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All of BiasedBayes's Comments + Replies

Models of human relationships - tools to understand people

Learning social dynamics from the book Game is like trying to learn science from clickbait media.

Try David Buss: Evolutionary psychology - the new science of mind (newest edition)

Three Responses to Incorrect Folk Ontologies

First of all thats wrong level of analysis. There is nothing relativistic about the theory of relativity itself. Proper analogy would be between theories/ontologies/belief systems not in terms of the content of those theories.

No reference frame makes Newtons, Thomas Youngs, Augustine-Jean Fresnels or Ernest Machs ideas about motion less or more right compared to Einsteins. You need evidence to value the ontologies, even if the content is relativistic.

0entirelyuseless8y

Exactly. Newton's idea is that either a thing is in motion or it is not, absolutely speaking, without considering a reference frame. This is false.

Three Responses to Incorrect Folk Ontologies

BiasedBayes8y10

Is this supposed be little cute side notion or powerful counterargument?

Its possible to have better and worse ontologies even if philosophers cant solve what is the right theory of truth. One could answer to the liars paradox based on Russells, Tarskis, Kripkes or Priests ideas but this is irrelevant IF one is interested about actually having accurate beliefs. It is not necessary to have completely water tight necessary and sufficient theory of the truth to be able to rank beliefsystems based on evidence at hand and evidence about human cognitive tendencies to create predictable folk theories.

2entirelyuseless8y

It is not a little cute side notion. Nor is it a very substantial argument as presented, but it is a crack in the OP's position that points in the direction of powerful counterarguments, ones strong enough to establish that their position is plain wrong. This why I said the OP's supposed ability to distinguish between "fundamentally real" and "fundamentally unreal" is itself a folk ontology. Let me point in the direction of a truer theory of reality. Consider the special theory of relativity. Here you can have two objects moving apart, without one of them being "really moving" and the other not. They are simply moving relative to one another. Now it is possible for someone to object: "Look. They were close together before. Now they are not. So something is different. Which one really changed? One of them must have changed for -real-, in order to end up in a different situation." But the response is that the notion of "real change" here is fundamentally misguided. "Moving relative to another" is itself the fundamental thing, and does not have to be based on a non-relative "real" motion. The OP's notion of "fundamentally real" is misguided in a similar way, like the idea of "real motion." I would propose an existential theory of relativity. To say that something exists, is to say that it exists relative to a reference frame, one which is often constituted by an observer, although not necessarily only in this way. In one way this is obvious: it is even typical to say that things in the past and the future do not exist, and the only way this is true is in relation to the one who is talking about them. But to see this more clearly, consider how skeptical scenarios would work. Suppose someone is a brain in a vat. If the person in the vat says, "I am a brain in a vat," it is evident that their statement is false. For their word "brain" refers to something in their simulation, and likewise their word "vat" refers to something in their simulation. And in terms of those thi

The Maze of Moral Relativism

BiasedBayes8y00

To state P is to imply "P is true". If you didn't think your theory was better, why state it?

Im not advocating some big grand theory of ethics but a rational approach to ethical problems given the values we have. I dont think its needed or even possible to solve some big general questions first.

Anyone else? Any number of people have stated theories. The Catholic Church The Protestant churches.Left wing politics. Right wing politics. ....etc etc etc.

In this discussion.

Anyone can state an object-level theory which is just the faith of th

... (read more)

1TheAncientGeek8y

You need to understand the meta-level questions in order to solve the right problem in the right way. Applying science to ethics unreflectively, naively, has numerous potentional pitfalls. For instance, the pitfall of treating whatever intuitions evolution has given us as the last word on the subject. Repeat three times before breakfast: science is value free. You cannot put together a heap of facts and come immediately to a conclusion about what is right and wrong. You need to think about how you are bridging the is-ought gap. At least they see the need to. If you don't , you just end up jumping to conclusions, like the way you backed universalism without even considering an alternative. I keep insisting that people think you can solve ethics with science need a meta ethical framework. The many people who have no ethical claims to make are not included. If you identify ethics as, in broad terms, fulfilling a functional role, then the answer to that questions is of the same general category as "is this hammer a good hammer". I am connecting ethical goodness to facts via instrumental goodness -- that is how I am approaching the is-ought gap. I am not saying : don't use empiricism, I am saying don't use it naively.

