(How do you know? People keep saying it, seriously or not, but when one is aware of a source of a bias, it seems as easy to overcompensate as to undercompensate, at which point you no longer know that you are biased.)
I don’t, and I’m sufficiently confident regarding the relevance of said post that a little doubt regarding under or over confidence matters little. On top of that I’m no more biased regarding what I wrote in the past than what I write in any comment I am writing now so additional warnings of bias for a reference call rather than inline text is largely redundant.
That was a colloquial usage not a lesswrongian one. It is sometimes appropriate to lampshade self-references so that it does not appear that one is trying to double-count ones own testimony.
Certainly (hence “seriously or not”). It just irks me when people say things whose literal interpretation translates into wrong or meaningless statements, particularly when those statements are misleading or wrong in a non-obvious way. So my issue is with (the use of) such statements themselves, not the intent behind their usage, which in most cases doesn’t take the literal interpretation into account. (It’s usually possible to find a substitute without this flaw.)
Certainly. It just irks me when people say things whose literal interpretation translates into wrong or meaningless statements
This example fits into a third category. That is, the colloquial meaning is valid, the lesswrong/OvercomingBias connotations are misleading but it is in fact technically true. I am, after all, biased about my own work and that is something that a reader should consider when I link to it. Assuming no difference in prior impressions of Carl and I Carl_Shuman’s link should be weighted slightly differently than my own.
I agree that I’d be best served to use different wording due to the potentially distracting connotations (do you have suggestions?) but I disagree regarding the actual technical wrongness of the statement.
Wait, what did you mean by “I don’t” in the previous comment then? I understood that comment as confirming that you don’t know that you are biased, but in this comment you say “I am, after all, biased about my own work”.
To clarify: by “biased”, I mean a known direction of epistemic distortion, a belief that’s known to be too strong or too weak, a belief that’s not calibrated, and is on the wrong side in a known direction. If the direction of a bias is unknown, it doesn’t count as a bias (in the sense I used the word).
By this definition, knowing that you’re biased means knowing something about the way in which you’re biased, that can be used to update the belief until you no longer have such actionable information about its updated state. For example, if you expect that you estimate the quality or relevance of your own post as higher than its actual quality or relevance, this is actionable information to adjust your estimation down. After you do that, you will no longer know whether the adjusted estimation is too high or too low, so you are no longer biased in this sense.
(I guess the confusion/disagreement comes from the difference in our usage of the world “bias”. What do you mean by “biased”, such that you can remain biased about your own work even after taking that issue into account?)
(I wasn’t able to unpack the statement “That is, the colloquial meaning is valid, the lesswrong/OvercomingBias connotations are misleading but it is in fact technically true.”, that is I don’t know what specifically you refer to by “colloquial meaning”, “LW/OB connotations”.)
Wait, what did you mean by “I don’t” in the previous comment then? I understood that comment as confirming that you don’t know that you are biased, but in this comment you say “I am, after all, biased about my own work”.
“I can not reliably state the nature or direction of whatever biases I may have. Even if I was entirely confident regarding the bias I should and in fact do expect others to bear that potential bias in mind.”
I don’t, and I’m sufficiently confident regarding the relevance of said post that a little doubt regarding under or over confidence matters little. On top of that I’m no more biased regarding what I wrote in the past than what I write in any comment I am writing now so additional warnings of bias for a reference call rather than inline text is largely redundant.
That was a colloquial usage not a lesswrongian one. It is sometimes appropriate to lampshade self-references so that it does not appear that one is trying to double-count ones own testimony.
Certainly (hence “seriously or not”). It just irks me when people say things whose literal interpretation translates into wrong or meaningless statements, particularly when those statements are misleading or wrong in a non-obvious way. So my issue is with (the use of) such statements themselves, not the intent behind their usage, which in most cases doesn’t take the literal interpretation into account. (It’s usually possible to find a substitute without this flaw.)
This example fits into a third category. That is, the colloquial meaning is valid, the lesswrong/OvercomingBias connotations are misleading but it is in fact technically true. I am, after all, biased about my own work and that is something that a reader should consider when I link to it. Assuming no difference in prior impressions of Carl and I Carl_Shuman’s link should be weighted slightly differently than my own.
I agree that I’d be best served to use different wording due to the potentially distracting connotations (do you have suggestions?) but I disagree regarding the actual technical wrongness of the statement.
Wait, what did you mean by “I don’t” in the previous comment then? I understood that comment as confirming that you don’t know that you are biased, but in this comment you say “I am, after all, biased about my own work”.
To clarify: by “biased”, I mean a known direction of epistemic distortion, a belief that’s known to be too strong or too weak, a belief that’s not calibrated, and is on the wrong side in a known direction. If the direction of a bias is unknown, it doesn’t count as a bias (in the sense I used the word).
By this definition, knowing that you’re biased means knowing something about the way in which you’re biased, that can be used to update the belief until you no longer have such actionable information about its updated state. For example, if you expect that you estimate the quality or relevance of your own post as higher than its actual quality or relevance, this is actionable information to adjust your estimation down. After you do that, you will no longer know whether the adjusted estimation is too high or too low, so you are no longer biased in this sense.
(I guess the confusion/disagreement comes from the difference in our usage of the world “bias”. What do you mean by “biased”, such that you can remain biased about your own work even after taking that issue into account?)
(I wasn’t able to unpack the statement “That is, the colloquial meaning is valid, the lesswrong/OvercomingBias connotations are misleading but it is in fact technically true.”, that is I don’t know what specifically you refer to by “colloquial meaning”, “LW/OB connotations”.)
“I can not reliably state the nature or direction of whatever biases I may have. Even if I was entirely confident regarding the bias I should and in fact do expect others to bear that potential bias in mind.”