Elliot Temple

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Elliot Temple — LessWrong

Critical Fallibilism and Theory of Constraints in One Analyzed Paragraph

3mo

I wrote a dense paragraph about Critical Fallibilism (CF), particularly ideas inspired by Eli Goldratt's Theory of Constraints (TOC). This article breaks it down and explains it. Here's the paragraph with small changes from the original:

People want complex solutions like correctly weighting and adding 50 factors, which are qualitatively different (e.g. price and deliciousness are hard to add), to figure out just the right credence that is further updated by any piece of evidence. Then they end up factoring in a bunch of local optima, that, in the bigger picture, have excess capacity, so those factors shouldn’t actually change the result. (The desire to always update the credence on any good or

... (read 8381 more words →)

Why would code/English or low-abstraction/high-abstraction simplicity or brevity correspond?

Elliot Temple

Solomonoff Induction (SI) focuses on short code. What’s short in English is not necessarily short in code, and vice versa. Most of our intuition in favor of short, simple explanations is from our experience with English, not code. Is there literature arguing that code and English brevity usually or always correspond to each other? If not, then most of our reasons for accepting Occam’s Razor wouldn’t apply to SI.

Another way to think of the issue may be that coding is a low level or reductionist way to deal with an issue, while English is a high level approach that uses high level tools like explanations. Ideas can be represented in many ways,... (read more)

Mathematical Inconsistency in Solomonoff Induction?

Elliot Temple

What counts as a hypothesis for Solomonoff induction? The general impression I’ve gotten in various places is “a hypothesis can be anything (that you could write down)”. But I don’t think that’s quite it. E.g. evidence can be written down but is treated separately. I think a hypothesis is more like a computer program that outputs predictions about what evidence will or will not be observed.

If X and Y are hypotheses, then is “X and Y” a hypothesis? “not X”? “X or Y?” If not, why not, and where can I read a clear explanation of the rules and exclusions for Solomonoff hypotheses?

If using logic operators with hypotheses does yield other hypotheses,... (read 429 more words →)

Analyzing Blackmail Being Illegal (Hanson and Mowshowitz related)

Elliot Temple

Highlights from the Blackmail Debate (Robin Hanson vs Zvi Mowshowitz) by Ben Pace:

Here's my overview of their positions.

Zvi thinks that blackmail would incentivize a whole host of terrible actions, such as trying to trick people into norm violation, and people becoming intensely secretive even around their closest friends and family.

Robin thinks that blackmail is a weird rule, where you cannot ask for money to keep a secret, but the other person is allowed to offer it (e.g. people can offer you money if you sign an NDAs). This makes no sense and Robin is looking for any clear reason why making one side of this deal should be illegal.

Thoughts Before Reading More

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Updating My LW Commenting Policy

Elliot Temple

I thought about how to use comments better and get along with people better. I wrote notes about it:

Write comments that would be appreciated by a new observer, who hasn’t read any of my previous stuff, hasn’t read the sequences, and only skimmed the post he’s commenting under.
Only reply to comments I actually think are good. If I see any signs of low quality, hostility, or social aggression, don’t reply.
Make it clear to people in my bio, and at the end of some posts, that I’m open to more discussion by request. I can change policies and be more responsive if asked.
Avoid meta discussion. Lots of LW people don’t like it. I

... (read 919 more words →)

Rationally Ending Discussions

Elliot Temple

Discussions should end gracefully. There should be some clarity about why they’re ending and why that’s rationally acceptable. If someone wants to continue the discussion, they should have the opportunity to see why this ending is reasonable. (Or, failing that, they should have some evidence available to enable them to argue their case that it was unreasonable. They shouldn’t be left with little or no data about what happened.)

