An area where my actions don't seem to correspond to my stated beliefs? How about luck? I've come to the embarrassing conclusion that although I believe in disbelief, I might actually believe in luck.
All my life people have constantly told me how lucky I am, and my family jokes that I have two guardian angels.
No matter how many risks I take, bad things just don't seem to happen to me like they do to other people. People are constantly warning me not to do things, I acknowledge their warnings have merit, but I do them anyway. I seem to believe that I'm just "lucky" in certain ways.
1) I lived in Guatemala City for 15 months, a place with a high crime rate. The vast majority of my American and Guatemalan friends were robbed on the street at least once during my time there, despite being far, far more cautious than I was. I was never robbed (or murdered, but this fits the probability since there were only 3 murders among thousands of passerby on the short street where I lived). Alone, I regularly took the "dangerous" red buses, walked through "dangerous" neighborhoods and alleys even at night (as a white female), rode in "dangerous" white taxis, and shopped at the "dangerous" markets. I left cash unattended in plain sight. I walked around with my ipod visible. Nothing ever happened.
2) I tend to forget it when I drive alone, but I'm an awful driver. I'm impulsive and daily make very obviously illegal u-turns or similar bad driving decisions just to save like 20 seconds. And even when I'm in no hurry, my default highway speed is 18 mph over the limit. I've never gotten a ticket, and I drive quite a lot.
3) My family has an old board game with a "gamble" card, that can swing the game 20 points in either direction. When 2 people gamble, they each roll the dice, and the higher number wins. We've played this game dozens and dozens of times over the years, and I have won every gamble. If I get the gamble card, even if I'm winning and losing the gamble could bump someone else ahead of me, I'll still use it. When someone else gets the gamble card, I'll try to cajole them into gambling with me, and in hopes of breaking my streak, they will. But I never lose, and what's worse, I seem to really believe I have a lower than 50-50 chance of losing this one gamble per game.
4) I treat my internal clock as if it's infallible. I might be lying in bed, realize I forgot to set an alarm for the next day (even if I'm about to get only a few hours of sleep) and still not bother to get up to set it, somehow just believing I'll be "lucky" and wake up just in time. And then I always do. Also, if I have to leave the house at 1:40, I might lose track of time and go several hours without bothering to check the time, and then look with shock to see it's 1:35-1:40... so far, I've never happened to look too late, and I've never overslept and missed class or any event.
Most things other people call me lucky for, I think are based on rational risk-reward calculations. For example, I rarely go to the bank. When paid in cash, I'd let it pile up in my dresser for months before bothering to deposit it. When coming back from Guatemala with the several thousand dollars in cash I had saved from the last few months of working, I put it in my baggage rather than paying $25 for a wire transfer.
Stuff like visiting the bank infrequently makes sense to me, but yikes, what's up with the other examples? The risks seem high and the rewards seem so negligible that I would never recommend others make the same decisions, yet I seem to figure I might as well continue to make them until something bad actually happens to me.
So this is a weird example, but it's all I could come up with. Either I'm really hungry for something interesting to happen to me, or my actions don't correspond to my professed disbelief in luck.
Honestly, kid, I don't see anything in this description which would count as evidence against the hypothesis that this is a simple example of confirmation bias.
There's a saying which describes people like you: "young and invincible." There has been no need to coin the corresponding "old and invincible" saying which you would expect to exist. Ponder that.
This is part of a semi-monthly reading group on Eliezer Yudkowsky's ebook, Rationality: From AI to Zombies. For more information about the group, see the announcement post.
Welcome to the Rationality reading group. This week we discuss the sequence Fake Beliefs which introduces the concept of belief in belief and demonstrates the phenomenon in a number of contexts, most notably as it relates to religion. This sequence also foreshadows the mind-killing effects of tribalism and politics, introducing some of the language (e.g. Green vs. Blue) which will be used later.
This post summarizes each article of the sequence, linking to the original LessWrong posting where available, and offers a few relevant notes, thoughts, and ideas for further investigation. My own thoughts and questions for discussion are in the comments.
Reading: Sequence B: Fake Beliefs (p43-77)
B. Fake Beliefs
11. Making beliefs pay rent (in anticipated experiences). Beliefs networks which have no connection to anticipated experience we call “floating” beliefs. Floating beliefs provide no benefit as they do not constrain predictions in any way. Ask about a belief what you expect to see, if the belief is true. Or better yet what you expect not to see: what evidence would falsify the belief. Every belief should flow to a specific guess of anticipation, and should continue to pay rent in future anticipations. If a belief turns deadbeat, evict it. (p45-48)
12. A fable of science and politics. Cautions, though a narrative story, the dangers of that come from feeling attachment to beliefs. Introduces the Greens vs Blues, a fictional debate illustrating the biases which emerge from the tribalism of group politics. (p49-53)
13. Belief in belief. Through the story of someone who claims a dragon lives in their garage, a invisible, inaudible, impermeable dragon which defies all attempts at detection, we are introduced to the concept of belief in belief. The dragon claimant believes that there is a fire-breathing flying animal in his garage, but simultaneously expects to make no observations that would confirm that belief. The belief in belief turns into a form of mental jujutsu where mental models are transfigured in the face of experiment so as to predict whatever would be expected if the belief were not, in fact, true. (p54-58)
14. Bayesian judo. A humorous story illustrating the inconsistency of belief in belief, and the mental jujutsu required to maintain such beliefs. (p59-60)
15. Pretending to be wise. There's a difference between: (1) passing neutral judgment; (2) declining to invest marginal resources in investigating the sides of a debate; and (3) pretending that either of the above is a mark of deep wisdom, maturity, and a superior vantage point. Propounding neutrality is just as attackable as propounding any particular side. (p61-64)
16. Religion's claim to be non-disprovable. It is only a recent development in Western thought that religion is something which cannot be proven or disproven. Many examples are provided of falsifiable beliefs which were once the domain of religion. (p65-68)
17. Professing and cheering. Much of modern religion can be thought of as communal profession of belief – actions and words which signal your belief to others. (p69-71)
18. Belief as attire. It is very easy for a human being to genuinely, passionately, gut-level belong to a group. Identifying with a tribe is a very strong emotional force. And once you get people to identify with a tribe, the beliefs which are attire of that tribe will be spoken with the full passion of belonging to that tribe. (p72-73)
19. Applause lights. Sometimes statements are made in the form of proposals when themselves present no meaningful suggestion, e.g. “We need to balance the risks and opportunities of AI.” It's not so much a propositional statement, as the equivalent of the “Applause” light that tells a studio audience when to clap. Most applause lights can be detected by a simple reversal test: “We shouldn't balance the risks and opportunities of AI.” Since the reversal sounds abnormal, the unreversed statement is probably normal, implying it does not convey new information. (p74-77)
This has been a collection of notes on the assigned sequence for this week. The most important part of the reading group though is discussion, which is in the comments section. I pose some questions for you there, and I invite you to add your own. Please remember that this group contains a variety of levels of expertise: if a line of discussion seems too basic or too incomprehensible, look around for one that suits you better!
The next reading will cover Sequence C: Noticing Confusion (p79-114). The discussion will go live on Wednesday, 20 May 2015 at or around 6pm PDT (hopefully), right here on the discussion forum of LessWrong.