It also depends on how fast you read. And whether you only want information for yourself, or possibly to educate other people (because telling other people to read something in Kahneman will seem high-status, while telling them to read the Sequences may feel cultish to them).

By the way, have you read Stanovich before or after LW? Was that worth your time?

I haven't read "Good and Real" or "Thinking, Fast and Slow" yet, because I think that I won't learn something new as a long term Less Wrong reader. In the case of "Good and Real" part seems to be about physics and I don't think I have the physics background to profit from hat (I feel a refresher on high school physics would be more appropirate for me). In the case of "Thinking, Fast and Slow" I have already read books by Keith Stanovich (What Intelligence Tests Miss and The Robot's Rebellion) and some chapters of academic books edited by Kahneman.

Does anyone think those two books are still worth my time?

Probably saying the obvious, but anyway:

What is the advantage of nice communication in a rationalist forum? Isn't the content of the message the only important thing?

Imagine a situation where many people, even highly intelligent, make the same mistake talking about some topic, because... well, I guess I shouldn't have to explain on this website what "cognitive bias" means... everyone here has read the Sequences, right? ;)

But one person happens to be a domain expert in an unusual domain, or happened to talk with a domain expert, or happened to read a book by a domain expert... and something clicked and they realized the mistake.

I think that at this moment the communication style on the website has a big impact on whether the person will come and share their insight with the rest of the website. Because it predicts the response they get. On a forum with a "snarky" debating culture, the predictable reaction is everyone making fun and not even considering the issue seriously, because that's simply how the debate is done there. Of course, predicting this reaction, the person is more likely to just avoid the whole topic, and discuss something else.

Of course -- yes, I can already predict the reactions this comment will inevitably get -- this has to be balanced against people saying stupid things, etc. Of course. I know already, okay? Thanks.

[Survey Taken Thread]

By ancient tradition, if you take the survey you may comment saying you have done so here, and people will upvote you and you will get karma.

Let's make these comments a reply to this post. That way we continue the tradition, but keep the discussion a bit cleaner.

I tend to read http://lesswrong.com/r/all/new/

Native English speaker, so I may be way off... but surely 'beliefs' would be 'Verständnis'? And for 'evidence', wouldn't you usually use a verb ('to provide evidence') instead of a noun, something like 'unterstützen'?

I have heard in particular that this is true of German. "German has no word for 'mind'" is how I have heard it put.

As you are a native German speaker, could give us, as a case study in the phenomenon, an account of how one talks in German about the range of things that in English would be called mental phenomena? Google Translate suggests for "mind" the words der Geist, der Verstand, die Meining, der Sinn, die Gedanken, die Sinne, das Gemüt, das Denken, das Gedächtnis, and das Gehirn, but a dictionary, still less Google Translate, can't tell me the nuances being expressed here. (However, the first two seem to be of similar breadth to "mind", the others being more about specific faculties.) Are there differences in what can be easily said, or are English and German on this subject as interchangeable as rectangular and polar coordinates?

I intuitively feel that there really are objective morals (or: objective mathematics, actual free will, tables and chairs, minds).

Therefore, there really are objective morals (etc.).

"Morals" is just a word. But unlike some other words, it's not 100% clear to me what it means. There is no physical entity that "morals" clearly refers to. There is no agreed upon list of axioms that define what "morals" is. That's why, to me, "there are objective morals" doesn't feel entirely like a factual statement.

I might justify that there are objective morals by relying on my intuition. But that's not because I think intuitions are reliable sources of knowledge. That's because I think intuitions are the correct normative source of how we use words (together with common usage, I guess).

It's till possible that my intuitions contradict each other, or that they contradict facts. So they are not sufficient to say with confidence that objective morals exist. But they are relevant.

Predictably, Naruto turns out to have inherited all his abilities from his parents, and then improved on them only because he was possessed by the ancient spirit of one of the most powerful beings in existence. And even before that, when the story required him to be the underdog hero, he tended to overcome obstacles using the Kyuubi.

All of the Narutoverse in general is about magic powers (chakra, whatever) passing on from parents to children without much of a change. There's exactly one character in all of Narutoverse who's called out for being powerful due to training, and it isn't Naruto. (A few others are powerful due to research, which is of course always evil.)

Naruto is the opposite of Tsuioku Naritai. It's the story of "everyone had something to protect and practiced like mad, but none of it made a huge difference and most everyone would have been about as powerful anyway." Naruto climbs trees (metaphorically speaking) for many chapters, but keeps being the underdog. Then he starts manifesting powers that make him the most powerful individual in the universe - because he's a shonen hero - and which are entirely due to his parents and outside intervention.

I actually really like that you have to spend a resource to learn new information and that the score is dependent on luck. I.e. you use limited resources to optimize the gamble you are making. That seems like a very good description of how life works, only, it's all transparent and quantified in your game.

Some suggestions:

• In the tutorial, why do I first get to read a description of a picture and then I'm presented with the picture? Obviously, it should be the other way around.
• You should be able to progress the text by mouse.
• It should be easier to distinguish new text from old. I think in visual novels, the text box never "scrolls". If the new text doesn't fit into the text box, or to make a new paragraph, the text box is cleared. You could make separate textboxes for the current message and the history.
• The confusing notation is a real distraction and zaps away a lot of the potential fun. Understanding the notation actually seems more interesting than winning the game, but I have too little information to understand it, which leads to frustration. Why are there two big boxes with normal nodes? Why do normal nodes have all those boxes instead of simple bar that shows the probability? Why do bayes-nodes have all those rows instead of just two bars? What are there grey bars? How do 'and' and 'or' nodes work? I would think that one input corresponds to the vertical division and one input to the horizontal division. It should be more obvious which node is which (by having the input into that side of the box). The connections of nodes did not have arrows. If I understood the game correctly, that would help distinguish inputs from outputs.
• The effect of clicking on one node shouldn't be instant. At first, it should probably go step by step: You click on a node and reveal it's truth-value (some text appears explaining which node changed and why). Press a key -> the next affected node gets updated. Until affected nodes are updated. Later you don't have to click, there is a small pause between each change. That way you could see the effect of measuring a node and understand why the effect was the way it was, instead of ... trying to work that information out for yourself with only being able to see the aftermath.
• You should make it more linear. Put the tutorial and the main game into one. I don't see the use of this decision between introductory and intermediate psychology.
• Have the player start out with much simpler networks and infinite energy.
• Introduce new types of nodes during the game, not all at once in the tutorial. Every time you introduce something new, go back to simple networks with unlimited energy.

Of those, explaining or simplifying the notation seems the most important to me.