= 27d567bc2d48d9f40e9ccc20ea370b15)
For the Feynman quote, I don't think Feynman was a programmer! And Chaos was late in his life. Incomprehensibly complex behaviour from simple rules is not surprising to me.
Perhaps, 'laws' would have been a better word than 'rules'.
I was thinking of it more in terms of complexity. When things are looked at in isolation, it is much easier to see how the simple laws apply. But as things get more complex, we also need to figure out how the different systems interact and influence each other. This makes the simple laws harder to discern.
Simple systems have few components and their behavior is in all respects fully understandable and predictable. An example would be a solid ball falling under the action of gravity through air. This simple system consists of the ball, the air, and the gravitational force. Here we usually assume a single ball, constant acceleration of gravity, a viscous drag on the ball, and Newton’s laws. When making these assumptions, we arrive at very useful answers. We did, however, neglect many aspects. If, for example, we would ask how the behavior changes when we go from one ball, to two, to three, or even more balls that fall close to each other, our “Simple System” assumption fails. It is not sufficient to generalize from one ball’s behavior to many. Instead we need to consider the interaction of the balls through their self‐generated vortices.
I think that it would probably be a good idea to differentiate: ‘simple explanations’ and 'explanations that are based on simple rules'. See Fake Simplicity for a description of simple explanations. An example would be attributing all of the causality to some other entity, e.g. god. Explanations that are based on simple rules can sometimes also be easy to understand, but the way in which they are reached is rarely simple. They are grounded in extensive research and evidence.
Simple explanations can be dangerous because they are easy to believe. They are:
- Easy to understand
- Sometimes partly correct as they can be true some of the time even though they don’t describe the whole picture
- Often overly broad so that they are hard to disprove
- Etc.
I am just trying to saying that we should also be careful of simple explanations as well because they can be enticing. I would think that non-experts rarely have enough experience to reach explanations based on simple rules and will instead often just find simple explanations. This is because it is really hard or, perhaps, even impossible to find these simple rules without a lot of ground work. We often have to understand something intimately and deeply before we even begin to sense the undercurrent from the operation of these simple rules.
Here’s an extract from Feynman which is related:
The world is strange. The whole universe is very strange, but you see when you look at the details that the rules of the game are very simple – the mechanical rules by which you can figure out exactly what is going to happen when the situation is simple. It is like a chess game. If you are in a corner with only a few pieces involved, you can work out exactly what is going to happen, and you can always do that when there are only a few pieces. And yet in the real game there are so many pieces that you can't figure out what is going to happen – so there is a kind of hierarchy of different complexities. It is hard to believe. It is incredible! In fact, most people don't believe that the behavior of, say, me is the result of lots and lots of atoms all obeying very simple rules and evolving into such a creature that a billion years of life has produced. There is such a lot in the world. There is so much distance between the fundamental rules and the final phenomena that it is almost unbelievable that the final variety of phenomena can come from such a steady operation of such simple rules.
In response to
Open Thread March 21 - March 27, 2016
t;dr how do you cope with death?
My dog has cancer in his liver and spleen, and learning this has strongly exacerbated some kind of predisposition towards being vulnerable to depression. He's an old dog so it probably wouldn't have changed his life expectancy THAT much, but it's still really sad. If you're not a pet person this might be counterintuitive, but to me it's losing a friend, and the things people say to me are mostly unhelpful. Which is why I'm posting it here specifically: the typical coping memes about doggy heaven or death as some profoundly important part of Nature are ruined for me. So I wanted to ask how people here deal with this sort of thing. Especially on the cognitive end of things, what types of frames and self talk you used. I do already know the basics, like exercise and diet and meditation, but I sure wouldn't mind a new insight on getting myself to actually do that stuff when I'm this down.
I've thought about cryopreserving him, but even if that were a good way to use the money I just don't think I can afford it. All I'll have is an increasingly vague and emotionally distant memory, I guess, and it sucks. I've been regretting not valuing him more during his peak health, as well, although maybe I'd always feel guilty for anything short of having been perfect.
I've been thinking a lot about chapter 12 of HPMOR, and trying play with and video and pamper him while I can. I don't want to say "fuck, it's too late" about anything else. It's the best thing I can think of right now.
This whole business with seeking Slytherin's secrets... seemed an awful lot like the sort of thing where, years later, you would look back and say, 'And that was where it all started going wrong.'
And he would wish desperately for the ability to fall back through time and make a different choice...
Wish granted. Now what?
I tend to view depression as an evolved adaptation and a certain state which it is natural for humans to move into in certain situations. I think that it can be helpful to recognize that dysphoria, sadness and grief are all natural reactions. It is ok to be sad. Although, like with all conditions if it becomes chronic or persists for an overly long time then you should probably get some help to deal with it. See here for more information.
