16 types of useful predictions

90 Julia_Galef 10 April 2015 03:31AM

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-making is this: The set {questions whose answers you can easily look up, or otherwise obtain} is a small subset of all possible questions. And the set {questions whose answers I care about} is also a small subset of all possible questions. And the intersection between those two subsets is much smaller still, and not easily identifiable. As a result, prediction-making tends to seem too effortful, or not fruitful enough to justify the effort it requires.

But the intersection's not empty. It just requires some strategic thought to determine which answerable questions have some bearing on issues you care about, or -- approaching the problem from the opposite direction -- how to take issues you care about and turn them into answerable questions.

I've been making a concerted effort to hunt for members of that intersection. Here are 16 types of predictions that I personally use to improve my judgment on issues I care about. (I'm sure there are plenty more, though, and hope you'll share your own as well.)

  1. Predict how long a task will take you. This one's a given, considering how common and impactful the planning fallacy is. 
    Examples: "How long will it take to write this blog post?" "How long until our company's profitable?"
  2. Predict how you'll feel in an upcoming situation. Affective forecasting – our ability to predict how we'll feel – has some well known flaws. 
    Examples: "How much will I enjoy this party?" "Will I feel better if I leave the house?" "If I don't get this job, will I still feel bad about it two weeks later?"
  3. Predict your performance on a task or goal. 
    One thing this helps me notice is when I've been trying the same kind of approach repeatedly without success. Even just the act of making the prediction can spark the realization that I need a better game plan.
    Examples: "Will I stick to my workout plan for at least a month?" "How well will this event I'm organizing go?" "How much work will I get done today?" "Can I successfully convince Bob of my opinion on this issue?" 
  4. Predict how your audience will react to a particular social media post (on Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, a blog, etc.).
    This is a good way to hone your judgment about how to create successful content, as well as your understanding of your friends' (or readers') personalities and worldviews.
    Examples: "Will this video get an unusually high number of likes?" "Will linking to this article spark a fight in the comments?" 
  5. When you try a new activity or technique, predict how much value you'll get out of it.
    I've noticed I tend to be inaccurate in both directions in this domain. There are certain kinds of life hacks I feel sure are going to solve all my problems (and they rarely do). Conversely, I am overly skeptical of activities that are outside my comfort zone, and often end up pleasantly surprised once I try them.
    Examples: "How much will Pomodoros boost my productivity?" "How much will I enjoy swing dancing?"
  6. When you make a purchase, predict how much value you'll get out of it.
    Research on money and happiness shows two main things: (1) as a general rule, money doesn't buy happiness, but also that (2) there are a bunch of exceptions to this rule. So there seems to be lots of potential to improve your prediction skill here, and spend your money more effectively than the average person.
    Examples: "How much will I wear these new shoes?" "How often will I use my club membership?" "In two months, will I think it was worth it to have repainted the kitchen?" "In two months, will I feel that I'm still getting pleasure from my new car?"
  7. Predict how someone will answer a question about themselves.
    I often notice assumptions I'm been making about other people, and I like to check those assumptions when I can. Ideally I get interesting feedback both about the object-level question, and about my overall model of the person.
    Examples: "Does it bother you when our meetings run over the scheduled time?" "Did you consider yourself popular in high school?" "Do you think it's okay to lie in order to protect someone's feelings?"
  8. Predict how much progress you can make on a problem in five minutes.
