Open Thread, May 25 - May 31, 2015

It appears that MetaMed has gone out of business. Wikipedia uses the past tense "was" in their page for MetaMed, and provides this as a source for it.

Key quote from the article:

Tallinn learned the importance of feedback loops himself the hard way, after seeing the demise of one of his startups, medical consulting firm Metamed.

9Larks10y

It would be nice if people were open when their startups close, especially when previously advertised on LW, so we can learn from mistakes. Or is there some reason to not admit a startup has failed?

4ChristianKl10y

Maybe the bankruptcy proceedings aren't yet through. A bunch of the MetaMed people are still listed as MetaMed on their LinkedIn accounts.

2Larks10y

Interesting idea. Could you explain why that would make them wary about disclosure? Maybe they're trying to sell the brand?

1ChristianKl10y

I don't have concrete information about the state of MetaMed that goes beyond publically available information.

1Larks10y

Yeah, sorry, I meant 'do you know why startups in general would be shy about disclosing their closing?'

0ChristianKl10y

Bankruptcy proceedings aren't yet through. The employees haven't yet moved on to new jobs. The time to a post-mortem is after those things.

[-]Max H10y160

Zvi discusses it a bit on his blog, here

[-]ChristianKl10y130

It seems like the business model of charging individuals prices that are that high just doesn't work for a startup without a proven brand.

8[anonymous]10y

Datapoint: The only exposure I have had to metamed was Yudkowsky saying he spent X dollars on it to get advice to take melatonin microdoses hours before going to bed. When i saw the dollar amount I burst out laughing because I had literally a week earlier come to the same conclusion using google scholar searches at the library in my quest to normalize my own sleep schedule (though my problem wound up having a very different solution in the end).

8ChristianKl10y

To be fair you do have a strong biology background that makes you more likely to do an efficient literature search than the average person. You are also at a university with journal subscription which isn't true for everyone. There might be room for people paying other people to do this kind of research. But the price is likely to high.

[-]James_Miller10y150

I wonder if Metamed's problem was that if you were smart and well informed enough to understand the company's value to the average person, you personally didn't need it because you could do the research yourself.

[-]Viliam10y140

Found a five years old comment about HPMoR:

I think the biggest problem Yudkowsky will have with this will involve Hermione - A rational and knowledgeable Harry makes her basically redundant. Well, that, and the fact that a good 90% of each book consisted of "Harry screws up repeatedly because he forgot from the last book that he should just always go to Dumbledore first with any new problem"... I don't see this Harry having that same problem.

Heh.

[-]Evan_Gaensbauer10y140

I'm currently twenty-two years old. Over the last two weeks, I've discussed with a couple friends that among the "millenial" generation, i.e., people currently under the age of thirty-five, people profess having goals for some kind of romantic relationships, but they don't act in a way which will let them achieve those goals. Whether they:

are lonely and want companionship,
want to stay single, but have more sex,
want a monogamous but casual relationship,
want a more committed and serious monogamous relationship,
want to find someone to one day marry and have children with,
want to find someone to love and love them to become happy, or happier,
want romance for any other usual reason,

it seems the proportion of young people who are and stay single is greater than I would expect. I don't just mean how the fastest-growing household configuration since the 1980s (in the United States) has been single adults. I mean how most of my friends profess a preference for having some romantic relationship in their life, yet most of my single friends stay single, and don't appear to be dating much or doing something else to correct this. Maybe popular culture exerts a normative socia... (read more)

[-][anonymous]10y140

I have something sort of a potential explanation to it, but it is difficult to formulate it in a way that it will be not misunderstood in the wrong way. Please everybody try to take this post with maximal charity and benefit of doubt.

History tends to swing from one extreme to another, as people tend to OVERreact to the problems they see.
Given that it is an OVERreaction, they are usually wrong, but it also points out a problem. You can diagnose the original problems from the overreactions to them.
These overreactions are sometimes exaggerated only in "quantity", in which case a more moderate version of them would be okay, or they often get the direction completely wrong, still they point out how something is a problem and the issues they raise often have SOME truth to them.
For example, Communism/Bolshevism was a huge OVERreaction to the condition of workers under capitalism, it was not a good solution at all, and even making it more moderate (a moderate, limited dictatorship of people who call themselves proletarians?) would not help much, but it pointed out a problem and now we have better solutions to that problem, such as unions striking when they want a wage ra

... (read more)

1Houshalter10y

We really need some statistics, because I'm not certain this is actually a real trend. At one point in time, 17 women reproduced for every one man. In more recent history it's 4 to 5 women for every man, as a global average (I don't know what they define "recent history" as though.)

0VoiceOfRa10y

That paper doesn't quite imply what you think.

-3VoiceOfRa10y

What's your evidence that RP is in fact wrong? What do you mean by "misogynistic"? The word is commonly used to mean believing that there are significant differences between men and women. If you mean something else by this word feel free to explain it. What do you mean by feminism 100% wins? Do you mean human nature will change? And if so to what?

5[anonymous]10y

This is highly debated how much human nature is hardcoded in this regard. The No 1. feature of human nature is the ability to adapt to wildly different circumstances. For example there is absolutely no such thing as an ancestral or paleolithical diet. Human nature is tribal, we still manage to have nations and supranational organizations somehow. Once could just as easily argue every political organization above kinship based tribes is against human nature. Yet we manage to do it... just with some unintended consequences (like tribalism rearing its head in politics, kicked out the door, it comes back the window). My "gut instinct" is on the middle way: we can change genders, but with many unintended consequences. (For example, once consequence that is more or less visible already: when people become more unisex, sexual tension drops as it is generated by difference. One of my ugliest (thankfully unproven, conditional) beliefs is that every passionate sex is essentially BDSM, and easing up dominance/submission kills truly burning desire. Dropping birthrates may be another one.) I think it is meant not simply about differences, but when 1) differences are used to justify social customs that reduce the autonomy / choices of people, primarily women 2) differences of the kind that tend to assign lower status to women. So when differences are value-laden in this way, and not purely factual. I think this is the most accepted usage. However in the case of RP it is not even the usual meaning but something far worse. Really, really ugly lingo, not even "politically offensive" but insulting in that basic human pre-feminism sense, violating every rule of keeping a civil tongue in one's head. For example blog.jim.com says most modern women are "psychotic whores". This is not simply un-PC, it was a huge insult far before PC or feminism was invented, 1950 or whatever date you pick. It is not simply un-feminist or anti-feminist lingo, it is the lingo of louts who grew up in the

-3VoiceOfRa10y

I'm not sure what you mean by this. Clearly you're not saying that our antcectors did not eat. Are you saying that humans have genetically adapted to different diets since the paleolithic? That still leaves the concept of ancestral diet as important. Are you saying any given human will be just as healthy on any diet? That's clearly false. By adapting the larger organizations to human nature, yes. This suggests your suffering from the arugment to mederation fallacy. Can we? It's possible for say men, to cut of their peneses and declare themselves women. (And in the west expect society to declare that they have always been women). However, in my experience the behvior of m-to-f trannies makes more sense if I model them as men who decided to "become women" as part of the especially male tendency to do crazy things. Does it matter of said customs are rational (say in the sense of leading to better outcomes)? Yes and in the 1950s a woman who behaved the way a typical women does today (at least in the west, I hear it's not quite as bad in eastern Europe) would be considered much worse then simply un-classy and loutish. And yes "psychotic whore" sounds about right for what they would of thought of that type of woman. Yes it is. At least it is possible to isolate the factual analysis enough to see that it is false. Um, are you actually familiar with the philosophies you listed or are you going by the popular caricatures? Of the ones I'm familiar with, this is a rather bad characterization of Machiavelli and an absolute horrible characterization of Objectivism.

