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How is having a paragraph that applies to [$POLITICAL_BELIEF] not the same as making a fully general argument?
Or are you just saying that the original statement about Communism was a fully general argument?
I'm saying that I think the original quote (which I did think was good) would have been improved qua Rationality Quote by removing the specific political content from it. (Much like the "Is Nixon a pacifist?" problem would have been improved by coming up with an example that didn't involve Republicans.)
I do appreciate the correct classification of global warming as a political belief :-D
I was substituting "[$POLITICAL_BELIEF]" for "Communism", which is what Pablo_Stafforini's quote referred to.
But I could also use it for "global warming" without making a statement against anthropogenic climate change, considering that even people who believe the science on climate change is mostly settled can also believe that
- climate change is political in the "Politics is the Mind-Killer" sense
- how we should respond to climate change is in large part a political question
Because it is often easy to detect the operation of motivated belief formation in others, we tend to disbelieve the conclusions reached in this way, without pausing to see whether the evidence might in fact justify them. Until around 2009 I believed, with most of my friends, that on a scale of danger from 0 to 10 (the most dangerous), global warming scored around 7 or 8. Since the recent revelations I believe that 10 is the appropriate number. The reason for my misperception of the evidence was not an idealistic belief that economic growth could have no downsides. In that case, I would simply have been victim of wishful thinking or self-deception. Rather, I was misled by the hysterical character of those who claimed all along that global warming scored 10. My ignorance of their claims was not entirely irrational. On average, it makes sense to discount the claims of the manifestly hysterical. Yet even hysterics can be right, albeit for the wrong reasons. Because I sensed and still believe that many of these fierce environmentalists would have said the same regardless of the evidence, I could not believe that what they said did in fact correspond to the evidence. I made the mistake of thinking of them as a clock that is always one hour late rather than as a broken clock that shows the right time twice a day.
Jane Elmer, Explaining Anti-Social Behavior: More Amps and Volts for the Social Sciences
EDIT: In case it wasn't clear, I disagree that "it is often easy to detect the operation of motivated belief formation in others". Also, when your opponents strongly believe that they are right and are trying to prevent a great harm (whether they have good arguments or not), this often feels from the inside like they are "manifestly hysterical".
Or just:
Until around 1990 I believed, with most of my friends, that on a scale of evil from 0 to 10 (the worst), [$POLITICAL_BELIEF] scored around 7 or 8. Since the recent revelations I believe that 10 is the appropriate number. The reason for my misperception of the evidence was not an idealistic belief that [$POLITICAL_BELIEF] was a worthy ideal that had been betrayed by actual [proponents of $POLITICAL_BELIEF]. In that case, I would simply have been victim of wishful thinking or self-deception. Rather, I was misled by the hysterical character of those who claimed all along that [$POLITICAL_BELIEF] scored 10. My ignorance of their claims was not entirely irrational. On average, it makes sense to discount the claims of the manifestly hysterical. Yet even hysterics can be right, albeit for the wrong reasons. Because I sensed and still believe that many of these fierce [opponents of $POLITICAL_BELIEF] would have said the same regardless of the evidence, I could not believe that what they said did in fact correspond to the evidence.
In response to
Rationality Quotes Thread March 2015
Eric S. Raymond: "Interesting human behavior tends to be overdetermined."
Example sources:
http://esr.ibiblio.org/?p=4213
I didn't understand this quote out of context so I followed one of the links and he explains it in this comment:
It's something I learned from animal ethology. An "overdetermined" behavior is one for which there are multiple sufficient explanations. To unpack: "For every interesting behavior of animals and humans there is more than one valid and sufficient causal theory." Evolution likes overdetermined behaviors; they serve multiple functions at once.
In response to
comment
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on
Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality discussion thread, February 2015, chapter 112
This is persuasive, but... why the heck would Voldemort go the trouble of breaking into Azkaban instead of grabbing Snape or something?
In response to
comment
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on
Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality discussion thread, February 2015, chapter 112
In Chapter 61 Dumbledore says:
"[...] But his second avenue is nearly as strong: The flesh of his servant, willingly given; the blood of his foe, forcibly taken; and the bone of his ancestor, unknowingly bequeathed. Voldemort is a perfectionist -" Albus glanced at Severus, who nodded agreement, "- and he would certainly seek the most powerful combination: the flesh of Bellatrix Black, the blood of Harry Potter, and the bone of his father. [...]"
