To use technical terminology rather than layman's:

A preference is demonstrated when an organism consistently makes one decision instead of another. It is a behavioral concept.

A motivation refers to the underlying cause of the organism's preference. Generally, these are divided into extrinsic and intrinsic motivations although the exact nature of this distinction or whether this is the best way to classify the cognitive processes underlying preference is a point of dispute. The word "motivation" by itself is generally used to refer to intrinsic motivation which is a cognitive term. Extrinsic motivation is a behavioral term. Extrinsic motivation is also often referred to as reinforcement and punishment under the behaviorist classification system.

Liking is distinct from preferring.

I have not a clue whether this sort of marketing is a good idea. Let me be clear what I mean: I think there's maybe a 30-40% chance that Gleb is having a net positive impact through these outreach efforts. I also think there's maybe a 10-20% chance that he's having a horrific long-term negative impact through these outreach efforts. Thus the whole thing makes me uncomfortable.

So here's some of the concerns I see; I've gone to some effort to be fair to Gleb, and not assume anything about his thoughts or motivations:

• By presenting these ideas in weakened forms (either by giving short or invalid argumentation, or putting it in venues or contexts with negative associations), he may be memetically immunizing people against the stronger forms of the ideas.
• By teaching people using arguments from authority, he may be worsening the primary "sanity waterline" issues rather than improving them. The articles, materials, and comments I've seen make heavy use of language like "science-based", "research-based" and "expert". The people reading these articles in general have little or no skill at evaluating such claims, so that they effectively become arguments from authority. By rhetorically convincing them to adopt the techniques or thoughts, he's spreading quite possibly helpful ideas, but reinforcing bad habits around accepting ideas.
• Gleb's writing style strikes me as very unauthentic feeling. Let me be clear I don't mean to accuse him of anything negative; but I intuitively feel a very negative reaction to his writing. It triggers emotional signals in me of attempted deception and rhetorical tricks (whether or not this is his intent!) His writing risks associating "rationality" with such signals (should other people share my reactions) and again causing immunization, or even catalyzing opposition.

An illustration of the nightmare scenario from such an outreach effort would be that, 3 years from now when I attempt to talk to someone about biases, they respond by saying "Oh god don't give me that '6 weird tips' bullshit about 'rational thinking', and spare me your godawful rhetoric, gtfo."

Like I said at the start, I don't know which way it swings, but those are my thoughts and concerns. I imagine they're not new concerns to Gleb. I still have these concerns after reading all of the mitigating argumentation he has offered so far, and I'm not sure of a good way to collect evidence about this besides running absurdly large long-term "consumer" studies.

I do imagine he plans to continue his efforts, and thus we'll find out eventually how this turns out.

Most people are bad at understanding. As students they usually prefer to memorize things, because it is a strategy that works best in short term. When they grow up and become teachers, they recite things to students and expect them to memorize it.

In math, in addition to memorizing facts verbally, there is also a lot of procedural knowledge (solving equations). This is probably one of the reasons most people hate math. But even the procedural knowledge can be taught in the memorizing way; only the verbal memory is replaced by the muscle memory.

Understanding is a step yet beyond procedural knowledge. Most people don't get there; even most teachers don't.

And being able to explain stuff to beginners -- that's the ultimate art. It requires not only having a good understanding of the topic, but also being able to untangle it to a linear thread that can be gradually fed to a human and will allow them to build a proper model of the topic. This requires also an understanding of humans, and an understanding of understanding.

So why aren't most math textbooks better? I guess it's either because there are not enough good mathematicians who also happen to be good at explaining to beginners... or maybe the market for textbooks that teach understanding simply is not big enough.

If you want to learn a specific topic, maybe you could ask about it on LW.

If I try to quickly taboo the words "fixed mindset" and "growth mindset", the essential question is probably this:

Is the person aware (not verbally, but on the gut level) that their own skills could improve in the future, or do they implicitly assume that their skills will always stay the same?

It is a bit more complicated than this. For example, the person may deny the possibility of growth by refusing to classify something as a "skill", because merely reframing something as a "skill" (as opposed to a "trait") already suggests the possibility of improvement. For example, one person would say "I am introverted" where another person would say "my social skills of dealing with strangers are not good enough (yet)". In other words, the person may reject not just the possibility of improving their own skill, but the idea of the trait being modifyable in general.

Also, this doesn't have to apply generally. For example a stereotypical nerd may assume that you are able to learn programming, but that social skills are innate; while another person may assume that social behaviors are learned, but the talent to understand math or computers is innate. So one can have a "fixed mindset" in some areas and a "growth mindset" in others.

Does LessWrong as a community have a fixed-mindset?

Both/neither. The idea that humans can become more rational is central to the website. On the other hand, I guess everyone accepts that IQ is a thing. On the other other hand, transhumanists hope to overcome even those biological limits in a distant future.

But these are the professed beliefs. What do LessWrongers alieve? Not so sure here; but I'd guess that anyone who e.g. participated in a CFAR workshop has revealed the "growth mindset". But it's also possible that for some of them the "growth mindset" applies only in a narrow area.

Uhm, how about making a poll with more specific questions, such as "how much you believe you could improve in X" for various values of X such as "social skills" or "your job" or...?

I want to determine whether I ought to have children or not based on the consequences for the population, my child(ren) and me personally.

I reckon the demographic factor that is most relevant to this choice is my status as a mentally ill person.

My decision cycle lasts from now till my prime fertile years (till I’m 35).

I will have kids if:

The consequences for the population is good. If existing evidence suggests population growth is good then the consequences for population growth is good. Population growth is basically good. There may be some non-linearity to that public good in the far future and that is a problem the future recipients of this past public good beyond my decision cycle can solve.

