outofculture comments on The 5-Second Level - Less Wrong

111 Post author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 07 May 2011 04:51AM

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Comment author: Charlie_OConnor 12 May 2011 05:40:57AM 3 points [-]

5 second level for evidence as soldiers

  1. Notice that all your evidence favors your belief; or Notice the anger/resentment/fear when coming across evidence against your belief.
  2. Pause and remember that
    1. beliefs are just expectations and truth is a measure of how accurate your expectations are
    2. evidence is not for or against a belief, it is a flow of probability between expectations
  3. Feel aversion to not internalizing all the evidence, to not letting reality constrain your expectations (beliefs)
  4. Make an bayesian calculation, incrementally incorporating all the evidence, so that your expectations (beliefs) are accurate (true).

A recent example for me comes from reading The Nurture Assumption and Selfish Reasons to Have more Kids.

  1. I noticed I was really convinced by a lot of evidence in favor of the view that parental influence is less important than I thought.
  2. My beliefs were being updated, but only by evidence in one direction - in favor of the hypothesis.
  3. Not wanting to be inaccurate about the best way to raise children I searched google scholar for twin/adoption studies and criticisms.
  4. I updated by beliefs based on the criticisms of the studies and I now feel confident in my expectations about parental influence.

Exercises include picking a belief (maybe one you recently acquired from a convincing friend) and researching all arguments for and against the belief. Write down your expectations before the research. As you research compare the research to your expectations and update your expectations as you go (I actually mean writing down so others can read it what you actually expect). Repeat. Eventually pick beliefs you have held for a long time and are a part of your identity (after practicing on recent beliefs that matter less).

Comment author: outofculture 15 May 2011 07:13:30AM *  1 point [-]

A variant on this topic:

  1. Notice when providing evidence X for a position P you believe in.
    1. Bonus points for reviewing recent memories to see if you have supported P repeatedly, especially to the exclusion of evidence to the contrary.
  2. Feel revulsion at having become the puppet of P.
  3. Introduce a nudge away from P. Some examples:
    1. Provide some good evidence counter to P.
    2. If you cannot point to specific counter evidence, try to at least describe what counter evidence would look like.
    3. State just how surprised you would be to see the evidence X if the position P were false. Can you rank it relative to other pieces of evidence under consideration? If the evidence is really weak, ask to have it weighted as such.

This seems sloppy, as it relies on the sense of revulsion to determine how much of a counter-nudge to give. It should still be useful, I hope.

The exercise to train this with:

  1. Propose a character facing a choice, especially on topics that are muddled by being high-profile (e.g. Jane Senator must decide how to vote on extending unemployment benefits).
  2. Provide a small selection of evidence that the character has considered, and state that their position after seeing just that evidence is for, against or undecided.
  3. Ask the participants what additional evidence they think the character should consider.
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