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by Mati_Roy
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Update: Beliefs that are about the world in general, and not about yourself in particular (ie. things you don't want to say about yourself)

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6

What are beliefs you wouldn't want (or would feel apprehensive about being) public if you had (or have) them?
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Richard_Kennaway

110

"My password to ... is ..."

Olomana

30

Any belief that is the opposite of a social construct that most people around me have internalized. I'd give an example if I could post anonymously.

8Zack_M_Davis
(I feel bad for how little intellectually-honest engagement you must get, so I guess I'll chip in with some feedback.) Is the implied policy suggestion here to decrease the number of children being raised without married parents (e.g., by making divorce harder, discouraging premarital sex, encouraging abortion if the parents aren't married, &c.), or are you proposing awarding custody disputes to the father more often? Your phrasing ("the statistically worse parent") seems to suggest the latter, but the distribution of single fathers today is obviously not going to be the same as the distribution after a change in custody rules! (Child care is cross-culturally assumed to be predominantly "women's work" for both evolutionary and cultural-evolutionary reasons: against that background, there's going to be a selection effect whereby men who volunteer to be primary caretakers are going to be disproportionately unusually well-suited to it.) If the presence or absence of the other also contributes to the task performance, then honestly, not much? If kids are better off in two-parent households, that's an argument in favor of two-parent households: if you have a thesis about women and mothers specifically, you need additional arguments for that.
1Stuart Anderson
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4ChristianKl
Are there specific statistics about the metrics you are referring to?
0Stuart Anderson
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4ChristianKl
From the twin studies we know that parental enviroment has relatively little effect on educational outcomes compared to genetics. A quick Googling brings me to statistics like single fathers are more likely to be black. Given that blackness does correlate with poor educational outcomes, it wouldn't be surprising to see a correlation of single motherhood with poor educational outcomes simply because of the sampling. To be convinced of any effect of parental enviroment I would want to see an effort made to clear up the data to be convinced and most Google hits do't do that.
1Stuart Anderson
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3ChristianKl
It's not clear to me why you aren't linking to quality sources if you think the quality sources for your claims exist.
1Stuart Anderson
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6ChristianKl
If I have a discussion a thousand times I usually do have my sources saved in a way that I can easily share. I also doubt that you had the same conversation a thousand times because "You make claims about strong effects of parental enviroment and those generally disappear when studies are done in a better way" is likely a different position then when you have the same discussion outside of LessWrong with people who have quite different objections.

Kubera Imxal

30

As for the "if I had" part, I think the political views, no matter how nuanced they are; and the reason being the mushiness of the territory. Secondly, my opinion on anything life and how to live it. Too burdensome for me bear the weight of guiding other people down a path which I myself do not have an effing clue about. And finally, my views on effects of progress, technological or otherwise. I thing all of these boils down to being anxious about being judged and not actually being judged. Anyway listing the strong ones below:

  1. Abolish income tax completely in developing countries until these countries catch up with the first world countries. (I feel it will help in exhorting risk-taking, a primary bottle-neck for growth. Thus leading to improved small/medium scale companies)

  2. Stop commoditizing startup wisdom, I feel it creates more failures than successes. The big-guns of the startup world need to hold their horses whenever they feel the urge to share their unparalleled insight into what approach made their startups succeed.

  3. Social sciences(psychology, behavioral econ, etc) has become a kind of porn for the intellectual community. And we must reduce the number of offerings in these fields. Causation≠Causation. The statistical evidences that you fetishize and shove down my throat in the name of focusing on changing the world and on preventable issue do not prevent anything. Worst event will be worst and you wouldn't have seen it, precisely because it is worse and nothing like that has ever happened before --- Lucretius Fallacy.

  4. AI/ML/DL is starting to tread in the realm of unbounded risk both spatially and temporally. I am not talking in the conventional sense of overlords and biases, but in a more abstract sense of expansion. The prevalent use of a black box technology that we don't know the inner workings of needs shock absorbers like financial market, not alignment policies. My point is we do not need more AI but a significant sample of the effects of AI within a mature market like the USA for a significant amount of time (temporal and spatial evidence for its credibility as a reliable technology). Here USA or China acting as shock absorbers.

[-]Mati_Roy30

Thank you for your answer! I'd want you to expand on all points, but will be more reasonable and prioritize my curiosity; re 2: does it creates more failures than successes because a) more people start a startup as a result, thinking it will be easier than it is, b) harder to get profit because competition is more fierce, or c) other reasons?

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3Kubera Imxal
All of the above and some more. It has been doing more than just inspiring the youth to take risks and help solve problems, it is creating a sort of startup fetish. Some reasons that come to my mind immediately are: 1. Creates a false sense that start-up equals autonomy. No it isn't. Not all ideas are going to do well, for most ideas do not allow for unforced optionality in implementation or otherwise. (Mainly financial autonomy. No) 2. Creates more charlatans and silicon valley Yodas who rise up the rank or create a basic startup, and do this full time without facing the downsides of failure faced by the entrepreneur. "No downside"/"Assymetry" is my biggest issue. 3. As you said, misestimation of effort, one's own capabilities, feasibility, future of the company because of this hyper-motivation. I am not remembering them all, actually I had written an essay on this exact same thing some years back with some more points, let me see if I can find it. But anyway you get the idea.
[-]Pattern20
Stop commoditizing startup wisdom, I feel it creates more failures than successes.

Advice should be pre-registered, so there isn't publication bias from startup founders that succeed?

Reply
2Kubera Imxal
Neat solution, but I feel the dynamics of advicer/advicee is more like I acquired this piece of wisdom over time through experiences, hardships, etc, so that you may not have to go through all of them. And mostly I think this is what lures in people. So, I think it won't play out the same way thus defeating the original intention of the solution. I am okay with people sharing their experiences and wisdom they acquired as a result of their journey, but what irks me is the extrapolation of it without sharing the downsides.
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