The Maze of Moral Relativism

BiasedBayes8y00

Since we agree that this is true, but you still keep insisting that "you have to solve (funny to use this word because this task is still work in progress after thoussands of years) the general questions first get to an "interesting" object-level ethical propositions" as you wrote in the beginning, please put forward your answers to these general questions. Im begging for you to give your foundational ethical arguments.

After this we could really proceed to compare our suggestions and other people could perhaps conclude whose propositi... (read more)

1TheAncientGeek8y

To state P is to imply "P is true". If you didn't think your theory was better, why state it? Anyone else? Any number of people have stated theories. The Catholic Church The Protestant churches.Left wing politics. Right wing politics. ....etc etc etc. Anyone can state an object-level theory which is just the faith of their ancestors or whatever, and many do. However, you put yourself in a tricky position to do so when your theory boils down to "science solves it", because science is supposed to be better than everything else for reasons connected to wider rationality...it's supposed to be on the high ground. Science as arbitrary, free-floating principles isn't really science. Why? To support some claim about ethics? I haven't made any. To prove that it is possible? Oh well.... We will be arguing that:- * Ethics fulfils a role in society, and originated as a mutually beneficial way of regulating individual actions to minimise conflict, and solve coordination problems. ("Social Realism"). * No spooky or supernatural entities or properties are required to explain ethics (naturalism is true) * There is no universally correct system of ethics. (Strong moral realism is false) * Multiple ethical constructions are possible... * ...but an ethical system can be better or worse adapted to a society's needs, meaning there are better and worse ethical systems.(Strong ethical relativism is also false...we are promoting a central or compromise position along the realism-relativism axis). * The rival theories of metaethics, deontology, consequentialism and virtue theory, are not really alternatives, but deal with different aspects of ethics. * Therefore the correct theory of metaethics is a kind of hybrid of deontology, consequentialism and virtue theory, as well as a compromise between relativism and realism.(Deontology explains obligation, consequentialism grounds deontology, virtue puts ethics into practice, utilitarianism steers the future direction of socie

The Maze of Moral Relativism

BiasedBayes8y00

Thanks for your answer. My 20 cents:

There are no both necessary and sufficient conditions for the perfect foundational general ethical theories. Would be interested hearing your arguments if you think otherwise. Give me an example to refute this. This does not mean that there cant be general guidelines. Contrary to your post there is huge falsifiability demand on my proposition because scientific enquiry can and has to inform what is the right (or better) moral answer. Which leads nicely to G.E. Moores naturalistic fallacy.

So there is such a thing as val

... (read more)

0TheAncientGeek8y

True, but irrelevant. You can't start with the premise that all ethics is imperfect and then immediately conclude your imperfect theory is less imperfect than everyone else's. Pointing out that science is relevant to ethics , without saying anything else, doesn't buy you anything..not even a theory, let alone a correct one.

The Maze of Moral Relativism

BiasedBayes8y00

You are partly trying to carve nature in clear categories, and it does not care about your intent doing so. There are general answers to general questions but when being more specific your nice clean and clear general answer can be problematic. Im in no way forced to keep defending universalism if the question is more specific. Good luck solving anything with that kind of conceptual musings from the armchair.

For instance, a decision-theoretic weighting on the desirbiilty a future outcome.

And those utilities on that decision-theoretic weighting are aff... (read more)

0TheAncientGeek8y

Or yours? You would have been making a consistent case if, throughout this discussion, you had maintained some kind of error theory about ethics, some claim along the lines that he whole subject is imponderable nonsense. Instead you have maintained the inconsistent claims that some completely gneral set of considerations about conceptual clarity undermine everyone else's case, but not yours. So there is such a thing as value, and the answer the fact-value dilemma is to wholeheartedly embrace the naturalistic fallacy?

The Maze of Moral Relativism

BiasedBayes8y00

I have not stated that I do not undestand the terms.This should be very clear. I have stated that the question is not interesting to me because its too general. BUT because you keep insisting I still gave an answer to you while very clearly stating that if you would like to be more specific I could give you even better answer.