1[anonymous]10y

No, saying that even in the paleolithic they were adapted to wildly different diets, because they were intelligent and they could make the most of whatever grew near them. http://hells-ditch.com/2012/08/archaeologists-officially-declare-collective-sigh-over-paleo-diet/ If they found wild rice, that was okay. If they found whale blubber, that was also OK. And I think this is a good example. The most typically human trait is flexibility because that is what intelligence generates. In the specific case when something is argued to be impossible, taking a middle way seems sensible: almost everything is possible, just often you have to throw the equivalent of a nuke on it, and then you will get all kinds of unwanted consequences. Come on, you are smarter than that, you know the difference between biological sex and social gender. E.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albanian_sworn_virgins Really I bet this is not new to you, you just pretend you have never heard the difference... I find it far too optimistic but I figure neither of us has evidence here. Popular versions, yes, but they are not caricatures simply - more like what people actually believe in. Popularity matters. To give you a reverse example, some people argue the Soviets were never properly, really Communists or Marxist. This means, they did not really believe what some books said. Books matter. But actual history, what people actually do, often matters more. Soviet Communism was the kind of Communism that mattered, because this had nukes and the obscure kind of Communism that had only some books and debating groups mattered far less. The same thing with the ones I mentioned - they were far smarter than this, but based on them there is a popular view of a simplified "dog eat dog" world where everything is competition and winners take all and losers suck and cooperation does not worth for anything. This jaded view was already disproved by Plato. Justice and efficiency go hand in hand and there is rarely

0VoiceOfRa10y

So you're claiming that any human will be just as healthy on any diet? So you're arguing that the Albanian sworn virgins were (socially) men? The very fact that they were called "virgins", thus appealing to the ideal of female virginity, should give you a clue. I thought you were smarter than that. Depends on which people. What the followers of the philosophies believe matters, what most people believe about the followers, not so much. I'm not sure who you think your arguing against here. It certainly isn't (most of) the philosophies you listed.

2[anonymous]10y

No, and building straw mans like that is not useful at all. I am just claiming most human groups learned to be healthy on almost any nutrients their environment managed to offer. I.e. flexibility, adaptation ability, due to intelligence. Yes, the article is very clear about that. What is your point really? There is nothing particularly magic or essential about social roles, although it is clear that hormones play a role in being more suitable or less suitable for them.

0Luke_A_Somers10y

That was rude to jump right to without further justification.

[-]Viliam10y140

Tangentially, how much is it a problem of "dating", and how much a problem of "dating with sane people", when the pool of sane people is already small?

When I was younger, I wanted to have a romantic relationship with a person whom I would perceive as intellectually equal (plus or minus the LessWrong level). Since I barely knew such people... not much luck.

If I could send a message in time back to myself, it would be: "It will take decades until you find someone you can have meaningful conversation with. Meanwhile, relax, and try to fuck any nice body, but don't get attached. Otherwise you will later regret the wasted time." The only problem is, my younger self would be horrified to hear such advice.

5Adam Zerner10y

I feel the same way on "dating with sane people". I'd love to hear more of your thoughts on this.

2Viliam10y

Seems to me that in a relationship people spend much more time talking than having sex. Thus, even if the sex is great, if talking is painful, the relationship as a whole sucks. And that's just idle talk... imagine having to solve real problems, or even owning property together, or having children. All the stupid stuff you read about online, happening at your own home. Before LW, I didn't know any "sane" community. I did know a few "sane" individuals. But they didn't have the explicit concept of "sanity"; I was not able to ask them "Where can I find more people like you?" in a way that would make them understand what exactly I wanted. For example, if they had a hobby, they would recommend me other people having the same hobby, but those other people wouldn't be "sane". In other words, there wasn't a place to meet new "sane" people. If I could be 20 years old again now, my step 1 for a serious relation would be "go to all possible LW meetups", and the step 2 would probably be starting my own rationalist blog, in hope of attracting attention of someone who doesn't go to LW meetups (yet). In reality, I already do have a girlfriend, and she helps me organize local LW meetups. I met her completely randomly, and it took me a few decades to have such lucky random event. I obviously can't recommend that as a strategy. Actually, until a few years ago I didn't even have a hope of ever dating a sane person. Probably not even the concept of sanity; only a vague idea of "someone like me". But that only creates an infinite recursion: where should I go to meet "people like me", if the problem in the first place is that I don't know where to go? Where is my Schelling point? Even today, I cannot give a better answer than "a LW community". (But I was not strong enough to create one. Which is one of the reasons I deeply admire Eliezer.)

1Adam Zerner10y

Cool, thank you! I can really relate to what you describe, especially the "not knowing any sane people" part. What are your thoughts on relationships in general? Let me explain - in brief, I agree with the idea that it's "a form of socially acceptable insanity" (sort of). To obsess and commit to one thing so much seems crazy to me. But not really; it makes people happy and you don't (always) have to sacrifice too much. So the cost-benefit does seem worth it.

3Viliam10y

Obsession is nature's way of making cooperation more resistant to random disruptive events. I think an important skill in relationships is to be able to see a long-term perspective even when you are in a bad moment. Don't ruin a mostly great relationship, just because today is the exceptional day that sucks. It can be easy to start a downward spiral. Forgiving is a way to play "tit for tat" in a noisy environment. The simplest hack to make people forgive is to make them blind towards the mistakes. (Which again comes with its own problems, because evolution is so short-sighted. Some people are too blind; some people forgive too much.) Costly signalling of cooperation is important in situations where there is so much at stake, such as raising children. I am rather conservative about relationships because... well, if I simplify it a lot, conservatism at its core is all about costly signalling. Sorry, I'm rambling, because of lack of sleep. So I'll stop now.

1Adam Zerner10y

That's very interesting, I never thought of it like that before. No need to apologize - If you want to keep rambling, I'll be listening.

[-]MrMind10y120

I think it makes sense for us to try dating and relationships more, because there may not be as much time and opportunity as we hope later in life.

How do you suggest people actually implement this 'just date more'?

1Evan_Gaensbauer10y

Well, if people agree with me, but dating more is easier said than done, here are some pointers from LessWrong in particular. In a more general sense, do I think the problem posed in my thinking would be solved if people only tried dating more? Maybe people won't turn out happier if they just start dating more. I notice for the link I posted, the original question wasn't just how to start dating, but how to maintain long-term relationships. Maybe dating and relationships are harder now than in the past, so much harder that even the chance of starting a happy relationship is low enough it doesn't warrant the effort modern dating demands. Compared to previous generations, young adults today have more emphasis put on careers for them. Also, the idea of a circle of friends is one which is bigger, and more closely knit, than it was before, when our parents or grandparents at our age would have relied on an (extended) family living in a single household. Since less emphasis is placed on the family unit relative to other types of relationships, and there is less pressure to start a family relative to building a career, dating, relationships and marriage might seem less valuable and less incentivized. More young adults might end up with a preference for being single, and that could be okay. If someone really still wants a relationship, or something resulting from that, I think the tactic I proposed still makes sense.

8Epictetus10y

Most of my friends and acquaintances are committed to long-term relationships (mid-late 20s age group). I've had trouble in this area due to certain personal reasons, but my personal observations lead me to believe that I'm atypical in this regard. It's possible they just don't know what they're doing or are paralyzed by anxiety when it comes to romance.

2Evan_Gaensbauer10y

Yeah, I've too much underrated observations like this in building my model above. Looking around, at age twenty-two, I notice most of my friends are still single, maybe 40% of them at most have some kind of relationship in any given month, but those relationships aren't stable over the long-term. I thought my model still might hold because I notice other people in my social circle at or around thirty are single, too. However, single people could select themselves to hang out with other single people. People closer to thirty than twenty who are single may be unusual in that they're more likely to hang out with people a few years younger than them, who are more likely to be single than not. So, the only young adults near 30 I'm observing are the ones who are hanging out with younger folk closer to 20 or 25. I fell prey to confirmation bias here. I had no observations of social circles which are predominantly 25-35, rather than 20-30, which might be lousy with long-term relationships. Maybe this is happening at fondue parties or something, which I and my friends never hear about now, but will be doing in five to ten years. Thanks for the data point(s)! I think I was wrong before, and I think I know why!

