I've often heard LWers describe themselves as having autism, or Asperger's Syndrome (which is no longer considered a valid construct, and was removed from the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders two years ago.) This is given as an explanation for various forms of social dysfunction. The suggestion is that such people have a genetic disorder.

I've come to think that the issues are seldom genetic in origin. There's a simpler explanation. LWers are often intellectually gifted. This is conducive to early isolation. In The Outsiders Grady Towers writes:

The single greatest adjustment problem faced by the intellectually gifted, however, is their tendency to become isolated from the rest of humanity. Hollingworth points out that the exceptionally gifted do not deliberately choose isolation, but are forced into it against their wills. These children are not unfriendly or ungregarious by nature. Typically they strive to play with others but their efforts are defeated by the difficulties of the case... Other children do not share their interests, their vocabulary, or their desire to organize activities. [...] Forms of solitary play develop, and these, becoming fixed as habits, may explain the fact that many highly intellectual adults are shy, ungregarious, and unmindful of human relationships, or even misanthropic and uncomfortable in ordinary social intercourse.

Most people pick up a huge amount of tacit social knowledge as children and adolescents, through very frequent interaction with many peers. This is often not true of intellectually gifted people, who usually grew up in relative isolation on account of lack of peers who shared their interests.

They often have the chance to meet others similar to themselves later on in life. One might think that this would resolve the issue. But in many cases intellectually gifted people simply never learn how beneficial it can be to interact with others. For example, the great mathematician Robert Langlands wrote:

Bochner pointed out my existence to Selberg and he invited me over to speak with him at the Institute. I have known Selberg for more than 40 years. We are on cordial terms and our offices have been essentially adjacent for more than 20 years.This is nevertheless the only mathematical conversation I ever had with him. It was a revelation.

At first blush, this seems very strange: much of Langlands' work involves generalizations of Selberg's trace formula. It seems obvious that it would be fruitful for Langlands to have spoken with Selberg about math more than once, especially given that the one conversation that he had was very fruitful! But if one thinks about what their early life experiences must have been like, as a couple of the most brilliant people in the world, it sort of makes sense: they plausibly had essentially nobody to talk to about their interests for many years, and if you go for many years without having substantive conversations with people, you might never get into the habit.

When intellectually gifted people do interact, one often sees cultural clashes, because such people created their own cultures as a substitute for usual cultural acclimation, and share no common background culture. From the inside, one sees other intellectually gifted people, recognizes that they're very odd by mainstream standards, and thinks "these people are freaks!" But at the same time, the people who one sees as freaks see one in the same light, and one is often blind to how unusual one's own behavior is, only in different ways. Thus, one gets trainwreck scenarios, as when I inadvertently offended dozens of people when I made strong criticisms of MIRI and Eliezer back in 2010, just after I joined the LW community.

Grady Towers concludes the essay by writing:

The tragedy is that none of the super high IQ societies created thus far have been able to meet those needs, and the reason for this is simple. None of these groups is willing to acknowledge or come to terms with the fact that much of their membership belong to the psychological walking wounded. This alone is enough to explain the constant schisms that develop, the frequent vendettas, and the mediocre level of their publications. But those are not immutable facts; they can be changed. And the first step in doing so is to see ourselves as we are.

These are quick notes on an idea for an indirect strategy to increase the likelihood of society acquiring robustly safe and beneficial AI.

Motivation:

• Most challenges we can approach with trial-and-error, so many of our habits and social structures are set up to encourage this. There are some challenges where we may not get this opportunity, and it could be very helpful to know what methods help you to tackle a complex challenge that you need to get right first time.

• Giving an artificial intelligence good values may be a particularly important challenge, and one where we need to be correct first time. (Distinct from creating systems that act intelligently at all, which can be done by trial and error.)

• Building stronger societal knowledge about how to approach such problems may make us more robustly prepared for such challenges. Having more programmers in the AI field familiar with the techniques is likely to be particularly important.

Idea: Develop methods for training people to write code without bugs.

• Trying to teach the skill of getting things right first time.

• Writing or editing code that has to be bug-free without any testing is a fairly easy challenge to set up, and has several of the right kind of properties. There are some parallels between value specification and programming.

• Set-up puts people in scenarios where they only get one chance -- no opportunity to test part/all of the code, just analyse closely before submitting.

  • Interested in personal habits as well as social norms or procedures that help this.

    • Daniel Dewey points to standards for code on the space shuttle as a good example of getting high reliability code edits.

How to implement:

• Ideal: Offer this training to staff at software companies, for profit.

