I ran across this article: The Much Forgotten and Ignored Need to Have Workable Solutions, that might interest some, either for the Rationality or the Effective Altruism aspects.

For a very rough summary: Academia (more specifically, the humanities) gives too much credit to describing problems (i.e. complaining) and not enough on thinking about good solutions, which is the difficult and important part.

Some quotes if you don't want to read the whole thing:

Of course the biggest assumption of all that is being shown to be inconsistent with actual behaviour is that of rationality – Richard Thaler’s Misbehaving and other behavioural research is showing that people are subject to various biases and often do not make rational decisions. This is especially scary for theoretical economists, whose entire universe pretty much depends on the rational representative household.

If their assumptions are rather strict and may not hold up in real-life, their call for a policy response is technically null and void. A good example is with auctions, where previously designers (economists) would rely heavily on the Revenue Equivalence Theorem in creating the rules of auctions. Yet, many of them forget that the assumptions of Revenue Equivalence aren’t always satisfied, for example the possibility of collusion, which can prove to significantly reduce the revenue of the seller.

The best paper on a time economists forgot about ECON 101 has to be this review of European 3G auctions. What was most clear for me from Klemperer’s work is that you can get all up in complex auction theory and mechanism design, but if you forget how very basic concepts in economics work in conjunction with that, you can get easily derailed. They basically put the cart before the horse – they forgot that they had to satisfy their own assumptions before applying their model to reality.

More questions: is the policy they suggest cumbersome, intangible and unable to be monitored for success? This is another pet peeve of mine – my blood boils when people say “We need to fix gender stereotypes! We need to create awareness! We need to change societal attitudes!” without suggesting how it should be done, how this monumental task will be measured for good performance and how they propose regulating all the sources of these things.

Also, how would they justify that spending? Have they thought about the parameters which would determine success or failure? What kind of campaign or agency are they suggesting to carry out these monumental tasks? What are the conditions for success?

Last is that sometimes when people chuck the words “Policy Implications” around, they often have no idea what a deep and complicated field policy design actually is. To be fair, I’m still learning about it and I don’t expect university students or even researchers not involved in related areas to have a full understanding of it.

However, it’s not like economists don’t have a basic understanding of incentives, principal-agent relationships, transaction-cost economics and externalities. Those four areas should be enough to at least attempt a more rigorous analysis of possible policies, rather than simply providing an offhand description of the policy based on a single relationship.

At the end of the day, there’s just a lot of arrogance among some researchers who like to imply that their research necessitates action – yet they haven’t put any meaningful or strategic thought whether the research truly necessitates action in the first place (especially in comparison to cost-equivalent policies in similar areas, or dealing with similar problems), whether the action will actually lead to the desired outcome (checking if assumptions are realistic/addressing relevant design issues) or whether there will be any undesirable externalities or further implications of the policy.

[...]

Maybe the worst thing about all of this is that when I was growing up, I always looked up to people who were aware of issues outside themselves, especially if the issues didn’t necessarily affect them. They seemed so cool and aware and intelligent. I’d watch these people with great admiration for their insight.

Now a lot of that is gone. The people about whom once I thought, wow, this person is so aware and intelligent, I now realize aren’t actually that intelligent. They’re just pretending to be. They’re just better at vocalizing some of the things that anyone can see and turning them into long spiels about what’s wrong with the world. They haven’t really thought about it.

(ironically (intentionally?), the post is mostly complaining about a problem, without offering a workable solution, but I still liked it)

Discussion article for the meetup : Paris Meetup: Saturday, July 11

Discussion article for the meetup : Paris Meetup: Saturday, July 11

Some moral questions I’ve seen discussed here:

• A trolley is about to run over five people, and the only way to prevent that is to push a fat bystander in front of the trolley to stop it. Should I?
• Is it better to allow 3^^^3 people to get a dust speck in their eye, or one man to be tortured for 50 years?
• Who should I save, if I have to pick between one very talented artist, and five random nobodies?
• Do I identify as an utilitarian? a consequentialist? a deontologist? a virtue ethicist?

Yet I spend time and money on my children and parents, that may be “better” spent elsewhere under many moral systems. And if I cared as much about my parents and children as I do about random strangers, many people would see me as somewhat of a monster.

In other words, “commonsense moral judgements” finds it normal to care differently about different groups; in roughly decreasing order:

• immediate family
• friends, pets, distant family
• neighbors, acquaintances, coworkers
• fellow citizens
• foreigners
• sometimes, animals
• (possibly, plants...)

… and sometimes, we’re even perceived as having a *duty* to care more about one group than another (if someone saved three strangers instead of two of his children, how would he be seen?).

In consequentialist / utilitarian discussions, a regular discussion is “who counts as agents worthy of moral concern” (humans? sentient beings? intelligent beings? those who feel pain? how about unborn beings?), which covers the later part of the spectrum. However I have seen little discussion of the earlier part of the spectrum (friends and family vs. strangers), and it seems to be the one on which our intuitions agree the most reliably - which is why I think it deserves more of our attention (and having clear ideas about it might help about the rest).