1VoiceOfRa10y

Keep in mind that people with good social skills tend to have more friends, so your selector maybe biased in that regard.

0Epictetus10y

Fair point. I'm less likely to encounter people who sit home all day and less likely to socialize with people who aren't social. That would skew my observations somewhat.

8advancedatheist10y

How do young people get into sexual relationships, any way? I had literally no experience with this in my youth, and not because I spent decades in prison starting around the age of 20 or anything like that. The women I knew as a young man walked around me as a physical object because they couldn't walk through me, but in general they treated me as socially invisible.

5skeptical_lurker10y

I think in general 'it just happens', which generally means alcohol.

3[anonymous]10y

That happens with most women and handsome men, but not all men. A better question is how can men shape up their looks so that it can happen to them. E.g. clothes, muscles, also demeanour, behavior etc.

[-]skeptical_lurker10y130

However attractive, well dressed, confidant you are, you still need to know how to actually approach someone.

A problem is that any attempt to improve attractiveness will lead some people to declare that you are evil or otherwise defective. Its not just PUA stuff, this is far more general: if a guy lifts, that makes him a 'dickhead' according to members of my peer group, while a woman not shaving her armpits makes her strong & empowered (does a man not shaving his face make him empowered?). Conversely, some people believe that not taking care of your appearance makes you a slob.

Then there's the problem that confidence is key. You need to be 110% confident of everything you say, and to truly believe this, you need to internalise it. The problem is then that it spills over into other aspects of life, and you become very badly credence calibrated, potentially leading to serious mistakes because you can't admit that you might be wrong. When you are in a group containing more than one 'alpha male' it becomes impossible to get anything done, even something as simple as choosing a pub to go to, because one alpha male decides to go to one pub, the other decides to go to a different pub... (read more)

9NancyLebovitz10y

I suggest that you need a better peer group. I don't know what your options are-- this might be worth discussing-- but the time you're spending with your current peer group is time that isn't available for spending with a better bunch of people.

1skeptical_lurker10y

Thanks for your advice. Boring personal details: Actually, I moved away from them a few years ago for various reasons (not feeling on the same wavelength, wanting there to be more to life than alcohol & drugs...), so I don't spend that much time with them, although there are a few of them I want to stay in contact with, friends who see me as practically family. I still refer to them as my peer group, because I haven't really made a new friendship group that lasted. I haven't really had a social life for over a year, and its quite tranquil in a way. I was starting to get stuck in cycles of social anxiety and I hope this solitude has broken the cycle and given me time to think objectively. For instance, I've realised just how many people were attracted to me, but I was not aware of at the time due to a lack of social/romantic confidence and an inability to pick up on any even remotely subtle hint. When I next move to a new city, I'm going to meet people who have similar interests - for instance at a boardgames club has worked well in the past. And I'm going to display the same level of social confidence as the intellectual confidence I already have, because vicious cycles can run backwards too.

7Richard_Kennaway10y

Screw them. To whom? Screw them. You can't please everyone and trying to is a waste of far more than just time.

5[anonymous]10y

Yes, but it is pissing against the wind of a huge part of human biology where status withing the tribe is all-important. Don't expect this to be easy.

0aleksiL10y

You worry about that all-important status when you fear losing it. Want to win? Then focus on winning, not on not-losing. You need to if you want to be seen as high-status, anyway. Fear of loss is low-status, so is worrying about what others think. Navigate the minefield, sure. But do it from a position of strength, not of weakness.

1[anonymous]10y

Of course. There are two relevant terms that I learned in another language, one way to translate them would be to "seek success" or "avoid failure". Seeking success is pursuing your dream job, avoiding failure is fearing you will not be able to pay bills so accepting any job. Seeking success is far better, but if you are not blessed with sky high testosterone and are thus timid and not driven, you cannot really do much more than avoiding failure. It is not exactly a choice you can make, it is more about what you are. Of course you can try to slowly change what you are i.e. work on developing courage. Wanting to win is in itself a keyword used by the success oriented, who believe they can be / can do better than others. The failure-avoidant want to not prove worse than others, and thus seek to lose, not win. It takes a really lot of working on courage to go from one to another and it is not clear what methods develop this kind of courage best. Maybe this (courage or self-confidence methods) would deserve a top level.

1skeptical_lurker10y

I applaud this attitude, and I think the first step should be for people to get enough self-confidence to say "screw them"!

0Richard_Kennaway10y

Where will the self-confidence come from? I prefer the Nike slogan: "Just do it."

5[anonymous]10y

If I was young again, I would probably try to hang with either multiple different peer groups or none at (I was terrible at it anyway). But these guys sound like a very bad influence for anyone trying to improve dating skills. I also find it really surprising how they are using media language. "Strong and empowered" is a magazine headline. It is media-talk, almost like advertisement-talk, only one step less artificial than politician-talk. 20 years ago in my peer group anything that sounded like a magazine headline was repeated only ironically / cynically. Or even 10 years ago. Anyone remembers "the coalition of the willing?" Yeah, no normal person ever repeated that without a sneer. And now I see young people talk like popular magazine headlines. Weird. Where is the bravely contrarian counter-signalling? :)

1skeptical_lurker10y

I'm not sure anyone actually verbally said "Strong and empowered", this would have been in a clickbait article someone shared on facebook.

9[anonymous]10y

... and then I became enlightened. Hypothesis: the lack of cynicism in today's young is due to much of their social life being done on Facebook and other social media, and in this type of medium it is a common, easy and obvious thing to do to share articles. I don't think in 1990 anyone brought me a printed paper mag and asked me to read this article. A handful of times, when it was something truly revolutionary and special, but anything even remotely mainstream not. We did not share our media consumption much. I may have been reading the same heavy metal mag as others, but we rarely discusessed it beyond "Seen that interview with Megadeth?" "Yeah, badass." It is through article sharing and shared, communal media consumption how the Facebook generation lost its cynicism against official media headline ideas.

5NancyLebovitz10y

Are younger people less cynical? I honestly don't know, and I'm curious about your evidence. My impression is that used to be a lot less debunking around, not that all of the debunking is accurate, either. Who's reading all those "7 Things You're Entirely Wrong About" articles from Cracked?

0[anonymous]10y

I understand I am dangerously close to a fully general argument now :) But I think there is a lot of debunking going on because the default stance seems to be to believe the mainstream media, and I think 20 years ago the default stance was to be skeptical about it. How to put it... I would be really surprised if a friend of mine offered a debunking of the abs trainer sold in TV shop because we are not supposed to believe it at all, that is not the default stance... "everybody" understands it is mainly about scamming suckers. And roughly the same about the media in general.

4Lumifer10y

You need a better peer group.

4Evan_Gaensbauer10y

* #NotAllPeerGroups. Seriously, though, I feel for you being in a peer group which could be better at encouraging fellow men while still respecting women, rather than hitting some failure mode because of signaling. I know you wrote only some* people will declare you evil or otherwise defective, but I don't see a reason not to leave them behind, all else equal. John Salvatier is a man I'm acquainted with, a member of this peer group who writes about improving attractiveness (not just sexual attractiveness, but general attractiveness based on fashion. He doesn't seem the sort who anyone I know accuses of being evil or otherwise defective. He hangs out on r/malefashionadvice, which seems to have an air of being more about becoming "a gentleman" rather than a "pick-up artist". Whether it's women or other men who are calling each other 'dickheads', I think we can find better peer groups which engender habits of expressing a desire for self-improvement better, and peer groups which won't punish individuals when desires are expressed. I agree that's very possible. It's an unfortunate trade-off for bad credence calibration. I'm not sure it's a trade-off worth undoing, though. *I'm inferring from your comment you're a man, but pardon me if I'm assuming too much.

