I thought Less Wrong might be interested to see a documentary I made about cognitive bias. It was made as part of a college project and a lot of the resources that the film uses are pulled directly from Overcoming Bias and Less Wrong. The subject of what role film can play in communicating the ideas of Less Wrong is one that I have heard brought up, but not discussed at length. Despite the film's student-quality shortcomings, hopefully this documentary can start a more thorough dialogue that I would love to be a part of.
The link to the video is Here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FOYEJF7nmpE
"Playing devils advocate" is the non-insidious way to describe this tactic when it's done in good faith, presumably with the other party being aware that one is not defending their true position or attacking those they necessarily think are false.
"I was just trying to make you think" definitely sets off alarms of back-pedaling and status dismissal. But, I've just as often heard "playing devils advocate" used for the same back-pedaling purpose. Though "playing devil's advocate" seems to be used in bad faith more often...
I'm personally uncomfortable with endorsing another voting system that functions just like karma but with a different name. Having more than one set of numbers that can fluctuate from positive to negative and are differentiated in name alone sounds like a headache, as well as an interface that would scare me away were I not already familiar with the site.
Instead, I propose simple "I Agree" and "I Disagree" buttons. Rather than just tallying the amount of votes for either, it should simply attach one's name to the post via a pulldown tab...
I live in the state of Georgia and recently I had noticed that I pay special attention to news stories about the country of Georgia. This happens despite that the country has no special relevance besides sharing a name with my state. This post gives me some insight as to why that happens.
This doesn't seem dissimilar to some experiences I had in elementary school. Whenever the teacher would read a story to the class, and a character had the same name as someone in the class, when the teacher read the name of that character, everyone in the class would look ...
I'm unsure whether you were using brute force as a hack to spur your musical imagination and create a good song or whether it was intended to isolate parts of composition you wanted to become more proficient in. Was the goal to create individual good songs or create a better understanding of music to apply later to a non-brute force style? It seems the brute force style is clearly wrongheaded as far as creating fully developed music, but you probably knew that going in (and it does serve as a good example of the null heuristic).
If it was instead a method to better learn music theory, did it work?
It's possible that naming the part of us that makes us lose is oversimplifying the problem. We can consciously come up with rationalizations for why achieving one result counts as a "win" and another result as a "loss". But clean win/lose states don't exist in real life, which is much more messy. Instead winning and losing is achieving different results.
Is it possible that Bruce is just playing a different game, rather than solely attempting to make "me" lose my game? Bruce may actually be the person who wants things that we c...
You made me think: Is there some possible evolutionary advantage of having a Bruce? Or more precisely, is there an instinct that would do something useful 100000 years ago, which makes us self-sabotage today?
Perhaps there is an instinct "not to appear much more successful than the rest of your tribe". Because there is a competition inside your tribe. Success is good, but it also brings enemies, any you may not be ready to face them. So unless you are ready to fight them all and become a leader of your tribe, it is better to sabotage yourself some...
Pen and paper interviews would almost certainly be more accurate. The problem being that images of people writing on paper are especially un-cinematic. The participants were encouraged to take as much time as they needed, many of which took several minutes before responding on some questions. However, the majority of them were concerned with how much time the interview would take up, and their quick responses were self imposed.
Whether the evidence is too messy to draw firm conclusions from, I agree that it is. This is an inherent problem with documentaries. Omissions of fact are easily justified. Also, just like in fiction films, a higher degree of manipulation over the audience is more sought after than accuracy.