Rationality Quotes October 2012

8 MBlume 02 October 2012 06:50PM

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  • Do not quote yourself
  • Do not quote comments/posts on LW/OB
  • No more than 5 quotes per person per monthly thread, please.

Checking for the Programming Gear

5 MBlume 08 September 2012 08:38PM

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 an hour from now, you have the gear, good luck" -- maybe something on Khan academy?

(I learned to program a long time ago, and I started with BASIC program listings in my math textbook -- I don't actually know what the optimal onramps are now.)

Bayesian Conspiracy Check-in Post

5 MBlume 03 September 2012 08:35AM

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.

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

20 MBlume 05 July 2012 07:12PM

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, let's talk about goals. I can think of four.

  1. Produce thriving, intelligent, rational, happy, good-hearted children who become thriving, intelligent, rational, happy, good-hearted adults.
  2. Have your children enjoy their childhoods
  3. Enjoy raising your children.
  4. Closely tied to 2 and 3 -- actually have a good relationship with your children. Like them and have them like you.
continue reading »

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

-4 MBlume 25 June 2012 05:25PM

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 reducing the emotional impact of decisions. This would certainly fit with past research that's shown the emotional impact of swear words, expressions of love and adverts is diminished when they're presented in a less familiar language.

Paywalled article (can someone with access throw a PDF up on dropbox or something?): http://pss.sagepub.com/content/early/2012/04/18/0956797611432178

Blog summary: http://bps-research-digest.blogspot.co.uk/2012/06/we-think-more-rationally-in-foreign.html

 

Anyone want a LW Enhancement Suite?

15 MBlume 15 February 2012 08:48AM

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 to have the UI enhancements make sense.

Anyway, this is mostly just a straw poll to see how many others would be interested in such a thing.

[Link] Enhanced Autodidacticism for the Chronically Lazy and Hyperactive

7 MBlume 01 June 2011 11:40PM

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

Enjoying food more: a case study in third options

20 MBlume 16 March 2011 06:23AM

This was originally going to be a comment on Zvi's excellent "How I Lost 100 Pounds Using TDT", but it ran rather long, so I expanded it to a top-level post. Hope no one minds.

The issue I took with Zvi's post was that there seemed to be a general assumption being made -- not just in the post, but in comments -- about improvements in health outcomes coming from sacrifices in food-related hedonic outcomes. This would make sense if we were all on some efficient frontier between nutrition and enjoyment of food. I think for most of us1 this is blatantly false.

So then, here are three steps aimed simply towards enjoying food more.2 Eat better food. Eat food you actually like. Pay attention when you eat. These steps may themselves mildly improve your health outcomes, but they are intended primarily to help you enjoy food. You can of course combine them with efficient trades between hedons and nutrition, and wind up doing drastically better for both.

continue reading »

Off-topic Thread

4 MBlume 11 March 2011 01:14AM

We used to have a monthly off-topic thread for stuff rationalists might like to talk about that really has no bearing on rationality. Here's a new one.

 

ETA: Original off-topic thread

Buy Insurance -- Bet Against Yourself

29 MBlume 26 November 2010 04:48AM
My friend and housemate, User:Kevin, makes a very pleasant living selling opioids on the internet, a living he expects to continue for some time, unless something awful happens like Obama losing the next election. The Intrade contract for Obama's loss is currently trading at 42% -- what can User:Kevin do about this?
My suggestion was that he bet heavily on Obama's loss. Say he spends $4200 buying not-Obama futures. If Obama wins, that money becomes worthless, but he gets four years selling kratom regulation-free. On the other hand, say Palin takes a surprise victory and institutes draconian regulation on various substances -- User:Kevin's $4,200 has just become $10,000, leaving a $5800 windfall to help him while he finds his next muse.
This is nothing more than what we normally call buying insurance, just extended to whatever outcomes you may want to insure against. Let's talk about some of the effects of this action.
continue reading »

View more: Next