I’m graduating law school in May 2010, and then going to work in consumer law at a small firm in San Francisco. I’m fascinated by statistical political science, space travel, aikido, polyamory, board games, and meta-ethics.
I first realized that I needed to make myself more rational when I bombed an online confidence calibration test about 6 years ago; it asked me to provide 95% confidence intervals for 100 different pieces of numerical trivia (e.g. how many nukes does China have, how many counties are in the U.S., how many species of spiders are there), and I only got about 72 correct. I can’t find the website anymore, which is frustrating; I like to think I would do better now.
I am a pluralist about what should be achieved—I believe there are several worthy goals in life, the utility of which cannot be meaningfully compared. However, I am passionately convinced that people should be consciously aware of their goals and should attempt to match their actions to their stated goals. Whatever kind of future we want, we are flabbergastingly unlikely to get it unless we identify and carry out the tasks that can lead us there.
Despite reading and pondering roughly 80 LW articles, together with some of their comments, I continue to believe a few things that will rub many LW readers the wrong way. My confidence in these beliefs has gone down, but is still over 50%. For example, I still believe in a naturalistic deity, and I still believe in ontologically basic consciousness. I am happy to debate these issues with individuals who are interested, but I do not plan on starting any top-level posts about them; I do not have the stamina or inclination to hold the field against an entire community of intelligent debaters all by myself.
I am not sure that I have anything to teach LW in the sense of delivering a prepared lecture, but I hope to contribute to discussions about how to best challenge Goodhart’s Law in various applied settings.
Hi everyone!
I’m graduating law school in May 2010, and then going to work in consumer law at a small firm in San Francisco. I’m fascinated by statistical political science, space travel, aikido, polyamory, board games, and meta-ethics.
I first realized that I needed to make myself more rational when I bombed an online confidence calibration test about 6 years ago; it asked me to provide 95% confidence intervals for 100 different pieces of numerical trivia (e.g. how many nukes does China have, how many counties are in the U.S., how many species of spiders are there), and I only got about 72 correct. I can’t find the website anymore, which is frustrating; I like to think I would do better now.
I am a pluralist about what should be achieved—I believe there are several worthy goals in life, the utility of which cannot be meaningfully compared. However, I am passionately convinced that people should be consciously aware of their goals and should attempt to match their actions to their stated goals. Whatever kind of future we want, we are flabbergastingly unlikely to get it unless we identify and carry out the tasks that can lead us there.
Despite reading and pondering roughly 80 LW articles, together with some of their comments, I continue to believe a few things that will rub many LW readers the wrong way. My confidence in these beliefs has gone down, but is still over 50%. For example, I still believe in a naturalistic deity, and I still believe in ontologically basic consciousness. I am happy to debate these issues with individuals who are interested, but I do not plan on starting any top-level posts about them; I do not have the stamina or inclination to hold the field against an entire community of intelligent debaters all by myself.
I am not sure that I have anything to teach LW in the sense of delivering a prepared lecture, but I hope to contribute to discussions about how to best challenge Goodhart’s Law in various applied settings.
Finally, thanks to RobinZ for the warm welcome!