gwern comments on Mandatory Secret Identities - Less Wrong

28 Post author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 08 April 2009 06:10PM

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Comment author: SoullessAutomaton 08 April 2009 10:37:14PM 2 points [-]

Speaking only for myself--I am here, consciously and explicitly, to learn rationality for its own benefits. I have no overwhelming interest in teaching others and, all else equal, have other things I would prefer to be doing with my life.

I didn't vote either way on the post because I am ambivalent to it. It felt underdeveloped compared to your usual material, and to some extent seems like you're getting ahead of yourself on this "teaching rationality" thing--the current understanding of applied rationality in this community here doesn't seem to justify raising the concern yet.

Perhaps the idea would have been better presented in the context of one of your parables/short stories/&c.?

Comment author: gwern 09 April 2009 01:51:10AM 8 points [-]

Thales, so the story goes, because of his poverty was taunted with the uselessness of philosophy; but from his knowledge of astronomy he had observed while it was still winter that there was going to be a large crop of olives, so he raised a small sum of money and paid round deposits for the whole of the olive-presses in Miletus and Chios, which he hired at a low rent as nobody was running him up; and when the season arrived, there was a sudden demand for a number of presses at the same time, and by letting them out on what terms he liked he realized a large sum of money, so proving that it is easy for philosophers to be rich if they choose, but this is not what they care about.

Comment author: jimrandomh 09 April 2009 03:08:52AM 2 points [-]

Huh? There is no way that knowledge of astronomy could possibly have told him about the olive crop. It seems more likely that his useful knowledge was of economics and business, but that he made up a story about astronomy to impress his peers.

Comment author: gwern 10 April 2009 02:10:43PM *  10 points [-]

"no way...could possibly..." (emphasis added)

This is a good example of what I meant over in the evolutionary psychology thread; coming up with evolutionary psychology explanations is a good practice to avoiding succumbing to 'arguments from incredulity', as I like to call this sort of comment.

"Oh, I couldn't think of how astronomy could possibly be useful in weather or crop forecasting, so I'll just assume the stories about Thales are a lie."

I'll leave this here for you.

" Forecasting Andean rainfall and crop yield from the influence of El Niño on Pleiades visibility", Nature 403, 68-71 (6 January 2000):

"Farmers in drought-prone regions of Andean South America have historically made observations of changes in the apparent brightness of stars in the Pleiades around the time of the southern winter solstice in order to forecast interannual variations in summer rainfall and in autumn harvests. They moderate the effect of reduced rainfall by adjusting the planting dates of potatoes, their most important crop1. Here we use data on cloud cover and water vapour from satellite imagery, agronomic data from the Andean altiplano and an index of El Niño variability to analyse this forecasting method. We find that poor visibility of the Pleiades in June—caused by an increase in subvisual high cirrus clouds—is indicative of an El Niño year, which is usually linked to reduced rainfall during the growing season several months later. Our results suggest that this centuries-old method2 of seasonal rainfall forecasting may be based on a simple indicator of El Niño variability."

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