Rationality Quotes September 2011

7 Post author: dvasya 02 September 2011 07:38AM

Here's the new thread for posting quotes, with the usual rules:

  • Please post all quotes separately, so that they can be voted up/down separately.  (If they are strongly related, reply to your own comments.  If strongly ordered, then go ahead and post them together.)
  • Do not quote yourself.
  • Do not quote comments/posts on LW/OB.
  • No more than 5 quotes per person per monthly thread, please.

Comments (482)

Comment author: dvasya 01 September 2011 07:33:29AM *  2 points [-]

If superior creatures from space ever visit earth, the first question they will ask, in order to assess the level of our civilization, is ‘Have they discovered evolution yet?’

-- Richard Dawkins, The Selfish Gene

(I know it's old and famous and classic, but this doesn't make it any less precious, does it?)

Comment author: Kingreaper 01 September 2011 07:46:46AM 10 points [-]

Sometimes I suspect that wouldn't even occur to them as a question. That evolution might turn out to be one of those things that it's just assumed any race that had mastered agriculture MUST understand.

Because, well, how could a race use selective breeding, and NOT realise that evolution by natural selection occurs?

Comment author: MarkusRamikin 01 September 2011 10:31:19AM 16 points [-]

Easily.

Realizing far-reaching consequences of an idea is only easy in hindsight, otherwise I think it's a matter of exceptional intelligence and/or luck. There's an enormous difference between, on the one hand, noticing some limited selection and utilising it for practical benefits - despite only having a limited, if any, understanding of what you're doing - and on the other hand realizing how life evolved into complexity from its simple beginnings, in the course of a difficult to grasp period of time. Especially if the idea has to go up against well-entrenched, hostile memes.

I don't know if this has a name, but there seems to exit a trope where (speaking broadly) superior beings are unable to understand the thinking and errors of less advanced beings. I first noticed it when reading H. Fast's The First Men, where this exchange between a "Man Plus" child and a normal human occurs:

"Can you do something you disapprove of?" "I am afraid I can. And do." "I don't understand. Then why do you do it?"

It's supposed to be about how the child is so advanced and undivided in her thinking, but to me it just means "well then you don't understand how the human mind works".

In short, I find this trope to be a fallacy. I'd expect an advanced civilisation to have a greater, not lesser, understanding of how intelligence works, its limitations, and failure modes in general.

Comment author: Kingreaper 01 September 2011 11:11:26AM *  3 points [-]

In short, I find this trope to be a fallacy. I'd expect an advanced civilisation to have a greater, not lesser, understanding of how intelligence works, its limitations, and failure modes in general.

But what reason do we have to expect them to pick evolution, as opposed to the concept of money, or of extensive governments (governments governing more than 10,000 people at once), or of written language, or of the internet, or of radio communication, or of fillangerisation, as their obvious sign of advancement?

Just because humans picked up on evolution far later than we should have, doesn't mean that evolution is what they'll expect to be the late discovery. They might equally expect that the internet wouldn't be invented until the equivalent tech level of 2150. Or they might consider moveable type to be the symbol of a masterful race.

Just because they'll likely be able to understand why we were late to it, doesn't mean it would occur to them before looking at us. It's easy to explain why we came to it when we did, once you know that that's what happened, but if you were from a society that realised evolution [not necessarily common descent] existed as they were domesticating animals; would you really think of understanding evolution as a sign of advancement?

EDIT: IOW: I've upvoted your disagreement with the "advanced people can't understand the simpler ways" trope; but I stand by my original point: they wouldn't EXPECT evolution to be undiscovered.

Comment author: Slackson 01 September 2011 11:47:22AM 10 points [-]

I suspect that the intent of the original quote is that they'll assess us by our curiosity towards, and effectiveness in discovering, our origins. As Dawkins is a biologist, he is implying that evolution by natural selection is an important part of it, which of course is true. An astronomer or cosmologist might consider a theory on the origins of the universe itself to be more important, a biochemist might consider abiogenesis to be the key, and so on.

Personally, I can see where he's coming from, though I can't say I feel like I know enough about the evolution of intelligence to come up with a valid argument as to whether an alien species would consider this to be a good metric to evaluate us with. One could argue that interest in oneself is an important aspect of intelligence, and scientific enquiry important to the development of space travel, and so a species capable of travelling to us would have those qualities and look for them in the creatures they found.

This is my time posting here, so I'm probably not quite up to the standards of the rest of you just yet. Sorry if I said something stupid.

Comment author: Kingreaper 01 September 2011 11:55:47AM *  8 points [-]

Welcome to lesswrong.

I wouldn't consider anything you've said here stupid, in fact I would agree with it.

I, personally, see it as a failure of imagination on the part of Dawkin's, that he considers the issue he personally finds most important to be that which alien intelligences will find most important, but you are right to point out what his likely reasoning is.

Comment author: dvasya 02 September 2011 12:31:20PM 3 points [-]

I think you're interpreting the quote too literally, it's not a statement about some alien intelligences but an allegory to communicate just how important the science of evolution is.

Comment author: Normal_Anomaly 02 September 2011 11:37:41PM 2 points [-]

Another chain of reasoning I have seen people use to reach similar conclusions is that the aliens are looking for species that have outgrown their sense of their own special importance to the universe. Aliens checking for that would be likely to ask about evolution, or possibly about cosmologies that don't have the home planet at the center of the universe. However, I don't think a sense of specialness is one of the main things aliens will care about.

Comment author: Logos01 02 September 2011 08:14:37PM 2 points [-]

In short, I find this trope to be a fallacy. I'd expect an advanced civilisation to have a greater, not lesser, understanding of how intelligence works, its limitations, and failure modes in general.

Have you never looked at something someone does and asked yourself, "How can they be so stupid?"

It's not as though you literally cannot conceive of such limitations; just that you cannot empathize with them.

Comment author: ata 02 September 2011 08:53:01PM *  1 point [-]

It's anthropomorphism to assume that it would occur to advanced aliens to try to understand us empathetically rather than causally/technically in the first place, though.

Comment author: Logos01 03 September 2011 12:06:18AM 3 points [-]

Anthropomorphism? I think not. All known organisms that think have emotions. Advanced animals demonstrate empathy.

Now, certainly it might be possible that an advanced civilization might arise that is non-sentient, and thus incapable of modeling other's psyche empathetically. I will admit to the possibility of anthropocentrism in my statements here; that is, in my inability to conceive of a mechanism whereby technological intelligence could arise without passing through a route that produces intelligences sufficiently like our own as to possess the characteristic of 'empathy'.

It's one thing to postulate counter-factuals; it's another altogether to actually attempt to legitimize them with sound reasoning.

Comment author: erniebornheimer 02 September 2011 10:37:43PM 9 points [-]

Yeah. This was put very well by Fyodor Urnov, in an MCB140 lecture:

"What is blindingly obvious to us was not obvious to geniuses of ages past."

I think the lecture series is available on iTunes.

Comment author: AlanCrowe 01 September 2011 06:43:35PM 4 points [-]

The British agricultural revolution involved animal breeding starting in about 1750. Darwin didn't publish Origin of Species until 1859, so in reality it took about 100 years for the other shoe to drop.

Comment author: MarkusRamikin 02 September 2011 07:23:15AM 4 points [-]

Selective breeding had been around much longer than that.

Comment author: Logos01 02 September 2011 08:17:21PM 1 point [-]

Selective breeding isn't necessarily the same as artificial selection, however. The taming of dogs and cats was largely considered accidental; the neotenous animals were more human-friendly and thus able to access greater amounts of food supplies from humans until eventually they could directly interact, whereupon (at least in dogs) "usefulness" became a valued trait.

There wasn't purposefulness in this; people just fed the better dogs more and disliked the 'worse' dogs. It wasn't until the mid-1700's that dog 'breeds' became a concept.

Comment author: JoshuaZ 02 September 2011 08:34:11PM *  4 points [-]

There wasn't purposefulness in this; people just fed the better dogs more and disliked the 'worse' dogs. It wasn't until the mid-1700's that dog 'breeds' became a concept.

There were certainly attempts to breed specific traits earlier than that. But they were hindered by a poor understanding of inheritance. For example, in the Bible, Jacob tried to breed speckled cattle by putting speckled rods in front of the cattle when they are trying to mate. Problems with understanding genetics works at a basic level was an issue even for much later and some of them still impact what are officially considered purebreds now.

I think that deliberate breeding of stronger horses dates back prior to the 1700s, at least to the early Middle Ages, but I don't have a source for that.

Comment author: Logos01 02 September 2011 08:43:01PM 1 point [-]

Absolutely. Even the dog-breeding practitioners were unaware of how inheritence operates; that didn't come about until Gregor Mendel. We really do take for granted the vast sums of understanding about the topic we are inculcated with simply through cultural osmosis.

