What is the purpose of an experiment in science? For instance, in the field of social psychology? For instance,what is the current value of the Milgram experiment? A few people in Connecticut did something in a room at Yale in 1961. Who cares? Maybe it's just gossip from half a century ago.
However, some people would have us believe that this experiment has broader significance, beyond the strict parameters of the original experiment, and has implications for (for example) the military in Texas and corporations in California.
Maybe these people are ...
I would like to be able to talk about politics with rational people ...[but]...the problem is that crazy views get too much credence here, due to an unwillingness to criticize by more rational people.
Right. It's those damn greens. Damn those greens, with their votes for... crazy green things! Not like us blues, who want nothing but good and rational blueness!
[ETA] My mind has been killed. This is why I don't want party politics -- as opposed to policy -- on LessWrong.
1) I would like to be able to talk about politics with rational people
I'd suggest a distinction between "politics" and "policy", at least in the American English prevalent on LessWrong. "Politics" implies party politics, blue versus green, horse races (by which I mean election horse races), and tribalism. I think your post suggested an interest in this. Personally, I don't want this here.
If, however, you want to talk about policy, using the analytical language of policy, then I say go for it. However, your original post, with its reference to parties, made me doubtful.
Downvoted because the original post didn't so much ask a question as make an assertion which I personally didn't find so valuable. As you point out, why would anyone come here for political discussion in the first place? So I downvoted it, because that's what the karma system is for. In the end, a karma point is just a karma point. Nothing personal in it.
What about targeted vaccinations and other health interventions for smart kids? I don't think thiis is a good idea, partly because it's going to be so much less efficient than just helping everyone, but you may.
Not at all, that sounds great, if it were possible. Certainly generally effective health interventions sound even far more likely. But if there were a health intervention that only benefited smart kids, I would definitely consider that a net plus as to not having it exist at all.
[ETA] If it imposed some extrinsic cost on everyone else, that would be a different matter, but that's not how vaccines work, is it?
you probably do better to find existing kids with the potential to be net-positive and help them reach their potential.
I have my doubts, or rather, I think it depends on a lot of things. I take it Steve Jobs' parents were decent average people who went out of their way to raise their brilliant adoptive son as best they could, with great success. But, of course, this involved for them almost exactly the same expense of time or money as it would to raise a biological child of their own, which nullifies a good chunk of the original argument, as I underst...
Having kids is a special case of spending your time and money in ways that make you happy.
I don't know, maybe a very special case. I'd say rather it's a way of creating new people with their own utility [I see now Lumifer made this point before me], and ideally their own contributions to overall utility. Alternatively, some new people may represent losses to overall utility overall.
If you think you can produce net-positive children...parents of Isaac Newton, I'm looking at you...it's worthwhile to spend all the time and effort and money to raise them. ...
"The Navy is a master plan designed by geniuses for execution by idiots. If you're not an idiot, but find yourself in the Navy, you can only operate well by pretending to be one." -Herman Wouk, The Caine Mutiny
I think I'm seconding this when I say that one of the most rational of Muggle studies has been magic, in the sense of stage illusionism. There's a long history of stage magicians -- beginning at least with Houdini -- debunking self-declared spiritualists and psychics and so on. James Randi, Penn and Teller, and even Johnny Carson spring to mind.
You could check out Wikipedia on public choice theory and organizational theory .
For a more humorous approach, you could read The Peter Principle . You could also check out Jerry Pournelle's Iron Law of Bureaucracy .
It may be that the benefit of LessWrong skews towards autodidacts -- after all, EY himself famously is self-taught. With that said, I'd say hell yeah a studious reading of LessWrong can teach you more than a "typical core college class." Sorry to say a typical core college class is far less than it should be. There are a few excellent teachers of core classes out there, but the academic system just is not set up to provide proper incentives for introductory undergraduate teaching.
I'd agree with your exception for technical classes such as gener...
I'm at least mildly creeped out by occasional cultish behavior on LessWrong. But every cause wants to be a cult
Eliezer said so, so therefore it is Truth.
Not sure if it involves supply of executive function , but I'm reminded of Kaj_Solata's own post to like each other, sing and dance in synchrony . He specifically mentioned military drill as an example.
I suspect that "executive function" as an individual is very different from executive function in the context of a highly collective institution like a military unit.
Personally, I'm desperately hoping for a near-term Gattaca solution, by which ordinary or defective parents can, by genetic engineering, cheaply optimize their children's tendencies towards all good things, at least as determined by genotype, including ethical behavior and competence, in one generation. Screw this grossly inefficient and natural selection nonsense.
I know the movie presented this as a dystopia, in which the elite were apparently chosen mostly to be tall and good-looking. Ethan Hawke's character, born naturally, was short and was supposedl...
The infamous Steve Sailer has written a lot about cousin marriage , which, in practice, seems to be correlated with arranged marriage in many cultures (including the European royals in past centuries). Perhaps a lot of arranged marriages in practice may lead to inbreeding, with the genetic dangers that follow.
