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All of Nate_Rausch's Comments + Replies

Inadequacy and Modesty
Nate_Rausch10

Another key difference between startup idea / medican research and financial markets is that the latter is a bounded problem.

It is possible to know every relevant supply and demand-factor regarding a currently priced asset. However, the possible startup ideas now or in the future is probably infinite, or at least many orders of magnitude larger than the space of possible information to know about the pricing of a current asset.

And so, we should and likely do have much less modesty concerning medical research and startup ideas, than we have concerning asset prices.

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Open thread, Apr. 03 - Apr. 09, 2017
Nate_Rausch00

Well, yes, but couldn't one just make a new religion without those attributes. For example the first of the 10 commandments could be: Question everything, including these texts. Be a student, not a follower. Finding fault in ourself is the highest virtue, free speech etc. ? :-)

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Open thread, Apr. 03 - Apr. 09, 2017
Nate_Rausch00

Fair point, well I don't think romantic love is worthy of sacred status in the irrationality religion. Tough those four neither seemed quite to fit the love I had in mind.

Perhaps something closer the buddhist concept of bodhisattva, meaning altruistic love for all sentient beings?

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1Lumifer
Sounds like the plain old Christian love, but with a new cool label :-/
Open thread, Apr. 03 - Apr. 09, 2017
Nate_Rausch10

A bit tongue-in-cheeck, but how about taking Tyler's unfair label as a proposal?

We could start the rationality religion, without the metaphysics or ideology of ordinary religion. Our God could be everything we do not know. We worship love. Our savior is the truth. We embrace forgiveness as the game-theoretical optimal modified tit-for-tat solution to a repeated game. And so on.

We thoroughly investigate and aggregate the best knowledge humanity currently has on how to live. And we create Rationality Temples worldwide. There will be weekly congregations, w... (read more)

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0Lumifer
Literally God of the Gaps! :-) Which love?
2MrMind
It surely is an effective way, since by this mean all kinds of silly causes have been pursued. But creating a religion out of rationality (lowercase) would defeat its purpose: in the span of a year, rationality would become the password to learn by memory and the beginning structures will solidify as an attire. Religions are appealing exactly because they exempt their members from thinking on their own and accepting hard truths: rationality has instead more in common with martial arts, they are mostly a question of training and learning to take many hits.
Which areas of rationality are underexplored? - Discussion Thread
Nate_Rausch00

Well, the "dark arts" might deserve a second look.

We shouldn't pivot too far. Politics clearly is a mind-killer, and exploiting human weaknesses to further your cause is not inherently good.

But I think we have grouped too many things into one basket. In order for rationality to succeed, we must manage to find the balance between being effective and being pure in our ideals.

We do not want to be the stereotypical investment banker, without any morals who will do whatever works. Yet we also don't want to be the environmentalist who don't do anyth... (read more)

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Open thread, Dec. 05 - Dec. 11, 2016
Nate_Rausch30

I was re-reading the meditations of moloch the other day, and it dawned on me that our situation is kind of relevant when it comes to information spreading on the internet.

The current state of competition on the internet seems to be quite clearly in disalignment with what we deem as good, like truth or insight. It feels like we are mid-way towards an equilibrium that is far worse. Unless something is done, we should expect the volume of fake narratives, fake news and lies of all sorts to grow going forward. On the positive side, we should expect to see fa... (read more)

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0Lumifer
You shouldn't think of people (aka internet users) as an undifferentiated mass. There are multiple competitions on the 'net for different population segments. For example, SSC isn't really competing with the see-Kylie-Jenner-naked people. There isn't going to be one single equilibrium. Oh, dear. I hate to break it to you, but... In the usual way. You imagine people selling bridges didn't exist before the 'net? What do you think the whole science thing is about? Internet actually makes it a lot easier to check whether something being told to you is a lie. Yes, and that's fine. Information hygiene is mundane, like brushing your teeth -- or resisting the urge to burrow into a hospital's infectious-waste trash pile. Saving the world from bad information is a... dangerous approach.
3Viliam
Sometimes it feels to me that publicly staying away from tribalism is impossible. At the moment you disagree with a sacred belief of some tribe, the tribe members will start calling you a member of the opposite tribe. Even worse, the members of the opposite tribe may take this as an encouragement to join you. If you depend on volunteers, this already disrupt your balance. If you somehow succeed to resist this, and also disagree with a sacred belief of the other tribe, both tribes will simply call you an idiot. And even that may not help you achieve the image of neutrality, because the first tribe may continue to claim that you are deep inside a fan of the second tribe; and the second tribe may continue to claim that you are deep inside a fan of the first tribe. (Because, from inside of a mindkilled person everyone who disagrees has to be, in some way, mindkilled for the enemy.) So do I, but various people whom I consider mindkilled in return consider me mindkilled for the opposite site, and I am quite aware that from an outside view this just seems like two people accusing each other of the same thing, so why should I be the one who is right? I take some comfort in knowing that I am accused of many contradictory things, which is a weak evidence that the accusations are bullshit, but this is a kind of reverse-stupidity reasoning. At the bottom of fact-checking, you need to compare the map with the territory. Just comparing two maps won't do enough. It can tell you which maps are more similar and which are less, perhaps you could do some kind of cluster analysis on them... but you would still need to have deep trust in some specific map, to decide that this cluster is the correct one; or perhaps medium-level trust in a group of independent maps, which you would find belonging to the same cluster, which would tell you that this is the correct one. -- I am not sure if something like this can literally be done, but it feels like a good metaphor for how I evaluate the t
Is arguing worth it? If so, when and when not? Also, how do I become less arrogant?
Nate_Rausch10

If you are to exert influence on the world, you have to state your opinions to people. But you also have to be rational about it.

Start with asking yourself:

  1. Am I wrong? (Honestly examine your position and see things from the other persons point of view)
  2. Is the topic important? (Cause prioritization)
  3. Am I convincing the live person or the audience? (Different tactics)
  4. Is success a possible outcome?

Let's say the answers in a given scenario are no, yes, person and yes. Convincing another person is hard because of confirmation bias. Added to that is the ... (read more)

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