AndHisHorse

Karma: 509

AndHisHorse Nov 21, 2017, 3:52 PM
3 points
in reply to: AndHisHorse’s comment on: Project proposal: Rationality Cookbook
I apologize for the formatting; I tried to copy and paste from another app to get around the character-eating behavior of the comment box on mobile, and it seems to have resulted in this monstrosity which is immune to edits.
Perhaps I ought to just start posting comments as links to Google Docs.

AndHisHorse Nov 21, 2017, 3:43 PM
3 points
on: Project proposal: Rationality Cookbook
For example, let’s imagine that melatonin is effective for 60% of all people: 80% of people who describe themselves as “morning people”, but only 40% of people who do not. This is useful melaton
I think that an important addition would be other data about the participants in a given intervention, that could ideally help newcomers filter out interventions which are reasonably likely to have a positive effect in the general population but unlikely to apply to some subset of people.I think that an important addition would be other data about the participants in a given intervention, that could ideally help newcomers filter out interventions which are reasonably likely to have a positive effect in the general population but unlikely to apply to some subset of people.I think that an important addition would be other data about the participants in a given intervention, that could ideally help newcomers filter out interventions which are reasonably likely to have a positive effect in the general population but unlikely to apply to some subset of people.I think that an important addition would be other data about the participants in a given intervention, that could ideally help newcomers filter out interventions which are reasonably likely to have a positive effect in the general population but unlikely to apply to some subset of people.
For example, let’s imagine that melatonin is effective for 60% of all people: 80% of people who describe themselves as “morning people”, but only 40% of people who do not. This is useful information for both groups (assuming the difference is statistically significant), and would be lovely to include in our cookbook.
This would require more information-gathering about individual users (and we should definitely have a “decline to disclose” option, particularly for more sensitive topics). If we want to be able to change what data we are collecting later (imagine that we suddenly have reason to believe that hair color is relevant to melatonin impact), we will need to store individual usernames in order to contact participants later.
I would be interested in helping with this project. My employer currently owns anything software-related I produce, but is willing to make reasonable exceptions where a project does not intersect with its business; if this project does materialize in a more concrete form, I would be able to present it to my employer and ask for permission to contribute. So if someone starts it, I would like to support it.
For example, let’s imagine that melatonin is effective for 60% of all people: 80% of people who describe themselves as “morning people”, but only 40% of people who do not. This is useful information for both groups (assuming the difference is statistically significant), and would be lovely to include in our cookbook.
This would require more information-gathering about individual users (and we should definitely have a “decline to disclose” option, particularly for more sensitive topics). If we want to be able to change what data we are collecting later (imagine that we suddenly have reason to believe that hair color is relevant to melatonin impact), we will need to store individual usernames in order to contact participants later.

AndHisHorse Nov 9, 2017, 1:21 PM
5 points
on: Modesty and diversity: a concrete suggestion
Perhaps instead the karma of a post ought not to be linear in the number of upvotes it receives? If the karma of a post is best used as a signal of the goodness of the post, then it is less noisy as more data points appear, but not linearly so.
There is perhaps still a place for karma as a linear reward mechanism—that is, pleasing 10 people enough to get them to upvote is, all other things being equal, 10 times as good as pleasing 1 person—but this might be best separated from the signal aspect.

AndHisHorse Nov 6, 2017, 12:05 PM
6 points
on: Self-confidence as a time saving tactic
“Epistemic Status” is meant to convey why the author believes something, not why the quality of the writing is what it is.
I say this not to score Pedantry Points, but because I really like having “Epistemic Status” clarifications at the top of an article and would be dismayed if the term mutated away from its current usefulness.

AndHisHorse Nov 6, 2017, 12:00 PM
4 points
on: Acknowledging Rationalist Angst
This post seems to mesh really well with Zeroing Out Both are about how the status quo has a lot of valuable knowledge, and shouldn’t be rejected entirely; in my case, reading one after the other helped both of them click..

