Julia_Galef

16 types of useful predictions

How often do you make predictions (either about future events, or about information that you don't yet have)? If you're a regular Less Wrong reader you're probably familiar with the idea that you should make your beliefs pay rent by saying, "Here's what I expect to see if my belief is correct, and here's how confident I am," and that you should then update your beliefs accordingly, depending on how your predictions turn out. And yet… my impression is that few of us actually make predictions on a regular basis. Certainly, for me, there has always been a gap between how useful I think predictions are, in theory, and how often I make them. I don't think this is just laziness. I think it's simply not a trivial task to find predictions to make that will help you improve your models of a domain you care about. At this point I should clarify that there are two main goals predictions can help with: 1. Improved Calibration (e.g., realizing that I'm only correct about Domain X 70% of the time, not 90% of the time as I had mistakenly thought). 2. Improved Accuracy (e.g., going from being correct in Domain X 70% of the time to being correct 90% of the time) If your goal is just to become better calibrated in general, it doesn't much matter what kinds of predictions you make. So calibration exercises typically grab questions with easily obtainable answers, like "How tall is Mount Everest?" or "Will Don Draper die before the end of Mad Men?" See, for example, the Credence Game, Prediction Book, and this recent post. And calibration training really does work. But even though making predictions about trivia will improve my general calibration skill, it won't help me improve my models of the world. That is, it won't help me become more accurate, at least not in any domains I care about. If I answer a lot of questions about the heights of mountains, I might become more accurate about that topic, but that's not very helpful to me. So I think the difficulty in prediction-mak

176Apr 10, 2015

Julia_Galef

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16 types of useful predictions

Apr 10, 2015176

A map of Bay Area memespace

The main reason we picked the Bay Area as a home for the Center for Applied Rationality was simply because that's where our initial fiscal sponsor, MIRI, was located. Yet as I’ve gotten to know this region better in the year and a half since then, I’ve been struck by...

Sep 23, 201378

Three ways CFAR has changed my view of rationality

The Center for Applied Rationality's perspective on rationality is quite similar to Less Wrong's. In particular, we share many of Less Wrong's differences from what's sometimes called "traditional" rationality, such as Less Wrong's inclusion of Bayesian probability theory and the science on heuristics and biases. But after spending the last...

Sep 10, 2013173

CFAR workshop, June 15th, Salt Lake City UT

CFAR is experimenting with a mobile workshop, so we can bring our material to people who can't make it to Berkeley. So, next week, we're running a one-and-a-half day workshop in Salt Lake City, Utah! Workshop Details On Saturday June 15th, CFAR will be running a workshop in the Salt...

Jun 6, 201330

New applied rationality workshops (April, May, and July)

In the early days of the Center for Applied Rationality, Anna Salamon and I had a disagreement about whether we were ready to run our first applied rationality workshops in six weeks. My inside view said "No way"; Her inside view said "Should be fine"; My outside view noted that...

Apr 9, 201345

Life Extension versus Replacement

Has anyone here ever addressed the question of why we should prefer (1) Life Extension: Extend the life of an existing person 100 years to (2) Replacement: Create a new person who will live for 100 years? I've seen some discussion of how the utility of potential people fits into...

Nov 30, 201120

How rationality can make your life more awesome

I'm currently working with Lukeprog on a crash course in rationality. It's essentially a streamlined version of the Sequences, but one area we want to beef up is the answer to the question, "Why learn about rationality?" I've gone through all of the previous threads I can find on this...

Nov 29, 201139

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Julia_Galef

Julia_Galef

Julia_Galef

16 types of useful predictions

Three ways CFAR has changed my view of rationality

A map of Bay Area memespace

New applied rationality workshops (April, May, and July)

Julia_Galef

16 types of useful predictions

A map of Bay Area memespace

Three ways CFAR has changed my view of rationality

CFAR workshop, June 15th, Salt Lake City UT

New applied rationality workshops (April, May, and July)

Life Extension versus Replacement

How rationality can make your life more awesome

16 types of useful predictions

Three ways CFAR has changed my view of rationality

A map of Bay Area memespace

New applied rationality workshops (April, May, and July)

16 types of useful predictions

A map of Bay Area memespace

Three ways CFAR has changed my view of rationality

CFAR workshop, June 15th, Salt Lake City UT

New applied rationality workshops (April, May, and July)

Life Extension versus Replacement

How rationality can make your life more awesome