″ we believe instinctively, but disbelief requires a conscious effort” link not working
Yoav Ravid
in Hebrew there’s a synonym for rationalization that stems from the word “excuse” (“הַתְרָצָה”). i think it’s quite fitting, as that’s basically the process. you decide on a conclusion and excuse you way backward from it so it seems rational.
what do you think?
I’m not very good in English so I’m not sure, if we create a word for it that stems from excuse, what it would be—have any suggestions?
sorry, i made a communication error. “הַתְרָצָה” is the other word for rationalization in Hebrew, it stems from the word for excuse which is “תירוץ”.
The hopeful thing about Asch’s conformity experiments is that a single dissenter tremendously drove down the rate of conformity, even if the dissenter was only giving a different wrong answer. (...) Being a voice of dissent can bring real benefits to the group. But it also (famously) has a cost. And then you have to keep it up. Plus you could be wrong.
so a good thing to do can be to voice a disagreement with the group (even if you don’t know the answer), in order to give someone else the courage to speak the truth, and then support whatever it is he said (assuming for some reason you still can’t know the answer)?
that’s assuming that other people aren’t likely to speak up whatever just so someone else will speak the truth, so it’s probable that if someone defy the group he has a good reason to think he’s right.
this is very interesting, i’m likely to try it, thank you :)
btw, i also found the graphic in the beginning confusing
I just posted about a website that tried to do some of what you described, here’s my post
they said somewhere (don’t remember where) that they aim to bring it to that level, but due to the in-activeness i suspect it won’t ever get there… which is unfortunate...
i know Kialo, it’s extremely different. Kialo is a debate platform with a nice sorting and ranking system. it doesn’t have any algorithm to find what’s “right”, it just shows “both sides of the argument”.
I don’t think that anybody who learned a bit about cognitive biases or epistemology would build that website in such a way (each side gets an equal representation, even though they’re not epistemically equal. and i remember a study that showed that pros and cons list don’t work to change peoples minds, cause they allow them to very easily fall into confirmation bias.
Hey i would like to join, can anybody just come to the address and join?
New to the forum, found it through effective altruism, but began reading and participating or a different reason. there was a topic i want to challenge my beliefs about, and research further then what was already done (relatively little).
Up to now, I’ve read the first 2 books of “rationality: from A to Z”, and randomly read around the site, loving it :)
(If you have any article suggestions for me it would be awesome)
thanks, I’ve already read methods of rationality. I’ll read the codex, it really does seem to have much of what i was interested in :)
Does someone have a suggestion for an anthropology book?
they restructured the rhythm and pacing and added vivid turns of phrase, while keeping all the important content in place. I still haven’t worked out exactly how they did it, or what principles lie behind the changes, but suddenly it sounded like a more graceful, alive voice was making my argument.
I’ll just put this great quote here (which is a great explanation for at least one thing they might have done, depends on whether you did that already)
“This sentence has five words. Here are five more words. Five-word sentences are fine. But several together become monotonous. Listen to what is happening. The writing is getting boring. The sound of it drones. It’s like a stuck record. The ear demands some variety. Now listen. I vary the sentence length, and I create music. Music. The writing sings. It has a pleasant rhythm, a lilt, a harmony. I use short sentences. And I use sentences of medium length. And sometimes, when I am certain the reader is rested, I will engage him with a sentence of considerable length, a sentence that burns with energy and builds with all the impetus of a crescendo, the roll of the drums, the crash of the cymbals–sounds that say listen to this, it is important.”
― Gary Provost
yeah i wrote a line at the end about pollution in general, but talked about CO2 cause that can be emitted just from the breathing process. and also a lot of time CO2 is used as a general metric for pollution, even if it’s not the only substance.
the office machine to remove CO2 is really quite interesting actually, it’s the first good (or any) idea i heard that makes it worthy for business . i wonder how much effect it can have on the general environment if it were put into practice.
What if first, you just calculate the most beneficial actions you can take (like Scott did), and after that asses each of those using something like piers steel’s procrastination equation? then you know which one you’re most likely to achieve, and can can choose more wisely.
also, doing the easiest first can sometimes be a good strategy to achieve all of them, steel calls it a success spiral, where you succeed time after time and it increases your motivation.
Try looking around this post (ctrl+f) on The Best Textbooks on Every Subject—and see if there’s anything you’ll find useful :)
I think trying to predict human behavior, and developing ways to do it best, is a great exercise, and one that can also have immediate benefits (being better at predicting what people will do makes your social skills better).
This can also be taken as a full project of rationality, doing scholarship (science of people), using math and probability (maybe even inventing your own algorithms), gathering, organizing, and analyzing data (like personality types of people you know and what can they tell you about them)...
As someone new to the community i can testify that i probably would have had more motivation to write if i gotten more comments and discussion. especially since, at least for me, the things i think to publish aren’t necessarily very polished ideas, but things i would like to get input on.
you made me think of a feature i think can be great, that when someone gives a down-vote to a post the site automatically prompts him to comment. another idea is that you’ll only be able to make a strong down-vote if you comment, but I’m not to sure about that.
Thanks, i actually read it already and (though i really liked it) it didn’t answer my question. can you elaborate on where you find answers to my question in there? :)
one thing that does seem to me like an axiom and was in there is “what could be destroyed by the truth should be”