Overview for AShepard - Less Wrong

AShepard on How to Build a Community

2013-05-16T03:57:06.333792+10:00

Good and important questions. I find it interesting, and indicative of a broader tendency at LessWrong, that books are the first place you looked for an answer. The academic approach has its place, but if you're looking for advice you can actually put into practice, it would be more helpful to find some people who have successfully built communities and ask them what they did. Talking to a few thoughtful people who have built successful mid-size businesses, community organizations, or online forums from the ground up is going to be a lot more useful on the margin than thinking more about a public goods game.

AShepard on Learn A New Language!

2012-05-21T03:05:05.024176+10:00

My suggestion would be to add an introduction. There are many more things to be read than time to read. It's incumbent on you as a writer to convince people that what you have to say is worth the time investment. And you need to make that case clearly, convincingly, and concisely right at the beginning.

For this particular article, you need to establish two things:

Why the reader should care about learning a foreign language. You take this as given, but I submit that it's not as obvious as you might think. It sometimes seems like everyone else in the world is trying to learn English - why shouldn't I let them do all the work?
Why the reader should listen to your advice. As far as we know, you're just some random person on the internet. Even if I am interested in learning a foreign language, why should I trust your suggestions?

A paragraph or two addressing those two points would go a long way towards convincing your potential readers that your article is worth their time to read.

AShepard on Prisoner's Dilemma on game show Golden Balls

2012-04-23T01:48:38.547657+10:00

To be even more technical, "Prisoner's Dilemma" is actually used as a generic term in game theory. It refers to the set of two-player games with this kind of payoff matrix (see here). The classic prisoners dilemma also adds in the inability to communicate (as well as a bunch of backstory which isn't relevant to the math), but not all prisoners dilemmas need to follow that pattern.

Learn a foreign language to reduce bias?

Mon, 23 Apr 2012 01:37:09 +1000

Submitted by AShepard • 8 votes • 35 comments

Interesting new paper (anyone have a link to an ungated version). Abstract (emphasis added):

Would you make the same decisions in a foreign language as you would in your native tongue? It may be intuitive that people would make the same choices regardless of the language they are using, or that the difficulty of using a foreign language would make decisions less systematic. We discovered, however, that the opposite is true: Using a foreign language reduces decision-making biases. Four experiments show that the framing effect disappears when choices are presented in a foreign tongue. Whereas people were risk averse for gains and risk seeking for losses when choices were presented in their native tongue, they were not influenced by this framing manipulation in a foreign language. Two additional experiments show that using a foreign language reduces loss aversion, increasing the acceptance of both hypothetical and real bets with positive expected value. We propose that these effects arise because a foreign language provides greater cognitive and emotional distance than a native tongue does.

Speakers of multiple languages: have you noticed a similar pattern in your own lives?

35 comments

Suggestions needed: good articles for a meetup discussion

Sun, 15 Apr 2012 08:31:56 +1000

Submitted by AShepard • 5 votes • 6 comments

The Chicago LW meetup group is looking to add a bit more structure to our discussions, which have been rather freeform to this point. What are some good articles that we could read in advance and then discuss at the meetup?

Some criteria that I think a good article would have:

LW-related topic
Relatively brief, so we will actually read it beforehand (a typical sequence post is probably a good target length)
Able to support/spark enough good discussion to be a centerpiece of a meetup
Others?

We haven't really done this before, so any suggestions or advice based on experiences at other meetups would be especially helpful (both specific articles that have worked well before, as well as best practices for having the best discussions).

6 comments

AShepard on Attention control is critical for changing/increasing/altering motivation

2012-04-11T13:43:07.788849+10:00

I’m guessing these are very familiar to most readers here, but let’s cover them briefly just in case.

I, for one, was not familiar with the terms, so I appreciated the explanation.

AShepard on SotW: Be Specific

2012-04-04T02:12:08.413880+10:00

I was reminded of something similar by AspiringKnitter's post below. There is an event in Science Olympiad called Write It Do It. One person is given a constructed object made out of LEGO, K'Nex, or similar. They write a set of instructions for how to reproduce the object. These are then given to a teammate who hasn't seen the original object, who must use the instructions to reconstruct the original object. Seems fairly simple to adapt to a group setting - you could just split the group into two rooms and have them first write their own instructions and then try to follow the instructions of a partner in the other room.

This exercise and malicious idiot exercise differ in the "when" and "by whom". With a malicious idiot, your errors are pointed out immediately and by somebody else. When writing instructions, your errors don't come to light until your partner's object doesn't look like yours, and neither of you might notice until that point. It's important to notice a lack of specificity both in others (so they don't lead you astray) and in yourself (so you don't lead yourself astray), so it would probably be useful to do both kinds of exercises.

AShepard on Minicamps on Rationality and Awesomeness: May 11-13, June 22-24, and July 21-28

2012-04-01T07:11:21.628473+10:00

Another thing you could do is measure in a more granular way - ask for NPS about particular sessions. You could do this after each session or at the end of each day. This would help you narrow down what sessions are and are not working, and why.

You do have to be careful not to overburden people by asking them for too much detailed feedback too frequently, otherwise they'll get survey fatigue and the quality of responses will markedly decline. Hence, I would resist the temptation to ask more than 1-2 questions about any particular session. If there are any that are markedly well/poorly received, you can follow up on those later.

AShepard on Minicamps on Rationality and Awesomeness: May 11-13, June 22-24, and July 21-28

2012-03-30T13:00:05.209950+11:00

I'd suggest measuring the Net Promoter Score (NPS) (link). It's used in business as a better measure of customer satisfaction than more traditional measures. See here for evidence, sorry for the not-free link.

"On a scale of 0-10, how likely would you be to recommend the minicamp to a friend or colleague?"
"What is the most important reason for your recommendation?

To interpret, split the responses into 3 groups:

9-10: Promoter - people who will be active advocates.
7-8: Passive - people who are generally positive, but aren't going to do anything about it.
0-6: Detractor - people who are lukewarm (which will turn others off) or will actively advocate against you

NPS = [% who are Promoters] - [% who are Detractors]. Good vs. bad NPS varies by context, but +20-30% is generally very good. The followup question is a good way to identify key strengths and high priority areas to improve.

Experience with Lumosity?

Mon, 19 Mar 2012 09:51:47 +1100

Submitted by AShepard • 4 votes • 5 comments

I just saw a commercial for Lumosity, which is a mental-skills training website. It seems like something that someone on LessWrong would have tried, but some googling of the site turns up only some passing mentions. Has anyone actually signed up and used it? Have you had results, and are they worth the subscription cost? (~$5-15/month, depending on subscription length).

5 comments