Original post: http://bearlamp.com.au/preference-over-null-preference/
For some parts of life it is better to exist with a prepared preference, for other parts of life it is better to exist without a prepared preference. This is going to be about looking at the sets of preferences and what might be better in each scenario.
On the object level some examples:
The specific examples are irrelevant but hopefully you get the idea. Having a preference is about having full set and reducing it to a smaller set. Example: one colour is my favourite out of the full set of colours.
In contrast, a null preference might look like this:
While null preferences are technically just another form of preference, I want to separate them out for a moment so that we can talk about them.
Deciding whether you should hold a preference, even if you didn't previously have one - can be an effective strategy for making decisions where there were previously difficulties. The benefit of having a preference is that it stands as a pre-commitment to yourself to maintain existing choices on certain choice-nodes.
The disadvantage of using this strategy is that if your preference fails to be fulfilled then you are at risk of disappointment.
If you get to the supermarket and can't decide which type of jam (or jelly for american;) to buy, you can consult an existing preference for blueberry jam and skip the whole idea of considering other types of jam.
For preference failure, if you prefer blueberry but the store doesn't have any, you risk leaving without jam, or being left with a choice less desirable like strawberry.
Nothing about your preference on the world effects the world until you interact with it. For the jam example: deciding you like blueberry will not cause blueberry jam to be available to you. Modifying the map will not immediately impact the territory. If you go on an endless tirade everywhere you travel - of demanding blueberry jam, chances are that at some point people will be more motivated to be prepared for the mad blueberry jammer. However the instant that you decide to have a preference, you have not yet caused any impact on the world. So the instantaneous effect of having a preference is nothing.
There will be times where you are not in control of the choice nodes available to you. There are times when you will be. That doesn't seem relevant to which is better.
There will be times when there will be more choices and times when there will be less. That doesn't seem relevant.
There will be times when your preference will be easily fulfilled and times when it will be hard or impossible. That doesn't seem relevant.
There are big expensive important choices, and small irrelevant insignificant choices. Apart from desiring to spending more time on big expensive important choices, that doesn't seem relevant either.
There will be days with more willpower and days with less willpower, (and days exist on which willpower does not deplete).
I don't know. What do you do now? Can we derive knowledge from the pre-existing system to make progress on what should change towards the future.
Try this:
As I get to this point I don't have a defining thesis for this concept. I don't have an answer as to whether preference can be ruled better than a null. Or that you might want to reduce your identity down until you have all null preferences, leading you to flexibility and freedom (of course such a reduction leads to a burden of maintaining the system of nulls as well).
I do want to open up this concept to you to decide and influence the use of the idea. If you hold a preference too strongly you risk the possibility of making the wrong choice over and over. If you hold it too loosely you risk indifference towards the world (maybe part of the answer is to look at where you are now in terms of decision problems and consider which direction you want to travel towards). I don't know.
Meta: 2 hours writing, then I got stuck when I realised I didn't have a concluding thesis (didn't actually have the answers) but I wanted to release the incomplete concept anyway to see if anyone else could come up with ideas around it.
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Original post: http://bearlamp.com.au/new-music-powers/
I have written before about how I am pretty terrible at canvassing music in my head. This lends to the appalling ability (to musically oriented people) to be able to do things like listen to the same song on repeat 500 times or more in a row without being bothered by it either way. I never cared more than the sense of "this is interesting but irrelevant" on the idea.
Being indifferent to music has given me the ability to be completely useless at holding a musical preference, or explore the value of music in terms of going to music events, or participating in musical experiences.
This week something changed! Or more accurately last week. Last week I was listening to a piece for the n'th time, but at the same time was quite badly sleep deprived. As I was listening the music started falling apart. Different parts of the music changed volume so that I could isolate different instruments and follow different features of the music. At the time, being a bit sleep deprived I took it as a warning that maybe it was time to go to bed. hint hint: your going a little nuts.
Today I noticed I can still do it. When I am no longer sleep deprived I can pay attention to music in a different way than I used to be able to. I can single out the drums and only "listen" to that part, or the guitar, or the vocals. (it's pop music on the radio).
Of course the reason I bothered to write about it, and the reason that it's interesting is; as half the readers can probably imagine - I told a musical friend of mine that I had developed new powers and he said,
Wait, people can't normally do that?
So I get to add this to the pile of typical mind, sensory perception assumptions that we make when we interpret our own individual world through our own senses. What if your's worked a bit differently? How much would that fundamentally change how you operate as a human? How much you assume about the world around you and how it works? And how everyone else works?
Question: What are your natural assumptions about how your senses work? Have you ever noticed anyone else acting on different basic natural assumptions?
Meta: this took 45mins to write.
