Supernaturalism is a distraction. Theologists defend supernaturalism as an indirect way of defending whatever God they want to believe in. See http://www.uncrediblehallq.net/2011/06/24/atheism-is-just-thinking-there-arent-any-gods/.
The sequences are not specifically tailored to convince people of atheism. They are rather a more general set of tools in going about and reasoning about the world. So don't over-ascribe relevance to atheism many of the philosophical ideas you see in there.
It's interesting that you think there's a distinction to be made between the methods of philosophy and math, as opposed to their subject matters.
So are you suggesting their differences in success has to do with subject matter?
Model uncertainty only has a big effect on probabilities that are defined as not (some event with probability near 1). When talking about specific scenarios with low probability, model uncertainty just scales them - e.g. a specific god existing in Pascal's wager isn't vastly over or underestimated if model uncertainty isn't accounted for.
Hmm, why is this the case? I think I'm missing background knowledge here.
What happens at these meetings?
We talk. Discuss stuff usually discussed on LW. In a social setting.
Ahem, that embedded map on this page is not right! Why does it show New Delhi?
(on the general topic of regret)
I can't recall any instance of extreme, wincing regret at some moment in my life, that doesn't have a flavor of regret for what it signals about me. That is, if regret has a use, it's to spur me to avoid damaging my reputation and relationships. For this to cover all cases, though, it would have to be the case that the mechanism is too dumb to realize that nobody knows except me - just that it would be damaging if it were known.
I do feel like I want to suppress regret (not by doing fewer things to regret), so that only the worries I find useful are implanted in my mind.
In the category of non-signaling regret, which upon consideration isn't empty (just less painful, in my experience), I suppose losses of resource, opportunity, or health are felt roughly twice as severe as a gain (according to various research I won't search for).
I've yet to lose my wallet. But I feel potential regret every time I realize I'm insufficiently aware of its whereabouts. I don't think actual regret is needed; imagined regret is just fine (and potentially unwanted). I've known other (well-off) people who have stronger or less discriminate tendencies toward regret and worry than I do, and they seem less happy.
Bravo! That's insightful. Thank you.
(I placed the Nesov quote there to hopefully prime people into not immediately accept whatever senses of regret which seem to 'make sense'. For example, merely looking for 'consistency'.)
Not sure. I can't dissolve my own confusion about the question yet. But a big part of it is indeed about consistency: it worries me that both Caplan-now and Caplan-counterfactual claim to have no regrets about the past, even though their pasts are different.
Well I don't think it makes sense to regret one's entire past and be satisfied with merely that. You want to draw specific lessons from your past. An ideal agent might not need regret of course, being able to learn from past mistakes without a feeling of regret toward a specific event which gave rise to the general lesson. But I think humans might find it useful to have an event serve as a reminder of a lesson learned.
We can interpret Caplan's "no regret" (perhaps too charitably) as "my past does not contain any lessons wrt. me behaving in a certain way in order to have my children be a certain way". But this leaves room for other lesson-specific regret wrt. other genuine lessons.
As for the massive counterfactual of "Caplan having behaved even minisculely different in his past", I think it's quite useless and hence meaningless, at least with respect to Caplan and his children. It doesn't help him better raise his children, for example. It's like how not every English sentence corresponds to a meaningful statement.
I feel the mistake is in transplanting Caplan-now into the universe of Caplan-counterfactual, just like the guy in my quote transplants himself into a bizarre alternate universe where he eats spinach despite hating it. It would make more sense to empathize with Caplan-counterfactual directly.
Hmm it depends on what you're trying to accomplish with the counterfactual I think. Is there a particular reason why you think it would make more sense to empathize with the Caplan-counterfactual, independent of it being more 'consistent' I guess?
I think he was making a joke, or at least an intentionally overblown statement.
This seems likely. Still I think there's a lesson to be learned here :)
= f037147d6e6c911a85753b9abdedda8d){kind=logo}
= 27d567bc2d48d9f40e9ccc20ea370b15)
= b715d02e85f7b3b4ae65ca3d3e450868)
Subscribe to RSS Feed
Yes.
I don't doubt that might be the ultimate cause, as different methods are amenable to different subject matters. But that does not affect the inference I want to draw here, that in doing abstract reasoning, one has to hold oneself to a ridiculously high standard of precision and rigor.