Epiphany

Ah! Good point! Karma for you! Now I will think about whether there is a way to figure out the truth despite this.

Ideas?

Replying to2012 Survey Results

While mistakes can of course go in either direction, they don't actually go in either direction.

I intuit that this is likely to be a popular view among sceptics, but I do not recall ever being presented with research that supports this by anyone. To avoid the lure of "undiscriminating scepticism", I am requesting to see the evidence of this.

I agree that, for numerous reasons, self-reported IQ scores, SAT scores, ACT scores and any other scores are likely to have some amount of error, and I think it's likely for the room for error to be pretty big. On that we agree.

An average thirty points higher than normal seems to me... (read more)

Replying to2012 Survey Results

Your unintentional lie explanation does not explain how the SAT scores ended up so closely synchronised to the IQ scores - as we know, one common sign of a lie is that the details do not add up. Synchronising one's SAT scores to the same level as one's IQ scores would most likely require conscious effort, making the discrepancy obvious to the LessWrong members who took the survey. If you would argue that they were likely to have chosen corresponding SAT scores in some way that did not require them to become consciously aware of discrepancies in order to synchronize the scores, how would you support the argument... (read more)

Replying to2012 Survey Results

This would be a good point in the event that we were not discussing IQ scores generated by an IQ test selected by Yvain, which many people took at the same time as filling out the survey. This method (and timing) rules out problems due to relying on estimates alone, most of the potential for mis-remembering, (neither of which should be assumed to be likely to result in an average score that's 30 points too high, as mistakes like these could go in either direction), and, assuming that the IQ test Yvain selected was pretty good, it also rules out the problem of the test being seriously skewed. If you... (read more)

Replying toRationalist sites worth archiving?

Rationalist sites worth archiving?

I did not intend to imply that you failed to back up your own data. That was intended as an amusing compliment.

Replying toRationalist sites worth archiving?

Rationalist sites worth archiving?

gwern.net

Both of the citations I was given by you guys said clearly that they were uncertain about the connection between race and IQ. That is the reason I don't agree - because even your citations do not agree. I assume those are the best citations you have, so that your citations do not agree with you makes your belief look very bad indeed.

Also, by arguing that the reason I don't agree is because I am statistically innumerate and that the reason I don't agree is because I'm too inept to understand, you have made an ad hominem fallacy. Attacking the person does zilch to support your argument.

I can't believe I just saw an ad hominem attack on LessWrong. That is the the most obvious behavior that one avoids if one wants to have a rational debate.

Well, seeing an unknown man approaching you at night

Actually, it is far more prudent to avoid a stranger approaching me at night, regardless of his race - depending on the environment I am in.

If he is approaching from a dark alley, I will head away from him, whatever his race. If he approaches me at a party full of friends, I will speak to him.

The crime statistics are not so incredibly different for blacks and whites that you can simply trust all of the whites.

You can believe whatever you want to believe, it's just that such an attitude looks strange here.

That is not my attitude. I have been asking you for research. Did you see what I discovered about "The Bell Curve"? What do you say about that?

Near-Term Risk: Killer Robots a Threat to Freedom and Democracy

Actually, the most useful application for individual businesses in this case would be (in the event that IQ tests are good at predicting who will be a good worker) to request IQ scores as part of a job application, not to discriminate based on race - this is not to say that it would be useful for society as a whole. I am not sure what it would do to society as a whole. On the one hand, if there's a correlation between race and IQ, more people of each race with a low IQ might find themselves worse off. However, if employers become more willing to hire black... (read more)

-3

Poll - Is endless September a threat to LW and what should be done?

13y

A new TED talk video just came out by Daniel Suarez, author of Daemon, explaining how autonomous combat drones with a capability called "lethal autonomy" pose a threat to democracy. Lethal autonomy is what it sounds like - the ability of a robot to kill a human without requiring a human to make the decision.

