All of Tom3's Comments + Replies

Johnicholas:

Isn't there a bias something like: "If something actually happens, then people believe that it was foreseeable before it happened."?

Hindsight Bias and, to an extent, Taleb's Narrative Fallacy. This whole topic is quite Talebian. How do we plan for disasters we can't foresee? As Robin says,

There is a vast space of possible things that can go wrong, so each plan will have to cover a pretty wide range of scenarios.

While there might be a very wide range of causes for disasters, the possible effects are likely to be fewer. A government can... (read more)

I think Robin has won this argument. Removing rhetorical flourishes makes the post easier to criticise in the comments section. You shouldn't be deliberately trying to make your statements more or less persuasive, just say what you want to say as clear as you can and let other contributors thrash it out in the comments. That is probably part of Robin's point about the importance of academic style: it makes peer-review easier.

"I am 87% confident you will burst into flames"

Ah, at last a practical application of the observation that bayesians cannot agree to disagree.

Virtual environments create possibilities for shock. The ability to torture a (non-sentient) simulated version of someone you hate, or engage in sexual activities that would be illegal in the real world come to mind.

Also what if, given the opportunity to live forever in eutopia, most minds freely choose the hardscrapple frontier? Even if the chances of death are significant?

Thom Blake:

I don't find this surprising at all, other than that it occurred to a consequentialist. Being a virtue ethicist and something of a Romantic, it seems to me that the best wo

Well... first of all, the notion that "ideas are generated by combining other ideas N at a time" is not exactly an amazing AI theory; it is an economist looking at, essentially, the whole problem of AI, and trying to solve it in 5 seconds or less. It's not as if any experiment was performed to actually watch ideas recombining. Try to build an AI around this theory and you will find out in very short order how useless it is as an account of where ideas come from...

But more importantly, if the only proposition you actually use in your theory is t... (read more)

And obviously we're not looking for software that lets our users throw sheep at one another. The Internet already offers enough ways to waste time, thank you. More like - how people can find each other geographically and meet up

This is an interesting idea, since local groups of rationalists raise the possibility of Overcoming Bias becoming a political project. We've discussed the fact that institutional irrationality causes resources to be misallocated and lives to be lost, so why don't we aim to make more people aware of that fact? Evidence Based Medici... (read more)

The third fallacy of teleology is to commit the Mind Projection Fallacy with respect to telos, supposing it to be an inherent property of an object or system. Indeed, one does this every time one speaks of the purpose of an event, rather than speaking of some particular agent desiring the consequences of that event.

I'm vaguely reminded of The Camel Has Two Humps. Perhaps it's the case that some people naturally have a knack for systemisation, while others are doomed to repeat the mind projection fallacy forever.

According to Norvig, Holmes is a Bayesian. Though I think it would be cool if there were a mystery story whose sleuth-protagonist made explicit use of stats and probability.

Angel, I agree that he comes across as a bit arrogant in that thread, but that's just his way. I think he was trying to ask for a list of don't's and you gave him a list of do's, and the ensuing communications breakdown led to this thread. But I think we have an opportunity now to correct this. So a question we might ponder is, what mistakes (not omissions) should be avoided in order to (to some extent) overcome gender bias?

Robin is a person with privilege denying the humanity of disprivileged people. He's following a pattern that's been >used to justify the rape and abuse of women for thousands of years.

I think it's bad form to imply that Robin wanted to deny the humanity of anyone, let alone justify their rape or abuse. Regardless of whether Robin is a member of a dominant group or not, he is a fallible individual human being, and we should assume in good faith that he honestly wanted to know whether this blog is off-putting to women without jumping to the conclusion ... (read more)

In the Timeless Physics section:

"The laws of physics are perfectly local; the configuration space is perfectly local."

Aren't the laws global?

Eliezer - Bayesian theory is a model. It isn't the universe.

BURN THE HERETIC!

The tiger, on the other hand, is a committed Platonist.

"EY, in this post you glibly liken belief in God to superstition. Similarly, I liken your belief in cryonics to other superstitions."

