I don’t say that you’re wrong, necessarily, but what would you say is an example of something that “has the form of a Ponzi scheme”, but is actually a change that enables permanently faster growth?
Said Achmiz
This is in reference to the Luddites, I suppose? If so, “some people’s jobs being automated” is rather a glib description of the early effects of industrialization. There was considerable disruption and chaos, which, indeed, is “doom”, of more or less the sort that the Luddites predicted. (They never claimed that the world would end as a result of the new machines, as far as I know.)
Well, people prophesying doom in general have a pretty poor track record, so if that’s all we know, our prior should be that any such person is likely to be very wrong.
Of course, most people throughout history who have prophesied doom have had in mind a religious sort of doom. People prophesying doom from technological advance specifically have a better track record. The Luddites were correct, for example. (Their chosen remedy left something to be desired, of course; but that is common, sadly. Identifying the problem does not, by itself, suffice to solve the problem.) And we’ve had quite a bit of doom from technological advance. Indeed, as technology has advanced, we’ve had more and more doom from that advance.
So, on the whole, I’d say that applying the reasoning I describe to people prophesying doom from technological advance is that there is probably something to what they say, even if their specific predictions are not spot-on.
If the premise is a world where nobody ever does any scams or tries to swindle anyone out of money, then it’s so far removed from our world that I don’t rightly know how to interpret any of the included commentary on human nature / psychology / etc. Lying for personal gain is one of those “human universals”, without which I wouldn’t even recognize the characters as anything resembling humans.
Even setting aside such textual anomalies, why is this a good argument? As I noted in a sibling comment to yours, my response assumes that Ponzi schemes have never happened in this world, because otherwise we’d simply identify the Spokesperson’s plan as a Ponzi scheme! The reasoning that I described is only necessary because we can’t say “ah, a Ponzi scheme”!
The opposite approach of Said Achmiz, namely appealing very concretely to the object level, misses the point as well: the post is not trying to give practical advice about how to spot Ponzi schemes. “We thus defeat the Spokesperson’s argument on his own terms, without needing to get into abstractions or theory—and we do it in one paragraph.” is not the boast you think it is.
If the post describes a method for analyzing a situation, and that described method is not in fact the correct method for analyzing that situation (and is actually much worse than the correct method), then this is a problem with the post.
(Also, your description of my approach as “appealing very concretely to the object level”, and your corresponding dismissal of that approach, is very ironic! The post, in essence, argues precisely for appealing concretely to the object level; but then if we actually do that, as I demonstrated, we render the post moot.)
It follows inevitably, therefore, that there is a very high chance that the S&P 500, and the stock market in general, is a scam, and will steal all your money.
Well, here’s a question: what happens more often—stock market downturns, or banks going bust?
It follows further that the only safe investment approach is to put all your money into something that you retain personal custody of. Like gold bars buried in your backyard! Or Bitcoin!
Now this is simply an invalid extrapolation. Note that I made no claims along these lines about what does or does not supposedly follow. Claims like “X reasoning is invalid” / “Y plan is unlikely to work” stand on their own; “what is the correct reasoning” / “what is a good plan” is a wholly separate question.
this choice is in general non-trivial
I disagree. It seems to me that this choice is, in general, pretty easy to make, and takes naught but common sense. Certainly that’s the case in the given example scenario. Of course there are exceptions, where the choice of reference class is trickier—but in general, no, it’s pretty easy.
(Whether the choice “requires abstractions and/or theory” is another matter. Perhaps it does, in a technical sense. But it doesn’t particularly require talking about abstractions and/or theory, and that matters.)
Yes. (If it were otherwise, then the response would be even simpler: “oh, this is obviously just a Ponzi scheme”.)
- 14 Mar 2024 22:51 UTC; 4 points) 's comment on ‘Empiricism!’ as Anti-Epistemology by (
Or:
“In the past, people who have offered such apparently-very-lucrative deals have usually been scammers, cheaters, and liars. And, in general, we have on many occasions observed people lying, scamming, cheating, etc. On the other hand, we have only very rarely seen such an apparently-very-lucrative deal turn out to actually be a good idea. Therefore, on the general principle that the future will be similar to the past, we predict a very high chance that Bernie is a cheating, lying scammer, and that this so-called ‘investment opportunity’ is fake.”