    I often have the impression that a problem is intractable, or that I've already worked on it and have considered all of the obvious solutions. But then when I decide (or when someone prompts me) to sit down and brainstorm for five minutes, I am surprised to come away with a promising new approach to the problem.  
    Example: "I feel like I've tried everything to fix my sleep, and nothing works. If I sit down now and spend five minutes thinking, will I be able to generate at least one new idea that's promising enough to try?"
  9. Predict whether the data in your memory supports your impression.
    Memory is awfully fallible, and I have been surprised at how often I am unable to generate specific examples to support a confident impression of mine (or how often the specific examples I generate actually contradict my impression).
    Examples: "I have the impression that people who leave academia tend to be glad they did. If I try to list a bunch of the people I know who left academia, and how happy they are, what will the approximate ratio of happy/unhappy people be?"
    "It feels like Bob never takes my advice. If I sit down and try to think of examples of Bob taking my advice, how many will I be able to come up with?" 
  10. Pick one expert source and predict how they will answer a question.
    This is a quick shortcut to testing a claim or settling a dispute.
    Examples: "Will Cochrane Medical support the claim that Vitamin D promotes hair growth?" "Will Bob, who has run several companies like ours, agree that our starting salary is too low?" 
  11. When you meet someone new, take note of your first impressions of him. Predict how likely it is that, once you've gotten to know him better, you will consider your first impressions of him to have been accurate.
    A variant of this one, suggested to me by CFAR alum Lauren Lee, is to make predictions about someone before you meet him, based on what you know about him ahead of time.
    Examples: "All I know about this guy I'm about to meet is that he's a banker; I'm moderately confident that he'll seem cocky." "Based on the one conversation I've had with Lisa, she seems really insightful – I predict that I'll still have that impression of her once I know her better."
  12. Predict how your Facebook friends will respond to a poll.
    Examples: I often post social etiquette questions on Facebook. For example, I recently did a poll asking, "If a conversation is going awkwardly, does it make things better or worse for the other person to comment on the awkwardness?" I confidently predicted most people would say "worse," and I was wrong.
  13. Predict how well you understand someone's position by trying to paraphrase it back to him.
    The illusion of transparency is pernicious.
    Examples: "You said you think running a workshop next month is a bad idea; I'm guessing you think that's because we don't have enough time to advertise, is that correct?"
    "I know you think eating meat is morally unproblematic; is that because you think that animals don't suffer?"
  14. When you have a disagreement with someone, predict how likely it is that a neutral third party will side with you after the issue is explained to her.
    For best results, don't reveal which of you is on which side when you're explaining the issue to your arbiter.
    Example: "So, at work today, Bob and I disagreed about whether it's appropriate for interns to attend hiring meetings; what do you think?"
  15. Predict whether a surprising piece of news will turn out to be true.
    This is a good way to hone your bullshit detector and improve your overall "common sense" models of the world.
    Examples: "This headline says some scientists uploaded a worm's brain -- after I read the article, will the headline seem like an accurate representation of what really happened?"
    "This viral video purports to show strangers being prompted to kiss; will it turn out to have been staged?"
  16. Predict whether a quick online search will turn up any credible sources supporting a particular claim.
    Example: "Bob says that watches always stop working shortly after he puts them on – if I spend a few minutes searching online, will I be able to find any credible sources saying that this is a real phenomenon?"

