Open thread, Nov. 21 - Nov. 27 - 2016

[-]Anders_H9y120

The one-year embargo on my doctoral thesis has been lifted, it is now available at https://dash.harvard.edu/bitstream/handle/1/23205172/HUITFELDT-DISSERTATION-2015.pdf?sequence=1 . To the best of my knowledge, this is the first thesis to include a Litany of Tarski in the introduction.

[-]Commander Zander9y60

This is not news but i would use this site a lot more if there was a little less downvoting. Is the bottleneck on this computer programmers or coordinators?

5gjm9y

More the former. In particular, there is one user who has been banned repeatedly, has many sockpuppets, and engages in mass-downvoting of people who have in the past expressed opinions contrary to his political position. (It is not clear that he now participates in any way other than by downvoting people he disapproves of, and it's possible that he would rather burn LW to the ground if he could.) Given better tools it might be easy to identify all his sockpuppets, terminate them with extreme prejudice, and stop him coming back; at present, those tools aren't in place. The LW moderators don't have the sort of direct access to the data that would make investigation easy without actually making code changes to the site, and are (I think) not programmer types anyway. So what needs to happen is for people who have software expertise (but no mod power) to develop what they hope will be suitable tools, without any sort of access to the actual server or data (but there is a procedure, only a few years out of date, for making a sort of LW sandbox on your own computer); for them to provide these to the people who run the site; for the tools to get deployed; for the mods to try to use them to do their job; and for whatever iteration on this process is needed to happen. (And of course this requires the people with expertise but no power to be sufficiently motivated to do their bit, without any actual way of knowing that the other people involved will actually be willing and able to turn their work into something usable.)

6Dagon9y

This makes it sound like coordination is at least as much a problem as expertise. Do the mods have any sort of feature list or request for things they WANT to use to solve the problem?

1gjm9y

Yup. The person to talk to would be Elo.

[-]MrMind9y50

The hero's journey

Someone common lives in harmony with a society oppressed by some evil. S/he sets for a journey which grants him/her the power to overturn the evil. S/he usually reintegrates into society.

The anti-hero's journey

Someone common lives in disharmony with a society oppressed by some evil. S/he sets for a journey which grants him/her the power to overturn the evil. S/he usually fails to do so.

The Chinese hero's journey

Someone powerful lives in disharmony with a society oppressed by some evil. After defeating the evil s/he sets for a journey whic... (read more)

4Gunnar_Zarncke9y

My guess: The Chinese anti-hero's journey Someone powerful lives in harmony with a society oppressed by some evil. After failing to defeat the evil s/he sets for a journey which grants him/her the humility / balance to live in harmony with society. S/he usually fails at that to.

0MrMind9y

Wonderful! :-)

[-]Daniel_Burfoot9y50

Consider the following two theories about why deep learning is currently the dominant paradigm of AI research:

Deep learning methods are actually superior to other approaches in fundamental ways. Possibly this is because they are closer to the real structure of human brains. Perhaps it is because they can be used to build complex models, and complex models are necessary to describe a complex world. Deep learning is the result of an exploratory process in AI, which after long deliberation picked machine learning as the right family of methods, and deep lea

... (read more)

4MrMind9y

I see 2 as a special case of 1. No computational model is inherently superior to another, it is just better for the data / computational power / necessities we have at hand.

0NatashaRostova9y

I am not a ML Research Scientist -- but have studied and used it, and find it very interesting. As far as I understand, deep learning is able to discover and fit any nonlinear dynamics in a set of data, which then of course has to be trained/regularized/cross-validated to prune away over-fitting. If we accept the view that reality is just a huge set of nonlinear equations and information, and NN/DL can discover these at any level of granularity, then it is a reasonable prediction that they are well posed to be the best. Also I'm not confident in this next point, but would love some additional feedback. Read this part with skepticism: As I understand effective DL works so well because it combines filtering and tractability within the model structure, and with variation on layering/neurons/optimization techniques, it opens up a greater set of potential models than many other model classes. This makes the fact that it works so well with GPU not a lucky accident, but rather an intrinsic feature of the mathematical structure of the model. Perhaps that's why we evolved to use NN type structure in our brain -- due to its tractability and parallel information processing abilities? To use an example from my own research, in Financial Econometric asset pricing we often use this tool called a Kalman Filter to filter out states of the world from sets of stochastic PDEs. Optimizing those models, when they have more than ~10 parameters, is such a hassle. It requires lots of optimization black-magic, which is a quasi-scientific method where over months you run different optimization algorithms on the whole model, then single parameters, then the whole model, and if some parameter looks 'weird' you manually change it to what you 'think' it should be. Basically a neural network could learn the dynamics here (without revealing them to us), and provide a potentially equal forecast (haven't tested this). It could also do this much faster than our optimization method (I think). The

