With regard to school degrees, I would expect that the most popular fields of study for LW folks would be cognitive science, other sciences, mathematics, and philosophy, so that’s no surprise. It has been my experience that people who are interested in rationality as a subject are generally interested in most or all of the above, and that people not interested in most or all of the above are generally not interested in rationality as a general topic.
I suspect that you’ll find computer science (my own field of study) is very highly represented. Maybe even a majority. That’s because within our field, any false beliefs and sloppy thinking eventually surface in the form of bugs; we spend hundreds of hours searching for and fixing these problems, which is applied rationality in pure form, with feedback. All programmers are forced to get in the habit of questioning their beliefs, and for us, improving cognitive skills has a very short payback period.
That’s because within our field, any false beliefs and sloppy thinking eventually surface in the form of bugs...
Flattering theory, but it doesn’t explain the abundance of programmers on Reddit where no one tries to overcome bias. I have a simpler theory: we programmers have a habit of surfing the internet looking for intellectual junk food.
You have to make a distinction between programmers in general and great programmers (or aspiring great programmers). The average programmer cares about bias no more (or little more) than the average person. But if you love programming and desire to become a jedi programmer, you absolutely have to get in the habit of being reflective about the underlying biases that were responsible for bugs, poor design decisions, etc., and figure out how the jedi are able to do what they do.
Read some interviews with (or writings of) great programmers—people like Jon Bentley, Bill Joy, etc.: you’ll see that they have great insight into cognitive biases that have to be overcome to become a great programmer, and they have found ways to overcome those biases.
Of course. I don’t know how I forgot to include computer science, but you could argue that it is included in “mathematics and the sciences”. Comp sci would probably be the largest group, both because of the large overlap between AI and rationality as well as the habit of questioning beliefs that good programmers engage in.
Agreed. I hold an undergraduate degree in computer science as well, and I’m quite certain that Eliezer has at minimum a graduate student’s level of knowledge in the field.
Of course, computer science is arguably either a subset of applied mathematics, or an intersection of mathematics and engineering.
With regard to school degrees, I would expect that the most popular fields of study for LW folks would be cognitive science, other sciences, mathematics, and philosophy, so that’s no surprise. It has been my experience that people who are interested in rationality as a subject are generally interested in most or all of the above, and that people not interested in most or all of the above are generally not interested in rationality as a general topic.
I suspect that you’ll find computer science (my own field of study) is very highly represented. Maybe even a majority. That’s because within our field, any false beliefs and sloppy thinking eventually surface in the form of bugs; we spend hundreds of hours searching for and fixing these problems, which is applied rationality in pure form, with feedback. All programmers are forced to get in the habit of questioning their beliefs, and for us, improving cognitive skills has a very short payback period.
That’s because within our field, any false beliefs and sloppy thinking eventually surface in the form of bugs...
Flattering theory, but it doesn’t explain the abundance of programmers on Reddit where no one tries to overcome bias. I have a simpler theory: we programmers have a habit of surfing the internet looking for intellectual junk food.
You have to make a distinction between programmers in general and great programmers (or aspiring great programmers). The average programmer cares about bias no more (or little more) than the average person. But if you love programming and desire to become a jedi programmer, you absolutely have to get in the habit of being reflective about the underlying biases that were responsible for bugs, poor design decisions, etc., and figure out how the jedi are able to do what they do.
Read some interviews with (or writings of) great programmers—people like Jon Bentley, Bill Joy, etc.: you’ll see that they have great insight into cognitive biases that have to be overcome to become a great programmer, and they have found ways to overcome those biases.
Of course. I don’t know how I forgot to include computer science, but you could argue that it is included in “mathematics and the sciences”. Comp sci would probably be the largest group, both because of the large overlap between AI and rationality as well as the habit of questioning beliefs that good programmers engage in.
Agreed. I hold an undergraduate degree in computer science as well, and I’m quite certain that Eliezer has at minimum a graduate student’s level of knowledge in the field.
Of course, computer science is arguably either a subset of applied mathematics, or an intersection of mathematics and engineering.
potentially economics too...