I'm also wondering about the effects of anonymous sperm banks, where relatively well-off women may pay to choose a biological father on the basis of -- whatever available information they may choose to consider. What factors, in a man they will never meet, do they choose for their offspring?
With regard to the general question described in the title, there's actually a huge literature. Just for example, Richard Posner's Economic Analysis of Law (and pretty much most of what he's written), and Philip Hamburger's *Law and Judicial Duty."
For what it's worth, in America at least, there is no "state without juries," but there are bench trials, for example when a criminal defendant waives a jury. In that case one -- and only one -- judge acts as both the arbiter of law and the finder of fact.
You only get a panel of judges at the app...
Long-distance runners and hikers and soldiers on road marches are often told not to change their strides when they get blisters, because when you have 15 or 20 miles left to go, a lopsided hobble can seriously damage your knees and hip and back.
However, based on your comment, that advice is not meant for you. Since you were able to post this, I assume you're not hopelessly lost in the woods. More importantly you've broken your toe. That is not a blister. For god's sake, get off the damn thing, and get some damn crutches if you haven't already done so and...
I'd quibble about "clearly," even in context. Wars are just too damn random.
Nothing against cost-benefit analysis in the abstract, but, in practice, invading a country seems like one of those very complicated choices that may inherently risk some major, major unintended consequences. I'm mostly thinking negative, but I suppose this would go both ways -- unexpected ultimate positive consequences might be possible as well, but still hard to calculate at all.
X is in a category whose archetypal member has certain features.
I don't always judge X. But when I do, I judge X as if it also had those features. Stay thirsty, my friends.
I think you misunderstand me. Jared Diamond is a serious academic in good standing. I did not say he was an ideologue. Apparently, Professor Diamond has a doctorate in physiology, but is currently described as a professor of geography. He is not a professional historian. In any case, the discipline of History is noble, but it is not always described as a social science at all.
But both Guns, Germs, and Steel and Collapse are pop sci, not that there's anything wrong with that. They were marketed to an audience of intelligent nonexperts. They were never int...
The Social Sciences are often very unscientific. I want to do to economics and foreign policy analysis what Jared Diamond and other similar authors have done with history.
These two sentences may contradict each other. I'd suggest that Jared Diamond is famous as a multidisciplinarian pop-sci author. I don't mean that as an insult to him at all. He has sold a lot of books, and has interested the public in ideas, which is great as far as it goes. But if you want to bring more rigor to social science, I don't think Jared Diamond's writings on history of al...
There's probably a bit of money in distilling legalese into simpler language. Nolo Press, for instance, is in that field.
The real money in lawyering, however, is in applying the law to the available evidence in a very specific case. This is why some BigLaw firms charge hourly fees measured by the boatload. A brilliant entrepreneur able to develop an artificial intelligence application which could apply the facts to the law as effectively as a BigLaw firm should eventually be able to cut into some BigLaw action. That's a lot of money.
This is a hard p...
I'd say that legal language, at least in America, is absolutely well within the bounds of natural language, with all the ambiguity that implies. Certainly lawyers have their own jargon and "terms of art" that sound unfamiliar to the uninitiated, but so do airplane pilots and sailors and auto mechanics. It's still not mathematics.
There are a lot of legislators and judges, and they don't all use words in exactly the same ways. Over time, the processes of binding precedent and legal authority are supposed to resolve the inconsistencies within the la...
I'm a lawyer. I'm also an enthusiast about applying computing technology to legal work generally, but not tech-savvy by the standards of LessWrong. But if I could help to define the problems a bit, I'd be happy to respond to PMs.
For example, the text of the U.S. Constitution is not long. Here's just one part of it:
...Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Governme
Thinking about Eliezer's post about Doublethink Speaking of deliberate, conscious self-deception he opines: "Leaving the morality aside, I doubt such a lunatic dislocation in the mind could really happen."
This seems odd for a site devoted to the principle that most of the time, most human minds are very biased. Don't we have the brains of one species of apes that has evolved to be particularly sensitive to politics? Why wouldn't doublethink be the evolutionarily adaptive norm?
My intuition, based on my own private experience, is the opposite of ...
Generally, he wouldn't have the power to officiate a marriage in California. See California Family Code section 400 and so on. Basically, only religious clergy and state officials can do that. That's the culture and law that applies in Berkeley, California.
There seems to be an exception under which someone can become a temporary "deputy commissioner of marriages" for the purpose of one ceremony. If you don't believe in religion, and (like me) you fear that the government has its own PHYGish tendencies, this doesn't seem like a bad alternative.
First, best wishes to the newly-married couple!
From a purely aesthetic point of view, I liked the relatively respectful and traditional mood effected by the Wagner wedding march, the adherence to the customs of bridesmaids and groomsmen and the giving away of the bride. I also liked the subtle subversive effect achieved by the bare feet. I read it as acknowledging established tradition, taking advantage of its strong momentum, while firmly taking charge of it and adapting it as required. Nicely done.
