I await the eager defenses of belief in belief in the comments, but I wonder if anyone would care to jump ahead of the game and defend belief in belief in belief? Might as well go ahead and get it over with.

My boyfriend was once feeling a bit tired and unmotivated for a few months (probably mild depression), and he also wanted to stop eating dairy for ethical reasons. He felt that his illness was partly mentally generated. He decided that he was allergic to dairy, and that dairy was causing his illness. Then he stopped eating dairy and felt better!

He told me all this, and also told me that he usually believes he is actually allergic to dairy, and it is hard to remember that he is not. When someone asks how he knows he is allergic to dairy, he says something plausible and false ("The doctor ran blood tests") and believes it if he doesn't stop and think too much.

He believes he is not allergic to dairy, but he believes he believes he is allergic to dairy? Belief-in-belief. But he recognizes this and explained it to me -- so that's a belief-in-belief-in-belief? But it helped him get over his mental illness and stop eating dairy... that's winning.

In general I would say a belief-in-belief is useful if you decide some behaviors are desirable, but some false model of the world better motivates you to behave properly. Belief-in-belief-in-belief is useful if you know too much to think both "Z is true" and "I believe not-Z". Then you tell yourself you have a belief-in-belief.

Disclaimer: This is weird to me and I don't really understand how he pulls it off.

I would add artificially extending the wait time to purchase. Some time ago I read a study (that I can no longer find) that correlated a decline in consumer satisfaction with an increase in credit based purchases. We no longer pine at the store window for months saving up to buy X. Which probably has two effects: when you finally get it, it feels much more satisfying (like the first meal after starving for a week is probably the best meal you have ever had), also, in the three months it takes you to save up to buy a super-left-handed-water-redehydrator, you might have the chance to use one at a friend's house and realize you don't really like it.

My top three satisfying purchases (which happen to all be vehicles) were all acquired after protracted waiting periods, one of which was nearly three years.

Hi, I'm Liz.

I'm a senior at a college in the US, soon to graduate with a double major in physics and economics, and then (hopefully) pursue a PhD in economics. I like computer science and math too. I'm hoping to do research in economic development, but more relevantly to LW, I'm pretty interested in behavioral economics and in econometrics (statistics). Out of the uncommon beliefs I hold, the one that most affects my life is that since I can greatly help others at a small cost to myself, I should; I donate whatever extra money I have to charity, although it's not much. (see givingwhatwecan.org)

I think I started behaving as a rationalist (without that word) when I became an atheist near the end of high school. But to rewind...

I was raised Christian, but Christianity was always more of a miserable duty than a comfort to me. I disliked the music and the long services and the awkward social interactions. I became an atheist for no good reason in the beginning of high school, but being an atheist was terrible. There was no one to forgive me when I screwed up, or pray to when the world was unbearably awful. My lack of faith made my father sad. Then, lying in bed and angsting about free will one night, I had some philosophical revelation, and it seemed that God must exist. I couldn't re-explain the revelation to myself, but I clung to the result and became seriously religious for the next year or so. But objections to the major strands of theism began to creep up on me. I wanted to believe in God, and I wanted to know the truth, and I found out that (surprise) having an ideal set of beliefs isn't compatible with seeking truth. I did lots of reading (mostly old-school philosophy), slowly changed my mind, then came out as an atheist (to close friends only) once the Bible Quiz season was over. (awk.)

At that point I decided to never lie to myself again. Not just to avoid comforting half-truths, but to actively question all beliefs I held, and to act on whatever conclusions I come to. After hard practice, unrelenting honesty towards myself is a habit I can't break, but I'm not sure it's actually a good policy. For example, a few white lies would've helped me move past a situation of extreme guilt last year.

Anyway, more recently, I read HPMOR and I'm now reading Kahneman's Thinking, Fast and Slow. I'm slowly working through the Sequences too. I always appreciate new reading recommendations.

I have some thoughts on Newcomb's Paradox. (Of course I am new to this, probably way off base, etc.) I think two boxes is the right way to go, and it seems that intuition towards one-boxing often comes from the idea that your decision somehow changes the contents of the boxes. (No reverse causality is supposed to be assumed, right?) Say that instead of an infallible superintelligence, the story changes to

"You go to visit your friend Ann, and her mom pulls you into the kitchen, where two boxes are sitting on a table. She tells you that box A has either $1 billion or $0, and box B has $1,000. She says you can take both boxes or just A, and that if she predicted you take box B she didn't put anything in A. She has done this to 100 of Anne's friends and has only been wrong for one of them. She is a great predictor because she has been spying on your philosophy class and reading your essays."

Terribly small sample size, but a friend told me this changes his answer from one box to two. As far as I can tell these changes are aesthetic and make the story clearer without changing the philosophy.

And, a question. Why is Bayes so central to this site? I use Bayesian reasoning regularly, but I learned Bayes' Theorem around the time I started thinking seriously about anything, so I'm not clear on what the alternative is. Why do y'all celebrate Bayes, rather than algebra or well-designed experiments?

Edit: Read farther in Thinking, Fast and Slow; question answered.