This is just a guess, but I think CFAR and the CFAR-sphere would be more effective if they focused more on hypothesis generation (or “imagination”, although that term is very broad). Eg., a year or so ago, a friend of mine in the Thiel-sphere proposed starting a new country by hauling nuclear power plants to Antarctica, and then just putting heaters on the ground to melt all the ice. As it happens, I think this is a stupid idea (hot air rises, so the newly heated air would just blow away, pulling in more cold air from the surroundings). But it is an idea, and the same person came up with (and implemented) a profitable business plan six months or so later. I can imagine HPJEV coming up with that idea, or Elon Musk, or von Neumann, or Google X; I don’t think most people in the CFAR-sphere would, it’s just not the kind of thing I think they’ve focused on practicing.
There’s a difference between optimizing for truth and optimizing for interestingness. Interestingness is valuable for truth in the long run because the more hypotheses you have, the better your odds of stumbling on the correct hypothesis. But naively optimizing for truth can decrease creativity, which is critical for interestingness.
I suspect “having ideas” is a skill you can develop, kind of like making clay pots. In the same way your first clay pots will be lousy, your first ideas will be lousy, but they will get better with practice.
...creation is embarrassing. For every new good idea you have, there are a hundred, ten thousand foolish ones, which you naturally do not care to display.
If this is correct, this also gives us clues about how to solve Less Wrong’s content problem.
Online communities do not have a strong comparative advantage in compiling and presenting facts that are well understood. That’s the sort of thing academics and journalists are already paid to do. If online communities have a comparative advantage, it’s in exploring ideas that are neglected by the mainstream—things like AI risk, or CFARish techniques for being more effective.
Unfortunately, LW’s culture has historically been pretty antithetical to creativity. It’s hard to tell in advance whether an idea you have is a good one or not. And LW has often been hard on posts it considers bad. This made the already-scary process of sharing new ideas even more fraught with the possibility of embarrassment.
If a single individual present is unsympathetic to the foolishness that would be bound to go on at such a [brainstorming] session, the others would freeze. The unsympathetic individual may be a gold mine of information, but the harm he does will more than compensate for that. It seems necessary to me, then, that all people at a session be willing to sound foolish and listen to others sound foolish.
There’s a difference between optimizing for truth and optimizing for interestingness.
Oh yes. For example, Physical Review Letters is mostly interested in the former, while HuffPo—in the latter.
the more hypotheses you have, the better your odds of stumbling on the correct hypothesis
That’s not true because you must also evaluate all these hypotheses and that’s costly. For a trivial example, given a question X, would you find it easier to identify a correct hypothesis if I presented you with five candidates or with five million candidates?
I suspect “having ideas” is a skill you can develop
Yes, subject to native ability. I suspect it’s more like music than like clay pots: some people find it effortless, most can improve with training, and some won’t do well regardless of how much time they spend practicing.
That’s the sort of thing academics and journalists are already paid to do.
Kinda. On the one hand, pop-sci continues to be popular. On the other hand, journalists are very very bad at it.
the already-scary process of sharing new ideas
I would like to suggest attaching less self-worth and less status to ideas you throw out. Accept that it’s fine that most of them will be shot down.
I don’t like the kindergarten alternative: Oh, little Johnny said something stupid, like he usually does! He is such a creative child! Here is a gold star!
I recommend recording ideas in a private notebook.
I concur. Note that LW is not that private notebook.
OK, so I told you the other day that I find you a difficult person to have discussions with. I think I might find your comments less frustrating if you made an effort to think of things I would say in response to your points, and then wrote in anticipation of those things. If you’re interested in trying this, I converted all my responses using rot13 so you can try to guess what they will be before reading them.
Oh yes. For example, Physical Review Letters is mostly interested in the former, while HuffPo—in the latter.
UhssCb vf gelvat gb znkvzvmr nq erirahr ol jevgvat negvpyrf gung nccrny gb gur fbeg bs crbcyr jub pyvpx ba nqf. Gur rkvfgrapr bs pyvpxonvg gryyf hf onfvpnyyl abguvat nobhg ubj hfrshy vg jbhyq or sbe lbhe nirentr Yrff Jebatre gb fcraq zber gvzr trarengvat ulcbgurfrf. Vg’f na nethzrag ol nanybtl, naq gur nanybtl vf dhvgr ybbfr.
