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SquirrelInHell comments on How It Feels to Improve My Rationality - Less Wrong Discussion
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Yes. I'm not claiming to be infallible, but I also suppose that having done a lot of abstract math helps me to know good thinking when I see it. Especially in cases when I can go deep enough and follow the whole thing from "first principles".
Being convinced that a single theory derived from first principles explains everything about a complex domain seems to me like having a hedgehog perspective on the domain.
That means you are unlikely to be very good at predicting over the domain by the findings of Tedlock.
You are jumping to assumptions about what I do, and how I think.
Well, thanks for the warning anyway. It's good to keep it in mind.
That's part of trying to understand what somebody else thinks. It's good to make assumptions to prevent a statement to be to vague to be wrong. If you think I made incorrect assumptions feel free to say to correct mistaken assumptions.
I'm not SquirrelInHell, but I'll point out what looks to me like one substantial misunderstanding.
SIH said that s/he finds that mathematical training gives a good sense of good versus bad thinking in cases of the "rigorous reasoning from first principles" kind. You responded as if SIH were claiming to be explaining everything about a complex domain using such reasoning, but s/he made no such claim.
Perhaps this analogy will help. Suppose I write something about improving my abilities in graphic design, and am asked how I distinguish genuine improvements from (say) mere increases in arrogance. I list a number of criteria for distinguishing one from the other, and one of them is something like "When the design has a strong short-term commercial focus, like an advertisement or a page on a merchant's website, we can measure actual sales or conversions and see whether I've successfully increased them". And then you object that it's wrong to reduce everything to counting money. So it is, but that doesn't mean that when something is about money and it can be counted you shouldn't do so.
The situation here is just the same. Not everything is about careful logical reasoning from first principles, but when things are a good sense of when they're correct is helpful. And yes, mathematicians are good at this. (I don't know how much of that is selection and how much is training.)
That's not the only claim. If you look at the post there the claim that there's polarization. That being rational makes him see less shades of gray.
two sensible sounding ideas become one great idea and one stupid ideaFor that to happen he has to call those ideas that are in line with his first principle derived theory great and ideas that are not in line with it stupid.Let us take an example. An aspriring rationalist finds that status is important for social interactions. He then rethinks all of his thinking about social interactions based on the first principle of status. That person will see the signs that SquirrelInHell described in the OP as the signs for increased rationality about the domain.
Or take one of those libertarians who try to boil down all of politics to being about violence. That produces those signs that SquirrelInHell describes but has nothing to do with real rationality.
It's the one I thought you were responding to.
My interpretation was that all those signs are potentially separate; in a given place, some will apply and some won't. The situation you describe applies, at most, to those cases that (a) SquirrelInHell thinks are resolvable from first principles and (b) SquirrelInHell now feels more polarized about.
So let's suppose we're only talking about those cases -- but note, first, that there's no reason to think that they're very common. (If SquirrelInHell finds that most cases are like that, then I agree that may be a bad sign.)
In that case, I agree that it is possible to go wrong by leaping into some oversimple crackpot theory. But so what? SIH listed intuition/elegance/"clicking" as just one of several signs to distinguish real from fake improvements. Any one of them may lead you astray sometimes. (All of them collectively may lead you astray sometimes. Sometimes the world just screws you over.) The question is not "can I think of counterexamples?" -- of course you can -- but "will this heuristic, overall, make you more or less accurate?".
I don't know whether SquirrelInHell has watched to see whether that sense of elegance does actually correlate with correctness (either globally or in some particular cases -- heuristics can work better in some situations than others). For that matter, I don't know whether you have (but SIH's sense of elegance might differ from yours).
Suppose, as per your first example, someone runs across the notion of social status and completely reframes his thinking about social interactions in terms of status. They may, as you say, feel that "everything makes sense now", even though in fact their thinking about social interactions may have become less effective. So let's look at the other signs SquirrelInHell lists. Does our hypothetical would-be-rationalist become more effective in interacting with others after this status epiphany? (If so, I would take that as evidence that "it's all status" is a better theory than whatever s/he was working with before. Wouldn't you?) Does discussion with other people throw up obvious problems with it -- especially obvious problems that the previous theory didn't have? (If so, then again I would take that as evidence in favour; wouldn't you?)
Note that for "it's all status" to be an improvement in rationality it's not necessary for "it's all status" to be correct. Only that it be more correct than whatever our hypothetical would-be-rationalist thought before. (Kepler noticed that planets seem to move in approximately elliptical orbits with certain nice properties. This was wrong -- because of the gravitational effects of other bodies besides the sun and the planet, and because Newtonian physics is wrong -- but it was a lot better than what had come before.)
Thank you for arguing calmly and patiently. I don't trust myself to do this, seeing how I have already failed once to keep my composure in my line of discussion with ChristianKl.
If it helps, I can imagine how it feels.
It looks to me that you tried to answer a question that is really complex and subjective. Of course you don't have a simple equation where you could just put numbers and say "well, if the result x is positive, it means my rationality has increased; if it is zero, it stayed the same; and if it is negative, it has actually decreased". Instead you looked into your mind and noticed a few patterns that frequently appear in situations where you believe you have become more rational. And then you put it on paper.
