Open Thread, December 2-8, 2013 — LessWrong

6

Open Thread, December 2-8, 2013

by ChrisHallquist

3rd Dec 2013

1 min read

6

6

Open Thread, December 2-8, 2013

25Anatoly_Vorobey

4Anatoly_Vorobey

1ChrisHallquist

0ThrustVectoring

8Douglas_Knight

7Oscar_Cunningham

1Oscar_Cunningham

17Risto_Saarelma

-5RolfAndreassen

9Douglas_Knight

15ChrisHallquist

5ChrisHallquist

6ChrisHallquist

5ChrisHallquist

2ChrisHallquist

14Douglas_Knight

0Douglas_Knight

2Douglas_Knight

0Douglas_Knight

-2Douglas_Knight

0Douglas_Knight

1Douglas_Knight

0Douglas_Knight

-1Richard_Kennaway

7Douglas_Knight

4ChrisHallquist

0ChrisHallquist

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[-]Viliam_Bur12y670

It's funny time now in Slovakia; as if someone declared a call: "Irrational people of all beliefs, unite!"

It started two years ago with the so-called "Gorilla scandal". (TL;DR: Not a real gorilla, just a nickname of some criminal who was investigated by the secret service. By wiretapping his house the investigation revealed that almost all of our political parties, both left and right, participated in economical crime, cooperating with the same small group of people. The transcripts of the investigation were leaked to internet.) It was followed by a few demonstrations, after which pretty much nothing happened. Realizing that most media in our country actually belong to people involved in the scandal, so they don't have an incentive to investigate and report on the scandal, an internet radio called "the free broadcast" was created. From that point, it gradually went downhill.

By deciding to focus on 'news that don't have place in the official media', the radio was gradually selecting for hoaxes, conspiracy theories, etc. Which probably led to saner people leaving the radio, concentrating the irrationality of the remaining ones. One year later, it was mos... (read more)

Sounds like an interesting real-world example of http://lesswrong.com/lw/lr/evaporative_cooling_of_group_beliefs/

On the plus side, now you have all the material you need to write a satirical novel.

[-]Viliam_Bur12y310

I used to wish that people be more interested in how society works, go outside of their homes and try to improve things. After seeing this, I just wish they all lost interest, returned home, a started watching some sitcoms.

I wasn't sure whether this largely political comment was okay to write on LW, but then I realized LW is pretty much the only place I know where I could write such comment without receiving verbal abuse, racist comments, explanations that homosexuality really is the greatest danger of our civilization, or offended complaints about how I am insensitive towards religion. Recently, LW feels like an island of sanity in the vast ocean of madness.

Perhaps this will give me more energy to promote rationality in my country. I already arranged another LW meetup after a few months pause.

[-]Anatoly_Vorobey12y250

Martin Odersky, the inventor of the Scala programming language, writes regarding a recent rant against Scala publicized on Hacker News:

Seems hardly a weekend goes by these days without another Scala rant that makes the Hacker news frontpage. [...]
There certainly seems to be a grand coalition of people who want to attack Scala. Since this has been going on for a while, and the points of critique are usually somewhere between unbalanced and ridiculous, I have been curious why this is. I mean you can find things that suck (by some definition of "suck") in any language, why is everybody attacking Scala? Why do you not see articles of Rubyists attacking Python or of Haskellers attacking Clojure?

The quotation is remarkable for its absolute lack of awareness of selection bias. Odersky doesn't appear to even consider the possibility that he might be noticing the anti-Scala rants more readily than rants against other programming languages. Not having considered the possibility of the bias, he has no chance to try and correct for it. The wildly distorted impression he's formed leads him to language bordering on conspiracy theories ("grand coalition of people who want to a... (read more)

[-]David_Gerard12y100

I think if you read what he wrote less ungenerously (e.g. as if you were reading a mailing list post rather than something intended as a bulletproof philosophical argument), you'll see that his implicit point - that he's just talking about the reaction to Scala in particular - is clear enough, and - and this is the important point - the eventual discussion is productive in terms of bringing up ideas for making Scala more suitable for its intended audience. Given that his post inspired just the sort of discussion he was after, I do think you're being a bit harsh on him.

4Anatoly_Vorobey12y

I don't know that we disagree. I will cheerfully agree that Martin's email was relatively measured, the discussion it kicked off was productive, and that his tone was neither bitter nor toxic. That doesn't detract from my point - that as far as I can make out, his perception of relative attack frequency is heavily selection-biased, and he's unaware of this danger. It is true that in this case the bias did not lead to toxic consequences, but I never said it did. The bias itself here is remarkable. If my being a bit harsh on him basically consists of my not saying the above in the original comment, I'll accept that; I could've noted in passing that the discussion that resulted was at the end largely a friendly and productive one.

Yesterday I received the following message from user "admin" in my Less Wrong inbox:

We were unable to determine if there is a Less Wrong wiki account registered to your account. If you do not have an account and would like one, please go to your preferences page.

But the link goes to a 404.

8Error12y

I got this, too. I was concerned that it was might not be what it claimed to be, and avoided clicking the link. I view with suspicion anything unexpected that points me anywhere I might reasonably input login details.

2[anonymous]12y

I got it too. I think it was a typo in the URL which should instead appear as your preferences page

0Pfft12y

Does that link actually work for you? If I enter my password, it briefly says "submitting" and the button moves to a different spot, but it doesn't seem to create a wiki account.

0Metus12y

This seems like the answer. Can one of the admins validate that this was the intended link?

1jackk12y

That private message was part of a new feature to encourage wiki participation, by helping existing Less Wrong users onto wiki accounts. Unfortunately the link to create an account didn't point to the right place. If you tried to create a wiki account and had the brief flash of "submitting" (like Pfft), make sure you've got a validated email address associated with your account.

1hyporational12y

Got the message too, and that 404, then created an account with the form below my username.

0Antiochus12y

Also did the same.

1ChrisHallquist12y

I got a similar / identical message. Anyone know what was up with that?

1Alejandro112y

Ditto.

0EvelynM12y

I got one as well. Link http://wiki.lesswrong.com/prefs/wikiaccount

[-]JoshuaZ12y220

Petition to the FDA not to ban home genomic kits like 23andMe. I recommend people here interested in personalized medicine, transhumanism, or have any libertarian bent consider reading and signing.

I added my own comment

I am an Ashkenazi Jew. We are a population with many well-documented diseases tied to recessive alleles. It is unfair to force a minority population to have to pay massive sums of money so that we have to find out our own genetic situation. This applies to genes such as BRCA1, which causes cancer, or the alleles which causeTay Sachs and autonomic neuropathy type III, all cases where the documentation is strong. Ashkenazic Jews are not the only group in this situation, and there are also bad alleles which are not more common with specific ethnic or racial groups. The individuals with those genes deserve the same benefits.