V jbhyq thrff Culfvpny Erivrj Yrggref cevbevgvmrf cncref gung unir vagrerfgvat naq abiry erfhygf bire cncref gung grfg naq pbasvez rkvfgvat gurbevrf va jnlf gung nera’g vagrerfgvat. Shegurezber, V fhfcrpg gung gur orfg culfvpvfgf gel gb qb erfrnepu gung’f vagrerfgvat, naq crre erivrj npgf nf n zber gehgu-sbphfrq svygre nsgrejneqf.
That’s not true because you must also evaluate all these hypotheses and that’s costly. For a trivial example, given a question X, would you find it easier to identify a correct hypothesis if I presented you with five candidates or with five million candidates?
Gur nafjre gb lbhe dhrfgvba vf gung V jbhyq cersre svir zvyyvba pnaqvqngrf. Vs svir ulcbgurfrf jrer nyy V unq gvzr gb rinyhngr, V pbhyq fvzcyl qvfpneq rirelguvat nsgre gur svefg svir.
Ohg ulcbgurfvf rinyhngvba unccraf va fgntrf. Gur vavgvny fgntr vf n onfvp cynhfvovyvgl purpx juvpu pna unccra va whfg n srj frpbaqf. Vs n ulcbgurfvf znxrf vg cnfg gung fgntr, lbh pna vairfg zber rssbeg va grfgvat vg. Jvgu n ynetre ahzore bs ulcbgurfrf, V pna or zber fryrpgvir nobhg juvpu barf tb gb gur evtbebhf grfgvat fgntr, naq erfgevpg vg gb ulcbgurfrf gung ner rvgure uvtuyl cynhfvoyr naq/be ulcbgurfvf gung jbhyq pnhfr zr gb hcqngr n ybg vs gurl jrer gehr.
Gurer frrzf gb or cerggl jvqrfcernq nterrzrag gung YJ ynpxf pbagrag. Jr qba’g frrz gb unir gur ceboyrz bs gbb znal vagrerfgvat ulcbgurfrf.
I would like to suggest attaching less self-worth and less status to ideas you throw out. Accept that it’s fine that most of them will be shot down.
I don’t like the kindergarten alternative: Oh, little Johnny said something stupid, like he usually does! He is such a creative child! Here is a gold star!
V pvgrq fbzrbar V pbafvqre na rkcreg ba gur gbcvp bs perngvivgl, Vfnnp Nfvzbi, ba gur fbeg bs raivebazrag gung ur guvaxf jbexf orfg sbe vg. Ner gurer ernfbaf jr fubhyq pbafvqre lbh zber xabjyrqtrnoyr guna Nfvzbi ba guvf gbcvp? (Qvq lbh gnxr gur gvzr gb ernq Nfvzbi’f rffnl?)
Urer’f nabgure rkcreg ba gur gbcvp bs perngvivgl: uggcf://ivzrb.pbz/89936101
V frr n ybg bs nterrzrag jvgu Nfvzbi urer. Lbhe xvaqretnegra nanybtl zvtug or zber ncg guna lbh ernyvmr—V guvax zbfg crbcyr ner ng gurve zbfg perngvir jura gurl ner srryvat cynlshy.
I told you the other day that I find you a difficult person to have discussions with
Yes. This is unfortunate, but I cannot help you here.
if you made an effort to think of things I would say in response to your points, and then wrote in anticipation of those things
I think it’s a bad idea. I can’t anticipate your responses well enough (in other words, I don’t have a good model of you) -- for example, I did not expect you to take five million candidate hypotheses. And if I want to have a conversation with myself, why, there is no reason to involve you in the process.
The existence of clickbait tells us basically nothing about how useful it would be for your average Less Wronger to spend more time generating hypotheses.
