Peacewise

re compartmentalization question about 'jinxing'.

I have some experience and knowledge in this subject from a sports science perspective.

It's commonly accepted within sport psychology that first, negativity, is associated with predicting low chances of success, and secondly that those who do display negativity and predict low chance of success decrease their own performance.

For example, a well coached basketball player at the free throw line would be aware that saying "I'm going to miss this free throw" increases their chances of missing the free ... (read more)

Microsoft Outlook Business Contact Manager provides ways forward to utilising prediction. Within its Task scheduling one has opportunity to estimate what percentage of the set task is already completed. Also how long the task will take is estimated by the user.

I find B.C.M highly useful for focusing prediction and task achievement.

Hi people, I just wanted to say thank you to the LessWrong community for exposing me to the concept of "bayesian probability". Apparently human motor programs function in a bayesian way, with each movement prior predicted including predicted sensory feedback of said movement, which enables a comparison of prediction with perceived reality. Pretty cool.

Learned of the observational evidence supporting random practice over blocked practiced as they relate to motor learning and retention, 14/5/2015.

Wrote a new lesson plan for my squash juniors, bas... (read more)

tomme, welcome to lesswrong, gday I'm Peacewise.

re

I used to believe that Santa is real

Fair crack mate, "Santa" is a standard fiction/lie perpetrated by society and parents, hardly something to be used as evidence of a "faulty brain". In fact its more likely to be evidence that your brain was and is functioning in a developmentally normal state.

I suggest you reconsider your position on fiction, since you state

so I would rather make sure it's accurate, truthful, useful knowledge

there is indeed plenty of accurate, truthful and us... (read more)

Seems to me that rationalism as a living ideal is a slippery slope with a positive outcome. Once someone takes the initial steps to use rationalism, they then seek to learn more about rationalism, they practice it more and they become more effective and efficient at utilising it. That looks like a slippery slope to me, but obviously one that has a different outcome type than a traditional negative outcome orientated slippery slope.

Well done, you've rephrased S.M.A.R.T.E.R goal setting into you're own language... and that's cool, cause that's a part of learning.

Do you recall this line in the Matrix?

MORPHEUS: I told you that I can only show you the door. You have to step through it.

Thats what i hoped would be understood by the previous, one can lead a horse to water but one cant make it drink.

I played Alpha Centauri for a few weeks back when it came out, ended up going back to Civilisation, more out of habit I suppose than anything else. These days I'm playing Civilisation IV Beyond the Sword.

What is interesting about being taught optimizer thinking within a computer game is that if that thinking stays within the game, then it's not real world applicable as optimal. If however one stops playing the game and then takes the learned strategies applicable in the real world, into the real world - then gaming is useful, otherwise gaming is just ente... (read more)

What is quite interesting when reconsidering the original hypothesis of ABrook, is the taking into consideration of outsiders.

If outsiders strongly associate rationality with LW and LW is negatively perceived, then the original hypothesis has some weight.

Fortunately we have an outsider... that's me, and,

I do have some negative perceptions of LW, yet more fortunately for rationality a negative perception of LW is that I do not strongly associate LW with rationality. I presume some will appreciate the beautiful irony of this construct and further appreciate and then avoid the infinite spirals it produces.

In my judgement ABrooks was not trolling, and instead raised a point of view that experience on LW encouraged me to consider.

I think it is true that some members of LW, on some occasions do believe they are justified in expressing contempt for the beliefs of outsiders, sometimes this is done without expressing the justification, on other occasions the justification has been expressed and refuted yet the contempt remains and on yet other occasions the justification is reasonable. I leave the other branches of the scenario for the community to express at th... (read more)

But why that seed in this conversation?

To assist in debiasing the ageism that was being expressed in the conversation.

that are a thousand years ahead of western science.

What was the motivation behind this addition? Was it positive?

The motivation was to plant a seed... motivated by the +2 on my comment.

In my experience debiasing others who have strongly held opinions is far more effort than it's worth, a better road seems to be to facilitate them debiasing themselves. Plant the seed and move on, coming back to assess and perhaps water it later on. I don't try to cut down their tree... as it were. http://lesswrong.com/lw/7ep/practical_debiasing/5ah1?context=1#5ah1

TimS, I'm glad we agree on several points, extinction and positive reinforcement of children. I wonder why these methods are espoused for children, yet tend to be used less for "competent adults". Thanks for planting the seed that I might be overgeneralizing the point a bit, I'll keep an eye on that.

I am reminded that saying "X is wrong" to an adult with a belief is ineffective in many circumstances, most notably the circumstance were the belief is a preconception, based in emotion or more specifically an irrational belief. Is this not... (read more)

I'd like to attend via skype if someone cares to plonk an ipad or other skype activated device on the desk. my skype name is peace.wise and I live in Mount Barker, south australia.

Please contact me via LW before attempting to have me as a skype contact. I reject all skype contacts from people I don't know as a matter of course.

Thanks for the post on negativity Vaniver. I wouldn't go bungee jumping if it had a 5% failure rate.

Mostly in discouraging behavior...

That viewpoint can be considered as based upon Skinners model of Behaviourism, it's been shown to be less effective for learning than being positive.

Makes sense - we tend to remember what we are emotionally engaged in and what is reinforced. When the negativity is associated with the 5%, what is reinforced is that a person is "wrong", that's associated with feelings of low self efficacy and tends to discourage... (read more)

thomblake, consider a high distinction as an A+ grade. Perhaps as along the lines of Newtonian Mechanics. It's mostly right.

Sure, if you're running in debate mode and thinking in terms of 'sides' or 'us versus them' and trying to 'win', then that might be something to do. Solution: don't do that in the first place.

Indeed, a valuable point. So what's up with the score keeping system of LW then. It encourages thinking in terms of sides and competition. -1, not my side, +1 my side. -1 lost, +1 won.

Don't worry, everything you believe is almost certainly wrong - don't expect to find yourself in the 95% correct state any time soon. We're running on corrupted hardware in the fi

Vaniver. Mate. I accept that you believe

It seeks to minimize arrogance and maximize doubt.

but I dispute that it achieves those. I believe instead that it maximises arrogance and maximises doubt in the others point of view, and in maximising doubt in the other persons view we minimize our doubt in our own view.

The belief that it's difficult to be completely right, encourages people to look for that gap that is "wrong" and then drive a wedge into it and expand it until it's all that's being talked about.

If 95% is correct and 5% is wrong, cr... (read more)

thanks for the link paper-machine, that's quite a reasonable policy.

If I wasn't downvoted to such a degree that I have no opportunity to downvote, I might consider implementing it. I'll certainly use the concept to more thoroughly mitigate my annoyance about those unable to follow argument.

I'll up vote you in accordance with my policy. Which is that if a person says a single useful thing, regardless of the rest of their post, I'll give it a +1.

My reasoning for this policy is twofold. I reject the negativity that is encouraged by criticism and it's aim of... (read more)