  • Although it’s teaching a skill under artificial hardship, it seems plausible that it could teach enough good habits and lines of thinking to noticeably increase productivity, so people would be willing to pay for this.

  • Because such training could create social value in the short run, this might give a good opportunity to launch as a business that is simultaneously doing valuable direct work.

  • Similarly, there might be a market for a consultancy that helped organisations to get general tasks right the first time, if we knew how to teach that skill.

• More funding-intensive, less labour intensive: run competitions with cash prizes

  • Try to establish it as something like a competitive sport for teams.

  • Outsource the work of determining good methods to the contestants.

This is all quite preliminary and I’d love to get more thoughts on it. I offer up this idea because I think it would be valuable but not my comparative advantage. If anyone is interested in a project in this direction, I’m very happy to talk about it.

I think the greatest issue with Less Wrong is that it lacks direction. There doesn't appear to be anyone driving it forward or helping the community achieve its goals. At the start this role was taken by Eliezer, but he barely seems active these days. The expectation seems to be that things will happen spontaneously, on their own. And that has worked for a few things (is. SubReddit, study hall, ect.), but on the while the community is much less effective than it could be.

I want to give an example of how things could work. Let's imagine Less Wrong had some kind of executive (as opposed to moderators who just keep everything in order). At the start of the year, they could create a thread asking about what goals they thought were important for Less Wrong - ie. Increasing the content in main, producing more content for a general audience, increasing female participation rate.

They would then have a Skype meeting to discuss the feedback and to debate which ones that wanted to primarily focus on. Suppose for example they decided they wanted to increase the content in main. They might solicit community feedback on what kinds of articles they'd like to see more of. They might contact people who wrote discussion posts that were main quality and suggest they submit some content there instead. They could come up with ideas of new kinds of contentLW might find useful (ie. Project management) and seed the site with content on that area to do that people understand that kind of content is desired.

These roles would take significant work, but I imagine people would be motivated to do this by altruism or status. By discussing ideas in person (instead of just over the internet), they there would be more of an opportunity to build a consensus and they would be able to make more progress towards addressing these issues.

If a group said that they thought A was an important issue and the solution was X, most members would pay more attention than if a random individual said it. No-one would have to listen to anything they say, but I imagine that many would choose to. Furthermore if the exec were all actively involved in the projects, I imagine they'd be able to complete some smaller ones themselves, or at least provide the initial push to get it going.

Crossposted at Agenty Duck

And somewhere in the back of his mind was a small, small note of confusion, a sense of something wrong about that story; and it should have been a part of Harry's art to notice that tiny note, but he was distracted. For it is a sad rule that whenever you are most in need of your art as a rationalist, that is when you are most likely to forget it. —HPMOR, Ch. 3

A rationalist’s art is most distant when it is most needed. Why is that?

When I am very angry with my romantic partner, what I feel is anger. I don’t feel the futility of throwing a tantrum, or the availability of other options like honest communication, or freewriting, or taking a deep breath. My attention is so narrowly focused on the object of my anger that I’m likely not even aware that I’m angry, let alone that my anger might be blinding me to my art.

When her skills are most needed, a rationalist is lost in an unskillful state of mind. She doesn’t recognize that it’s happening, and she doesn’t remember that she has prepared for it by learning and practicing appropriate techniques.

I've designed and exercise that trains a skill I call reflective attention, and some call mindfulness. For me, it serves as an anchor in a stormy mind, or as a compass pointing always toward a mental state where my art is close at hand.

Noticing that I am lost in an unskillful state of mind is a separate skill. But when I do happen to notice—when I feel that small, small note of confusion—reflective attention helps me find my way back. Instead of churning out even more pointless things to yell at my partner, it allows me to say, “I am angry. I feel an impulse to yell. I notice my mind returning over and over to the memory that makes me more angry. I’m finding it hard to concentrate. I am distracted. I have a vague impression that I have prepared for this.” And awareness of that final thought allows me to ask, “What have I trained myself to do when I feel this way?”

The goal of the following exercise is to practice entering reflective attention.

It begins with an instruction to think of nothing. When you monitor yourself to make sure you’re not having any thoughts, your attention ends up directed toward the beginnings of thoughts. Since the contents of consciousness are always changing, maintaining focus on the beginnings of thoughts prevents you from engaging for an extended period with any particular thought. It prevents you from getting “lost in thought”, or keeping attention focused on a thought without awareness of doing so. The point is not actually to be successful at thinking nothing, as that is impossible while conscious, but to notice what happens when you try.