3Daniel_Burfoot9y

I can't comment usefully on everything you wrote, so I'll just say a couple of things. First, don't be too credulous: the field of AI has been surrounded and plagued by hype since its inception, the current era isn't much different. Researchers have every incentive to encourage the hype. Second, it's interesting that you bring up the Kalman Filter, because it makes a nice contrast to DNNs. The Kalman filter is actually kind of nice aesthetically, it has a pleasing mathematical elegance to it. People who use the KF know more or less the limits of its applicability. When I'm reading DNN papers, I feel like the whole field has given up on the notion of aesthetics and wholeheartedly embraced architecture hacking as a methodology. Third, I think you'll find that the DNNs are much much harder to use than you imagine or expect. The problem is that all DNN research relies on architecture hacking: write down a network, train it up, look at the result, then tweak the architecture and repeat. There is very little, embarrassingly little theory behind it all. The phrase "we have found" is prominent in DNN papers, meaning "we tweaked the network a bunch of times in various ways and found that this trick worked the best." Furthermore, each cycle of code/test/tweak takes a really long time since DNN training, almost by definition, is very time-consuming.

0NatashaRostova9y

To address your third point first, I'm sure you are right. I have only played around with simple NNs, and shouldn't have spoken freely on how it would be easy to estimate a more complex one, when I don't know much about it. As a follow up question to your second point: The Kalman filter is a very aesthetically pleasing model, I agree. Something I wonder, but have no idea on, is whether there are mathematical concepts similar to the Kalman filter (in terms of aesthetics and usefulness) that are entirely outside of the understanding of the human brain. So, hypothetically, if we engineered humans with IQ 200+ (or whatever), they would uncover things like the Kalman Filter that normal humans couldn't grasp. If that's true, does it stand to reason that we could still use those models with a sufficiently well optimized/built DNN? We would just never understand what's going on inside the network? I often think of self-driving cars as learning the dynamic interactions of a set of nonlinear equations that are beyond the scope of a human to ever derive. I'll note I realize some of my questions might be too vague or pseudo-philosophical to be answered. PS: I did a little internet sleuthing and have read the first ~12 pages of your book so far, which is very interesting and similar to how I think of the world (yours is much more well developed). I am also incredibly interested in empirical philosci and read/write/think about it a ton.

[-]moridinamael9y30

Have you heard of Gobekli Tepe?

Through the radiocarbon method, the end of Layer III can be fixed at about 9000 BCE (see above) but it is believed that the elevated location may have functioned as a spiritual center by 11,000 BCE or even earlier, essentially at the very end of the Pleistocene.

...

The surviving structures, then, not only predate pottery, metallurgy, and the invention of writing or the wheel, they were built before the so-called Neolithic Revolution, i.e., the beginning of agriculture and animal husbandry around 9000 BCE. But the constru

... (read more)

4FourFire9y

I wouldn't take this claim for granted, perhaps I can contact one of these archaeologists, to check how they reached their estimate? There's not many pixels in this source but it explains a concept for low manpower block moving using simple tools probably available to pre-farming civilizations.

4Lumifer9y

500 people is not a "large, organized" civilization. The town of Jericho is supposed to have had a population of 2-3,000 people around the same time. Calling it a "civilization" is aIso debatable. I really don't see anything earth-shaking about this. That's evidence for the theory that the Younger Dryas were caused by an extraterrestrial impact, not for the theory of "true civilizations before 10,000 BC".

4Vaniver9y

I feel like you're missing what makes this case interesting, that our best evidence makes it look like this happened before agriculture and animal husbandry, not after. 500 people is a lot of people to have in one place with only hunting and gathering. Jericho came about three thousand years after Gobekli Tepe, if one takes the dating estimates at face value.

