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My take away from this is that you need to "shut up and multiply" every single time. Looking at the math skills study, the thought was that people glance at the raw numbers (instead of looking at the ratios) and stop there if they fit their ideological beliefs. If it conflicts with your beliefs though you spend a little longer and figure out you need to look a the ratio. So if we train ourselves to always "shut up and multiply" hopefully some of this effect will go away. Maybe a follow-up study to see if people who actually do the math still get it wrong?
In response to
Another way our brains betray us
If preconceived notions make it impossible to do math, then how can we possibly get a result that contradicts with our preconceived notions?
It seems to me a rational agent should never change its self-consistent terminal values. To act out that change would be to act according to some other value and not the terminal values in question.
Only a static, an unchanging and unchangeable rational agent. In other words, a dead one.
All things change. In particular, with passage of time both the agent himself changes and the world around him changes. I see absolutely no reason why the terminal values of a rational agent should be an exception from the universal process of change.
Why wouldn't you expect terminal values to charge? Does your agent have some motivation (which leads it to choose to change) other than its terminal values. Or is it choosing to change its terminal values in pursuit of those values? Or are the terminal value changing involuntarily?
In the first case, the things doing the changing are not the real terminal values.
In the second case, that doesn't seem to make sense.
In the third case, what we're discussing is no longer a perfect rational agent.
In response to
Post ridiculous munchkin ideas!
Similar to BForBandana's idea, use the refund system to convert gift cards into cash.
You'll hurt your credit rating, right? Which makes it harder to find places to rent, 'cause landlords will want to know your credit rating. And of course, harder to get credit cards, auto loans, mortgages.
See also: voluntary homelessness.
Perhaps, but absolute power tends to be the more relevant one, as it definitionally also includes the means to persue the goals derived from absolute corruption.
I wonder where one could apply "Absolute" and not come up with a scary sounding conclusion. Absolute skepticism seems it would turn one into a gibbering madman. Absolute logic--well what is a dangerous AI but absolute logic plus power?
Absolute non-contradiction? Since anything else (that is, any contradictory statement) is absolutely horrible, if absolute non-contradiction is also horrible then nothing good exists.
edit: s/than nothing/then nothing/
In response to
Words as Mental Paintbrush Handles
Now did you happen to notice which side of the street he was walking on (left or right), and whether he was walking towards or away from you?
Your visualizations include such details? As the description didn't include such details, they're necessarily undefined - so why did you define them out of their uncertainty?
How many of you dream in concepts rather than images?
In my visualization, a man (don't remember what he looked like) was walking along a line with a 90 degree turn away from me (think of how GPS navigators represent roads, only the only thing I visualized was the road that was actually used). When he turned, the camera panned along with him, keeping his back to me, and we were facing a double-door entryway.
My visualizations seem to lack every detail they can possibly lack...
In response to
Feeling Rational
I think that the saying "What can be destroyed by truth, should be" is a little bit too black and white to work well in all aspects of life. For example, a clumsy and fat person who thinks he is actually rather agile, might be a lot happier with this false belief than if he were aware of the truth*. Of course it could be said that if he knew the truth, he would start to exercise and eventually become healthier, but that's not necessarily the case. Another example would be, that if a not-so-good-looking person thinks he looks good, he might be encouraged by that false belief to ask someone he likes for a date.
*Here when I talk about truth, I mean that how things are in the physical reality. ( whatever that may mean. )
I may be somewhat more radical than a lot of people here, but I don't think the fat man should be deluded. It will hurt him more in the long run, because, believing himself to be agile, he'll sign up for physically strenuous jobs and may injure himself, or try to compete in sports and be let down hard, instead of lightly like a controlled reveal could be.
I'd phrase it as, rationality prevents you from experiencing irrational (i.e., pointless) emotions.
My theory is that almost all negative emotions have to be learned by imitation. They are cached responses copied from role models at an early age, almost always irrational (read: counterproductive), and unfortunately there is no automatic updating system for them.
Even worse is that whenever we experience a cached negative emotion our thinking is impaired (especially by anger), so there is even less chance that we'll notice and update it. Still worse is that even if we notice the response is irrational and try to update, once the sour taste of the emotion has infected the mind a clean update becomes extraordinarily difficult.
My solution: Make it a habit to imagine awful or offensive situations in advance, and see yourself reacting perfectly.
Like imagine you get stuck in traffic when you're in a hurry, but you're totally zen about it. Since it's your imagination you may as well be 100% chill, heck why not even find some reason to be happy about it? Then that will be the cached response next time you hit traffic.
Or say someone's kid spills grape juice on your new white carpet (and realistically you're not going to ask for remuneration). May as well imagine yourself reacting wonderfully, without missing a beat, no hint of irritation whatsoever. This kind of thing really impresses people.
Starts out right; being pointlessly angry at all those crazy drivers is a waste of energy, and often the result of various fallacies (fundamental fallacy? if you drove like that, you'd have a reason to).
But then you mention "why not even find some reason to be happy about it?" That's a bias; cut it out. Also, you want the kid to realize that spitting juice onto the carpet is unacceptable.
In response to
Feeling Rational
"P. C. Hodgell said: "That which can be destroyed by the truth should be." "
That sounds very much like a quote from a Russian anarchist which was I think mentioned in one of Turgenev's books, possibly "Fathers and Sons". Here we go:
"Anything that can be broken, should be broken." ~Dmitri Pisarev
Solomon says: nothing new under the sun.
Isn't "by the truth" an extremely important qualifier?! I'm really curious how the two quotes are the same.
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A real cryonic revival counselor, or just one merely made of atoms?
Real in the same way that a real banana is real.