Hi, I'm curious what rationalists (you) think of this video if you have time:
Why Rationality Is WRONG! - A Critique Of Rationalism https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iaV6S45AD1w 1 h 22 min 47 s
Personally, I don't know much about all of the different obstacles in figuring out the truth so I can't do this myself. I simply bought it because it made sense to me, but if you can somehow go meta on the already meta, I would appreciate it.
Tried listening.
3 minutes: most scientists are wrong.
doubt the rest is worth it.
bring about the future we would rather live in
Attacking the ability of journalists to uncover misdeads of powerful individuals seems to be the opposite. Investigative journalism is under enough attacks as it is.
Shortly after the very early effects, it will have a net positive effect of creating news of positive value, protecting the media from escalating negativity, and bringing about the future we want to see in the world.
The future I want to live in isn't one where the 4th estage can't fights against misdeeds by powerful people.
powerful people.
interesting you say that because I suggested that the individual was not powerful and the media was.
Original post: http://bearlamp.com.au/changing-time-zones/
With a few of my new organisation and time management prediction algorithms I have found that I can plan down to a few minutes accurately. I noticed something today that surprised me.
I wear two watches. The history of this goes back more than 10 years, but today I wear two watches because one of them is analog and never runs out of battery and the other is digital and tracks heart rate, skin temp, perspiration and other metrics while also being a smart digital watch and telling the time, but only has a 4 day long battery life.
My digital watch updates to whatever time my phone is set to, which updates to global servers etc. so that watch is the right time. I accidentally set my analog watch fast and then noticed I would get places just on time, or quite very exactly on time instead of 5 minutes late. I really lucked out with this behaviour, because it took me a while to figure out what is happening. Or what I think is happening.
When I am running late, I check the time in a system 1 way, which means I glance at my watch and continue about my day. Then my brain takes the information granted by the visual angle of the hands and converts that into time for me to work out if I am running late or on time. By having my analog watch fast, I will take actions that involve assumptions that the time is actually faster than it is. For example, deciding to leave my house because I "should have left already", instead of spending another 5 minutes on whatever I am doing.
If I am planning tasks for the future, or doing other time-checking behaviour, I do it using system 2, I naturally check both my watches so that I get an accurate feel for the time now.
Today I was struck by the idea I was suddenly running late. Which is not a feeling I was expecting given that I was in fact running squarely on time. Where what actually transpired was that I was looking at computer time when I decided to go in the shower, and when I got out of the shower I looked at analog time. Which put me squarely past the "running right on time" and into the "definitely running late". In other words I changed time zone on myself.
This whole post is to note that noticing when things surprise you is an excellent habit to have. This case was pretty cut and dry as I analysed why I was late and concluded that I in fact was not. But the next thing to surprise me might not be so obvious.
Question: What has surprised you recently? What happened, how did your map of the world fail to explain what was going to happen?
Meta: this took an hour to write.
Original post: http://bearlamp.com.au/a-model-of-arguments/
Why do we argue, when we could be discussing things in a productive manner? Arguments often occur because the parties involved simply don't have the tools to transmit their ideas clearly. In this kind of situation, the whole conversation can completely break down. It’s easy to spend a lot of time saying "You're wrong", without accomplishing anything.
Let's imagine two people having an argument, represented by a Venn diagram. A in the black, and B in the blue. They each see the issue slightly differently. The blue circle to represent B’s opinion and a black circle to represent A’s opinion. The concept of “You’re wrong” falls into the area of describing the other person’s ideas.
Person A says, "You're wrong" to Person B. A description of the state of affairs of B’s ideas. Not one that really represents A’s own ideas. Naturally, Person B says, “No you’re wrong” back, equally making the unfounded claim on A’s conceptual real-estate. The thing that is hard to demonstrate is the conflict that is accidentally generated by crossing into each other’s territory to declare things.
To do this creates a crossing-over of ideas.
We don’t even need to know what the argument is about, but we can expect something like this to happen:
Now suppose instead of Person A saying, "You're wrong", where they place the burden of argument (and proof) on the opposition, they now say, "We disagree".
Person B can now continue to make the same argument of "You're wrong". But so long as Person A shrugs and replies "We disagree", there is no conflict in the argument.
For some Person Bs, Person A might get lucky, and the two could end up with a happy middle ground of "Yes, we disagree". This is already a step in the right direction, and will let the pair continue to sort out precisely where and how they disagree On the other hand, a stubborn Person B will still present a problem.
Hey, that's the internet for you! You win some, you lose some.
Nonetheless, the shared ground offered by "We disagree" will often spur constructive discussion.