We didn’t get to an average Lesswronger generating hypotheses yet. You’ve introduced a new term—“interestingness” and set it in opposition to truth (or should it have been truthiness?) As far as I can see, clickbait is just a subtype of “interestingness”—and if you want to optimize for “interestingness”, you would tend to end up with clickbait of some sort. And I’m not quite sure what does it have to do with the propensity to generate hypotheses.
If five hypotheses were all I had time to evaluate, I could simply discard everything after the first five.
If a correct hypothesis was guaranteed to be included in your set, you would discard the true one in 99.9999% of the cases, then.
The initial stage is a basic plausibility check which can happen in just a few seconds.
Let’s try it. “Earth rotates around the Sun”—ha-ha, what do I look like, an idiot? Implausible. Next!
...Isaac Asimov, on the sort of environment that he thinks works best for it.
Where “it” is “writing fiction”?
Your kindergarten analogy might be more apt than you realize—I think most people are at their most creative when they are feeling playful.
LOL. Kids are naturally playful—the don’t need a kindergarten for it. In fact, kindergartens tend to use their best efforts to shut down kids creativity and make them “less disruptive”, “respectful”, “calm”, and all the things required of a docile shee… err… member of society.
I suggest creating a few top-level posts yourself before taking your own opinion on these topics seriously.
I neither see much reason to do so, nor do I take my own opinion seriously, anyway :-P
Do you want playfulness or seriousness? Pick a side.
Online communities do not have a strong comparative advantage in compiling and presenting facts that are well understood. That’s the sort of thing academics and journalists are already paid to do.
But academics write for other academics, and journalists don’t and can’t. (They’ve tried. They can’t. Remember Vox?)
AFAIK, there isn’t a good outlet for compilations of facts intended for and easily accessible by a general audience, reviews of books that weren’t just written, etc. Since LW isn’t run for profit and is run as outreach for, among other things, CFAR, whose target demographic would be interested in such an outlet, this could be a valuable direction for either LW or a spinoff site; but, given the reputational risk (both personally and institutionally) inherent in the process of generating new ideas, we may be better served by pivoting LW toward the niche I’m thinking of—a cross between a review journal, SSC, and, I don’t know, maybe CIA (think World Factbook) or RAND—and moving the generation and refinement of ideas into a separate container, maybe an anonymous blog or forum.
Edit, 5 minutes later: a bit more seriously, I’m not sure I’d agree that “academics write for other academics” holds as a strong generalization. Many academics focus on writing for academics, but many don’t. I think the (relatively) low level of information flow from academia to general audiences is at least as much a demand-side phenomenon as a supply-side one.
Academics write textbooks, popular books, and articles that are intended for a lay audience.
Nevertheless, I think it’s great if LW users want to compile & present facts that are well understood. I just don’t think we have a strong comparative advantage.
LW already has a reputation for exploring non-mainstream ideas. That attracts some and repels others. If we tried to sanitize ourselves, we probably would not get back the people who have been repulsed, and we might lose the interest of some of the people we’ve attracted.
Definitely agree with the importance of hypothesis generation and the general lack of it–at least for me, I would classify this as my main business-related weakness, relative to successful people I know.
Colonizing Antarctica and making a whole slew of new countries is actually a good idea IMO, but it doesn’t have enough appeal. The value to humanity of creating new countries that can innovate on institutions is large.
You can think of Mars colonization as a more difficult version of Antarctic colonization which is actually going to be attempted because it sounds cooler.
I’m not convinced yet. Yes that is why people are talking about it instead of talking about attempting to colonize Antarctica, or the bottom of the ocean, or whatever. But they currently aren’t attempting to colonize any of those places, including Mars, and we have yet to see them attempt any of them, including Mars.
Well, I suppose it depends where you draw the line.
SpaceX has built real physical components for its Interplanetary Transport System, which is specifically designed for missions to Mars. That’s more than just talk.
But I suppose there was seasteading… though that actually did fully close down.
I can imagine thinking of such an idea. If you start with the assumption that colonizing Mars is really hard it’s the next step to think about what we could colonize on earth.
There’s much empty land in Australia that could be colonized easier than the Arctic.
This reminds me of a silly plan I put together in high school, I put it here just for the amusement value (because it’s in the same league of absurdity in the plan outlined above): collect from eBay enough balls for Geiger counter testing to make a critical mass and with that seize control of San Marino (a terribly small but wealthy independent state inside Italy).