The FDA's move is a step in the wrong direction which interferes with the fundamental right to know about one's own body.

The last line I added in part to aim at the current left-wing attitudes about personal bodily integrity. I stole the less well known disease from Yvain's excellent letter here, where I got to find about yet one more fun disease potentially in my gene pool. I strongly recommend people read Yvain's letter.

[-]Kaj_Sotala12y200

One piece of common wisdom on LW is that if you expect that receiving a piece of information will make you update your beliefs in a certain direction, you might as well update already instead of waiting. I happened to think of one exception: if you expect that something will cause a change in your beliefs when it shouldn't, because it uses strong rhetorical techniques (e.g. highlighting highly unrepresentative examples) whose effect you can't fully eliminate even when you know that they're there.

(I have a feeling that this might have been discussed before, but I don't remember where in that case.)

[-]pragmatist12y110

One piece of common wisdom on LW is that if you expect that receiving a piece of information will make you update your beliefs in a certain direction, you might as well update already instead of waiting.

It's more like, if you expect (in the statistical sense) that you will rationally update your beliefs in some direction upon receiving some piece of evidence, then your current probability assignments are incoherent, and you should update on pain of irrationality. It's not just that you might as well update now instead of waiting. But this only applies if your expected future update is one that you rationally endorse. If you know that your future update will be irrational, that it is not going to be the appropriate response to the evidence presented, then your failure to update right now is not necessarily irrational. The proof of incoherence does not go through in this case.

2Shmi12y

This seems like a breakdown in reflective consistency. Shouldn't you try to actively counter/avoid the expected irrationality pressure, instead of (irrationally and meekly) waiting for it to nudge your mind in a wrong direction? Is there a specific example that prompted your comment? I can think of some cases offhand. Say, you work at a failing company and you are required to attend an all-hands pep talk by the CEO, who wants to keep the employee morale up. There are multiple ways to avoid being swayed by rhetoric: not listening, writing down possible arguments and counter arguments in advance, listing the likely biases and fallacies the speaker will play on and making a point of identifying and writing them down in real time, etc.

4Kaj_Sotala12y

No specific examples originally, but Yvain had a nice discussion about persuasive crackpot theories in his old blog (now friends-locked, but I think that sharing the below excerpt is okay), which seems like a good example: As for trying to actively counter the effect of the misleading rhetoric, one can certainly try, but they should also keep in mind that we're generally quite bad at this. E.g. while not exactly the same thing, this bit from Misinformation and its Correction seems relevant:

0lmm12y

Sure, you should try to counter. But sometimes the costs of doing that are higher than the losses that will result from an incorrect belief.

2Alejandro112y

This seems related, though not exactly what you are asking for.

0ThrustVectoring12y

There's an intermediate step of believing things because you expect them to be true (rather than merely convincing). It's fully corrected if you use correlates-to-truth over convincingness for the update. In other words, if you expect the fifth column more if you see sabotage, and more if you don't see sabotage, then you can reduce that into just expecting the fifth column more.

[-]Dan_Moore12y190

The phrenology guy isn't showing up on the homepage for me. Did LW take him off?

5Emile12y

That's because the stylesheet link in the homepage is: and that link should be to: http://wiki.lesswrong.com/wiki/Lesswrong:Stylesheet

[-]Ben Pace12y180

I've been teaching myself the basics of probability theory (I'm sixteen) but I'm having trouble on the first step. My basic definitions of probabilities are all frequentist, and I don't know a good Bayesian source appropriate for a secondary school student. Is Jaynes' PT:LOS able to be read by moi, given that I know basic set theory? If not, can anyone recommend a different textbook?

[-]passive_fist12y340

Jayne's book probably requires a university undergraduate-level familiarity with probability theory to fully appreciate.

I'd say that for the time being you don't need to worry about bayesianism vs. frequentism. Just learn the basics of probability theory and learn how to solve problems.

9Ben Pace12y

Thanks for being the one commenter who told me how tough the book is - I'm leaving it for now, and the below recommendation of 'Understanding Uncertainty' was very useful for understanding what a probability is. After that, I've got some basic probability textbooks waiting to go. Cheers.

8Douglas_Knight12y

It's worth knowing that what Jaynes calls "probability" everyone else calls "statistics." Generally, "probability theory" means studying well-specified random models. In some sense this is frequentist, but in another sense the distinction does not apply. Whereas "statistics" is about subjective ignorance.

0Lumifer12y

That terminology sounds strange to me. I define statistics as a toolbox of methods to deal with uncertainty.

0Gvaerg12y

And simulation theory is kinda the opposite of statistics - whereas in statistics you deduce the distribution from sample data, in simulation you compute plausible sample data from a given distribution.

8pragmatist12y

If you're looking for an elementary introduction to Bayesian probability theory, I recommend Dennis Lindley's Understanding Uncertainty. A lot more accessible than Jaynes, but not dumbed down. It's informal, but it covers a number of quite sophisticated topics. Lindley is one of the architects of the Bayesian conspiracy.

5Ben Pace12y

This recommendation has helped me out a lot, I might do a write-up of the book as a LW post at some point in the future. Thanks.

7Oscar_Cunningham12y

Given that PT:LOS is free online you can just try reading it. Even if you don't understand all the maths (do you know some calculus?) you'll still be able to read his verbal explanations of things, which will give you a good idea of the distinction between frequentist statistics and Bayes.

7gjm12y

IIRC the version that's online is not the same as the dead-tree version you can buy; the latter has extra material and bugfixes. (I do, none the less, think reading the online version is a good way for Benito to determine whether he finds it approachable.)

1Oscar_Cunningham12y

Indeed. (Although the dead-tree version doesn't have that much extra material. It mostly just has the "--Much more here!!!--"" notices deleted.)

1JGWeissman12y

A good way to find out would be to try reading it.

[-]Risto_Saarelma12y170

With math, it's useful to be able to distinguish books you can't understand because you're missing prerequisite knowledge from books you can't understand because you just aren't reading them carefully enough. The prevailing wisdom seems to be that you can't really expect to be able to follow Jaynes through if you pick it up as your first serious textbook on probability.

-5RolfAndreassen12y

[-]Lumifer12y160

An interesting factoid. Drawing implications is left as an exercise for the reader.

"...for two decades, all the Minuteman nuclear missiles in the US used the same eight-digit numeric passcode: 00000000. ... And while Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara directly oversaw the installation of PALs on the US-based ICBM arsenal, US Strategic Command generals almost immediately had the PAL codes all reset to 00000000 to ensure that the missiles were ready for use regardless of whether the president was available to give authorization." (source)

9Douglas_Knight12y

duplicate. I'm surprised I can only find this one. The original source is Bruce Blair, 2004, who has made related complaints since 1977. Supposedly Eric Schlosser's book (2013) is an independent source. Luke quotes it at length here, but not about the zeros. The most common source is Steven Bellovin, who makes some historical remarks here more candidly than most accounts.