I have one additional, general thought on how to get the most out of predictions:

Rationalists tend to focus on the importance of objective metrics. And as you may have noticed, a lot of the examples I listed above fail that criterion. For example, "Predict whether a fight will break out in the comments? Well, there's no objective way to say whether something officially counts as a 'fight' or not…" Or, "Predict whether I'll be able to find credible sources supporting X? Well, who's to say what a credible source is, and what counts as 'supporting' X?"

And indeed, objective metrics are preferable, all else equal. But all else isn't equal. Subjective metrics are much easier to generate, and they're far from useless. Most of the time it will be clear enough, once you see the results, whether your prediction basically came true or not -- even if you haven't pinned down a precise, objectively measurable success criterion ahead of time. Usually the result will be a common sense "yes," or a common sense "no." And sometimes it'll be "um...sort of?", but that can be an interestingly surprising result too, if you had strongly predicted the results would point clearly one way or the other. 

Along similar lines, I usually don't assign numerical probabilities to my predictions. I just take note of where my confidence falls on a qualitative "very confident," "pretty confident," "weakly confident" scale (which might correspond to something like 90%/75%/60% probabilities, if I had to put numbers on it).

There's probably some additional value you can extract by writing down quantitative confidence levels, and by devising objective metrics that are impossible to game, rather than just relying on your subjective impressions. But in most cases I don't think that additional value is worth the cost you incur from turning predictions into an onerous task. In other words, don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good. Or in other other words: the biggest problem with your predictions right now is that they don't exist.

A map of Bay Area memespace

43 Julia_Galef 23 September 2013 05:34PM

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 how good the fit has turned out to be. The Bay Area is unusually dense with idea-driven subcultures that mix and cross-pollinate in fascinating ways, many of which are already enriching rationalist culture.

This map is my attempt at illustrating that landscape of subcultures, and at situating the rationalist community within it. I’ve limited myself to the last 50 years or so, and to subcultures defined by ideology (as opposed to, say, ethnicity). I’ve also depicted some of the major memes that have influenced, and been influenced by, those subcultures:

(Click to enlarge)

Note that although many of these memes are widely influential, I only drew an arrow connecting a meme to a group if the meme was one of the defining features of the group. (For example, yoga may be popular among many entrepreneurs, but that meme -> subculture relationship isn’t strong enough to make my map.).

Below, I expand on the map with a quick tour through the landscape of Bay Area memes and subcultures. Instead of trying to cover everything in detail, I’ve focused on nine aspects of that memespace that help put the rationalist community in context:

continue reading »

Three ways CFAR has changed my view of rationality

102 Julia_Galef 10 September 2013 06:24PM

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 year and a half with CFAR as we've developed, tested, and attempted to teach hundreds of different versions of rationality techniques, I've noticed that my picture of what rationality looks like has shifted somewhat from what I perceive to be the most common picture of rationality on Less Wrong. Here are three ways I think CFAR has come to see the landscape of rationality differently than Less Wrong typically does – not disagreements per se, but differences in focus or approach. (Disclaimer: I'm not speaking for the rest of CFAR here; these are my own impressions.)

 

1. We think less in terms of epistemic versus instrumental rationality.

Formally, the methods of normative epistemic versus instrumental rationality are distinct: Bayesian inference and expected utility maximization. But methods like "use Bayes' Theorem" or "maximize expected utility" are usually too abstract and high-level to be helpful for a human being trying to take manageable steps towards improving her rationality. And when you zoom in from that high-level description of rationality down to the more concrete level of "What five-second mental habits should I be training?" the distinction between epistemic and instrumental rationality becomes less helpful.

Here's an analogy: epistemic rationality is like physics, where the goal is to figure out what's true about the world, and instrumental rationality is like engineering, where the goal is to accomplish something you want as efficiently and effectively as possible. You need physics to do engineering; or I suppose you could say that doing engineering is doing physics, but with a practical goal. However, there's plenty of physics that's done for its own sake, and doesn't have obvious practical applications, at least not yet. (String theory, for example.) Similarly, you need a fair amount of epistemic rationality in order to be instrumentally rational, though there are parts of epistemic rationality that many of us practice for their own sake, and not as a means to an end. (For example, I appreciate clarifying my thinking about free will even though I don't expect it to change any of my behavior.)

In this analogy, many skills we focus on at CFAR are akin to essential math, like linear algebra or differential equations, which compose the fabric of both physics and engineering. It would be foolish to expect someone who wasn't comfortable with math to successfully calculate a planet's trajectory or design a bridge. And it would be similarly foolish to expect you to successfully update like a Bayesian or maximize your utility if you lacked certain underlying skills. Like, for instance: Noticing your emotional reactions, and being able to shift them if it would be useful. Doing thought experiments. Noticing and overcoming learned helplessness. Visualizing in concrete detail. Preventing yourself from flinching away from a thought. Rewarding yourself for mental habits you want to reinforce. 

These and other building blocks of rationality are essential both for reaching truer beliefs, and for getting what you value; they don't fall cleanly into either an "epistemic" or an "instrumental" category. Which is why, when I consider what pieces of rationality CFAR should be developing, I've been thinking less in terms of "How can we be more epistemically rational?" or "How can we be more instrumentally rational?" and instead using queries like, "How can we be more metacognitive?"

