“They, instead, commit the fundamental attribution error, which is if something good happens, it’s because I’m a genius. If something bad happens, it’s because someone’s an idiot or I didn’t get the resources or the market moved. … What we’ve seen is that the people who are the most successful here, who we want to hire, will have a fierce position. They’ll argue like hell. They’ll be zealots about their point of view. But then you say, ‘here’s a new fact,’ and they’ll go, ‘Oh, well, that changes things; you’re right.’”

• Why Google doesn't care about hiring top graduates

Looking for some people to refute this recently hair-brained idea I came up with.

The time period from the advent of the industrial revolution to the so-called digital revolution was about 150 - 200 years. Even though computers were being used around WWII, widespread computer use didn't start to shake things up until 1990 or so. I would imagine that AI would constitute a similar fundamental shift in how we live our lives. So would it be a reasonable extrapolation to think that widespread AI would be about 150 - 200 years after the beginning of the information age?

I was at this entrepreneur dinner and I met Melissa, and she’s this brilliant, amazing entrepreneur. She was like, “Everyone I know wants me to write a book but I don’t have time and I’m not a good writer and publishing is this awful process … can you help me?” So, of course — I’d like to think that I’m not an elitist snob but of course I am — and I start lecturing her about hard work and writing and the writer’s life and all this shit and she rolls her fuckin’ eyes. And I’m like, “what?” and she’s like, “Are you an entrepreneur? I’m an entrepreneur, too, and in my job I have to solve problems. Can you solve my problem or are you just going to lecture me about hard work?”

Tucker Max

Sure. I should have been clearer. I guess I'm more curious about the degree to which this exists because of the internet. Assuming it's true that self-esteem takes a negative hit (at least initially) due to realizing you're a small fish in a huge pond, does the availability of information compound that effect to a level where it is exponentially consequential?

Ultimately, I think it's a very natural and spiritual process to go through—to realize you are, in fact, not the center of the universe. But it's been a more gradual process in our history. Nowadays, it's like saturation in the idea that "I suck. I'm boring. I'm ugly" 24/7 at the age of 10 or before.

HPMOR is something that appeals to System 1 (an engaging story/narrative) to advertize for rationality. So I don't think appealing to System 1 per se implicates you as a dark arts practicioner.

A friend of mine recently succumbed to using the base rate fallacy in a line of argumentation. I tried to explain that it was a base rate fallacy, but he just replied that the base rate is actually pretty high. The argument was him basically saying something equivalent to "If I had a disease that had a 1 in a million chance of survival and I survived it, it's not because I was the 1 in a million, it's because it was due to god's intervention". So I tried to point out that either his (subjective) base rate is wrong or his (subjective) conditional probability is wrong. Here's the math that I used, let me know if I did anything wrong:

Let's assume that the prior probability for aliens is 99%. The probability of surviving the disease given that aliens cured it is 100%. And of course, the probability of surviving the disease at all is 1 out of a million, or 0.0001%.

• Pr(Aliens | Survived) = Pr(Survived | Aliens) x Pr(Aliens) / Pr(Survived)
• Pr(Aliens | Survived) = 100% x 99% / 0.0001%
• Pr(Aliens | Survived) = 1.00 * .99 / .000001
• Pr(Aliens | Survived) = .99 / .000001
• Pr(Aliens | Survived) = 990,000 or 99,000,000%

There's a 99,000,000% chance that aliens exist!! But... this is probability theory, and here probabilities can only add up to 100%. Meaning that if we end up with some result that is over 100% or under 0% something in our numbers is wrong.

The Total Probability Theorem is the denominator for Bayes Theorem. In this aliens instance, that is the probability of surviving the disease without alien intervention, which is 1 out of a million. The Total Probability Theorem, meaning 1 out of a million in this case, is also equal to Pr(Survived | Aliens) x Pr(Aliens) + Pr(Survived | Some Other Cause) x Pr(Some Other Cause):

• 1 in a million = Pr(Survived | Aliens) x Pr(Aliens) + Pr(Survived | Some Other Cause) x Pr(Some Other Cause)
• 0.0001% = 100% x 99% + ??? x 1%
• 0.0001% = 99% + 1%*???

If we want to find ???, in this case it would be Pr(Survived | Some Other Cause), we need to solve for ??? just like we would in any basic algebra course to find x. In this case, our formula is 0.000001 = 0.99 + 0.01x.

If we solve for x, it is -98.999, or -9899%. Meaning that Pr(Survived | Some Other Cause) is -9899%. Again, a number that is outside the range of allowable probabilistic values. This means that there is something wrong with our input. Either the 1 in a million is wrong, the base rate of alien existence being 99% is wrong, or the 100% conditional probability that you would survive your 1 in a million disease due to alien intervention is wrong. The 1 in a million is already set, so either the base rate or conditional probabilities are wrong. And this is why that sort of "I could only have beaten the odds on this disease due to aliens" (or magic, or alternative medicine, or homeopathy, or Chthulu, or...) reasoning is wrong.

Again, remember the base rate. And you can't cheat by trying to jack up the base rate or you'll skew some other data unintentionally. Probability is like mass; it has to be conserved.

Took it.

This is my second year taking the survey. I wish I remembered what my answers were last year so I could see how I've changed.

I don't think PvE is necessarily scientific knowledge. It's more like experience (to expound on the analogy further). While we're currently in one environment -- Earth -- it might be possible for us to explore other environments in the future. But, like the analogy proposes, it would take an enormous amount of manhours/manpower to actually reach this new content.

This is a quote from memory from one of my professors in grad school:

Last quarble, the shanklefaxes ulugled the flurxurs. The flurxurs needed ulugled because they were mofoxiliating, which caused amaliaxas in the hurble-flurble. The shakletfaxes domonoxed a wokuflok who ulugles flurxurs, because wokuflok nuxioses less than iliox nuxioses.

1. When did the shaklefaxes ulugle the flurxurs?
2. Why did the shaklefaxes ulugle the flurxurs?
3. Who did they get to ulugle the flurxurs?
4. If you were the shaklefaxes, would you have your ulugled flurxurs? Why or why not?
5. Would you domonox a wokuflok who ulugles flurxurs instead of an iliox? Why or why not?

Notice how if you only memorize things, you can reasonably answer the first three questions but not the last two. But if you actually understand things, you can answer all five. Instead of memorizing things, you will get a lot further in life if you actually understand the reasoning behind them.

I like the calibration check idea, and it's a fair point about intensity. The last survey I took that included this kind of question asked about "moderate exercise (eg brisk walking)" and "intense exercise", or some similar wording, which I thought was a reasonable split. These might all be details we don't care about though.