Keeping your focus on the constant changes in your stream of consciousness brings attention to your experience of awareness itself. Awareness of awareness is the anchor for attention. It lets you keep your bearings when you’d otherwise be carried away by a current of thought or emotion.

Once you’re so familiar with the feeling of reflection that creating it is a primitive action, you can forget the introductory part, and jump straight to reflective attention whenever it occurs to you to do so.

This will probably take around five minutes, but you can do it for much longer if you want to.

Notice what your mind is doing right now. One thing it’s doing is experiencing sensations of black and white as you read. What else are you experiencing? Are there words in your inner monologue? Are there emotions of any kind?

Spend about thirty seconds trying not to think anything. When thirty seconds is up, stop trying not to think, and read on.

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What’s happening in your mind is constantly changing. Even when you were trying not to think, you probably noticed many times when the stillness would shift and some new thought would begin to emerge in conscious awareness.

Turn your attention to those changes. When a new thought emerges in consciousness, see if you can notice the exact moment when it happens, becoming aware of what it feels like for that particular change to take place.

If it helps at first, you can narrate your stream of consciousness in words: “Now I’m seeing the blue of the wall, now I’m hearing the sound of a car, now I’m feeling cold, now I’m curious what time it is…” You’ll probably find that you can’t narrate anywhere near quickly enough, in part because thoughts can happen in parallel, while speech is serial. Once narrating starts to become frustrating, stop slowing yourself down with words, and just silently observe your thoughts as they occur.

If you’re finding this overwhelming because there are too many thoughts, narrow your focus down to just your breathing, and try to precisely identify the experience of an exhale ending and an inhale beginning, of an inhale ending and an exhale beginning. Keep doing that until you feel comfortable with it, and then slowly expand your attention a little at a time: to other experiences associated with breathing, to non-breath-related bodily sensations, to non-tactile sensations from your environment, and finally to internal mental sensations like emotions.

If you notice an impulse to focus your attention on a particular thought, following it and engaging with it—perhaps you notice you feel hungry, and in response you begin to focus your attention on planning lunch—instead of letting that impulse take over your attention, recognize it as yet another change in the activity of your mind. If you’re narrating, say, “now I’m feeling an impulse to plan my lunch”, and keep your focus broad enough to catch the next thought when it arises. If you realize that you’ve already become lost in a particular thought, notice that realization itself as a new thought, and return to observing your stream of consciousness by noticing the next new thought that happens as well.

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You might need to practice this many times before you get the hang of it. I suggest trying it for ten minutes to half an hour a day until you do.

Once you feel like you can recognize the sensation of reflective attention and enter that state of mind reliably given time, begin to train for speed. Instead of setting a timer for fifteen minutes or however long you want to practice, set it to go off every minute for the first half of your practice, spending one minute in reflective attention, and one minute out. (Don’t do this for all of your practice. You still need to practice maintenance.) When you can consistently arrive in reflective attention by the end of the minute, cut the intervals down to 45 seconds, then thirty, fifteen, and five.

In real life, the suspicion that you may be lost in an unskillful state of mind will be quiet and fleeting. “Quiet” means you’ll need to learn to snap your attention to the slightest hint of that feeling. For that, you’ll need to train “noticing”. “Fleeting” means you’ll need to be able to respond in less than five seconds. You’ll need to begin the process in less than one second, even if it takes a little longer to fully arrive in reflective attention. For that, training for speed is crucial.

Strongly related: the Ebborians

Imagine mapping my brain into two interpenetrating networks. For each brain cell, half of it goes to one map and half to the other. For each connection between cells, half of each connection goes to one map and half to the other. We can call these two mapped out halves Manfred One and Manfred Two. Because neurons are classical, as I think, both of these maps change together. They contain the full pattern of my thoughts. (This situation is even more clear in the Ebborians, who can literally split down the middle.)

So how many people am I? Are Manfred One and Manfred Two both people? Of course, once we have two, why stop there - are there thousands of Manfreds in here, with "me" as only one of them? Put like that it sounds a little overwrought - what's really going on here is the question of what physical system corresponds to "I" in english statements like "I wake up." This may matter.

The impact on anthropic probabilities is somewhat straightforward. With everyday definitions of "I wake up," I wake up just once per day no matter how big my head is. But if the "I" in that sentence is some constant-size physical pattern, then "I wake up" is an event that happens more times if my head is bigger. And so using the variable people-number definition, I expect to wake up with a gigantic head.

