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Guessing the Teacher's Password
Followup to: Fake Explanations
When I was young, I read popular physics books such as Richard Feynman's QED: The Strange Theory of Light and Matter. I knew that light was waves, sound was waves, matter was waves. I took pride in my scientific literacy, when I was nine years old.
When I was older, and I began to read the Feynman Lectures on Physics, I ran across a gem called "the wave equation". I could follow the equation's derivation, but, looking back, I couldn't see its truth at a glance. So I thought about the wave equation for three days, on and off, until I saw that it was embarrassingly obvious. And when I finally understood, I realized that the whole time I had accepted the honest assurance of physicists that light was waves, sound was waves, matter was waves, I had not had the vaguest idea of what the word "wave" meant to a physicist.
There is an instinctive tendency to think that if a physicist says "light is made of waves", and the teacher says "What is light made of?", and the student says "Waves!", the student has made a true statement. That's only fair, right? We accept "waves" as a correct answer from the physicist; wouldn't it be unfair to reject it from the student? Surely, the answer "Waves!" is either true or false, right?
Lesswrong real time chat
This is a short post to say that I have started and am managing a Slack channel for lesswrong.
Slack has only an email-invite option which means that I need an email address for anyone who wants to join. Send me a PM with your email address if you are interested in joining.
There is a web interface and a mobile app that is better than google hangouts.
If you are interested in joining; consider this one requirement:
- You must be willing to be charitable in your conversations with your fellow lesswrongers.
To be clear; This means (including but not limited to);
- Steelman not strawman of discussion
- Respect of others
- patience
- an aim for productive conversations, to make progress on our lives.
- a brains trust for life-advice in all kinds of areas where, "outsource this decision to others" is an effective strategy.
- collaborative creation of further rationality content
- a safe space for friendly conversation on the internet (a nice place to hang out)
- A more coherent and stronger connected lesswrong
- Development of better ideas and strategies in how to personally improve the world.
- AI
- Film making
- Goals of lesswrong
- Human Relationships
- media
- parenting
- philosophy
- political talk
- programming
- real life
- Resources and links
- science
- travelling
- and some admin channels; the "welcome", "misc", and "RSS" from the lw site.
Edit - first week of October: http://lesswrong.com/r/discussion/lw/mub/open_thread_oct_5_oct_11_2015/csr3
Edit - 3rd week in october 2015: http://lesswrong.com/r/discussion/lw/mwt/open_thread_oct_26_nov_01_2015/cuq5
Edit - 3rd week in november 2015 http://lesswrong.com/r/discussion/lw/mzz/open_thread_nov_23_nov_29_2015/cwyl
Survey Articles: A justification
There seems to be a growing consensus among the community that while Less Wrong is great at improving epistemic rationality, it is rather lacking when it comes to resources for instrumental rationality. I've been thinking about how to address this. This can be very hard because many of the questions most important to instrumental rationality lack an objective answer and depend heavily on individual circumstance. Consider for example the question, "How do I become a more interesting person?", that is the first survey article I've published. One person might easily have the resources to go travelling and gain new experiences, while another person might be prevented by their financial situation. One person may enjoy the process of broadening their experience by reading, while another may simply detest books. Ignoring these individual circumstances will lead to much of the advice being unsuitable
It therefore seems that in a general resource, that is forced by its very nature to ignore individual circumstances, that the best response would be to gather together as many ideas as possible. It is hoped that each rationalist has the capacity to critically examine each suggestion that is proposed and reject those that would be counterproductive. This differs from a standard list article as, instead of limiting itself to an arbitrary number of ideas, or only using ideas thought of by the author, I have made a comprehensive list and taken ideas from different sources. Taking ideas from different sources is extremely important - a single person can only possess so much creativity. It also decreases the influence of the author's subjective point of view - I might never have said something myself, but I might be willing to include it in a list of ideas. Another problem with lists is that if they are wordy, they take a long time to read through, while if they are concise, they may be misunderstood. Summarising whilst linking to a source means that extra detail is available for those who need it.
One flaw is that the production of this lists will always be greatly subjective. I really like Mark Manson and am probably going to quote him a lot in these lists, but another person might love The Secret and quote it everywhere instead. Regardless of this subjectivity, if you think that a particular source lacks value, then you can choose to just ignore that source and just read the rest of the article. If there is a noticeable omission, that can be addressed in the comments, or, in extreme cases, by producing a rival list. So I think that these articles can work well regardless of subjectivity.