4Fluttershy10y

I don't necessarily think that social confidence and credence should be conflated to the extent that a few replies in this thread of posts have conflated them by use of the word "confidence" to refer to both concepts. It is possible to have confident body language, be an active participant in conversations, and even call others out on their overconfidence while still being a well-calibrated individual.

0skeptical_lurker10y

I think the underlying reason for "improving attractiveness is evil" is largely a mixture of egalitarianism and a disconnect from reality. The idea is: 'I want to believe that everyone is attractive, therefore anyone who tries to become more attractive is evil. Do they think they're better than us?' Now, admittedly, if attractiveness is a purely positional good, then this would make sense. But I don't think this is the case. Similarly, I've heard the idea that universities giving female students advice on personal safety is evil, because in a perfect world no-one would commit violent crime. The fact that we don't live in a perfect world does not seem to have occurred to them. To a large extent I already have, moving away from them a few years ago. Not that I don't enjoy their company, but they are rather entropic people. A second possibility is simply adopting a strong mental attitude of independence. Since reading about cogsci and how the mind automatically accepts everything it hears without making a concious effort to question its veracity, I've begun consciously marking opinions I hear as "someone else's opinion". Well, this is strongly characteristic of LW. I have attended a meetup where we did assertiveness training, which I would think is far more helpful than advice about 'just be yourself'. I wonder what other ways there are to find more positive peer groups? Offline, I have found martial arts people (or, other sports people) are a good start. Online, I wonder if other groups similar to LW have organised meatspace meetups - I used to lurk around many H+ organisations, but not for a while. I looked at r/malefashionadvice, and it seems a little too 'what is in this season'. I'd rather have clothes that are timeless, rather then having to reappraise my wardrobe every year. Still, I think this: Seems a good idea. People have raised the possibility of doublethink wrt this sort of thing - simultaneously believing something with absolute certainty for th

5Nornagest10y

Be careful. A lot of common missteps in personal presentation, especially in geek communities, come from failed attempts to look gentlemanly; the "m'lady" stereotype of Reddit fame is an extreme example, of course, but the rabbit hole goes a lot deeper. I'm only casually familiar with r/malefashionadvice, but I recall its house style being described somewhere as "dressing like a grownup", which seems like a better objective to start with. (Failed attempts to look badass are even worse.)

0skeptical_lurker10y

Apparently the problem is that the "m'lady" stereotype is wearing a fedora with a t-shirt, is overweight and is just essentially low-status. A gentleman wearing a suit with some confidence is a different matter. Now I want to know how to dress as a badass gentleman...

[-]Nornagest10y100

Sure, that's the stereotype. But the problem is actually that the signaling model is wrong. Our stereotype wants to associate himself with some concept, so he throws on an item that he associates with that concept: a pinstripe fedora if he likes Thirties mobsters, let's say, or a leather trench if he's seen The Matrix one too many times. It's out of context, it clashes, and the outfit ends up looking worse than the sum of its parts (and being overweight and poorly groomed never helps).

The principle is easy to state: clothes should work in context, including the context of your body. But the point is that those cues are not obvious. There's a whole visual language that needs to be learned before you can reliably present yourself as e.g. gentlemanly, and keeping a laser focus on whatever stereotype you feel like projecting actually isn't the most efficient way to get there. Better to start with the basics.

2Lumifer10y

I think how to "dress for success" differs radically between different subcultures. In some you want to look like you stepped out of a fashion ad, in others it's all about worn jeans and tshirts, in yet others fake fur and el-wire rule...

0Lumifer10y

It's also mugging the competition :-D

2Good_Burning_Plastic10y

In certain circles it does -- "there's a word for people without a beard: women", etc.

0skeptical_lurker10y

I wonder, in these circles, do women find a bushy beard attractive? Or do they not have a choice of partner? Or do they make a choice based on some other criteria?

0ChristianKl10y

The average 16 year old doesn't have high self confidence. That doesn't mean that he won't get laid.

3[anonymous]10y

It does. When I try to remember my high school class, finding a girlfriend was by far the hardest problem most boys faced. About 75% suffered from this problem. Getting into a university or not flunking the coming test on the natural logarithm or whatever other challenges we faced, they were easier. It is sort of hard to tell exactly why. Lack of confidence was surely part of the story, but on a more broader sense, relationships are something adults have and we were stuck in half-childhood. The guys who managed to find a GF looked and acted like young adults already at 16. Part of it is biological - some of them were already shaving daily even though they weren't even 18. Puberty ran its full course on them, testosterone working fully. But even the guys who didn't, and yet were able to find girlfriends, they had this adult demeanor already. For example and uncle could ask them to help in repairing a car and they would approach it like an adult, cautiously, competently and efficiently. Now the guys who were unable to find a GF approached it like a child. Mamaaaah I don't want this I want to go back to playing videogames, well I guess if I have to do it I will half-ass the tools with one hand and play on the Nintendo with the other, maybe they'll let me go then, that kind of attitude. Growing up is seriously hard when people lack the kind of challenges that would make them, and this is why it is extremely hard for many young men to get laid.

2ChristianKl10y

The person who spends their time playing video games instead of going to parties where people get drunk is less likely to be hookup even if he's confident.

1[anonymous]10y

I think when I discovered body building at 17 it helped. Also, being tall. I went to discotheques, dance clubs, and saw there is a fairly uniform look there, hair gel, muscle t-shirts of Replay or Diesel brand etc. it was easy to fit in and later on when I made friends in the university a guy who also went to these clubs and he had a large circle of friends, often 20 people going to a disco together and there getting introduced to another 20, it was helpful because these circles contained women, and once a guy was part of the circle and they liked the looks, the muscles, the designer clothes "uniform" they sent clear indicators of interest. Outside the circle it was harder as they would not send IOIs to completely stranger people, out of fear I guess. At any rate, working on the looks and finding this large circle was very helpful. Nevertheless they did not help at all in the far harder task of actually keeping the newfound girlfriends. The day after, when we sobered up and we got into everyday life, not the glamour of the dance club, they realized I am an unmasculine, childish, timid nerd. So I lost them soon thereafter. Things did not get much better until my thirties when the women who are not married start having more realistic expectations.

0VoiceOfRa10y

So there these people called PUA's investigating that question, you may have heard of them.

0Evan_Gaensbauer10y

If I can go one level above your question, for at least a generation, maybe more*, most young people aren't getting into frequent sexual relationships. Scott Alexander explains here, in one of the most upvoted comments of all time, why it seems most people, whenever they are or were young, seemed to know a few people who had lots of sex, but weren't or aren't themselves having lots of sex. His model seems to hold for heterosexual men and women, which is most people anyway. Essentially, for both men and women, there is a negative skew for sexiness, i.e., which people are most sexually attractive and/or having the most sex. So, it is only the sexiest men and sexiest women having sex with each other often, and the sexiest men and women mostly don't have sex with people who are less than the sexiest. People who are in between the average and the sexiest may have a moderate amount of sex, but still far less than the sexiest people. Men and women of around average sexiness are having sex infrequently, or not at all. This doesn't mean "average" levels of sexiness are utterly unsexy. For example, as a heterosexual man, I perceive most women as moderately attractive, and it's only the rare exception of a woman who proves the rule that people are generally attractive, that is the woman I find utterly unattractive, or ugly. I might be generalizing from my own experience too much, though. Assuming most heterosexual men find most heterosexual women "attractive-ish", and visa-versa, it's interesting they're not having sex with each other. Anyway, the function of how much sex a person has based on whatever qualities count as attractive seems more like a quadratic function than a linear one. The failure of most of us not in the top tiers of sexiness to have sex is a coordination problem. Their are other factors, which I think are covered in my original post. *I think as North American culture was more sexually conservative in previous generations, people were just having less sex

3Adam Zerner10y

My first thought is that the lack of strategic approach isn't surprising - there are tons of instances in which people are extremely unstrategic, and this doesn't seem to be too particularly unstrategic. My second thought is that this is an area in which it's particularly easy to procrastinate. Because initiation is hard and scary (to most people).