For general advice for dealing with grief, see this article and apply whatever you think is applicable or would be helpful. Excerpt:
- Establish a simple routine
- Regular meal and bed times
- Increase pleasant events
- Promote self-care activities
- Regular medical check-ups
- Daily exercise
- Limited alcohol intake
- Provide information about grief and what to expect
- Grief is unique and follows a wave-like pattern
- Grief is not an illness with a prescribed cure
- Children benefit from being included and learning that grief is a normal response to loss
- Compartmentalise worries
- List the things that are worrying
- Create a ‘to-do’ list, prioritise and tick off items as they are completed
- Use different coloured folders for the paperwork that needs to be finalised
- Prepare to face new or difficult situations
- Graded exposure to situations that are difficult or avoided
- Plan for the ‘firsts’ such as the first anniversary of the death – How do you want it to be acknowledged? Who do you want to share it with?
- Adopt a ‘trial and error’ approach; be prepared to try things more than once
- Challenge unhelpful thinking
- Encourage identification of thoughts leading to feelings of guilt and anger
- Gently ask the following questions – What would your loved one tell you to do if they were here now? What are the alternatives to what you thought? Where is the evidence for what you thought?
Provide a structured decision-making framework to deal with difficult decisions e.g., When to sort through belongings? Whether to take off the wedding ring? Whether to move or not?
- Base decisions on evidence, not emotions
- Avoid making major, irreversible decisions for 12 months to prevent decisions being based on emotion
- Identify the problem and possible solutions
- List the positives and negatives for each potential solution
- Determine the consequences for each solution – can they be lived with?
I guess, and it sucks. I've been regretting not valuing him more during his peak health, as well, although maybe I'd always feel guilty for anything short of having been perfect.
Can CFAR content be learned from a compilation or writeup?
A year ago I considered attending the CFAR workshop in Boston, one of the things that stopped me was that I actually read LW a lot and applied a bunch of it in real life. Kenzi and Critch at CFAR tried gently to explain how a workshop was qualitatively different from reading and trying stuff yourself, but I didn't give them the opportunity to convince me.
This week I came back from the CFAR workshop in New York, and I actually felt my life changing on the evening of the third day. Yes, time will tell if that actually happened, but I have enough evidence even a week out that it's going that way. How could I think that I could get that benefit by myself with no help? It scares me how close I was to never having gone to CFAR. I'm going to try to write what would have convinced "Jacobian-2015" that he should attend a workshop.
Compound interest. You need motivation to work on your motivation. You need an accurate map of knowing how to attain accurate maps. It takes a jolt of rationality to improve your rationality. There isn't an encyclopedia of CFAR material, but the material is incredibly high quality. This causes it to compound and improve other things you learn, like the difference between $100 under your mattress (i.e. the sequences) and $20 that grows at 20% a year.
Blind spots. You can't lift yourself up by your hair, you can't see the mistaken beliefs you refuse to question and you can't solve the problems in your life you refuse to admit. Some things simply can't be done without other people helping you out. Most of my progress at CFAR was made in the hours of focused small group "therapy" sessions. The first thing I did when I got back was to set up a CFAR workgroup (can I trademark "Agenty Flock"?) with friends from the workshop.
The moon. This is either really important or completely meaningless, I don't know because I'm not there yet. The point of CFAR isn't to learn a bunch of techniques but to achieve the mindset in which the techniques become natural, indistinguishable and you are able to generate them yourself at will. The techniques are the fingers pointing at the moon, the mindset is the moon. I did my BSc in physics, and I retain less declarative knowledge of physics than someone who read the Feynman lectures. Still, I think I wouldn't have fallen for the radiator plate trick. Not because I can do integrals of thermal conduction, but because I spent hours in a lab trying to get some dumb thermodynamics experiment to work the way I believed it should, and it refused. I don't know if I really attained a physics mindset in undergrad, and I don't know if the applied rationality mindset is attainable from a CFAR workshop. I know that it would take a super-mind to attain it from reading stuff online.
ScottL, your write-up is great. The only thing I don't like about it is that you called it "CFAR canon", isn't it troubling that that's what would show up in search results from now on? I would at least change the word "CFAR" to "applied rationality". I'm really concerned that this write-up may cause some people to decide against attending a workshop they otherwise would've gone to. To everyone who reads this "canon" and considers going to a workshop, ask yourself this:
How many actual CFAR alumni do I know who feel that they could have gained most of the value by themselves?
Count my experience as a point of evidence against.
The moon. This is either really important or completely meaningless, I don't know because I'm not there yet.
I prefer the concept of Fingerspitzengefühl (finger tips feeling) which basically means having an intuitive grasp of a situation and being able to zero in on the accurate region of the problem without wasteful consideration of a large range of unfruitful, alternative diagnoses and solutions. The mechanism behind this is probably similar to how we learn physical patterns.
