Comment author: Eugine_Nier 05 February 2013 01:22:59AM 15 points [-]

Of a proposed course of action He wants men, so far as I can see, to ask very simple questions; is it righteous? is it prudent? is it possible? Now if we can keep men asking "Is it in accordance with the general movement of our time? Is it progressive or reactionary? Is this the way that History is going?" they will neglect the relevant questions. And the questions they do ask are, of course, unanswerable; for they do not know the future, and what the future will be depends very largely on just those choices which they now invoke the future to help them to make.

-- Screwtape, The Screwtape Letters by C.S. Lewis

Comment author: NevilleSandiego 23 February 2013 10:42:50AM 1 point [-]

I kind of wish people did use the future more, sometimes. For example, in Australia at the moment, neither major political party supports gay marriage. And beyond all the direct arguments for/against the concept, I can't help but wonder if they really expect, in 50 years time, that we will live in a world of strictly hetrosexual marriages. What are they possibly hoping to achieve? Maybe that reasoning isn't the best way to decide to actively do a thing, but it surely counts towards the cessation of resistance to a thing.

Comment author: Kindly 01 February 2013 07:44:07PM 12 points [-]

Were all stars to disappear or die,
I should learn to look at an empty sky
And feel its total darkness sublime,
Though this might take me a little time.

W. H. Auden, "The More Loving One"

Comment author: NevilleSandiego 23 February 2013 10:30:03AM 0 points [-]

I had a thought recently, what if the existence of a benevolent, omnipotent creator was proven? and my first thought was that I would learn to love the world as the creation of a higher power. And that disturbed me. It's too new a thought for me to have plumbed it properly. But this reminded me. In the absence of the stars, what becomes of their beauty?

When the world is bereft of tigers, glaciers, the Amamzon, will we feel it to be sublime? imma go read the poem now

Comment author: Alicorn 13 February 2013 05:23:11AM 5 points [-]

"It does not matter what we have believed," Caleb said. "What matters is the truth."

--Jovah's Angel by Sharon Shinn

Comment author: NevilleSandiego 23 February 2013 10:09:45AM -1 points [-]

maybe it's just my most recent physchem lecture talking, but my instant response to that was 'truth is a state function'. Or perhaps 'perceived truth', and 'should be'. (i.e., shouldn't depend on the history preceding current perceived truth)

Comment author: James_Miller 02 February 2013 07:16:09PM 3 points [-]

If useful doesn't equal accurate then you have biased your map.

The most useful beliefs to have are almost always accurate ones so in almost all situations useful=accurate. But most people have an innate desire to bias their map in a way that harms them over the long-run. Restated, most people have harmful emotional urges that do their damage by causing them to have inaccurate maps that "feel" useful but really are not. Drilling into yourself the value of having an accurate map in part by changing your emotions to make accuracy a short-term emotional urge will cause you to ultimately have more useful beliefs than if you have the short-term emotional urge of having useful beliefs.

A Bayesian super-intelligence could go for both useful beliefs and emotions. But given the limitations of the human brain I'm better off programming the emotional part of mine to look for accuracy in beliefs rather than usefulness.

Comment author: NevilleSandiego 23 February 2013 09:53:21AM 0 points [-]

useful may not be accurate, depending on one's motives. A 'useful' belief may be one that allows you to do what you really want to unburdened by ethical/logistic/moral considerations. e.g., belief that non-europeans aren't really human permits one to colonise their land without qualms.

I suppose that's why, as a rationalist, one would prefer accurate beliefs- they don't give you the liberty of lying to yourself like that. And as a rationalist, accurate beliefs will be far more useful than inaccurate ones.

In response to Chaotic Inversion
Comment author: NevilleSandiego 21 October 2012 05:40:51AM 0 points [-]

Nuuu! I KNOW I'm stupid! I can see myself frittering away my time, thinking 'wow I'm on the ball, I deserve a break' AND 'agh I'm not getting anything done, I should take a break', even now I have things I SHOULD be doing. And I KNOW I'd enjoy them if I actually did them- I study science cos I love it, not cos I love putting it off. I know all the benefits, and they're not even long term, mostly I get a high return on very little investment. There's a little voice in me, screaming, and it can't make me do anything. AGH. WHY STUPID THINGS WHY? So I was hoping this was going to be some kind of terribly clever rationalist approach to productivity. Oh well, back to hitting myself over the head with a mallet.

In response to Chaotic Inversion
Comment author: Z._M._Davis 29 November 2008 01:51:13PM 12 points [-]

I'm sure you've already heard this, but have you tried reading relevant papers rather than random websites?

Personally, I'm kind of giving up on "discipline" as such, in favor of looking for things worth doing and then doing them because they are worth doing. Why torture myself trying to regulate and control every minute, when that doesn't even work? Of course every minute is precious, but just because I'm not following a schedule doesn't mean nothing valuable is getting done. Whatever happened to the power of play? The first virtue is curiosity, isn't it?

Results are mixed so far, but with a certain history, even "mixed" counts as a win.

Comment author: NevilleSandiego 21 October 2012 05:35:02AM 2 points [-]

I have difficulty even making myself do things I enjoy, or I know to be rewarding. Like reading a book on something I'm interested in, or going for a walk in the sun, or making a serious go of understanding some basic quantum theory. I do very few things because I'm anticipating some kind of long term benefit. I do stuff because I expect it to be interesting and fun now. Still have difficulty with impetus.

In response to Say Not "Complexity"
Comment author: NevilleSandiego 21 October 2012 04:41:24AM 0 points [-]

'Mercury's gravitational pull has long since been destroyed by solar flares, which is why is has no atmosphere'. Something I read today- seems appropriate. Apparently they'd been watching a documentary, and I think they put the components of the explanation together incorrectly in their head.

In response to Say Not "Complexity"
Comment author: Benjamin_Zivan 30 August 2007 01:46:16PM 4 points [-]

As a current student, I can confirm your suspicions about a seemingly complete paper being preferred over one that addresses all information about the topic. "I don't know" still is not an acceptable answer in many circles and I regard it as an unfortunate phenomenon.

Comment author: NevilleSandiego 21 October 2012 04:39:24AM 1 point [-]

In my second year uni course, I have an outline for writing lab reports that says 'include in your discussion anything you feel is out of place, or that you don't understand in this experiment. You will not be marked down for such admissions'. And I thought 'NO-ONE is going to take you up on that.'. I hate having to bullshit science papers - I tend to compromise, with a hashed together explanation that I express doubt in, and take the marks hit. Bullshitting is great fun in English courses, but in science it feels like shooting myself in the foot.

Comment author: NevilleSandiego 21 October 2012 04:26:39AM 0 points [-]

I believe I first came across the term emergence in relation to Langton's Ant, in a book section loosely centered on game theory. In the book, the patterns formed by the progression of Langton's Ant were termed 'emergent' because they could not be predicted except by running the program. One could not, with full knowledge of the simple rules that governed the Ant's world, predict what the pattern would look like after x iterations, or where the ant would be. Given this, I would not call the location of a dropped object at time t after the drop an 'emergent property', because given the laws that govern how it will fall and the initial values of the system (height and mass of object, area perpendicular to motion, density of air etc etc) I can accurately predict the object's location and momentum without having to actually drop it and see where it is.

So an emergent system is one wherein the simple base rules do not enable one to predict the large scale order or consequences (I suppose lack of order too), whereas a system which is not emergent is one wherein knowledge of the governing rules enables a prediction which can later be proven by running of the system. Prime numbers are thus an emergent phenomenon of how numbers related to each other (unless someone has found a way to predict them while I wasn't paying attention), whereas even numbers are not.