This being said, one should not hesitate to downvote a short message if it does not add at all to the discussion, simply to keep the flow of useful comments without superfluous interruption that would hamper what could otherwise be a constructive argument.
shaih
I’m Shai Horowitz. I’m currently a duel physics and mathematics major at Rutgers university. I first learned of the concept of “Bayesian” or “rationality” through HPMOR and from there i took it upon myself to read the Overcoming Bias post which has been an extremely long endeavor of which I have almost but not yet accomplished. Through conversation with others in my dorm at Rutgers I have realized simply how much this learning has done to my thought process and it allowed me to hone in on my own thoughts that i could see were still biased and go about fixing them. Through this same reasoning it became apparent to me that it would be largely beneficial to become an active part in the lesswrong community to sharpen my own skills as a rationalist while helping others along the way. I embrace rationality for the very specific reason that I wish to be a Physicists and realize that in trying to do so i could (as Eliezer puts hit) “shoot off my own foot” while doing things that conventional science allows. In the process of learning this I did stall out for months at a time and even became depressed for a while as I was stabbing my weakest points with the metaphorical knife. I do look back at laugh at the fact now that a college student was making incredibly bad decisions to get over the pain of fully embracing the second law of thermodynamics and its implications, which to me seems to be a sign of my progress moving forward. I don’t think that i will soon have to face a fact as daunting as that one and with the knowledge that I know how to accept even that law I will now be able to accept any truths much more easily. That being said even though hard science is my primary purpose for learning rationality I am a bit of a self proclaimed polymath and have spent recent times learning more of psychology and cognition then simply the cognitive bias’s i need to be self weary of. I just finished the book “Influence: Science and Practice” which I’ve heard Eliezer mention multiple times and very recently as in this week my interest have turned into pushing standard ethical theories to there limits as to truly understand how to make the world a better place and to unravel the black box that is itself the word “better”. I conclude with I would love to talk with anyone experienced or new to rationality about pretty much any topic and would very much like if someone would message me. furthermore if anyone reading this goes to Rutgers university or is around the area, a meet up over coffee or something similar would make my day.
I’ve been reading the sequences but i’ve realized that less of it has sunk in then i would have hoped. What is the best way to make the lessons sink in?
also this xkcd comic seems very on topic
My knowledge of statistics at the time was very much lacking (that being said i still only have about a semesters worth of stat) so I was not able to do any type of statistical analysis that would be rigorous in any way. I did however keep track of my predictions and was around 60% on the first day (slightly better then guessing probably caused by reading books i mentioned) to around 80% about a week later of practicing every day. I no longer have the exact data though only approximate percentages of how i did.
I remember also that it was difficult tracking down the cases in which truth was known and this was very time consuming, this is the predominant reason that i only practiced like this for a week.
I think I understand now thank you.
No rational argument will have a rational effect on a man who does not want to adopt a rational attitude.
Karl Popper
You’re right Einstien was not relevant to your original question. I brought him up because I did not understand the question until
I think you’ve lost track of why we were talking about Einstein. In the original post, you listed two reasons to believe non-falsifiable things. I asked you to give an example of the first one. Maybe it wasn’t sufficiently clear that I was asking for an example which wasn’t falsifiable, in which case I apologize, but I was (after all, that’s why it came up in the first place). Relativity is falsifiable. A heuristic that beautiful things tend to be true is also falsifiable.
Thanks for leading me to the conclusion truth does not trump awesomeness and yes I now agree with this.
I also have in mind things like finding out whether you were adopted
Good point
This chart has been extremely helpful to me in school and is full of weird approximation like the two above.
I don’t have them any longer. An easy way to do it is have a friend pick out videos for you (or have someone post links to videos here and have someone pm them for the answer). Or while on YouTube look for names that you’ve heard before but not quite remember clearly which is not really reliable but its better then nothing.
I found that going to the gym for about half an hour a day improved my posture. Whether this is from increased muscles that help with posture or simply with increased self-esteem I do not know but it definitely helped.
I have read them but it was a long time ago and I was not practicing using the knowledge at the time so it may not have sunk in as it was supposed to. I will go back now and reread them, thank you.
I’m reading through all of the sequences (slowly, it takes a while to truly understand and I started in 2012) and by coincidence I happen to be at the beginning of metaethics currently. Until I finish I won’t argue any further on this subject due to being confused. Thanks for help
The first thing that came to mind is it would only be possible to do this for the original post because it would be nearly impossible to be able to calculate how many of the readers read each comment. Further if it was implemented it would have to be able to count one reader per username, or more specifically one reader per person that can vote. that way if lets say i were to read an article but come back multiple times to read different comments it would not skew the ratio.
As a side note to this we could also implement a ratio per username that would show (post read)/(post voted on) so we would be able to see which users participate in voting at all. This however is nowhere near as useful to those who post as the original ratio and could have many possible downsides that i’m not going to take the time to think about because it will probably not be considered, but it is a fun idea.
I think what Creutzer is trying to mean is in ordinary discourse meaning everyday problems in which you are not always able to give the thought time it deserves, when you don’t even have 5 minutes by the clock hand to think about the problem rationally, it is better to rely on the heuristic assume people are smart and some unknown context is causing problems then to rely on the heuristic people who make mistakes are dumb. this said heuristics are only good most of the time and may lead you to errors such as
It’s epistemically incorrect to adopt a belief “for the purpose of action”
in this case it is still technically an error but you are merely attempting to be “less wrong” about a case where you don’t have time to be correct then assuming the heuristic until you encounter contrary evidence (or you have the time to think of better answers) follows closely the point of this website
From lessons I learned in HPMOR before making an important decision ask yourself “What do you think you know, and why do you think you know it?” I have found that this not only shows you what knowledge you have is sound enough to make decisions on but shows which pieces of knowledge you’re emotionally attached to and would therefore lead to a biased conclusion.
I am new to less wrong and am coincidentally a student at rvcc. i unfortunetly have class until 3:15 but will stop by for the end of the meetup
There is something to be said to improving the quality of life as well as saving lives. In scientific and discovery fields such as pure math, contributions could improve the quality of life exponentially.
Does anyone have any unbiased statistics on gender in workforce, career choice, education, and any other relevant statistics?
I do not believe it would be a good way to practice because even with actors acting the way they are supposed (consistent body language and facial expressions) lets say conservatively 90% of the time, you are left with 10% wrong data. This 10% wouldn’t be that bad except for the fact that it is actors trying to act correctly (meaning you would interpret what it looks like for a fabricated emotion to be a real emotion). This could be detrimental to many uses of being able to read body language such as telling when other people are lying.
My preferred method has been to watch court cases on YouTube where it has come out afterword whether the person was guilty or innocent. I watch these videos before i know what the truth is make a prediction and then read what the truth is. In this way I am able to get situations where the person is feeling real emotions and is likely to hide what there feeling with fake emotions.
After practicing like this for about a week i found that i could more easily discern whether people were telling the truth or lying, and it was easier to see what emotions they truly felt.
This may not extremely applicable to the real world because emotions felt in court rooms are particularly intense but i found that it allows me to get my mind to the point of being used to looking for emotion which has helped in the real world.
I should also note that i have read many books from Paul Ekman and have used some of his training programs.
If it is important to you how to learn to read faces I largely recommend SETT and METT where if its simply a curiosity you’re unwilling to spend much money on i recommend checking out “emotions revealed” in your local library