 

2. We think more in terms of a modular mind.

The human mind isn't one coordinated, unified agent, but rather a collection of different processes that often aren't working in sync, or even aware of what each other is up to. Less Wrong certainly knows this; see, for example, discussions of anticipations versus professions, aliefs, and metawanting. But in general we gloss over that fact, because it's so much simpler and more natural to talk about "what I believe" or "what I want," even if technically there is no single "I" doing the believing or wanting. And for many purposes that kind of approximation is fine. 

But a rationality-for-humans usually can't rely on that shorthand. Any attempt to change what "I" believe, or optimize for what "I" want, forces a confrontation of the fact that there are multiple, contradictory things that could reasonably be called "beliefs," or "wants," coexisting in the same mind. So a large part of applied rationality turns out to be about noticing those contradictions and trying to achieve coherence, in some fashion, before you can even begin to update on evidence or plan an action.

Many of the techniques we're developing at CFAR fall roughly into the template of coordinating between your two systems of cognition: implicit-reasoning System 1 and explicit-reasoning System 2. For example, knowing when each system is more likely to be reliable. Or knowing how to get System 2 to convince System 1 of something ("We're not going to die if we go talk to that stranger"). Or knowing what kinds of questions System 2 should ask of System 1 to find out why it's uneasy about the conclusion at which System 2 has arrived.

This is all, of course, with the disclaimer that the anthropomorphizing of the systems of cognition, and imagining them talking to each other, is merely a useful metaphor. Even the classification of human cognition into Systems 1 and 2 is probably not strictly true, but it's true enough to be useful. And other metaphors prove useful as well – for example, some difficulties with what feels like akrasia become more tractable when you model your future selves as different entities, as we do in the current version of our "Delegating to yourself" class.

 

3. We're more focused on emotions.

There's relatively little discussion of emotions on Less Wrong, but they occupy a central place in CFAR's curriculum and organizational culture.

It used to frustrate me when people would say something that revealed they held a Straw Vulcan-esque belief that "rationalist = emotionless robot". But now when I encounter that misconception, it just makes me want to smile, because I'm thinking to myself: "If you had any idea how much time we spend at CFAR talking about our feelings…"

Being able to put yourself into particular emotional states seems to make a lot of pieces of rationality easier. For example, for most of us, it's instrumentally rational to explore a wider set of possible actions – different ways of studying, holding conversations, trying to be happy, and so on – beyond whatever our defaults happen to be. And for most of us, inertia and aversions get in the way of that exploration. But getting yourself into "playful" mode (one of the hypothesized primary emotional circuits common across mammals) can make it easier to branch out into a wider swath of Possible-Action Space. Similarly, being able to call up a feeling of curiosity or of "seeking" (another candidate for a primary emotional circuit) can help you conquer motivated cognition and learned blankness.  

And simply being able to notice your emotional state is rarer and more valuable than most people realize. For example, if you're in fight-or-flight mode, you're going to feel more compelled to reject arguments that feel like a challenge to your identity. Being attuned to the signs of sympathetic nervous system activation – that you're tensing up, or that your heart rate is increasing – means you get cues to double-check your reasoning, or to coax yourself into another emotional state.

We also use emotions as sources of data. You can learn to tap into feelings of surprise or confusion to get a sense of how probable you implicitly expect some event to be. Or practice simulating hypotheticals ("What if I knew that my novel would never sell well?") and observing your resultant emotions, to get a clearer picture of your utility function. 

And emotions-as-data can be a valuable check on your System 2's conclusions. One of our standard classes is "Goal Factoring," which entails finding some alternate set of actions through which you can purchase the goods you want more cheaply. So you might reason, "I'm doing martial arts for the exercise and self-defense benefits... but I could purchase both of those things for less time investment by jogging to work and carrying Mace." If you listened to your emotional reaction to that proposal, however, you might notice you still feel sad about giving up martial arts even if you were getting the same amount of exercise and self-defense benefits somehow else.

