

But as an economist—a Masonomics student, no less—I’m inclined to see a greater harm in “markets fail, so assume a benevolent social planner and imagine what policies she could implement” approach to solving economic questions than the harms of dirtying one’s self in the morass of historical context. This is why social science is hard—and why it should be hard. It’s not that we should be indifferent to the injection of ideology into these debates, but that it’s liable to create greater harm if we try to avoid all questions which cannot yield precise analytical answers which are self-apparent to reasonable minds.

Hopefully I’m not strawmanning your point here—maybe you’re primarily trying to explain how ideology mucks things up, but I also get the impression that you think it’s reasonably feasible to avoid questions that lend themselves to ideological answers… I definitely would disagree with such an assertion.

Peter_Twieg 20 Jul 2009 2:31 UTC
−7 points
in reply to: Eliezer Yudkowsky’s comment on: Sayeth the Girl
I believe the favored gender-neutral third-person subject pronoun du jour is “zie.”

ie. “Zie bought hir shoes at Walmart.”