Comment author: machrider 03 September 2011 07:29:26AM *  2 points [-]

100 years is nothing in the evolution of a civilization though. The time between agricultural revolution and the discovery of evolution is not a typical period in the history of humanity.

Comment author: wedrifid 02 September 2011 12:59:43PM 6 points [-]

but this doesn't make it any less precious, does it?

I wouldn't say it has much preciousness to begin with. It is is nearly nonsensical cheering. The sort of thing I don't like to associate myself with at all.

Comment author: NancyLebovitz 03 September 2011 08:05:45AM 2 points [-]

I wonder if there's any way to estimate how hard it is for an intelligent species to think of evolution. It's a very abstract theory, and I think it's plausible that intelligent species could be significantly better or worse than we are at abstract thought. I have no idea where the middle of the bell curve (if it's a bell curve at all) would be.

Comment author: rwallace 04 September 2011 01:18:34PM 5 points [-]

I would actually think evolution a particularly poor choice.

If you want to pick one question to ask (and if we leave aside the obvious criterion of easy detectability from space) then you would want to pick one strongly connected in the dependency graph. Heavier than air flight, digital computers, nuclear energy, the expansion of the universe, the genetic code, are all good candidates. You can't discover those without discovering a lot of other things first.

But Aristotle could in principle have figured out evolution. The prior probability of doing so at that early stage may be small, but I'll still bet evolution has a much larger variance in its discovery time than a lot of other things.

Comment author: JoshuaZ 04 September 2011 01:27:52PM 2 points [-]

Heavier than air flight, digital computers, nuclear energy, the expansion of the universe, the genetic code, are all good candidates. You can't discover those without discovering a lot of other things first.

Genetic code might likely vary. While it isn't implausible that other life would use DNA for its genetic storage it doesn't seem to be that likely. It seems extremely unlikely that DNA would be organized in the same triplet codon system that life on Earth uses.

Heavier than air flight is also a function of what sort of planet you are on. If Earth had slightly weaker or stronger gravity the difficulty of this achievement would change a lot. Also if intelligent life had arose from winged species one could see this as impacting how much they study aerodynamics and the like. One could conceive of that going either way (say having a very intuitive understanding of how to fly but considering it to be incredibly difficult to make an Artificial Flyer, or the opposite, using that intuition to easily understand what would need to be done in some form.)

Other than that, your argument seems to be a good one.

Comment author: lessdazed 04 September 2011 01:36:17PM *  1 point [-]

digital computers

This is a good one. I like it.

nuclear energy

Seems dependent on substitute energy availability and military technology.

the expansion of the universe

There seems to be significant variance in how much humans care about such things, and achievement depends significantly on interest. Would aliens care at all about this?

If you want to pick one question to ask

I think we would do quite poorly with any one such question and exponentially better if permitted a handful.

Comment author: JoshuaZ 04 September 2011 01:47:56PM 4 points [-]

I think we would do quite poorly with any one such question and exponentially better if permitted a handful

cringe. Please don't use "exponentially" to mean a lot when you have only two data points.

Comment author: lessdazed 04 September 2011 01:51:06PM *  -1 points [-]

I mean we'd do more than twice as well with one question than with two, and more than twice as well with three than with two. Usually, diminishing returns leads us to learn less from each additional question, but not here. How do I express that?

when you have only two data points.

I have zero data points, I'm comparing hypothetical situations in which I ask aliens one or more questions about their technology. (It seems Dawkins' scenario got inverted somewhere along the way, but I don't think that makes any difference.)

Comment author: JoshuaZ 04 September 2011 01:58:50PM *  1 point [-]

I mean we'd do more than twice as well with one question than with two, and more than twice as well with three than with two. Usually, diminishing returns leads us to learn less from each additional question, but not here. How do I express that?

That's actually a claim of superexponential growth, but how you said it sounds ok. I'm actually not sure that you can get superexponential growth in a meaningful sense. If you have n bits of data you can't do better than having all n bits be completely independent. So if one is measuring information content in a Shannon sense one can't do better than exponential.

Edit: If this is what you want to say I'd say something like "As the number of questions asked goes up the information level increases exponentially" or use "superexponentially" if you mean that.

Comment author: lessdazed 04 September 2011 02:35:52PM 0 points [-]

My best guess for each individual achievement gets better each other achievement I learn about, as they are not independent.

So if one is measuring information content in a Shannon sense one can't do better than exponential.

I was trying to get at the legitimacy of summarizing the aggregate of somewhat correlated achievements as a "level of civilization". Describing a civilization as having a a "low/medium/high/etc. level of civilization" in relation to others depends on either its technological advances being correlated similarly or establishing some subset of them as especially important. I don't think the latter can be done much, which leaves inquiring about the former.

If the aliens are sending interstellar ships to colonize nearby systems, have no biology or medicine, have no nuclear energy or chemical propulsion (they built a tower on their low gravity planet and launched a solar sail based craft from it with the equivalent of a slingshot for their space program), and have quantum computers, they don't have a level of technology.

Comment author: JoshuaZ 04 September 2011 02:53:59PM 0 points [-]

If the aliens are sending interstellar ships to colonize nearby systems, have no biology or medicine, have no nuclear energy or chemical propulsion (they built a tower on their low gravity planet and launched a solar sail based craft from it with the equivalent of a slingshot for their space program), and have quantum computers, they don't have a level of technology.

Well what does no medicine mean? A lot of medicine would work fine without understanding genetics in detail. Blood donors and antibiotics are both examples. Also do normal computers not count as technology? Why not? Assume that we somehow interacted with an alien group that fit your description. Is there nothing we could learn from them? I think not. For one, they might have math that we don't have. They might have other technologies that we lack (for example, better superconductors). You may be buying into a narrative of technological levels that isn't necessarily justified. There are a lot of examples of technologies that arose fairly late compared to when they necessarily made sense. For example, one-time pads arose in the late 19th century, but would have made sense as a useful system on telegraphs 20 or 30 years before. Another example are high-temperature superconductors. Similarly, high temperature superconductors (that is substances that are superconductors at liquid nitrogen temperatures) were discovered in the mid 1980s but the basic constructions could have been made twenty years before.

Comment author: lessdazed 04 September 2011 03:14:42PM *  1 point [-]

Well what does no medicine mean?

No blood donors (if they have blood), no antibiotics (if they have bacteria), etc.

Also do normal computers not count as technology?

Of course they do.

Assume that we somehow interacted with an alien group that fit your description. Is there nothing we could learn from them?

We could learn a lot from them, but it would be wrong to say "The aliens have a technological level less than ours", "The aliens have a technological level roughly equal to ours", "The aliens have a technological level greater than ours", or "The aliens have a technological level, for by technological levels we can most helpfully and meaningfully divide possible-civilizationspace".

You may be buying into a narrative of technological levels that isn't necessarily justified. There are a lot of examples of technologies that arose fairly late compared to when they necessarily made sense.

My point is that there are a lot of examples of technologies that arose fairly late compared to when they necessarily made sense, so asking about what technologies have arisen isn't as informative as one might intuitively suspect. It's so uninformative that the idea of levels of technology is in danger of losing coherence as a concept absent confirmation from the alien society that we can analogize from our society to theirs, confirmation that requires multiple data points.

Comment author: JoshuaZ 04 September 2011 03:21:52PM 2 points [-]

Ah, I see. Yes that makes sense. No substantial disagreement then.

Comment author: Normal_Anomaly 04 September 2011 03:31:29PM *  -1 points [-]

cringe. Please don't use "exponentially" to mean a lot when you have only two data points.

I heard a Calculus teacher do this with even less justification a few days ago.

EDIT: was this downvoted for irrelevancy, or some other reason?

Comment author: lessdazed 04 September 2011 11:11:25PM *  0 points [-]

I didn't downvote it, but if you notice, JoshuaZ concluded my use of "exponential" was "ok", as what I actually meant was not "a lot" but rather what is technically known as "superexponential growth".

"Even less justification" has some harsh connotations.

Comment author: soreff 04 September 2011 02:08:27PM 2 points [-]

I think we would do quite poorly with any one such question and exponentially better if permitted a handful.

Very much agreed.

I also agree with:

I, personally, see it as a failure of imagination on the part of Dawkin's, that he considers the issue he personally finds most important to be that which alien intelligences will find most important,

I agree with the general idea of:

If you want to pick one question to ask (and if we leave aside the obvious criterion of easy detectability from space) then you would want to pick one strongly connected in the dependency graph.

though I think it is hard to correctly choose according to this criterion. I'm skeptical that digital computers would really pass this test. Considering the medium that we are all using to discuss this, we might be a bit biased in our views of their significance. (as a former chemist, I'm biased towards picking the periodic table - but I know I'm not making a neutral assessment here.)

