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All of Benjamin Hendricks's Comments + Replies

Recommendations for Recent Posts/Sequences on Instrumental Rationality?
Benjamin Hendricks10

Delightfully lengthy! Out of curiosity, to what degree are rationality and/or cognitive science relied on? Material focusing on that is especially what I'm looking for, with I'll probably check it out regardless.

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3David Gross
The sequence is rationality-informed but also picks up things from folk wisdom, religious traditions, etc. when that seems helpful. It references cogsci studies and insights when those are available.
I'm consistently overwhelmed by basic obligations. Are there any paradigm shifts or other rationality-based tips that would be helpful?
Benjamin Hendricks10

Good to know. I was asking because my cursory research suggests that it may be oriented towards older people, or others who may be in more need than me.

If it's not too much to ask, what were the circumstances around your using OT?

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3Ann
Around middle and highschool, exploring various interventions, treatments and skill training for relative impairments from ADHD, anxiety, autism, dysgraphia and less specified struggles with physical coordination and speech difficulties. It's important to note that I would test as 'good enough' on skills I was actually rather impaired on because I was "good at intelligence tests" in general, and was able to cover for weak points fairly effectively with effortful application of other skills. The learning difficulties were best discerned by strong peak/valley effects in my score pattern. I consequently might have appeared to be "less in need" of the interventions from a naive perspective of the testing, but this was an illusion, and I benefited a good deal from trying things out to improve those skills. Occupational therapy is a broad field, but it comes up pretty reliably with aging due to the rather ubiquitous necessity of adapting to physical and cognitive changes.
I'm consistently overwhelmed by basic obligations. Are there any paradigm shifts or other rationality-based tips that would be helpful?
Benjamin Hendricks110

You bring up a point that I definitely should've mentioned in the post: I am diagnosed with an anxiety disorder (OCD) and am currently taking medicine for it. It doesn't solve everything (such as the issues mentioned here), but the diagnosis does help to explain why I might be having these problems in the first place.

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1GdL752
Are you in any sort of psychotherapy for it specifically? That seems like exactly something that could be worked on with empirically supported OCD specific methods.
I'm consistently overwhelmed by basic obligations. Are there any paradigm shifts or other rationality-based tips that would be helpful?
Benjamin Hendricks10

These sound promising. How would I go about looking for information about these? The terms are generic enough that I'm not sure a Google search would turn up what you have in mind.

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1metachirality
I think it is referring to Gendlin's focusing.
1Celarix
Not a full answer, but Kaj Sotala's Multiagent Models of Mind (https://www.lesswrong.com/s/ZbmRyDN8TCpBTZSip) is a great sequence that introduces some of these concepts.
1Ann
I am not, but have had some.
I'm consistently overwhelmed by basic obligations. Are there any paradigm shifts or other rationality-based tips that would be helpful?
Benjamin Hendricks10

Good question. Often, it's both. I will be stressed during a task (e.g. racing thoughts and fast breathing while shopping, or planning to shop) and if I think about it while doing something else (e.g. watching a movie with my wife and something reminds me that I need to fold laundry).

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Consequences of Bayesian Epistemology?
Benjamin Hendricks50

Hmm... I'm probably being thick, but it sounds like gears-based reasoning is just commitment to a detailed model. That wouldn't help you design the model, among other things.

I may need to investigate this on my own; I don't want to tangle you in a comment thread explaining something over and over again.

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6ChristianKl
From Tetlocks Superforcasting work we know that commitment to one detailed model makes you worse at the kind of Bayesian reasoning that Superforcasting is about. I think one great talk about the difference is Peter Thiel: You Are Not a Lottery Ticket | Interactive 2013 | SXSW. In the Bayesian frame everything is lottery tickets. It's also not like we completely got rid of Bayesian epistimology. We still do a lot of things like betting that come from that frame, but generally LessWrong is open to reasoning in a lot of different ways. There the textbook definition of rational thinking from Baron's Thinking and deciding: I do think that's the current spirit of LessWrong and there's a diversity of ways to think that get used within LessWrong.
Consequences of Bayesian Epistemology?
Benjamin Hendricks20

Thanks for the quick reply! I'll check those posts out.

From what I've seen (which, again, isn't much), gears-level reasoning just involves comprehensively investigating a model. I'm sure I'm misunderstanding it, especially if it's now the basis for most of the posts around here. Could you enlighten me?

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2ChristianKl
Gears reasoning means that you have a model of how the parts of a system interact and reason based on the model. Given that reality is usually very complicated that means that you are operating on a model that's a simplication of reality. In Tedlocks distinction: Good Bayesian reasoning is foxy. It's about not committing to any single model but having multiple and weighting between them.  On the other hand if you are doing gear's style reasoning you are usually acting as a hedgehog that treats one model to be the source of reliable information.