Comment author: CronoDAS 08 November 2015 12:12:55AM *  3 points [-]

This seems like an obvious choice for a death-related poem...

Do not go gentle into that good night
Dylan Thomas, 1914 - 1953

Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Though wise men at their end know dark is right,
Because their words had forked no lightning they
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright
Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,
And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight
Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

And you, my father, there on the sad height,
Curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears, I pray.
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

It's still under copyright, but I don't think that really matters...

Comment author: MarsColony_in10years 13 November 2015 12:56:23AM 0 points [-]

I absolutely love the poem. Unfortunately every reading I've ever heard is painfully bad, so maybe it isn't a great choice for a spoken piece. The exception is this scene from Interstellar: [Trigger warning? Or is it just me?]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=13pA3cPRYw4

Comment author: MarsColony_in10years 13 November 2015 12:28:22AM *  0 points [-]

I'm a fan of both versions of Ozymandias, but here's Shelley's version:

I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said: "Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed:
And on the pedestal these words appear:
'My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!'
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away."

Comment author: ChristianKl 12 November 2015 12:06:55PM 0 points [-]

The world is indeed often surprising but frequently surprising in a way that scientific experiments open new questions that weren't in the mind of the scientists beforehand.

When looking at something like Reiki, Bill Nye and friends argue don't consider it an open question whether or not Reiki works just because we don't have well controlled studies investigating it. They consider it not to work because they don't believe that there's ki.

You might argue that they are wrong to do so, but that's still how they operate.

I've seen people like Bill Nye repeat this, and seen plenty of science-themed reminders that test results are often surprising

The phrase science-themed sounds to me more like it refers to science mythology than serious history of science. To the extend that you want to sensible talk about what scientists do, you have to listen to people who study what scientists do and that's not the speciality of a rocket scientist like Wernher Von Braun.

Comment author: MarsColony_in10years 12 November 2015 06:51:04PM 0 points [-]

Ah, that's the definition about which we were talking past each other. I certainly wouldn’t say that "Reiki might work, and until we test it we just don't know!" Perhaps it "works" somewhat through the placebo effect, but even in the unlikely event of a study showing some random placebo controlled health benefit, it would still be astronomically unlikely that ki was the mechanism. (That's not to say that no one will look at the real mechanism after the fact, and try to pick out some superficial similarity to the idea of "ki".)

But that’s beside the point. For hypotheses that are worth our time to test, we test them precisely because it’s an open question. Until we take the data, it remains an open question. (at least for certain definitions of “open question”) I think that’s the point the author was trying to get at with his infeasible historical example.

Comment author: ChristianKl 11 November 2015 11:51:40PM 0 points [-]

Yeah, but if you steel-man it,

The act of steelmanning means to argue against a different position then the one the person is holding. It very worthwhile to criticize people for holding positions for the wrong reasons.

I think he was trying to make something similar to a map-territory distinction. It's often useful to make a distinction between the data and our best interpretation of the data. Some conclusions don't require much extrapolation, but others require a great deal.

To me what you are saying doesn't seem like a description of the map-territory distinction. A map is not an extrapolation of the territory but an abstraction of it.

If things are "open questions" until they are above a confidence interval of, say, 0.99

That sentence doesn't look to me like it's inspired by looking at what scientists do. I'm not aware of a scientific community having the standard of question being closed when they are over a confidence interval of 0.99.

You might argue that scientists should do things that way, but that doesn't have much to do with the question of how scientists act in the real world.

It's often useful to make a distinction between the data and our best interpretation of the data.

Statements about what's useful are different than statements that describe what scientists do in reality.

Using a historical example which happens to be false just complicates things. If I recall, philosophers first hypothesized a round earth around 600 BCE, but didn't prove it experimentally until 300 BCE.

I think you missed a point. At 300 BCE they were not centrally concerned with proving via experiment that the earths is round. They instead cared about things making sense intuitively. The idea that it's important to prove claims via experiment came with Descartes into the scientific mosaic which happened much later.

Nobody at the time between 600 BCE and 300 BCE said: “The part of the Earth that I can see at any given time appears to be flat, which would be the case when looking at a small piece of many differently shaped objects up close, so I don’t have enough information to know what the shape of the Earth is. One reasonable hypothesis is that the Earth is flat, but until we have tools and techniques that can be used to prove or disprove that hypothesis, it is an open question.”

If things are "open questions" until they are above a confidence interval of, say, 0.99, then just about everything we discuss here is an open question, as the quote suggests.

"How does action at a distance work?" wasn't an open question shortly after Descartes. It became again an open question when Newton was shown to be right by the expedition that measured the shape of the earth.

In biology the central dogma of molecular biology was considered a close question for a long time. Biologists where confident about the fact that a lot of the DNA is junk DNA that doesn't do anything.

One of the main reasons why we don't consider the question of whether homeopathy works an open question isn't just that we lack empiric evidence for it working but that we based on our theories of chemistry we don't believe that it could work.