Nuclear energy seems like a decent choice, from the dependency graph point of view. A civilization which is able to use either fission or fusion has to pass a couple of fairly stringent tests. To detect the relevant nuclear reactions in the first place, they need to detect Mev particles, which aren't things that everyday chemical or biological processes produce. To get either reaction to happen on a large scale, they must recognize and successfully separate isotopes, which is a significant technical accomplishment.

Comment author: lessdazed 04 September 2011 02:39:23PM *  2 points [-]

To get either reaction to happen on a large scale, they must recognize and successfully separate isotopes, which is a significant technical accomplishment.

Is it possible the right isotopes might be lying around? Like here, but more concentrated and dispersed?

Comment author: soreff 04 September 2011 03:00:18PM 2 points [-]

Is it possible the right isotopes might be lying around?

Yes, good point, if intelligent life evolved faster on their planet. The relevant timing is how long it took after the supernova that generated the uranium for the alien civilization to arise. (since that sets the 238U/235U ratio).

Comment author: lessdazed 04 September 2011 03:27:13PM 1 point [-]

I'm confused. I thought a reaction needed a quantity of 235U in an area, and that smaller areas needed more 235U to sustain a chain reaction. Wouldn't very small pieces of relatively 235U rich uranium be fairly stable? One could then put them together with no technological requirements at all.

Comment author: soreff 04 September 2011 04:20:31PM *  2 points [-]

You are quite correct, small pieces of 235U are stable. The difference is that low concentrations of 235U in natural uranium (because of it's faster decay than 238U) make it harder to get to critical mass, even with chemically pure (but not isotopically pure) uranium. IIRC, reactor grade is around 5% 235U, while natural uranium is 0.7%. IIRC, pure natural uranium metal, at least by itself, doesn't have enough 235U to sustain a chain reaction, even in a large mass. (but I vaguely recall that the original reactor experiment with just the right spacing of uranium metal lumps and graphite moderator may have been natural uranium - I need to check this... (short of time right now)) (I'm still not quite sure - Chicago Pile-1 is documented here but the web page described the fuel as "uranium pellets". I think they mean natural uranium, in which case I withdraw my statement that isotope separation is a prerequisite for nuclear power.)

Comment author: JoshuaZ 04 September 2011 04:46:29PM *  2 points [-]

I vaguely recall that the original reactor experiment with just the right spacing of uranium metal lumps and graphite moderator may have been natural uranium

I think this is correct but finding a source which says that seems to be tough. However, Wikipedia does explicitly confirm that the successor to CP1 did initially use unenriched uranium.

Edit: This article (pdf) seems to confirm it. They couldn't even use pure uranium but had to use uranium oxide. No mention of any sort of enrichment is made.

Comment author: lessdazed 04 September 2011 10:41:31PM *  1 point [-]

IIRC, pure natural uranium metal, at least by itself, doesn't have enough 235U to sustain a chain reaction, even in a large mass.

What is natural is something that I, without background other than a history of nuclear weapons class for my history degree, was/am not confident wouldn't vary from solar system to solar system.

The natural reactor ended up with less U235 than normal, decayed uranium because some of the fuel had been spent. I assume that it began with either an unusual concentration of regular uranium (or other configuration of elements that slowed neutrons or otherwise facilitated a reaction) or that the uranium there was unusually rich in 235U. If it was the latter, I don't know the limits for how rich in 235U uranium could be at time of seeding into a planet, but no matter the richness, having small enough pieces would preserve it for future beings. Richness alone wouldn't cause a natural reaction, so to the extent richness can vary, it can make nuclear technology easy.

If the natural reactor had average uranium, and uranium on planets wouldn't be particularly more 235U rich than ours, then nuclear technology's ease would be dependent on life arising quickly relative to ours, but not fantastically so, as you say.

Comment author: dvasya 01 September 2011 07:34:20AM 1 point [-]

Any useful idea about the future should appear to be ridiculous.

-- Jim Dator ("Dator's Law")

Comment author: JoshuaZ 01 September 2011 05:36:48PM 7 points [-]

Any useful idea about the future should appear to be ridiculous.

Strongly disagree with this quote. Some useful ideas about the future might seem ridiculous. But a lot won't. Lots of new technologies and improvements are due to steady fairly predictable improvement of existing technologies. It might be true that a lot of useful ideas or the most useful ideas have a high chance of appearing to be ridiculous. But even that means we're poorly calibrated about what is and is not reasonably doable. There's also a secondary issue that the many if not most of the ideas which seem ridiculous turn out to be about as ridiculous as they seemed if not more so (e.g. nuclear powered aircraft which might be doable but will remain ridiculous for the foreseeable future) and even plausible seeming technologies often turn out not to work (such as the flying car). Paleo Future is a really neat website which catalogs predictions about the future especially in the form of technologies that never quite made it or failed miserably or the like. The number of ideas which failed is striking.

Comment author: gwern 01 September 2011 07:02:18PM 4 points [-]

If there is a useful idea about the future which triggers no ridiculous or improbable filters, doesn't that imply many people will have already accepted that idea, using it and removing the profit from knowing it? To make money, you need an edge; being able to find ignored gems in the 'possible ridiculous futures' sounds like a good strategy.

Comment author: JoshuaZ 01 September 2011 07:07:26PM 5 points [-]

If there is a useful idea about the future which triggers no ridiculous or improbable filters, doesn't that imply many people will have already accepted that idea, using it and removing the profit from knowing it?

Not necessarily. For example, it could be that no one had thought of the idea in question but once someone thought of the idea the usefulness is immediately obvious.

Comment author: gwern 01 September 2011 07:08:33PM 0 points [-]

Sure, but that implies a rather inefficient market - not even exploring major possibilities! Wouldn't work on Wall Street, I don't think.

Comment author: Khoth 02 September 2011 07:47:46AM 5 points [-]

An idea can still be useful even if everyone else knows about it too. Life isn't a zero-sum game.

Comment author: lessdazed 01 September 2011 06:44:44PM 2 points [-]

Like this one?

Comment author: lukeprog 01 September 2011 12:02:14PM 6 points [-]

The mind of man is far from the nature of a clear and equal glass, wherein the beams of things should reflect according to their true incidence; nay, it is rather like an enchanted glass, full of superstition and imposture…

Francis Bacon, The advancement of Learning and New Atlantis

Comment author: lukeprog 01 September 2011 12:04:59PM 18 points [-]

The rule that human beings seem to follow is to engage the brain only when all else fails - and usually not even then.

David Hull, Science and Selection: Essays on Biological Evolution and the Philosophy of Science

Comment author: James_Miller 01 September 2011 05:23:38PM 5 points [-]

This is the idea behind duel-N back, that the only strategy your lazy brain can implement to do better at the game is to increase the brain's working memory.

Comment author: lukeprog 01 September 2011 12:12:13PM 15 points [-]

Imagine that everyone in North America took [a cognitive enhancement pill] before retiring and then woke up the next morning with more memory capacity and processing speed... I believe that there is little likelihood that much would change the next day in terms of human happiness. It is very unlikely that people would be better able to fulfill their wishes and desires the day after taking the pill. In fact, it is quite likely that people would simply go about their usual business - only more efficiently. If given more memory capacity and processing speed, people would, I believe: carry on using the same ineffective medical treatments because of failure to think of alternative causes; keep making the same poor financial decisions because of overconfidence; keep misjudging environmental risks because of vividness; play host to the [tempting bad ideas] of Ponzi and pyramid schemes; [and] be wrongly influenced in their jury decisions by incorrect testimony about probabilities... The only difference would be that they would be able to do all of these things much more quickly!

Keith Stanovich, What Intelligence Tests Miss

Comment author: soreff 01 September 2011 02:24:27PM *  7 points [-]

I'm not convinced. One very simple gain from

more memory capacity and processing speed

is the ability to consider more alternatives. These may be alternative explanations, designs, or courses of action. If I consider three alternatives where before I could only consider two, if the third one happens to be better than the other two, it is a real gain. This applies directly to the case of

carry on using the same ineffective medical treatments because of failure to think of alternative causes

Comment author: NancyLebovitz 01 September 2011 02:31:36PM 11 points [-]

I think it would take more than a day for people to get possible good effects of the change.

A better memory might enable people to realize that they have made the same mistake several times. More processing power might enable them to realize that they have better strategies in some parts of their lives than others, and explore bringing the better strategies into more areas.

Comment author: Davorak 01 September 2011 04:28:13PM *  30 points [-]

Better memory and processing power would mean that probabilistically more businessmen would realize there are good business opportunities where they saw none before. Creating more jobs and a more efficient economy, not the same economy more quickly.

ER doctors can now spend more processing power on each patient that comes in. Out of their existing repertoire they would choose better treatments for the problem at hand then they would have otherwise. A better memory means that they would be more likely to remember every step on their checklist when prepping for surgery.

It is not uncommon for people to make stupid decisions with mild to dire consequences because they are pressed for time. Everyone now thinks faster and has more time to think. Few people are pressed for time. Fewer accidents happen. Better decisions are made on average.