If you discuss poorly, it’s important that you can learn from that and do better next time. If you want it, you should have access to some critical feedback, some explanation of the other person’s perspective, or something to enable progress. If you’re running... (read 4045 more words →)

-3

Social Dynamics

Elliot Temple

These are some summary notes on social dynamics.

conformity
- try to fit in
- pandering
- pleasing people
- avoiding conflict
- do whatever the group thinks is high status
  - follow trends
- you need to already have friends. people are impressed by people who other people already like (pre-selection).
- have standard interests like the right TV shows, music, movies and sports. talk about those. don’t say weird stuff.
  - you’re allowed to have interests people think they should have. lots of people think they should be more into art galleries and operas. you can talk about that stuff to people who don’t actually like it but pretend they want to. they’ll be impressed you actually do that stuff which seems a bit inaccessible but valuable to them.
law

... (read 1045 more words →)

The Law of Least Effort Contributes to the Conjunction Fallacy

Elliot Temple

Continuing the theme that the “Conjunction Fallacy” experimental results can be explained by social dynamics, let’s look at another social dynamic: the Law of Least Effort (LoLE).

(Previously: Can Social Dynamics Explain Conjunction Fallacy Experimental Results? and Asch Conformity Could Explain the Conjunction Fallacy.)

The Law of Least Effort says:

the person who appears to put the least amount of effort out, while getting the largest amount of effort returned to him by others, comes across as the most socially powerful.

In other words, it’s higher status to be chased than to chase others. In terms of status, you want others to come to you, rather than going to them. Be less reactive than others.

Visible effort... (read 762 more words →)

Asch Conformity Could Explain the Conjunction Fallacy

Elliot Temple

This post follows my question Can Social Dynamics Explain Conjunction Fallacy Experimental Results? The results of the question were that no one provided any research contradicting the social dynamics hypothesis.

There is research on social dynamics. Asch’s conformity experiments indicate that wanting to fit in with a group is a very powerful factor that affects how people answer simple, factual questions like “Which of these lines is longer?” People will knowingly give wrong answers for social reasons. (Unknowingly giving wrong answers, e.g. carelessly, is easier.)

Conformity and other social dynamics can explain the conjunction fallacy experimental data. This post will focus on conformity, the dynamic studied in the Asch experiments.

This post assumes you’re already... (read 1240 more words →)

Can Social Dynamics Explain Conjunction Fallacy Experimental Results?

Elliot Temple

Is there any conjunction fallacy research which addresses the alternative hypothesis that the observed results are mainly due to social dynamics?

Most people spend most of their time thinking in terms of gaining or losing social status, not in terms of reason. They care more about their place in social status hierarchies than about logic. They have strategies for dealing with communication that have more to do with getting along with people than with getting questions technically right. They look for the social meaning in communications. E.g. people normally try to give – and expect to receive – useful, relevant, reasonable info that is safe to make socially normal assumptions about.

Suppose you knew... (read more)

LESSWRONG
LW

LESSWRONG
LW

Chains, Bottlenecks and Optimization

Bottleneck Examples

Can Social Dynamics Explain Conjunction Fallacy Experimental Results?

Updating My LW Commenting Policy

Elliot Temple

Elliot Temple

Critical Fallibilism and Theory of Constraints in One Analyzed Paragraph

Why would code/English or low-abstraction/high-abstraction simplicity or brevity correspond?

Mathematical Inconsistency in Solomonoff Induction?

Analyzing Blackmail Being Illegal (Hanson and Mowshowitz related)

Updating My LW Commenting Policy

Rationally Ending Discussions

Social Dynamics

Elliot Temple

Chains, Bottlenecks and Optimization

Bottleneck Examples

Can Social Dynamics Explain Conjunction Fallacy Experimental Results?

Updating My LW Commenting Policy

Elliot Temple

Elliot Temple

Critical Fallibilism and Theory of Constraints in One Analyzed Paragraph

Why would code/English or low-abstraction/high-abstraction simplicity or brevity correspond?

Mathematical Inconsistency in Solomonoff Induction?

Analyzing Blackmail Being Illegal (Hanson and Mowshowitz related)

Updating My LW Commenting Policy

Rationally Ending Discussions

Social Dynamics

Thoughts Before Reading More