[-]ChrisHallquist12y150

Looking for people older than me (I'm 26) to tell me their memories of what kind of nutrition messages they remember getting from Nutrition Authority Type People (USDA or whatever).

The reason I ask is because I read a bunch of Gary Taubes over the weekend, and at first glance his claims about what mainstream nutritionists have been saying strike me as... not what I've experienced, to put it mildly. In particular, the nutritiony stuff I learned as a kid was always pretty clear on sugary soda and snacks being bad for you. Charitable hypothesis: maybe mainstream nutrition messaging was much crazier in the 80s? I don't actually think this is likely but I thought I'd ask.

7[anonymous]12y

I may be a bit older than you're looking for (44, grew up in small town Indiana) but it just so happens I was back in the US for Thanksgiving and happened to discuss nutrition education with other members of my family. All of the nutrition education I remember was structured in terms of the four main food groups: meat, dairy, grain, fruit & vegetables - focusing on the idea that these should all be represented in a balanced meal. We also were taught about nutritional content, mainly which vitamins are represented in which food groups (and which specific foods), but almost entirely separately from "meal planning". This was hardly changed from the nutrition education my parents received some 20 years previously.... although not surprising as a few of the teachers were the same! My younger siblings (38, 40) saw the introduction of the fifth food group, fats & sugars as I recall, presented as bad things that should be avoided. Also the presentation of the four food groups was somewhat altered, bringing nutritional balance (and the "recommended daily allowance") a bit more to the forefront in meal design. (All of the above is based on our memories of nutrition education which may be highly flawed!)

6A1987dM12y

What does Taubes say mainstream nutritionists said?

5ChrisHallquist12y

That they recommended that people reduce their fat intake (which is definitely true) but then he tries to pin increased consumption of sugary crap on them (which is much less credible). For example:

-2passive_fist12y

It doesn't sound like you're being neutral on this.

6ChrisHallquist12y

"Sugary crap" is just shorthand for "the sugary stuff everyone agrees is bad for you." The badness of e.g. sugary soda is pretty uncontroversial among nutritionists, "low-carb" or otherwise.

0passive_fist12y

It was my impression that dieticians recommend avoiding processed sugar because of the lack of nutrients, thus making it easy for a diet high in processed sugar to have too many calories and not enough nutrients. Also, that in people with a genetic predisposition to insulin resistance, diets high in sugar have been shown to be correlated with developing insulin resistance and diabetes. I have never seen a professional dietician refer to 'sugary stuff' as 'bad for you'.

0Lumifer12y

That terminology has always confused me. What, sucrose is not a nutrient? Why not? Not to mention that this is talking apples and oranges -- calories are a term from the physics-level description and nutrients are a term from the biochemistry-level description.

5hyporational12y

The correct word is micronutrients. Perhaps some people mistakenly interchange the words. I doubt anyone's confusing physics with biochemistry when they talk about these things.

1Lumifer12y

Mass media uses "nutrients" in the sense of "a magical substance, akin to aether or flogiston, that makes you thin and healthy". It is mostly generated by certificates of organic farming and is converted into its evil twin named "calories" by a variety of substances, e.g. anything connected to GMOs.

2hyporational12y

Ok. You clearly have a different kind of mass media there. "It's got electrolytes."

3passive_fist12y

You're right that sucrose can indeed be considered a nutrient, but I'm just using the word to refer to essential nutrients i.e. molecular groups that you need to consume in your diet for the proper functioning of human biochemistry and cannot be substituted for anything else. As Nornagest says, these are vitamins, minerals, essential amino acids and essential fatty acids. Sucrose is not any of these so it is not an essential nutrient. I don't see why 'comparing apples and oranges' invalidates the argument, though. What difference does it make if they refer to different processes? I also agree that nutrition is extremely contentious and politically charged.

-1Lumifer12y

Well, essential nutrients are a bit different thing, but even that doesn't really help. The issue here is that there is an unstated underlying assumption that everyone needs all the essential nutrients and the more the better. To give an example, iron is an essential nutrient. Without it you get anemia and eventually die. So, should I consume more of this essential nutrient? In my particular case, the answer happens to be no -- I have a bit too much iron in my blood already. Unsurprisingly, for many essential nutrients you can have too much as well as too little. And yet the conventional wisdom is that the more nutrients the better. Human biochemistry is very complicated and all the public discourse about the diet can manage is Less calories! More nutrients! Ugh. (yes, I know, I'm overstating things for dramatic effect :-P)

2passive_fist12y

I agree with you that 'more nutrients!' is not sound advice, but again, I never said anything like that, not even implicitly. Human biochemistry is indeed very complicated. That's exactly why I responded to ChrisHallquist's remark about 'sugar being bad', because I feel that that is vastly oversimplifying the issues at hand. For instance, simple sugars like fructose exist in fruit, and not necessarily in small amounts either. Yet I don't think he would argue that you should avoid all fruit.

3Lumifer12y

I am not arguing against you... Well, ChristHallquist is reading Taubes and for Taubes insulin is the devil, along with the carbs leading to it :-/

0A1987dM12y

What do you mean by small amounts? In the context of Taubes claiming that people are drinking soda because they don't realize it's unhealthy, this is the amount you're comparing it with. (For comparison, that's the amount in fruits.)

1hyporational12y

I once tried to plan a very simple diet consisting of as few foodstuffs as possible. Calculating the essential nutrient contents I quickly realized that's not possible and it's better to eat a little bit of everything to get what you need, unless of course, you take supplements.

2Lumifer12y

Yes, that's the idea behind Soylent but I'm rather sceptical of that concept.

0hyporational12y

Anyone else notice at least three of the soylent guys seem to have this unusual flush on their cheeks? Is this just sheer vitality glowing from them or could there be something else going on? :) I've seen several pictures of Rob and his face seems to be constantly red.

3gwern12y

Do you know if their Soylent recipe uses carrots or other pigmented vegetables? It could be an accumulation of the coloring. (This apparently happened to me as an infant with carrots. Made my face red/orangish.)

2hyporational12y

The early version contains carotenoids found in pigmented vegetables, at least lycopene found in tomatoes, and alpha-carotene found in carrots. It seems you'd get much less carotenoids from Soylent than just eating one tomato and one carrot per day. He mentions "not very scientific, but the males in my family have always loved tomatoes." Perhaps that's the explanation and not Soylent, although you get three times less carotenoids from tomatoes compared to carrots so you'd probably have to eat ridiculous amounts of them to become red. Perhaps they love carrots too.

