All of Neil's Comments + Replies

Neil10

If parapsychology is studying the patently non-existent, then the fact that parapsychologists don't typically spend their time debunking their own subject might suggest they are not up to par in some way, as a group, with "the rest of" science - unless you concede that other branches of science would also carry on in the face of total collapse in the credibility of their subject.

3Eliezer Yudkowsky
The nonexistence of psychic powers is less patently obvious than the truth of many-worlds in physics, so there is no proof that parapsychologists are less rational than average physicists. They are studying a widely despised subject, but that if anything should raise our estimate of their level. That said, it's entirely possible that, in reality, parapsychologists are lower-level. But we should not be so quick to assume this. And it remains that other sciences may also tend to contain some low-level people. Scientific protocols for saying when a theory has been verified are not supposed to rely on such things.
Neil00

I wonder if you could in theory separate out part of the prestige value. Part of the prestige value of a product would be related to its exclusivity - things that are easily got don't confer prestige for obvious reasons.

So suppose you were looking at two schools that were equally prestigous but one was smaller, more expensive, required better social connections and higher academic achievement to access, and was more preferred by people in higher circles than the other. Then you might conclude that this smaller school derived more of its prestige from its exclusivity than the other school did, and hence on other indicators which might matter more, the larger, less exclusive school was actually better.

Neil30

For most kinds of persuasive argumentation, especially in complicated and emotionally laden subjects like child rearing, arguments work on us without us ever being able to fully evaluate their merit. And in that world, it does make sense to down-weight arguments that have some bias built into them.

When we are dealing in such topics, we presumably have our own bias on the subject, and in making some assessment of the degree to which another's argument might need discounting due to their bias, we may bring our own bias into play. Are we then risking just ... (read more)

1David_J_Balan
Like so many things in the general OB/LW project, it's always possible that an otherwise sound practice will steer you wrong. If you come up with a good reason to downweight certain types of bad arguments, you might end up using a similar reason as justification to ignore good but unpalatable arguments. That's why it's hard.
3wedrifid
Watch how he treats the arguments of people with whom he agrees. Also watch his conclusion (and more subtle agenda as applicable).
Neil00

Since a bid's winningness is contingent on other bids you can't use winning as a proxy for understanding. If they all thought and acted like Ashley and broke the pact with 5 cent bids would they all have got a round of applause for their great insight in bidding 5 cents?

Neil10

The oldest non-fiction book I've read (cover-to-cover) as it happens was a book of Seneca's letters (first century). His Stoic philosophy might hold some interest to people here.

Neil100

I think it's odd that he would say that only Ashley understood the game, not because she may actually be the loser in the wider scheme of things, but because the relevance of the Prisoner's Dilemma is that is actually supposed to be a dilemma. His saying only her action showed understanding suggests he doesn't think it's a real dilemma at all. He thinks it's a question with an answer: defect.

1wedrifid
3wedrifid
It isn't the prisoner's dilemma and Hamerish did not describe it as such. It is similar to the Prisoner's Dilemma in as much as, well it is to do with game theory and people could cooperate. The title of this post is a misuse of 'Prisoner's Dilemma'.
Neil10

I think he's saying something more limiting - we cannot tell if we imagine things that cannot exist.

or even as far as - we cannot tell if things cannot exist. :)

Neil40

Arthur C Clarke said it -

Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.

Neil70

I think your description of the alien with the cigarette pack highlights the fact the problem with advice often lies in the fact that it's too chunky. By that I mean the steps are described at too high a level. This can happen when there's a great difference in the levels of experience of the advisor and the advised, and the advisor has become so familiar with the processes they have been conceptually black boxed. In fact the black boxing is a necessary part of the process - you ride a bike well when you no longer think about how to ride a bike, and you so... (read more)

6pdf23ds
Which is exactly why I said elsewhere in this thread that the only good advice comes when the adviser has seen the advisee (or many other advisees) make mistakes, which has the effect of breaking up the adviser's black box.
Neil30

In the long term (and I mean the very long term) people will evolve to get around the obstacles that stop them producing the children they could.

If contraception decouples sex from reproduction, people will evolve to be less interested in sex and more directly interested in babies.

If entertainment proves more compelling than having kids, people will evolve to be less entertainable.

If being a responsible, well adjusted person is limiting family size, people will evolve to be irresponsible, poorly adjusted people.

0Bugle
The fact is we as large complex mammals are already locked into a low rate of reproduction, sure given the right evolutionary pressures we could end up like shrews again, but that would take an asteroid strike or nuclear war, the scenario you're thinking of assumes long term evolution within a very long lasting stable society essentially like ours. In those circumstances genes for successful reproduction will spread through the population, but that's largely meaningless - if I have the gene for super attractiveness and manage to have 100 kids with 100 women we're still below replacement rate. The way women maximize their reproduction is by having male kids who are alpha males but in these circumstances an alpha is someone who is good at seduction rather than the old style coercion and multiple wives ownership of old times. tl;dr the bottleneck for overpopulation is individual women's fertility, and the way women maximize their reproduction is by having high quality sons rather than popping out babies nonstop. So you can still have high reproductive strategies without actual overpopulation. In any case it's hard to think in these terms, the feeling I have is memetics will always overshadow any purely instinctual drives.
4soreff
Consider an analogy to the cells in our own bodies. Cells can divide (with some exceptions), yet the cells in our bodies do not keep dividing till they run into local resource limits, the equivalent of subsistence limits. There are signalling systems that tell healthy cells when they are "supposed" to stop dividing, and these mostly work. The analog to saying that people will evolve to get around obstacles that stop them from breeding is that cells will mutate till they are dominated by cancer cells. That isn't the whole story. Our immune system kills off most of the malignant cells we produce - we have social systems at various levels which could do the equivalent. If we (as a global society - a kind of weak singleton) can add layers of control faster than breeding mutations pile up, we may be able to contain runaway breeding indefinitely.
Neil10

