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FWIW, this is one of my favourite articles. I can't say how much it would help everyone -- I think I read it when I was just at the right point to think about procrastination seriously. But I found the analytical breakdown into components incredibly helpful way to think about it (and I love the sniper rifle joke).
In response to
In Defense of Tone Arguments
Tone arguments are not necessarily logical errors
I think people's objections to tone arguments have often been misinterpreted because (ironically) the objections are often explained more emotively and less dispassionately.
As I understand it, the problem with "tone arguments" is NOT that they're inherently fallacious, but rather, than they're USUALLY (although not necessarily) rude and inflammatory.
I think a stereotypical exchange might be:
A says something inadvertently offensive to subgroup Beta B says "How dare you? Blah blah blah" A says "Don't get so emotional! Also, what you said is wrong because p, q and r" C says "Hey, no tone arguments, please"
A is correct that B's point might be more persuasive if it were less emotional and were well-crafted to be persuasive to people regardless whether they're already aware of the issues or not, and often correct about p, q and r (whether they're substansive rebuttals of the main point, or just quibbles) . But if B fails to put B's argument in the strongest possible form , it's A's responsibility to evaluate the stronger form of the argument, not just critique B for not doing so. And C pointed that out, just in a way that might unfortunately be opaque to A.
Even if you can't divulge the password, you can still enter it... so if someone is actually in a position to coerce you, they're probably also in a position to make you enter the password for them. (It's damn hard to make an ATM that will give you your money when you want it, but also makes it impossible for someone to empty your account by waiting for you at the ATM and pointing a gun at you.)
I don't know if the idea works in general, but if it works as described I think it would still be useful even if it doesn't meet this objection. I don't forsee any authentication system which can distinguish between "user wants money" and "user has been blackmailed to say they want money as convincingly as possible and not to trigger any hidden panic buttons", but even if it doesn't, a password you can't tell someone would still be more secure because:
- you're not vulnerable to people ringing you up and asking what your password is for a security audit, unless they can persaude you to log on to the system for them
- you're not vulnerable to being kidnapped and coerced remotely, you have to be coerced wherever the log-on system is
I think the "stress detector" idea is one that is unlikely to work unless someone works on it specifically to tell the difference between "hurried" and "coerced", but I don't think the system is useless because it doesn't solve every problem at once.
OTOH, there are downsides to being too secure: you're less likely to be kidnapped, but it's likely to be worse if you ARE.
In response to
Eliezer apparently wrong about higgs boson
The impression I've formed is that physicists have a pretty good idea what's pretty reliable (the standard model) and what's still completely speculative (string theory) but at some point the popular science pipeline communicating the difference to intelligent scientifically literate non-physicists broke down, and so I became broadly cynical about non-experimentally-verified physics in general, when if I'd had more information, I'd have been able to make much more accurate predictions about which were very likely, and which were basically just guesses.
In response to
Irrationality Game II
Irrationality game
0 and 1 are probabilities. (100%)
I'd not seen Elizier's post on "0 and 1 are not probabilities" before. It was a very interesting point. The link at the end was very amusing.
However, it seems he meant "it would be more useful to define probabilities excluding 0 and 1" (which may well be true), but phrased it as if it were a statement of fact. I think this is dangerous and almost always counterproductive -- if you mean "I think you are using these words wrong" you should say that, not give the impression you mean "that statement you made with those words is false according to your interpretation of those words is false".
In response to
Summary of "How to Win Friends and Influence People"
I once skimmed "How to win friends and influence people". I didn't read enough to have a good opinion of the advice (I suspect djcb's description of it being fairly good advice as long as the author's experience generalises well, which HTWFAIP probably does better than many but not perfectly).
However, what had a profound influence on me was that though there's an unfortunate stereotype of people who've read too much Carnegie seeming slimy and fake, the author seemed to genuinely want to like people and be nice to them, which I thought was lovely.
Perhaps, but she's far from alone. I'm mostly with her on this one; letting people live in ignorance we can cure just so they can appreciate knowledge more when it's eventually obtained makes about as much sense to me as letting them suffer from illness we can cure just so they can appreciate health.
It seems to me that Elizier's post was a list of things that typically seem, in the real world, to be component of people's happiness, but are commonly missed out when people propose putative (fictional or futuristic) utopias.
It seemed to me that Elizier was saying "If you propose a utopia without any challenge, humans will not find it satisfying" not "It's possible to artificially provide challenge in a utopia".
In response to
Intellectual insularity and productivity
I concur. I read the sequences, then I read every post from the end of the sequences until that time (May 2011). I was amazed just how little seemed to have been taken in even from the posts on LW since the end of the sequences.
I have faint hopes the Center for Modern Rationality can seed a new set of community norms.
Hm. Now you say it, I think I've definitely read some excellent non-Elizier articles on Less Wrong. But not as systematically. Are they collated together ("The further sequences") anywhere? I mean, in some sense, "all promoted articles" is supposed to serve that function, but I'm not sure that's the best way to start reading. And there are some good "collections of best articles". But they don't seem as promoted as the sequences.
If there's not already, maybe there should be a bit of work in collecting the best articles by theme, and seeing which of them could do with some revising to make whatever the (in retrospect) best point more clear. Preferably enough bit of revising (or just disclaimers) to make it clear that they're not the the Word of God, but not so much they become bland.
Thanks for the feedback. How does it sound now?
This does NOT mean unframed posters. Unframed posters signal "college dorm". If you would like to display your personality via geeky stuff (comic books, fantasy art, etc), this is acceptable, but frames should be utilized or they should be mounted in some other way. Think of it as protection for your art.
Awesome avoidance of potential disagreement in favour of cooperation for a positive-sum result :)
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I remember when you drew this analogy to different interpretations of QM and was thinking it over.
The way I put it to myself was that the difference between "laws of physics apply" and "everything acts AS IF the laws of physics apply, but the photon blinks out of existence" is not falsifiable, so for our current physics, the two theories are actually just different reformulations of the same theory.
However, Occam's razor says that, of the two theories, the right one to use is "laws of physics apply" for two reasons: firstly, that it's a lot simpler to calculate, and secondly, if we ever DO find any way of testing it, we're 99.9% sure that we'll discover that the theory consistent with conservation of energy will apply.
Excellent point!