4Lumifer9y

Not if they gather for a few weeks or so, and then disperse.

0moridinamael9y

It is worth noting that even mainstream archaeologists who aren't on board with the idea of mysterious ancient civilizations and impact extinctions think Gobekli Tepe is weird and not easily explicable. They assert that it would build by hunter-gatherers despite the fact that this contradicts their usual model of what hunter-gatherers should be able to accomplish.

5Lumifer9y

Yeah, but the thing is, I don't see anything terribly important about facts which "contradict their usual model of what hunter-gatherers should be able to accomplish" since I think their usual model should come with a large warning label "EPISTEMIC STATUS: UNCERTAIN". If you have a collection of guesses based on sparse data, you should be prepared to revise these guesses when new data comes in. It's a big deal if you staked your academic career on one of those guesses; otherwise, not so much.

0bogus9y

True, but these are arguably a lot more like "large, organized civilizations" than "isolated bands of foragers". What this suggests is that complex social organization may have been a fairly gradual development occurring over thousands of years, as opposed to a sudden shift resulting from the adoption of agriculture or animal herding. But this is a rather small and local "tweak" on the 'prevailing interpretation'.

6Lumifer9y

It's the "isolated" word that's carrying most of the weight here and I don't see any reason to consider the hunter-gatherer tribes of that age isolated. Now, contemporary stone-age tribes are all very isolated, but that is clearly a selection effect. If you're a forager tribe 10 kya, why wouldn't you interact (sometimes cooperate, sometimes fight) with other similar tribes around you?

0moridinamael9y

I'm not really in a position to contradict anybody on this topic, but I can't seem to Google up any info about Jerico that supports that claim, unless you expand your window of "around that time" by a couple of thousand years. I am prepared to be wrong about this, and will keep looking. Regardless, I am still having a hard time imagining a supposedly pre-writing, pre-pottery, literally stone age civilization building something like Gobekli Tepe. In an admittedly naive framing, if you just look at Gobekli Tepe, it seems more extensive and sophisticated than anything we see for another 4000 years or so, when the Sumerians start building their cities. As for the relevance of the link I posted, you're right, I debated whether to include the link at all. I decided to include it because it does constitute evidence for a significant, environment-shifting celestial event occurring within that window of time.

0Lumifer9y

Wikipedia says so, but doesn't provide a supporting reference. With respect to Gobeliki Tepe, keep in mind that it was not a town, that is, not where people lived. The best guess is that it was some sort of a spiritual/religious/temple kind of place. But in any case, haven't we've been doing "How could those savages have built THAT?!??" since XIX century England and Stonehenge..?

0knb9y

There's no mystery about what caused the quaternary mass extinction--humans reached the Americas and wiped out the ecologically naive megafauna.

0Vaniver9y

If I remember correctly, it showed up in Sapiens. One suspicion is that a bunch of tribes used it as their periodic meeting ground, and that it led to the invention of agriculture in the region because of the frequent human visitation. This seems plausible to me, especially if it's constructed bit by bit over many years. (How they would do the quarrying in the first place seems weirdest in my model.)

2Lumifer9y

I think it's just a simple case of "Flint hard, limestone soft, scratch the limestone with the flint point, repeat, repeat, repeat, repeat..." I wonder at which point the stone-cutting tools stopped being stone themselves.. Bronze is probably too soft and even early iron might have been too soft and too expensive to use for stone-cutting.

[-]MrMind9y30

A little bit of a wild idea: what if the concept of a single unified identity is a social construct?

I'm reading "RESTful web API", O'Reilly's book about the REST protocol, which contains this sentence: "Just as one person may be addressed by different names in different contexts", then gives as example a friendly surname, a Twitter handle and a formal salutation. Reading that sparked an association: back when there were no social media, and even further away in time when there was no Internet at all, we all had one name: our complete na... (read more)

4Lumifer9y

That is incorrect -- there were nicknames, various nom de guerre/plume/..., etc. Besides, most societies have a variety of ways to address an individual depending on the formality of the occasion and the relative status of the speaker: compare "Hey Lizzy" to "Your Majesty" :-D

1FourFire9y

That might be true, but the fact remains that one person is still completely dependent on and consequently bound to one neural substrate, and the support system for said neural substrate, which permits us (for now) to tie a person's personality to their distinct 'body'. This remains true even in the spectrum of cases when multiple personalities or possibility even people (appear to) inhabit or share the same neural substrate. If the substrate is disrupted, the indivdual(s) are destroyed. This will not always be the case, once technology progresses to such an extent that synthetic and digital persons living in distributed neural substrates become first possible at all and then commonplace in society, the the above statement will be false and a society wide identity crisis will emerge for those not born into the new status quo. We biological humans, with our antiquated instincts for people in single bodies will be old & regressive compared to the zeitgeist of society.