Well, the difference is that cryonics exists even if it doesn't work (yet?). You can see how this changes the nature of the debate.

"To solve this debate let us have Peter McCluskey set up another long-dated prediction market on InTrade that no one will actually bother to trade."

Oh SNAP!

How many members of a certain demographic group does it take to perform a specified task?

A finite number: one to perform the task and the remainder to act in a manner stereotypical of the group in question.

It's such a shame about my failure To have been born within Australia; Because then the rhyme for "Overcoming Bias" Could be found among "The Himalayas".

Caledonian is just trying to point out that the keys to rationalism are family values and a literal interpretation of the Bible. I don't know why you all can't see something so obvious.

Observe:

"It may even be the case that, by that definition, everything is evidence about everything else. And clearly that doesn't match our everyday understanding and use of the term - it doesn't even match our formal understanding and use of the term.

What's missing from the definition that we need, in order to make the definition match our understanding?"

Jesus.

&qu... (read more)

You can see the Buzz Aldrin punch on Youtube.

I heard he also roundhouse kicked a holocaust denier through a plate glass window and karate chopped a 9/11 truther in the balls.

anonymous:

"In the future (if we survive the next century) there will be enough technological progression to create essential Communism (no-one needs to work, everyone will have necessary resources to live incredible lives and so forth)."

-10 points for confusing means with ends.

From the article:

"[...]there is never an Idea so true that it's wrong to criticize any argument that supports it."

Or make jokes about it? Having a sense of humour ought to be mentioned as a primary piece of equipment in the Bias-Buster's toolkit. It's easy and fun... (read more)

Topo, it's a simple unprobabilistic phase inversion topography manifold calculation, I can hardly see how you could fail to understand it.

At Mt. Obaku temple in the Ko district, Yudkowksy-Sensei was approached by an Individualist during morning meditation.

"All of us are ultimately selfish; we care only about our own states of mind. The mother who claims to care about her son's welfare, really wants to believe that her son is doing well - this belief is what makes the mother happy. She helps him for the sake of her own happiness, not his." said the Individualist.

Yudkowsky-Sensei remained sitting on his zafu, and said nothing.

The Individualist continued: "She did it because sh... (read more)

Kaj: By jingo you may be right. But the question is, if the population of trolls is falling between The Hobbit and LoTR, is this an example of species-level selection? Because I can see that coming in handy. Imagine:

Johnny Creationist: "The Bible says God created the Earth in six days!"

Me: "Well the Lord of The Rings says we evolved by punctuated equilibrium!"

Johnny Creationist: "Damn! Your logic is unassailable! Well, I'm an atheist now."

shake hands

Jacob Stein:

"Are religious societies better? Cannibals and Satanists, perhaps not, but it's a tough call. Orthodox Jews, Quakers, Mennonites, probably yes."

Well Jacob it's just such a coincidence that you'd say that, because I am a cannibal satanist! Cool, right?

Anyway, the reason I bring it up is you say that Orthodox Jews and the like have better societies, but you are a jew, aren't you? (There's probably a bias or something there, I dunno). But since I think (to paraphrase Selfreferencing) that we're naturally motivated to seek Satan and that ... (read more)

This thread has more trolls than The Lord Of The Rings.

"Congratulations, Paris. I look forward to meeting you someday.

Posted by Eliezer Yudkowsky"

Pffff hahahaha

Greatest OB discussion thread ever.

Irrationality by Stuart Sutherland is pretty much this blog in book form.

This is all very zen. Do you have buddhist sympathies, Eliezer?

I would say:

"To understand recursion, you must first understand recursion."

Find the meta level in that, Chronophone!

I would make an argument for the importance of space exploration and colonisation, on the assumption that in Archimedes' time this would be heard as an argument in favour of naval expansion. Since the greeks were seafaring people anyway, Archimedes might be convinced to push for a great greek colonisation program. Who knows? They could reach the far east, or even the americas. The age of global trade might begin two thousand years earlier.