2knb10y

A lot of Millennials have moved back in with their parents (boomerang generation). Especially for men, this makes any kind of romantic life very difficult. Mostly I think many Millennials have serious anxiety/social dysfunction and a bad case of Peter Pan Syndrome. For example, cultural favorites of Millennials include superhero/comic book movies and My Little Pony.

[-]Evan_Gaensbauer10y130

It doesn't appear this is discussed much, so I thought I'd start a conversation:

Who on LessWrong is uncomfortable with or doesn't like so much discussion of effective altruism here? if so, why?

Other Questions:

Do you feel there's too much of it now, or would even a little bit of it seem averse?
Do you think such discussion is inappropriate given the implicit or explicit goals of LessWrong?
Has too much discussion of effective altruism caused you to think less of LessWrong, or use it less?
For what reason(s) do you disagree with effective altruism? Is it because of your values and what you care about, or because you don't like normative pressure to take such strong personal actions? Or something else?

I want to discuss it because what proportion of the LessWrong community is averse or even indifferent or disinterested in effective altruism doesn't express their opinions much. Also, while I identify with effective altruism, I don't only value this site as a means to altruistic ends, and I don't want other parts of the rationalist community to feel neglected.

[-]Shmi10y270

Personally, I'm indifferent to EA. It seems to me a result of decompartmentalizing and taking utilitarianism overly seriously. I don't really disagree with it, just not interested. As I've mentioned before, I care about myself, my family, my friends, and maybe some prominent people who don't know me, but whose work makes my life better. I feel for the proverbial African children, but not enough for anything more than a token contribution. If LW had a budget, /r/EA would be a good subreddit, though one of those I would rarely, if ever, visit. As it is, I skip the EA discussions, but I don't find them annoyingly pervasive.

[-]Richard_Kennaway10y140

That is exactly my own view. I can see the force of the arguments for EA, but remain unmoved by them. I don't mind it being discussed here, but take little interest in the discussions. I have no arguments against it (although the unfortunate end of George Price is a cautionary tale, a warning of a dragon on the way), and I certainly don't want to persuade anyone to do less good in the world.

It's rather like the Christian call to sainthood. Many are called, but few are chosen.

ETA: I am interested, as a spectator, in seeing how the movement develops.

6Elo10y

Upvote for agreement. I find the extent of my power should be my concern. My local community; those who I can reach and touch. for the sake of drawing a number out of the air; anyone further than 100km from me does not deserve my attention; indeed anyone further than 50km probably also (except that I may one day cross paths with them). I would rather spend $X towards the local homeless people of my city than the unknown suffering in a distant and far off place. (In fact I would rather not spend $X and would rather donate my time to the community nearby; which is exactly what I do) While this is my opinion I certainly don't mind the EA stuff I see; I just don't partake in it very much.

0Calien10y

Is your rule about distances actually a base part of your ethics, or is it a heuristic based on you not having much to do with them? I'm assuming that you take it somewhat figuratively, e.g. if you have family in another country you're still invested in what happens to them. Do you care whether the unknown people are suffering more? If donating $X does more than donating Y hours of your time, does that concern you?

0Elo10y

Its more of a heuristic. Any ethic that used a specific measurement of distance in its raw calculation would be odd. There might somewhere be a line where on one side I might care about a person, and on the other I might not. Where someone could stand on the line exactly. That would be mostly silly. most of my family lives within a few suburbs of me. I have a few cousins who have been living in England for a few years; I barely even know what they are doing with their lives any more. (I wouldn't excommunicate someone for being far away, but I wouldn't try as hard as someone living in the same city as me) My grandmother keeps in touch with the cousins far away but I don't think its a requirement for me to do, and I am sure they also don't feel like they have to keep up with my life either. There is also the case of warm fuzzy utilons; where I can know that my intended impact hit the nail on the head; where I might otherwise find it difficult to know if $X made the intended impact. Its kinda like outsourcing making an impact to someone else in letting them use that $ for what they feel is right. I don't necessarily feel like I can trust others with my effectiveness desires. Does this make sense? I can try to explain it again if you point out what isn't making sense...

4Evan_Gaensbauer10y

Upvoted not for agreement*, but for expressing well what seems like a common enough sentiment, in a way that's efficient and useful. *Agreement, given my current state of mind, would be odd because I, well, identify with effective altruism in ways you don't. I don't disagree with you, though, because I don't disbelieve your stated preferences and values. I don't think less of someone who isn't "on board" with effective altruism, either. Agree/Disagree seems like an error; we just perceive and act on what we value differently.

[-][anonymous]10y250

On my part, it strikes me as the greatest and most important contribution this place has had on my life.

[-]iceman10y220

(Disclaimer: My lifetime contribute to MIRI is in the low six digits.)

It appears to me that there are two LessWrongs.

The first is the LessWrong of decision theory. Most of the content in the Sequences contributed to making me sane, but the most valuable part was the focus on decision theory and considering how different processes performed in the prisoner's dilemma. Understanding decision theory is a precondition to solving the friendly AI problem.

The first LessWrong results in serious insights that should be integrated into one's life. In Program Equilibrium in the Prisoner's Dilemma via Lob's Theorem, the authors take a moment to discuss the issue of "Defecting Against CooperateBot"--if you know that you are playing against CooperateBot, you should defect. I remember when I first read the paper and the concept just clicked. Of course you should defect against CooperateBot. But this was an insight that I had to be told and LessWrong is valuable to me as it has helped internalize game theory. The first year that I took the LessWrong survey, I answered that of course you should cooperate in the one shot non-shared source code prisoner's dilemma. On the latest survey, I ins... (read more)

7Rob Bensinger10y

'Altruism' for me doesn't mean 'I assign infinite value to my own happiness (and freedom, beauty, etc.) and 0 to others', but everyone would be better off (myself included) if I sacrificed my own happiness for others'. So I'll sacrifice my own happiness for others'.' Rather, I assign some value to my own happiness, but a lot more value to others' happiness. I care unconditionally about others' happiness. Since it's only a Prisoner's Dilemma if I value 'I defect, you cooperate' over 'we both cooperate', for me high-stakes 'defecting' would mean directly indulging in my desire to help others, while 'cooperating' via UDT would mean sacrificing humanity's welfare in some small way in order to keep a non-utilitarian agent from doing even more to reduce humanity's welfare. The structure of the PD has nothing to do with whether the agents are selfish vs. altruistic (as long as you take that into account when initially calculating payoffs). Thought experiments like Singer's are how I found out that I do in fact terminally value people who are distant from me in space (and time). My behavior isn't perfectly utilitarian, but I'd take a pill to become more so, so my revealed preferences aren't what I'd prefer them to be.

3James_Miller10y

I don't know if my praise means anything to you, but you have it. If the MIRI brings about a positive singularity then its members and supporters are likely to receive lots more praise, from a lot more people, for a very long time.

2Good_Burning_Plastic10y

BTW that is no longer possible (if it ever even was) unless you're wearing pretty expensive shoes indeed.

2tut10y

On the other hand, a pair of dress shoes and a suit might still be more expensive, and might get ruined when you save somebody from a pool of mud.

0NancyLebovitz10y

"Defect against cooperate bot" makes sense if the Prisoner's Dilemma game is the only thing that's going on. However, in the real world, cooperatebot might have friends who will take revenge, or CB might be doing useful work. From memory: a person who refused to defect in a PD because they didn't want to be that sort of person. Defecting against CB is equivalent to "Never give a sucker an even break", and it might lead to a world where people spend a lot more resources than otherwise necessary on defending themselves.