The impact on decisions is less big. If I'm in this head with a bunch of other Manfreds, we're all on the same page - it's a non-anthropic problem of coordinated decision-making. For example, if I were to make any monetary bets about my head size, and then donate profits to charity, no matter what definition I'm using, I should bet as if my head size didn't affect anthropic probabilities. So to some extent the real point of this effect is that it is a way anthropic probabilities can be ill-defined. On the other hand, what about preferences that depend directly on person-numbers like how to value people with different head sizes? Or for vegetarians, should we care more about cows than chickens, because each cow is more animals than a chicken is?

According to my common sense, it seems like my body has just one person in it. Why does my common sense think that? I think there are two answers, one unhelpful and one helpful.

The first answer is evolution. Having kids is an action that's independent of what physical system we identify with "I," and so my ancestors never found modeling their bodies as being multiple people useful.

The second answer is causality. Manfred One and Manfred Two are causally distinct from two copies of me in separate bodies but the same input/output. If a difference between the two separated copies arose somehow, (reminiscent of Dennett's factual account) henceforth the two bodies would do and say different things and have different brain states. But if some difference arises between Manfred One and Manfred Two, it is erased by diffusion.

Which is to say, the map that is Manfred One is statically the same pattern as my whole brain, but it's causally different. So is "I" the pattern, or is "I" the causal system? 

In this sort of situation I am happy to stick with common sense, and thus when I say me, I think the causal system is referring to the causal system. But I'm not very sure.

Going back to the Ebborians, one interesting thing about that post is the conflict between common sense and common sense - it seems like common sense that each Ebborian is equally much one person, but it also seems like common sense that if you looked at an Ebborian dividing, there doesn't seem to be a moment where the amount of subjective experience should change, and so amount of subjective experience should be proportional to thickness. But as it is said, just because there are two opposing ideas doesn't mean one of them is right.

On the questions of subjective experience raised in that post, I think this mostly gets cleared up by precise description an  anthropic narrowness. I'm unsure of the relative sizes of this margin and the proof, but the sketch is to replace a mysterious "subjective experience" that spans copies with individual experiences of people who are using a TDT-like theory to choose so that they individually achieve good outcomes given their existence.

I'd like to believe that I'm pretty productive, and people seem interested in how I do it.  Previously, I had written "How I Am Productive"and it became one of my most popular essays of all time.

The real secret is that, in the past, I wasn't nearly as productive.  I struggled with procrastination, had issues completing assignments on time, and always felt like I never had enough time to do things.  But, starting in January 2013 and continuing for the past year and a half, I have slowly implemented several systems and habits in my life that, taken together, have made me productive.

I've learned productivity, and I want to try to teach it to others.

When I wrote "How I Am Productive", I kind of brain dumped everything that I knew in one place.  To do better, I should help people go one step at a time.  I also focused a lot on particulars of my situation -- to do better, I should be more general.  The aim of this -- Productivity 101 for Beginners -- is to try to make a general, step-by-step guide to increasing people's productivity.

...It's basically what I would do if I somehow had to start over.

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Disclaimer: This is still advice based on what works for me.  I've attempted to validate it by trying it on a couple of other people and integrating feedback.  I've also tried to improve it based on what I've learned in the year between writing this and writing "How I Am Productive".  But your mileage still may vary, and I'm not a professional coach.

Step One: Get some goals!

...So here's my step-by-step guide to being productive.  ...Start on step one.  Focus on step one.  Do not move on from step one until you're done with step one.

Most people think productivity starts with "how", but I always find that it starts with "why".

Why do you want to be productive?

...If you could do more, what would you do?  Would you try to exercise?  Would you practice programming regularly?  Would you start writing?

Action point for this step: Carefully pick two goals -- two things that you want to accomplish that you're currently not doing.  Focus on them and how awesome it would be if you could get those things done!

Avoid this common mistake: Do not pick more than two goals.  Only focus on two to start small and simple.  You can add more goals later.

You can progress to the next step when you've picked two goals that you're excited about.  These are the reasons why you want to be productive.

Step Two: Track Your Time!

So you have your two goals now.  (If you don't have your two goals, go back to Step One.)  We now know why you want to be productive.

Now we have to make some time for your goals.  But in order to do that, we have to figure out where your time is currently going.

Action point for this step: Using paper and a pencil, Google Calendar, Toggl, or some other time tracker, map out roughly what you do on a given week.  If your week is atypical, wait until a more typical week.  If all your weeks are atypical, just track one and we'll work with it.

Avoid this common mistake: Don't stress out about timing.  You can do rough estimates (I started out with fifteen minute intervals, but half hour intervals are fine) and if you miss something, it's ok.  It might take a day of practice.  Remember to have your timer with you (carry your notebook, get Toggl's mobile app, etc.) so it's easier to track things.

