Choose well is a nice salutation for instrumental rationality. But what about, "Know much and choose well" to cover epistemic and instrumental rationality?
The framing effect affects how you might answer a given question. What I'm talking about is figuring out why you're answering a given question at all instead of some completely different question (rather than a reframing of the given question). A privileged question isn't necessarily "wrong" in the sense that it might rely on an untrue premise (as in your example), it's just suboptimal.
The quote struck me as a poetic way of affirming the general importance of metacognition - a reminder that we are at the center of everything we do, and therefore investing in self improvement is an investment with a multiplier effect. I admit though this may be adding my own meaning that doesn't exist in the quote's context.
...I've always seen that whole speech as a pretty good example of reasoning from the wrong premises: Henry V makes the argument that God will decide the outcome of the battle and so if given the opportunity to have more Englishmen fight
Additionally, fitness roughly breaks into two broad categories - resistance and cardiovascular. Starting Strength covers resistance training, but the cardiovascular version of Starting Strength is Couch To 5K. It uses the same basic concept of progressive overload applied to running.
All things be ready if our minds be so.
Having now concluded Rationalist Lent, I have determined that it is worth my time and I do genuinely prefer to keep watching the Daily Show.
At Lent's conclusion, I started rewatching and ended up watching all the episodes that I missed (the ones still available anyway) with a renewed appreciation. Coincidentally, I also just finished a comprehensive cleanup of all my harddrives, stretching back over ten years, and at the bottom of one of the oldest (pulled from my closet), I found an episode from 1999. I have no earthly idea why I downloaded/saved it in t...
"If you test theories by how precisely they predict experimental results, you will have many more opportunities to have sex and look cool."
This was the case for me in my uniforms required school. The obvious and conspicuous item we could control was our tie, but thinking back on it now, kids signalled identity and status through shoes, belts, and other accessories (though I was effectively blind to such things at the time).
Seniors were also allowed to wear khaki pants, a conscious allowance on the administrators' part designed to reinforce the different classes.
Has this idea been considered before? The idea that a self-improving capable AI would choose not to because it wouldn't be rational? And whether or not that calls into question the rationality of pursuing AI in the first place?
Because I know enough people in the entertainment industry that I'm not applying Fundamental Attribution Error? I'm not sure what your question is.
My suspicion is that somebody is thinking of this (and possibly pitched it) as the reality version of "The Big Bang Theory." If that's the case, consider that the BBT's showrunner, Bill Prady, is himself a genuine nerd. Then imagine how bad BBT is and how bad it would be if its showrunner wasn't a nerd. Then turn that into a reality show.
It still pales in comparison to the power of invented meaning through editing.
It's the Kuleshov Effect turned up to 11.
It wouldn't happen that way. The person participating in the story has no power compared to the person orchestrating the story.
I think most people here would be surprised to know the tremendous extent to which narratives are manipulated in editing in reality TV. Watch ten minutes of any of the ghost hunter/paranormal type shows. Those will show how much can be constructed from the barest of actual events.
And they'll engineer that into existence one way or another. There is great, nuanced storytelling to be found on television, but the reality genre is not that place.
There are huge benefits to getting the right kind of TV exposure, but this is probably not it.
I would advice against participating. It's not impossible for this to be a worthwhile project that would result in overall beneficial PR for the community, but I estimate the odds as HEAVILY against it.
All storytelling is based around drama and conflict, this show will be no different. The only question is how nuanced and truthful is that conflict and as I'm sure I don't have to tell anyone here, the reality TV genre is not known for its nuance or truthfulness.
I believe Mr. Inman is sincere in his desire and ambition, but without any other information, he...
Give people permission to bug you.
If you commit to doing or following up on something for somebody, tell them to bug you if you don't get back to them about it. You'll feel less stressed about remembering or being obligated to do it because you've shifted at least some of the responsibility to them and given yourself external pressure, which is ultimately more efficient than relying on your own willpower anyway.
Conversely, give yourself permission to bug people, though without judgment. You know how you feel when you have email in your inbox that you know...
Yeah, I explicitly unchecked the boxes that said they would do that and it still showed up in my Twitter feed (which automatically forwarded to my Facebook feed).
Not "Common Room"? Ravenclaw or otherwise?
Too obvious? :)
I was in for a bit last night and enjoyed it. On the one hand, I think it did help me keep working where I otherwise would've quit or wasted more time on Internet distractions. That said, the chat, while interesting, was distracting from the primary purpose of the chat room.
