But we want the feminists to win.

"The accessory optic system: The AOS, extensively studied in the rabbit, arises from a special class of ganglion cells, the cells of Dogiel, that are directionally selective and respond best to slow rates of movement. They project to the terminal nuclei which in turn project to the dorsal cap of Kooy of the inferior olive. The climbing fibers from the olive project to the flocculo-nodular lobe of the cerebellum from where the brain stem occulomotor centers are reached through the vestibular nuclei." -- MIT Encyclopedia of the Cognitive Sciences, "Visual Anatomy and Physiology"

Beautiful. I will use this on the prettiest girl I meet tomorrow, and if she doesn't fall for me right away, she's a deaf lesbian.

I don't see what a lot of this has to do with rationality.

I think they an all be described as stuff Eliezer likes for whatever reason. Maybe he started the file for rationality quotes, then started sticking everything in it. That's my theory.

"If we let ethical considerations get in the way of scientific hubris, then the feminists have won!"

Back when science was fun :

Watson, repeating similar experiments [to Pavlov], noted thetransference'' aspect of such conditioning. Having found that the violent striking of an iron bar produced fear in an infant, he noted that he could give a ``fear'' character to some hitherto neutral object, such as a rabbit, by placing it before the child each time the iron bar was struck; he next demonstrated that this conditioned fear of the rabbit was transferred with varying degrees of intensity to other things having similar properties(such as fur coats or cotton blankets).''

• Kenneth Burke, Permanence and Change p.11

Could we please get a teeny tiny bit of insight as to what the point of the accessory optics system quote is?

Okay, so Stefan_King is right that beauty is a special case of rationality, then? And the optic system quote represents that?

Sorry, while there may be beauty in that particular system, the quote itself only glorifies complexity, not beauty. Whatever happened to say not complexity?

(Btw, Eliezer_Yudkowsky, about that blog post I just linked: Marcello seemed to make, with all due respect to the gentleman, a pretty stupid inference. If all I have to do to qualify to work for you is be smart enough not to think like that, you really need to hire me. I'll email my salary requirements. ;-)

Eliezer, we all love you, but you just complained that people on the internet are not giving you enough credit.

A prime example of putting the human super-powers of misinterpretation to good use:

"but you just complained that people on the internet are not giving you enough credit."

not enough credit for subtlety.

That's a difference that's not subtle.

And he didn't complain. It was a neutral statement.

I think I understood what he said; I think I understood his brain state. I think you didn't; I think you made an unsubtle, additive interpretation of it instead of seeing it as it is.

//"Law of Conservation of Firepower: Any powerful weapon capable of destroying/defeating an opponent in a single shot will invariably be reserved and used only as a last resort."//

Of course it's the last resort; if the enemy has been destroyed, why keep firing?

This is like: When you've lost something, it's always in the last place you look.

Of course it's the last resort; if the enemy has been destroyed, why keep firing?

The point is of course that it isn't the first resort. It's always saved for last, after everything else has been used. In reality, that would be because the consequences of such weapons are usually such that we prefer to find alternative solutions. In poor-quality drama, it's because we need stuff to take up time.

MIT analysis of neural processing: LOL. They said they'd get to the hard stuff after tackling vision - I believe this has been the longest summer on record.

I'm not yet able to see subtleties like that linkage without prompting. I know it's a fault of mine: I don't search enough for serendipitous connection and undetected patterns that ought to become insights. I know for certain that harms my effectiveness.

Eliezer, it's obvious you're smarter than me. I also have read science that suggests that people who see intelligence tasks as trainable can improve their scores. Implication: smarts is at least partly strategy and/or practice.

So, questions: what strategies do you think you are using, that less smart people seem not to use, and that could be taught. Similarly, what and how do you practice? (I recognize the extended Bayesian Enlightenment series is related to one set of strategies.)

Do you have strategies in this one context of serendipity and insight? Is there a relation to the Bayesian strategies you've already described?

"I see only rationality here. Whereever it is not immediately obvious, it is a quote on beauty, which is a special case of rationality." --Stefan King

Eliezer: You may be a step ahead of me, but I think this is a perfect quote to put into your file.

"//"Law of Conservation of Firepower: Any powerful weapon capable of destroying/defeating an opponent in a single shot will invariably be reserved and used only as a last resort."//

Of course it's the last resort; if the enemy has been destroyed, why keep firing?

This is like: When you've lost something, it's always in the last place you look."

Reminds me of this one I hear often here in Colorado - It's always the last run of the day that people break their legs on.