[-]Dahlen10y210

Seeing as, in terms of absolute as well as disposable income, I'm probably closer to being a recipient of donations rather than a giver of them, effective altruism is among those topics that make me feel just a little extra alienated from LessWrong. It's something I know I couldn't participate in, for at least 5 to 7 more years, even if I were so inclined (I expect to live in the next few years on a yearly income between $5000 and $7000, if things go well). Every single penny I get my hands on goes, and will continue to go, strictly towards my own benefit, and in all honesty I couldn't afford anything else. Maybe one day when I'll stop always feeling a few thousand $$ short of a lifestyle I find agreeable, I may reconsider. But for now, all this EA talk does for me is reinforce the impression of LW as a club for rich people in which I feel maybe a bit awkward and not belonging. If you ain't got no money, take yo' broke ass home!

Anyway, the manner in which my own existence relates to goals such as EA is only half the story, probably the more morally dubious half. Disconnected from my personal circumstances, the Effective Altruism movement seems one big mix of good and not-so-good mo... (read more)

[-]Kaj_Sotala10y120

I think that the image of EA on LW has been excessively donation-focused, but I'd like to point out that things like earning to give are only one part of EA.

EA is about having the biggest positive impact that you can have on the world, given your circumstances and personality. If your circumstances mean that you can't donate, or disagree with donations being the best way to do good, that still leaves options like e.g. working directly for some organization (be it a non-profit or for-profit) having a positive impact on the world. Some time back I wrote the following:

Effective altruism says that, if you focus on the right career, you can have an even bigger impact! And the careers don't even need to be exotic, demanding ones that only a few select ones can do (even if some of them are). Some of the top potential careers that 80,000 hours has identified so far include thing as diverse as being an academic, civil servant, journalist, marketer, politician, or software engineer, among others. Not only that, they also emphasize finding your fit. To have a big impact on the world, you don't need to shoehorn yourself into a role that doesn't suit you and that you hate - in fact you're ex

... (read more)

[-]skeptical_lurker10y140

I know this may come across as sociopathically cold and calculating, but given that post-singularity civilisation could be at least thirty orders of magnitude larger than current civilisation, I don't really think short term EA makes sense. I'm surprised that the EA and existential risk efforts seem to be correlated, since logically it seems to me that they should be anti-correlated.

And if the response is that future civilisation is 'far' in the overcoming bias sense, well, so are starving children in Africa.

4Evan_Gaensbauer10y

It doesn't come across as sociopathically cold and calculating to me. It may come across like that to others. Some people who have never encountered effective altruism or Less Wrong might think you sociopathic, but most people don't reflective enough to realize if they care about the overwhelming magnitude of future civilizations, or starving children far away. So, the consequences of what most others signal and believe of their own values don't lead to consequences different than yours. The capacity to care about so many far away people seems difficult to maintain all the time, mostly because if you carried so much empathy in the forefront of your mind all the time it'd be overwhelming. Saying so about real people in particular might seem sociopathic no matter who says it. Anyway, it at first confused me why existential risk reduction is correlated with effective altruism. Effective altruism is a common banner which promotes the values common enough to existential risk reduction and Less Wrong, such as reflective thinking, evidence-based evaluation, and far preferences for helping others through time and space. I think the x-risk reduction community makes a choice to go with effective altruism because they get a strong enough position to attract more capital: financial capital, human capital, relevant expertise, etc. While x-risk may only get a small slice of the pie that is effective altruism, as effective altruism grows, so does the absolute size of the added support x-risk reduction receives. Also it's the common impression effective altruists are talented and reflective folk to begin with, so if one can cross-convert their concerns from poverty reduction and global health to existential risk reduction, it helps out. Further, cause areas which would otherwise be at odds with each other accept each other within effective altruism because they all gain from cooperation with each other. For example, such efforts are coordinated by the Centre for Effective Altruis

0Calien10y

Proponents of both have the same attitude of "this is a thing that people ocassionally give lip service to, that we're going to follow to a more logical conclusion and actually act on".

-4[anonymous]10y

This just strikes me as another pascal's mugging.

7James_Miller10y

Disagree because the probability of this happening is significant. I would rate as >80% conditional on us not destroying ourselves.

2skeptical_lurker10y

I'd say well over 80%. The probability of the whole of humanity deciding to stop technological development, and actually successfully co-coordinating this is minimal. Even if the human mind cannot be run on a classical computer, we would still tile the universe with quantum computronium.

5Lumifer10y

You people sound awfully sure about far-off future. How well, do you think, an educated Egyptian from, say, 2000 BC would have fared at predicting the future path of the society?

5skeptical_lurker10y

Was there any noticeable technological progress back in 2000 BC? Looking at science fiction from the 19th century, aerial warfare, armoured land warfare, space exploration were all predicted. The details were all wrong, and I doubt we can predict the details of the future with any great accuracy. But the general theme of humanity expanding across the universe seems a safe extrapolation, even if I don't know whether the starships will be beam riders or ramscoops or wormhole navigators or Alcubierre drive or some other technology that has not yet been conceived.

6[anonymous]10y

Shitloads. Empires rose and fell as they obsoleted each other's military technologies, architecture evolved tremendously, crop plants diversified and became more nutritious, extractive farming techniques gave way to those that preserved the fertility of the soil rather than stripmining it, new naval technology was partially responsible for the late bronze age collapse... (yes I'm aware these gradiate towards 1000 BC)

0Lumifer10y

What makes you think that in 4000 years people will think there was noticeable technological progress in the XXI century? Actually, no, if the limit of the speed of light holds, either there won't be much expansion or the result of the expansion won't be very human.

0James_Miller10y

Fairly well for the next 3000 years since not a lot changed.

2Lumifer10y

And yet I feel you don't want to follow that example of success :-P

0VoiceOfRa10y

Well for starters his decedents would no longer be ruled by someone (purporting to be) a living incarnation of the sun god. Something he would no doubt consider extremely shocking.

0James_Miller10y

So we have gone from worshiping the sun god to worshiping the son of god.

-4VoiceOfRa10y

Nice pun. Now do you have a serious response?

2James_Miller10y

The life of a typical Egyptian didn't much change from 2000 BC to 1000 AD. And for most of this time the leaders claimed to have a strong connection or endorsement from the divine. An educated Egyptian living in 2000 BC would be aware of the diversity of religion in the world and would probably expect that over the next 3000 years religious practices would change in form in his country.

0[anonymous]10y

Are you joking?

2James_Miller10y

No, the life of the average human didn't much change from 2000 BC to 1000 AD. Jim

0James_Miller10y

If not for the Fermi paradox, I would agree.

2skeptical_lurker10y

Good point! I would have thought the great filter probably lies in our past, most likely with the origin of life or perhaps multicellular life, but the Fermi paradox is still information against space colonisation.

4[anonymous]10y

It's also unfortunately a distinctly uninformative piece of evidence about anything but space colonization and exponential expansion. All it tells us is that nothing self-replicates across the galaxy to a scale we could see in sheer infrared emissions or truly ridiculous levels of active attempts to be visible. There are so many orders of magnitude and divergent possibilities of things that could exist that we simply wouldn't know about right now given the observations we have made.

[-][anonymous]10y120

My brain filters it out automatically. Altruism is not even on my mind AT ALL, until I sorted out my own problems and feel the life of me and my family is reasonably secure, happy, safe, and going up and up. I don't feel I have any surplus for altruism.

I guess in practice I do altruistic things all the time. People ask me for help, I don't say no. I just don't seek out opportunities to.

[-]drethelin10y100

My biggest problem with EA is the excessive focus on a specific metric with no consideration of higher order plans or effects. The epitome of naive utilitarianism.