We thus defeat the Spokesperson’s argument on his own terms, without needing to get into abstractions or theory—and we do it in one paragraph.
This happens to also be precisely the correct approach to take in real life when faced with apparently-very-lucrative deals and investment opportunities (unless you have the time to carefully investigate, in great detail and with considerable diligence, all such deals that are offered to you).
Note that the
selectionchange
event will report the currently selected hit for the searched text, not all highlighted hits, so this should not be a problem. (As the user presses Cmd-G [Find Next], or Enter in the search box, the browser will cycle through the highlighted hits, firing a newselectionchange
event each time.) Thus, each time the event is fired, you can expand whatever section the currently-selected hit is in (and collapse its neighbors in the row).Update: I just checked, and it seems like this stopped being true at some point; I am now seeing
selectionchange
events fired only on the initial search (when the user first spawns the Search box, by invoking the Find command or the Find Next / Find Previous command) and also when that box is dismissed, but not on subsequent invocations of Find Next/Previous (or the Enter key) when the Search box is open. (It is still the case that only a single selected hit, and not all highlighted hits, are reported.) This reduces the usefulness of the technique I described, though does not entirely eliminate it. @habryka
I am not sure what you mean by step #1 (when something “feels like it should” take some amount of time, but ends up taking more time, it’s generally not because I made some mistake, but rather because my initial “feeling” turned out to be mistaken about how much time the task “should” take—which is not shocking, as such “feelings” are necessarily probabilistic).
The rest of it seems like… learning from mistakes and optimizing your practices/workflows/etc. based on experience. Is that what you’re talking about?
I confess that I’m still confused about how any of this could be described as “how could I have thought that faster”. Eliezer writes about “retrain[ing] [himself] to perform only those steps over the course of 30 seconds”, and… that just does not seem like it has anything to do with what you’re describing? Am I missing some analogy here, or what?
I would also like to see this. As it is, I’m not sure what the OP is even describing. (As noted in a sibling comment, description is very vague.)
I’ve gotten better at computer programming (as demonstrated by the fact that I used to not know how to code and now I can code pretty well), and not only have I never done anything that sounds like this, I am not sure I even understand what it would mean to do this. (Is it just “optimize your workflow on a task”? If so, then it seems very mis-decribed. Or is it something else?)
I don’t think that this view described in your second paragraph stands up to scrutiny.
Like, suppose that you are designing a product etc., and I ask you whether you’ve considered that perhaps capitalism is not even good for civilization. “I choose not to think about that right now” is not a coherent answer. Either you have already thought about that question, and have reached an answer that is compatible with your continuing to work on your product or whatever (in which case you can say “indeed I have considered that question, and here, in brief, is my answer”)—or else you should, in fact, pause and at least briefly consider the question now, because your answer will affect whether you should continue with your project or else abandon it.
In other words, if the questioning came before, then just give the answer you found. If the questioning comes after… well, that’s too late. The questioning shouldn’t come after. If there’s possibly some reason why you shouldn’t be doing the thing you’re doing, then the best time to figure that out is before you started, and the second best time to figure it out is right now.
“I’ll question my assumptions later” typically means “I’ll question my assumptions never; I simply want you to go away and not bother me.”
Sorry, I meant that I’d like to see references for @habryka’s last sentence specifically (i.e., the part for which he says “I could dig up the references”). The IQ thing doesn’t seem to be that.
Is there some reason why you don’t want to post the procedure here, on Less Wrong?
I would love to see references for this!
Re-reading this post today, in 2024, I just want to note:
Anyone want to still want to eat chocolate-chip cookies when the last sun grows cold? I didn’t think so.
I absolutely want to still want to eat chocolate chip cookies when the last sun grows cold.
That… does not seem like a historically accurate account of the formation and growth of cities.