You can progress to the next step when you have at least three days of usable timelogs, preferably a week of timelogs.

Step Three: Timebox

Now you have to figure out when you want to accomplish your goals.  Timeboxing refers to making a box of time in your calendar when you'll accomplish something.

Action point for this step: Look in your timelog to see if you have any time that you're not spending the way you want, and make that the time you do your goals.  When I started out, I found that I would read the internet aimlessly for two hours a day.  I cut that down to one hour and then used that free hour to exercise.

You might find that good times include right when you wake up, right before you go to sleep, after class, before work, after work, etc.  Lots of different times work for different people -- just find a time that works for you!

Avoid this common mistake: Don't cut out too much suboptimal time.  Breaks are important for rest!  Maybe you can set a timer (implicitly based on agreeing only to watch one TV episode, or an actual timer that rings), take a break for that amount, and then do what productive thing you want.  Remember how excited you are about doing it, and how bad you'll feel if you watch that second TV show!

You can progress to the next step when you have a concrete time in which you will accomplish both your goals.

Step Four: Commit!

We've long recognized that we can't get our goals done ourselves -- weakness of will is just too strong.  You need the power of a commitment device if you actually want to accomplish your goals in the long-run -- there is no other way.

Action point for this step: Bind both your goals to some sort of commitment device that works for you.  Go to the gym with a friend and don't let them let you cancel.  Sign up for Beeminder.  Sign up for HabitRPG.  Bet a friend.  Start making checkmarks for every day on track and don't let yourself break the streak.  Do more than one of these things.  Do whatever it takes to get yourself on track!

Avoid this common mistake: Don't use a commitment device that doesn't work for you.  If you'd lie to Beeminder, don't use it.  If you'd lie to a friend you bet, find some way to increase their oversight so that you can't lie.  You have to make your commitment device inescapable.

You can progress to the next step when you have a commitment device that has successfully made you stick to your two habits for five days in a row.  If your commitment device isn't working, get a new one.  If your time isn't working, choose a new time.  If you find yourself still failing, maybe your goal isn't important to you?  Focus on why you want to do this goal, or consider switching goals.

Step Five: Keep Going!

Don't stop now!  Keep your habit up!

Action point for this step: Continue to stick to your two goals.

Avoid this common mistake: Do not add more goals.  You must focus on your current two goals in order to make them stick.  It's worth it in the long run.

You can progress to the next step when you have stuck to your goal successfully for three weeks.

Step Six: Build!

Congrats on getting this far.  Now you're ready to add more goals as you see fit and dig into more advanced productivity advice.

Remember to keep things going slow.  Productivity is a marathon, not a sprint, and the same rules apply.  Minor setbacks don't matter if the long-run is an improvement.

You have reached the end of Productivity 101, but I'd be glad to help you further.  I'd love feedback on how it went for you.

...I'd also love feedback if one of the steps didn't work for you, so I can improve this guide for you or others.

Related: The map is not the territory, Unresolved questions in philosophy part 1: The Liar paradox

A well-known brainteaser asks about the truth of the statement "this statement is false". If the statement is true, then the sentence must be false, but if it false then the sentence must be true. This paradox, far from being just a game, illustrates a question fundamental to understanding the nature of truth itself.

A number of different solutions have been proposed to this paradox (and the closely related Epimenides paradox, Pinocchio paradox). One approach is to reject the principal of bivalence - that every proposition must be true or false - and argue that this statement is neither true nor false. Unfortunately, this approach fails to resolve the truth of "this statement is not true". A second approach called Dialetheism is to argue that it should be both true and false, but this fails on "this statement is only false".

Arthur Prior's resolution it to claim that each statement implicitly asserts its own truth, so that "this statement is false" becomes "this statement is false and this statement is true". This later statement is clearly false. There do appear to be some advantages to constructing a system where each statement asserts its own truth, but the normative claim that truth should always be constructed in this manner seems to be hard to justify.

Another solution (non-cognitivism) is to deny that these statement have any truth content at all, similar to meaningless statements ("Are you a?") or non-propositional statements like commands ("Get me some milk?"). If we take this approach, then a natural question is "Which statements are meaningless?" One answer is to exclude all statements that are self referential. However, there are a few paradoxes that complicate this. One is the Card paradox where the front says that the sentence on the back is true and the back says that the sentence on the front is false. Another is Quine's paradox - ""Yields falsehood when preceded by its quotation" yields falsehood when preceded by its quotation". One other common example is: "The statement on the blackboard in Carslaw Room 201 is false". The Card paradox and blackboard paradox are interesting in that if we declare the Liar paradox to be meaningless, these paradoxes are meaningless or meaningful depending on the state of the world.