0gwern12y

Early recipe, and practically speaking, I don't know what the effects of one tomato & carrot a day would be! Rhinehart and the others have been on Soylent for, what, a year now? That's a long time for stuff to slowly accumulate. Most people don't eat a single vegetable that routinely. During the summer I eat 1 tomato a day (we grow ours) without glowing, but then I don't eat any tomatoes during spring/winter, which is disanalogous.

0[anonymous]12y

I didn't know that. Seems a likely explanation.

0A1987dM12y

Does anyone actually think that the optimal amount of calories is zero and the optimal amount of nutrients is infinity? I haven't seen many people taking a dozen multivitamins a day but otherwise fasting, so... (If what they actually mean is that more people in the First World are eating more calories than optimal than fewer, and vice versa for certain essential nutrients, I'd guess they're probably right.) Then again, it's hard for most people to think quantitatively rather than qualitatively, but that doesn't seem to be a problem specific to nutrition.

2Lumifer12y

It's common for people to think that they (or others) should consume less calories and more nutrients. They generally stop thinking before the question of "how much more or less?" comes up.

0A1987dM12y

And sometimes they are right. True that, but that doesn't seem to be specific to nutrition. (That said, I am peeved by advice that assumes which way the listener is doing wrong, e.g. “watch less TV and read more books” rather than “don't watch too much TV and read enough books”.)

2kalium12y

Breatharians come close, but I guess the only nutrient they acknowledge is sunlight/vitamin D.

0[anonymous]12y

Um, no. Nutrients are things your body needs to function. Some, but not all, of them can be burned for calories. They can also be used for other things.

0Nornagest12y

In this context, I'd take "nutrients" to refer loosely to the set of things other than food energy that we need to consider in diet: vitamins, dietary minerals (other than sodium, usually), certain amino acids and types of fat, and so forth. That doesn't map all that closely to the biochemical definition of a nutrient, but I don't expect too much from pop science, especially not in a field as contentious and politically charged as nutrition.

0Lumifer12y

Oh, I don't expect much from it at all, but unfortunately this terminology is pervasive and, IMHO, serves to confuse and confound thinking on this topic.

-3Laoch12y

I'm sorry to say I expected more from you Chris. How do you reducing fat intake is definitely true? Especially when you've read Gary Taubes.

3jaime200012y

He means that it is definitely true that they were advocating reducing fat intake.

3Laoch12y

Wires crossed moment. Yes they were indeed, pity they were sooo wrong and that the word fat is conflated with a dietry meaning and a physiological energy storage meaning. In other words people hear "make me fat" when you mention fat and how one(me specifically) eats so much of it. Peter Attia and Gary Taubes have set up NUSI to get some much needed science behind optimal diet. Peter's site http://eatingacademy.com/ has loads of cool data on his experience with the keto fyi.

2Lumifer12y

It's been up for quite a while but I haven't noticed any progress. Is anything happening with it or it stalled?

2Laoch12y

Hmm I haven't seen anything either, my bad. Tis a shame, I'm not aware of any other optimal diet science. Is there any?

2Lumifer12y

Well, there are lot of claims for that :-/

4ephion12y

That they advocated reducing fat intake and especially saturated fats, and encouraged grain and carbohydrate intake.

9stoat12y

This sounds familiar to me. I'm 32 and I definitely remember hearing stuff like this. I remember in elementary school (so, late 80s early 90s) seeing the Canada food guide recommend a male adult eat something like up to 10 servings of grains a day, which could be bread or pasta or cereal. You were supposed to have some dairy products each day, maybe 2-4. And maybe 1-3 servings from Meat & Alternates. I remember that pretty much all fat was viewed (popularly) with caution, at least until Udo Erasmus came out with his book Good Fat, Bad Fat. But I do recall a clear message that soda and snacks were unhealthy. It wasn't as though soda was thought ok just because it was low fat / high carb.

3Lumifer12y

This may help... And that, too.

5hyporational12y

If someone decides to read these, a tiny summary would be nice.

5ChrisHallquist12y

I will likely end up doing so in an upcoming post, but I may not find time to write it for a few weeks.

0hyporational12y

Does he argue there was a change of opinion in the 80s or before that? If I recall correctly, he argues that the guidelines have remained roughly the same for decades, or even changed for worse.

2ChrisHallquist12y

Don't have the quotes readily on-hand but basically, yes, he claims offical low-fat recommendations of 70s/80s were important.

[-]Douglas_Knight12y140

I would like some feedback on a change I am considering in my use of some phrases.

I propose that journal articles be called "privately circulated manuscripts" and that "published articles" should be reserved for ones that be downloaded from the internet without subscription. A more mild version would be to adopt the term "public article" and just stop using "published article."

[-]gjm12y260

I think that if you do this and few others do, the main result will be to confuse your readers or hearers -- and of those who are confused, when you've explained I fear that a good fraction of those who didn't already agree with you will pigeonhole you as a crank.

Which is a pity, because it would be good for far more published work to be universally accessible than presently is.

A possibly-better approach along similar lines would be to find some term that accurately but unflatteringly describes journals that are only accessible for pay (e.g., "restricted-access") and use that when describing things published on such terms. That way you aren't redefining anything, you aren't saying anything incorrect, you're just drawing attention to a real thing you find regrettable. You might or might not want a corresponding flattering term for the other side (e.g. "publicly accessible" or something). "There are three things worth reading on this topic. There's a book by Smith, a restricted-access journal article by Jones, and a publicly-accessible paper by Black."

0Douglas_Knight12y

You don't think "privately circulated manuscript" is 100% accurate? I think it's pretty clear to say "a privately circulated article by Jones and a published paper by Black," at least as long as I provide links. The ambiguity I'm concerned about is where my comment is very short; the typical situation is providing the public version to someone who cited the private version.

[-]Kaj_Sotala12y110

"Privately circulated" implies something that's only available to a very small group and not widely available. This might be a fair characterization in the case of some very obscure journals, but we might reasonably expect that most of the universities in the world would have subscriptions to journals such as Nature. According to Wolfram Alpha, there are 160 million students in post-secondary education in the world, not including faculty or people at other places that might have an institutional subscription.

Even taking into account the fact that not all of "post-secondary education" includes universities but probably also includes more vocational institutions that likely don't subscribe to scientific journals, we can probably expect the amount of people who have access to reasonably non-niche journals to be in the millions. That doesn't really fit my understanding of "privately circulated".

[-]kalium12y110

Would you consider Harry Potter not to have been published because it is not being given away for free? Why should "published articles" be defined differently from "published books"?

2Douglas_Knight12y

Everyone applies "published" differently to books and articles. In fact, most people use "published article" to mean "peer-reviewed article," but even ignoring that there are pretty big differences. Why did you choose to make this comment here, rather than in response to my original comment?

2A1987dM12y

Like what?

2Lumifer12y

No, I read "privately circulated" as distributed to a limited and mostly closed circle. If anyone with a few bucks can buy the paper, I wouldn't call it "privately circulated".

