All of orbenn's Comments + Replies

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)

0Josh Smith-Brennan
Great course. I took it a few years back and got a lot out of it. I think as it relates to understanding the actual underlying physical processes of the brain and how they relate to making conscious meaning, it was super helpful to me.

I agree. The difficult thing about introducing others to Less Wrong has always been that even if the new person remembers to say "It's my first time, be gentle". Less Wrong has the girth of a rather large horse. You can't make it smaller without losing much of its necessary function.

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

I think we're getting some word-confusion. Groups that claim "make a big point of being anti-rational" are against the things with the label "rational". However they do tend to think of their own beliefs as being well thought out (i.e. rational).

1DanArmak
No, I think we're using words the same way. I disagree with your statement that all or most groups "think of their own beliefs as being well thought out (i.e. rational).". They think of their beliefs of being right, but not well thought out. "Well thought out" should mean: 1. Being arrived at through thought (science, philosophy, discovery, invention), rather than writing the bottom line first and justifying it later or not at all (revelation, mysticism, faith deliberately countering evidence, denial of the existence of objective truth). 2. Thought out to its logical consequences, without being selective about which conclusions you adopt or compartmentalizing them, making sure there are no internal contradictions, and dealing with any repugnant conclusions.

"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

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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.

I think he means "create a functional human you, while primarily sourcing the matter from your old body". He's commenting that slicing the brain makes this more difficult, but it sounds like the alterations caused by current vitrification techniques make it impossible either way.

0Gurkenglas
That criterion doesn't make sense as per No Individual Particles and Identity Isn't In Specific Atoms .

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... (read more)

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... (read more)

1thomblake
Yes, that's an oft-repeated goal, and as Eliezer mentions in a sibling, there's a one-year follow-up planned but it has not yet been a year.
-1SilasBarta
Right, it's been nearly a year since the last one. The long-term evidence is out there. How are attendees doing in their lives now vs how they were doing before? I'm pretty sure there's been enough time to find this information out by now.

Anecdotally: I'm not diabetic that I know of, but my mood is highly dependent on how well and how recently I've eaten. I get very irritable and can break down into tears easily if I'm more than four hours past due.

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.

It makes me think of "Rationality Orgy", but that's just me. I'm not sure how I feel about that as I haven't been to a meetup yet.

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... (read more)

0kilobug
Welcome !

Technically true, but that's a horrible analogy. Bullys are still a problem if you don't notice them. An ugly picture is completely not a problem if no one sees it, so in a way it is worse.

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.

  1. 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.

  2. 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

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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.

1Tem42
My understanding is that all humans have the 'hardware' to see polarized light, but that most of us filter it out -- that is, it is a software issue. However, you could also phrase this as 'the eyes register the light, but the brain discards the information'.