4Evan_Gaensbauer10y

On one hand, I'm not sure that's all of effective altruism. Those concerned about existential risk reduction, such as the MIRI, consider themselves part of effective altruism, and haven't always been about quantifying the value of ensuring a flourishing future civilization of trillions of human-like descendants in terms of quality-adjusted life years (henceforth referred to as QALYs). On the other hand, at the 2014 Effective Altruism Summit (I attended, and it's just a big EA conference), Eliezer Yudkowsky presented the potential value of the MIRI's work, given their work would prevent a counter-factual extinction of humanity and Earth-originating intelligence, in terms of QALYs. It was some extravagantly big number expressed in scientific notation, calculated as the expected years of happy life for so many trillions of future people. This is just my impression, but I think Mr. Yudkowsky and the MIRI did this to accommodate the rest of the community's knee-jerk demand for specific metrics. I've also met several folk hailing from Less Wrong and its cluster in person-space with loftier visions of improving the fare of humanity in the nearer-term future, than just handing out mosquito nets or deworming children near the equator, who are lukewarm towards or supportive of effective altruism as a community. They seem to be dismissive of naive utilitarianism in effective altruism, too. I myself take issue with bringing too much utilitarianism injected into effective altruism. I think as effective altruism as a vehicle which took inspiration from utilitarianism, but would mostly serve as a motivator and coordinating network for pragmatic action among all sorts of people, rather than so much theory of ethics which can and should be picked apart. I admit we in effective altruism don't tackle this issue well. This could be because the opinion that utilitarianism is overriding what could be the dynamic rationality of effective altruism is a minority one. I'm not confident I an

0Calien10y

Evan - I am also involved in effective altruism, and am not a utilitarian. I am a consequentialist and often agree with the utilitarians in mundane situations, though. drethelin - What would be an example of a better alternative?

1[anonymous]10y

I dont think anyone really CAN reliably consider all but the crudest higher order effects like population size...

[-]James_Miller10y110

I propose that some major academic organization such as the American Economic Association randomly and secretly choose a few members and request that they attempt to get fraudulent work accepted into the highest ranked journals they can. They reveal the fraud as soon as an article is accepted. This procedure would give us some idea how of easy it is to engage in fraud, and give journals additional incentives to search for it. For some academic disciplines the incentives to engage in fraud seem similar to that with illegal performance enhancing drugs and professional sports, and I wonder if the outcomes are similar.

[-]passive_fist10y290

Every so often someone proposes this (and sometimes someone who thinks they are clever actually carries it out) and it's always a terrible idea. The purpose of peer review is not to uncover fraud. It's not even to make sure what's in the paper is correct. The purpose of peer review is just to make sure what's in the paper is plausible and sane, and worth being presented to a wider audience. The purpose is to weed out obvious low-quality material such as perpetual motion machines or people who are duplicating other's work as their own. Could you get fraudulent papers accepted in a journal? Of course. A scientist sufficiently knowledgeable of their field could definitely fool almost any arbitrarily rigorous peer review procedure. Does fraud exist in the scientific world? Of course it does. Peer review is just one of the many mechanisms that serve to uncover it. Real review of one's work begins after peer review is over and the work is examined by the scientific community at large.

[-]James_Miller10y150

The purpose of peer review is not to uncover fraud.

And this is OK if the fraud rate is low, and unacceptable if it's high.

Real review of one's work begins after peer review is over and the work is examined by the scientific community at large.

I doubt this happens to more than a tiny number of papers, although probably the more important the result the more likely it will get reviewed.

8Richard_Kennaway10y

If a paper shows all its working, a competent reviewer can judge whether the work as reported is good. How will they detect that the report is a fabrication? All the reviewer sees is the story the author is telling. The reviewer may notice inconsistencies, such as repeated use of the same figures, or data with an implausible distribution, but they will generally have no way to compare the story with the actual facts of what happened in the lab. Detecting and preventing fraud is a good thing, but I don't think peer review is a place where much of it can happen.

3estimator10y

At least in math, a paper can actually be verified during peer review.

1DanielLC10y

Easier said than done. Just because you didn't notice an error in a two hundred page proof doesn't mean there isn't one.

1Salemicus10y

Maybe, but this isn't how actual peer review operates. It rejects far more than implausible/insane/unworthy ideas. I agree with this, if you'll concede that by your measure, the vast majority of scientific output never undergoes real review. Which is why most published results are false, and science is a cesspool.

3passive_fist10y

What else does it reject? I think it's important to look at this on a per-discipline basis. Some disciplines have much higher standards of clarity, precision, and repeatability than others. That article you linked looks at statistical studies with a special focus on medical research, but then seems to make the critical error of generalizing this to all scientific research. Do the findings apply to physics? Math? Computer science?

6gwern10y

Different fields use different methods. The basic point Ioannidis makes applies to any field which uses null-hypothesis significance-testing statistics for interpreting sampled data. * Math uses formal proofs, so whatever math error rates are (non-zero and meaningful, but not sure how big), they are independent of NHST's problems. * Ecology, medicine, biology, psychology, economics - heavy NHST users, critique definitely applies. * Experimental physics seems to use a lot of NHST too but they obey the critique by increasing power substantially: reducing measurement error and gathering enormous masses of data, more than is feasible in the other fields, so many n they can use the famed six-sigma alpha, which translates to very high PPV. They're also helped by the commitment to falsifiable narrow predictions of things like intervals rather than directions (hypothesis testing works much better if you can predict the Higgs's mass lies within a narrow range rather than having a null hypothesis of mass equals zero and an alternative of mass is non-zero; if you're interested, see Paul Meehl's methodological papers on why this is important). * Computer science is tricky: * the mathy parts are math and are safe (but not necessarily important or worth doing), * but other areas like systems work or machine learning may use NHST techniques or may not; there seem to be a lot of replicability problems in optimization work due to variation from machine to machine, and in machine learning I've heard many insinuations that papers get published by p-hacking hyperparameters until finally the new algorithm is p<0.05 better than the comparison algorithm or that the new tweak is just overfitting on a standard dataset, and some subfields are visibly rotten (HCI especially; you only have to look at how routine it is for HCI papers to claim an improvement based on NHST techniques applied to n=10 or something to know that those ain't gonna replicate)... but aside from a

0passive_fist10y

I agree 100%.

1Salemicus10y

I see papers get rejected all the time for methodological disagreements and failure to cite papers the referee thinks important. More broadly, ideas that are perfectly plausible but contrary to current thinking in a field have a much higher threshold to publication than ideas consonant with current thinking. But more generally, peer review is normally explicitly aimed at rejecting work judged to be non-novel or non-substantial. That boring replication attempts can't get published should therefore be seen as a feature not a bug. The ability of academics to publish novel, counter-intuitive and false results should therefore also be seen as a feature not a bug. Oh, I'm sure some disciplines are worse than others. But as you seem to be tacitly conceding, "the vast majority of scientific output never undergoes real review," and that's true in all disciplines.

6ChristianKl10y

Do you have any doubt that it's very easy to get fraudulent work accepted?

2James_Miller10y

I do have uncertainty over how much of a boost you can get by engaging in fraud.

0ChristianKl10y

I'm not sure whether paper acceptance in journals is the only factor that matters here. People who engage in fraud have to hide it from their colleagues and might lose reputation when their work isn't replicated.

5Elo10y

I would be concerned that including fraud-detection processes would also bring in biases of "I don't like this work and therefore we shouldn't publish it". I also agree with the points of the purpose of peer review is to check for sanity of method and soundness of scientific process; not fraud.

[-][anonymous]10y80

Let's make a top level thread collecting websites that are useful for any purpose. From curetogether.com to pomodoro timers. Also includes download sites of useful software. Eventually this should make it into the wiki.

What would be a good way to do it? Perhaps similar to media threads.

I also know the space I propose to search is ginormous, but the goal is not to make it exhaustive, the goal is to list the favorite web-based tools / learning materials / software / other useful things on the web of LW members. With the hidden hope that we will get a better... (read more)

[-]ZacHirschman10y80

A few thoughts on Mark_Friedenbach's recent departure:

I thought it could be unpacked into two main points. (1) is that Mark is leaving the community. To Mark, or anyone who makes this decision, I think the rational response is, "good luck and best wishes." We are here for reasons, and when those reasons wane, I wouldn't begrudge anyone looking elsewhere or doing other things.