0kalium12y

Exactly.

0lmm12y

A word is just a label for an empirical cluster. It's misleading to talk about "accurate" as though there were a binary definition.

0komponisto12y

The "manuscript" part certainly isn't, since these things are generally typeset.

0Douglas_Knight12y

I choose libel.

0drethelin12y

as always a phrase being technically 100 percent correct has a lot less to do with whether it's understood as intended than you might think. a privately circulated manuscript implies the protocols of the elders of zion to me.

-2Douglas_Knight12y

gjm chose the word "accurate."

Wouldn't it be more practical to simply adopt a personal rule of jailbreaking (if necessary) any paper that you cite? I know this can be a lot of work since I do just this, but it does get easier as you develop the search skills and is much more useful to other people than an idiosyncratic personal vocabulary.

2hyporational12y

Any how-to-advice on jailbreaking? Do you just mean using subscriptions at your disposal? I wonder if "pirating" papers has any real chance of adverse repercussions.

Any how-to-advice on jailbreaking?

I think there have been past threads on this. The short story is Google Scholar, Google, your local university library, LW's research help page, /r/Scholar, and the Wikipedia Resource Request page.

I wonder if "pirating" papers has any real chance of adverse repercussions.

I have 678 PDFs on gwern.net alone, almost all pirated, and perhaps another 200 scattered among my various Dropboxes. These have been building up since 2009. Assuming linear growth, that's something like 1,317 paper-years (((678+200)/2)*3) without any warning or legal trouble so far. By Laplace, that suggests a risk of trouble per paper-year of 0.076% (((1+0)/(1317+2)) * 100). So, pretty small.

0Douglas_Knight12y

There is no dichotomy. Word choice is largely independent of action. You set a good example, but you cite very few papers compared to your readers. Word choice to nudge your readers might have a larger effect. Do your readers even notice your example? My question is how to get people to link to public versions, not how to get them to jailbreak. I think that when I offer them a public link it is a good opportunity to shame them. If I call it an "ungated" link, that makes it sound abnormal, a nice extra, but not the default. An issue not addressed by my proposal is how to tell people that google scholar exists. Maybe I should not provide direct links, but google scholar links. Not search links, but cluster links ("all 17 versions"), which might also be more stable than direct links.

0gwern12y

I don't know. I know they often praise my articles for being well-cited, but I don't know if they would say the same thing were every citation a mere link to Pubmed. If you just want to shame them, then there's much more comprehensible choice of terms. For example, 'useful' or 'usable'. "Here is a usable copy" - implying their default was useless.

8hyporational12y

Universities have a lot subsriptions so that their students can access journal articles for free, so "privately circulated" perhaps isn't as accurate as you'd like to think. Journals can also be accessed from libraries.

1Shmi12y

Feel free to elaborate on your reasons and goals for this (beyond the obvious signaling).

1Douglas_Knight12y

What is the obvious signaling?

1Shmi12y

That you are the type of person who thinks that all research should be freely available and charging for access to scientific journals is morally wrong. (You likely also prefer Linux over Windows because MS is evil, but put up with Apple because it is cool.)

0[anonymous]12y

I had to double-check that you weren't secretly RMS.

0Douglas_Knight12y

RMS? Try Nina Paley cf But today I am not encouraging people to violate copyright, just to prefer links that work.

[-]fubarobfusco12y120

Is there a better expression for the "my enemy must be the friend of my other enemy" fallacy, or insistence on categorizing all your (political or ideological) opponents as facets of the same category?

[-]Kaj_Sotala12y150

Out-group homogeneity seems closely related, at least.

0AbdullaRashim12y

Semi related article (pdf link): What Is the Enemy of My Enemy? Causes and Consequences of Imbalanced International Relations, 1816–2001 Abstract:

[-]VAuroch12y120

Recently found this paper, entitled "On the Cruelty of Really Teaching Computer Science" by Dijkstra (plaintext transcription here). It outlines ways in which computer programming had failed to (and still has) actually jump across the transformative-insight gap that led to the creation of the programmable computer. Probably relevant to many of this crowd, and very reminiscent of some common thoughts I've seen here related to AI design.

In the same place I found this paper discussed, there was mention of this site, which was recommended as teaching computer science in a way implementing Dijkstra's suggestions and this textbook, similarly. I can't vouch for them personally yet, but this might be an appropriate addition to the big list of textbooks.

8ShardPhoenix12y

Dijkstra's ideas may be relevant to safety-critical domains (at least to some extent) but the article is flagrantly ignoring cost-benefit tradeoffs. Empirically we see that (manual) proof-oriented programming remains a small niche while test-driven programming has been very successful.

0VAuroch12y

He's certainly not ignoring cost-benefit tradeoffs. He acknowledges this as a perceived weak point, and claims that, when practiced properly, the tradeoff is illusory. (I rate this unlikely but possible, around 2% that it's purely true and another ~20% that the cost increase is greatly exaggerated.) I'm pretty sure Dijkstra would argue (and I'm inclined to agree) that proof-oriented programming hasn't gotten a fair field test, since the field is taught in the test-driven paradigm and his proof-oriented teaching methods were never widely tried. There's definitely some status quo bias at work; the critical question is whether Dijkstra's methods would pass the reversal test, and if so how broadly. My intuition suggests "Yes, narrowly with positive outlook"; as we move toward having more and more information on cloud-computing servers and services and social networks, provably-secure computing seems likely to be appealing in increasingly broad applications, particularly when you look at large businesses wanting to reap the benefits of new technologies but very leery of the negative consequences of bugs. And of course, even in the status quo, these methods still have relevance to anyone looking to make high-risk things like AI.

9Kaj_Sotala12y

I would be skeptical of this claim, given how diverse the field of software engineering is, and many programmers are both self-taught and mathematically talented, so they would be prone to trying out neat things like proof-oriented programming even if mainstream schools only taught the test-driven paradigm. At the same time, many schools actually focus on teaching computer science instead of software engineering, taking a much more theoretical and mathematical approach than what most programmers will ever actually need. People coming from these backgrounds would also seem to be inclined to try out neat formal methods. (If they pursued an academic career, they could even do so without profitability concerns.)

2passive_fist12y

Dijkstra's general senitment seems to be that applying existed engineering practices from civil, mechanical, electrical, etc. engineering disciplines to computer science is woefully inadequate. With this, I agree. I also agree that there seems to be some weird set of beliefs in mathematical culture that the human brain is superior to a computer and that no computer could ever do mathematics like a human could (I've seen even prominent mathematicians use Godel's theorem as bogus 'evidence' of this). But the problem is that there doesn't seem to be a viable alternative to the status quo of software engineering, not at the moment. The only type of radical new thinking that I am aware of is the functional programming approach to things taken by e.g. haskell. But there are a lot of issues there as well. So far, productivity has been far higher using the more traditional way of doing things.

