Excellent comment. I have only two objections. First, this statement:
But it's not the content of the objection that matters, it's that ANY objection that stops you from actually trying something useful, means you fail. You lose.
is good on its merits, but I caution everyone to be careful about asserting that some technique or other is "something useful". There are plenty of reasons not to try any random thing that enters into our heads, and even when we're engaged in a blind search, we shouldn't suspend our evaluative functions completely, even though they may be assuming things that blinds us to the solution we need. They also keep us from chopping our legs off when we want to deal with a stubbed toe.
My second objection deals with the following:
If the master sat there listening to people's inane theories about how they need to punch differently than everybody else, or their insistence that they really need to understand a complete theory of combat, complete with statistical validation against a control group, before they can even raise a single fist in practice, that master would have failed their students AND their Art. ust as EY fails his students and his art by the public positions he has taken on his weight and akrasia.
What grounds are there for assigning EY the status of 'master'? Hopefully in a martial arts dojo there are stringent requirements for the demonstration of skill before someone is put in a teaching position, so that even when students aren't personally capable of verifying that the 'master' has actually mastered techniques that are useful, they can productively hold that expectation.
When did EY demonstrate that he's a master, and how did he supposedly do so?
There are plenty of reasons not to try any random thing that enters into our heads
...and most of those reasons are fallacious.
The opposite of every Great Truth is another great truth: yes, you need to look before you leap. But he who hesitates is lost. (Or in Richard Bandler's version, which I kind of like better, "He who hesitates... waits... and waits... and waits... and waits...")
When did EY demonstrate that he's a master, and how did he supposedly do so?
I never said he did.
Reply to: Practical Advice Backed By Deep Theories
Inspired by what looks like a very damaging reticence to embrace and share brain hacks that might only work for some of us, but are not backed by Deep Theories. In support of tinkering with brain hacks and self experimentation where deep science and large trials are not available.
Eliezer has suggested that, before he will try a new anti-akraisia brain hack:
This doesn't look to me like an expected utility calculation, and I think it should. It looks like an attempt to justify why he can't be expected to win yet. It just may be deeply wrongheaded.
I submit that we don't "need" (emphasis in original) this stuff, it'd just be super cool if we could get it. We don't need to know that the next brain hack we try will work, and we don't need to know that it's general enough that it'll work for anyone who tries it; we just need the expected utility of a trial to be higher than that of the other things we could be spending that time on.
So… this isn't other-optimizing, it's a discussion of how to make decisions under uncertainty. What do all of us need to make a rational decision about which brain hacks to try?
(can these books be judged by their covers? how does this chance vary with the type of exposure? what would you need to do to understand enough about a hack that would work to increase its chance of seeming deeply compelling on first exposure?)
… and, what don't we need?
How should we decide how much time to spend gathering data and generating estimates on matters such as this? How much is Eliezer setting himself up to lose, and how much am I missing the point?