AndHisHorse Oct 30, 2017, 9:15 PM
1 point
in reply to: whpearson’s comment on: Response to Cyber, Nano and AGI risks
Thank you for stumbling upon a way to make link posts work for me on mobile after landing on them through an RSS reader.

AndHisHorse Oct 30, 2017, 2:49 PM
4 points
on: Inadequacy and Modesty
I think that there is a potentially dangerous implication in the comparison between the BoJ and the stock market, that the real essence of the difference between them is incentives . (At least, the way that I read it allowed for that interpretation; I’m not sure if this is sufficient universal).
I think that the general class of thing which is present in a stock market but not a central bank is an error-correction mechanism . In this case, that mechanism is in the form of very clear and direct monetary incentives. But we should expect other mechanisms to achieve the same purpose (though many may be or be connected to non-central examples of incentives as well).
Experimentation is one; I believe physicists, for example, because they have data to back up their predictions and the field tends to check theories against data. Peer review (formal or informal—namely, the ability of a field to call out and reject bad ideas) is another; my trust in this mechanism for correcting errors is the basis of my trust in a great deal of science (basically the idea that many qualified persons are keeping watch and could effectively raise an alarm if something important went wrong).
It seems reasonable to allow for disagreement with a field or institution if you can determine that its conclusions seem to have been reached in the absence of such a mechanism. In particular, if a field lacks, say, expert consensus, or an institution is going against that consensus, it seems reasonable to assume that there is an opportunity for a layperson to do reasonably well at interpreting expert-generated evidence from the rest of the field.
The requirements are even more lax, I believe, for errors of omission , which Eliezer mentions in his description of Brienne’s light issues. I think this could reasonably be called a different category of problem.

AndHisHorse Oct 30, 2017, 12:41 PM
2 points
on: Leave beliefs that don’t constrain experience alone
I think an important distinction to make here is between the beliefs “there is a God who is Good in a nonspecific way that doesn’t contradict very basic morality” and “there is a God who is very concerned with our day-to-day behavior and prescribes additional moral and factual precepts beyond what society generally already believes”.
The former is the sort of belief which seems partially optimized for never needing to be examined (I’ll wave my hands and say “memetic evolution” here as if I’m confident that I know what it means), and is probably more common among scientists and liberals and people with whom atheists are likely to agree than the latter. From an instrumental rationality perspective, it’s the latter which ends inquiry and stifles truth, and the latter which we need to destroy by raising the waterline; the former is just collateral damage.

AndHisHorse Oct 24, 2017, 11:20 PM
2 points
on: Welcome to the World
We rejoice at the increase of the share of matter being used in human minds.

AndHisHorse Oct 18, 2017, 12:16 PM
6 points
on: Seeding a productive culture: a working hypothesis
I appreciate the disclaimer that this is meant to give context and highlight options, rather than persuade the reader of the correctness of those options.

AndHisHorse Oct 12, 2017, 12:21 PM
3 points
on: [Error communicating with LW2 server]
Particularly given the mind-killing properties of research into gender dynamics, and the unearned explanatory flexibility that tends to encounter the evolutionary psychology that looks to be involved in your model, can you convince us why this map should be believed?

AndHisHorse Oct 11, 2017, 2:01 AM
6 points
in reply to: whpearson’s comment on: Centralisation shapes Idealists into Cynics
I think this form ends up a lot better. The explanation of what you, specifically, in this instance mean by “cynic” is still necessary and good, but since “cynic” doesn’t have the same valence as “sociopath”, it seems much less bait-and-switch.

AndHisHorse Oct 10, 2017, 9:31 PM
7 points
on: Centralisation shapes Idealists into Cynics
If you have written a title for which you feel compelled to apologize in the second paragraph in order to explain what you mean, you have written a misleading title and this is behavior that I would very much like to disincentivize.