There are problems which are not human vs human but are human vs reality. With increased memory and processing power humanity gains an advantage over reality.

By no means is increasing memory and processing power a sliver bullet but it seems considerably more then everything only moving "much more quickly!"

Edit: spelling

Comment author: loup-vaillant 02 September 2011 08:18:33AM *  0 points [-]

The potential problem with your speculation is that the relative reduction of the mandatory-work / cognitive-power ratio may be a strong incentive to increase individual work load (and maybe massive lay-offs). If we're reasonable, and use our cognitive power wisely, then you're right. But if we go the Hansonian Global Competition route, the Uber Doctor won't spend more time on each patient, but just as much time on more patients. There will be too much Doctors, and the worst third will do something else.

Comment author: Strange7 03 September 2011 03:09:26AM 0 points [-]

Possibly because people would be driving faster?

Comment author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 02 September 2011 07:42:39AM 29 points [-]

It's a nice list, but I think the core point strikes me as liable to be simply false. I forget who it was presenting this evidence - it might even have been James Miller, it was someone at the Winter Intelligence conference at FHI - but they looked at (1) the economic gains to countries with higher average IQ, (2) the average gains to individuals with higher IQ, and concluded that (3) people with high IQ create vast amounts of positive externality, much more than they capture as individuals, probably mostly in the form of countries with less stupid economic policies.

Maybe if we're literally talking about a pure speed and LTM pill that doesn't affect at all, say, capacity to keep things in short-term memory or the ability to maintain complex abstractions in working memory, i.e., a literal speed and disk space pill rather than an IQ pill.

Comment author: lukeprog 02 September 2011 05:01:50PM 3 points [-]

Sounds plausible. If anybody finds the citation for this, please post it.

Comment author: gwern 03 September 2011 02:34:35AM *  20 points [-]

How about http://www.psychologicalscience.org/index.php/news/releases/are-the-wealthiest-countries-the-smartest-countries.html ?

They found that intelligence made a difference in gross domestic product. For each one-point increase in a country’s average IQ, the per capita GDP was $229 higher. It made an even bigger difference if the smartest 5 percent of the population got smarter; for every additional IQ point in that group, a country’s per capita GDP was $468 higher.

Citing "Cognitive Capitalism: The impact of ability, mediated through science and economic freedom, on wealth". (PDF not immediately available in Google.)

EDIT: efm found the PDF: http://www.tu-chemnitz.de/hsw/psychologie/professuren/entwpsy/team/rindermann/publikationen/11PsychScience.pdf

Or http://www.nickbostrom.com/papers/converging.pdf :

Economic models of the loss caused by small intelligence decrements due to lead in drinking water predict significant effects of even a few points decrease (Salkever 1995; Muir and Zegarac 2001). Because the models are roughly linear for small changes, they can be inverted to estimate societal effects of improved cognition. The Salkever model estimates the increase in income due to one more IQ point to be 2.1% for men and 3.6% for women. (Herrnstein and Murray 1994) estimate that a 3% increase in overall IQ would reduce the poverty rate by 25%, males in jail by 25%, high-school dropouts by 28%, parentless children by 20%, welfare recipients by 18%, and out-of-wedlock births by 25%.

EDITEDIT: high IQ predicts superior stock market investing even after the obvious controls. High IQ types are also more likely to trust the stock market enough to participate more in it

Comment author: gwern 03 September 2011 06:46:29PM *  10 points [-]

This is related, but not the research talked about. The Terman Project apparently found that the very highest IQ cohort had many more patents than the lower cohorts, but this did not show up as massively increased lifetime income.

Compare the bottom right IQ graph with SMPY results which show the impact of ability (SAT-M measured before age 13) on publication and patent rates. Ability in the SMPY graph varies between 99th and 99.99th percentile in quintiles Q1-Q5. The variation in IQ between the bottom and top deciles of the Terman study covers a similar range. The Terman super-smarties (i.e., +4 SD) only earned slightly more (say, 15-20% over a lifetime) than the ordinary smarties (i.e., +2.5 SD), but the probability of earning a patent (SMPY) went up by about 4x over the corresponding ability range.

http://infoproc.blogspot.com/2011/04/earnings-effects-of-personality.html

Unless we want to assume those 4x extra patents were extremely worthless, or that the less smart groups were generating positive externalities in some other mechanism, this would seem to imply that the smartest were not capturing anywhere near the value they were creating - and hence were generating significant positive externalities.

EDIT: Jones 2011 argues much the same thing - economic returns to IQ are so low because so much of it is being lost to positive externalities.

Comment author: jimmy 02 September 2011 06:14:21PM *  8 points [-]

Absolutely - IQ is very important, especially in aggregate. And yet, I'd still bet that the next day people will just be moving faster.

I think its worth making the distinction between having hardware which can support complex abstractions and actually having good decision making software in there. Although it'd be foolish to ignore the former because it tends to lead to the latter, it seems to be the latter that is more directly important.

That, and the fact that people can generally support better software than they pick up on their own is what makes our goal here doable.

Comment author: erniebornheimer 02 September 2011 10:28:01PM 1 point [-]

Sounds implausible to me, so I'm very interested in a citation (or pointers to similar material). If true, I'm going to have to do a lot of re-thinking.

Comment author: AlexMennen 02 September 2011 11:07:05PM 2 points [-]

they looked at (1) the economic gains to countries with higher average IQ, (2) the average gains to individuals with higher IQ, and concluded that (3) people with high IQ create vast amounts of positive externality, much more than they capture as individuals

How did they establish that economic gains are influenced by average IQ, rather than both being influenced by some other factor?

Comment author: DanielLC 02 September 2011 11:07:58PM -1 points [-]

Perhaps IQ correlates weakly with intelligence. If their are lots of people with high IQ, their are probably lots of intelligent people, but they're not necessarily the same people. Hence, the countries with high IQ do well, but not the people.

Comment author: [deleted] 03 September 2011 09:41:28PM 5 points [-]

I think you really need to see this google tech talk by Steven Hsu.

Comment author: juliawise 05 September 2011 12:26:27PM 4 points [-]

If this is true, it would affect my decisions about whether and how to have children. So I'd really like to see the source if you can figure out what it was.

Comment author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 06 September 2011 02:40:32AM 6 points [-]

James Miller says:

Hi,

It wasn't me. Garett Jones, an economist at George Mason University, has been making these points. See

http://mason.gmu.edu/~gjonesb/JonesADBSlides

http://mason.gmu.edu/~gjonesb/JonesADR

Comment author: juliawise 06 September 2011 02:44:45PM 1 point [-]

That's helpful; thanks.

Comment author: [deleted] 03 September 2011 09:34:19PM *  13 points [-]

But naturally doing everything faster would be pretty freaking awesome in itself.

  • increased yearly economic growth (consequently higher average living standards since babies still take 9 months to make)
  • it would help everyone cram much more living into their lifespan.
  • it would help experts deal with events that aren't sped up much better. Say an oil leak in the Gulf of Mexico.
  • medical advances would arrive earlier meaning that lots of people who would otherwise have died might live for a few more productive (sped up!) years.

But I'm having way to much fun nitpicking so I'll just stop here. :)

Comment author: BillyOblivion 05 September 2011 12:52:51PM 4 points [-]

Don't confuse time-to-solution with correctness. Speed and the amount of facts at hand will not give you a good result if your fundamental assumptions (aka your algorithm) is wrong.

You cannot make up in quantity what you lose on each transaction, as the dot-com folks proved repeatedly.

Comment author: [deleted] 01 September 2011 02:38:27PM 15 points [-]

On practical questions of urgent importance we must make up our minds one way or the other even when we know that the evidence is incomplete. To refuse to make up our minds is equivalent to deciding to leave things as they are (which is just as likely as any other to be the wrong solution).

-- Robert H. Thouless

Comment author: juliawise 05 September 2011 12:21:35PM 1 point [-]

...Unless your decision makes things worse.

Comment author: Vladimir_Nesov 05 September 2011 12:28:09PM *  1 point [-]

(Only in the sense of constructing some plan of action (or inaction) that currently seems no worse than others, not in the sense of deciding to believe things you have no grounds for believing. "Make up your mind" is a bad phrase because of this equivocation.)

Comment author: [deleted] 01 September 2011 02:40:10PM 8 points [-]

When will we realize that the fact that we can become accustomed to anything, however disgusting at first, makes it necessary to examine carefully everything we have become accustomed to?

-- George Bernard Shaw

(Thanks to gwern for this one.)

Comment author: RobinZ 01 September 2011 05:56:08PM 10 points [-]
Comment author: [deleted] 01 September 2011 06:11:06PM *  8 points [-]

Whoops. I found it on gwern's website. Guess I should've done the next (in retrospect) most obvious thing. Sorry about that!

