Thanks for this post. I agree with a lot of it, and that with which I disagree, I still think is important to discuss. I have several tangential thoughts. I’m not sure how coherently organized this comment will be, but I’ll try.
Intellectual Productivity: I agree this is a problem. I think there are a number of factors about LW that, in some ways, discourage intellectual productivity. I’ve said it before, but if I want to read something technical, I’ll read the sequences, since I haven’t finished them. As a result, I read very little of main. Raemon mentions that he doesn’t read main as much because it is more difficult to get to. Ultimately though, I think the biggest problem is that main is not as interesting as discussion. Reading main, like reading the sequences, takes much more work. You have to actually think and digest what you’re reading. Discussion is much easier to browse through.
In addition, I think people are far more hesitant to post in main. I know I am. I’ve never made a main post, although I’ve thought of a number that might be appropriate.* Most of these posts I am worried are A) Trivial insights for most LWers even though they just occurred to me, B) Not substantial enough to write more than a couple of paragraphs on, C) Are based on my own introspection and not literature searches, or D) simply boring. I suspect other users have similar hesitation about just not being good enough for main.
On the flip side, at least LW is beating the pants off of similarly trafficked sites when it comes to intellectual productivity.
I don’t think insularity is necessarily a problem. Others have beat this horse already though, so I’ll let it lie.
With regard to titles, I do think that tends to happen. I linked a friend to “Why Are Individual IQ Differences OK?”, thinking it talked much more about race and much less about religion, until I reread it and was quite surprised. So, positive data point.
*I would very much appreciate feedback on potential posts I’ve thought about writing. If any of these seem interesting to you, please let me know, since that will help answer my questions above. General descriptions of the three I am most likely to write are below.
An Intuitive Explanation of Many Worlds: The Quantum Physics Sequence (Which, admittedly, I haven’t finished yet, but would do so obviously, before I wrote this) did not intuitively seem to necessarily lead to Many Worlds as Eliezer seemed to suggest. It was not at all obvious to me. What flipped the switch was an entirely different line of reasoning: Quantum physics says everything is a wave. You and the desk next to you aren’t really different things, you’re just different parts of the same wave function. Now what happens when parts of the wave function evolves sentience? The me that is where I am now can’t observe the probability blob that is me anywhere else, but that doesn’t mean that there is zero probability that I’m there.
Reduce Anger by Evaluating Monetary Value of Time. One of the things I think about often when driving is road rage. I find it interesting from an ev psych perspective. For example, I notice that if I look at a driver’s face, my frustration with em dramatically decreases, because I realize ey is a person, and not a car. This doesn’t generalize very well outside of driving, but another principle seems generally applicable to me. Drivers tend to get frustrated when other drivers cost em very small amounts of time. If you’re stuck behind a car going 15 mph slower than you would (let’s say 35 vs 50), even if you are stuck there for five miles, you’re still only losing around seven minutes of time. If you value your time at $20/hr, that’s still only around two dollars. I suspect that people subconsiously overvalue time and undervalue money because it is a status signal—having lots of time is low status and having lots of money is high status.
Observations and conclusions from my journal, which ended up looking nothing like I described it as in that post. It’s basically an excel spreadsheet, where I tracked well… everything.
Road Rage seems to me to be a symptom of drivers’ inability to communicate with each other. All you have are your lights and your horn. The usual methods for defusing conflicts are impossible—when in a car, you can’t make requests of, apologize to, or even say “thank you” to another driver. There’s no room for politeness in the system, and the lack of standard social feedback makes people feel like others are treating them with contempt, which in turn makes them angry.
On a side note, the earliest description of what might be called “road rage” occurs in the Ancient Greek tragedy Oedipus the King; Oedipus and his biological father, neither knowing the other’s identity, get into a fight over whose chariot has right-of-way.
Road Rage seems to me to be a symptom of drivers’ inability to communicate with each other. All you have are your lights and your horn. The usual methods for defusing conflicts are impossible—when in a car, you can’t make requests of, apologize to, or even say “thank you” to another driver. There’s no room for politeness in the system, and the lack of standard social feedback makes people feel like others are treating them with contempt, which in turn makes them angry.
I don’t know what the customs are where you are, but in the U.K., one politely waves to a driver who has politely let one through, to acknowledge their politeness.
Re #1, I think your argument is a nice intuition pump to motivate Many Worlds (MW), but I don’t think it engages seriously with the main alternative interpretations (which was the biggest problem in the Eliezer sequence). When you say “Quantum physics says everything is a wave” you are almost on MW already: you have excluded by fiat epistemic interpretations of the wave function, as well as Bohmian interpretations, hidden retrocausal variables, etc.
