Updated link to Piers Steel's meta-analysis on procrastination research (at least I think it's the correct paper): http://studiemetro.au.dk/fileadmin/www.studiemetro.au.dk/Procrastination_2.pdf
"rationality" branding isn't as good for keeping that front and center, especially compared to, say the effective altruism meme
Perhaps a better branding would be "effective decision making", or "effective thought"?
...As I've already explained, there's a difficult problem here about how to be appropriately modest about our own rationality. When I say something, I never think it's stupid, otherwise I wouldn't say it. But at least I'm not so arrogant as to go around demanding other people acknowledge my highly advanced rational
This was enjoyable to me because "saving the world", as you put it, is completely unmotivational for me. (Luckily I have other sources of motivation) It's interesting to see what drives other people and how the source of their drive changes their trajectory.
I'm definitely curious to see a sequence or at least a short feature list about your model for a government that structurally ratchets better instead of worse. That's definitely something that's never been achieved consistently in practice.
The problem here seems to be about the theories not taking all things we value into account. It's therefore less certain whether their functions actually match our morals. If you calculate utility using only some of your utility values, you're not going to get the correct result. If you're trying to sum the set {1,2,3,4} but you only use 1, 2 and 4 in the calculation, you're going to get the wrong answer. Outside of special cases like "multiply each item by zero" it doesn't matter whether you add, subtract or divide, the answer will still be wron...
If the primary motivation for attending is the emotional rewards of meeting others with interest in rationality and feeling that you've learned how to be more rational, then yes, a Christian brainwashing retreat would make you glad you attended it in the same way, if and only if you are/became Christian (since non Christians likely wouldn't enjoy a Christian brainwashing retreat.)
That said, as many of us have little/no data on changes in rationality (if any) of attendees, attending is the only real option you have to test whether it might. Confirmation bia...
So it's ok to call people stupid or insane, but it's NOT ok to call them ignorant? I'd much rather be ignorant than stupid or insane because ignorance is a condition that can be cured rather than an inherent attribute of an individual.
And in this day of freely available education ignorance is indeed equivalent to a mental defect. At the very least it shows a defect in the natural desire to learn.
There's a book to this effect: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0691142084/ref=oh_o03_s01_i01_details
A little googling will bring up some very convincing lectures on the subject by the author. Unfortunately he hasn't made many headlines or much headway in actually implementing these ideas.
Hi LessWrongians, I've actually been reading this for a few months since I discovered it through HPMOR, but I just found this thread. I've been a traditional rationalist for a long time, but it's great to find that there is a community devoted to uncovering and eliminating all the human biases that aren't obvious when you're inside them.
I'm 27 with a BS in Business Information Systems and working as an analyst, though I consider this career a stopgap until I figure out something more entrepreneurial to do. I've been slowly reading through the sequences, b...
If being statistical and probabilistic settles oft-discussed intellectual debates so thoroughly as dampen further discussion, that's a great thing!
The goal is to get correct answers and move on to the unanswered, unsettled questions that are preventing progress; the goal is to NOT allow a debate to go any longer than necessary, especially--as Nisan mentioned--if the debate is not sane/intelligent.
Is completely off topic. It's irrelevant bordering on nihilism. Sure the universe doesn't care because as far as we know the universe isn't sentient. so what? That has no bearing on desire for death or the death of others.
If knowing that number 2 is true (rationally or otherwise) were really enough, then no one would cry at funerals. "Oh, they're also alive we're just viewing them as dead" people would say. Just because I'm dreaming doesn't mean I don't want to have a good dream or have the good dream keep going. It also doesn't mean I don't c
You're thinking about this all wrong. It's biological so the hardware IS the software.
A better question would be: is the difference in the eye or the brain? This you could test by taking some blue-detecting cones from the retinas of people who can and cannot detect Haidinger's brush and see if they respond differently to changes in polarization.
I recently watched this Coursera course on learning how to learn and your post uses different words for some of the same things.
The course described what you call "shower-thoughts" as "diffuse mode" thinking, with an opposite called "focused mode" thinking and the brain only able to do one at a time. Focused mode uses ideas that are already clustered together to solve familiar problems while diffuse mode attempts to find useful connections between unclustered ideas to solve new problems in new ways. Not sure if these are the ... (read more)