Expert piano player’s movements largely happen automatically or intuitively. That is, without conscious thought. This happens due to their extensive practice and because of concepts like chunking, spreading activation and hebbian learning. I would guess that we also learn psychical (thought) patterns through a similar mechanism.
I would at least change the word "CFAR" to "applied rationality"
Thanks for your suggestion. I removed the CFAR from the title.
I'm going to try to write what would have convinced "Jacobian-2015" that he should attend a workshop.
There are two extra things that my post isn’t good at conveying.
- Depth in the material. For example, goal factoring I have a paragraph on this and, I guess, that it describes the concept, but it would take a whole other post to describe how to use it in practice.
- A framework. The post just describes the techniques, but it doesn’t really describe the underlying mechanisms of how they work or how they relate to each other. In practice, the techniques would rarely be used in isolation, but would instead be combined.
I'm really concerned that this write-up may cause some people to decide against attending a workshop they otherwise would've gone to.
My intent was never for this post to be used as a replacement to attending CFAR. My goal was to put the material out there so that there was some base material upon which I could expand.
CFAR has all of this material readily available likely in a much more comprehensive and accurate format. CFAR are altruists. Smart altruists. The lack of anything like this canon suggests that they don't think having this publicly available is a good idea. Not yet anyway. Even the workbook handed out at the workshops isn't available.
Having it publicly available definitely has huge costs and tradeoffs. This is particularly true when you're worried about the processes you want to encourage getting stuck as a fixed doctrine - this is essentially why John Boyd preferred presentations over manuals when running his reform movement in the US military.
this is essentially why John Boyd preferred presentations over manuals when running his reform movement in the US military.
It's strange that you mention John Boyd because, to be honest, I was thinking of him when I decided to post the material. I don’t believe that John’s preference for presentations over documentation was a good one. In general, I oppose obscurity and restriction of information although there are times that I don’t, e.g. when it’s from a lack of resources or an extremely short material turnover rate etc. In regards, to John Boyd’s stuff, personally, I know that I had to waste a lot of time wading through a lot of simplistic and pretty useless information (pretty much just the simple OODA loop stuff) to understand his material. I believe that this is his only published paper. Also, it was only really the Osinga thesis which has allowed me to understand his ideas. Although, I do need to go over it again.
This is particularly true when you're worried about the processes you want to encourage getting stuck as a fixed doctrine
Wouldn’t most of these issues would be avoided if you gave some warning that the material is in flux and versioned it as well. So, you had a CFAR material version 1, version 2 etc. Also, doesn’t it seem a bit weird to give the potential of the information becoming a doctrine enough weight that it causes the restriction of this information? It seems weird to me since the skills that CFAR and Boyd are/were trying to teach are in large part about breaking out of fixed doctrines. It’s kind of like stopping someone from learning martial arts because you don’t want them to get hurt while training.
In response to
Request for advice: high school transferring
I will describe this first in an abstract way and then in a child comment I will describe some practical techniques that I think might help.
When facing a tough choice, it is important that you are as strong as possible in the following areas:
- Value awareness, i.e. that you have a full understanding of all the things that would impact your choice. People tend to neglect or not include certain things in their deliberations like being scared of change, for example, because either they don’t think about them or they don’t want to admit that they matter. You don’t want do this. If something is impacting your choice, then it should be included in your considerations.
- Prediction accuracy, i.e. that you have a correct understanding of how valuable each choice will actually be once it is made and in the future as well. In most instances it is possible for us to improve upon our innate and intuitive predictions.
- Agency, i.e. that you are fully aware of all of the moves and choices that you can make. You should be careful to avoid the false dilemma. As an example, let’s imagine someone wants to leave their job because even though they love it they have some major issues with a person at their work. This situation should not be framed as a choice between leaving their job or not, but as a problem in which leaving their job is one of many potential solutions. Even though the person may think at first that leaving their job is the only option, on deeper analysis they may find other better and less drastic strategies that they could follow to alleviate the problems with the person at their work.
I will now explain some practical techniques that I would give someone in your position. It looks like you have already implemented some of them. FYI I haven’t provided much background on any of the techniques, so if you want any more information on any of the mentioned techniques check out my post on the CFAR material as well.
Value Awareness
- Reframe the situation to find hidden values. You can do this, for example, by asking: “If I was already at the public school would the choice to switch to the private school be just as hard”. If there is a difference, then analysing why can often reveal hidden values.
- Use goal factoring to find hidden values. This entails finding some alternate set of actions through which you could get what you want cheaper and then analysing why you don’t choose to go with the cheaper option. For example, boarding at the school would resolve move of the problems you have, e.g. travelling and not having enough social time with the other students. I don’t know if this is an option, but if it is and you don’t want to do it then the reason for this should be in your considered valuations.