Whether or not chiropratics interventions work was a question that scientists considered not to be open for a long time.

Comment author: MarsColony_in10years 12 November 2015 02:11:34AM 0 points [-]

In passing, he gestured vaguely at a vague conception of science. I guess that doesn't qualify as an argument, so perhaps there is no argument to steelman. But I think that the vague conception of science he was trying to gesture toward does correspond to a real thing that scientists sometimes do.

In the map-territory analogy, this might correspond to a fuzzy or blank region of the map. A scientifically minded person might well say "One reasonable hypothesis is that the ~~Earth is flat~~ the blank region looks like nearby regions, but until we have tools and techniques that can be used to prove or disprove that hypothesis, it is an open question."

But here's the idea I think the author was trying to gesture at. In my experience, most people are way too eager to try and solve problems they don't fully understand. I've often heard scientists and engineers caution against this, but the most notable quote is from the rocket scientist Wernher Von Braun: "One good test is worth a thousand expert opinions". I've seen people like Bill Nye repeat this, and seen plenty of science-themed reminders that test results are often surprising, since the world is often much more complex that we give it credit for.

As for the historical commentary, I completely agree. The scenario isn't historically plausible. The scientific revolution would have had to happen earlier just to produce someone capable of saying the quote, and society would have had to somehow go through a scientific revolution without noticing that the earth was round.

Comment author: ChristianKl 11 November 2015 04:08:13PM 2 points [-]

A scientist doesn’t say, “Well we know the Earth is flat because that’s the way it looks, that’s what’s intuitive, and that’s what everyone agrees is true,” a scientist says, “The part of the Earth that I can see at any given time appears to be flat, which would be the case when looking at a small piece of many differently shaped objects up close, so I don’t have enough information to know what the shape of the Earth is. One reasonable hypothesis is that the Earth is flat, but until we have tools and techniques that can be used to prove or disprove that hypothesis, it is an open question.”

That seems to be a flawed conception of science that doesn't have much to do with the reality of how scientists operate.

Comment author: MarsColony_in10years 11 November 2015 10:06:20PM 0 points [-]

Yeah, but if you steel-man it, I think he was trying to make something similar to a map-territory distinction. It's often useful to make a distinction between the data and our best interpretation of the data. Some conclusions don't require much extrapolation, but others require a great deal.

On LW we happily discuss with very long inferential distances, and talk about regions of hypothesis space with high densities of unknown unknowns. Most scientists, however, work over much smaller inferential distances, with the intent of meticulously build up a rock solid body of knowledge. If things are "open questions" until they are above a confidence interval of, say, 0.99, then just about everything we discuss here is an open question, as the quote suggests.

Using a historical example which happens to be false just complicates things. If I recall, philosophers first hypothesized a round earth around 600 BCE, but didn't prove it experimentally until 300 BCE.

Comment author: freyley 11 November 2015 04:11:12PM *  6 points [-]

The author does not seem to understanding survivorship bias. He never approaches the question of whether the things he proposes are the reason for Musk's success actually work, or whether they happen to work for Musk in a context-dependent way. In other words, if you give this as advice to someone random, will they end up successful or an outcast. I'd guess the latter in most cases. This is in general the problem of evaluating the reasons behind success.

Also, unnecessary evolutionary psychology, done badly, even to the point of suggesting group selection. Ick.

The idea that using technical language (which isn't actually any more precise in meaning in the examples cited) in regular life is beneficial in being more scientific is also pretty suspect.

Comment author: MarsColony_in10years 11 November 2015 09:38:21PM 0 points [-]

Try thinking of it as a case study, not a comprehensive literature review. I didn't really take anything in there as claiming that if I install Musk's mental software then I will succeed at anything I try. The author explicitly mentions several times that Musk thought SpaceX was more likely to fail than succeed. Similarly, there's bits like this:

Likewise, when an artist or scientist or businessperson chef reasons independently instead of by analogy, and their puzzling happens to both A) turn out well and B) end up outside the box, people call it innovation and marvel at the chef’s ingenuity.

It makes a lot more sense if you read it as a case study. He's positing a bunch of hypotheses, some of which are better worded than others. If you steel-man the ones with obvious holes, most seem plausible. (For example, one of the ones that really annoyed me was the way he worded a claim that older children are less creative, which he blamed on schooling but made no mention of a control group.) But the thing was already pretty long, so I can excuse some of that. He's just hypothesizing a bunch of qualities that are necessary but not sufficient.

Comment author: OrphanWilde 10 November 2015 03:13:47PM 3 points [-]

Rather, the idea is that by appealing to both the "head" and the "heart" we can convey a fuller message about EA, and that this will amplify our reach among people who otherwise might not know about it or take it seriously.

Coddletrop. This post is talking about dark arts, about bypassing the head entirely. "Superdonor" indeed.