What problem is this designed to solve?
This has already been discussed above, but I want to go into more detail about the current process when someone has one of these subjective questions. The current process probably looks like Googling the question or searching the question on a trusted source (ie. Quora or Reddit). There are many good answers and good ideas, but they are spread out all over the Internet. It is very possible for someone to fail to find a suggestion that would have helped them. Gathering together a large number of different resources helps to minimise this. It also helps people to discover new sources that they might not have thought to look at.
What feedback am I after?
As well as general support or criticisms of the idea, I'd also like to see some suggestions on which questions you'd love to see a survey for.
Pain and gain motivation
Note: this post is basically just summarizing some of PJ Eby's freely available writings on the topic of pain/gain motivation and presenting them in a form that's easier for the LW crowd to digest. I claim no credit for the ideas presented here, other than the credit for summarizing them.
EDIT: Note also Eby's comments and corrections to my summary at this comment.
Eby proposes that we have two different forms of motivation: positive ("gain") motivation, which drives us to do things, and negative ("pain") motivation, which drives us to avoid things. Negative motivation is a major source of akrasia and is mostly harmful for getting anything done. However, sufficiently large amounts of negative motivation can momentarily push us to do things, which frequently causes people to confuse the two.
To understand the function of negative motivation, first consider the example of having climbed to a tree to avoid a predator. There's not much you can do other than wait and hope the predator goes away, and if you move around, you risk falling out of the tree. So your brain gets flooded with signals that suppress activity and tell it to keep your body still. It is only if the predator ends up climbing up the tree that the danger becomes so acute that you're instead pushed to flee.
What does this have to do with modern-day akrasia? Back in the tribal environment, elicting the disfavor of the tribe could be a death sentence. Be cast out by the tribe, and you likely wouldn't live for long. One way to elict disfavor is to be unmasked as incompetent in some important matter, and a way to avoid such an unmasking is to simply avoid doing anything where to consequences of failure would be severe.
You might see why this would cause problems. Sometimes, when the pain level of not having done a task grows too high - like just before a deadline - it'll push you to do it. But this fools people into thinking that negative consequences alone will be a motivator, so they try to psyche themselves up by thinking about how bad it would be to fail. In truth, this is only making things worse, as an increased chance of failure will increase the negative motivation that's going on.
A Map of Currently Available Life Extension Methods
Extremely large payoff from life extension
We live in special period of time when radical life extension is not far. We just need to survive until the moment when all the necessary technologies will be created.
The positive scenario suggests it could happen by 2050 (plus or minus 20 years), when humanity will create an advanced and powerful AI, highly developed nanotechnologies and a cure for aging.
Many young people could reach the year 2050 without even doing anything special.
But for many other people an opportunity to extend their life for just 10-20 years is the key to achieving radical life extension (at least for a thousand of years, perhaps even more), because they will be able to survive until the creation of strong life extension technologies.
That is why even a slight life extension today means a potentially eternal prize. This map of the currently available life extension methods could help in it. The map contains a description of the initial stage of plan A from the “Personal Immortality Roadmap” (where plan B is cryonics, plan C – digital immortality and plan D – quantum immortality).
Brain is most important for life extension
The main idea of this map is that all efforts towards life extension must start from our brain, and in fact, they must finish there too.
First of all, you must have the will to conquer aging and death, and do it using scientific methods.
This is probably the most difficult part of the life extension journey. The vast majority of people simply don't think about life extension, while those who do care about it (usually when it's too late) use weak and non-scientific ways and methods; they simply don't understand that the prize of this game is not ten of healthy latter years, but almost eternal life.
Secondly, you need to develop or mobilize the qualities inside yourself which are necessary for simple, daily procedures, which can almost guarantee life extension by an average of 10-20 years. e.g. avoiding smoking and alcohol consumption, daily mobility, daily intake of medicines and dietary supplements.
Most people find it incredibly difficult to perform simple actions on a permanent basis, for example even taking one pill every day for a year would be too much for most people. Not to mention quitting smoking or regular health check-ups.
A human who has the motivation to extend his life, a proper understanding of how to achieve it and the necessary skills to realize his plans, should be considered as almost a superman.
On other hand, while all of our body systems are affected by aging, our brain damage during aging plays the biggest role in total productivity reduction. Even though our crystallized intelligence increases with age, our fluid intelligence, our memory, and the possibility of making radical changes and acquiring new skills all decrease significantly with aging.