There should definitely be two separate rooms - one for general chat and one for paired working. But the shared Pomodoro timing is also a good idea and should be tried, in my opinion.
Also, we should find a different chat client than Tinychat. It's log in process and text limitations are very annoying.
In addition to making lists for "work," make one for things you want to watch, read, and/or play. You'll feel more productive and motivated even when taking a break from work.
I have a candidate and it might be an odd one. I think I'll give up watching the Daily Show for 40 days. I've been watching it for almost its entire existence (before Jon Stewart was the host) and take a certain hipster pride in the fact that I watched the show before it became the widely known, popular thing it is now. But for awhile now, I haven't derived that much enjoyment from actually watching it. Some interviews, an occasional chuckle here and there, but mostly I find myself annoyed at how lazy the writing has become and Stewart's increasing tendenc...
Yes, it was an opportunity cost problem - at what point did the cost of being cogent in the morning outweigh the cost of missing great late night conversations.
I can't think of any optimal solution that doesn't involve loads of caffeine or bilocation, time turner induced or otherwise.
After a week long vacation at Disney World with the family, it occurs to me there's a lot of money to be made in teaching utility maximization to families...mostly from referrals by divorce lawyers and family therapists.
Hm, perhaps you're right. It would depend largely on the composition of the ritual(s). Certainly, extraordinary care must be taken when intentionally playing with any kind of death spiral. A generous dose of tongue in cheek self deprivation would probably be a good idea.
"What we're reasonably sure is settled truth" does not necessarily equal truth. Nor does it necessarily equal "what we will want to believe once we know more".
Absolutely, which is what makes building in the ability to self modify so intrinsically important. The function of any ritual like activity shouldn't be any where near the vicinity of the "research arm" of the rationality community. Nothing should be acquired within them, nor determined through them. They should be about reinforcing the settled science, to minimize th...
I actually think you are a bit overconfident in the ability to self-described rationalists to walk away from this unchanged. I think this is valuable, and yes I even agree that rationality training should help reduce the negative side-effects. But I don't think for a second that our level-headedness will automatically return the instant we step out of the ritual room.
It's valid to be worried about the introduction of rituals producing death spirals. That is their express purpose after all, to produce and reinforce whatever death spirals the community has defined as essential.
Ritualism is a mind hack invented by early humanity to reinforce the group worldview and build/maintain group cohesion. And in the intervening thousands of years, either we or ritualism itself has evolved into something deeply ingrained in our cognitive makeup. At this point, it's how our brains are wired and I don't think it's feasible to simply i...
Sorry I missed last week, I'll be there next!
Thank you, fixed.
"It's the map and not the territory," right?
I may be way off base here, but isn't the root of this disagreement that lukeprog is saying that our mental map called "conceptual analysis" doesn't perfectly reflect the territory of the real world and should therefore not be the official model. While Morendil is saying, "but it's good enough in most cases to get through most practical situations." Which lukeprog agrees with.
Is that right?
At the time, I made a distinction between ethics and morality that I would now say is probably more semantic than definitional. But, IIRC, they defined morality as a code of behavior with a religious basis. So I used the term ethics to say that I followed a code of behavior that didn't follow from religious belief.
Essentially, I made the point that just because I didn't believe I would go to hell for killing somebody didn't mean that I had any desire to. Or that the prospect of prison and general rejection from society didn't serve as an adequate deterren...
As an atheist that attended a Catholic high school, one of the questions often leveled at me was what exactly prevented me from going on murdering rampages without a religious morality to keep me in check. I got this question from both students and faculty (usually as part of the class discussion in religion class). So in my experience at least, it is difficult for religious people to understand the morality of a non-religious person. I would speculate that this is because they, on some level, didn't believe in God (or at least the Catholic God) and were instead believing in belief, feeling that the morality that came with the dogma was necessary and beneficial to leading a proper life.
Hello, I found Less Wrong after a friend recommended Methods of Rationality, which I devoured in short order. That was almost a year ago and I've been lurking LW off and on ever since. In June I attended a meetup and had some of the best conversation I've had in a long time. Since then, I've been attacking the sequences more systematically and making solid progress.
I'm in my late 20's, live in Los Angeles, and work in the entertainment industry (after failing miserably as an engineering student). It's my ambition to produce stories and science fiction that...
Does anyone know if there is/are narrative fiction based around the AI Box Experiment? Short stories or anything else?