= 27d567bc2d48d9f40e9ccc20ea370b15)
Um... "There has to be Shannon mutual information between the evidential event and the target of inquiry"?
In response to
How to Have Space Correctly
Another idea is to use different browsers for different tasks. For example, Firefox for school, IE for goofing off, and Chrome for extra-curricular projects.
Anyway, time to remove all the books I will likely not want to look at in the near future to make room for useful things like my calendar and vitamins.
Now I'm actually thinking. It is incredibly difficult, but I am convinced that it is worth it.
I strongly agree with both of those statements.
Do you know what you'd like to do with the knowledge and skills you're acquiring, or is that still an open question?
What I want to do is to figure out what I want to do. My basic (and vague) goal is to do the most amount of good with my future career. If I make that decision with my current tools, I will likely overlook something.
In response to
Litany of Instrumentarski
If I'm reading this correctly, if A is true and the evidence available to you for A is false, you wish to believe that A is false? Or am I missing something?
In response to
How to Evaluate Data?
It is more useful to determine whether a source you're looking at is not telling the truth. Find one black swan, you don't have to look at all possible swans to determine the claim "all swans are white" is not correct.
In the example you gave, identify ways to determine whether the source is not telling the truth. That could include inaccurate quotes, or accurate quotes of faulty data, or consulting the cited texts plus competing texts, but I'm not sure it can include avoiding reading the cited texts even if you think it's a waste of time.
That makes a lot of sense. Looks like I'll be slogging through a lot of links then. Thank you for the tip!
How to Evaluate Data?
What I'm trying to figure out is, how to I determine whether a source I'm looking at is telling the truth? For an example, let's take this page from Metamed: http://www.metamed.com/vital-facts-and-statistics
At first glance, I see some obvious things I ought to consider. It often gives numbers for how many die in hospitals/year, but for my purposes I ought to interpret it in light of how many hospitals are in the US, as well as how many patients are in each hospital. I also notice that as they are trying to promote their site, they probably selected the data that would best serve that purpose.
So where do I go from here? Evaluating each source they reference seems like a waste of time. I do not think it would be wrong to trust that they are not actively lying to me. But how do I move from here to an accurate picture of general doctor competence?
In response to
Welcome to Less Wrong! (5th thread, March 2013)
I've been browsing the site for at least a year. Found it through HP:MoR, which is absolutely amazing. I've been coming to the LessWrong study hall for a couple weeks now and have found it highly effective.
For the most part, I haven't really applied this at all. I ended up making a final break with Christianity, but the only significant difference is that I now say "Yay humanism!" instead of "Yay God!" I've used a few tricks here and there, like the Sunk Cost Fallacy, and the Planning Fallacy, but I still spent the majority of my time not thinking about things. Because thinking is hard.
Then I started trying again to figure out what I should do with my life. Now, the first time I tried this I spent less effort on the decision than I did on most papers I've written for class. Ended up signing a five-year contract with miserable results. Now I'm actually thinking. It is incredibly difficult, but I am convinced that it is worth it.
My current goals are to broaden my knowledge (I know a ton of information about classical music but almost nothing else) and sharpen my critical thinking skills.
In response to
Group Rationality Diary, April 5-14
- I actually thought about something for the first time in years
- While thinking about it, I jotted down "Find an article to back this up." I quickly noticed my error and replaced it with "See what science has to say on the subject."
- I recognized that there is a problem with how I think about social interactions.
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I realized that I was approaching my future career by doing the sort of things that I think I am supposed to do prepare for said career rather than actually figuring out how to go about preparing for it.