Let’s consider two rough categories of decisions:

• impersonal decisions: what should government policy be? By what standard should we judge moral systems? On which cause is charity money best spent? Who should I hire?
• personal decisions: where should I go on holidays this summer? Should I lend money to an unreliable friend? Should I take a part-time job so I can take care of my children and/or parents better? How much of my money should I devote to charity? In which country should I live?

Impartial utilitarianism and consequentialism (like the question at the head of this post) make sense for impersonal decisions (including when an individual is acting in a role that require impartiality - a ruler, a hiring manager, a judge), but clash with our usual intuitions for personal decisions. Is this because under those moral systems we should apply the same impartial standards for our personal decisions, or because those systems are only meant for discussing impersonal decisions, and personal decisions require additional standards ?

I don’t really know, and because of that, I don’t know whether or not I count as a consequentialist (not that I mind much apart from confusion during the yearly survey; not knowing my values would be a problem, but not knowing which label I should stick on them? eh, who cares).

I also have similar ambivalence about Effective Altruism:

• If it means that I should care as much about poor people in third world countries than I do about my family and friends, then it’s a bit hard to swallow.
• However, if it means that assuming one is going to spend money to help people, one should better make sure that money helps them in the most effective way possible.

Scott’s “give ten percent” seems like a good compromise on the first point.

So what do you think? How does "caring for your friend’s and family" fit in a consequentialist/utilitarian framework ?

Other places this has been discussed:

• This was a big debate in ancient China, between the Confucians who considered it normal to have “care with distinctions” (愛有差等), whereas Mozi preached “universal love” (兼愛) in opposition to that, claiming that care with distinctions was a source of conflict and injustice.
• “Impartiality” is a big debate in philosophy - the question of whether partiality is acceptable or even required.
• The philosophical debate between “egoism and altruism” seems like it should cover this, but it feels a bit like a false dichotomy to me (it’s not even clear whether “care only for one’s friends and family” counts as altruism or egoism)
• “Special obligations” (towards Friends and family, those one made a promise to) is a common objection to impartial, impersonal moral theories
• The Ethics of Care seem to cover some of what I’m talking about.
• A middle part of the spectrum - fellow citizens versus foreigners - is discussed under Cosmopolitanism.
• Peter Singer’s “expanding circle of concern” presents moral progress as caring for a wider and wider group of people (counterpoint: Gwern's Narrowing Circle) (I haven't read it, so can't say much)

Other related points:

• The use of “care” here hides an important distinction between “how one feels” (My dog dying makes me feel worse than hearing about a schoolbus in China falling off a cliff) and “how one is motivated to act” (I would sacrifice my dog to save a schoolbus in China from falling off a cliff). Yet I think we have the gradations on both criteria.
• Hanson’s “far mode vs. near mode” seems pretty relevant here.

Discussion article for the meetup : Paris Meetup

Discussion article for the meetup : Paris Meetup

Sometimes our minds suddenly "click" and we see a topic in a new light. Or sometimes we think we understand an idea, think it's stupid and ignore attempts to explain it ("yeah, I already know that"), until we suddenly realize that our understanding was wrong.

This kind of insight is supposedly hard to transmit, but it might be worth a try!

So, what kind of important and valuable insights do you wish you had earlier? Could you try to explain briefly what led to the insight, in a way that might help others get it?

So I have a three-year old kid, and will usually read or tell him a bedtime story.

That is a nice opportunity to introduce new concepts, but my capacity for improvisation is limited, especially towards the end of the day. So I'm asking the good people on LessWrong for ideas. How would you wrap various lesswrongish ideas in a short story a little kid would pay attention to?

I'm mostly interested in the aspects of "practical rationality" that aren't going to be taught at school or in children's books or children's TV shows - so things like Sunk Costs, taking the outside view, wondering which side is true instead of arguing for a side, etc.

Pointers to outside sources of such stories are welcome too!

Edit: actually, if you want to share ideas of games or activities of the same kind, go ahead! :)

This is a detailed description of my reading and learning workflow. You may find ideas to adopt, or maybe you can tell me what I could be doing differently!

Overview

I've been using Spaced Repetition on and Off for the past few years, and have built a solid Anki habit this last three months, to the point where now I wonder how I could read books without entering the important points into Anki.

I recommend getting a habit of using Spaced Repetition, it's a small habit that doesn't require too much willpower (it can feel like a game, if done right!), and is useful in the long term.

Daily routine: transit

I have a dozen or so Anki decks. Some I consider “valuable” (Algorithms, Driving Code, Git commands), some less so (Paris Metro, Hiragana and Katakana, Vim commands, …). I also carry around a book, notebook and four-color pen.

On any downtime (waiting for transit, waiting in line in a store, standing in crowded transit…), I’ll review my decks, starting with those with the most due cards.

On some days I may not finish all the decks, but that’s no big deal; with an hour and a half of transit per day, I’ll get to them eventually.