Which probably means you've got other reasons for doing martial arts that you haven't yet explicitly acknowledged -- for example, maybe you just think it's cool. If so, that's important, and deserves a place in your decisionmaking. Listening for those emotional cues that your explicit reasoning has missed something is a crucial step, and to the extent that aspiring rationalists sometimes forget it, I suppose that's a Steel-Manned Straw Vulcan (Steel Vulcan?) that actually is worth worrying about.

Conclusion

I'll name one more trait that unites, rather than divides, CFAR and Less Wrong. We both diverge from "traditional" rationality in that we're concerned with determining which general methods systematically perform well, rather than defending some set of methods as "rational" on a priori criteria alone. So CFAR's picture of what rationality looks like, and how to become more rational, will and should change over the coming years as we learn more about the effects of our rationality training efforts. 

CFAR workshop, June 15th, Salt Lake City UT

17 Julia_Galef 06 June 2013 04:47PM

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 Lake City area. We’ll be presenting selected material from our four-day workshop and giving you the chance to consult with our instructors on how you can put these skills to work.

You’ll arrive for class at 10am on Saturday, and you and eleven other participants will spend the day learning highlights from our applied rationality curriculum: how to recognize and defuse a fight-or-flight response when it doesn't do you any good (you can’t outrun data you don’t like!), how to make sure your desire to complete a long-term project (say, writing a book) trickles down to motivate all the picayune steps along the way (doing a read-through to pick off unnecessary adjectives), and how to make the most of your intuitive judgments. Classes wrap up at 7pm, and then we’ll all go out for dinner, where you’ll have a chance to decompress and digest the day (along with your meal).

After dinner, if you’ve registered for the optional half-day, you’ll sleep over on site with the CFAR staff and play some fun, brain-teasing games. The evening is a time for unstructured conversation and collaboration. What are your pet projects and ambitions? Get feedback from classmates and instructors and start figuring out ways to make the most of your newfound skills.

The next morning, you’ll choose which of the previous day’s skills you really want to practice intensively. Catch any misunderstandings or sticking points while you’re still around to troubleshoot them with a CFAR instructor. At our four-day workshops, many participants report that our final-day review sessions are the point where they were finally able to internalize the material and start to use it instinctively.

After a half-day of review and reinforcement, we send you back out into the world, better prepared to make the most of your brain.

 

Application Details

The cost of the workshop will be $90 for the first day of instruction + $50 if you plan to stick around for the overnight and the second day of practice.

Registration is first come, first serve. Space is limited to 12. To sign-up, fill out this two minute form.

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

27 Julia_Galef 09 April 2013 02:58AM

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 Anna had more relevant experience than I did, and therefore cowed my inside view into grudgingly shutting up.

It turned out well. Granted, the first couple of workshops were a bit chaotic (hey, sleeping in a dogpile on the living room builds character, amiright May minicampers?). But it's clear in retrospect that we got a lot more value out of diving in than we would have from the extra time spent planning.

The "try stuff fast" habit is responsible for a lot of the techniques in our curriculum; we test out classes on each other and on volunteers, observe "Oh hey, this helps other people too" or "Oh hey, no one else thinks this is useful, turns out I'm just weird," and tweak our curriculum accordingly.

And because we cannot help going recursively meta, we've built a lot of material into our curriculum to make people better at trying things that could make them better at pursuing their goals. Quick, off-the-cuff value of information (VOI) calculations help you decide when it's worth it to spend the time, or money or risk, to try something new. Againstness helps you notice and alleviate the stress responses that can keep you from trying something, once you've noticed that you should. Comfort zone expansion is basically a "try a bunch of new things" drill.

For more details on our curriculum, check out a sample schedule. I also made a simplified map of some of our classes, so you can see how I think of them fitting into the bigger picture of rationality (click to enlarge):

To the extent that I've improved my own rationality skills over the last year, I give a lot of credit to "try stuff fast." Like many Less Wrongers I have historically been more of a "thinking about things" person than a "trying stuff fast" person; given the choice of an afternoon spent debating ignorance priors or one spent figuring out how to improve my public speaking skills, I'd pick the former every time, even though the latter would be more useful to me.

