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Which "change in policy" do Eric Garner protests aim to achieve? A rewriting of how indictment or grand juries work? Which "change in policy" did Occupy aim to achieve?
I think that's one issue with protests. Many people gather with ill defined goals that are tangentially related to what most would agree is the actual problem. The "actual problem" for Occupy relates to unequal distribution of wealth, and the "actual problem" for the recent police brutality protests relates to systemic bias in the criminal justice system. I'm not sure if there actually is this sort of systemic bias, nor am I sure of the implicit claim that "things have gotten worse."
So, what do protests actually achieve, and is that effective in making things better? It seems that they do raise some level of awareness in the sense that more eye balls are on the issue for a short period of time. It's unclear to me that that's effective though, especially since it's a double edged sword. Raising awareness about the issue makes the negative externalities (like rioting and looting) more likely to be picked up and emphasized about the media.
In response to
Lifehack Ideas December 2014
[not sure if this strictly qualifies as a lifehack, but it seems to be in the general ballpark]
I have been practising a slightly modified version of alternate-day intermittent fasting since mid-January this year. Basically, every second day, I eat a small breakfast and then nothing until midnight (or at least I try to, in practice I sometimes have a snack at 10-11 pm). There seems to be some evidence that this is good for human health, and I have found it to be rather low-cost - I am still able to do moderately strenuous physical activity on fasting days (namely cycling from university to my home, which is half an hour away and mostly uphill), and do not get particularly hungry either (although I sometimes desire certain foods, hence the snacking). All in all, this seems like the sort of thing that is worth trying.
That's an interesting schedule. Do you find it easier to fast during the day, vs the commonly recommended "don't eat anything after 6pm until 1pm the next day"?
In response to
Open thread, Dec. 8 - Dec. 15, 2014
I have a question about a seemingly complex social issue, so I'm interested if anyone has any insights.
Do protests actually work? Are e.g. the Ferguson/police crime protests a good way of attacking the problem? They seem to me to have a high cost, to be deflecting from the actual problem, and not enough sustained effort by people who care to push through to actual social change in the U.S.
In response to
Open thread, Dec. 8 - Dec. 15, 2014
23andMe/SNPs: so I recently decided I might as well get around to getting my own data since the price has not dropped much for a while and I figured out how to work around the state restrictions. I now have my raw SNP data, and I'll be posting some random notes soonish. Does anyone have any ideas for what to do with this data?
Look at SNPs corresponding to methylation defects, and run a self experiment on any interventions that drop out of that.
In response to
What is the difference between rationality and intelligence?
Some off the cuff thoughts:
Can you imagine an intelligent agent that is not rational? And vice versa, can you imagine a rational agent that is not intelligent?
AIXI is "rational" (believe that it's vNM-rational in the literature). Is "instrumental rationality" a superset of this definition?
In the case of human rationality and human intelligence, part of it seems a question of scale. E.g. IQ tests seem to measure low level pattern matching, while "rationality" in the sense of Stanovich refers to more of a larger scale self reflective corrective process. (I'd conjecture that there are a lot of low level self reflective corrective processes occurring in an IQ test as well).
Personally, I'd be interested in setting up an IRC chatroom, google hangout or other semi-persistent thinghy for pair/group
That would be great!
What's the current status of this? I'm looking to get started on the course list and would love a study partner.
Is anyone working on formalising UDT, TDT, and the like, for publication in academic journals? Has any of it appeared there already?
There is this paper, http://commonsenseatheism.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/Hintze-Problem-class-dominance-in-predictive-dilemmas.pdf which was an honors thesis.
More discussion relevant to the state of UDT and TDT in this comment: http://lesswrong.com/lw/k3m/open_thread_2127_april_2014/au6e
A couple of starting points to improve your investigation.
First, rigorous inductive reasoning, i.e. bayesian probability, includes as a special case deductive reasoning, at least in the case where deductive reasoning is conflated with "classical logic". AFAIK there have been only sparse and timid research into widening probability to fit other kinds of logic.
Second, the example you use to illustrate generalization is a case of what in logic is known as elementary embedding, and it's a pure application of deductive reasoning. Although the process that led the first mathematician to the invention of rational numbers might have very well been one of inductive reasoning.
Third, do not be tempted to think that abstraction is generally linear. It may very well be the case that the model C is generalized by model B, which is generalized by model A which is found to be a special example of C. This kind of "strange loops" (I credit Hofstadter for the invention of this term) happens all the time in category theory.
The very same four different foundations for mathematics (set theory, type theory, category theory, univalence theory) are all instances of one another (see for example the paper "From Sets to Types to Categories to Sets" by Awodey, which however was compiled before univalence was formalized).
Thanks for your enticing comment!
I understand your first point, but my math knowledge is not up to par to really understand point #2, and point #3 just makes me want to learn category theory. BTW, I also posted this question on the philosophy stackexchange: http://philosophy.stackexchange.com/questions/14689/how-does-abstraction-generalization-in-mathematics-fit-into-inductive-reasoning.
Do you have any recommendations of what to study to understand category theory and more about the foundations of math? (Logic, type theory, computability & logic, model theory seem like contenders here)
In response to
Open thread, 14-20 July 2014
So there's a MIRIxMountain View, but is it redundant to have a MIRIxEastBay/SF? It seems like the label MIRIx is content to be bestowed upon even low key research efforts, and considering the hacker culture/rationality communities there may be interest in this.
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Are there any updates on when the Sequences e-book versions are going to be released? I'm planning a reread of some of the core material and might wait if the release is imminent.