In return, instead of discussion like "wow, it feels the same to me, I am so surprised, I thought I was the only person who feels like this" or "for me it is completely different; I usually don't notice anything immediately, but later other people start telling me that I have become smarter, or the smart people whom I respect a lot suddenly become interested at meeting me and talking with me"... in other words, instead of repaying your introspection and sharing with other people's introspection and sharing... you got hit by a full-speed Vulcan train. "Your evidence is not 100% reliable, and we are going to assume that you are an idiot unaware of this." You exposed your sensitive belly, and you got kicked there. (It's not a coincidence that the critics have carefully avoided saying anything about how improving rationality feels to them, and only focused on dissecting you. That's how one plays it safe.)
Yeah, it sucks.
EDIT: And then it's funny to scroll the page down and see a comment saying it's "ordinary and uncontroversial".
Wow. You are good at empathy.
I'm responding to a mental model of his position based on what he wrote. No single statement is responsible for the full model.
I don't think the concern is simple about crackpot theories. It's about trying to explain everything with one theory. You can do that successfully in physics but in many contexts it's you can't do everything with one theory.
Yes. I think the heuristic of following the Superforcasting principles is better. That means developing more shades of gray and thinking foxy instead of thinking like a hedgehog.
The status-hedgehog might be better at a few interactions at the cost of not being able to have genuine connections with others anymore. He would be more effective if he would be foxy and would say: Status is important, but there are also other important factors.
I don't think that looking for positive real world effects or looking at whether discussion with other people throw up obvious problems are filter that successful protect from hedgehog thinking.
There nothing wrong with using first-principle thinking. If you however use it to come up with a view and then call all ideas that align with that view great and all that don't align stupid you are making a mistake. You are using a bad heuristic.
No, it isn't. I traded precision for vividness. Sorry if that caused confusion.
I agree. I see no sign that SIH is any less aware of this, but you're writing as if you're confident s/he is.
These are heuristics that apply in different situations, and not alternatives to one another. Perhaps we're at cross purposes. The heuristic I have in mind is "in situations where first-principles deductive reasoning seems appropriate, trust my sense of good reasoning that's been trained by doing mathematics", and not anything like "in general, expect to find good deductive first-principles models that explain everything". The latter would be a terrible heuristic; but, again, I see no reason to think that SquirrelInHell is either using or advocating it.
In any case, I think you are making the same mistake as before. SIH says "here are some signs of improving rationality", and you object that you could exhibit those signs while shifting to a position that's suboptimal. But a position can be both suboptimal and better than what came before it.
Sure. And it looks to me as if you are taking SquirrelInHell to be either advocating that heuristic or admitting to using it regularly, and that just doesn't seem to me to be true.
Actually, I'm going to qualify that "sure" a bit. I use first-principles thinking to determine that there is no integer whose square ends in 2 when written in decimal notation. If someone thinks otherwise then I call them wrong (I'm usually to polite to use words like "stupid", but I might think them). There is nothing wrong with this.
SIH writes about himself getting polarized and starting to judge ideas as either great and stupid and then feeling the each to preach to people about how wrong they are.
That's usually what happens with someone who focuses on one theory. It's a sign that's what he's doing. It's not useful to see either of those two factors as signs of increased rationality because that means you orient yourself in a way of becoming a hedgehog in more domains.
At the moment he or you haven't provided a justiciation why the heuristic of seeing those things as a sign of increased rationality is useful. Instead he tries to dodge having a real discussion in various creative ways.
If you read what I wrote I consciously added the word "complex" to indidate that I don't object to that usage.
Has anyone noticed that ChristianKl is explaining everything with one theory that says it's bad to explain everything with one theory? ;)
There you are wrong. I'm not drawing from a single theory in this discussion. It the lesson from BPS debating that smart people can find good arguments for any position. It's Tedlocks theory of Superforcasting. It's Eliezer's "Policy Debate Shouldn't be One-Sided". It's the general case for scientific pluralism as made by Kuhn and other HPS people.
That's four theories that I'm thinking about actively and there are likely more if I would spent more time to dig.
Lastly, this thread isn't "everything". I write a lot. It's a mistake for you to assume that the tiny bit of my writing that you have read is everything.
Now you have made a general point that can be easily argued both ways.
Tell me the strongest counter-arguments you can think of against what you just said.
(I predict you to agonize over this, produce strawmans, and have a strong impulse to dodge my request. Am I wrong?)
Edit: This was a bad way to handle this on my part, and I regret it. The flip side to ChrisitanKl's statement is probably obvious to anyone reading this (confirmed with a neutral third party), and I wanted to somehow make ChrisitanKl see it too. I don't know a good way to do this, but what I wrote here was certainly not it.
Why do you think that would be helpful?
It seem to me like you don't want to engage with discussion. As a result it doesn't me to try to find counter-arguments against what I'm saying.
Notice how I made a successful prediction that you will try to dodge my request.
It would be helpful to you, if you want to improve your rationality, as opposed to feeling good.
Edit: I retract this, since it is not a helpful way to advance the discussion.
That happen to be false. You predicted something related but different. But predicting that people won't go along with unreasonable requests doesn't require much skill.
It's also intersting that you call it dodgin when I ask you to provide reasons for why you think what you recommend is good.
I don't see how going along with people who are evasive generally increases my rationality. In general the sequences also recommend against playing devils advocate and don't see it as raising rationality.