I notice that I have a hard time getting myself to make decisions when there are tradeoffs to be made. I think this is because it's really emotionally painful for me to face actually choosing to accept one or another of the flaws. When I face making such a decision, often, the "next thing I know" I'm procrastinating or working on other things, but specifically I'm avoiding thinking about making the decision. Sometimes I do this when, objectively, I'd probably be better off rolling a dice and getting on with one of the choices, but I can't get myself to do that either. If it's relevant, I'm bad at planning generally. Any suggestions?

[Link] why do people persist in believing things that just aren't true

I have a random mathematical idea, not sure what it means, whether it is somehow useful, or whether anyone has explored this before. So I guess I'll just write it here.

Imagine the most unexpected sequence of bits. What would it look like? Well, probably not what you'd expect, by definition, right? But let's be more specific.

By "expecting" I mean this: You have a prediction machine, similar to AIXI. You show the first N bits of the sequence to the machine, and the machine tries to predict the following bit. And the most unexpected sequence is one where the machine makes the most guesses wrong; preferably all of them.

More precisely: The prediction machine starts with imagining all possible algorithms that could generate sequences of bits, and it assigns them probability according to the Solomonoff prior. (Which is impossible to do in real life, because of the infinities involved, etc.) Then it receives the first N bits of the sequence, and removes all algorithms which would not generate a sequence starting with these N bits. Now it normalizes the probabilities of the remaining algorithms, and lets them vote on whether the next bit would be 0 or 1.

However, our sequence is generated in defiance to the prediction machine. We actualy don't have any sequence in advance. We just ask the prediction machine what is the next bit (starting with the empty initial sequence), and then do the exact opposite. (There is some analogy with Cantor's diagonal proof.) Then we send the sequence with this new bit to the machine, ask it to predict the next bit, and again do the opposite. Etc.

There is this technical detail, that the prediction machine may answer "I don't know" if exactly half of the remaining algorithms predict that the next bit will be 0, and other half predicts that it will be 1. Let's say that if we receive this specific answer, we will always add 0 to the end of the sequence. (But if the machine thinks it's 0 with probability 50.000001%, and 1 with probability 49.999999%, it will output "0", and we will add 1 to the end of the sequence.)

So... at the beginning, there is no way to predict the first bit, so the machine says "I don't know" and the first bit is 0. At that moment, the prediction of the following bit is 0 (because the "only 0's" hypothesis is very simple), so the first two bits are 01. I am not sure here, but my next prediction (though I am predicting this with naive human reasoning, no math) would be 0 (as in "010101..."), so the first three bits are 011. -- And I don't dare to speculate about the following bits.

The exact sequence depends on how exactly the prediction machine defines the "algorithms that generate the sequence of bits" (the technical details of the language these algorithms are written in), but can still something be said about these "most unexpected" sequences in general? My guess is that to a human observer they would seem like a random noise. -- Which contradicts my initial words that the sequence would not be what you'd expect... but I guess the answer is that the generation process is trying to surprise the prediction machine, not me as a human.

New family of materials discovered by accident

Does this suggest a problem with using Bayes to generate hypotheses? My impression is that Bayes includes generating hypotheses which look in the most likely places. Are there productive ways of generating accidents, or is paying attention when something weird happens the best we can do?

Find a problem, if any, in this reasoning:

(Dilbert)

Links: Young blood reverses age-related impairments in cognitive function and synaptic plasticity in mice (press release)(paper)

I think the radial arm water maze experiment's results are particularly interesting; it measures learning and memory (see fig 2c which is visible even with the paywall). There's a day one and day two of training and the old mice (18 months) improve somewhat during the first day and then more or less start over on the second day in terms of the errors they are making. This is also true if the old mice are treated with 8 injections of old blood over the course of 3 weeks (the new curves lie pretty much on top of the old curves in supplemental figure 7d). Young mice (3 months) perform better than the old mice (supplemental figure 5d) they learn faster on the first day and retain it when the second day starts (supp 7d).

However, if you give 8 injections of 100 micro liters of blood from 3 month old mice to 18 month old mice, the treated mice perform dramatically better than the old-blood treated old mice (2c) and much more like young mice (this comparison is less certain; I'm comparing one line from 2c to one line from supp. 7d, but that's how it looks by eye).

One factor in the new blood that plays a role is GDF11. From another paper: "we show that GDF11 alone can improve the cerebral vasculature and enhance neurogenesis"

The New York Times gives an overview and other known effects of young blood such as rejuvenating the musculature / heart / vasculature of old mice with young blood. Young Blood May Hold Key to Reversing Aging, e.g. Restoring Systemic GDF11 Levels Reverses Age-Related Dysfunction in Mouse Skeletal Muscle

I think the use of exclamation points should be tastefully rare, or it does give the wrong impression.

Thanks Badger. This is great!

Hi, CFAR alumni here. Reposting I guess, the OTs are getting confusing.

Is there something like a prediction market running somewhere in discussion?

Going mostly off of Gwern's recommendation, it seems like PredictionBook is the go-to place to make and calibrate predictions, but it lacks the "flavour" that the one at CFAR did. CFAR (in 2012, at least) had a market where your scoring was based on how much you updated the previous bet towards the truth. I really enjoyed the interactional nature of it.

What would it take to get such a thread going online? I believe one of the reasons it worked so well at minicamp was because we were all in the same area for the same period of time, so it was simple to restrict bets to relevant things we could all verify. Even if most of the posts wind up being relevant only to the local meetups, it would be nice to have them up in the same place for unofficial competition. Is that something you would use?

How strong is the evidence in favor of psychological treatment really?

I am not happy. I suffer from social anxiety. I procrastinate. And I have a host of another issues that are all linked, I am certain. I have actually sought out treatment with absolutely no effect. On the recommendation of my primary care physician I entered psychoanalytic counseling and was appalled by the theoretical basis and practical course of "treatment". After several months without even the hint of a success I aborted the treatment and looked for help somewhere else.

I then read David Burns' "Feeling Good", browsing through, taking notes and doing the exercises for a couple of days. It did not help, of course in hindsight I wasn't doing the treatment long enough to see any benefit. But the theoretical basis intrigued me. It just made so much more sense to be determined by one's beliefs than a fear of having one's balls chopped off, hating their parents and actively seeking out displeasure because that is what fits the narrative.

Based on the key phrase "CBT" I found "The now habit" and reading me actually helped to subdue my procrastination long enough to finish my bachelor's degree in a highly technical subject with grades in the highest quintile. Then I slipped back into a phase of relative social isolation, procrastionation and so on.

We see these phenomena consistently in people. We also see them consistently in animals being held in captivity not suited to their species' specific needs. I am less and less convinced that this block of anxiety, depression and procrastination is a disease but a reaction to an environment in the broadest sense inherently unsuitable to humans.

The proper and accepted procedure for me would be to try counseling again, this time with a cognitive behavioral approach. But I am unwilling to commit that much time for uncertain results, especially now that I want to travel or do a year abroad or just run away from it all. (Suicide is not an option) What lowers my odds of success even more is that I never feel understood by people put in place to understand in various venues. So how could such a treatment help?

I am open to bibliotherapy. I don't think I am open to traditional or even medical therapy.