How can it add up to value? It can can provide crucial information in meeting those values. Hard distinction between facts and values is illposed. What is a fact free value? In the other hand even our senses and cognition have apriori concepts that affects the process of observing and processing so called value free facts. Welcome to 2017 David Hume.

0TheAncientGeek8y

But to get to an "interesting", object-level ethical proposition, you have to solve the general questions first. And you have already taken a stand o one such general question, namely universalism versus tribalism. In conjunction with something else that has'nt been specified? Of course factual information can contribute to evaluative claims, that's not the hard version of the fact-value problem. For instance, a decision-theoretic weighting on the desirbiilty a future outcome.

The Maze of Moral Relativism

BiasedBayes8y00

Well yes, I think morality is related to the wellbeing of the organism interested about the morality in the first place. There are reasons why forcefully cutting my friends arm vs hair is morally different. The difference is the different effects of cutting the limb vs hair to the nervous system of the organism being cut. Its relevant what we know scientifically about human wellbeing. We can obtain morally relevant knowledge through science.

Interview with Nassim Taleb 'Trump makes sense to a grocery store owner'

BiasedBayes8y00

Thats a way too simplistic way to think about this. One has to stand on the shoulders of giants to be intellectual in the first place. Also there is this thing called scientific consensus and there are reason why its usually rational to lean ones opinions in line with scientific consensus- not because of other people think like it too but because its usually the most balanced view of the current evidence.

Talebs argument about being IYI is pretty ridiculous and includes stuff like not deadlifting, not cursing on twitter and not drinking white wine with st... (read more)

The Maze of Moral Relativism

BiasedBayes8y00

Actually authors point is the choice between moral facts or slide to the nihilism. As a relativist one can try to muddle the water by saying that one should say that "according to culture X, Y is wrong" but this is a descriptive statement of culture X carrying no normative power. I really like the article, thanks a lot. Should have read it better in the first place.

The Maze of Moral Relativism

BiasedBayes8y20

You are right sir. I think we might have different opinions about the ways/angle to approach the issue of right normative moral code. If I interpret it right I would be sceptical about authors idea "to employ our usual mix of argument, intuition and experience" in the light of knowledge of the limits and pitfalls of descriptive moral reasoning.

0Stabilizer8y

Right. Unfortunately, we don't really have any other means of obtaining moral knowledge other than via argument, intuition, and experience. Perhaps your point is that we should emphasize intuition less and argument+experience more.

The Maze of Moral Relativism

BiasedBayes8y00

Its not meaningless in general, just your question: "How much weighting do you put on the wellbeing of the folks at home versus people in far off lands" is meaningless to me or atleast not interesting. What do you mean by wellbeing? who are these people? (all people abroad?),Whats "far away"? what do you mean by saying to "put weight on wellbeing"?, whats "home"?

Exactly equal weighting (whatever that means) because we are the same species with the same kind of nervous system and same factors affecting to our wellbeing. If you are going to specify your question further my answer will get more nyanced too.

1TheAncientGeek8y

You have already put forward an answer to the question, namely that the wellbeing of everybody near and far counts equally, so your protestation that you don't understand the terms of the question are not convincing. The terms are neither completely meaningless nor exactly well defined. You are engaging in a form of Selective Demand for RIgor, where you round off the terms to meaningless or perfectly OK depending on who is using them. That's a series of fact. How does it add up to a value?

The Maze of Moral Relativism

BiasedBayes8y00

That is huge generalisation from one simple general question. Science can inform general normative questions and theres nothing wrong with general normative questions, in general ;). The problem is that this specific question here is pretty meaningless. In general one should put equal weight to everybodys wellbeing. Its easy to poke holes to this answer but the problem is still your question that begs general answers like this.

1TheAncientGeek8y

I dont see why the weighting/universality issue is meaningless, particularly on view of the fact that a lot of object level ethics depends on it. I also dont see why equal weighting is the right answer, mainly because you did not provide any argument.

Most empirical questions are unresolveable; The good, the bad, and the appropriately under-powered

BiasedBayes8y10

Then why not to state exactly that position in the article ? To answer to your question i dont if you mean every possible crazy hypothesis being in the space of possible hypothesis but disagree if you mean in terms of pragmatic usefull hypothesis being well resolved. There is not a single doubleblinded RCT on smoking causing cancer as far as I know, but its pretty resolved that smoking causes cancer, agreed?

The Maze of Moral Relativism

BiasedBayes8y10

Im curious about your view. Do you think that we cant say its a moral fact that its better (1) to feed newborn baby with milk from its mother and sooth it tenderly so it stops crying compared to (2) chop its fingers of one by one slowly with a dull blade and then leave it bleeding? And this moral evaluation depends on your state of mind?

2satt8y

Correct, I would call that a category error. One's view of the wrongness of torturing a newborn versus soothing it depends on one's state of mind, yes. If I were confronted with someone who insisted that "torturing a newborn instead of soothing it is good, actually", I could say that was "wrong" in the sense of evil, but there is no evidence I could present which, in itself, would show it to be "wrong" in the sense of incorrect.

The Maze of Moral Relativism

BiasedBayes8y00

Thanks for clarifying! In that case thats a way too general normative question to give real purposeful answer. (For example 1,089 % more does not really make any sense).

1TheAncientGeek8y

So are we believing that science is bad, because it can't answer broad normative questions, or that broad normative questions are bad because science can't answer them?

The Maze of Moral Relativism

BiasedBayes8y00

Depends what you mean by "solving".Yeah, this is exactly what the data shows and its called ingroup-outgroup bias.

1TheAncientGeek8y

You seem to have read my question "how much weighting do you put on the wellbeing of the folks at home versus people in far off lands?" as the statement "you put more weight on the folks at home". But that is descriptive not normative.. it tells you what you do do, not what you should do. Solving ethics involves recognising that the normative question is different to the descriptive question, and solving the normative question.

The Maze of Moral Relativism

BiasedBayes8y20

Thanks for the reply. My point was that evolutionary system 1 thinking and morality does not necessarily even correlate. Descriptive intuitive moral decisions are highly biased and can be affected for example by the ingroup bias and framing.Moral intuitions are there to better own reproduction/survival not to make good moral and ethical decisions.

0Stabilizer8y

I don't think you and the article's author really have a disagreement here. Notice that the author is not trying to tell you what the correct moral facts are. He'd be happy to accept that many proposed moral facts are actually false. He is simply trying to show that whenever we make moral judgements, we are implicitly assuming the existence of some moral facts – erroneous though they might be.

The Maze of Moral Relativism

BiasedBayes8y00

Confusing article. "Either total relativism or absolute moral facts". How about the following: descriptive morality is based on rationalizations of emotional system 1 responses but if morality has anything to do with human wellbeing, science can inform what is right normative moral code.

0BiasedBayes8y

1TheAncientGeek8y

Science can inform, but hardly solve. How much weighting do you put on the wellbeing of the folks at home versus people in far off lands?

0Stabilizer8y

Your view is consistent with the article's. The assumption that one ought to improve the well-being of humans would be a moral fact. The fact that emotional system 1 acquired noisy and approximate knowledge of moral facts would simply mean that evolution can acquire knowledge of moral facts. This is unproblematic: compare, for example, how evolutionarily evolved humans can obtain knowledge of mathematical facts. For more on this, I recommend this Stanford Encyclopedia article; especially Section 4.

Most empirical questions are unresolveable; The good, the bad, and the appropriately under-powered

BiasedBayes8y-10

Thanks for the link, the title is a bit misleading though ("most empirical questions..").

0Davidmanheim8y

Really? I'd expect that very few questions outside of the hard sciences are resolvable given model uncertainty, the limits on running RCTs, and the limited samples available given finite population and insufficient variation regarding variables of interest. Do you disagree?

This one equation may be the root of intelligence

BiasedBayes8y00

Thanks! Very interesting!

An attempt in layman's language to explain the metaethics sequence in a single post.

BiasedBayes8y00

Morality binds and blinds. People derive moral claims from emotional and intuitive notions. It can feel good and moral to do amoral things. Objective morality has to be tied to evidence what really is human wellbeing; not to moral intuitions that are adaptions to the benefit of ones ingroup; or post hoc thought experiments about knowledge.

Not all theories of consciousness are created equal: a reply to Robert Lawrence Kuhn's recent article in Skeptic Magazine [Link]

BiasedBayes9y10

Thanks for the post, I really liked the article overall. Nice general summary of the ideas. I agree with torekp. I also think that the term consciousness is too broad. Wanting to have a theory of consciousness is like wanting to have a "theory of disease". The overall term is too general and "consciousness" can mean many different things. This dilutes the conversation. We need to sharpen our semantic markers and not to rely on intuitive or prescientific ideas.Terms that do not "carve nature well at its joints" will lead our i... (read more)

1oge9y

I agree re: consciousness being too broad a term. I use the term in the sense of "having an experience that isn't directly observable to others" but as you noted, people use it to mean LOTS of different other things. Thanks for articulating that thought.

Suggest best book as an introduction to computational neuroscience

BiasedBayes9y10

I have been reading Memory and the Computational Brain: Why Cognitive Science will Transform Neuroscience by Gallistel and King.After that I will read Olaf Sporns book you recommended.

Just actually listened Brainscience podcast where Olaf spoke about his work.Thanks a lot!

Suggest best book as an introduction to computational neuroscience

BiasedBayes9y10

Thanks for the info :) Yes, thats true. I ordered Theoretical Neuroscience couple of days ago together with Mathematics for Neuroscientists by Gabbiani and Cox. No one teaches computational neuroscience in our university, so i have to try to learn this field by myself.

Suggest best book as an introduction to computational neuroscience

BiasedBayes9y00

Found this free online course if someone else is interested: https://www.coursera.org/course/compneuro

Suggest best book as an introduction to computational neuroscience

BiasedBayes9y10

Awesome! Judging by the first 30 pages this is gold. Very nice, thanks a lot!

Suggest best book as an introduction to computational neuroscience

BiasedBayes9y00

I love that book too! I have read it once and listened it once.

Map:Territory::Uncertainty::Randomness – but that doesn’t matter, value of information does.

BiasedBayes9y10

Thinking "probability exists only in the territory" is exactly taking the idea that probabilities exists as "things itself" to the extreme as i wrote. This view is not a strawman of dogmatic frequentists position, as you can see from the John Venn quote.

I feel the need to point that i have tried to describe the context of the debate where the heuristic: "uncertainty exists in the map, not in the territory" was given in the first place. This whole historical debate started from the idea that probability as a degree of belief d... (read more)

Map:Territory::Uncertainty::Randomness – but that doesn’t matter, value of information does.

BiasedBayes9y00

Generally if you approach probability as an extension of logic, probability is always relative to some evidence. Hardcore frequency dogmatists like John Venn for example thought that this is completely wrong: "the probability of an event is no more relative to something else than the area of a field is relative to something else."

So thinking probabilities existing as "things itself" taken to the extreme could lead one to the conclusion that one cant say much for example about single-case probabilities. Lets say I take HIV-test and it comes back positive. You dont find it weird to say that it is not OK to judge probabilities of me having the HIV based on that evidence?

0Anders_H9y

Thinking probabilities can exists in the territory leads to no such conclusion. Thinking probabilities exist only in the territory may lead to such a conclusion, but that is a strawman of the points that are being made. It would be insane to deny that frequencies exist, or that they can be represented by a formal system derived from the Kolmogorov (or Cox) axioms. It would also be insane to deny that beliefs exist, or that they can be represented by a formal system derived from the Kolmogorov (or Cox) axioms. I think this confusion would all go away if people stopped worrying about the semantic meaning of the word "probability" and just specified whether they are talking about frequency or belief. It puzzles me when people insist that the formal system can only be isomorphic to one thing, and it is truly bizarre when they take sides in a holy war over which of those things it "really" represents. A rational decision maker genuinely needs both the concept of frequency and the concept of belief. For instance, an agent may need to reason about the proportion (frequency) P of Everett branches in which he survives if he makes a decision, and also about how certain he is about his estimate of that probability. Let's say his beliefs about the probability P follow a beta distribution, or any other distribution bounded by 0 and 1. In order to make a decision, he may do something like calculate a new probability Q, which is the expected value of P under his prior. You can interpret Q as the agent's beliefs about the probability of dying, but it also has elements of frequency. You can make the untestable claim that all Everett branches have the same outcome, and therefore that Q is determined exclusively by your uncertainty about whether you will live or die in all Everett branches. This would be Bayesian fundamentalism. You can also go to the other extreme and argue that Q is determined exclusively by P, and that there is no reason to consider uncertainty. That would be

-1TheAncientGeek9y

Maybe, but so what? That doesn't establish any point of interest. It doesn't establish Bayes over Frequentisim, since frequentists still need evidence. And it doesn't establish subectivity over objectivty, because if there are objective probabilities, you still need evidence to know what they are. The invalid argument I alluded to elsewhere in this thread is the argument that if there is subjective probability, based on limited information, then there is no objective probability. "Don't take objective probability to an extreme" is very different to "reject objective probability".

Map:Territory::Uncertainty::Randomness – but that doesn’t matter, value of information does.

BiasedBayes9y10

If you mean me and you...well we dont. I agree. But maybe one should ask that having Ronald Aylmer Fishers ideas about Bayesian statistics in mind: "the theory of inverse probabilities must be fully rejected"

Let me reprhase my quote: The heuristic "uncertainty exists in the map, not in the territory" is in the first place meant to be an heuristic against dismissing Bayesian concept of probability."

0TheAncientGeek9y

Then it is a misleading, unnecessarily metaphysical phrasing of the point, and appears to have misled Yudkowsky among others.

Map:Territory::Uncertainty::Randomness – but that doesn’t matter, value of information does.

BiasedBayes9y10

Upvoted. The heuristic "uncertainty exists in the map, not in the territory" is in the first place meant to be an heuristic against frequentist statistics. One can argue that probabilities are properties of the things itself also in situations of purely epistemic randomness. The argument "uncertainty exist in the map, not in the territory" is used in this context to show that thinking probablilities existing as "thing itself" can lead to weird conclusions.

1TheAncientGeek9y

And why do we need one of those? Most academics think religious warfare been B-ism and F-ism is silly, and you should use whichever is the most appropriate.

0TheAncientGeek9y

Such as?

Rationality Reading Group: Part R: Physicalism 201

BiasedBayes9y10

If someone is interested about the book, i highly recommend the audiobook version. You can find it from: http://castify.co/channels/53

It took me 5 days to listen the whole book (volume 1-3).

The Number Choosing Game: Against the existence of perfect theoretical rationality

BiasedBayes9y50

Ok, lets say you are right that there does not exist perfect theoretical rationality in your hypothetical game context with all the assumptions that helps to keep the whole game standing. Nice. So what?

2Viliam9y

Then we can ask whether there are any other situations where perfect theoretical rationality is not possible. Because we are already aware that it depends on the rules of the game (instead of assuming automatically that it is always possible). Exploring the boundary between the games where perfect theoretical rationality is possible, and the games where perfect theoretical rationality is impossible, could lead to some interesting theoretical results. Maybe.

3mako yass9y

It is useful to be able to dismiss any preconceptions that perfect decisionmakers can exist, or even be reasoned about. I think this is a very elegant way of doing that.

1casebash9y

Spoilers, haha. I was actually reading this post and I was trying to find a solution to the coalition problem where Eliezer wonders how rational agents can solve a problem with the potential for an infinite loop, which lead me to what I'll call the Waiting Game, where you can wait n units of time and gain n utility for any finite n, which then led me to this post.

Nature publishes an article about alternative therapy

BiasedBayes9y00

"Speaking as someone who finds that placebos cure my headaches as well as painkillers do, I dispute that that is the question.."

You should consider regression to the mean and illusion of correlation.

5Tem429y

I have. I have no evidence that either pain killers or placebos work in any sort of medical sense; I have clear evidence that swallowing a pill causes me to relax, resulting in a immediate reduction in pain. This is stupid, and I am working on eliminating the pill, but still, if this is what works, I will continue to use it frequently until I find something better. I think one of the major reasons that people dislike the idea of placebos is because they think that they are being medicine. This has not been my experience. Placebos are better than medicine, because they work directly on your mind, and your mind (my mind, anyway) is sometimes too stupid to pay attention to medicine. I would have been better off, and a bit wealthier, if a doctor had realized this before trying the medical route.

