All of nicdevera's Comments + Replies

Armchair psych, agreed. The one bit was patients performed poorly on the Cognitive Reflection Test, but yeah that's not news. I'm sure most people in most circumstances would perform poorly on the CRT. System 1 is like original sin, it's the default state that takes effort to overcome.

nicdevera660

Done. Fairly high confidence that I'm still the lone Filipino LessWronger.

Upvote, valuable insight. And meta thinking is switching from Tiger style to Crane style as the situation warrants. Good idea to have a set of modules ready to go.

1ahel
Yeah, but the weak point is how to realize that a model switching is needed in that very moment.

I guess signalling non-agency is tactical level; protective camouflage, poker bluffing etc. Agenty thinking as above is essentially strategic, winning with moves that are creative, devious, hard to predict or counter, going meta, gaming the system. Pretending to be a loyal citizen of Oceania is a good tactic while you covertly work towards other goals.

For cultural agency, the Wikipedia page on locus of control's one place to start. And there was the Power Distance Index in Gladwell's Outliers.

3Viliam_Bur
Humans are not very good at pretending. If you pretend something, you start believing it. Especially if you have to pretend it for years. And even if you succeeded in it, it would be very difficult to teach your children -- if they do it wrong, it may result in a death for your whole family, but if you wait until they are reasonable enough, they may already strongly believe other things.

Just finished reading K.J. Parker's Devices and Desires. What struck me at first was "Eh, no, medieval people didn't think like that," but after mentally shifting gears to thinking of it as an author tract like HPMOR, with modern characters in a quasi-historical setting, it was much more enjoyable.

Schelling's Strategy of Conflict says that in some cases, advertising non-agency can be useful, something like "If you cross this threshold, that will trigger punitive retaliation, regardless of cost-benefit, I have no choice in the matter."

4Viliam_Bur
Is there a situation where it would be strategic to live all your life, or large areas of your life in non-agency? Maybe a life in a dictatorship is like this. Be too agenty for someone to notice, and they may decide you are a potential risk, and your genes and memes get eliminated. Later, even if the dictatorship is gone, the habits and the culture remain. Is there a way to compare average citizens' agency in different nations, and correlate that with their history?

Hello again. Used to post as "ZoneSeek" but switched to my real name. I'm from the science/science fiction/atheist/traditional rationality node, got linked to LW years ago through Kaj Sotala back in the Livejournal days. I have high confidence that I am the only LessWronger in the Philippines.

ygert180

You know, a feature it would be nice to have on LessWrong is a namechange feature. I too have had thought about moving over to my real name, but that is painful, you know? I'd have to start over from complete scratch. I guess it wouldn't be so bad, I've only been posting here for a year, and the pain will only get worse the more I put it off, but it would be much nicer if there were a button I could click to just change my username. Yes, put on it some safeguards, like have it say on my userpage what my username used to be, and maybe even have it cost karm... (read more)

Upvote. The Drake Equation and SETI seem at least as relevant as, say, Pascal's Mugging. GIGO, sure, but a standard dismissal in statistics is to say there's not enough data, more research needed. Isn't this where Bayes is supposed to win over frequentism, when it comes to imperfect or incomplete information?

Babyeater FAI would be very different, but could still give us big hints on how to make human FAI. It's the standard science process, instead of reinventing the wheel, stand on the shoulders of giants and learn what other smart people who've come before have figured out.

nicdevera110

Yo. I've been around a couple years, posted a few times as "ZoneSeek," re-registered this year under my real name as part of a Radical Honesty thing.

nicdevera110

Logorrhea is a remarkably good short story anthology, besides The Cambist and Lord Iron, Crossing the Seven is of literary and conceptual interest:

"Our laws here are simple and just. You will only swear to do no harm while you stay within Sucusa, and you are free here as long as you wish."

That sounded simple enough. But I had seen too much already. "What do you define as harm, that I should avoid, Majesty?"

The queen laughed. "Well spoken, messenger. The obvious sorts of things."

"I will swear willingly not to lift my han

... (read more)