I'm partially reformed now, thanks in part to the influence of Anna, whom you'll frequently overhear saying things like "I think I'll try teaching the class as if I were Val" or "We should try a different meeting format today, it's high VOI." So now I'm much more likely to notice, "Hey, in this situation I always do X (e.g., ask for feedback later, by email), so this time let me try X-prime (e.g., ask for feedback in person on the spot) -- the cost is low and it's plausible I'll learn that I like it better than my default."

In that spirit, I recommend coming to one of our upcoming workshops in April, May or July, where you will not only be introduced to all the stuff that we've tried and found promising so far, but will also be plugged into a growing network of several hundred other thoughtful and creative people who have developed their own habits you can borrow and try (we certainly do – past participants have been the origin of some of our best material). And being surrounded by other people with similar aspirations, during the workshop and in the alumni network afterwards, is the best way I know of to keep your motivation and your discipline strong.

At $3900, it's an investment, but a low-risk one, since we have a money-back guarantee. If you don't feel like what you got out of it was worth it, we'll refund your money without hesitation or complaint.

Here are the basics:

You can apply here for any of our next three applied rationality workshops:

  • Friday, April 26 - Monday, April 29
  • Friday, May 17 - Monday, May 20
  • Saturday, July 20 - Tuesday, July 23

Each workshop will consist of an immersive four days at a retreat near San Francisco, training you in the art of actually using rationality. That means figuring out what your goals are, and what you can be doing to pursue them more effectively; noticing when you're acting out of habit or impulse; cultivating curiosity about the world and how it works; and learning to use both your intuitive (System 1) and analytical (System 2) thinking systems to their fullest.

We're soliciting applications not just from Less Wrongers, but from other entrepreneurs, students, teachers, scientists, engineers, activists -- anyone who is analytical, friendly, and motivated to make their own careers, personal lives, and/or societies better.  

For more information on our content, check out our workshop webpage, our checklist of rationality habits, or a detailed sample schedule.

We're constantly tinkering with our curriculum (as mentioned earlier), and collecting follow-up data on what works well. So while you should be aware that our material hasn't yet been subjected to rigorous long-term studies, our alumni do tend to report that they've gotten a lot of value out of their experience. Here are a few write-ups from Less Wrongers about their CFAR workshop experience and any changes they've made as a result: toner, palladias, Qiaochu_Yuan, thejash, BrandonReinhart, ciphergoth, and a bunch of other people.

The total cost is $3900, and that includes:

  • Three days of classes -- Six hours of class a day, with small class sizes (4-6 people) so you get a lot of personal attention from the instructors. We rearrange those small groups several times throughout the workshop to give you a chance to get to know everyone.
  • One day of practice – Optional but recommended, so instructors can help you make and troubleshoot a plan to use the material going forward. (If you choose to skip this day, the total cost is $3400.)
  • Six weeks of personal follow-ups – Talk to our staff in one-on-one follow-ups to help you get the most value out of what you've learned.
  • Staying on site – We rent out lovely retreat centers (lodging and food included in the cost of the workshop) so you can get to know the instructors and other participants in the evenings, during meals, and on breaks. Evenings include everything from unconferences, to parties, to impromptu Rubix-cube lessons.
  • An alumni network -- You'll be included in all future CFAR alumni events, parties, online forums, and so on. We'll make every effort to connect you to alumni from other workshops with whom we think you'll hit it off or have opportunities for collaboration. 

Scholarships and financial aid are available -- including for many who thought they wouldn't qualify.  So if you're interested in attending, definitely apply, and mention you'd like to be considered for this. We'll set up a call to discuss.

And please don't hesitate to email me (Julia at appliedrationality dot org). CFAR staff will also be in this comment thread to field questions, and some of the alumni who frequent Less Wrong may be there as well. 

Apply here (the form takes less than 10 minutes, so you should do it now rather than planning on getting to it later!).

