All of AnnaLeptikon's Comments + Replies

With my current research together with John Vervaeke and Johannes Jaeger, I'm continuing the work on the cognitive science of rationality under uncertainty, bringing together the axiomatic approach (on which Stanovich et al. build) and the ecological approach. 

Here I talk about Rationality and Cognitive Science on the ClearerThinking Podcast. Here is a YouTube conversation between me and John, explaining our work and the "paradigm shift in rationality". Here is the preprint of the same argumentation as "Rationality and Relevance Realization". John als... (read more)

For the exact adress and the way to the room (with pictures) follow this link: http://web.student.tuwien.ac.at/~e0326238/rationality_meetup/directions.html

As always: For further information join or look into the Facebook group "Rationality Vienna" - here is also the FB-event: https://www.facebook.com/events/779237562115156/

Here is the link for the FB-event - for any further information:

https://www.facebook.com/events/1491377887814691

(Might be that you first need to become member or "Rationality Vienna" to see it)

Me - and many others from the meetup in Vienna - already signed up. This - probably - will be super awesome. Looking forward to it!

Review about the Rationality Meetup in Vienna on 27.09.2014

Superintelligence Summary by Marko Thiel

People who were there: Andreas, Matthias Brandner, Manuel K., Monika, Marko, Viliam Bur, Alex, Philip, Anna, Philipp, Tino/Sandy, Austin, Milica, Luka, Ivan, Axel, Lea, Lio, Andreas V., Manuel M. (20 people - awesome! And so many were new!)

Superintelligence by Nick Bostrom (presented by Marko Thiel)

First announcement: ethics will not be discussed and rather be ignored today, because otherwise he would never finish

Quote "Let an ultraintelligent machine be... (read more)

Am I not allowed to call it "prejudice" if it's like a Bayesian prior?

5ChristianKl
It's not a matter of "allowed". Given the nature of the website it would make sense for you to analyse the relationship between what you are saying and Bayesian priors if you want to convince people.

However, I filled in the application with the information about my personal location, so that he/they can see, that there is need for such events in Europe, too :) (maybe you should do that, too!)

Maybe he can give his plans for this event to some of us and we can organize our own event as a subunit.

4Raemon
Yes, if it turns out there's a critical mass of people in, say Iceland... well, I probably won't be able to make it work this year, but it'd be important information for next year.

Since I will not be able to attend "the rational ritual retreat" I will just post my thoughts on this topic here :) I already talked about this with some of the people from LessWrong Vienna, but I will write it down for the whole community, too:

What do you think about "rational alternatives" to important conventional events (but of course not exactly on the official dates - because people probably meet their families then) or creating "rational annual events"? I personally don't experience big meaning in official celebrations... (read more)

2Raemon
Thanks for the thoughts Anna! I actually have a lot to say about this, but I will probably end up writing it up as a blogpost in a little bit.
4Viliam_Bur
I think that connecting the ritual to some specific day - an astronomical event or someone's birthday - is not really necessary. That's how it was done historically, because if you want to coordinate masses of people and avoid quarrels among the organizer, you need some rationalization. But these days, we celebrate Xmas on December 25th simply because we have always celebrates Xmas on December 25th. -- Telling people that winter solstice is actually December 21st will not change anyone's mind. And educated people, religious or not, don't believe we have good evidence for Jesus being born on December 25th. Still, December 25th is Xmas, because that's how it has always been. (Unless you are Orthodox, in which case it is January 7th, because it has always been January 7th.) We are not going to organize the whole country to do something at their homes at the same time. There will be a few dozen people at most, and they will come to the same place. Therefore "It will be on day XYZ, because XYZ is the day we organize it" is good enough. If we announce it soon enough, people will be able to make time. I started thinking about my vague ideas, but then I realized that what I actually want on the meta level is to expand the range of interaction modes among rationalists. In other words, my reasoning is not "celebrations are inherently better than talking at cafe", but rather "we already do talk at cafe, but we didn't have a celebration yet". Because, you know, if it were the other way round - regular celebrations once in a month, but no talking at cafe - I would probably try to organize some talk at cafe instead. Of course we have more talking at cafe because that is easier to organize. And that's the thing: unless we are strategic, we will always converge to "what is easier to do" instead of "what would be good". Here is a list of interaction modes that quickly come to my mind: * informal talk * moderated debate * lecture / sermon * workshop * games * sport * hikin

Skype conferences and private talks spreading the know-how in a pyramid scheme should be as effective as flying there - and it's a lot cheaper!

3buybuydandavis
It's a continuum, where physical presence is best, then simulcast conferences, then further talks, then video presentations. The more of a shared event in time and space, the better, but the better shouldn't preclude the not as good. IMO, having a simulcast conference as part of any physical event would be valuable on both sides.

I would love to attend at "The Rational Ritual Retreat" but I expect it will not be near Austria or Bavaria :(

2Gunnar_Zarncke
I'm inspired to morph our usual years end come together into a rational ritual thingy. And I'm curious what comes out of Raemons retreat.
7Ben Pace
Or even Britain. It's irritating that those rationalists in America consistently refuse to fly over to Britain just to include me in everything.

The general problem of fasting and extremely reduced intakes is that the metabolism slows down. Also you first lose a lot of muscles, then a bit of fat - when going on eating normal you burn less than before (because of less muscles) and therefore gain more fat. So for your body's composition I would say: Don't do it. (There is this great German book called "Die Physik des Abnehmens" = "the physics of weight loss" in which a physicist explains all this things very nicely)

However: I personally tried fasting for the mental effect, I was a... (read more)

2falenas108
As a physicist, I would not trust a book about weight loss by a physicist unless they also studied nutrition at an academic level. Actually, I wouldn't trust a book about weight loss by anyone who hasn't studied nutrition at an academic level, that field is incredibly hard and it's too easy to simplify.

Review about the Rationality Meetup in Vienna on 23.08.2014

People who were there: Marko Thiel, Monika, Andreas, Matthias Brandner, Viliam Búr, Ivan, Manuel Moertelmaier, Pascal, Anna Leptikon, Marianna, Adelheid Gfrast, Jana and Austin Franzoni

We did the "open microphone" idea again and had our first meetup at Andreas' and Moni's place - thank you again for organizing it and all the food and drinks :)

Our (official) topics on Saturday were:

  • "money creation" by Andreas

  • "time" by Lea

  • "remembering and experiencing self&quo

... (read more)

Review about the Rationality Meetup in Vienna on 19.07.2014:

People who were there: Marko Thiel, Heinrich, Erik Unger, Monika, Andreas, Matthias Brandner, Peter Mühlbacher, Viliam Búr, Axel, Ivan , Manuel Moertelmaier, Anna Leptikon, Andreas Villarreal, Tom Madl, Marianna, Lio Kaufman

We tried the "open microphone" idea by Manuel the first time (which means: we collect topics people have to offer in the beginning, vote which ones we want to hear and every speaker gets 30 minutes - discussion included - for his topic) Donclusion: more information de... (read more)