This is just a guess, but I think CFAR and the CFAR-sphere would be more effective if they focused more on hypothesis generation (or “imagination”, although that term is very broad). Eg., a year or so ago, a friend of mine in the Thiel-sphere proposed starting a new country by hauling nuclear power plants to Antarctica, and then just putting heaters on the ground to melt all the ice. As it happens, I think this is a stupid idea (hot air rises, so the newly heated air would just blow away, pulling in more cold air from the surroundings). But it is an idea, and the same person came up with (and implemented) a profitable business plan six months or so later. I can imagine HPJEV coming up with that idea, or Elon Musk, or von Neumann, or Google X; I don’t think most people in the CFAR-sphere would, it’s just not the kind of thing I think they’ve focused on practicing.
There’s a difference between optimizing for truth and optimizing for interestingness. Interestingness is valuable for truth in the long run because the more hypotheses you have, the better your odds of stumbling on the correct hypothesis. But naively optimizing for truth can decrease creativity, which is critical for interestingness.
I suspect “having ideas” is a skill you can develop, kind of like making clay pots. In the same way your first clay pots will be lousy, your first ideas will be lousy, but they will get better with practice.
Source.
If this is correct, this also gives us clues about how to solve Less Wrong’s content problem.
Online communities do not have a strong comparative advantage in compiling and presenting facts that are well understood. That’s the sort of thing academics and journalists are already paid to do. If online communities have a comparative advantage, it’s in exploring ideas that are neglected by the mainstream—things like AI risk, or CFARish techniques for being more effective.
Unfortunately, LW’s culture has historically been pretty antithetical to creativity. It’s hard to tell in advance whether an idea you have is a good one or not. And LW has often been hard on posts it considers bad. This made the already-scary process of sharing new ideas even more fraught with the possibility of embarrassment.
Same source.
I recommend recording ideas in a private notebook. I’ve been doing this for a few years, and I now have way more ideas than I know what to do with.
Relevant: http://waitbutwhy.com/2015/11/the-cook-and-the-chef-musks-secret-sauce.html
Oh yes. For example, Physical Review Letters is mostly interested in the former, while HuffPo—in the latter.
That’s not true because you must also evaluate all these hypotheses and that’s costly. For a trivial example, given a question X, would you find it easier to identify a correct hypothesis if I presented you with five candidates or with five million candidates?
Yes, subject to native ability. I suspect it’s more like music than like clay pots: some people find it effortless, most can improve with training, and some won’t do well regardless of how much time they spend practicing.
Kinda. On the one hand, pop-sci continues to be popular. On the other hand, journalists are very very bad at it.
I would like to suggest attaching less self-worth and less status to ideas you throw out. Accept that it’s fine that most of them will be shot down.
I don’t like the kindergarten alternative: Oh, little Johnny said something stupid, like he usually does! He is such a creative child! Here is a gold star!
I concur. Note that LW is not that private notebook.
OK, so I told you the other day that I find you a difficult person to have discussions with. I think I might find your comments less frustrating if you made an effort to think of things I would say in response to your points, and then wrote in anticipation of those things. If you’re interested in trying this, I converted all my responses using rot13 so you can try to guess what they will be before reading them.
UhssCb vf gelvat gb znkvzvmr nq erirahr ol jevgvat negvpyrf gung nccrny gb gur fbeg bs crbcyr jub pyvpx ba nqf. Gur rkvfgrapr bs pyvpxonvg gryyf hf onfvpnyyl abguvat nobhg ubj hfrshy vg jbhyq or sbe lbhe nirentr Yrff Jebatre gb fcraq zber gvzr trarengvat ulcbgurfrf. Vg’f na nethzrag ol nanybtl, naq gur nanybtl vf dhvgr ybbfr.