Life Extension versus Replacement

13 Julia_Galef 30 November 2011 01:47AM

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 a utilitarian calculus. Eliezer has raised the Repugnant Conclusion, in which 1,000,000 people who each have 1 util is preferable to 1,000 people who each have 100 utils. He rejected it, he said, because he's an average utilitarian.

Fine. But in my thought experiment, average utility remains unchanged. So an average utilitarian should be indifferent between Life Extension and Replacement, right? Or is the harm done by depriving an existing person of life greater in magnitude than the benefit of creating a new life of equivalent utility? If so, why?

Or is the transhumanist indifferent between Life Extension and Replacement, but feels that his efforts towards radical life extension have a much greater expected value than trying to increase the birth rate?

 

(EDITED to make the thought experiment cleaner. Originally the options were: (1) Life Extension: Extend the life of an existing person for 800 years, and (2) Replacement: Create 10 new people who will each live for 80 years. But that version didn't maintain equal average utility.)


*Optional addendum: Gustaf Arrhenius is a philosopher who has written a lot about this subject; I found him via this comment by utilitymonster. Here's his 2008 paper, "Life Extension versus Replacement," which explores an amendment to utilitarianism that would allow us to prefer Life Extension. Essentially, we begin by comparing potential outcomes according to overall utility, as usual, but we then penalize outcomes if they make any existing people worse off.

So even though the overall utility of Life Extension is the same as Replacement, the latter is worse, because the existing person is worse off than he would have been in Life Extension. By contrast, the potential new person is not worse off in Life Extension, because in that scenario he doesn't exist, and non-existent people can't be harmed. Arrhenius goes through a whole list of problems with this moral theory, however, and by the end of the paper we aren't left with anything workable that would prioritize Life Extension over Replacement.

 

How rationality can make your life more awesome

23 Julia_Galef 29 November 2011 01:23AM

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 topic -- Reflections on rationality a year out, Personal benefits from rationality, What has rationality done for you?, and The benefits of rationality -- but most of the examples people give of rationality helping them are a little too general. People cite things like "I hold off on proposing solutions," or "I ask myself if there's a better way to be doing this."

To someone who's not already sold on this whole rationality thing, general statements like that won't mean very much. What I think we really need is a list of concrete examples of how the tools of epistemic rationality, as they're taught in the Sequences, can improve your health, your career, your love life, the causes you care about, your psychological well-being, and so on.

Below, my first attempt at doing just that. (I explain what rationality is, and how to practice it, elsewhere in the guide -- this section is just about benefits.) I'd appreciate feedback: Is it clear? Can you think of any other good examples in this vein? Would it be convincing to someone who isn't intrinsically interested in epistemic rationality for its own sake?

 

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For some people, rationality is an end in itself – they value having true beliefs. But rationality’s also a powerful tool for achieving pretty much anything else you care about. Below, a survey of some of the ways that rationality can make your life more awesome:

Rationality alerts you when you have a false belief that’s making you worse off.

You’ve undoubtedly got beliefs about yourself – about what kind of job would be fulfilling for you, for example, or about what kind of person would be a good match for you. You’ve also got beliefs about the world – say, about what it’s like to be rich, or about “what men want” or “what women want.” And you’ve probably internalized some fundamental maxims, such as: When it’s true love, you’ll know. You should always follow your dreams. Natural things are better. Promiscuity reduces your worth as a person.

Those beliefs shape your decisions about your career, what to do when you’re sick, what kind of people you decide to pursue romantically and how you pursue them, how much effort you should be putting into making yourself richer, or more attractive, or more skilled (and skilled in what?), more accommodating, more aggressive, and so on.

But where did these beliefs come from? The startling truth is that many of our beliefs became lodged in our psyches rather haphazardly. We’ve read them, or heard them, or picked them up from books or TV or movies, or perhaps we generalized from one or two real-life examples.

Rationality trains you to notice your beliefs, many of which you may not even be consciously aware of, and ask yourself: where did those beliefs come from, and do I have good reason to believe they’re accurate? How would I know if  they’re false? Have I considered any other, alternative hypotheses?

Rationality helps you get the information you need.

