I would ideally like to see a book of concrete controversies and scenarios that illustrate the principles of rationality. I envision it almost like a set of exercises. As you’ve noted before, the knowledge that a problem has been solved before tends to kill motivation, so they would need to be framed in a way to elicit curiosity. Quantum mechanics and p-zombies worked well for me, but I was already a long time traditional rationalist. Unfortunately, math tends to be scary to my friends and concepts like p-zombies wouldn’t be considered relevant to the real world. Because an intro book has a lot of ground to cover, this may not be entirely feasible, but readers should have something to try their hand at.
For material to build up to controversies, I’d start with an explanation of guessing the teacher’s password. I bet the concept rings true with most people who have sat through American high schools. Science classes give lots of answers but few explanations. The distinction between real and fake explanations also allows you to hold out the promise of real explanations to build curiosity.
Next, standard examples like the application of Bayes to medical tests and the Wason selection task (on letters and numbers vs. ages and beverages) are good introductory problems. They quickly show the necessity of a strict approach to rationality.
Next, Bayesian scoring à la Techical Explanation. I think my friends would love this, if it were explained right. Once you have a score, the urge is to maximize it. This brings home the points that there is a definite way to judge beliefs, the importance of making a prediction before hand, and the balance that must be struck between vagueness and precision. Beliefs have to pay rent, otherwise they are messing up your score.
Once predictions have been introduced, the book has to cover “the map != the territory” and the Mind Projection fallacy. Jaynes on the physics of coin-flipping did this for me. More “real-world” examples like drug testing might be useful here.
That is a lot of ground to cover, but it feels like a solid core. After that, practice on real issues (suitably divorced from ingrained beliefs) is important, both to hone skills and to make the reader feel like these principles are useful and important.
Badger, this sounds like a book I would buy for my friends, but not like Eliezer’s book (which I would also, for different reasons, buy for my friends). Do you think you could write a book like this?
I admit I don’t remember exactly what Eliezer’s intentions for his book are, so I just outlined what I would write. If only I had time right now (although that’s not saying much, considering how much time I spent sites like this). Any thoughts on possible issues that are controversial enough to be interesting, but not enough to bring out biases and cached thoughts?
I would ideally like to see a book of concrete controversies and scenarios that illustrate the principles of rationality. I envision it almost like a set of exercises. As you’ve noted before, the knowledge that a problem has been solved before tends to kill motivation, so they would need to be framed in a way to elicit curiosity. Quantum mechanics and p-zombies worked well for me, but I was already a long time traditional rationalist. Unfortunately, math tends to be scary to my friends and concepts like p-zombies wouldn’t be considered relevant to the real world. Because an intro book has a lot of ground to cover, this may not be entirely feasible, but readers should have something to try their hand at.
For material to build up to controversies, I’d start with an explanation of guessing the teacher’s password. I bet the concept rings true with most people who have sat through American high schools. Science classes give lots of answers but few explanations. The distinction between real and fake explanations also allows you to hold out the promise of real explanations to build curiosity.
Next, standard examples like the application of Bayes to medical tests and the Wason selection task (on letters and numbers vs. ages and beverages) are good introductory problems. They quickly show the necessity of a strict approach to rationality.
Next, Bayesian scoring à la Techical Explanation. I think my friends would love this, if it were explained right. Once you have a score, the urge is to maximize it. This brings home the points that there is a definite way to judge beliefs, the importance of making a prediction before hand, and the balance that must be struck between vagueness and precision. Beliefs have to pay rent, otherwise they are messing up your score.
Once predictions have been introduced, the book has to cover “the map != the territory” and the Mind Projection fallacy. Jaynes on the physics of coin-flipping did this for me. More “real-world” examples like drug testing might be useful here.
That is a lot of ground to cover, but it feels like a solid core. After that, practice on real issues (suitably divorced from ingrained beliefs) is important, both to hone skills and to make the reader feel like these principles are useful and important.
Badger, this sounds like a book I would buy for my friends, but not like Eliezer’s book (which I would also, for different reasons, buy for my friends). Do you think you could write a book like this?
I admit I don’t remember exactly what Eliezer’s intentions for his book are, so I just outlined what I would write. If only I had time right now (although that’s not saying much, considering how much time I spent sites like this). Any thoughts on possible issues that are controversial enough to be interesting, but not enough to bring out biases and cached thoughts?