This problem has been previously discussed on Less Wrong, but I think that there is more that is worth being said on this topic. Cousin_it noted that the formalist school of philosophy (in maths) believes that "meaningful questions have to be phrased in terms of finite computational processes". Yvain took a similar approach arguing that "you can't use a truth-function to evaluate the truth of a noun until you unpack the noun into a sentence" and that it would require infinite unpacking to evaluate, while "This sentence is in English" would only require a single unpacking.

I'll take a similar approach, but I'll be exploring the notion of truth as a constructed concept. First I'll note that there are at least two different kinds of truth - truth of statements about the world and truth of mathematical concepts. These two kinds of truth are about completely different kinds of objects. The first are true if part of world is in a particular configuration and satisfy bivalence because the world is either in that configuration or not in that configuration.

The second is a constructed system where certain basic axioms start off in the class of true formulas and we have rules of deduction to allow us to add more formulas into this class or to determine that formulas aren't in the class. One particularly interesting class of axiomatic systems has the following deductive rules:

if x is in the true class, then not x is in the false class
if x is in the false class, then not x is in the true class
if not x is in the true class, then x is in the false class
if not x is in the false class, then x is in the true class

If we start with certain primitive propositions defined as true or false and start adding operations like "AND", "OR", "NOT", ect. then we get propositional logic. If we define variables and predicates (functions from variables to boolean values) and "FOR EACH", "THERE EXISTS", ect, then we get first-order predicate logic and later higher order predicate logics. These logics work with the two given deductive rules and avoid a situation where both x and not x are in the true class which would for any non-trivial classical logic lead to all formulas being in the true class, which would not be a useful system.

The system has a binary notion of truth which satisfies the law of excluded model because it was constructed in this manner. Mathematical truth does not exist in its own right, in only exists within a system of logic. Geometry, arithmetic and set theory can all be modelled within the same set-theoretic logic which has the same rules related to truth. But this doesn't mean that truth is a set-theoretic concept - set-theory is only one possible way of modelling these systems which then lets us combine objects from these different domains into the one proposition. Set-theory simply shows us being within the true or false class has similar effects across multiple systems. This explains why we believe that mathematical truth exists - leaving us with no reason to suppose that this kind of "truth" has an inherent meaning. These aren't models of the truth, "truth" is really just a set of useful models with similar properties.

Once we realise this, these paradoxes completely dissolve. What is the truth value of "This statement is false"? Is it Arthur Prior's solution where he infers that the statement asserts its own truth? Is it invalid because of infinite recursion? Is it both true and false? These questions all miss the point. We define a system that puts statements into the true class, false class or whatever other classes that we want. There is no reason to assume that there is one necessarily best way of determining the truth of the statement. The value of this solution is that this dissolves the paradox without philosophically committing ourselves to formalism or Arthur Prior's notion of truth or Dialetheism or any other such system that would be difficult to justify as being "the true solution". Instead we simply have a choice of which system we wish to construct. 

I have also seen a few mentions of Tarski's type hierarchies and Kripke's fixed point theory of truth as resolving the paradox. I can't comment too much because I haven't had time to learn these yet. However, the point of this post is to resolve the paradox without committing us to a specific model of truth, as opposed to the general notion of truth as a construct.

Edit: I removed the discussion of "This statement is true" as it was incorrect (thanks to Manfred). The proper example was, "This statement is either true or false". If it is true, then that works. If it is false, then there is a contradiction. So is it true or is it meaningless given that it doesn't seem to refer to anything? This depends on how we define truth. We can either define truth only for statements that can be unpacked or we can define it for statements that have a single stable value allocation. Either version of truth could work.

Help, having a brain blank. I can come up w examples of times something happened, but not times something didnt-happen. What heuristic?

— Kate Donovan (@donovanable) April 29, 2014

If I tell 100 people not to think of an elephant, what's the single thing they're all most likely to think about over the next five minutes, aside from sex?

An elephant, of course.

Negation and oppositeness are perfectly intelligible semantic concepts - in general, no one is confused about what "Don't think of an elephant" means - or, more generally, "Don't do [X]," where X is any intelligible behavior. And people would know how to comply, if [X] were a physical action like sitting down. But even if they wanted to, they don't know how to not think of an elephant - even though that's a behavior they exhibit most of their waking lives, and in some sense on purpose.

