Some of what I’ve been reading lately:
Distinctions are useful. They probably would top my mindlist of meta-cognitive tools. The first such distinction I can recall is that between Map and Territory. The first explanation I can personally remember is Neil Gaiman’s, in American Gods;
[Epistemic status — speculative.]
It’s long been a trope of Bayesian rationalism that if you disagree with a friend, you should bet. This is a good community norm: if you bet, you’re more likely to remember that you were wrong; you’re forced to quantify the degree of…
Epistemic status: at high risk of single-study syndrome.
In my post on growth mindset, I mentioned time preference. This got me thinking about what kind of thought causes high time preference (meaning…
Suppose you want to accomplish a task. You could write a short program in Python. Or you could start a new Minecraft world, build a redstone computer, and program it to perform the task.
I recently read Scott Alexander’s posts about growth mindset (one, two, three, four). He starts out admitting that he’s biased against it, and I agree — reading his criticism made me take growth mindset more seriously, because his criticism was…
To recap, the hypothesis is, “all computable things exist, maybe other things, too, but we’re pretty sure about the computable things, as it is easy to trust that they are well-defined enough to be necessary truths.”
Ordinary fiction has lots of holes in its logic which we let it get away with for a bit of fun. One of the tropes of rationalist fiction is to deny the author that tool, requiring characters to have realistic motives (rather…
I can’t say if it’s a statistically significant trend, but I’ve noticed that a number of people who were polyamorous no longer are. I myself gradually went through this transition over the last five-ish years. While I have no problem believing that some people in some places can and do have very…
Even if nothing existed, it seems like we should still be able to make some true statements. To steal some words from the philosophers, “necessary” truths ought to still be true, even in the perverse case where nothing actually exists.
Information cascades and availability cascades are a set of mechanisms by which mass belief shifts (or apparent belief shifts) can occur in a winner-takes-all manner. The subject is complex, and I will not attempt to summarize it here (although I’d like to discuss it further in later…
Epistemic Status: Fairly Confident.Implications: Very Uncertain.
Enlightened utilitarianism says we should value the happiness of everyone equally, while selfish ingroup…
“Wait, hold up. Look.”
J paused his dealing, turned his head. The screen held a single message, the word ERROR in big letters. “It’s probably just a drill. Let’s finish this hand.”
“No, they usually warn us about drills. This might be the real deal.” E was…
Since writing Descriptive Before Prescriptive, I’ve thought a bit more about the general pattern I’m trying to point at. A big part of what goes wrong is: a value judgement becomes a fake explanation, stopping curiosity. If an atheist writes off a religious belief as “just…
The last candle is lit. The chalk pentagram is perfectly inscribed. My black robe is freshly pressed and linted. The hood rests just above my eyes. The Infernal incense is burning. The time is exactly 2:59:45 AM. I have spoken the opening incantation flawlessly. I have named the demon I seek. I’m…
The Qeng Ho believed their interstellar culture had reached its final stage of development. However, in A Deepness in the Sky we see four special technologies:
God: Now, for my next trick…
Audience: Create the universe!
G: We just did that.
A: Do it again!
G: But I can do lots of other tricks. Don’t you want to see something else?
The last two posts spent a fair amount of time trying to explain why you should be willing to bet, and why you need to offer fair odds. This one explains why, without a few critical caveats, that’s actually terrible advice.
Last time, I talked about why betting is a good idea. I didn’t mention a key point — if you want your betting to help you the most, you should pick either setting the odds however you want, or which side of the bet to pick — not both.
A pilgrim came to Instance of Class Temple.
“I wish to become an enlightened person,” said the pilgrim.
“Watch this video,” said Member Of Species.
The pilgrim left, satisfied.
Many people in the rationalist community advocate betting — either because of how socially useful prediction markets can be, because it helps you adjust your expectations, because you need to calibrate your beliefs, or because it helps you make your beliefs pay rent…
A student came to Instance of Class Temple.
“I wish to master the skill,” said the student.
Member Of Species demonstrated an action. “This is the first action. Practice this.”
I have been looking for a good ontology.
Hold up. What is an ontology? I think of an ontology as a hierarchical ordering/categorization that encompasses the entirety of reality, visible and invisible. I want this because I’m curious about the universe and…
There’s something good that happens when you distinguish between prescriptive statements and descriptive statements. For example, the laws of logic could be mistaken for a theory of what humans do, and would have to be discarded on that basis. Formal logic took a particular…
People have always built walls. Some walls are built by accident, some by default, and a few are built on purpose — but it’s not always obvious which one is which. These walls are implicit or explicit, social or mental or linguistic, but they are real, and most merely…
