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I would use the heck out of this software if it existed, and for that reason I would very much like to assist in writing software like this.
It feels instinctual to you and many others alive today including myself, but I'm not sure that's evidence enough that it was common in the ancestral environment.
Do you mean that it could just be a learned thing from today's culture? Or that it is a side-effect of some other adaptation?
Isn't "people are not supposed to disagree with each other on factual matters because anything worth knowing is common knowledge in the ancestral environment" also an ev-pysch proposition?
Yes I suppose it is. Is this a proposed source of the frustration-with-unorthodoxy instinct?
Whatever the cause is, "What matters is that this urge seems to be hardware, and it probably has nothing to do with actual truth or your strategic concerns."
I'm thinking it would best be described as "cultural". Some level of taboo against correcting others unless you're in a socially-approved position to do so (teacher, elder, etc.) is, to my understanding, fairly common among humans, even if it's weaker in our society and time. I brought up the common knowledge thing just because it seems to contradict the idea that a strong urge to correct others could have been particularly adaptive.
In response to
Memetic Tribalism
For some reason "correcting" people's reasoning was important enough in the ancestral environment to be special-cased in motivation hardware.
It feels instinctual to you and many others alive today including myself, but I'm not sure that's evidence enough that it was common in the ancestral environment. Isn't "people are not supposed to disagree with each other on factual matters because anything worth knowing is common knowledge in the ancestral environment" also an ev-pysch proposition?
I'm not sure what this has to do with rationality quotes, but the extract basically convinces me to avoid the guy like the plague. The underlying premises seem to be something like:
The remaining choice when someone knows enough to feel a book is too simple for them is that they know everything.
They should discard all that they know - empty before you fill - so they can learn from someone with more knowledge than them.
Go learn lisp... -shrug-
It seems incredibly bad advice to give to someone who thinks a lot of what's in a book's too simple for them to essentially yell at them to shut up and knuckle down. As compared to say, pointing them to a few things that are generally not covered that well in self-learning and direct them to a more advanced book.
I think the quote's main function is to warn those who don't know anything about programming of a kind of person they're likely to encounter on their journey (people who know everything and think their preferences are very right), and to give them some confidence to resist these people. It also drives home the point that people who know how to program already won't get much out of the book. I quoted it because it addresses a common failure mode of very intelligent and skilled people.
What do you think that "design the political environment so that that will happen naturally" means concretely?
The policies that Milton advocated got a huge boost because companies put lobbyists who distribute campaign money in the "right places" to switch political incentives.
There are political enviroments in which the actors try to do what is right instead of just maximizing their personal interests. Milton says in the quoted video that the US congress isn't such an enviroment and that's no problem that anyone should be attempting to fix by electing different politicians.
Concretely, Milton Friedman probably didn't have a workable plan for bringing about such an environment, though he may have thought he did; I'm not familiar enough with his thinking. One next-best option would be to try to convince other people that that's what part of a solution to bad government would look like, which under a charitable interpretation of his motives, is what he was doing with that statement he made.
That mentality is probably why US politics is as corrupt as it is at the moment. Electing people who aren't corrupt to replace corrupt people is very valuable if your goal is to have a well governed country.
If you have the political goals of Milton Friedman it might not be. If you want politicians to be corportate friendly than you make it politically profitable for them to do so by making it easy for companies to bribe them.
I think the spirit of the quote is that instead of counting on anyone to be a both benevolent and effective ruler, or counting on voters to recognize such things, design the political environment so that that will happen naturally, even when an office is occupied by a corrupt or ineffective person.
I tried programming a couple of times but it never really 'clicked' in the sense that I am able to write (simple) code but never developed a fascination with it. I usually find consice solutions that perform reasonably well but I can not stick to learning a language beyond the basic standard exercises.
I went the common route of fixing the "learning advanced subjects is hard" problem by studying computer engineering in college, if that's an option you're able to consider. Writing simple code is a just few steps away from writing complex code, and at that point you have something you'll likely be able to make a career out of. "Software is eating the world", as some people accurately quip.
In response to
Open Thread, February 1-14, 2013
In some kind of identity crisis I am looking for a well-paying, preferably mathematical, career where I can use broad knowledge of physics, biology, chemistry, cognitive science, economics ... I was thinking actuary or statistician. Any similar thoughts?
The software world could probably scratch your itch pretty well. Have you tried/do you like programming?
In response to
Rationality Quotes February 2013
If you are reading this book and flipping out at every third sentence because you feel I'm insulting your intelligence, then I have three points of advice for you:
Stop reading my book. I didn't write it for you. I wrote it for people who don't already know everything.
Empty before you fill. You will have a hard time learning from someone with more knowledge if you already know everything.
Go learn Lisp. I hear people who know everything really like Lisp.
For everyone else who's here to learn, just read everything as if I'm smiling and I have a mischievous little twinkle in my eye.
Introduction to Learn Python The Hard Way, by Zed A. Shaw
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The problem with going there is that it's easy to go to far, to a point where the Bible isn't true anymore and it's just your interpretation of bits and pieces of the Bible. Anyways, I don't really think of figurative language as something you need to make allowances for, it just is how it was written- and most of the time is fairly obvious too. I've never seen one instance of imprecise measurement, but if you know of one, fire away, and unmarked parables are also fairly easy to spot.
1 Kings 7:23