Thanks for this post. I agree with a lot of it, and that with which I disagree, I still think is important to discuss. I have several tangential thoughts. I’m not sure how coherently organized this comment will be, but I’ll try.
Intellectual Productivity: I agree this is a problem. I think there are a number of factors about LW that, in some ways, discourage intellectual productivity. I’ve said it before, but if I want to read something technical, I’ll read the sequences, since I haven’t finished them. As a result, I read very little of main. Raemon mentions that he doesn’t read main as much because it is more difficult to get to. Ultimately though, I think the biggest problem is that main is not as interesting as discussion. Reading main, like reading the sequences, takes much more work. You have to actually think and digest what you’re reading. Discussion is much easier to browse through.
In addition, I think people are far more hesitant to post in main. I know I am. I’ve never made a main post, although I’ve thought of a number that might be appropriate.* Most of these posts I am worried are A) Trivial insights for most LWers even though they just occurred to me, B) Not substantial enough to write more than a couple of paragraphs on, C) Are based on my own introspection and not literature searches, or D) simply boring. I suspect other users have similar hesitation about just not being good enough for main.
On the flip side, at least LW is beating the pants off of similarly trafficked sites when it comes to intellectual productivity.
I don’t think insularity is necessarily a problem. Others have beat this horse already though, so I’ll let it lie.
With regard to titles, I do think that tends to happen. I linked a friend to “Why Are Individual IQ Differences OK?”, thinking it talked much more about race and much less about religion, until I reread it and was quite surprised. So, positive data point.
*I would very much appreciate feedback on potential posts I’ve thought about writing. If any of these seem interesting to you, please let me know, since that will help answer my questions above. General descriptions of the three I am most likely to write are below.
An Intuitive Explanation of Many Worlds: The Quantum Physics Sequence (Which, admittedly, I haven’t finished yet, but would do so obviously, before I wrote this) did not intuitively seem to necessarily lead to Many Worlds as Eliezer seemed to suggest. It was not at all obvious to me. What flipped the switch was an entirely different line of reasoning: Quantum physics says everything is a wave. You and the desk next to you aren’t really different things, you’re just different parts of the same wave function. Now what happens when parts of the wave function evolves sentience? The me that is where I am now can’t observe the probability blob that is me anywhere else, but that doesn’t mean that there is zero probability that I’m there.
Reduce Anger by Evaluating Monetary Value of Time. One of the things I think about often when driving is road rage. I find it interesting from an ev psych perspective. For example, I notice that if I look at a driver’s face, my frustration with em dramatically decreases, because I realize ey is a person, and not a car. This doesn’t generalize very well outside of driving, but another principle seems generally applicable to me. Drivers tend to get frustrated when other drivers cost em very small amounts of time. If you’re stuck behind a car going 15 mph slower than you would (let’s say 35 vs 50), even if you are stuck there for five miles, you’re still only losing around seven minutes of time. If you value your time at $20/hr, that’s still only around two dollars. I suspect that people subconsiously overvalue time and undervalue money because it is a status signal—having lots of time is low status and having lots of money is high status.
Observations and conclusions from my journal, which ended up looking nothing like I described it as in that post. It’s basically an excel spreadsheet, where I tracked well… everything.
Road Rage seems to me to be a symptom of drivers’ inability to communicate with each other. All you have are your lights and your horn. The usual methods for defusing conflicts are impossible—when in a car, you can’t make requests of, apologize to, or even say “thank you” to another driver. There’s no room for politeness in the system, and the lack of standard social feedback makes people feel like others are treating them with contempt, which in turn makes them angry.
On a side note, the earliest description of what might be called “road rage” occurs in the Ancient Greek tragedy Oedipus the King; Oedipus and his biological father, neither knowing the other’s identity, get into a fight over whose chariot has right-of-way.
I don’t know what the customs are where you are, but in the U.K., one politely waves to a driver who has politely let one through, to acknowledge their politeness.
Re #1, I think your argument is a nice intuition pump to motivate Many Worlds (MW), but I don’t think it engages seriously with the main alternative interpretations (which was the biggest problem in the Eliezer sequence). When you say “Quantum physics says everything is a wave” you are almost on MW already: you have excluded by fiat epistemic interpretations of the wave function, as well as Bohmian interpretations, hidden retrocausal variables, etc.
I am most definitely interested in #3, and hope you write it. This would be my pick.
I would read #2. I can see it possibly leading to some interesting comment discussions.
#1 would just be noise to me (but in this regard I am likely to be in the LW minority).