ETA: Feel free to vote me back down if you wish.

Comment author: [deleted] 01 September 2011 02:43:49PM 36 points [-]

If people can't think clearly about anything that has become part of their identity, then all other things being equal, the best plan is to let as few things into your identity as possible.

-- Paul Graham

Comment author: Nic_Smith 01 September 2011 05:06:34PM *  8 points [-]

There is actually a pre-split thread about this essay on Overcoming Bias, and the notion of "Keep Your Identity Small" has come up repeatedly since then.

Comment author: Will_Newsome 03 September 2011 09:50:10AM *  5 points [-]

And of course "Cached Selves", and especially this comment on that post.

Comment author: [deleted] 01 September 2011 04:06:30PM -2 points [-]

[Joseph] Campbell was no pessimist. He believed there is a "point of wisdom beyond the conflicts of illusion and truth by which lives can be put back together again." Finding it is the "prime question of the time."

-- Bill Moyers, introduction to The Power of Myth

Comment author: JoshuaZ 01 September 2011 05:26:50PM 1 point [-]

Sorry, I don't understand what this quote is trying to say. I've attempted to parse it and can sort get some sort of thing about not caring what the truth is. If that's the meaning then it seems to be pretty anti-rationalist. What am I missing?

Comment author: [deleted] 01 September 2011 05:36:22PM 0 points [-]

The marvelous irony of Joseph Campbell is that he was a world-renowned mythologist and expert on religion... but basically an atheist materialist. I interpret the quote as saying: "As our ways of knowing grow more accurate, we are more likely to produce undeniable truths that benefit all human beings."

More from the same introduction:

The unpardonable sin, in Campbell's book, was the sin of inadvertence, of not being alert, not quite awake.

The last time I saw him I asked him if he still believed -- as he once had written -- "that we are at this moment participating in one of the very greatest leaps of the human spirit to a knowledge not only of outside nature but also of our own deep inward mystery."

He thought a minute and answered, "The greatest ever."

Comment author: djcb 03 September 2011 10:46:43AM *  2 points [-]

I found Campbell's The Hero with a Thousand Faces not very convincing. The similarities he sees between folk stories are often rather trivial, I think, and the rubbery nature of human language makes it easy -- not even mentioning selection bias.

Is The Power of Myth better?

Comment author: [deleted] 03 September 2011 03:16:06PM *  1 point [-]

The similarities he sees between folk stories are often rather trivial

Probably valid. What's an example of a non-trivial similarity in folk stories?

My knowledge of Campbell's work is limited to my having watched Moyers' interviews with him:

Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4 Part 5 Part 6

I wonder what he would think of the possibility of "editing" human nature via technology, and how those changes might negate the usefulness of mythology as a set of teaching memes.

Comment author: Normal_Anomaly 03 September 2011 04:55:31PM 3 points [-]

I wonder what he would think of the possibility of "editing" human nature via technology, and how those changes might negate the usefulness of mythology as a set of teaching memes.

Greg Egan's short story "The Planck Dive" has an interesting take on that subject. It's about a mythologist trying to force a description of a post-Singularity scientific expedition into one of the classic mythical narratives.

Comment author: Vladimir_Nesov 03 September 2011 05:28:39PM 1 point [-]

It's not "post-Singularity", it's normal human technology, just more advanced.

Comment author: Normal_Anomaly 04 September 2011 01:29:03AM 2 points [-]

I guess you could say that. I said "post-Singularity" because all the characters are uploads, but there aren't any AGIs and human nature isn't unrecognizably different.

Comment author: djcb 04 September 2011 11:12:16PM 1 point [-]

An example of a well-known non-trivial similarity would be the flood-myths that many cultures have -- it seems that least some of those myths are related somehow - but not in inherited psycho-analytical way (!) that Campbell suspects, but more likely simply due to copying the stories (e.g. Noah, Gilgamesh).

Comment author: Jayson_Virissimo 01 September 2011 04:40:38PM *  27 points [-]

The typical citizen drops down to a lower level of mental performance as soon as he enters the political field. He argues and analyzes in a way which he would readily recognize as infantile within the sphere of his real interests. He becomes primitive again.

-Joseph A. Schumpeter, Capitalism, Socialism, and Democracy

In other words, politics is the mind killer.

Comment author: James_Miller 01 September 2011 05:13:46PM 58 points [-]

It is a vast, and pervasive, cognitive mistake to assume that people who agree with you (or disagree) do so on the same criteria that you care about.

Megan McArdle

Comment author: JoshuaZ 01 September 2011 05:27:58PM 31 points [-]

Related SMBC.

Comment author: majus 06 September 2011 08:10:53PM 4 points [-]

reminds me of:

"I know that you believe you understand what you think I said, but I'm not sure you realize that what you heard is not what I meant." --Robert McCloskey

Comment author: XFrequentist 01 September 2011 08:26:54PM 3 points [-]

Rationality gives us greater knowledge and greater control over our own actions and emotions and over the world. Although our rationality is, initially, an evolved quality - the nature of rationality includes the Nature in it - it enables us to transform ourselves and hence transcend our status as mere animals, actually and also symbolically. Rationality comes to shape and control its own function.

Our principles fix what our life stands for, our aims create the light our life is bathed in, and our rationality, both individual and coordinate, defines and symbolizes the distance we have come from mere animality. It is by these means that our lives can come to mean more than what they instrumentally yield. And by meaning more, our lives yield more.

-- Robert Nozick (The Nature of Rationality)

Comment author: Tesseract 01 September 2011 08:48:19PM 23 points [-]

If you want to live in a nicer world, you need good, unbiased science to tell you about the actual wellsprings of human behavior. You do not need a viewpoint that sounds comforting but is wrong, because that could lead you to create ineffective interventions. The question is not what sounds good to us but what actually causes humans to do the things they do.

Douglas Kenrick

Comment author: Tesseract 01 September 2011 08:49:27PM 5 points [-]

To love truth for truth's sake is the principal part of human perfection in this world, and the seed-plot of all other virtues.

Locke

Comment author: Multiheaded 03 September 2011 09:21:11AM 3 points [-]

I disagree. A lot of human conducts that I find virtuous, such as compassion or tolerance, have no immediate connection with the truth, and sometimes they are best served with white lies.

For example, all the LGBTQ propaganda spoken at doubting conservatives, about how people are either born gay or they aren't, and how modern culture totally doesn't make young people bisexual, no sir. We're quite innocent, human sexuality is set in stone, you see. Do you really wish to hurt your child for what they always were? What is this "queer agenda" you're speaking about?

Tee-hee :D

Comment author: Raw_Power 05 September 2011 01:01:42AM 0 points [-]

I can't tell if you're joking...

Comment author: Multiheaded 06 September 2011 12:03:47PM *  1 point [-]

Dead serious actually. Well, what I mean is that a heteronormative approach where everyone must be either 6 or 1 on the Kinsey scale is hard to maintain in the modern world, and that when some extremely irrational older folks hate to see how young people can, for the first time in history, 1)discover their sexuality with some precision by using media and freely experimenting and 2)get a lot of happiness that way, it's fine to spin a clean and simple tale of the subject matter to those sorry individuals.

Comment author: Raw_Power 06 September 2011 01:44:41PM 0 points [-]

... I like the way you talk. This goes a long way into explaining the same person saying "homosexuality is not a choice" and "I have been with qute a few straight guys", as well as the treatment bi people get as "fence-sitters" and the resentment they generate by having an easier time in the closet.

Comment author: AdeleneDawner 01 September 2011 09:54:09PM 12 points [-]

I know of no society in human history that ever suffered because its people became too desirous of evidence in support of their core beliefs.

-Sam Harris

Comment author: Nominull 01 September 2011 10:51:49PM 3 points [-]

What about, I dunno, the protestant reformation, where people were persecuted for wanting, among other things, to read the bible themselves rather than have it interpreted for them by the priesthood?

Comment author: Vaniver 02 September 2011 12:29:29AM 9 points [-]

What does it mean for a society to suffer?

Comment author: MinibearRex 01 September 2011 10:01:10PM *  26 points [-]

The proposition here is that the human brain is, in large part, a machine for winning arguments, a machine for convincing others that its owner is in the right - and thus a machine for convincing its owner of the same thing. The brain is like a good lawyer: given any set of interests to defend, it sets about convincing the world of their moral and logical worth, regardless of whether they in fact have any of either. Like a lawyer, the human brain wants victory, not truth; and, like a lawyer, it is sometimes more admirable for skill than for virtue.

Robert Wright, The Moral Animal

Comment author: lionhearted 01 September 2011 11:34:16PM *  14 points [-]

I moved out of the hood for good, you blame me?

Niggas aim mainly at niggas they can't be.

But niggas can't hit niggas they can't see.

I'm out of sight, now I'm out of they dang reach.