Puts me in mind of this passage

...philology is that venerable art which demands of its votaries one thing above all: to go aside, to take time, to become still, to become slow—it is a goldsmith’s art and connoisseurship of the word which has nothing but delicate, cautious work to do and achieves nothing if it does not achieve it lento. But for precisely this reason it is more necessary than ever today, by precisely this means does it entice and enchant us the most, in the midst of an age of “work,” that is to say, of hurry, of indecent and perspiring has

... (read more)
0Vladimir_Nesov
Better still when this kind of deep reflection doesn't turn out to be mindless trance or faithful chanting.
Neil40

Yes, the internet, sometimes it's a substitute for company, but I think sometimes I spend a lot of time on the net reading what smart people have written (and there's no end to it) as a kind of substitute for exercising my own creative intelligence. Reading other people's smart stuff pushes a lot of my buttons intellectual-satisfactionwise but not all of them by any means. And that makes it feel like a kind of voyeurism.

Speaking of the net, I guess porn is a good example, in some ways it's very close to something you want, but in other ways it's nowhere near it.

Neil10

There's also some assumption here that civilisations either collpase or conquer the galaxy, but that ignores another possibility - that civilisations might quickly reach a plateau technologically and in terms of size.

The reasons this could be the case is that civilisations must always solve their problems of growth and sustainability long before they have the technology to move beyond their home planet, and once they have done so, there ceases to be any imperative toward off-world expansion, and without ever increasing economies of scale, technological developments taper off.

Neil70

To that degree, yes, just as they objectify you as 'passenger', or 'customer'.

But even as we interact as 'passenger' and 'bus driver', and probably don't have any desire but to do what we have to do as efficiently as possible, we do generally keep in mind that we are both people with concerns about our respect and we don't casually devalue each other for playing out the roles we have. There's still an assumption of basic personhood going on.

But I think that when people start talking about getting sex from a woman with the same degree of respect and mutuali... (read more)

Neil320

This is an actual dream I once had. I was with an old Chinese wise man, and he told me I could fly - he showed me I just had to stick out my elbows and flap them up and down (just like in the chicken dance). Once you'd done that a few times, you could just lift up your legs and you'd stay off the ground. He and I were flying around and around in this manner. I was totally amazed that it was possible for people to fly this way. It was so obvious! I thought this is so great a discovery, I can't wait til I wake up and do this for real. It'll change the world.... (read more)

2Omegaile
For some reason this seems to be a fairly common dream. I myself have had similar versions where I had discovered a perfectly reasonable method for flying ( although I was never able to speak out loud the method, it made perfectly sense in my head). And I also had this idea of waking up and telling people this so obvious method. I find dreams very fascinating and wonder how many people have similar dreams than mine.
[anonymous]180

You flap your wings and then, afterward, you can fly. That's almost brilliant.

8CannibalSmith
It's called plummeting.
Neil00

I think, to really think about human rationality and irrationality, you need to be able to consider the mind from an evolutionary perspective. Is there a better introduction to evolutionary thinking out there?

I can only add it was very influential for me. I read this and The Extended Phenotype in succession and while I certainly understood evolution before reading them, I certainly understood it on a whole new level afterwards.

Neil40

The main problem is viewing this warm fuzziness as a "mystery." This warm fuzziness, as an experience, is a reality. It's part of that set of things that doesn't go away no matter what you say or think about them.

I'm not sure I agree with this. How you feel about religion is very strongly driven by what you think about it. If you think it is the truth then religion is awesome and profound, if you think its a constructed mythology then probably not so much. I'd suggest even the very fact that it is a "mysterious truth", adds to the en... (read more)

0alvarojabril
but in the end the fact may remain that religious stories are better at generating them than any formulation of the truth is This is exactly right. The question isn't whether or not it's chemically possible for people to get their fuzzies from places other than religion - this is obviously true. The question is whether or not us getting them to do so is politically feasible. I think not, and seeing how there are many believers who live decent lives I'd rather spend my time cultivating the more cosmopolitan varietals.
Neil160

Objections to this statement seem to be 1) the highly loaded descriptions of the rich and the poor and 2) the juxtaposition of the descriptions without an explicit relationship.

While an examination of word choice might allow you get to a less loaded formulation of its content. eg. The rich, who have much, enjoy luxury while the poor suffer. It doesn't get to the fact that the statement is an attempt to draw us into an implicit connection between the two descriptions. The statement is only connected by a "while", which might connect any two facts,... (read more)

Neil00

The point is, I believe, that we value things in ways not reducible to "maximising our happiness". Here Love is the great example, often we value it more than our own happiness, and also the happiness of the beloved. We are not constituted to maximise our own happiness, natural selection tells you that.