MattG comments on The Growth of My Pessimism: Transhumanism, Immortalism, Effective Altruism. - Less Wrong

15 Post author: diegocaleiro 28 November 2015 11:07AM

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Comment author: [deleted] 28 November 2015 04:20:11PM 6 points [-]

We need a community that at once understands probability theory, doesn’t play reference class tennis, and doesn’t lose motivation by considering the base rates of other people trying to do something, because the other people were cooks, not chefs, and also because sometimes you actually need to try a one in ten thousand chance. But people are too proud of their command of Bayes to let go of the easy chance of showing off their ability to find mathematically sound reasons not to try.

Are you saying don't think probabilistically here? I'd love a specific post on just your thoughts on this.

Comment author: diegocaleiro 29 November 2015 11:04:21AM 4 points [-]

Yes I am.

Step 1: Learn Bayes

Step 2: Learn reference class

Step 3: Read 0 to 1

Step 4: Read The Cook and the Chef

Step 5: Reason why are the billionaires saying the people who do it wrong are basically reasoning probabilistically

Step 6: Find the connection between that and reasoning from first principles, or the gear hypothesis, or whichever other term you have for when you use the inside view, and actually think technically about a problem, from scratch, without looking at how anyone else did it.

Step 7: Talk to Michael Valentine about it, who has been reasoning about this recently and how to impart it at CFAR workshops.

Step 8: Find someone who can give you a recording of Geoff Anders' presentation at EAGlobal.

Step 9: Notice how all those steps above were connected, become a Chef, set out to save the world. Good luck!

Comment author: [deleted] 01 December 2015 02:43:47PM 3 points [-]

Note that the billionaires disagree on this. Thiel says that people should think more like calculus and less like probability, while Musk(the inspiration for the cook and the chef) says that people think in certainties while they should think in probabilities.

Comment author: diegocaleiro 02 December 2015 05:30:12AM 0 points [-]

Not my reading. My reading is that Musk thinks people should not consider the probability of succeding as a spacecraft startup (0% historically) but instead should reason from first principles, such as thinking what are the materials from which a rocket is made, then building the costs from the ground up.

Comment author: [deleted] 02 December 2015 06:51:01AM 1 point [-]

First, I think we should seperate two ideas.

  1. Creating a reference class.
  2. Thinking in probabilities.

"Thinking in probabilities" is a consistent talking point for Musk - every interview where's he asked how he's able to do what he does, he mentions this.

Here's an example I found with a quick Google search:

Yeah, I think in general you always want to try to think about the future, try to predict the future. You’re going to generate some error between the series of steps you think will occur versus what actually does occur and you want to try to minimize the error. That’s a way that I think about it. And I also think about it in terms of probability streams. There’s a certain set of probabilities associated with certain outcomes and you want to make sure that you’re always the house. So things won’t always occur the way you think they’ll occur, but if you calculate it out correctly over a series of decisions you will come out significantly ahead…"

So that covers probability.

In terms of reference class, I think what Thiel and Musk are both saying is that previous startups are really bad to use as a reference class for new startups. I don't know if that means they generally reject the idea of reference classes, but it does give me pause in using them to figure out the chances of my company succeeding based on other similar companies.

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