Comment author: MarsColony_in10years 10 November 2015 09:28:15PM 1 point [-]

I agree that OP was leaning a bit heavy on the advertising methods, and that advertising is almost 100% appeal to emotion. However, I'm not sure that 0% emotional content is quite right either. (For reasons besides argument to moderation.) Occasionally it is necessary to ground things in emotion, to some degree. If I were to argue that dust specs in 3^^^3 people's eyes is a huge amount of suffering, I’d likely wind up appealing to empathy for that vastly huge unfathomable amount of suffering. The argument relies almost exclusively on logic, but the emotional content drives the point home.

However, maybe a more concrete example of the sorts of methods EAs might employ will make it clearer whether or not they are a good idea. If we do decide to use some emotional content, this seems to be an effective science-based way to do it: http://blog.ncase.me/the-science-of-social-change/

Aside from just outlining some methods, the author deals briefly with the ethics. They note that children who read George Washington's Cherry Tree were inspired to be more truthful, while the threats implicit in Pinocchio and Boy Who Cried Wolf didn’t motivate them to lie less than the control group. I have no moral problem with showing someone a good role model, and setting a good example, even if that evokes emotions which influence their decisions. That’s still similar to an appeal to emotion, although the Aristotelian scheme the author mentions would classify it as Ethos rather than Pathos. I’m not sure I’d classify it under Dark Arts. (This feels like it could quickly turn into a confusing mess of different definitions for terms. My only claim is that this is a counterexample, where a small non-rational component of a message seems to be permissible.)

It seems worth noting that EAs are already doing this, to some degree. Here are a couple EA and LW superheroes, off of the top of my head:

One could argue that we should only discuss these sorts of people purely for how their stories inform the present. However, if their stories have an aspirational impact, then it seems reasonable to share that. I’d have a big problem if EA turned into a click-maximizing advertising campaign, or launched infomercials. I agree with you there. There are some techniques which we definitely shouldn’t employ. But some methods besides pure reason legitimately do seem advisable. But guilting someone out of pocket change is significantly different from acquiring new members by encouraging them to aspire to something, and then giving them the tools to work toward that common goal. It’s not all framing.

Comment author: Lumifer 10 November 2015 06:00:36PM 0 points [-]

Most people aren't trying and failing to achieve their dreams. We aren’t even trying. We don’t have well-articulated dreams

Evidence or typical mind fallacy..? X-)

In response to comment by Lumifer on High Challenge
Comment author: MarsColony_in10years 10 November 2015 06:59:21PM *  1 point [-]

Guilty. I've spent most of my life trying to articulate and rigorously define what our goals should be. It takes an extra little bit of cognitive effort to model others as lacking that sense of purpose, rather than merely having lots of different well-defined goals.

(EDIT, to avoid talking past each other: Not that people don't have any well defined sub-goals, mind you. Just not well defined terminal values, and well defined knowledge of their utility function. No well-defined answers to Life, The Universe, And Everything.)

Comment author: OrphanWilde 09 November 2015 09:20:01PM 21 points [-]

Once you start trying to appeal to "emotionally-oriented" thinkers (what a euphemism), you start bringing them into your group. Once you bring them into your group, they start participating in creating your group policy. Once they start participating in creating your group policy - you stop being effective, because they don't care about effective, and they outnumber you.

Don't court the Iron Law of Oligarchy so directly. Keep your focus on your organization's purpose, rather than your organization. It will last slightly longer that way.

Comment author: MarsColony_in10years 10 November 2015 04:28:31PM 2 points [-]

This is a good point. Perhaps an alternative target audience to "emotionally oriented donars" would be "Geeks". Currently, EA is heavily focused on the Nerd demographic. However, I don't see any major problems with branching out from scientists to science fans. There are plenty of people who would endorse and encourage effectiveness in charities, even if they suck at math. If EA became 99.9% non-math people, it would obviously be difficult maintain a number crunching focus on effectiveness. However this seems unlikely, and compared to recruiting "emotionally-oriented" newbies it seems like there would be much less risk of losing our core values.

Maybe "Better Giving Through SCIENCE!" would make a better slogan than "Be A Superdonor"? I've only given this a few minutes of thought, so feel free to improve on or correct any of these ideas.

Comment author: VoiceOfRa 10 November 2015 12:23:21AM 4 points [-]

The biggest problem isn't System 1 dominating System 2. It's system 2's being filled with BS and falsehoods.

In response to comment by VoiceOfRa on High Challenge
Comment author: MarsColony_in10years 10 November 2015 03:09:30PM 2 points [-]

Excellent point. Most people aren't trying and failing to achieve their dreams. We aren’t even trying. We don’t have well-articulated dreams, so trying isn’t even a reasonable course of action until we have a clear objective. I'd guess that most adults still don't know what they want to be when they grow up, and still haven't figured it out by the time they retire.

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