V jbhyq thrff Culfvpny Erivrj Yrggref cevbevgvmrf cncref gung unir vagrerfgvat naq abiry erfhygf bire cncref gung grfg naq pbasvez rkvfgvat gurbevrf va jnlf gung nera’g vagrerfgvat. Shegurezber, V fhfcrpg gung gur orfg culfvpvfgf gel gb qb erfrnepu gung’f vagrerfgvat, naq crre erivrj npgf nf n zber gehgu-sbphfrq svygre nsgrejneqf.
Gur nafjre gb lbhe dhrfgvba vf gung V jbhyq cersre svir zvyyvba pnaqvqngrf. Vs svir ulcbgurfrf jrer nyy V unq gvzr gb rinyhngr, V pbhyq fvzcyl qvfpneq rirelguvat nsgre gur svefg svir.
Ohg ulcbgurfvf rinyhngvba unccraf va fgntrf. Gur vavgvny fgntr vf n onfvp cynhfvovyvgl purpx juvpu pna unccra va whfg n srj frpbaqf. Vs n ulcbgurfvf znxrf vg cnfg gung fgntr, lbh pna vairfg zber rssbeg va grfgvat vg. Jvgu n ynetre ahzore bs ulcbgurfrf, V pna or zber fryrpgvir nobhg juvpu barf tb gb gur evtbebhf grfgvat fgntr, naq erfgevpg vg gb ulcbgurfrf gung ner rvgure uvtuyl cynhfvoyr naq/be ulcbgurfvf gung jbhyq pnhfr zr gb hcqngr n ybg vs gurl jrer gehr.
Gurer frrzf gb or cerggl jvqrfcernq nterrzrag gung YJ ynpxf pbagrag. Jr qba’g frrz gb unir gur ceboyrz bs gbb znal vagrerfgvat ulcbgurfrf.
V pvgrq fbzrbar V pbafvqre na rkcreg ba gur gbcvp bs perngvivgl, Vfnnp Nfvzbi, ba gur fbeg bs raivebazrag gung ur guvaxf jbexf orfg sbe vg. Ner gurer ernfbaf jr fubhyq pbafvqre lbh zber xabjyrqtrnoyr guna Nfvzbi ba guvf gbcvp? (Qvq lbh gnxr gur gvzr gb ernq Nfvzbi’f rffnl?)
Urer’f nabgure rkcreg ba gur gbcvp bs perngvivgl: uggcf://ivzrb.pbz/89936101
V frr n ybg bs nterrzrag jvgu Nfvzbi urer. Lbhe xvaqretnegra nanybtl zvtug or zber ncg guna lbh ernyvmr—V guvax zbfg crbcyr ner ng gurve zbfg perngvir jura gurl ner srryvat cynlshy.
uggc://jjj.birepbzvatovnf.pbz/2016/11/zlcynl.ugzy
Lbh unir rvtugrra gubhfnaq xnezn ba Yrff Jebat. Naq lrg lbh unira’g fhozvggrq nalguvat ng nyy gb Qvfphffvba be Znva. Lbh’er abg gur bayl bar—gur infg znwbevgl bs Yrff Jebat hfref nibvq znxvat gbc-yriry fhozvffvbaf. Jul vf gung? Gurer vf jvqrfcernq nterrzrag gung YJ fhssref sebz n qrsvpvg bs pbagrag. V fhttrfg perngvat n srj gbc-yriry cbfgf lbhefrys orsber gnxvat lbhe bja bcvavba ba gurfr gbcvpf frevbhfyl.
Yes. This is unfortunate, but I cannot help you here.
I think it’s a bad idea. I can’t anticipate your responses well enough (in other words, I don’t have a good model of you) -- for example, I did not expect you to take five million candidate hypotheses. And if I want to have a conversation with myself, why, there is no reason to involve you in the process.
We didn’t get to an average Lesswronger generating hypotheses yet. You’ve introduced a new term—“interestingness” and set it in opposition to truth (or should it have been truthiness?) As far as I can see, clickbait is just a subtype of “interestingness”—and if you want to optimize for “interestingness”, you would tend to end up with clickbait of some sort. And I’m not quite sure what does it have to do with the propensity to generate hypotheses.
If a correct hypothesis was guaranteed to be included in your set, you would discard the true one in 99.9999% of the cases, then.
Let’s try it. “Earth rotates around the Sun”—ha-ha, what do I look like, an idiot? Implausible. Next!