0ChristianKl9y

As Lumfier says naming is often more complicated than that. Scientists who published in Latin for example often didn't simply write their name as they get called in their native language on their manuscript but Latinized it. People who move to Spain often adopt the Spanish naming convention where the last name is inherited from both mother and father. I remember (I think from Code Complete) that the assumption that everybody has a name is also false.

[-]ChristianKl9y20

Philip Tetlock speaks strongly of the virtues of foxes. Is there a person in the decision science field who defends being a hedgehog with good arguments?

2Douglas_Knight9y

Does Tetlock make good arguments? Doesn't he just say that they have a small empirical advantage? An empirical advantage means that he doesn't know what the virtues actually are. Though maybe a small mean advantage corresponds to a large difference at the tails, and all superpredictors are foxes. Tetlock himself praises hedgehogs: he says that they are necessary for asking good questions. I don't he provides any evidence for this and I'm a little worried that it's just bullshit for the purpose of being inclusive. There is a long history of decision science praising models and condemning humans who second-guess the models. Is this praise of hedgehogs? They certainly don't use the word "hedgehog" — that's Tetlock's brand. Or does a precise model not count, only verbal models? When Tetlock talks about foxes and hedgehogs, he sounds to me like a hedgehog, insisting that every new result has vindicated his verbal model that I can't pin down.

0ChristianKl9y

Tetlock has more than just verbal models. "Expert Political Judgment: How Good Is It? How Can We Know?" has a technical appendix.

4Douglas_Knight9y

The technical appendix is technical on the matter of scoring, not on the fox-hedgehog distinction. He has a precise test for the fox/hedgehog distinction. But he claims that it means a lot more than a short list of vague questions. In the technical appendix he scores people in many different ways and he claims that these are reasonable things to expect of foxes and hedgehogs, but it's all post hoc. There's no evidence that he ever had a theory of foxes and hedgehogs.

[-]mortal9y20

How do I remove the effect of cognitive biases on my decision making? My current idea is to - one, train myself to recognize the points when biases may affect me; two, when making an important decision with a high cost or influence on my future, make the decision the 'academic' way.

Is this optimal? Do you have any better solutions?

Also, which book is better to use as a starting point - 'Judgement in Managerial decision Making', or 'Judgement under Uncertainty'? Is 'Thinking Fast and Slow' worth spending time on compared to actively practicing the skill of recognizing biases that influenced your thinking during the day?

Thank you.

[-]ingive9y-20

Spinozism Is Back

Einstein, Sagan for example, was Spinozists.

“I believe in Spinoza's God, who reveals Himself in the lawful harmony of the world, not in a God who concerns Himself with the fate and the doings of mankind... to Rabbi Herbert Goldstein (1929)”― Albert Einstein"

Neurospinozism.

Science Finds God: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VuqvI49IEwU

[-]ingive9y-30

Science Finds God 23:05

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VuqvI49IEwU https://www.asimpleclick.org/

A type of "self-help" similar to CBT or so forth, but of course, without any double-blind trial, or placebo-controlled, if it's possible. But from my point of view, worth investigation, especially in a clinical setting.

What do you think, watching the video, impressions?

Sources:

Harms, E. (1962): “Ethical and Psychological Implications of Religious Conversion”, Review of Religious Research, Vol. 3, No. 3, pp. 122-131, DOI: 10.2307/3510690
http://www.s

... (read more)

2Viliam9y

Okay, I watched the video and it was impressive. If I start my own cult, I will definitely want to hire your video guy. My impression is that there are a few good ideas in the core, but they are blown out of proportion ("motte and bailey"). The video is an advertisement, using the standard techniques to create a mountain out of a molehill. It's impressive and technically well-done, but when you are familiar with the pattern, it's just the same pattern again. Generally, it feels like a LessWrong-inspired Scientology clone. They even talk about registering as a religion. This is how it probably works in reality: 1) Create an effective spiral around a few keywords such as "logic", by providing a few clever insights, and then insisting that investing as much emotional energy as possible in these few insights will fix everything that is wrong with the world, or at least give you personal superpowers. 2) Subtly redefine "logic" to mean "what our leader says". 3) Profit!

-2ingive9y

The video is an advertisement to create a mountain out of a mountain which is not proved to be a mountain yet. Otherwise, your idea will come across as a molehill even if you had a mountain or not, so it might be effective to pretend to be a mountain. I say the latter for the intersubjective reality of lesswrong (as defined in the video). It's done to raise awareness around the phenomena/get regular folks interested. It is logical, rational & critical thinking after all. Submitting yourself to rationality isn't too bad? The word doesn't matter as much as the process. Because people who value comfort, (presume the theory is correct) will rationalize and be a slave to this comfort, how can any thinking be critical if it stems from a flawed paradigm? Maybe even rationalists take this for granted as a human flaw to justify not getting the emotional part. That was speculation and assuming a lot.(intersubjective) Are they blown out of proportion because the evidence is the anecdotes/testimonies? We all get it that we need studies and peer-review, that's what most here would ask for before looking into it but at least see it's interesting. :D What is the bait-and-switch here? What's the partial truth and the underlying falsehood? If you mean with the 4th step not being told before the 3rd and so forth, that makes sense to me, because why wouldn't it? It's not like there is a 5th step, it's all within the video if not there, the website, from there the wiki etc. The steps were generalized in the beginning I think. In Germany you receive a lot of benefits for registering as a religion, as comparable to charity. The latter which they tried for many months, even getting ripped off by lawyers. Can't register a charity if you don't accept money because they simply funnel money to charity themselves without being middle-men. But after this new knowledge, they instantly did it I'd guess. Teaching neuroscience, evolutionary biology, AGI, in school in depth isn't too bad? You'r

3Viliam9y

I agree that there is this "arms race" between advertisers and consumers, where advertisers always exaggerate, and then consumers learn to discount everything, so if you enter the debate without exaggerating, the consumers will discount anyway, and it will make you seem like a loser. My impression from this video is that the target audience is, uhm, the people who watch "Zeitgeist" or read "The Secret", and then can't stop talking about it for years. (Essentially, people with little critical thinking, searching for the magical "one weird trick" that will solve all their problems.) And if your audience is the same, then the obvious hypothesis is that your product is also in the same category. People more rational than this will probably be turned off by this kind of video. I may be wrong here; if any LW regular was impressed positively, please correct me. Depends on what you mean by that. Assuming you already are 100% rational, it would probably be a good thing. Assuming you are just an aspiring rationalist full of biases and mistaken assumptions, submitting yourself to your "rationality" effectively means submitting yourself to your biases and mistakes. (Or your leader's biases and mistakes; even if we assume their best intentions.) You mean those two or three seconds of anecdotes, followed by minutes of the standard advertising technique "this will be the best thing in your life... but before we get to anything specific, let me show you these cool pictures with emotional music... and more pictures and more music... and more... are you hooked on already? good... now more pictures and music... and more vague talk... okay, you have already spent twenty minutes of your time listening to me, so I guess you are ready to buy my product now". Let me guess... the teaching will be heavily interspersed with talking about "clicking". (This is how Scientologists do it. They take something that already exists out there, simplify it sometimes to absurd levels, mix it with

0ingive9y

In my opinion, this is a big part of the target audience with the video. Learning about neuroscience/rationality/evolutionary biology and so forth instead of some other curriculum which bases itself on unscientific things has a higher expected value in my opinion. Take a random person, they know nothing about rationality. This book is written by the same person, if you take a few moments, it's not long to read some you can understand a little bit more what general public will be pushed towards, what kind of insights: magnet:?xt=urn:btih:e3ade7cdccc4aba33789686b9b9d765d7f14ae7b&dn=Real+Answers&tr=udp%3A%2F%2Ftracker.leechers-paradise.org%3A6969&tr=udp%3A%2F%2Fzer0day.ch%3A1337&tr=udp%3A%2F%2Fopen.demonii.com%3A1337&tr=udp%3A%2F%2Ftracker.coppersurfer.tk%3A6969&tr=udp%3A%2F%2Fexodus.desync.com%3A6969 (he's uploaded it himself) No, because rational people want to become more rational what's the problem with a heuristic that is based on "Is this the most rational thing to do in this moment?" Or logical, whatever. Yes, it's meant for the general public. Rational people want evidence, scientific studies, peer-review, which is underway but it will take plenty of time. Meanwhile, with the available evidence you can make a decision wheter it is worth pursuing that which you already seek (rationality) but on an emotional level. Which is what it is all about. I agree, but it still hints towards neuroscience/evolutionary biology within the video and someone who submits themselves to rationality or logic should at least take a moment to read up on it and by visiting the website, wiki and so forth. Of course if the video didn't mention any of these things someone who values rationality might do things which are a result of a lack of knowledge. But knowledge is what such a person seeks, I presume. Even if biases and mistakes are introduced it easily be seen as a higher expected value that people do this rather then not, someone who simply studies neuroscience/evolutionary bio

0Viliam9y

I suppose this is the critical point of disagreement between us. Whether "praising science" is the right direction to go. (Because I don't doubt that your group is doing a good job at making some people praise science.) More precisely, whether "praising science" leads to more science, or more pseudoscience. Because as long as you believe some specific pseudoscience is science, it is equally easy to praise it... and the pseudoscience has more degrees of freedom than real science, so unless specific precautions are taken, it can outcompete the real science. (In some sense, those "specific precautions" is what makes science science. And worship is definitely not one of them.) Now reading the book... I am still at the beginning, but it already makes better impression than the video.

0ingive9y

Albert Einstein, Carl Sagan, Neil Degrasse Tyson and more praise science, in the same way, it was just found out recently, actually today. It's called Spinozism or Spinoza's God. You can view a video about it here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pVEeXjPiw54 Michio Kaku about Einstein's God: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uHVg9KnAFak&feature=youtu.be&t=5m44s Where this leads? This is exactly the same with the exception of the latest neuroscience research which builds and complete this, and this "clicking" thing to logic. What's been done here is what Tyson asks here literally: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6RjW5-4IiSc&feature=youtu.be&t=373 Personally, "the smartest man in the world" Chris Langan might even be on to this as well. If Bachir has said he has had this for so many years and accomplished so much, looking at these others with "Spoza's God" a strong correlation is occurring as a part of our intrinsic need to find patterns in things. However true or false they are. Sagan pushed really hard on critical thinking, and Bachir does as well actually. By the way, then people "click" and report increased intelligence. It just makes sense. But we don't know 100% sure. What comes next? Well with this new understanding, the documentary will be reuploaded and this is taken into consideration because it is groundbreaking when it comes to the intersubjective reality. Bachir is also going to be speaking at U.N, where he was invited yesterday. where he will talk about this as well although I don't know if it was because of this. It's going to be called Neurospinozism since understandings in neuroscience completes what was missed on earlier. P.S I am not a part of this I am just a watcher of his stream.

2Viliam9y

Intelligence tests are already developed and quite cheap. Testing these claims empirically would take about 2 hours and 20 dollars per person.

2Good_Burning_Plastic9y

Those tests are pretty sensible to training effects, so giving them twice to the same person would result in a higher score the second time almost no matter what.

3Viliam9y

Good point, but the experiment could have a control group which doesn't do anything but takes the tests twice. And someone probably already did the control-group part of this experiment, i.e. measured how much does the IQ increase after test retake. So we just need to know if the measured IQ of the people who "clicked" increases more that that. Also, as far as I remember, the effect is something like plus 5 or 10 IQ points. (May differ for different tests, though. Some tests have multiple variants, so even if you benefit from the training, at least you cannot benefit from remembering the correct answers in the previous test.) The people who "clicked" report that their intelligence increased tenfold or hundredfold -- they obviously use a different scale, but if that corresponds to +5 or more IQ point, it should be measurable.

0ingive9y

Intelligence is not only analytical skills, rhetoric, pattern recognition, more abstract things. Working memory tests might measure g but not overall intelligence, Krakauer defines intelligence and stupidity in specific ways: You can ask when you're a neurospinozist and have logic as your core value, what is the problem which we are given? To understand the world, God, but what else? Why do we have this amazing brain with neuroplasticity, and why do most of us use it to feed something like comfort or validation when looking at neuroscience these things are so flawed? Personally might be social conditioning, I click into it when I am writing this because it's just right there in front of us.

1Viliam9y

Seems like the worship of science stops when science starts contradicting your claims. :P Seriously, there are some valid objections against IQ tests, but it feels like you have dismissed the topic too easily here. Almost as if you know there is actually no dragon in the garage.

0ingive9y

But that's not true, science hasn't contradicted any of my claims. In fact, it is in full support at this moment, the scientific process is in ongoing. Sorry about that. What I mean you can quantify intelligence as per Krakauer's definition as well before and after. It's unlikely g - general intelligence is increased (working memory) but maybe, then tests can be done easily, before and after in a clinical setting. Two trials of a test shouldn't have a big of a training effect but that can be taken into consideration as well as with all other variables. :)

1ChristianKl9y

Linking to Youtube video's doesn't help your case. People who watch Zeitgeist also report that they suddenly understand politics much better. People feeling more intelligent is no useful sign. With the Dunning–Kruger effect it's not easy to understand that one doesn't understand a subject. Getting people to think they are smarter might produce more problems then it solves. That's something that people say who don't understand the basics of probabilistic reasoning. If you aren't 100% sure, what's the probability that you attach to your theory being true?

0ingive9y

An excellent video which talks about Spinoza and Spinozism, which Einstein and Sagan had faith in... doesn't help my case? In the same manner, you assume that Spinoza and this isn't linked, without refuting it. If you were serious about youtube videos not helping cases, that's fine. That implies one is ignorant at baseline which makes no sense if you value logic and critical thinking at the core, emotionally. If people report wanting to understand the world and is reiterated multiple times, doesn't go along with the belief you already know it all. You presume that they are lying, in the same manner, Einstein or Sagan lied about their belief in the God of Spinoza. How do we know if someone has converted or not? (I presume that there is a link between God of Spinoza and intelligence, it seems more likely than before, even if it's a correlation this exercise might imply causality) I was euphoric, it was a heuristic. I still don't understand any probabilistic reasoning or how to make a calculation outside of intuition. Since there isn't any peer-review or papers surrounding the exercise itself I have too little data honestly. But since we know now that Einstein and Sagan had a similar belief, it seems more likely that this religion will spread but I don't know how much. If you have the intersubjective/objective definitions from earlier (in the documentary) Spinozism is very intersubjective I presume.

0ChristianKl9y

Yes. Referring to arguments that are made in text is more convincing. Especially when the text refers to actual sources. There's no evidence that people who value logic are less prone to Dunning–Kruger. On the other hand a person who derives everything from one logical tree is a hedgehog and therefore more likely to be overconfident in his opinions. Yes. You don't need to do calculations outside of intuition. It's fine if you give a probability judgement that's based on intuition. The fact that you are using intuition doesn't prevent you from making probability judgments. How do you know? Did you do a literature search?

0ingive9y

https://logicnation.org/wiki/A_simple_click Although there are no sources for a lot of the content here for the exception of Spinozism etc, but you can find some in the video sources. If you think you've read it before, it's been updated now. I can agree, I shouldn't have written that, but you did quote it out of context as well, but I think I understand my mistake. Yes. How do you update your probability then, if you estimated at 20% for example, and it turned out to be correct (100%)? It could still act within the 20% probability. Well, it's very unlikely that there is a paper with the exactly the same methodology but I can't be certain of it. I wouldn't know what to search for. It's like someone writing a piece of music, the likelihood someone else has, note-by-note is very unlikely. It sounds to me as you're asking me if I do pursue literature search in general, or that you have found something which is similar.

0ChristianKl9y

In general you can calibrate yourself by making many guesses. Tetlock's Superforcasting is a good book if you want to go deeper. To me it appears like you hold your beliefs based on arguments made in pop-science instead of having engaged with the academic literature. At least that's the impression I get when you try to refer to Youtube videos as backup.

0ingive9y

That's not true, a respectable philosophy channel talking about the history of a philosopher is not pop-science. You're welcome to watch the videos before making straw man arguments. Videos of biographies and Neil Tyson speaking about his love for the cosmos, or Michio Kaku talking about Einstein's beliefs has nothing to do with whatever narrow view you have of how to share information.

0ChristianKl9y

Both of those are pop-science. Neil deGrasse Tyson is famous for doing pop-science. He isn't a philosopher, studies the history of science or has expertise in cognitive science. He's the planetarium director at the American Museum of Natural History. His video's about his love for the cosmos might be good for getting young people motivated to take up scientific careers but they are pop-science. The are not arguments that are supposed to withstand academic rigor. Neil deGrasse Tyson wouldn't get papers about his love for the universe published in peer reviewed journals.

0ingive9y

This has nothing to do with the argument made in the first post they were mentioned, the way Neil deGrasse Tyson talked about the experiment and religious experiences was a funny coincidence. Exactly, so why are you even bringing up academic literature in a discussion that has nothing to do with it whatsoever. His love for the universe could be published in a neuro study similar to religious experiences. That would be cool if it is done and if it is or is not the case. I kind of understand what you mean now, yes the argument is based on pop-science because you can't have love of the universe in a video published in peer-reviewed journals. It has nothing to do with this, for the exception of the exercise, the click and so forth, that should be published.

0ChristianKl9y

Well yes. That's the point I was making. What you are saying is detached from academic science and you don't make appeals to real academic science. Or for that matter to other serious writing.

0ingive9y

I understand what you mean. Do you have any suggestions where to start?

0ChristianKl9y

Do you know how you can access scientific papers?

0ingive9y

Yes, I have used pubmed, although I am not that good at searching yet. After that, I get the full papers from sci-hub.

0ChristianKl9y

That paragraph sounds like you think in the US terms of registering organsiation. Which actual German registrations do you mean?

0ingive9y

I don't know, that's what I heard. Are you familiar with German registrations?

0ChristianKl9y

I'm familiar enough to get the impression that what you are saying seems strange. I'm German.

0ingive9y

Maybe you can email reese or something reese@gamingforgood.net if you are this interested. I have no clue. It's hard for me to google because it's probably in german so you have an easier time. Registering as a charity seems to give tax benefits, religion might not even exist as registration, if so it might be some form of U.N registration. Might say something here or the links in the wiki: https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glaubensgemeinschaft

0ChristianKl9y

You saying that you have no clue whether what you said previously said is wrong? First you claim that registering as religion provides benefits and then you claim that it might not exist? To me your response of giving me the email of Reese (whoever that is) sounds like you don't care about whether what you are saying is true enough to check it for yourself.

0ingive9y

Well, I assume that there has to be some form of registration at some level, for example, to accept donations as they have to be taxed. It's important when you talk with people to not butcher what they say, write out of context, yes you are right. But you can respond to an entire message. I figure you were suspicious and welcomed you to investigate, you are the one who read and writes german here and can research the tax agency or whatever. It seems as you just want to be right and don't care whether something is strange or not.

2ChristianKl9y

The most likely explanation is that what you said is simply a reflection of misunderstanding what someone else told you. No research of German laws will give me an idea about what you meant with "But after this new knowledge, they instantly did it I'd guess". From my feeling of suspicion because of strangeness and your answer the default response is to conclude that you don't know what you are talking about. Or care whether the things you mention as evidence for the advantages are true.

0ingive9y

That's simply a writing error, I mean that they tried to register as a charity because a religion wasn't suitable for a charity org, but after this click thing they instantly try and register religion. I don't understand.

0ChristianKl9y

The issue is that there's no "register as religion" in Germany in the narrow sense. Religions are registered associations (Eingetragene Vereine) or (Körperschaft des öffentlichen Rechts). You would also register a charity as an registered associations. If a member of your religion wants to say that you threw him out for unfair reasons, then you can argue to the government that you are a religion and don't have to provide any rational reasons for throwing people out but otherwise there's not much difference. In that case a judge would decide whether you should be treated as a religion or shouldn't.

LESSWRONG
LW

LESSWRONG
LW

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Open thread, Nov. 21 - Nov. 27 - 2016

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