-- Dr. Dre, "The Watcher"

Comment author: sabre51 02 September 2011 01:36:08PM *  8 points [-]

I believe no discovery of fact, no matter how trivial, can be wholly useless to the race, and no trumpeting of falsehood, no matter how virtuous in intent, can be anything but vicious... I believe in the complete freedom of thought and speech- alike for the humblest man and the mightiest, and in the utmost freedom of conduct that is consistent in living in an organized society... But the whole thing can be put very simply. I believe it is better to tell the truth than to lie. I believe it is better to be free than to be a slave. And I believe it is better to know than be ignorant.

-HL Menken

Comment author: brazil84 03 September 2011 12:03:08AM 6 points [-]

From an evolutionary perspective, I would have to disagree. Believing that one's children are supremely cute; that one's spouse is one's soulmate; or even that an Almighty Being wants you to be fruitful and multiply -- these are all beliefs which are a bit shaky on rationalist grounds but which arguably increase the reproductive fitness in the individuals and groups who hold them.

Comment author: listic 02 September 2011 01:42:17PM *  10 points [-]

True courage is loving life while knowing all the truth about it.

-- Sergey Dovlatov

(translation is mine; can you propose a better translation from Russian?)

Comment author: curiousepic 02 September 2011 03:15:27PM *  0 points [-]

Emotions in the brain, they'll always be the same / it's just chemicals and glop and what you've got is what you've got / and we just apply it to whatever's passing by it

-- Jeffrey Lewis, If Life Exists, which is really about set point happiness

Comment author: Xom 02 September 2011 05:35:51PM *  8 points [-]

A certain amount of knowledge you can indeed with average faculties acquire so as to retain; nor need you regret the hours you spend on much that is forgotten, for the shadow of lost knowledge at least protects you from many illusions.

~ William Johnson Cory

Comment author: DSimon 02 September 2011 06:41:16PM *  3 points [-]

(Sheen is attempting to perform brain surgery on an unknown alien)

Sheen: That's weird. This brain has no labels.

Doppy: Labels?

Sheen: Yeah! Usually brains come with labels, like "this is the section for tasting chicken", "this is the section for running around in circles", "this is the section for saying AAAAARGHLBLAHH." But, this brain doesn't have any labels at all. So, I'm going to have to do what all the best doctors do.

Doppy: What's that?

Sheen: Poke around and see what happens!

-- Planet Sheen

Comment author: Tripitaka 02 September 2011 07:05:21PM *  -1 points [-]

If other Mediators come to a different conclusion from mine, that is their affair. It may be that their facts are incomplete, or their aims different. I judge on the evidence.

-Whitbreads Fyunch(click), by Larry Niven & Jerry Pournelle in "The Mote in God's Eye".

Comment author: Teal_Thanatos 04 September 2011 11:42:37PM 3 points [-]

This doesn't really comment that Whitbreads may have incomplete evidence, facts, bias or his own aims.

Comment author: Tripitaka 07 September 2011 07:45:50PM *  0 points [-]

For me it runs more along the lines of Aumann`s agreement theorem.

Comment author: Maniakes 02 September 2011 08:49:38PM 9 points [-]

I beseech you, in the bowels of Christ, think it possible that you may be mistaken.

-- Oliver Cromwell

Comment author: JoshuaZ 02 September 2011 09:38:33PM 3 points [-]

This has been mentioned in a few places on LW before (e.g. here) although I don't know if it has been in a quotes thread.

Comment author: Maniakes 02 September 2011 08:52:25PM 30 points [-]

The church is near, but the road is icy. The bar is far away, but I will walk carefully.

-- Russian proverb

Comment author: Bugmaster 03 September 2011 05:20:28AM 4 points [-]

I'm Russian, and I don't think I've heard this proverb before. What does it sound like in Russian ? Just curious.

Comment author: Risto_Saarelma 03 September 2011 06:57:30AM 2 points [-]
Comment author: Ms_Use 03 September 2011 07:22:25AM 9 points [-]

It's a rather lousy translation of the proverb, the more close variant of which than that above is mentioned in Vladimir Dahl's famous collection of russian proverbs: Церковь близко, да ходить склизко, а кабак далеконько, да хожу потихоньку.

Comment author: Normal_Anomaly 03 September 2011 04:28:41PM 3 points [-]

Can you provide a better translation?

Comment author: Bugmaster 03 September 2011 08:50:26PM 3 points [-]

Ahh, yes, thank you ! I didn't even recognize the proverb in English, but I doubt that I myself could translate it any better...

Comment author: Maniakes 03 September 2011 09:01:42AM 0 points [-]

I'm not sure. I came across it in translated form without sourcing.

Comment author: Normal_Anomaly 03 September 2011 01:08:18AM *  14 points [-]

From the day we arrive on the planet

and blinking, step into the sun

there's more to see than can ever be seen

more to do than can ever be done

--The Lion King opening song

Comment author: Alex_Altair 03 September 2011 01:34:26AM 7 points [-]

Do you consider this a promotion of fun theory? Or a justification for living forever?

Comment author: Normal_Anomaly 03 September 2011 02:27:06AM 4 points [-]

Both.

Comment author: Teal_Thanatos 04 September 2011 11:37:48PM 3 points [-]

Can also be an indication that everything is more than one person/mind can handle. By stepping into the sun, we enjoy the warmth and may be overwhelmed by the world as we see it. The song's lyrics seem cautionary, indicating that despite the warmth of being in the world do not attempt to see everything, do not attempt to do everything? This is rational, there are things we may not enjoy as much as others. To reduce our overall enjoyment by not placing parameters on our activities would be irrational in my opinion.

Comment author: JonathanLivengood 03 September 2011 03:55:30AM *  2 points [-]

I will submit (separately) three quotations from my favorite philosopher, C.S. Peirce:

Upon this first, and in one sense this sole, rule of reason, that in order to learn you must desire to learn, and in so desiring not be satisfied with what you already incline to think, there follows one corollary which itself deserves to be inscribed upon every wall of the city of philosophy: Do not block the way of inquiry.

-- C.S. Peirce

Comment author: JonathanLivengood 03 September 2011 04:00:54AM 2 points [-]

It is the man of science, eager to have his every opinion regenerated, his every idea rationalized, by drinking at the fountain of fact, and devoting all the energies of his life to the cult of truth, not as he understands it, but as he does not yet understand it, that ought properly to be called a philosopher.

-- C.S. Peirce

Comment author: JonathanLivengood 03 September 2011 04:01:46AM 5 points [-]

The elements of every concept enter into logical thought at the gate of perception and make their exit at the gate of purposive action; and whatever cannot show its passports at both those two gates is to be arrested as unauthorized by reason.

-- C.S. Peirce

Comment author: [deleted] 03 September 2011 04:53:09AM *  7 points [-]

The first principle is that you must not fool yourself and you are the easiest person to fool.

-- Richard P. Feynman

Comment author: anonym 04 September 2011 05:42:34PM 3 points [-]

And oldy but goody.

Comment author: Eugine_Nier 03 September 2011 05:36:08AM 31 points [-]

One day, I was playing with an "express wagon," a little wagon with a railing around it, I noticed something about the way the ball moved. I went to my father and said, "Say, Pop, I noticed something. When I pull the wagon, the ball rolls to the back of the wagon. And when I'm pulling it along and I suddenly stop, the ball rolls to the front of the wagon. Why is that?"

"That, nobody knows," he said. "The general principle is that things which are moving tend to keep on moving, and things which are standing still tend to stand still, unless you push them hard. This tendency is called 'inertia,' but nobody knows why it's true." Now, that's a deep understanding. He didn't just give me the name.

-Richard Feynman

Comment author: NancyLebovitz 03 September 2011 08:10:20AM 2 points [-]

In other words, they’re looking to someone’s life as an example of perfection, rather than what the person was saying, to see if it is true or false. They should know full well that everybody has that measure of hypocrisy in their lives; everybody has a measure of being flawed. My parents were no better or no worse. Thus, if someone who looked to my dad as a kind of a guru or someone who walked on water is disillusioned, they probably should be. But they shouldn’t only be disillusioned about him, they should be disillusioned about any idea of perfection in any human being because no one is like that.

Frank Schaeffer

Comment author: MinibearRex 03 September 2011 05:45:56PM 6 points [-]

My parents were no better or no worse.

Beware the fallacy of grey.

Comment author: Thomas 03 September 2011 09:19:55AM 2 points [-]

That which does not kill [but it tries], makes me bitter and cynical.

  • Anthony Quinn Stanley
Comment author: djcb 03 September 2011 10:15:36AM 4 points [-]

I think I prefer Nietzsche's version...

Comment author: Will_Newsome 03 September 2011 10:01:41AM 9 points [-]

There are a thousand hacking at the branches of evil to one who is striking at the root.