Is this consequence modified by greater participation in the population growth by individuals with mental illness? I have no relevant evidence so I will be stick the most proximate generalisation that the consequences on population growth is good.

The consequences for the children are good.

Having a close family member affected by a mental illness is the largest known risk factor, to date

Therefore, relative to the general population, it is likely that the consequences for the children are bad. However, this is meaningful at a population level, rather than at the level of the child as I had intended to analyse. Regardless, I will adjust me interpretation of the consequences of population growth to be bad simulating that greater prevalence of risk factors in the population if mentally ill people participate at a greater level of reproduction.

Finally, are the consequences good for me?

Children cost hundreds of thousands of dollar’s in Western countries. The switching cost is tremendous. We may need not enumerate the trade from this angle, however, as there is a more psychologically proximate evidence-base to examine:

From the abstract for :

There are theoretical foundations in sociology for two seemingly incompatible positions: (1) children should have a strong negative impact on the psychological well-being of parents and (2) children should have a strong positive impact on the psychological well-being of parents. Most empirical analyses yield only a modest relationship between parenthood and psychological well-being. Usually, but not always, it is negative. In this study we consider the relationship between parental status and several dimensions of psychological well-being. Our analysis is based on data from a large national survey. It suggests that children have positive and negative effects on the psychological well-being of parents. The balance of positive and negative effects associated with parenthood depends on residential status of the child, age of youngest child, marital status of the parent, and the particular dimension of psychological well-being examined. When compared with nonparents, parents with children in the home have low levels of affective well-being and satisfaction, and high levels of life-meaning; parents with adult children living away from home have high levels of affective well-being, satisfaction, and life-meaning.

Scholarly evidence clearly favours non-parenthood for personal well-being.

Given the negative consequences for the general population and the individual with mental illness, and the uncertainty in forecasting consequences for the children themselves, not having children dominates the choice to have children.

Yes, I'm aware politics kills minds.

What did Obama do wrong?

I hear people say (1) the economy didn't grow fast enough and (2) the U.S. is weaker, globally.

Is there objective evidence of either of these claims? Or is this mostly just blue vs. green tribalism?

The economy definitely is not growing fast enough, but blaming Obama doesn't really make sense. Very weak growth is a problem throughout the developed world, and the US economy is if anything better than average.

What did Obama do wrong?

Leaving aside issues that are primarily questions of personal values, I see a couple of important failures that seem pretty objective.

• Affordable Care Act: The rollout of Healthcare.gov was an embarrassing debacle, but the law itself just isn't very good--even from a liberal perspective (the basic plan was originally a proposal by the right-wing Heritage Foundation). It doesn't achieve anything like universal coverage, there have been continued large increases in insurance premiums, the insurance "corridors" are hemorrhaging money faster than expected, and there are some signs of the "death spiral." (United Health is losing so much money they plan to exit the [individual] market.) Even Obama has admitted that "if you like your health plan, you can keep it" turned out not to be true. Keep in mind that ACA was designed so that many of its aspects don't take full effect for years, so we still don't really know how things will shake out, but it's clear Obama's signature legislation isn't curing America's healthcare woes.

• Obama administration policies of supporting regime change against secular Arab governments has basically been a disaster, leading to disastrous civil wars in Libya and Syria. Islamists are almost certainly a lot stronger than they would have been if the administration had done nothing. The side effects of this are disastrous for long-term US policy goals like supporting European integration, since the resulting refugee crisis has (temporarily?) killed Schengen and made the nationalist parties in Europe stronger. And the crisis is ongoing, we have no idea how bad it will get.

Carol Dweck on fixed vs. growth mindsets

In terms of theory, I'm not sure if fixed vs. growth mindset is the best way to describe the comparison. I feel like there should be a better way to more precisely define the two concepts, but I'm not sure exactly how. I think the research is useful still despite my concerns although you're more than welcome to argue it isn't. Anyway, I've been wondering about this in terms of LessWrong. Does LessWrong as a community have a fixed-mindset? The praising for being smart vs. praising for effort distinction used made me wonder if LessWrong is more concerned with having intelligent discussions, and whether this interferes with improvement in rationality.

Lessons from teaching a neural network...

Grandma teaches our baby that a pink toy cat is "meow".
Baby calls the pink cat "meow".
Parents celebrate. (It's her first word!)

Later Barbara notices that the baby also calls another pink toy non-cat "meow".
The celebration stops; the parents are concerned.
Viliam: "We need to teach her that this other pink toy is... uhm... actually, what is this thing? Is that a pig or a pink bear or what? I have no idea. Why do people create such horribly unrealistic toys for the innocent little children?"
Barbara shrugs.
Viliam: "I guess if we don't know, it's okay if the baby doesn't know either. The toys are kinda similar. Let's ignore this, so we neither correct her nor reward her for calling this toy 'meow'."

Barbara: "I noticed that the baby also calls the pink fish 'meow'."
Viliam: "Okay... I think now the problem is obvious... and so is the solution."
Viliam brings a white toy cat and teaches the baby that this toy is also "meow".
Baby initially seems incredulous, but gradually accepts.

A week later, the baby calls every toy and grandma "meow".

Based off the very rough comparison of my SAT score with my GRE score, my IQ rose around 10 points in the interim (a gap of about 10 years), and I did begin reading LW during that period. However, my own impression is that most of the increase (if it even exists) came before I started reading LessWrong, and the increase instead came from economics blogs and literature recommendations which I mainly got from economics blogs. One of those early blogs was OvercomingBias, so I suppose that could be seen as a win for LessWrong. Previously, most of my reading had consisted of either school work or fiction, typically Sci-Fi or Fantasy.