All of ahh's Comments + Replies

ahh30

I agree that CBT is well-supported by the evidence, and in general should be rationalism-friendly but that isn't always so. The therapist I mentioned in my OP was, in fact, calling himself a CBT practitioner. So I was hoping someone knew a CBT guy (or other equally well-supported method, honestly) he personally liked.

2Vaniver
There are a handful of CBT books that are about as effective in general as having a therapist. You might be interested in feeling good, the depression workbook, or the anxiety workbook. I recommend that you keep looking for social support as well.
0pedanterrific
Oh. Well, that's surprising. Sorry, I'm not in the area.
ahh110

Can anyone recommend a good therapist in San Francisco (or nearby) who's rationalism-friendly? I have some real problems with depression and anxiety, but the last time I tried to get help the guy told me I was paying too much attention to evidence and should think more spiritually and less rationally. Uh...huh. If you don't want to post publicly here, PM or email is fine.

2pedanterrific
I'll second drethelin; CBT is both evidence-based as a treatment method- there's evidence it works- and evidence-based in practice, meaning you don't have to believe in it or anything, you just follow the prescribed behaviors and observe the results. Really, it's highly rationalism-friendly, being mainly about noticing and combatting "cognitive distortions" (e.g. generalizing from one example, inability to disconfirm, emotional reasoning, etc.). A therapist who specializes in CBT can be pretty well assumed to not be in the habit of dragging "spirituality" into their work.
0drethelin
CBT style therapy is pretty founded on science
0knb
You might want to look at Rational-emotive behavior therapy (REBT), and the affiliated organizations' websites. There are usually a few REBT therapists in any major city.
ahh60

You know, Stross tacitly considered an interesting form of resurrection in Accelerando--a hypothetical post-singularity (non-Friendly) AI computes a minimum message length version of You based off any surviving records of what you've done or said (plus the baseline prior for how humans work) and instantiates the result.

I'm having real trouble proving that's not more-or-less me, and what's more, that such a resurrection would feel any different from the inside looking back over its memories of my life.

ahh10

I can't find BEST (as a statistical test or similar...) on Google. What test do you refer to?

3gwern
http://www.indiana.edu/~kruschke/BEST/
ahh80

I think this paper (while mathematically interesting!) is rather oversold. A positive result to their proposed experiment says one of the following is true:

A) we're simulated on a cubic grid B) we're not simulated, but True Physics has cubic structure C) (other non-obvious cause of anisotropy)

Not only is it very difficult in my mind to distinguish between A and B, think what a negative result means; one of:

A) we're simulated on a non-cubic grid B) we're simulated with a more complex discretization that deals with anisotropy C) we're not simulated, and Tr... (read more)

1fubarobfusco
... unless cubic anisotropy is more likely in a simulation than in not-a-simulation. How could we know that, though?