- Find out which aspects of the choice are cruxes. You can do this by creating a list of the valuable or aversive things related to the two choices and then eliminating one of them at a time to see if the choice you would make is significantly altered. If it is, then you have found a crux.
- Reference class hopping. Try and think about if your choice ever wavers. That is, if there are moments when you really want to change schools. If this happens, then it indicates that there may be some large underlying issue that is prompting the desired change. An example might be that your desire to change schools spikes when you are feeling excluded, like you are not part of the clique or like you can’t connect deeply with anyone at the school. A large underlying issue, in my opinion, indicates a problem that you should at least try to resolve before making any drastic decisions.
Prediction Accuracy
- Take an outside view. Can you find anyone who has made the same choice already?
- Trial the change to see what it will actually be like. This is probably not applicable for your situation, but it is normally one of the first things to look into.
Agency
It can often be good to spend most of your effort on thinking about how to fix existing problems rather than moving to a whole new situation. It is common for people to not think about or to underestimate the costs involved with change. In your case, example costs would be having to get to know the new teachers and students in the public school. An example of fixing a problem could be seeing if it is possible to set up a math club at your private school.
- Think through all the cruxes that you figured out earlier and try to come up with as many solutions as you can that would deal with those cruxes. For example, instead of taking the trip to the private school each day you can look into boarding at the school. Once you have come up with these strategies you can take a much more intricate approach to the choice, perhaps, employing multiple strategies to deal with different aspects relating to the choice.
- Get the advice of others especially those who can relate and are close to the problem, e.g. teachers, parents, friends etc. Be sure not to present the solution as a false dilemma, i.e. to change schools or not. Instead try to explain the situation as fully as possible. This could involve going through all the cruxes and the strategies you have come up with the resolve them. There are two extra benefits to this as well:
- It can often help you come up with a solution that should have been obvious. This is because there is difference between thinking you have fully understood a problem and being able to fully explain it to another person.
- It allows you to see the problem from a different perspective. It can, at times, be easy to miss the ramifications for other people of the choices that we make.
In response to
Request for advice: high school transferring
I will describe this first in an abstract way and then in a child comment I will describe some practical techniques that I think might help.
When facing a tough choice, it is important that you are as strong as possible in the following areas:
- Value awareness, i.e. that you have a full understanding of all the things that would impact your choice. People tend to neglect or not include certain things in their deliberations like being scared of change, for example, because either they don’t think about them or they don’t want to admit that they matter. You don’t want do this. If something is impacting your choice, then it should be included in your considerations.
- Prediction accuracy, i.e. that you have a correct understanding of how valuable each choice will actually be once it is made and in the future as well. In most instances it is possible for us to improve upon our innate and intuitive predictions.
- Agency, i.e. that you are fully aware of all of the moves and choices that you can make. You should be careful to avoid the false dilemma. As an example, let’s imagine someone wants to leave their job because even though they love it they have some major issues with a person at their work. This situation should not be framed as a choice between leaving their job or not, but as a problem in which leaving their job is one of many potential solutions. Even though the person may think at first that leaving their job is the only option, on deeper analysis they may find other better and less drastic strategies that they could follow to alleviate the problems with the person at their work.
This. Is. Crazy. Unbelievable. I didn't even know that these summaries existed. Whoever wrote these: Thanks to all of you diligent LW gardeners! Can these summaries please please be made more available. Like linked on the entry page or something. Just my suggestion for LW 2.0.
They are mentioned on the wiki FAQ page which has some other useful links as well. If you want to go over all the LW concepts and topics, then you might find this page that I wrote a while ago to be useful. It provides a list of concise definitions for most of the LW concepts.
= b715d02e85f7b3b4ae65ca3d3e450868)
Subscribe to RSS Feed
= f037147d6e6c911a85753b9abdedda8d){kind=logo}
I think of identity as if it were a kind of 'thought groove' or as if it was similar to trampling a path in snow that others will naturally tend to follow. By this I mean that it tends to cause some types of thoughts to be activated and others to be attenuated. The stronger your identity the stronger this effect.
What we perceive, is largely a product of what we have been primed and conditioned to perceive. Our perception is shaped by our previous experiences and beliefs for it is filled with assumptions and predictions. Gaps which must be filled by drawing upon pre-existing information in our minds. Whether a certain argument feels right or whether a particular remark is funny to you will depend largely on who you are and what your identity is.
Identity can be a great way to get certain thoughts and ways of thinking down to the 5 second level. On the other hand, it is also a common way to embed and propagate harmful or unhelpful thoughts. The best strategy to deal with it in my opinion involves four things: