ig0r

Cross-posted on my blog: http://garybasin.com/ways-of-seeing/

Tough problems often feel insurmountable without more information and better models — more data and thinking. An alternative approach is to be able to see the problem, and the whole world, in a new way. By looking through different eyes, different aspects of the world get highlighted and new actions become visible. An entrepreneur sees the world differently. They notice opportunities for improvement and innovation where someone else only sees stress and pain. Similarly, while a typical person enters a living room and sees the couches and artwork on the walls, a parent of a young child perceives a menagerie of death traps. We are doing this in our own ways all of... (read 295 more words →)

The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Certain Questions

ig0r

Cross-posted on my blog: http://garybasin.com/the-unreasonable-effectiveness-of-certain-questions/

About a year ago I was sitting around trying to grok the concept of Evil — where does it come from and how does it work? After a few hours of spinning in circles, I experienced a sudden shift. My mind conjured up the question: “Is this a thing out in the world or just a projection?” (Map vs Territory). Immediately, a part of my mind replied with “Well, this may not be anything other than a story we tell about the behavior of people we dislike”. Let’s ignore the truth value for today and notice the process. I’m interested in this mechanism of how a simple query — checking if... (read 350 more words →)

Replying toWhat is Wisdom?

ig0r9y

What is Wisdom?

I agree that raising general predictive ability would also tend to increase wisdom. I think my main point, which I probably didn't sufficiently highlight, is that wisdom is bottlenecked on data (and also maybe seems to require more abstraction and abduction than other learning) moreso than other knowledge we tend to collect due to the underlying complexity of the thing we are trying to predict (human behavior)

What is Wisdom?

ig0r

Cross-posted on my blog: http://garybasin.com/what-is-wisdom/

What could go wrong if we develop technology to significantly amplify the intelligence of human minds? Intelligence is tricky to understand and I get confused when comparing it to the related concepts of wisdom and rationality. I'd like to draw clear distinctions between them. In a nutshell, rationality is the tendency to apply the capacity of intelligence, whereas wisdom describes the embodied knowledge of human behavioral patterns, specifically in terms of failure modes.

The relationship between rationality and intelligence seems better understood. My favorite exposition is in the excellent What Intelligence Tests Miss (good summary on LW). Of course, LessWrong itself is partially devoted to understanding this distinction and CFAR was built to

... (read 822 more words →)

Replying toHow French intellectuals ruined the West - Postmodernism and its impact, explained

ig0r9y

How French intellectuals ruined the West - Postmodernism and its impact, explained

I think that's right and it's a bit of a strawman. I don't think pomo originally threw out epistemology but it provides tools that, while useful for general societal critique, are also easy to shoot your foot off with. So, pomo allows for some good things but also seems to have enabled identity politics as well as right wing fake news hysteria.

Replying toSatisfaction Levers

ig0r9y

Satisfaction Levers

To me, this felt more like speculation which was certainly informed by many things I've read in the past but nothing particular came to mind with the exception of the obvious reference to Deleuze. A kind of applied Deleuzian psychiatry, although I'm not sure he would agree with this sort of application. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-Oedipus#Desiring_machines_and_social_production)

Good point regarding Focusing, and I do agree that it is closely related. I've only listened to the audiobook, is there a work by Gendlin you would recommend? Upon reflection, it seems one of the main insights I was trying to point at here is the lack of logical connection between the qualia of desire and the object it seeks (the machine it seeks to connect to, in D&G's terminology). The mental act of seeking out levers to pull would be equivalent to Focusing here, I think?

Replying toSatisfaction Levers

ig0r9y

Satisfaction Levers

Yes that Cleese piece is great, thanks for sharing.

Satisfaction Levers

ig0r

(Cross-posted on my blog: http://garybasin.com/satisfaction-levers/)

I believe gnawing and uncomfortable sensations (nihilism, restlessness, etc) that one may not quite understand how to resolve are a manifestation of poorly understood desires, and there are concrete practices one can develop to help understand and resolve these sensations. We’ve come to associate certain sensations in our stomach with the idea of hunger because they are resolved by putting certain types of objects into our mouth and chewing. What if we didn’t know about food — how would we understand “hunger”? What does this say about a complex sensation like “anxiety”?

The human mind can be thought of as a machine that produces and satisfies desires. We become familiar with these desires from birth.... (read 648 more words →)

Replying toProjects-in-Progress Thread

ig0r9y

Projects-in-Progress Thread

+1 for the suggestions made by others. I will ping the blog writer about this post to see if he's interested in reaching out.

You may also want to look at Daniel Ingram and his MCTB community

Replying toHow do you identify complex systems?

ig0r9y

How do you identify complex systems?

That's also just the tip of the iceberg. This book is a good guide to identifying and predicting complex time series behavior: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0521529026/ref=oh_aui_search_detailpage?ie=UTF8&psc=1

So I guess this is along the lines of: try prediction techniques that are designed to work on complex systems and see how it goes.

This doesn't work when you don't have enough data to do so, of course.

Replying toIdeas for Next Generation Prediction Technologies

ig0r9y

Ideas for Next Generation Prediction Technologies

On the topic of financial markets and aggregation of signals, there is actually a lot of ML-based signal aggregation going on within trading companies. A common structure is having specialized individuals or teams develop predictive signals (for publicly traded securities) and then have them aggregated into a single meta-prediction (typically a "microprice", or theoretical price) which is then used for order placement.

A couple anecdotes:

There is some publicly available story about a high frequency KOSPI options desk that made a substantial improvement in P/L after adding a Random Forest in their signal aggregation logic. Eventually, this became the difference between making and losing money
Accurate up until about a year or two ago, I believe one of the top 10 worldwide trading firms was using a simple average as their aggregation mechanism for most of their trading. This would include averaging effectively redundant signals which could be easily identified as such.

Replying toFinding slices of joy

ig0r9y

Finding slices of joy

Nice. Just curious, how much did you do, and why'd you stop (if you did)?

Replying toFinding slices of joy

ig0r9y

Finding slices of joy

This is derivative of meditative insight practice. You may be interested in looking into Vipassana practice. With some time spent building concentration skills this kind of sensation noticing practice is far more powerful (think, LSD-like power) and can be extended to get you a lot more than just joy

Replying toRationality Quotes: February 2011

ig0r15y

Rationality Quotes: February 2011

Sorry for the slow reply, want to do this over email? im gbasin at gmail

LESSWRONG
LW

LESSWRONG
LW

Leverage Points: Places to intervene in a system

Satisfaction Levers

The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Certain Questions

How French intellectuals ruined the West - Postmodernism and its impact, explained

ig0r

ig0r

Ways of Seeing

The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Certain Questions

What is Wisdom?

Deleuze contra Error: Other Misadventures of Thought

How French intellectuals ruined the West - Postmodernism and its impact, explained

Leverage Points: Places to intervene in a system

Satisfaction Levers

ig0r

Leverage Points: Places to intervene in a system

Satisfaction Levers

The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Certain Questions

How French intellectuals ruined the West - Postmodernism and its impact, explained

ig0r

ig0r

Ways of Seeing

The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Certain Questions

What is Wisdom?

Deleuze contra Error: Other Misadventures of Thought

How French intellectuals ruined the West - Postmodernism and its impact, explained

Leverage Points: Places to intervene in a system

Satisfaction Levers