VAuroch

Discussion article for the meetup : Portland, OR: Improv for Rationalists WHEN: 18 October 2014 01:00:00PM (-0700) WHERE: 2945 NE 64th Ave, Portland, OR Last meetup we discussed using techniques from acting improv to improve social skills and impose personal habits. This month we'll be putting some of that into...

Discussion article for the meetup : Portland Teachable Skills Discussion WHEN: 20 September 2014 01:00:00PM (-0700) WHERE: 2945 NE 64th Ave, Portland, OR First meetup in Portland after a long break. This month's meetup will be a discussion on Teachable Skills; what are you learning, what can you teach, what...

Another month, another rationality quotes thread. The rules are: * Please post all quotes separately, so that they can be upvoted or downvoted separately. (If they are strongly related, reply to your own comments. If strongly ordered, then go ahead and post them together.) * Do not quote yourself. *...

http://mappingignorance.org/2014/02/03/mandela-was-right-the-foreign-language-effect/ Summary: Across the board, people are less prone to cognitive bias in a non-native language. Conclusion: If all important discourse was conducted in Latin, or any other language native to no one, people would make better decisions. Corollary: All the attempts to make a constructed "scientific language" actually could...

A great article by Michael Nielsen on failures of intuition and ways to present data more effectively so that we don't get caught by those failures. It reminded me of concepts like log odds in common use around here, and also to the recent discussion of teaching rationality techniques to...