-- Henry David Thoreau

Comment author: Will_Newsome 03 September 2011 10:10:38AM *  -1 points [-]

(Though if a thousand people tried striking at the root at once they'd undoubtedly end up striking each other. (I wish there was something I could read that non-syncretically worked out analogies between algorithmic information theory and game-theory/microeconomics.))

Comment author: Teal_Thanatos 04 September 2011 11:24:39PM 0 points [-]

That sounds awfully negative and I can't see any basis for it apart from negativity. ie: For what basis do you declare that people striking the root are any more likely to strike each other than striking the branches?

While you might use the analogy to declare that the root of the problem is smaller, please note that there are trees (like Giant sequoias ) which have root systems that far outdistance the branch width.

Comment author: BillyOblivion 05 September 2011 12:41:46PM 5 points [-]

If you picture the metaphorical great oak of malignancy with branches tens of yards in radius, and a trunk with roots (at the top of the trunk) only about 10 feet in diameter, you face one of those square of the distance problems in terms of axe swinging space.

This is what happens when you take the comments of romantic goofballs and slam them up against ontological rationalists who just might be borderline aspies or shadow autists.

I guess I should point out for the sake of clarity that the romantic goofball has not yet posted on this thread, and given the advanced interaction with entropy is unlikely to do so. Unless the Hindus, Buddhists and a few others are more accurate than the Catholics and Atheists.

Comment author: gwern 03 September 2011 06:28:06PM 16 points [-]

"Asking a question is embarrassing for a moment, but not asking is embarrassing for a lifetime. "

--Haruki Murakami, Kafka on the Shore, 2006, p. 255

Comment author: shokwave 04 September 2011 03:43:59PM 1 point [-]

Not if Western society is anything to go by. Not asking (but knowing the answer) produces a lifetime's worth of successes, as far as I can tell.

Comment author: [deleted] 03 September 2011 09:07:47PM 29 points [-]

"The ordinary modes of human thinking are magical, religious, and social. We want our wishes to come true; we want the universe to care about us; we want the esteem of our peers. For most people, wanting to know the truth about the world is way, way down the list. Scientific objectivity is a freakish, unnatural, and unpopular mode of thought, restricted to small cliques whom the generality of citizens regard with dislike and mistrust."

— John Derbyshire

Comment author: brazzy 03 September 2011 10:47:19PM *  30 points [-]

She generally gave herself very good advice, (though she very seldom followed it)

-- Lewis Carrol, "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland"

Hard to believe that it hasn't show up here before...

Comment author: crazy88 04 September 2011 07:29:46AM *  17 points [-]

Ralph Hull made a reasonable living as a magician milking a card trick he called "The Tuned Deck"...Hull enjoyed subjecting himself to the scrutiny of colleagues who attempted to eliminate, one by one, various explanations by depriving him of the ability to perform a particular sleight of hand. But the real trick was over before it had even begun, for the magic was not in clever fingers but in a clever name. The blatantly singular referent cried out for a blatantly singular explanation, when in reality The Tuned Deck was not one trick but many. The search for a single explanation is what kept this multiply determined illusion so long a mystery.

--Nicholas Epley, "Blackwell Handbook of Judgment and Decision Making"

Comment author: MinibearRex 06 September 2011 08:54:04PM 1 point [-]

You don't have to put the little '>' signs in on every line, just the beginning of a paragraph.

Comment author: crazy88 07 September 2011 02:38:55AM 2 points [-]

Fixed. Thanks.

Comment author: Normal_Anomaly 08 September 2011 12:17:59AM 3 points [-]

Would this count as doing something deliberately complicated to throw off anyone with an Occam prior?

Comment author: Patrick 04 September 2011 01:37:22PM *  3 points [-]

I believe that no discovery of fact, however trivial, can be wholly useless to the race, and that no trumpeting of falsehood, however virtuous in intent, can be anything but vicious.

-- HL Mencken

Comment author: Normal_Anomaly 04 September 2011 03:26:12PM 2 points [-]

I disagree, especially with the second part. For a trivial example, take the traditional refutation of Kantianism: You are hiding Jews in your house during WWII. A Nazi shows up and asks if you are hiding any Jews.

Comment author: Teal_Thanatos 04 September 2011 11:17:02PM -2 points [-]

I'm going to have to call you on this one, in your trivial example you are intending harm/chaos/diversion to/to/of the Nazi plan. Causing disruption to another is vicious, even if you are being virtuous in your choice to disrupt.

Comment author: Atelos 04 September 2011 11:34:46PM *  1 point [-]

Causing disruption is certainly vicious in the sense of aggressive or violent, yes. I, and apparently Normal_Anomaly, read the quote from Mencken as meaning that lying is vicious in the sense of immoral, 'vice-ious', and hence unjustifiable.

Comment author: Oscar_Cunningham 04 September 2011 05:28:20PM 4 points [-]

This is quoted already on this page albeit with "no matter" substituted for "however".

Comment author: anonym 04 September 2011 05:57:54PM 0 points [-]

The only laws of matter are those that our minds must fabricate and the only laws of mind are fabricated for it by matter.

James Clerk Maxwell

Comment author: Normal_Anomaly 04 September 2011 07:06:44PM 2 points [-]

I am having difficulty parsing this. The easiest interpretation to make of the first part seems to be "There are no laws of matter except the ones we make up," and the second part is saying either "minds are subject to physics" or something I don't follow at all.

Comment author: anonym 04 September 2011 07:34:13PM 2 points [-]

I interpret the first part as saying that there are no laws of matter other than ones our minds are forced to posit (forced over many generations of constantly improving our models). And the second part is something like "minds are subject [only] to physics", as you said. The second part explains how and why the first part works.

Together, I interpret them as suggesting a reductive physicalist interpretation of mind (in the 19th century!) according to which our law-making is not only about the universe but is itself the universe (or a small piece thereof) operating according to those same laws (or other, deeper laws we have yet to discover).

Comment author: anonym 04 September 2011 05:58:03PM 5 points [-]

Nature uses only the longest threads to weave her patterns, so each small piece of her fabric reveals the organization of the entire tapestry.

Richard P. Feynman

Comment author: anonym 04 September 2011 06:06:58PM 5 points [-]

Very often in mathematics the crucial problem is to recognize and discover what are the relevant concepts; once this is accomplished the job may be more than half done.

Yitz Herstein

Comment author: p4wnc6 05 September 2011 09:28:16PM *  9 points [-]

Good mathematicians see analogies between theorems. Great mathematicians see analogies between analogies.

Banach, in a 1957 letter to Ulam.

Comment author: anonym 04 September 2011 06:11:38PM *  -1 points [-]

Every truth is a path traced through reality: but among these paths there are some to which we could have given an entirely different turn if our attention had been orientated in a different direction or if we had aimed at another kind of utility; there are some, on the contrary, whose direction is marked out by reality itself: there are some, one might say, which correspond to currents of reality. Doubtless these also depend upon us to a certain extent, for we are free to go against the current or to follow it, and even if we follow it, we can variously divert it, being at the same time associated with and submitted to the force manifest within it. Nevertheless these currents are not created by us; they are part and parcel of reality.

Henri L. Bergson -- The Creative Mind: An Introduction to Metaphysics, p. 218

ETA: retracted. I posted this on the basis of my interpretation of the first sentence, but the rest of the quote makes clear that my interpretation of the first sentence was incorrect, and I don't believe it belongs in a rationality quotes page anymore.

Comment author: Patrick 05 September 2011 12:37:46AM 5 points [-]

On some other subjects people do wish to be deceived. They dislike the operation of correcting the hypothetical data which they have taken as basis. Therefore, when they begin to see looming ahead some such ridiculous result as 2 + 3 = 7, they shrink into themselves and try to find some process of twisting the logic, and tinkering the equation, which will make the answer come out a truism instead of an absurdity; and then they say, “Our hypothetical premiss is most likely true because the conclusion to which it brings us is obviously and indisputably true.” If anyone points out that there seems to be a flaw in the argument, they say, “You cannot expect to get mathematical certainty in this world,” or “You must not push logic too far,” or “Everything is more or less compromise,” and so on.

-- Mary Everest Boole

Comment author: cwillu 05 September 2011 01:43:36AM *  11 points [-]

[...] Often I find that the best way to come up with new results is to find someone who's saying something that seems clearly, manifestly wrong to me, and then try to think of counterarguments. Wrong people provide a fertile source of research ideas.

-- Scott Aaronson, Quantum Computing Since Democritus (http://www.scottaaronson.com/democritus/lec14.html)

Comment author: Raw_Power 05 September 2011 02:07:13AM 0 points [-]

Reversed Stupidity?

Comment author: JoshuaZ 05 September 2011 02:32:26AM 10 points [-]

I don't think so. In this context, it seems that Scott is talking about in this context making his mathematical intuitions more precise by trying to state explicitly what is wrong with the idea. He seems to generally be doing this in response to comments by other people sort of in his field (comp sci) or connected to his field (physics and math ) so he isn't really trying to reverse stupidity.

Comment author: lessdazed 05 September 2011 02:33:53AM 4 points [-]

Seems more like harnessing motivated cognition, so long as opposite arguments aren't privileged as counterarguments.

Comment author: shokwave 05 September 2011 12:33:16PM 1 point [-]

Reversed stupidity isn't intelligence, but it's not a bad place to start.

Comment author: Vladimir_Nesov 05 September 2011 12:56:41PM 4 points [-]

It is a bad place to start. The intended sense of "reversed" in "reversed stupidity" is that you pick the opposite, as opposed to retracting the decisions that led to privileging the stupid choice. The opposite of what is stupid is as arbitrary as the stupid thing itself, if you have considerably more than two options.

Comment author: Desrtopa 05 September 2011 09:52:40PM 5 points [-]

People come up with ideas that are clearly and manifestly wrong when they're confused about the reality. In some cases, this is just personal ignorance, and if you ask the right people they will be able to give you a solid, complete explanation that isn't confused at all (evolution being a highly available example.)

On the other hand, they may be confused because nobody's map reflects that part of the territory clearly enough to set them straight, so their confusion points out a place where we have more to learn.

Comment author: Raw_Power 06 September 2011 03:28:45AM 1 point [-]

It points to where the ripe bananas are, huh? Thanks, that was clarifying.

Comment author: Thomas 05 September 2011 01:25:02PM 14 points [-]

The investor who finds a way to make soap from peanuts has more genuine imagination than the revolutionary with a bayonet, because he has cultivated the faculty of imagining the hidden potentiality of the real. This is much harder than imagining the unreal, which may be why there are so many more utopians than inventors

  • Joe Sobran
Comment author: Vladimir_Nesov 05 September 2011 01:31:19PM *  8 points [-]

which may be why there are so many more utopians than inventors

Is that the case?

Comment author: Thomas 05 September 2011 01:48:46PM *  9 points [-]

The majority dreams about a "just society", the minority dreams about a better one through technological advances. No matter there was 20th century when "socialism" brought us nothing and the technology brought us everything.

Comment author: Vladimir_Nesov 05 September 2011 02:35:21PM *  13 points [-]

Echoing a utopian meme is analogous to stamping an instance of an invention, not to inventing something anew. It is inventors of utopian dreams that I doubt to be more numerous than inventors of technology.

Comment author: Thomas 05 September 2011 03:19:44PM 2 points [-]

You may be right here. Utopias are usually also quite uninnovative. "All people will be brothers and sisters with enough to eat and Bible (or something else stupid) reading in a community house every night".

Variations are not that great.

Comment author: gwern 05 September 2011 07:36:06PM 3 points [-]

And let's not forget how many millions of patents there are; I don't think there are that many millions of utopias, even if we let them differ as little as patents can differ.

Comment author: MixedNuts 05 September 2011 03:27:16PM 7 points [-]

Be fair. We tried socialism once (in several places, but with minor variations). We tried a lot of technology, including long before the 20th century.

Comment author: Raw_Power 06 September 2011 12:31:59AM 6 points [-]

I feel obliged to point out that Socialdemocracy is working quite well in Europe and elsewhere and we owe it, among other stuff, free universal health care and paid vacations. Those count as "hidden potentiality of the real." Which brings us to the following point: what's , a priori, the difference between "hidden potentiality of the real" and "unreal"? Because if it's "stuff that's actually been made", then I could tell you, as an engineer, of the absolutely staggering amount of bullshit patents we get to prove are bullshit everyday. You'd be amazed how many idiots are still trying to build Perpetual Motion Machines. But you've got one thing right: we do owe technology everything, the same way everyone ows their parents everything. Doesn't mean they get all the merit.

Comment author: gwern 05 September 2011 07:44:47PM 9 points [-]

"Lessing, the most honest of theoretical men, dared to say that he took greater delight in the quest for truth than in the truth itself."

--Friedrich Nietzsche, The Birth of Tragedy (1872); cf. "Intellectual Hipsters and Meta-Contrarianism"

Comment author: Risto_Saarelma 06 September 2011 05:40:32AM 9 points [-]

But I had hardly entered the room where the masters were playing when I was seized with what may justly be described as a mystical experience. I seemed to be looking on at the tournament from outside myself. I saw the masters—one, shabby, snuffy and blear-eyed; another, in badly fitting would-be respectable shoddy; a third, a mere parody of humanity, and so on for the rest. These were the people to whose ranks I was seeking admission. "There, but for the grace of God, goes Aleister Crowley," I exclaimed to myself with disgust, and there and then I registered a vow never to play another serious game of chess. I perceived with praeternatural lucidity that I had not alighted on this planet with the object of playing chess.

-- Aleister Crowley

Comment author: Raemon 06 September 2011 05:49:15PM 27 points [-]

I recently contemplated learning to play chess better (not to make an attempt at mastery, but to improve enough so I wasn't so embarassed about how bad I was).

Most of my motivation for this was an odd signalling mechanism: People think of me as a smart person, and they think of smart people as people who are good at chess, and they are thus disappointed with me when it turns out I am not.

But in the process of learning, I realized something else: I dislike chess, as compared to say, Magic the Gathering, because chess is PURE strategy, whereas Magic or StarCraft have splashy images and/or luck that provides periodic dopamine rushes. Chess only is mentally rewarding for me at two moments: when I capture an enemy piece, or when I win. I'm not good enough to win against anyone who plays chess remotely seriously, so when I get frustrated, I just go capturing enemy pieces even though it's a bad play, so I can at least feel good about knocking over an enemy bishop.

What I found most significant, though, was the realization that this fundamental not enjoying the process of thinking out chess strategies gave me some level of empathy for people who, in general, don't like to think. (This is most non-nerds, as far as I can tell). Thinking about chess is physically stressful for me, whereas thinking about other kinds of abstract problems is fun and rewarding purely for its own sake.

Comment author: FiftyTwo 07 September 2011 11:03:50PM 6 points [-]

My issue with chess is that the skills are non-transferable. As far as I can tell the main difference between good and bad players is memorisation of moves and strategies, which I don't find very interesting and can't be transferred to other more important areas of life. Whereas other games where tactics and reaction to situation is more important can have benefits in other areas.

Comment author: cousin_it 06 September 2011 08:34:05PM *  11 points [-]

This is an awesome quote that captures an important truth, the opposite of which is also an important truth :-) If I were choosing a vocation by the way its practicioners look and dress, I would never take up math or programming! And given how many people on LW are non-neurotypical, I probably wouldn't join LW either. The desire to look cool is a legitimate desire that can help you a lot in life, so by all means go join clubs whose members look cool so it rubs off on you, but also don't neglect clubs that can help you in other ways.

Comment author: Dr_Manhattan 06 September 2011 12:33:43PM 7 points [-]

Michael: I don't know anyone who could get through the day without two or three juicy rationalizations. They're more important than sex. Sam Weber: Ah, come on. Nothing's more important than sex. Michael: Oh yeah? Ever gone a week without a rationalization?

  • The Big Chill
Comment author: Patrick 07 September 2011 10:07:26AM 2 points [-]

Leonard, if you were about to burn or drown or starve I would panic. It would be the least I could do. That's what's happening to people now, and I don't think my duty to panic disappears just because they're not in the room!

-- Raymond Terrific

Comment author: lukeprog 08 September 2011 01:58:27AM 12 points [-]

If you cannot calculate you cannot speculate on future pleasure and your life will not be that of a human, but that of an oyster or a jellyfish.

Plato, Philebus

Comment author: [deleted] 08 September 2011 02:07:44AM *  8 points [-]

I wish I were a jelly fish
That cannot fall downstairs:
Of all the things I wish to wish
I wish I were a jelly fish
That hasn't any cares,
And doesn't even have to wish
'I wish I were a jelly fish
That cannot fall downstairs.'

G.K. Chesterton

Comment author: lessdazed 08 September 2011 02:23:18AM *  2 points [-]

If I were a jelly fish,

Ya ha deedle deedle, bubba bubba deedle deedle dum.

All day long I'd biddy biddy bum.

If I were a jelly fish.

I wouldn't have to work hard.

Ya ha deedle deedle, bubba bubba deedle deedle dum.

Comment author: JoshuaZ 08 September 2011 02:29:59AM 3 points [-]

I prefer if I were a deep one.

(If you aren't familiar with this song I strongly recommend one looks at all of Shoggoth on the Roof.)

Comment author: lessdazed 08 September 2011 02:31:15AM 3 points [-]

A gentle introduction to the mythos.

Comment author: AlexSchell 08 September 2011 08:13:09PM *  26 points [-]

It's one thing to make lemonade out of lemons, another to proclaim that lemons are what you'd hope for in the first place.

Gary Marcus, Kluge

Relevant to deathism and many other things