As it turns out, there is another way. When you go to understand someone else's idea, instead of starting with "You are wrong", consider starting with, "I am wrong". Right from the start, this gives you an advantage. Rather than starting off from a position of conflict, you start off in a position of equality.
Sometimes the other party won't accept your peace offering. They will bristle and rage and prepare for the offensive.
But it's far more common to see an offer of equality met by an acceptance of that equality. Instead of things going downhill, this usually happens:
Or this:
And a pleasant discussion can ensue.
Why is this so great? Because what we're aiming for here - what we really want out of discussions - is this:
What we are aiming for is to trade knowledge until we can conclude the answers in the end.
This style of measured, polite and constructive conversation can only occur when parties meet each other on equal terms.
If there's one lesson to take home from this post, it's that the way you deliver your argument can easily be what makes it powerful. If you come in throwing punches, ready to take your opponent down a notch or two, you might enjoy yourself - but don't expect to have a constructive discussion. Whereas if you approach your opponent as an equal from the shared ground of "We disagree", or even from the vulnerable position of "I am wrong" - well, what reasonable opponent could disagree with that?
This post took me weeks of thinking about, and only 3 hours to write down and draw the first time. But it was rubbish. Didn’t make sense. The rewrite was contributed by the Captain and the slack, taking another 2 hours. This version gets the point of the idea across. I sent the original post to Tim@waitbutwhy but he is very busy and declined to draw pictures to go along with it.
Cross posted to lesswrong:
Original post: http://bearlamp.com.au/no-negative-press-agreement/
What is a no negative press agreement?
A no negative press agreement binds a media outlet's consent to publish information provided by a person with the condition that they be not portrayed negatively by the press.
Why would a person want that?
In recognising that the press has powers above and beyond every-day people to publish information and spread knowledge and perspective about an issue that can be damaging to an individual. An individual while motivated by the appeal of publicity, is also concerned about the potential damage caused by negative press.
Every person is the hero of their own story, from one's own perspective they performed actions that were justified and motivated by their own intention and worldview, no reasonable person would be able to tell their story (other than purposefully) in which they are spun as the negative conspirator of a plot, actively causing negative events on the world for no reason.
Historically, humans have been motivated to care more about bad news than good news, for reasons that expand on the idea that bad news might ring your death (and be a cause of natural selection) and good news would be irrelevant for survival purposes. Today we are no longer in that historic period, yet we still pay strong attention to bad news. It's clear that bad news can personally effect individuals - not only those in the stories, but others experiencing the bad news can be left with a negative worldview or motivated to be upset or distraught. In light of the fact that bad news is known to spread more than good news, and also risks negatively affecting us mentally, we are motivated to choose to avoid bad news, both in not creating it, not endorsing it and not aiding in it's creation.
The binding agreement is designed to do several things:
Does this limit news-maker's freedom to publish?
That is not the intent. On the outset, it's easy to think that it could have that effect, and perhaps in a very shortsighted way it might have that effect. Shortly after the very early effects, it will have a net positive effect of creating news of positive value, protecting the media from escalating negativity, and bringing about the future we want to see in the world. If it limits media outlets in any way it should be to stop them from causing harm. At which point any non-compliance by a media entity will signal the desire to act as agents of harm in the world.
Why would a media outlet be an agent of harm? Doesn't that go against the principles of no negative press?
While media outlets (or humans), set out with the good intentions of not having a net negative effect on the world, they can be motivated by other concerns. For example, the value of being more popular, or the direction from which they are paid for their efforts (for example advertising revenue). The concept of competing commitment, and being motivated by conflicting goals is best covered by Scott under the name moloch.
The no negative press agreement is an attempt to create a commons which binds all relevant parties to action better than the potential for a tragedy. This commons has a desire to grow and maintain itself, and is motivated to maintain itself. If any media outlets are motivated to defect, they are to be penalised by both the other press and the public.
How do I encourage a media outlet to comply with no negative press?
Ask them to publish a policy with regard to no negative press. If you are an individual interested in interacting with the media, and are concerned with the risks associated with negative press, you can suggest an individual binding agreement in the interim of the media body designing and publishing a relevant policy.
I think someone violated the no negative press policy, what should I do?
At the time of writing, no one is bound by the concept of no negative press. Should there be desire and pressure in the world to motivate entities to comply, they are more likely to comply. To create the pressure a few actions can be taken:
Meta: this took 45mins to write.
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Tried listening.
doubt the rest is worth it.
Oh god. This is really bad.
Someone should tell him about the straw vulcan.
The more we (lw'ers) are tied to the word "Rationality". That should happen less. If you feel personally affected by the idea that someone says this part of your identity is wrong, then maybe it's time to be more fox and less hedgehog.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Hedgehog_and_the_Fox