2Gvaerg12y

I did some Googling after reading the article and found this book by Dijkstra and Scholten actually showing how a first-order language could be adapted to yield easy and teachable corectness proofs. That is actually amazing! I have a degree in CS and unfortunately I've never seen a formal specification system that could actually be implemented and not be just some almost-tautological mathematical logic, like so many systems that exist in the academia. Thanks very much for the link.

4Pfft12y

If you are interested in this kind of thing, you should check out Dafny. It's a programming language with Hoare-logic style pre- and postconditions (and the underlying implementation computes weakest preconditions, Dijkstra-style). But what sets it apart is that it is backed by an automatic theorem prover (Z3) which is sufficiently powerful to handle most things that seem trivial to a human. To me Dafny feels like the promise of programming verification research in the 1970s finally came through: you can carry out program verification like you would with pen and paper, without being overwhelmed by finicky algebraic manipulations.

2[anonymous]12y

Mathematicians (and Dijkstra qualifies as one) have been bemoaning the lack rigour in undergraduate education for some time now. (Aye, even as early as the French vs. English trigonometry textbook debates of the 1800s.) The United States has a peculiar cultural mismatch between the relative quality of secondary and undergraduate education, which in my mind causes most of the drama. In particular, EWD1036 was written during Dijkstra's career at UT Austin. I'd like to know if this phenomena is global, though.

[-]metatroll12y110

Is it just me, or is solipsism wrong?

4lmm12y

It's just you. But it amuses me that you think otherwise.

[-]NoSuchPlace12y110

The talk Eliezer Yudkowsky held at Oxford (and the resulting discussion) are now online.

5NancyLebovitz12y

If the human race is down to 1000 people, what are the odds that it will continue and do well? I realize this is a nitpick-- the argument would be the same if the human race were reduced to a million or ten million.

6knb12y

It's an interesting question. The Toba Catastrophe Theory suggests that human population reached as low as 10,000 individuals during a climate change period linked to supervolcano eruption. Another theory suggests that human population reached as low as 2000 individuals. Overall I think 1000 individuals is enough genetic diversity that humans could recover reasonably well. The real problem seems to me to be whether humans could ever catch up to where we are after being knocked down so low. Some people have suggested that if civilization collapses humanity won't be able to start a new industrial revolution due to depleted deposits of oil and surface minerals.

6NancyLebovitz12y

Garbage dumps would have metal that's more concentrated than you'd find it in ore. I'm not sure how much energy would be needed to refine it. If I were writing science fiction, I think I'd have modest tech-level efforts at mining garbage dumps in coastal waters. The History of the Next Ten Billion Years-- a Stapledonian handling of the human future. Entertaining, though I think it underestimates human inventiveness.

3taelor12y

Aluminum, in particular, is known for being very difficult to extract from ore, but once extracted, very easy to recycle into new products.

3Nornagest12y

Oil (and coal, which is less topically sexy but historically more significant to industrialization) is the big problem, though rare earths and other materials that see use more in trace than in concentration could also be an issue. If you're a medieval-level smith, you probably wouldn't care too much whether you're getting your Fe from bog iron nodules or from the melted skeletons of god-towers in the ruins of Ellae-that-Was, although certain types of bottleneck event could make the latter problematic for a time. Still, I'd be willing to bet at even odds that that wouldn't be a showstopper if it came to it.

0Adele_L12y

On the other hand, these future humans would probably be able to learn things like science much more quickly because of all the information we have lying around everywhere.

2Nornagest12y

Our information storage media has a surprisingly short shelf life. Optical disks of most types degrade within decades; magnetic media is more variable but even more fragile on average (see here and the linked pages). There are such things as archival disks, and a few really hardcore projects like HD-Rosetta, but they're rare. And then there's encryption and protocol confusion to take into account. A couple centuries after a civilization-ending event, I'd estimate that most of the accessible information left would be on paper, and not a lot of that.

0lmm12y

I don't know. Those objects make certain kinds of superstitions seem much more plausible.

1knb12y

The audio cuts out partway through the talk.

-1Richard_Kennaway12y

I haven't watched it all the way through, but I can jump into it at any point and it plays fine.

5knb12y

Audio cuts out at around 38 minutes, after that there is no sound from Eliezer's mic, so it's apparently relying on the camera mic which makes the recording noisy and hard to hear.

-4NoSuchPlace12y

The audio is only gone for a minute or so, so while this is annoying it's not major.

4knb12y

No, it cuts out completely for a minute, and then it apparently switches to the camera mic, which makes Eliezer very hard to hear over noise.

0FiftyTwo12y

He's a better public speaker than i expected.

[-]kpreid12y110

LW meta (reposted, because a current open thread did not exist then): I have received a message from “admin”:

We were unable to determine if there is a Less Wrong wiki account registered to your account. If you do not have an account and would like one, please go to your preferences page.

I have seen, indeed, options to create a wiki account. But I already have one; how do I associate the existing accounts?

0Gvaerg12y

A related question: I clicked the (modified) URL that "admin" sent me, and the page contained a form where I could fill in my LW password in order to create a wiki account. I submitted it but I cannot login on the wiki with my LW credentials. What's going on?

[-]niceguyanon12y110

It looks like the Sheep Marketplace is done since a major heist for its bitcoins took place. At least one part of this prediction worked out.

[-]lukeprog12y90

Today I skim-read Special Branch (1972), the first book-length examination of Good's "ultra-intelligent machine."

It is presented in the form of a 94-page dialogue, and the author (Stefan Themerson) is clearly not a computer scientist nor an analytic philosopher. So the book is largely a waste of attempted "analysis." But because I'm interested in how ideas develop over time and across minds, I'll share some pieces of the dialogue here.

A detective superintendent from "special branch," named Watson, meets up with the author (the... (read more)

[-]Adele_L12y80

Make sure you use the tag "open_thread" so that it will show up in the latest open thread on the sidebar.

[-]Douglas_Knight12y70

Here are two (correct) arguments that are highly analogous.

Brownian motion, the fact that a particle in water or air does not come to rest, but dances at a minimal rate is an important piece of evidence for the atomic hypothesis. Indeed, Leucippus and Democritus are said to have derived the atomic hypothesis from Brownian motion; certainly Lucretius provided it as evidence.

Similarly, Darwin worried that "blending" inheritance would destroy variation in quantitative traits. He failed to reach the conclusion that heredity should be discrete, though.

0fubarobfusco12y

I wonder if there is an analogous argument having to do with markets (or other social systems) and what an "equilibrium" looks like.

[-]WrongBot12y70

I'm planning to run a rationality-friendly table-top roleplaying game over IRC and am soliciting players.

