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As a lurker, I may go to that place and eavesdrop.
In response to
Cambridge Less Wrong meetup this Sunday, May 16
I was the guy sitting across from you reading "Yoga Time Travel."
In response to
Cambridge Less Wrong meetup this Sunday, May 16
As a lurker, I may go to that place and eavesdrop.
In response to
Human values differ as much as values can differ
The closest thing I can think of as a solution for the status-FAI is domain-specific status. Let Fred be a high-status pianist, let Jim be a high-status computer engineer, let Sheila be a high-status chef, and let the status ordering shift with context.
But that does seem like a problem for FAI, given the appearance of these preferences.
Jay-Z proves status wants to break free of its domain.
It would be great for this rationalist community to be able to discuss any topic, but in a way that insulates the main rationality discussions from off-topic discussions. Perhaps forum software separate from the main format of LessWrong? Are monthly open threads enough for off-topic discussions?
A rationalist forum would be interesting not only for the discussions themselves, but also because it would materialize and test some of the more abstract stuff from this site.
Reading the new year/decade predictions conversations, it struck me that effective treatment of outside content should be Less Wrong's crowning jewel--the real proof that rationality makes good ideas.
In response to
The Second Law of Thermodynamics, and Engines of Cognition
the more uncertain you are about the velocity (not just speed)
Isn't speed the same as velocity?
What is phase space? Is it the same as state space? You didn't define it.
Does that make its thermodynamic entropy zero? Is the water colder, because we know more
about it?
Ignoring quantumness for the moment, the answer is: Yes! Yes it is!
I guess that if you stick your finger into the water it will still get burned, am I wrong?
And conversely, one subsystem cannot increase in mutual information with another subsystem,
without (a) interacting with it and (b) doing thermodynamic work.
It is not entirely clear to me how you arrived at this conclusion.
Your finger will not get burned; it will suffer the cumulative damage resulting from an unusually high quantity of unrelated high-speed molecule attacks.
In response to
Open Thread: January 2010
Akrasia FYI:
I tried creating a separate login on my computer with no distractions, and tried to get my work done there. This reduced my productivity because it increased the cost of switching back from procrastinating to working. I would have thought that recovering in large bites and working in large bites would have been more efficient, but apparently no, it's not.
I'm currently testing the hypothesis that reading fiction (possibly reading anything?) comes out of my energy-to-work-on-the-book budget.
Next up to try: Pick up a CPAP machine off Craigslist.
This strategy works for me. I made the password to my non-work login something that would remind me why I set up the system. (I know of people doing similar things to the phone numbers of people they don't want to call.)
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Wouldn't rationality help people get things on the two bottom tiers? If so, shouldn't your theory predict that people in more dire circumstances are more rational, when I believe the opposite tends to be the case?
A much, much simpler explanation is that rationality is hard and not-rationality is easy. Just as all good families are quite similar and bad families are often uniquely different, there's basically one correct epistemology and a whole lot of incorrect ones. Because truly terrible, survival-inhibiting epistemologies have been eliminated through natural (and social) selection, we're left with a bunch that, at the very least, do not inhibit reproduction. Extremely high-quality epistemology does not appear to be particularly conducive to Darwinian reproductive success, so it never exactly got selected for. Indeed, extremely high quality epistemology may be contingent on a certain level of scientific progress, and thus may have only been practicable in the past few centuries. Imagine trying to simply exist in the world 20,000 years ago, where the only answer you could give to nearly any question about nature or how the world worked was, "I haven't a clue."
Much like religion, one will generally end up with whatever epistemology one is raised with, with whatever particular modifications your mind makes intuitively. Since very few people have minds that gravitate towards a rational epistemology, and since society doesn't particularly value epistemic hygiene, it's little surprise that rationalists do not abound.
Furthermore, your hypothesis that rationality is not conducive to tiers three and four does not appear to be well-founded. I suspect a lot of people would be significantly benefit from greater marginal rationality. An old acquaintance of mine has a Facebook status that regularly oscillates between, "OMG so good to be in love!!!!!<3" and "Oh no my heart was broken again how could u do this to me?" I would anticipate that just a little bit more rationality would greatly benefit this person.
That's a pretty risky analogy.