MBlume

The Epistemic Prisoner's Dilemma

Let us say you are a doctor, and you are dealing with a malaria epidemic in your village. You are faced with two problems. First, you have no access to the drugs needed for treatment. Second, you are one of two doctors in the village, and the two of you cannot agree on the nature of the disease itself. You, having carefully tested many patients, being a highly skilled, well-educated diagnostician, have proven to yourself that the disease in question is malaria. Of this you are >99% certain. Yet your colleague, the blinkered fool, insists that you are dealing with an outbreak of bird flu, and to this he assigns >99% certainty. Well, it need hardly be said that someone here is failing at rationality. Rational agents do not have common knowledge of disagreements etc. But... what can we say? We're human, and it happens. So, let's say that one day, OmegaDr. House calls you both into his office and tells you that he knows, with certainty, which disease is afflicting the villagers. As confident as you both are in your own diagnoses, you are even more confident in House's abilities. House, however, will not tell you his diagnosis until you've played a game with him. He's going to put you in one room and your colleague in another. He's going to offer you a choice between 5,000 units of malaria medication, and 10,000 units of bird-flu medication. At the same time, he's going to offer your colleague a choice between 5,000 units of bird-flu meds, and 10,000 units of malaria meds. (Let us assume that keeping a malaria patient alive and healthy takes the same number of units of malaria meds as keeping a bird flu patient alive and healthy takes bird flu meds). You know the disease in question is malaria. The bird-flu drugs are literally worthless to you, and the malaria drugs will save lives. You might worry that your colleague would be upset with you for making this decision, but you also know House is going to tell him that it was actually malaria before he sees you. Far fro

121Apr 18, 2009

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Rationality Quotes October 2012

Here's the new thread for posting quotes, with the usual rules: * Please post all quotes separately, so that they can be voted up/down separately. (If they are strongly related, reply to your own comments. If strongly ordered, then go ahead and post them together.) * Do not quote yourself...

Oct 2, 201216

Checking for the Programming Gear

People on this board have talked about programming as a gear in your brain that, to a first approximation, you have or you don't. I'm wondering if there's some well put-together resource you can direct someone with zero experience and just a web-browser to and say "if you're having fun...

Sep 8, 20129

Bayesian Conspiracy Check-in Post

Just returned from this year's Bayesian Conspiracy camp at Burning Man. We encountered a lot of cool burners who read this blog, and I thought we should have a post for them to check in with contact info if they'd like to stay in touch.

Sep 3, 201211

On the Care and Feeding of Young Rationalists -- Revisited[Draft] [Request for Feedback]

Planned top-level post -- any feedback very much welcome. Obviously a followup to: On the Care and Feeding of Young Rationalists My very first top-level post on LW was a solicitation for advice/feedback/discussion on the topic of rationalist parenting. I'd like to revisit the topic now. Goals First of all,...

Jul 5, 201231

Framing a problem in a foreign language seems to reduce decision biases

> The researchers aren't entirely sure why speaking in a less familiar tongue makes people more "rational", in the sense of not being affected by framing effects or loss aversion. But they think it may have to do with creating psychological distance, encouraging systematic rather than automatic thinking, and with...

Jun 25, 2012-8

Anyone want a LW Enhancement Suite?

Reddit Enhancement Suite If anyone cares, I could probably port this to work on LW without too much trouble. Optimistically it'd just involve opening up the source and replacing reddit.com with lesswrong.com. More realistically, there'd probably be a lot of baked-in assumptions about DOM structure that'd need to be updated...

Feb 15, 201221

[Link] Enhanced Autodidacticism for the Chronically Lazy and Hyperactive

Takeaway seems to be: stay light on your feet; keep everything in the short term, but build habits that will serve you in the long term; make sure you're always doing something that holds your interest. http://somebeautifulplace.tumblr.com/post/6074297771/enhanced-autodidactism-for-the-chronically-lazy-and

Jun 1, 201110

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The Epistemic Prisoner's Dilemma

Instrumental vs. Epistemic -- A Bardic Perspective

The Fundamental Question

Welcome to Less Wrong!

MBlume

Rationality Quotes October 2012

Checking for the Programming Gear

Bayesian Conspiracy Check-in Post

On the Care and Feeding of Young Rationalists -- Revisited[Draft] [Request for Feedback]

Framing a problem in a foreign language seems to reduce decision biases

Anyone want a LW Enhancement Suite?

[Link] Enhanced Autodidacticism for the Chronically Lazy and Hyperactive

The Epistemic Prisoner's Dilemma

Instrumental vs. Epistemic -- A Bardic Perspective

The Fundamental Question

Welcome to Less Wrong!

Rationality Quotes October 2012

Checking for the Programming Gear

Bayesian Conspiracy Check-in Post

On the Care and Feeding of Young Rationalists -- Revisited[Draft] [Request for Feedback]

Framing a problem in a foreign language seems to reduce decision biases

Anyone want a LW Enhancement Suite?

[Link] Enhanced Autodidacticism for the Chronically Lazy and Hyperactive