Even for physical actions we are not only admonished to refrain from, but have a strong personal interest in not doing, we feel an impulse to do them anyway. Standing on a narrow ledge, afraid of falling, you might feel a strong urge to jump. Why?

Because a part of your mind that is trying to take care of you is thinking, as hard as it can, "Don't jump!" And there's another part of your mind, whose job it is to fetch ideas related to the things you're interested in. This fetcher doesn't understand words like "don't," but it does understand that you're very interested in the idea of jumping off that ledge, so it helpfully suggests ways to do so.

Oops.

This can be a big problem if you're trying to find ways not to do something, or for something not to happen.

It is not possible to find ways for something not to happen.

Knowing this, how should we use our brains differently than we did before? For obvious reasons, I am not just going to tell you to avoid thinking of the things you want in terms of negations. Instead, I'm going to tell you some stories of how I used techniques designed with this in mind, to win at life.

The Case of the Missing Car Keys

A few days ago, I was on my way to an eagerly anticipated debate presided over by the incomparable Leah. I had gotten my scheduled prior weekend chores out of the way, and even had time to stop by the local Le Pain Quotidien for a leisurely brunch (for which the service was no more intolerably slow than usual, but this time they apologized without prompting and comped about half the meal), and read a chapter of Global Catastrophic Risks. In short, everything was going horribly right. Right in precisely that way that makes the bad news so upsetting by contrast.

This was the day I discovered that I am not smart enough to hold onto car keys, but I am smart enough to avoid getting defensive and starting a fight about it. They fell out of my pocket, either on the sidewalk or at the restaurant, or at the Whole Foods where I had plenty of time to pick up snacks for the event. I retraced my steps and asked after the keys at both places I'd been. No luck. I got back to the debate location just in time, and despondent. It didn't ruin the debate for me, since that was a pleasant and engrossing distraction with lots of happy people talking about interesting things, but afterwards I had to ask my girlfriend to come bring me the spare key so I could bring the car home.

Not only was I upset that I lost time waiting for the keys, and feeling bad about myself for losing them, and anticipating the hassle of going to the dealer to get another extra key (if that's even possible) - but I also put my girlfriend in a bad mood, which made me expect to be criticized for losing the keys. My brain was looking for ways to preemptively blame her. (There were plausible ways to argue it, but nothing that could be accurately described as her fault to anyone except my increasingly desperate defensive brain.)

I managed to suppress that particular comment preemptively blaming her, but on the car ride home, she brought up a few more things that could have turned into fights. But I (just barely) managed to say, "let's talk about these things if you still think that's a problem when we're both in better moods."

Haha, fightbrain, YOU LOSE! (For now.)

I would have totally failed at this as recently as a couple of months ago. What changed?

Well, over the past few months, I've been meditating for about 10 minutes a day, on average. More recently I even set up a Beeminder goal for this. I'm not meditating for spiritual insights or inner calm - I'm meditating to train my mind to do what I want. In particular, I'm practicing this pattern:

Me: I'm going to focus on X.
My brain: Y! Y! Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Y!
Me: I notice that I'm thinking about Y. Now let's think about X.

Over and over again, for as long as it takes. Not fighting the passing thought - not responding to "Y" with "not-Y" (which as we now know just gets parsed as "Y") - but gently redirecting my attention back to X, where X can be the feeling of my breath as it moves through the bottom of my nostrils, or the task of bringing the car safely home.

I still had to expend some WILLPOWER, which is evil, and means I'm not as good at this as I want to be, but in the past I would have lost and picked a fight. This time I won, and put off the conversations about what happened and what needed to change until I could engage productively.

Another thing I did in between getting upset and having a calm conversation about the keys, was talk with people whom my brain did not want to get mad at. People totally uninvolved with the conflict. This got my brain into a mode of thinking about my losing the car keys that had nothing to do with blaming or being blamed or defending or attacking - I was just explaining what happened and thinking about how I could hold onto my car keys better in the future.

(If you have ideas, I want to hear them! My pocket obviously isn't reliable. I'm likely enough to lose a bag that it's no better. A carabiner can come off, and a regular clip is even worse. I've considered using a combination padlock to hold the keys onto my belt, but that seems more hassleful than it's worth. )

How I Come Up With Ideas When I Can't Come Up With Any Ideas

Let's say I have something I want to do, and I can't think of any good ways it can be done. Like improving my emotional vocabulary - I want to figure out what exercises I can do that will increase the number of emotions I can recognize and name in the moment, and the rate at which I remember them afterwards. At first I thought I couldn't think of anything good.

