Stupid Questions Open Thread Round 4

lukeprog

This is for anyone in the LessWrong community who has made at least some effort to read the sequences and follow along, but is still confused on some point, and is perhaps feeling a bit embarrassed. Here, newbies and not-so-newbies are free to ask very basic but still relevant questions with the understanding that the answers are probably somewhere in the sequences. Similarly, LessWrong tends to presume a rather high threshold for understanding science and technology. Relevant questions in those areas are welcome as well. Anyone who chooses to respond should respectfully guide the questioner to a helpful resource, and questioners should be appropriately grateful. Good faith should be presumed on both sides, unless and until it is shown to be absent. If a questioner is not sure whether a question is relevant, ask it, and also ask if it's relevant.

Ask away!

Previously: round 1, round 2, round 3

From the original thread:

This is for anyone in the LessWrong community who has made at least some effort to read the sequences and follow along, but is still confused on some point, and is perhaps feeling a bit embarrassed. Here, newbies and not-so-newbies are free to ask very basic but still relevant questions with the understanding that the answers are probably somewhere in the sequences. Similarly, LessWrong tends to presume a rather high threshold for understanding science and technology. Relevant questions in those areas are welcome as well. Anyone who chooses to respond should respectfully guide the questioner to a helpful resource, and questioners should be appropriately grateful. Good faith should be presumed on both sides, unless and until it is shown to be absent. If a questioner is not sure whether a question is relevant, ask it, and also ask if it's relevant.

Ask away!

Can anyone attest to getting real instrumental rationality benefits from reading Wikipedia? (As a control question; everyone seems to think that Wikipedia is obviously useful and beneficial, so is anyone getting "real instrumental rationality benefits" from it?)

I suspect that the "success equation", as it were, is something like expected_success = drive intelligence rationality, and for most people the limiting factor is drive, or maybe intelligence. Also, I suspect that changes in your "success equation" parameters take can take years to manifest as substantial levels of success, where people regard you as "successful" and not just "promising". And I don't think anyone is going to respond to a question like this with "reading Less Wrong made me more promising" because that would be dopey, so there's an absence of data. (And promising folks may also surf the internet, and LW, less.)

It's worth differentiating between these two questions, IMO: "does reading LW foster mental habits that make you better at figuring out what's true?" and "does being better at figuring out what's true make you significantly more successful?" I tend to assign more credence to the first than the second.

John, Wikipedia is generally valued for epistemic benefit, i.e., it teaches you facts. Only rarely does it give you practically useful facts, like the fact that lottery tickets are a bad buy. I agree that LW-rationality gives epistemic benefits.

And as for "years to manifest": Diets can make you thinner in months. Likewise, PUA lessons get you laid, weightlifting makes you a bit stronger, bicycle repair workshops get you fixing your bike, and Tim Ferris makes you much better at everything, in months -- if each of these is all it's cracked up to b... (read more)

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Stupid Questions Open Thread Round 4

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Stupid Questions Open Thread Round 4

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