Eliezer_Yudkowsky comments on No One Knows Stuff - Less Wrong

7 Post author: talisman 12 May 2009 05:11AM

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Comment author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 12 May 2009 06:48:25AM 10 points [-]

Of those who have learned about heuristics and biases, a nontrivial minority have gotten confused to the point that they offer Kahnemann and Tversky's research as justification for the self-arbitrages they've set up!

Suggested alternative wording:

"Of those who have learned about heuristics and biases, a nontrivial minority are so confused as to point to the biases research as justifying their exhibition of a bias!"

Comment author: marianasoffer 12 May 2009 08:18:10AM 0 points [-]

Completely agree that people just use methods such as tabu search a*, etc... without understanding them at all, same happens with machine learning techniques, or even statistic ones. Mostly they get by using the recommended algorithm/meta heuristic for the domain they are working at.

I strongly recommend python for doing this, it is the best language to begin programming with, I have several programs I did by myself, I can collaborate with the project.

Comment author: SoullessAutomaton 12 May 2009 09:44:15AM *  0 points [-]

I strongly recommend python for doing this, it is the best language to begin programming with, I have several programs I did by myself, I can collaborate with the project.

Not disagreeing with you here, but you seem to have missed the implication; the reason Python was mentioned is because LessWrong is written in it.

Comment author: marianasoffer 13 May 2009 06:20:26AM 0 points [-]

Thanks for clarifying, I did not know it, I guess I have to read the introduction first.

Comment author: John_Maxwell_IV 13 May 2009 04:48:22AM 1 point [-]

It's interesting that this correction has a higher score than the post itself.

Comment author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 13 May 2009 08:22:05PM 0 points [-]

People don't seem to vote posts up or down with the same enthusiasm as they vote on comments. Why? I do not know.

Comment author: jscn 13 May 2009 10:10:14PM 2 points [-]

I would guess that it's because comments are shorter and tend to express a single idea. Posts tend to have a series of ideas, which means a voter is less likely to think all of them are good/worthy of an upvote.

Comment author: JGWeissman 12 May 2009 07:05:03AM 1 point [-]

I strongly agree. As an anecdotal data point, I understood the suggested alternative but not the original wording. And it is a powerful point to miss because I haven't heard of Kahnemann and Tversky.

Also, if mentioning specific researchers were central to the point, I would recommend linking to a resource about them, or better yet, create entries for them on the Less Wrong Wiki and link to those.

Comment author: talisman 12 May 2009 04:24:43PM 0 points [-]

Done, thanks for the feedback!

I made the mistake I'm talking about---assuming certain things were well-known.

Comment author: Emile 12 May 2009 08:28:34AM 0 points [-]

Seconded! Those names didn't ring a bell for me either, though I'm familiar with the results from Prespect Theory (I probably read about them on OB), and that's probably what talisman was refering to.

Comment author: talisman 12 May 2009 11:45:06AM 0 points [-]

Definitely worth reading up. K & T are the intellectual fathers of the entire modern heuristics and biases program. There was some earlier work (e.g. Allais) but from what I hazily recall that work was fairly muddled conceptually.