Nature publishes an article about alternative therapy

BiasedBayes9y00

Sorry the misleading title and thanks for downvoting :D.The author goes much further than just ”utilizing the placebo effect”. The article is basically about endorsing alternative medicine. You can easily see this from the following quotes .

There are many shady arguments in the article:

”Conventional medicine, with its squeezed appointment times and overworked staff, often struggles to provide such human aspects of care. One answer is to hire alternative therapists.”

--> Just because there are challenges in medicine like overworked stuff does not mean alt... (read more)

Welcome to Less Wrong! (8th thread, July 2015)

BiasedBayes10y10

Thanks for the link! Very nice publication!

The Heuristic About Representativeness Heuristic

BiasedBayes10y00

Thanks for the post. I love it.

My comments:

First sidenote that dont assume that if something is a heuristic it is automatically a wrong way of thinking.(sorry if i misinterpret this, because you dont explicitly say this at all :) In some situations simple heuristics will outperform regression analysis for example.

But about your mainpoint. If I understood right this is actually a problem of violating so called "ratio rule".

(1) The degree to which c is representative of S is indicated by the conditional propability p (c | S)- that is, the propa... (read more)

0BT_Uytya10y

Thank you. English isn't my first language, so for me feedback means a lot. Especially positive :) My point was that representative heuristic made two errors: firstly, it violates "ratio rule" (= equates P(S|c) and P(c|S)), and secondly, sometimes it replaces P(c|S) with something else. That means that the popular idea "well, just treat it as P(c|S) instead of P(S|c); if you add P(c|~S) and P(S), then everything will be OK " doesn't always work. The main point of our disagreement seem to be this: 1) Think about stereotypes. They are "represent" their classes well, yet it's extremely unlikely to actually meet the Platonic Ideal of Jew. (also, sometimes there is some incentive for members of ethnic group to hide their lineage; if so, then P(stereotypical characteristics|member of group) is extremely low, yet the degree of resemblance is very high) (this is somewhat reminds me of the section about Planning Fallacy in my earlier post). 2) I think that it can be argued that the degree of resemblance should involve P(c|~S) in some way. If it's very low, then c is very representative of S, even if P(c|S) isn't high. ---------------------------------------- Overall, inferential distances got me this time; I'm probably going to rewrite this post. If you have some ideas about how this text could be improved, I will be glad to hear them.

Welcome to Less Wrong! (8th thread, July 2015)

BiasedBayes10y20

Yep :) You are definetely right career wise. Problem for me was the 200 other people who will absorb completely wrong idea of how the mind works if I wont say anything. Primum non nocere.

But yeah, this was 4 years ago anyway...just wanted to mention it as an anecdote of bad general reasoning and biases :)

Welcome to Less Wrong! (8th thread, July 2015)

BiasedBayes10y40

Thanks hyporational ! It is exactly same here. Cognitive biases, heuristics, or even Bayes Theorem (normative decision making) is not really taught here.

Also I once argued against some pseudoscientific treatment (in mental illnesses) and my arguments were completely ignored by 200 people because of argumentum ad hominem and attribute substitution (who looks like he is right vs. looking the actual arguments). Most people dont know what is a good argument or how to think about the propability of a statement.

Interesting points Anders_H, I have to think about those littlebit.

4hyporational10y

We were taught bayes in the form of predictive values, but this was pretty cursory. Challenging the medical professors' competence publicly isn't a smart move careerwise, unless they happen to be exceptionally rational and principled, unfortunately. There's a time to shut up and multiply, and a time to bend to the will of the elders :)

Welcome to Less Wrong! (8th thread, July 2015)

BiasedBayes10y120

Hello all!

Im a medical student and a researcher. My interests are consciousness, computational theory of mind, evolutionary psychology, and medical decision making. I bought Eliezers book and found here because of it.

Want to thank Eliezer for writing the book, best writing i have read this year. Thank You.

5hyporational10y

Welcome! I'm an MD and haven't yet figured out why there are so few of us here, given the importance of rationality for medical decision making. It's interesting that at least in my country there is zero training in cognitive biases in the curriculum.