He explains that a human decision-maker is not a necessity for combat drones to function. This has potentially catastrophic consequences, as it would allow a small number of people to concentrate a very large amount of power, ruining the checks and balances of power between governments and their people and the checks and balances of power between different... (read 501 more words →)

105

Female Test Subject - Convince Me To Get Cryo

13y

Various people raised concerns that growth might ruin the culture after reading my "LessWrong could grow a lot" thread. There has been some discussion about whether endless September, a phenomenon that kills online discussion groups, is a significant threat to LessWrong and what can be done. I really care about it, so I volunteered to code a solution myself for free if needed. Luke invited debate on the subject (the debate is here) and will be sent the results of this poll and asked to make a decision. It was suggested by him in an email that I wait a little while and then post my poll (meta threads are apparently annoying... (read 482 more words →)

262

Elitism isn't necessary for refining rationality.

13y

I heard that women are difficult to convince when it comes to signing up for cryo. In mentioning cryonics to a dying person, there seems to be a consensus that it's not going to happen. I encountered a post: Years saved: Cryonics vs VillageReach, which addressed my main objection (that the amount of money spent on cryo may be better spent on saving starving children, especially considering that you could save multiple children for that amount of money with high probability whereas you save only one life with low probability by paying for cryo). Now I'm open to being persuaded.

My first instinct was to go read a lot about cryo, but it... (read 292 more words →)

176

Call For Agreement: Should LessWrong have better protection against cultural collapse?

13y

Note: After writing this post, I realized there's a lot I need to learn about this subject. I've been thinking a lot about how I use the word "elitism" and what it meant to me. I was unaware that there are a large number of people who use the word to describe themselves and mean something totally different from the definition that I had. This resulted in my perception that people who were using the word to describe themselves were being socially inept. I now realize that it's not a matter of social ineptness, that it may be more of a matter of political sides. I also realized that mind-kill reactions... (read 1808 more words →)

-32

Preventing discussion from being watered down by an "endless September" user influx.

13y

As you are probably already aware, many internet forums experience a phenomenon known as "eternal September". Named after a temporary effect where the influx of college freshmen would throw off a group's culture every September, eternal September is essentially what happens when standards of discourse and behavior degrade in a group to the point where the group loses it's original culture. I began focusing on solving this problem and offered to volunteer my professional web services to get it done because:

- When I explained that LessWrong could grow a lot and volunteered to help with growth, various users expressed concerns about growth not always being good because having too many new users... (read 2645 more words →)

LessWrong could grow a lot, but we're doing it wrong.

13y

In the thread "LessWrong could grow a lot, but we're doing it wrong.", I explained why LessWrong has the potential to grow quite a lot faster in my opinion, and volunteered to help LessWrong grow. Of course, a lot of people were concerned about the fact that a large quantity of new members will not directly translate to higher quality contributions or beneficial learning and social experiences in discussions, so I realized it would be better to help protect LessWrong first. I do not assume that fast growth has to cause a lowering of standards. I think fast growth can be good if the right people are joining and all goes... (read 5652 more words →)

102

Enjoy solving "impossible" problems? Group project!

13y

How do I know this? I got a copy of the website analytics.

The bounce rate for LessWrong's home page is 60%!

To be clear: Over half the people who visit LessWrong are going away without even clicking anything.

Yet how many NEW visitors are there? Almost half of the visitors are new!

Granted, new visitor statistics aren't perfect, but that's a LOT of people.

Simple math should tell us this:

If we got the bounce rate down around 30% (a reasonable rate for a good site) by making sure every visitor sees something awesome immediately, AND make sure that each visitor can quickly gauge how much they're going to relate to the community (assuming the new... (read 866 more words →)

107

Number of Members on LessWrong

14y

In the Muehlhauser-Hibbard Dialogue on AGI, Hibbard states it will be "impossible to decelerate AI capabilities" but Luke counters with "Persuade key AGI researchers of the importance of safety ... If we can change the minds of a few key AGI scientists, it may be that key insights into AGI are delayed by years or decades." and before I read that dialogue, I had come up with three additional ideas on Heading off a near-term AGI arms race. Bill Hibbard may be right that "any effort expended on that goal could be better applied to the political and technical problems of AI safety" but I doubt he's right that it's impossible.

How do... (read 746 more words →)

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