Comment author: pedanterrific 10 January 2013 09:07:54PM 1 point [-]

I'll second drethelin; CBT is both evidence-based as a treatment method- there's evidence it works- and evidence-based in practice, meaning you don't have to believe in it or anything, you just follow the prescribed behaviors and observe the results. Really, it's highly rationalism-friendly, being mainly about noticing and combatting "cognitive distortions" (e.g. generalizing from one example, inability to disconfirm, emotional reasoning, etc.). A therapist who specializes in CBT can be pretty well assumed to not be in the habit of dragging "spirituality" into their work.

Comment author: ahh 10 January 2013 09:37:08PM 2 points [-]

I agree that CBT is well-supported by the evidence, and in general should be rationalism-friendly but that isn't always so. The therapist I mentioned in my OP was, in fact, calling himself a CBT practitioner. So I was hoping someone knew a CBT guy (or other equally well-supported method, honestly) he personally liked.

Comment author: ahh 10 January 2013 02:50:33AM 6 points [-]

Can anyone recommend a good therapist in San Francisco (or nearby) who's rationalism-friendly? I have some real problems with depression and anxiety, but the last time I tried to get help the guy told me I was paying too much attention to evidence and should think more spiritually and less rationally. Uh...huh. If you don't want to post publicly here, PM or email is fine.

Comment author: ahh 01 January 2013 07:57:36AM 4 points [-]

You know, Stross tacitly considered an interesting form of resurrection in Accelerando--a hypothetical post-singularity (non-Friendly) AI computes a minimum message length version of You based off any surviving records of what you've done or said (plus the baseline prior for how humans work) and instantiates the result.

I'm having real trouble proving that's not more-or-less me, and what's more, that such a resurrection would feel any different from the inside looking back over its memories of my life.

In response to comment by Tenoke on Against NHST
Comment author: gwern 21 December 2012 04:53:40PM 5 points [-]

inevitably use the frequentist tools.

No, I don't. My self-experiments have long focused on effect sizes (an emphasis which is very easy to do without disruptive changes), and I have been using BEST as a replacement for t-tests for a while, only including an occasional t-test as a safety blanket for my frequentist readers.

If non-NHST frequentism or even full Bayesianism were taught as much as NHST and as well supported by software like R, I don't think it would be much harder to use.

In response to comment by gwern on Against NHST
Comment author: ahh 28 December 2012 07:54:18AM 1 point [-]

I can't find BEST (as a statistical test or similar...) on Google. What test do you refer to?

Comment author: Raiden 16 December 2012 05:19:17PM *  5 points [-]
Comment author: ahh 20 December 2012 02:59:09AM 5 points [-]

I think this paper (while mathematically interesting!) is rather oversold. A positive result to their proposed experiment says one of the following is true:

A) we're simulated on a cubic grid B) we're not simulated, but True Physics has cubic structure C) (other non-obvious cause of anisotropy)

Not only is it very difficult in my mind to distinguish between A and B, think what a negative result means; one of:

A) we're simulated on a non-cubic grid B) we're simulated with a more complex discretization that deals with anisotropy C) we're not simulated, and True Physics doesn't have a cubic structure

I think the only thing a cubic anistropy can tell us about is the structure of True Physics, not whether or not that true physics is based on a simulation.