Then I tried to come up with ten terrible ideas.

My working model of how this happens is that I implicitly have a stack of ideas, and my idea-fetcher assumes that the top of the stack is probably the best idea, so when I query my mind for "ideas about how to do X" the fetcher inspects the top item, finds it terrible, and decides that there are no ideas. If I ask again, the fetcher goes back to the stack, inspects the same top item, judges it unacceptable, and returns "no results" again.

So why does asking for terrible ideas fix this? Because it's not actually possible to query my mind for terrible ideas. Appending the word "terrible" doesn't actually suppress the good ideas - it just stops me from suppressing the bad ones. And once I've retrieved the top idea from the stack (even though it often is pretty terrible), my fetcher will turn up something different when I query it again. So I can inspect the second, and third, etc. Often, in my list of ten "terrible" ideas, some will obviously be good ones, and some others will be bad but improvable. And you can make a lot more improvements to a bad idea you are considering, than a bad idea you aren't even thinking of.

A few months ago, I asked Carl Shulman for ideas about how to build the forecasting and reasoning skills necessary to judge the importance of different existential risks, and he gave me about fifteen different really good ideas in about five minutes. It felt like magic, and I regret to report that at the time, it didn't occur to me to ask him how he was so good at coming up with ideas. But I think he was just using some version of this technique - at any rate, looking back, it doesn't feel like it would have been impossible for me to come up with those ideas anymore. My censors are off. I have the Intent To Solve The Problem. I will accept even terrible ideas.

Swim Parallel to the Shore

Let's say I am going into a social interaction and am nervous that it will be awkward because I'm not good with strangers. We now know that "don't be awkward" is not a query that will produce useful plans. Even "be socially skilled" is a problem - if you're worried about being awkward, you don't necessarily have a strong and vivid an image of what a generic successful conversation looks like - but you sure know what an awkward one looks like. Even if the explicit verbal instruction you give your mind is "tell me how to be socially skilled in this conversation," it will get parsed as "tell me how to be not awkward" and your fetcher will in turn parse that as "be awkward" and helpfully suggest ways to accomplish that goal.

Instead, you might want to make the other person laugh, or get some information from them, or ask them for a favor, or just let them know that you like them and want to be their friend. Pick a goal - or more than one - that is sideways relative to awkwardness, and optimize for that. Your conversation won't be perfect, but it will be a lot less awkward than if you spend all your energy thinking about how to be awkward.

Do the same thing you're supposed to do when you're swimming in the ocean, and the undertow threatens to draw you out to sea. They don't just tell you not to fight the tide, though - they tell you to swim orthogonally to it, parallel to the shore. Pick a new direction, and optimize for that.

An Alternative Approach: Flip The Sign

Kate unsurprisingly has her own interesting take on this. She talks about flipping ideas around so if you don't want X, then you can create a positive goal that's the complement of X. For example, she turns the aversive goal "I don’t want to be the sort of person who avoids things because they’re emotionally weighty" into the positive goal "I want to be the sort of person who tackles emotionally weighty conflicts".

I think this is likely to be a problem because your brain may be stupid but it's also smart. It can sometimes tell when your oh-so-positive wording is just a tricky way of circumlocuting a negation. I'd expect more success with something like, "I want to be compassionate during emotionally weighty conflicts," since that goal pushes sideways, not against the aversion.

You the reader should be happy we disagree, since it means you're more likely to have found a technique that will work for you. If one of our ideas doesn't work for you, try the other. If one works, try the other anyway. Try lots of things! Then keep doing the ones that work.

cross-posted at my personal blog

(Oops. I forgot this was moved to Discussion.)

TL;DR:  When people read a journal article that concludes, "We have proved that it is not the case that for every X, P(X)", they generally credit the article with having provided at least weak evidence in favor of the proposition ∀x !P(x).  This is not necessarily so.

 

Authors using statistical tests are making precise claims, which must be quantified correctly.  Pretending that all quantifiers are universal because we are speaking English is one error.  It is not, as many commenters are claiming, a small error.  ∀x !P(x) is very different from !∀x P(x).

 

A more-subtle problem is that when an article uses an F-test on a hypothesis, it is possible (and common) to fail the F-test for P(x) with data that supports the hypothesis P(x).  The 95% confidence level was chosen for the F-test in order to count false positives as much more expensive than false negatives.  Applying it therefore removes us from the world of Bayesian logic.  You cannot interpret the failure of an F-test for P(x) as being even weak evidence for not P(x).