A post I wrote on CFAR's blog about the errors we make in hedonic prospecting, based on Gilbert and Wilson's 2007 review article of the topic. Let me know what you think! Reposting from the discussion in case anyone missed it. :) 

Link. 

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8 comments, sorted by Click to highlight new comments since: Today at 1:25 PM
[-][anonymous]9y70

This was great!

I'd love to see the solutions (make it near term, break it down step by step, wait for the correct state) broken out just like the problems were... it almost felt like they were all jammed in at the end.

Thanks. I'll consider expanding the second part into a whole article. :)

Nice article, have a karma!

There's a lot of information there, I'd suggest perhaps using this article as the basis for a four part series one each area. The content is non-obvious, so having the extra space to really break down the inferential distance into small steps so that the conclusions are intuitive to non-rationalists would be useful.

(As an aside I suspect that writing for the CFAR blog is right now reasonably high impact for the time investment. Personally I found CFAR's apparent radio-silence since September unnerving and it's possible that it was part of the reason the matching fundraiser struggled. Despite Anna's excellent post on CFAR's progress the lack of activity may have caused people to feel as though CFAR was stagnating and thus be less inclined to part with their money on a System 1 level.)

Thanks for the feedback, Arran. Re: radio silence, we're working on it and there are a few posts scheduled to be coming out soon. :)

[-][anonymous]9y20

Why wasn't Anna's update on CFAR (or her other recent posts) posted on the blog? Seems like the logical place to put it rather than lesswrong.

Possible typos.

  1. "And the difference might not that amount to that much." Extra "that"

  2. "Think through each step of what you’ll be doing, and try to avoid relying on your brains associations with whole events." Should be "brain's associations"

  3. "So, how successful, do you predict, you’ll be able to influence your predictions?" I'm having trouble parsing this sentence.

Fixed. Thanks for taking the time to give feedback. :)

[-][anonymous]9y10

Hello, first I would like to say that I am French, please forgive me my languages mistakes. Next I would like to say that it is a very good article that has the merit of being short and very complete. However, I have one comment: The 4 types of predictions quoted here refer to a current environment in which decisions must be made quickly and in the most efficient way possible. Indeed this is a big part of all our lives but I ask myself, is it the same thing in a quiet environment with time to think, why not put in writing Souvenirs (it is proved that help remembering)? Predictions are they the same to you? For me, philosophically, the reason is an expensive process in time and energy ration used but can give much better results than the rapid reasoning to the at least the merit of being, what is your opinion?

ChapelierdeCheshire