(2) is that the community is in need of growth. My interpretation of this is as follows: the Sequences are not updated, and yet they are still referenced as source material. ... (read more)

7Vaniver10y

One way of looking at the failure mode of Scientology is that they lead with genuinely useful material, which hooks people and establishes them as a credible source of wisdom. They then have a progressive structure that convinces you new epiphanies are just around the corner, you just need to put in a little more effort / time / cash--but there is no epiphany waiting that will be as useful as the original epiphanies. This happens lots of places. I recall reading about some Alexander Technique expert, who continued doing lessons in the hopes of recapturing the first moment when he experienced lightness in his body. He never could, because the thing that was shocking about the first time was the surprise, not the lightness, and no matter how light he got, he could not become as surprised by it. The healthy approach is to have a purpose, to pursue a well of knowledge for as long as doing so enhances that purpose, and then to abandon that well of knowledge as soon as it no longer enhances that purpose. But here we run into the issue that, while rationality may be the common interest of many causes, the "something new" is unlikely to be a specifically rationality thing. It's more likely to be something that some people find interesting and some people find boring, and so the people split into different taskforces to solve different problems. (That is, the Craft and the Community sequence really does anticipate lots of these issues.)

2ZacHirschman10y

I don't mean to advocate an epiphany-driven model of discovery. To use your Scientology example and terminology, what I am advocating is not that we find the "next big thing," but that we pursue refinement of the original, "genuinely useful material." Of course, it is much easier to advocate this than to put the work in, but that's why I'm using the open thread. There are some legitimate issues with some of the Sequences (both resolved and unresolved). The comments represent a very nice start, but there may be some serious philosophical work to be done. There is a well of knowledge about pursuing wells of knowledge, and I would find it purposeful to refine the effective pursuit of knowledge.

1Viliam10y

The taskforces may be really necessary, and it may be really difficult to admit in near mode. On some level, it feels wrong to try fragmenting the LW community. I mean, I am so happy that I have found such wonderful people... and now should my next step be to choose a topic that doesn't interest most of them, and focus on that? So that some subgroup will be interested in that, and most will not? Yes, exactly this. Because trying to make everyone interested means staying on the level of generalities, ignoring the virtue of narrowness. You conduct experiments with specific data, and only generalize later. And yet, focusing on the specific feels like deviating from the topic of this website, which is about rationality in general. Historically, even Eliezer didn't make everyone on Overcoming Bias happy. There were people who didn't care about quantum physics. Actually, even today some people feel like the Sequences would be better without the quantum physics parts; like they ruin the otherwise good advice on rationality. Quantum physics is just a narrow specific topic; why couldn't Eliezer just leave it out? Well, Eliezer had his reasons, but there is a meta-reason that if you start leaving out specific things for the reason that they are not central to the issue of rationality, and that some people may not be interested in them, then what remains? General pro-"rationality" applause lights? Topics too mathematical to have any obvious connection with everyday life? On the other hand, it may be a pattern that Eliezer split from Overcoming Bias to follow his own topics; and now Scott is similarly trying to apply rationality to politics on SSC... something like it's easier to focus fully on your mission, when you have your own playground, so you really don't have to care about what other people think about your approach. Like, if you have something to protect, it makes sense to bring it on your own turf, where you can protect it better. Maybe it is necessary that the ne

3Vaniver10y

So, the thing that I think most exciting here would be some sort of LW comment API / easy WordPress plugin / whatever, so that one can trivially add LW commenting to their blog, and people can have one shared account and comment response inbox across all rationalist blogs. So, I think one component of it being a "taskforce" instead of just a blog is that actual work is getting done. Yes, there's stuff like IAFF that's primarily discussion--because that discussion is leading to papers and constitutes "actual work." But CFAR seems like it falls into the 'task force' category--it has a mission, but also employees, a budget, and so on. And I think it makes sense to treat LW as a "forum," in the ancient Roman sense. You'll talk about your business in the marketplace and keep abreast of what's going on elsewhere, but it's not a good place to try to get your work done--that's what your own building is for.

0ChristianKl10y

It seems to me like if you want to start a task force, start a task force. No rebranding needed.

1Viliam10y

Unless "officially" encouraged by LW, people may be doing it away from LW, so it may not be visibly displayed here. Somewhat related: "Why Our Kind Can't Cooperate": Maybe we are doing a similar thing here, only instead of "donating / not donating", the choice is "doing / not doing". People are doing stuff -- in private. (At least sometimes we have a bragging thread. For individuals.) Publicly -- we complain that LessWrong is dying, or that LessWrong is all procrastination and no action. And then we upvote the complaints for the courage, or perhaps hoping that it will make someone else do something. I guess what I would like to see here is something like the bragging threads... but for groups of rationalists. Perhaps with posts instead of comments, although comments are still better than nothing. Do something awesome; post the results and what you learned. Doesn't have to be rationality in general, or AI, or quantum physics; it could be anything you care about, as long as you are willing to use your reason while doing it. It could be even learning together, or solving Project Euler together. Something you decide to do, and kinda precommit to publish your achievements and/or failures. (Technically, organizing local meetups is also a project LessWrongers do in groups, so at least this kind of taskforces already provably exists.)

0NancyLebovitz10y

This strikes me as close to right. LW might be a good place, though not the only good place, to announce starting a task force. If you attract people who are willing and able to do the work, then LW might or might not turn out to be a good place for primary discussion of what the task force is doing.

0ChristianKl10y

I think "epiphany" isn't a good way to think about scientology. The advantages you get by not being emotionally reactive to triggers, aren't about "epiphanies". Could you source that story? To me that sound like someone not practicing "beginners mind" and as a result getting things wrong. Eliezer mostly wrote about his own thoughts on rationality and at the beginning of LW, I think there reason to assume that it covers everything meaningful there to say about rationality.

1Vaniver10y

If I recall correctly (60%?), it was Frank Pierce Jones. I'll have to do some digging to find the initial quote, and I remember reading him as healthily noticing that desire and acknowledging that it was impossible, rather than misspending his life in pursuit of it. (I've also stuck an "as" in the quoted text to make it a little clearer what claim I'm making.) I agree there are more ways out there than just Eliezer's way, and people should be encouraged to discover theirs and post about it here. My hope was more to convey that some fruits can only be picked once.

1[anonymous]10y

I don't see any connection between growth and updating unless significant cognitive science breakthroughs were made since. But I think growth would depend on presenting it in a popular, digestible format. Not HPMOR, not one book and not a book for SF/F nerds anyway... but more going to say changemyview.reddit.com and engaging in debates and when people make cognitive mistakes linking to the article here. For example. Or people who have commit privileges to popular newspapers could write articles like "10 things LW taught me".

[-]ChristianKl10y110

Or people who have commit privileges to popular newspapers could write articles like "10 things LW taught me".

That draws the wrong people.

When doing Quantified Self community building we found in in Germany that while we were featured plenty in mainstream media, the interesting people who came to our meetups hadn't heard of us over that channel. We learned that it doesn't make sense to hold QS meetups in German in Berlin, because everybody who's interesting speaks English but not everybody who's interesting speaks German.

You don't want the people who take popular newspapers seriously.

0ZacHirschman10y

I see that I used the word "growth" capriciously. I don't necessarily mean greater numbers, I mean the opposite of stagnation. Of course a call for action is easier and less effective than acting, but that's why we have open threads.

[-]CAE_Jones10y70

(Akrasia, because that's all I ever talk about):

I do not know to whose attention I should bring this so as to combat the problem, so I'm asking here:

http://caejones.livejournal.com/18117.html

I have a stupidly difficult time talking to people, too, especially my parents (who pretty much have to manage all the details, because of course they do). This does not help.

Yes, I've read all the Akrasia articles on Lesswrong that I can find. Mostly, I'm hoping there's someone better equipped to fix this than me or the internet, and that someone can help me find that... (read more)

2eeuuah