And these abilities decrease at the very time when they are needed most – to fight the aging process! Young people usually don't care too much about the aging process, because it's beyond their planning horizon. These qualities are vital in order to build the motivation and skills required to maintain health.
Thus, this leads to the idea of the map, which says that all main efforts to combat aging must be focused on brain aging. If you can keep your brain youthful, it will create and implement new skills to extend your life, helping you to find new information in a sea of new publications and technologies.
If Alzheimers is the first sign of aging to reach your body, you will have to crawl for a tablet of validol without even knowing that it is harmful. And even worse, you will crystallize some harmful beliefs. A person can think that he is a genius in some fields, receive approval from others, but continue his journey in the wrong direction – in the direction of death. (Of course early detection of cancer and a healthy heart are really important to extend your life, but it will be too difficult to deal with such problems if your brain is not working properly).
The second reason to invest in brain health and regeneration is a direct connection of its state with the state of many other systems in your body through nervous and hormonal connections.
In order to preserve your brain health we have to use antidepressants, nootropics and substances which promote its regeneration.
The example of Rita Montalchni is incredibly interesting (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rita_Levi-Montalcini). She administered a nerve growth factor (NGF) as eye drops and lived for 101 years while her twin sister died when she was 91. (Bearing in mind the average life duration difference of twins is six years, we can conclude that she gained about four years.)
Thus, providing that we understand the priority of tasks, life extension now can be reached through three fine-spun blocks: a lifestyle, a medication and the prevention of aging itself.
Collective efforts in life extension
This map doesn't include one really important social aspect of aging prevention. If we could absorb all the money (through crowdfunding), which people use to buy supplements (around 300 billion per year), and use it to perform experiments in the field of life extension instead, we could invent new anti-aging medicine and other life extension tools. These methods and medicines could be used by those who initially donated money for such experiments; they could also benefit from sales of such products. Thus, such crowdfunding would include IPO too.
You won't find other social aspects in the map such as promotion of the idea of the fight against aging, political activism and art. All of these aspects are mentioned in the main Immortality Roadmap.
The map also doesn't include a temporal aspect. Our knowledge about the best methods of life extension changes almost daily. This map contains ideas which are valid in 2015, but it will require a significant update in just five years. If you aim to extend your life you must perform a constant analysis of scientific research in this area. Currently many new methods are appearing every day, e.g. ways of lengthening telomeres and gene therapy. Additionally, the older you are the riskier new methods you should try.
The map of ideas
In fact, the map contains a systemized analysis of ideas, which can lead to life extension, but not a bunch of well-proven tips. In an ideal situation such a map should contain links to research about all the listed items, as well as an evaluation of their real effects, so any help on improving the map will be welcomed.
This map (like all my other maps) is intended to help you navigate through the world of ideas. In this case it includes life extension ideas.
Moreover, one single idea may become a salvation for a person, e.g. eradicating a certain chronic disease. Of course, no single person can complete all of the ideas and suggestions in this map or indeed in any other list. I'm pretty sure that people will not be able to implement more than one advice per month – and I'm no exception.
My approach: I drink alcohol on really rare occasions, I don't smoke (but sometimes I use nicotine wrapping with nootropic objectives), I sleep a lot, I try to walk at least 4 km every day, I avoid risky activities and I always fasten my seatbelt.
I also invest a lot of effort in preventing my brain from aging and in combating depression. (I will provide you with a map about depression and nootropics later).
The pdf of the map is here, and jpg is below.
Previous posts with maps:
A map: AI failures modes and levels
A Roadmap: How to Survive the End of the Universe
A map: Typology of human extinction risks
Roadmap: Plan of Action to Prevent Human Extinction Risks
Future planned maps:
Brut force AIXI-style attack on Identity problem
Ways of mind-improvement
Fermi paradox map
Ways of depression prevention map
Quantum immortality map
Interpretations of quantum mechanics ma
Map of cognitive biases in global risks research
Map of double catastrophes scenarios in global risks
Probability of global catastrophe
Map of unknown unknowns as global risks
Map of reality theories, qualia and God
Map of death levels
Map of resurrections technologies
Map of aging theories
Flowchart «How to build a map»
Map of ideas about artificail explosions in space
Future as Markov chain
EDIT: due to temporary hosting error, check the map here: https://www.scribd.com/doc/286606304/Life-Extension-Map
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