If I can sit for a bit of time, and don’t have too many outstanding cards, I’ll usually read a book (or work on stuff in my notebook if I have some stuff that needs brainstorming).

Reading books

If I’m reading fiction, I’m relaxing, I don’t need to try to remember anything :)

If I’m reading non-fiction, I’ll usually have an index card as a bookmark and place to take notes - things to look up, summaries and rephrasings, diagrams, page numbers of parts to come back to, and of course things to enter in Anki (though I’ll sometimes just directly enter them in my phone).

I’ll reread my notes when I finished the book or a big chapter, or when I come back to the book after a long time, and eventually enter them in Anki (usually with Anki's web interface, which is quicker than typing on a phone).

Reading online material

I have a bunch of Google Docs where I take notes on various topics (why Google Docs? I can search them, share them if needed, work with them from various places). If I’m reading something I want to remember, I’ll usually have a corresponding google doc open in another window (so I can see both at the same time - hunting through tabs breaks the flow). My notes will be a mix of

• URLs marked as “to read” or “read” (with maybe a summary of what it’s about)
• Verbatim quotes
• Rephrasings, insights, questions, brainstoriming
• “anki format” cards (pairs of question, then answer), for example, from my Haskell deck:

How do I declare that Integer is of class Eq, using IntegerEq?
instance Eq Integer where
  x == y                =  x `integerEq` y

(note that in this case it's three lines, when entering into Anki I'll have to put the first line as question and the two other ones as answer)

Building the anki cards in Google docs makes it easier to make related cards by copying and pasting the same question and changing little bits ("Question: ???, B and C", "Question: A, ??? and C", "Question: A, B and ???")

In the evening, when I don’t have the energy for something more difficult, I’ll occasionally copy batches of stuff from Google Docs into Anki. To do that first I copy everything into a plain text file (to strip all formatting, otherwise things look weird in Anki and it’s distracting), and then cut-paste the cards into Anki by alt-tabbing between the text file and the Anki web interface (this sounds cumbersome but can be done fairly quickly using pretty much only the keyboard).

What if I get behind?

No big deal, I’ll review the “important” decks first, and then eventually catch up on the rest (Some people recommend using one big deck for everything; I prefer having several small decks because it makes it easier to catch up with what matters if I “fall of the bandwagon”).

What I learned

• Make Stupid and easy cards; I aim for having answers that are a single word
• I delete or suspend cards that I suspect are a waste of time (because I don’t care about learning that; because it’s too difficult; because I suspect it’s wrong).
• Double-sided cards are useful for learning languages (I used to make both directions independently)
• If you're learning a foreign language with a weird alphabet, it's worth the extra effort of finding an imput system on your phone (or computer) that handles that alphabet.

What I’d like to improve

Batch-entering data is a bit complicated, I wish I could just select a bunch of text in google docs and say "just put all this in Anki". However, as a low-energy habit batch-copying stuff feels a bit like a game so I don't mind that much.

• I wish I could put some decks at “low throttle” and some at “high throttle” (say, I want to learn 20 driving code cards a day, but only 3 vim cards). Anki has a setting that says how many new cards you get, but it's global; so either I change that setting all the time (which can be done fairly quickly), or control the influx by leaving stuff in Google Docs.
• I wish I could control randomization: just select a bunch of cards and say "randomize these". There's some cards I want to see in a random order, and some where I'd rather see them in the original order.
• Anki is bad at handling synchronization, if I used Anki on my phone and want to use the web interface, I need to synchronize first, which takes a few minutes and may fail; otherwise there will be a conflict and I will have to pick which of the two datasets I keep. This is another reason why I prefer to use Google Docs for staging: waiting for synchronization breaks my flow.
• How do people use evernote or supermemo?

More resources on Spaced Repetition

The article on the Wiki points to a few discussions here of Spaced Repetition (which are worth reading if you want to see how other people use it), including Gwern's excellent article.

How about you? Do you use Spaced Repetition? Have you tried, but give up? Do you have a workflow with some bits that differ from mine? Do you have any tips of things I could do better?

Discussion article for the meetup : Paris Meetup: Sunday, October 6: New people, games...

Discussion article for the meetup : Paris Meetup: Sunday, October 6: New people, games...

diegocaleiro wrote:

I'm tired of people never, ever, ever, EVER stopping 2 hours to 1) Think of what their goals are 2)Checking if their current path leads to desired goals 3)Correcting course and 4)Creating a system to verify, in the future, whether goals are being achieved. I'm really tired of that. Really.

... so we may want to remind and encourage each other to do so, and exchange tips!

• Have you thought about your life goals recently?
• Do you know what your long-term and medium-term goals are?
• If you're facing big problems or annoyances, have you thought of ways of solving them?
• Do you have a system you use regularly that pushes you in the right direction?

See also: Humans are not automatically strategic, levels of action.

Discussion article for the meetup : Paris Meetup: Sunday, May 26.

Discussion article for the meetup : Paris Meetup: Sunday, May 26.