I would not dare to summarize Fussell's guide here, but it shattered my illusion that I mostly avoid thinking about class signals, and instead convinced me that pretty much everything I do from waking up in the morning to going to bed at night is a class signal.
This is a very readable and interesting guide, and it may have been dead-on accurate in 1983 when it was written. But the kind of class system he describes, one defined by social signals and not by (say) brute force or even money, can only exist in a unified culture, in which everybody speaks th...
I understand some enthusiasts get very emphatic about this issue, but I can only speak to my own very limited experience. The tool immediately to my hand now is a Leatherman PST, easily about ten years old or more and still not showing many signs of age. As I understand it, it's the very basic original Leatherman model. It's paid for itself many times over in simple ready convenience and utility. I see there are some very fancy and complicated multitools around. I have no comment about those, as I've never used them. I would say that my comment was based ...
I suspect that this recommendation will be redundant for many or most of LessWrong, but let it be repeated: buy a good basic multitool and keep it where you can easily find it. Better, buy a couple of them and keep them (say) in your car, in your desk at work, and at home.
Sometimes you need exactly the right tool for the job. However, for many simple tasks, and for any emergency, the simple tool immediately at hand is much more useful than the ideal tool which would take time and effort to retrieve.
My family and I recently moved homes. We used the Pods company service, and were satisfied. Basically, they deliver a shipping container to your driveway, you load it, they put it on one of their trucks and deliver it to your new place, whereupon you unload it. For us, it was just the right balance between doing-it-yourself (cheaply) and paying someone else with a competitive advantage to do a service. Anyway, they showed up on time and did what they said they would do.
I like it. Are their definitions all perfect and complete? Certainly not. But, at least in my own experience, the sanity waterline of (say) an undergraduate dorm is typically so low that hanging something like this on the wall for communal reference might tend to improve the level of conversation. Anyway, it looks like it's under a creative commons license which allows remixing.
Come to think of it, it could be reformatted to make a series of cards to play Newspaper Editorial Page Logical Fallacy Bingo.
I tentatively suggest there's a pattern here.
By default, and in practice for the great majority, no factual question can be regarded as popular or important unless it provides an opportunity for status signaling or mind killing.
However, if there is something like a prediction market, a tiny minority will adapt to become specialists in making accurate and profitable predictions.
This applies to sports and stock trades. Most people will be happy to be a [LOCAL SPORTS TEAM] fan, and will happily remained biased for signaling purposes, maybe making penny-ante ...
I was thinking along the same lines, then saw your comment. I suspect an issue can't really become "popular" without some some signaling or wishful thinking involved.
Probability of a major earthquake in California this year? High, if you hope those damnfool leftcoasters are finally going to get what's coming to them. Low, if you have a lot of money tied up in property in California.
Somewhat related:
The Center for Communicating Science, together with Alan Alda, is sponsoring what they call the Flame Challenge: Answer the question – “What is a flame?” – in a way that an 11-year-old would find intelligible "and maybe even fun."
...As a curious 11-year-old, Alan Alda asked his teacher, “What is a flame?” She replied: “It’s oxidation.” Alda went on to win fame as an actor and writer, became an advocate for clear communication of science, and helped found the Center for Communicating Science at Stony Brook University. He never stop
I'm reminded of the story of the gentile asking the rabbi Hillel that the whole Torah be explained to him while he stood on one foot. Hillel replied "What is hateful to you, do not do to your fellow: this is the whole Torah; the rest is commentary; go and learn."
An article in the Jewish Daily Forward observes that it is a mistake to equate "the rest is commentary" with "the rest is unimportant."
...It is interesting to see how “the rest is commentary” has taken on an English meaning of its own that is subtly different from Hi
It was the Herbert Kornfeld trash talk that had me literally laughing out loud. Keep it real, L-Dog.
So the scenario would be, not that the elders of the LDS church are secretly running the American intelligence community...
In fact, there are a lot of Mormons in the U.S. intelligence services. This isn't because of any sinister conspiracy,* but simply because of their institution of going off as missionaries to foreign countries. Most Americans, if raised speaking English in the home, have little motivation to properly learn another language, and don't. Mormons do -- they learn most of the languages of the globe and practice them under very trying cond...
In all seriousness, I once took it for granted that, assuming perfect good faith and honesty on the part of the filer, and assuming perfectly complete and accurate records, there would automatically be one precise and correct figure for the amount of (say) income tax to be filed, at least in theory. Since that time, I have learned that, while arithmetic may be straightforward, within the tax code and even within generally accepted accounting principles, there are always huge areas of ambiguity, even for the average person filing a 1040EZ.
Given that there's always more to learn about pretty much everything, this list didn't bother me at all. I would have been much more alarmed if they asked for expert advice on:
There's an app for that, at least on the IT Crowd.