The system is Unknown Armies, a game of postmodern magic set in a creepier, weirder version of our own world. Expect to investigate crimes, decipher the methods behind occult rituals, interpret symbols, and slowly go mad. This particular game will follow the misadventures of a group of fast food employees working for an occult cabal (well, more like a mailing list) that wants to make the world a better place.

Sessions will be 3-4 hours once a week over I... (read more)

[-]niceguyanon12y60

I̶s̶ ̶t̶h̶e̶r̶e̶ ̶a̶ ̶n̶a̶m̶e̶ ̶f̶o̶r̶ ̶t̶h̶e̶ ̶h̶a̶l̶o̶ ̶e̶f̶f̶e̶c̶t̶ ̶o̶f̶ ̶w̶o̶r̶d̶s̶?̶ ̶ ̶T̶h̶e̶r̶e̶ ̶s̶h̶o̶u̶l̶d̶ ̶b̶e̶ ̶b̶e̶c̶a̶u̶s̶e̶ ̶o̶n̶e̶ ̶e̶x̶a̶m̶p̶l̶e̶ ̶o̶f̶ ̶t̶h̶i̶s̶ ̶i̶s̶ ̶"̶O̶v̶e̶r̶d̶r̶a̶f̶t̶ ̶P̶r̶o̶t̶e̶c̶t̶i̶o̶n̶"̶.̶

EDIT: I am specifically referring to Debit Card Overdraft p̶r̶o̶t̶e̶c̶t̶i̶o̶n̶ service

EDIT 2: I have been made aware that I am using the wrong term, overdraft service is the term most commonly used by major banks to refer to the "service" they offer on debit card overdrafts. If you see me refer to somethin... (read more)

4ChrisHallquist12y

I bank with Chase, and unless the written information I've received from them is a straight-up lie (which would put them at risk for a lawsuit...) this information is factually inaccurate. What you describe as "overdraft protection" is actually the policies you'll be subjected to without overdraft protection. Overdraft protection does come with fees, but they're much less, no more than $10 a day. (The moral of the story: don't be overdrawn. It will cost you money in fees with or without overdraft protection.)

4niceguyanon12y

The confusion stems from the fact that there are two different services for Chase, one for check writing and one for debit cards. I am specifically talking about debit card usage and will edit my post to make it more clear. Chase will charge you $10 per day for check writing overdraft protection on accounts that are linked, this is true. However for debit card use, you would be charge $0 if you opt-out and indeed pay $34 per transaction if you opt-in. The problem is that many banks combine checking and debit card usage in to one plan, and others like Chase split it up. My main point is that check writing is becoming very rare, and most people get dinged from fees using their debit cards. So if they are combined and you really don't write checks, then you definitely should opt-out. There is $34 fee for debit card overdraft protection and $0 fee for opting out(here and here). Does this resolve your disagreement? If you opt-out of debit card overdraft protection it will not cost you any money! If you opt-in for debit card overdraft protection it will cost you money. I know it sounds ridiculous, because it is.

0ChrisHallquist12y

Based on the links, Chase doens't even call their service for debit cards "overdraft protection," so this doesn't support the original point about words misleading people. Also, it seems that if you have debit card coverage and overdraft protection, you'll at most be changed $10/day for overdrawing with your debit card. Still better to use a credit card when you don't have money in your checking account, obviously. (Also, as Louie Helm recently pointed out, as long as you pay your balance in full every month, you're better off using your credit card for everything because the rewards program will reduce the cost of everything you buy by 1% or more.)

-1niceguyanon12y

In the spirit of being helpful and trying to be as factually accurate as possible, I have edited my original post, as you are absolutely are correct about the terminology. I would only argue that I consider my original point to be merely a segway to introduce my main argument that debit card overdraft services are typically poor decisions. I do not believe this is accurate. However assume it is accurate, if you weigh the cost/benefit (again talking about debit card use) it IMO is still a terrible investment. My bank happens to be Wells Fargo and they charge $12, for debit OD service, better, but still pretty bad. But ultimately you must decide what is an acceptable fee. The vast majority of people getting dinged for debit card overdrafts, are not buying life saving medication, its more likely to be a cup of coffee or a hot dog. So if you asked them what they would have done if they knew they had insufficient funds, they would likely reject the $10 or $34 fee. This isn't even considering that most banks are not obligated to tell you that you are overdrawn, so you could get dinged $10 a day until you finally realize it, as opposed to being notified right away from being declined. BTW since you're a Chase customer Chase happens to waive the fee if you can fund your account by day end, but they aren't obligated to inform you that you are negative. You're better off using your credit card and saying no to debit card overdraft service – for the most part. Unless you frequently find yourself in the position of having your purchases must go though for what ever reason.

0fubarobfusco12y

Also, use financial institutions whose incentives are better-aligned with the interests of their depositors; notably, credit unions.

3palladias12y

Oh wheee, this is what I worked on in DC. There are a few different things that can happen when you try to make a purchase on a debit card with insufficient funds: * the merchant sees you don't have the money, the card is declined, and you pay the bank nothing * the bank transfers money from a linked account (usually a savings account or line of credit) and charges a fee for this service (median $10, at least back in 2012) * the bank covers the cost of the purchase, which you now need to pay back, along with a fee of (at median) $35 Both the second and third option are sometimes called Overdraft Protection. There is no industry standard term, so it can be very hard to contrast between banks and disambiguate overdrafts covered by a transfer and regular overdrafts. (You can see the 14 different terms we found across 24 banks and credit unions here). The law changed recently (in the last 5 years) so that banks have to ask you to opt-in to overdraft. If you take no action, when you try to buy something with your debit card you don't have the money to cover, you just can't do it, and you incur no fee. So, banks have done a big push to get people to opt-in, including using the "Overdraft Protection" language, but, for most people, it's a bad choice. And, fun fact, some banks reorder your purchases, when they're processed, in order to maximize the number of overdrafts you incur. (i.e. if you had $20 in you account and bought, in order, items costing $5, $5, $5, $20, some banks reorder your purchases high-to-low so they can charge three overdraft fees instead of one). You can see a graphic with data from a real world case here.

0niceguyanon12y

Fun Fact, if you overdraw and are protected by a bank transfer from a linked account but that linked account is also insufficient, you get charged both fees – one fee for the transfer, and another for not having enough after the transfer! How can they justify this? Easy, the fee for just a transfer, not guaranteeing you that your transfer will be adequate.

2gwern12y

Last month I signed up for a bank account at my local credit union, and they do offer overdraft protection of various sorts. One of the things that impressed me was that the woman who was setting up my account explained to me why I did not want overdraft protection, using a very similar example.

2Ander12y

I cannot speak for all Banks policies, but that isn't how the 'overdraft protection' on my account works. How mine (actually a credit union, maybe thats a difference) works is: Without it, if I was to write a check with insufficient funds, I would get charged some large fee. But with the Overdraft Protection, it will transfer money from my savings account to checking to cover it, for free, helping me avoid the fee. Essentially it lets me use the savings accounts as a safety net to avoid the charges. This 'protection' has in fact saved me in a couple of instances.