Sometimes you need to figure out the answer to a question in order to make an important decision about, say, your health, or your career, or the causes that matter to you. Studying rationality reveals that some ways of investigating those questions are much more likely to yield the truth than others. Just a few examples:

“How should I run my business?” If you’re looking to launch or manage a company, you’ll have a huge leg up over your competition if you’re able to rationally determine how well your product works, or whether it meets a need, or what marketing strategies are effective.

“What career should I go into?” Before committing yourself to a career path, you’ll probably want to learn about the experiences of people working in that field. But a rationalist also knows to ask herself, “Is my sample biased?” If you’re focused on a few famous success stories from the field, that doesn’t tell you very much about what a typical job is like, or what your odds are of making it in that field.

It’s also an unfortunate truth that not every field uses reliable methods, and so not every field produces true or useful work. If that matters to you, you’ll need the tools of rationality to evaluate the fields you’re considering working in. Fields whose methods are controversial include psychotherapy, nutrition science, economics, sociology, management consulting, string theory, and alternative medicine.

“How can I help the world?” Many people invest huge amounts of money, time, and effort in causes they care about. But if you want to ensure that your investment makes a difference, you need to be able to evaluate the relevant evidence. How serious of a problem is, say, climate change, or animal welfare, or globalization? How effective is lobbying, or marching, or boycotting? How far do your contributions go at charity X versus charity Y?

Rationality teaches you how to evaluate advice.

Learning about rationality, and how widespread irrationality is, sparks an important realization: You can’t assume other people have good reasons for the things they believe. And that means you need to know how to evaluate other people’s opinions, not just based on how plausible their opinions seem, but based on the reliability of the methods they used to form those opinions.

So when you get business advice, you need to ask yourself: What evidence does she have for that advice, and are her circumstances relevant enough to mine? The same is true when a friend swears by some particular remedy for acne, or migraines, or cancer. Is he repeating a recommendation made by multiple doctors? Or did he try it once and get better? What kind of evidence is reliable?

In many cases, people can’t articulate exactly how they’ve arrived at a particular belief; it’s just the product of various experiences they’ve had and things they’ve heard or read. But once you’ve studied rationality, you’ll recognize the signs of people who are more likely to have accurate beliefs: People who adjust their level of confidence to the evidence for a claim; people who actually change their minds when presented with new evidence; people who seem interested in getting the right answer rather than in defending their own egos.

Rationality saves you from bad decisions. 

Knowing about the heuristics your brain uses and how they can go wrong means you can escape some very common, and often very serious, decision-making traps.

For example, people often stick with their original career path or business plan for years after the evidence has made clear that it was a mistake, because they don’t want their previous investment to be wasted. That’s thanks to the sunk cost fallacy. Relatedly, people often allow cognitive dissonance to convince them that things aren’t so bad, because the prospect of changing course is too upsetting.

And in many major life decisions, such as choosing a career, people envision one way things could play out (“I’m going to run my own lab, and live in a big city…”) – but they don’t spend much time thinking about how probable that outcome is, or what the other probable outcomes are. The narrative fallacy is that situations imagined in high detail seem more plausible, regardless of how probable they actually are.   

Rationality trains you to step back from your emotions so that they don’t cloud your judgment.

Depression, anxiety, rage, envy, and other unpleasant and self-destructive emotions tend to be fueled by what cognitive therapy calls “cognitive distortions,” irrationalities in your thinking such as jumping to conclusions based on limited evidence; focusing selectively on negatives; all-or-nothing thinking; and blaming yourself, or someone else, without reason.

Rationality breaks your habit of automatically trusting your instinctive, emotional judgments, encouraging you instead to notice the beliefs underlying your emotions and ask yourself whether those beliefs are justified.

It also trains you to notice when your beliefs about the world are being colored by what you want, or don’t want, to be true. Beliefs about your own abilities, about the motives of other people, about the likely consequences of your behavior, about what happens after you die, can be emotionally fraught. But a solid background in rationality keeps you from flinching away from the truth – about your situation, or yourself -- when learning the truth can help you change it.