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The short example (from somebody who went to college with Scott and took Calc II in the same class with him) is yes. But that's an answer relative to the students of an elite college and only based on the fact that he asked me for to work on math homework with him.
In response to
Meetup : Boston: Trigger action planning
I hope they've managed to advance past "if somebody criticizes your idea, ban them from the group!" because that's what happened to me after a criticized Comfort Zone Expansion.
In response to
Rationality Quotes December 2014
I am an intransigent atheist, but not a militant one. This means that I am an uncompromising advocate of reason and that I am fighting for reason, not against religion. I must also mention that I do respect religion in its philosophical aspects, in the sense that it represents an early form of philosophy.
Ayn Rand, to a Catholic Priest.
You lost me at "junk heap." There is no conscious choice available to a layperson ignorant of philosophy and logic, and such ways of life are perfectly copacetic with small-enough communities. If anything, it is the careful thinker who is more shackled by self-doubt, better understood as the Dunning-Kruger effect, but Ayn Rand has made it obvious she never picked up any primary literature on cognitive science so it's not surprising to see her confusion here.
Quote from 1971's The Romantic Manifesto.
You lost me at "junk heap."
Sorry you're so averse to negative descriptions of the average person's philosophy.
There is no conscious choice available to a layperson ignorant of philosophy and logic
Yes there is, they can choose what music, TV, movies, videos etc to buy/view/play.
and such ways of life are perfectly copacetic with small-enough communities
Do you mean communities where the leader knows about philosophy and can order people around?
If anything, it is the careful thinker who is more shackled by self-doubt
It's reasonable to doubt certain things, but if learning increases your self doubt than you're doing it wrong.
better understood as the Dunning-Kruger effect, but Ayn Rand has made it obvious she never picked up any primary literature on cognitive science
She was associated with Nathaniel Branden, a well regarded psychologist. Cognitive Science is a relatively new field.
so it's not surprising to see her confusion here.
I don't think she's confused, she's saying something you disagree with. If you think you've refuted it, I think you're the confused one.
Would you consider having Less Wrong members record the sequences or do you already have people you've promised to give the job to?
C. Yes.
B. Agreed that there's benefit to realizing we have bias, disagree that there's no benefit to declaring some biases aren't overcomeable. Trying to overcome biases takes effort. Wasted effort is bad. It's better to pursue mixed strategies that aim at instrumental rationality than to aim at the perfection described in the Rand quotation. Thoughts that seem complex or messy should not be something we shy away from, reality is complicated and our brains are imperfect.
A. I don't know how to describe how to do it, but I do it all the time. It's something humans have to fight against to avoid doing, as it's essentially automatic under normal conditions.
Trying to overcome biases takes effort. Wasted effort is bad. It's better to pursue mixed strategies that aim at instrumental rationality
I think you are assuming hyperbolic discounting/short time preference. It requires a lot of effort to overcome bias, perhaps years. But there are times when it is worth it.
than to aim at the perfection described in the Rand quotation
What perfection? Choosing philosophy? You can always update your philosophy.
If the bolded pair of words were struck, I'd agree completely. Different people will have different balls and chains.
This quote was from a speech given to West Point cadets. By no means are they identical but it would be relatively hard to find a group of people more identical (from the perspective of being of the same gender, same age (within a few years) same nationality, and same general ideology).
A. False dichotomy - there are other choices. We might choose to compartmentalize our rationality, for example.
B. False dichotomy in a different sense - we actually don't have access to this choice. No matter how hard we work, our brains are going to be biased and our philosophies are going to be sloppy. It's a question of making one's brain marginally more organized or less disorganized, not of jumping from insanity onto reason. I'm suspicious that working with the insanity and trying to guide its flow is a better strategy than trying to destroy it.
C. Although not having a philosophy leaves us open to bias, having a philosophy can sometimes expose us to bias even further. It's about comparative advantage. Agnosticism has wiggle room that sometimes can be a place for bias to hide, but conversely ideology without self-doubt often serves to crush the truth.
A. How would you implement that choice?
B. We is a loaded term, speak for yourself. There's benefit to realizing that as a human you have bias. There's no benefit to declaring that you can't overcome some of this bias.
C Wouldn't that depend on your philosophy?
Yes, but most of those people live in areas where $2 goes a long way.
The GDP statistics I cited were nominal. The $2 a day thing was not. They don't make $2 a day. The make enough to go as far as $2 would in the US.
Really? Do you think successful people don't have children? And that they don't try to make these children US citizens by 'immigrating' (often illegally) to the USA? I can assure you this happens frequently.
Only 13% of the US population is immigrants. 20% of the world's immigrant population is in the US, so it works out to about two million immigrants. Less than a thirtieth of a percent of the world population. I does not explain the discrepancy of income.
That's up for them to define, not for you to define.
It's not up for you to define either. It seems highly unlikely that living on a fifteenth of what the US would call poor is successful. There are certainly people who value living on next to nothing, but I don't think there are billions of them. It would take powerful evidence to show that they consider themselves more successful than a US citizen. How much evidence do you have of this?
This argument has gone far away from the original quote. I'm not going to argue about the details. If you want to try to disprove your ability to become successful by using your intelligence, go ahead.
It's very difficult to make economic comparisons between countries while simultaneously acknowledging all of the cultural differences between countries. You can do it, but the results aren't necessarily meaningful.
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Bruce/Caitlyn Jenner.
Wendy/Walter Carlos