0xnn12y

UK banks lost a test case a few years ago that led to a lot of people getting back however many years of overdraft charges, plus interest. The same thing happened a bit later with "payment protection insurance", intended to cover loan repayments if you lost your job, but with so many exclusions as to be almost worthless. The end result was something like a forced savings policy. Cue people who avoided the initial trap wondering where their free money is. You have to wonder sometimes.

[-]NancyLebovitz12y50

Computer programs which maximize entropy show intelligent behavior.

Kevin Kelly linked to it, which means it might make sense, but I'm not sure.

It sounds like Prigogine (energy moving through a system causes local organization), but I'm not sure about Prigogine, either.

4fubarobfusco12y

I'm curious about this, and specifically what's meant by this "decoupling". Anyone have a link to research about that? It sounds somewhat like "financial AIs are paperclipping the economy" or possibly "financial AIs are wireheading themselves", or both. If either is true, that means my previous worries about unfriendly profit-optimizers were crediting the financial AIs with too much concern for their owners' interests.

2gwern12y

Previously: http://lesswrong.com/lw/h96/link_causal_entropic_forces/ http://lesswrong.com/lw/h7r/open_thread_april_1530_2013/8th1

Louie on G+ links an interesting pair of philosophy papers: http://plus.google.com/104557909419304580033/posts/jNdsspkqGH8 - An attempt to examine the argument from disagreement ('no two people seem able to agree on anything in ethics') by using computer simulations of belief convergence. Might be interesting reading.

[-]FiftyTwo12y40

There are a couple of commercially available home eeg sets available now, has anyone tried them? Are they useful tools for self monitoring mental states?

[-]pdsufferer12y40

I've been diagnosed with avoidant personality disorder and obsessive compulsive personality disorder, as well as major depression, about 4 months ago, and even though my depression has been drastically reduced by medication, I still often have suicidal thoughts. Does anyone have advice on dealing with this? It's just hard to cope with feeling like I'm someone that it isn't good or healthy to be around.

6drethelin12y

Lots of people enjoy hanging out with my me despite my occasional suicidal ideation! Most people can't read your mind!

4witzvo12y

naive question (if you don't mind): What sort of things trigger your self-deprecating feelings, or are they spontaneous? E.g. can you avoid them or change circumstances a bit to mitigate them?

2pdsufferer12y

The prospect of social interaction, whether it actually happens or not, can trigger it. Any time I start a project (including assignments at university), go back to edit something, and it doesn't meet my standards, I get quite severe self-deprecating feelings. For the second one I managed to mitigate it by changing my working process to something more iterative and focused on meeting the minimum requirements before optimizing. I still have not found a remotely serviceable solution for the social interaction problems, and the feedback loops there are more destructive too. At least with the perfectionism problem I can move to another project to help restore some of my self-esteem.

1witzvo12y

It's easy to be sympathetic with these two scenarios -- I get frustrated with myself, often enough. Would it be helpful to discuss an example of what your thoughts are before a social interaction or in one of the feedback loops? I'm not really sure how I'd be able to help, though... Maybe your thoughts are thoughts like anyone would have: "shoot! I shouldn't have said it that way, now they'll think..." but with more extreme emotions. If so, my (naive) suggestion would be something like meditation toward the goal of being able to observe that you are having a certain thought/reaction but not identify with it.

Evolution in humans does not work to produce an integrated intellectual system but produces the set of hacks better suited to the ancestral environment than any other human. Thus we should expect the average human brain to have quite insular but malleable capabilites. Indeed I have the impression that old arts like music try to repurpose those specific pathways in novel ways. Are there parts of our brains we can easily repurpose to aid in our quest for rationality?

2NancyLebovitz12y

I have a notion we aren't just adapted to the ancestral environment-- we've also got adaptations for low-tech agriculture (diligence, respect for authority) and cities (tolerance for noise, crowding, and strangers). Neither list is intended to be complete. I've wondered whether people in separatist/supremacist movements have fewer city genes than average.

0Metus12y

Great point, we have adaptions for a multitude of environments. Still, the question is, can we repurpose some of those little adaptions for rationality or finetune them by some technique?

0lmm12y

You mean like imagining you're going to present an issue to an authority figure when thinking about it? Or something more wacky like converting reasoning problems into visual problems?

0Metus12y

Either. The first will be lower hanging fruit, the second will be much more non-obvious. My point, I think, is that most of the stuff on lesswrong is on the theoretical side of things but quite impractical.

[-]hesperidia12y20

I am trying to find a post here and am unable to find it because I do not seem to have the right keywords.

It was about how the rational debate tradition, reason, universities, etc. arose in some sort of limited context, and how the vast majority of people are not trained in that tradition and tend to have emotional and irrational ways of arguing/discussing and that it seems to be the human norm. It was not specifically in a post about females, although some of the comments probably addressed gender distributions.

I read this post definitely at least six months and probably over a year ago. Can anyone help me?

0gjm12y

Probably not what you're after, but there's Making Rationality General-Interest by Swimmer963. Further out but with a little overlap with what you describe: Of Gender and Rationality by Eliezer. Or No Safe Defense, Not Even Science by Eliezer. I think it's less than 25% probable that any of these is what you're after, but (1) looking at them might sharpen your recollection of what you are after, (2) one or more might be a usable substitute for whatever your purpose is, and (3) others reading your comment and wanting to help now needn't check those :-).

0hesperidia12y

"No Safe Defense, Not Even Science" is close enough for the purpose I was using it for. Thank you!

0gjm12y

You're welcome.

[-]CAE_Jones12y20

Someone led me to Emotional Baggage Check. The idea appears to be that people can leave an explanation of what's troubling them, or respond to other people's issues with music or words of encouragement. It sounds like a good idea (the current popular strategy of whining on a public forum seems to be more trouble than it's worth). It doesn't look particularly troll-proof, though.

If nothing else, I'd like to look at them in a year or so and see how it's turned out.

4Trixie12012y

Hey dude! I am the creator of that site. Hm yeah we are working on the whole troll-proof thing. Actually have a whole alert system set up but we still have more to work on. And yeah I'm pretty interested to see where we will be in a year too. Stay tuned.

[-]JoshuaZ12y20

Can someone change the front page so it doesn't say "Lesswrong:Homepage"? This sounds like it is a website from 1995. Almost any other plausible wording would be better.

6David_Gerard12y

The graphic appears to be broken.

[-][anonymous]12y10

Directed Technological Change and Resources

http://whynationsfail.com/blog/2013/11/26/directed-technological-change-and-resources.html

"Temporary interventions are sufficient to redirect technological change..."

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