Where “it” is “writing fiction”?
LOL. Kids are naturally playful—the don’t need a kindergarten for it. In fact, kindergartens tend to use their best efforts to shut down kids creativity and make them “less disruptive”, “respectful”, “calm”, and all the things required of a docile shee… err… member of society.
I neither see much reason to do so, nor do I take my own opinion seriously, anyway :-P
Do you want playfulness or seriousness? Pick a side.
Is this due to lack of ability or lack of desire? If lack of ability, why do you think you lack this ability?
I lack the ability to change you and I lack the desire to change myself.
But academics write for other academics, and journalists don’t and can’t. (They’ve tried. They can’t. Remember Vox?)
AFAIK, there isn’t a good outlet for compilations of facts intended for and easily accessible by a general audience, reviews of books that weren’t just written, etc. Since LW isn’t run for profit and is run as outreach for, among other things, CFAR, whose target demographic would be interested in such an outlet, this could be a valuable direction for either LW or a spinoff site; but, given the reputational risk (both personally and institutionally) inherent in the process of generating new ideas, we may be better served by pivoting LW toward the niche I’m thinking of—a cross between a review journal, SSC, and, I don’t know, maybe CIA (think World Factbook) or RAND—and moving the generation and refinement of ideas into a separate container, maybe an anonymous blog or forum.
Would that be Vox, Vox, or Vox?
Edit, 5 minutes later: a bit more seriously, I’m not sure I’d agree that “academics write for other academics” holds as a strong generalization. Many academics focus on writing for academics, but many don’t. I think the (relatively) low level of information flow from academia to general audiences is at least as much a demand-side phenomenon as a supply-side one.
Given “publish or perish”, usually the latter won’t stay in academia for long.
I’d be reluctant to go as far as “usually”, but yes, publish-or-perish norms are playing a role here too.
Academics write textbooks, popular books, and articles that are intended for a lay audience.
Nevertheless, I think it’s great if LW users want to compile & present facts that are well understood. I just don’t think we have a strong comparative advantage.
LW already has a reputation for exploring non-mainstream ideas. That attracts some and repels others. If we tried to sanitize ourselves, we probably would not get back the people who have been repulsed, and we might lose the interest of some of the people we’ve attracted.
Definitely agree with the importance of hypothesis generation and the general lack of it–at least for me, I would classify this as my main business-related weakness, relative to successful people I know.
Interesting idea; shall consider.
headline: CFAR considering colonizing Antarctica.
History repeats itself. Seafarers have always been fond of colonizing distant lands.
...first time as a tragedy and second time as a farce.
Colonizing Antarctica and making a whole slew of new countries is actually a good idea IMO, but it doesn’t have enough appeal. The value to humanity of creating new countries that can innovate on institutions is large.
You can think of Mars colonization as a more difficult version of Antarctic colonization which is actually going to be attempted because it sounds cooler.
“which is actually going to be attempted”
I’m not convinced yet. Yes that is why people are talking about it instead of talking about attempting to colonize Antarctica, or the bottom of the ocean, or whatever. But they currently aren’t attempting to colonize any of those places, including Mars, and we have yet to see them attempt any of them, including Mars.
Well, I suppose it depends where you draw the line.
SpaceX has built real physical components for its Interplanetary Transport System, which is specifically designed for missions to Mars. That’s more than just talk.
But I suppose there was seasteading… though that actually did fully close down.
For the sake of counter factual historical accuracy, if anyone came up with it, it would be Leo Szilard.
I can imagine thinking of such an idea. If you start with the assumption that colonizing Mars is really hard it’s the next step to think about what we could colonize on earth.
There’s much empty land in Australia that could be colonized easier than the Arctic.
This reminds me of a silly plan I put together in high school, I put it here just for the amusement value (because it’s in the same league of absurdity in the plan outlined above): collect from eBay enough balls for Geiger counter testing to make a critical mass and with that seize control of San Marino (a terribly small but wealthy independent state inside Italy).
I think Paul Christiano is an example of someone in the CFAR-sphere who is good at doing this. Might be a useful example to learn from.