sirjackholland

This post is a bad idea and it would be better if it were taken down. It's "penny-wise, pound-foolish" applied to epistemology and I would be utterly shocked if this post had a net positive effect.

I wrote a big critique outlining why I think it's bad, but I couldn't keep it civil and don't want to spend another hour editing it to be, so I'll keep it brief and to the point: lesswrong has been a great source of info and discussion on COVID-19 in the past couple of weeks, much better than most mainstream sources, but as usual, I don't recommend the site to friends or family because I know posts... (read more)

Thinking that evolution is smart on the timescales we care about is probably a worse heuristic, though. Evolution can't look ahead, which is fine when it's possible to construct useful intermediate adaptations, but poses a serious problem when there are no useful intermediates. In the case of infosec, it's as all-or-nothing as it gets. A single mistake exposes the whole system to attack by adversaries. In this case, the attack could destroy the mind of the person using their neural connection.

Consider it from this perspective: a single deleterious mutation to part of the genome encoding the security system opens the person up to someone else poisoning their mind in serious and sudden... (read more)

I'm not sure what "statistically immoral" means nor have I ever heard the term, which makes me doubt it's common speech (googling it does not bring up any uses of the phrase).

I think we're using the term "historical circumstances" differently; I simply mean what's happened in the past. Isn't the base rate purely a function of the records of white/black convictions? If so, then the fact that the rates are not the same is the reason that we run into this fairness problem. I agree that this problem can apply in other settings, but in the case where the base rate is a function of history, is it not accurate to say... (read more)

For #1, I'm not sure I agree that not everyone in the room knows. I've seen introductions like this at conferences dedicated entirely to proteins where it assumed, rightly or not, that everyone knows the basics. It's more that not everyone will have the information cached as readily as the specialists. So I agree that sometimes it is more accurate to say "As I'm sure most of you know" but many times, you really are confident that everyone knows, just not necessarily at the tip of their tongue. It serves as a reminder, not actually new knowledge.

I suppose you could argue: since everyone is constantly forgetting little things here and there, even... (read more)

Echoing the other replies so far, I can think of other practical explanations for saying "everybody knows..." that don't fall into your classification.

1) Everybody knows that presenting a fact X to someone who finds X obvious can sometimes give them the impression that you think they're stupid/uninformed/out-of-touch. For instance, the sentence you just read. For another instance, the first few slides of a scientific talk often present basic facts of the field, e.g. "Proteins comprise one or more chains of amino acids, of which there are 20 natural types." Everybody who's a professional biologist/biochemist/bioinformatician/etc. knows this [1]. If you present this information as being even a little bit novel, you look ridiculous.... (read 401 more words →)

Simplified examples from my own experience of participating in or witnessing this kind of disagreement:

Poverty reduction: Alice says "extreme poverty is rapidly falling" and Bob replies "$2/day is not enough to live on!" Alice and Bob talked past each other for a while until realizing that these statements are not in conflict; the conflict concerns the significance of making enough money to no longer be considered in "extreme poverty." The resolution came from recognizing that extreme poverty reduction is important, but that even 0% extreme poverty does not imply that we have solved starvation, homelessness, etc. That is, Alice thought Bob was denying how fast and impressively extreme poverty is being reduced,... (read 1299 more words →)

One notable aspect in my experience with this is that exhaustion is not exclusively a function of the decision's complexity. I can experience exhaustion when deciding what to eat for dinner, for instance, even though I've made similar decisions literally thousands of times before, the answer is always obvious (cook stuff I have at home or order from a restaurant I like - what else is there?), and the stakes are low ("had I given it more thought, I would have realize I was more in the mood for soup than a sandwich" is not exactly a harrowing loss).

Another aspect to note is that decisions that end up exhausting me usually entail... (read more)