In response to
comment
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on
Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality discussion thread, February 2015, chapter 108
In chapter 25 the Weasley twins discuss the map
" How's it doing?" said Fred in a low voice. "Still on the fritz," said George. "Both, or -" "Intermittent one fixed itself again. Other one's same as ever."
I now think this refers to warm!Harry showing up as HJPEV and his dark side as Tom M. Riddle. If so, it's less probable the map is being manipulated.
In response to
comment
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on
Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality discussion thread, February 2015, chapter 108
Eliezer says on r/hpmor that the intermittent map "error" is V's intermittent control of Q's body.
I can give you 100 pairs of colors that you couldn't distinguish from each other that go from red to blue. There no point where you would be able to draw a clear boundary where redness stops and blue begins.
This is true, but it doesn't change the fact that I am experiencing colors when I look at them. Why is there "redness" or "blueness" to begin with?
The same way you can train new phoneme distinctions you can train new color distinctions. Interestingly naming the colors helps with the ability to develop a new perceived color.
But being able to distinguish between colors or sounds isn't the problem I'm trying to address. The problem for me is, why do colors have metadata associated with them while sound does not?
why do colors have metadata associated with them while sound does not?
What about (for example) "low" and "high"? ("What if low pitches sound to you the way high pitches sound to me, and vice versa?")
It discourages me that he tabooed 'values' and you immediately used it anyway.
In fairness, I only used it to describe how they'd come to be used in this context in the first place, not to try and continue with my point.
I wrote a Python-esque pseudocode example of my conception of what an AGI with an arbitrary terminal value's very high level source code would look like. With little technical background, my understanding is very high level with lots of black boxes. I encourage you to do the same, such that we may compare.
I've never done something like this. I don't know python, so mine would actually just be pseudocode if I can do it at all? Do you mean you'd like to see something like this?
while (world_state != desired_state)
get world_state
make_plan
execute_plan
end while
ETA: I seem to be having some trouble getting the while block to indent. It seems that whether I put 4, 6 or 8 spaces in front of the line, I only get the same level of indentation (which is different from Reddit and StackOverflow) and backticks do something altogether different.
Unfortunately it's a longstanding bug that preformatted blocks don't work.
Wow! Thank you so much for your time and effort in typing out that reply!
(I'm not actually sure what the difference between Second Upper and First Class Honours is - I assume that's because you're referring to the education system of a country with which I am not familiar).
Well, About 3-5 percent of the best students in a cohort can expect to get First Class Honours. It basically means 97th percentile, or 95th percentile, depending on the quality of the students. The 75th to 95th percentile can expect to get Second Class Honours.
Define "division".
I must admit that this question stunned me. I don't actually know. What first came to my mind is that it is some sort of algorithm (case 1: two integers that divide cleanly, case 2: two integers that divide to make a fraction, case 3: an unknown ...) that has useful applications (e.g. it is useful to know that you can divide 6 apples by 3 people to allocate 2 to each person). This is my shot at a definition: division is an operation that gives the ratio of number/function F and another number/function G. The ratio can be determined by seeing how many of G can be added together to comprise F. It can be a fraction/real number/complex number/function. Argh. I am stumped. This definition seems like Swiss cheese.
I recommend chapter 22 ("Algebra") of volume 1 of The Feynman Lectures on Physics. Here's a PDF.
My summary (intended as an incentive to read the Feynman, not a replacement for reading it):
We start with addition of discrete objects ("I have two apples; you have three apples. How many apples do we have between us?"). No fractions, no negative numbers, no problem.
We get other operations by repetition -- multiplication is repeated addition, exponentiation is repeated multiplication.
We get yet more operations by reversal -- subtraction is reversed addition, division is reversed multiplication, roots and logarithms are reversed exponentiation. These operations also let us define new kinds of numbers (fractions, negative numbers, reals, complex numbers) that are not necessarily useful for counting apples or sheep or pebbles but are useful in other contexts.
Rules for how to work with these new kinds of numbers are motivated by keeping things as consistent as possible with already-existing rules.
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I think the problems associated with providing concrete political examples are in this case mitigated by the author's decision to criticize people on opposite sides of the political debate (Soviet communists and hysterical anti-communists), and by the author's admission that his former political beliefs were mistaken to a certain degree.
True.