AndHisHorse Oct 9, 2017, 9:06 PM
3 points
in reply to: Ezra’s comment on: Initial thoughts on assisted formatting of discussion posts
I’ve been able to get to the “Submit Comment” button on mobile in portrait (by tapping elsewhere to exit the editor before doing so), but my problem has been that the text box tends to lose all my progress oh, every other character or so. As a result, this comment has been copied and pasted from Google Keep.

AndHisHorse Oct 8, 2017, 11:05 PM
1 point
on: Why hive minds might work
I’d be interested in reading a more complete post on these concepts.

AndHisHorse Oct 8, 2017, 3:08 AM
2 points
on: Stubs of Posts I’d like to Write
I personally would be particularly interested in the Standards, Social Reality, and Agency Pipeline posts.

AndHisHorse Oct 4, 2017, 7:46 PM
4 points
in reply to: whpearson’s comment on: Avoiding Selection Bias
I think that the benefit of criticizing publicly is that it allows your criticism to in turn be criticized.
Let us say that Alice writes a post. Bob finds the material too <adjective> to interest him. If he messages Alice privately, that is the extent of the feedback. If, however, he comments as such, Carol, Daniel, and Eve may all chime in saying that they found the material the right about of <adjective> to be interesting. The vocal minority inspires feedback from the silent majority, who might not have independently thought to give Alice feedback (because they didn’t realize their views weren’t universal, because they didn’t believe they had actionable feedback, because they didn’t have something they disagreed with).
Like all systems of voluntary feedback, there’s a great deal of self-selection involved; moving from private to public feedback just affects who selects themselves. But I think it can do so in a valuable direction.

AndHisHorse Oct 4, 2017, 12:58 PM
6 points
on: Writing That Provokes Comments
You mention wanting to be incentivized to research things, and also that a particular danger to the community is writers optimizing for engagement at the expense of other things.
It seems like a possible partial remedy for this would be a mechanism for the readership to make their desires known in a centralized place. Right now, a hypothetical writer William, if they want to craft content the community wants, would be best served by doing a review of past posts in search of things which are consistently popular. If they are lucky and clever, they may even be able to infer a niche which hasn’t been filled—a gap in some topic, or perhaps a missing topic altogether—that would be welcome. This is time-consuming and presumably error-prone. Perhaps more importantly, it seems likely to produce content which is similar to what has come before. (Disclaimer: I have never made a top-level post, so if there is a different, quicker, more accurate process, please let me know.)
If instead the community could vote to say “We would like more posts on Machine Learning” or “We want posts on what Dr. X’s latest psychology research means about consciousness”, this would create an easily visible incentive to research and an incentive to explore specific topics (which may steer writers away from optimizing for comments, although the comments will likely follow). It adds complexity to the site, but I think it may be worth an experiment.

AndHisHorse 4 Oct 2017 12:44 UTC
5 points
on: Pop Evo-Psych
The problem, I think, with making pop evo-psych assertions without a solid foundation of comprehensive and well-explained research does not go away even when the assertions are not outlandish: we don’t have a mechanism to judge these ideas other than common sense (or, in the worst case [not shown here], a misleadingly narrow selection of research).
This means that, while evo-psych may provide an interesting framework, it may also reinforce our existing preconceptions and give us false confidence in our conclusions. The outside view says that unsupported evo-psych assertions are likely to be wrong; I think that in many cases in which they are not wrong, they are not wrong for reasons independent of the inclusion of evo-psych itself. Whatever mechanism you used to judge that these particular theories were reasonable was probably sufficient without bringing in evo-psych. I think this post is a useful way of calling attention to certain human tendencies without it.
In general, however, I’ve really enjoyed your mini sequence and encourage you to keep up the good work.

AndHisHorse 3 Oct 2017 12:37 UTC
1 point
on: Things you should never do
“Three years is an awfully long time in the Internet world.”
Publication date: April 6, 2000
I think the content of this article is a good recommendation against this article.