Blackened

• BlackenedJun 22, 2012, 11:16 AM

  0 points

  in reply to: gwern’s comment on: Per­son­al­ity anal­y­sis in terms of parameters

  That doesn’t change anything—then I want to know what constitutes pattern recognition, working memory (I know that some of it comes from executive functions—so it’s not as simple as it looks like), spatial. Then I want to look at how each of them looks like in someone’s reasoning. Plus maybe some of the not so highly g-loaded tasks.

• BlackenedJun 21, 2012, 9:40 PM

  0 points

  in reply to: [deleted]’s comment on: Per­son­al­ity anal­y­sis in terms of parameters

  That’s again too abstract. I’m looking for a description that would help me make an IQ test. Currently, I’m relatively bad at judging people’s intelligence—even though my gut feeling already gives me a relatively good heuristic for that.

  J.P. Guilford’s Structure of Intellect (1967) model used three dimensions which when combined yielded a total of 120 types of intelligence. It was popular in the 1970s and early 1980s but faded due to both practical problems and theoretical criticisms.

  I don’t know if this model is working at all, but I’m looking for something like what this sounds—a detailed low-level explanation that will ideally help me see the presence or absence of IQ in every individual thought/​idea.

• BlackenedJun 21, 2012, 3:41 PM

  0 points

  in reply to: Viliam_Bur’s comment on: Per­son­al­ity anal­y­sis in terms of parameters

  Is this the kind of answer you want?

  Not really, I was looking for an answer that explains the exact way IQ works. Some problems might be less g-loaded. The explanation I’m looking for is something like that:

  In a hypothetical situation, a problem is given to two (or more) people with very different IQs. Then there is a detailed explanation of how did they reach to the answer they gave—describing their thoughts and how did IQ lead them to think that. Also, something that accounts for the speed.

  In other words, I want to know the patterns through which IQ works. Something that if I learn perfectly, I’ll be able to predict the minimal IQ for the understanding of any phrase/​idea (under given conditions, of course).

• BlackenedJun 21, 2012, 12:55 AM

  0 points

  in reply to: buybuydandavis’s comment on: Look­ing for an in­tu­itive ex­pla­na­tion of ex­pected outcome

  I do realize that, but I wasn’t sure if my text was understandable in the first place, so I decided to keep it simple.

  Using our world (where 200k-300k people die of natural causes every day), and using random people and circumstances where saving 10 people would be ¹⁰⁄₃ times better than saving 3 people, I argue that 30% chance of saving 10 people (and 70% for saving 0) is equivalent in terms of everything to 100% chance of saving 3 people (it probably requires a few more assumptions, because the cause of their death might be a special illness where if it kills 3 people it could be researched, but not if it kills 10 people). So if my model of expected value is valid, it shouldn’t matter which choice you pick.

  But that’s unnecessary and beyond the point. I’d prefer to say that the one is equivalent to the other in terms of people saved on the moment and not as consequences of the choice.

Per­son­al­ity anal­y­sis in terms of parameters

• BlackenedJun 20, 2012, 10:53 AM

  0 points

  on: Look­ing for an in­tu­itive ex­pla­na­tion of ex­pected outcome

  I’m glad to see that my idea was understood. I have read all the replies, but unfortunately I’ve came up with all those ideas when trying to prove the idea to myself.

  You meet a bored billionaire who offers you the chance to play a game. The outcome of the game is decided by a single coin flip. If the coin comes up heads, you win a million dollars. If it comes up tails, you win nothing.

  The bored billionaire enjoys watching people squirm, so he demands that you pay $10,000 for a single chance to play this game.

  I’ve thought of this, but it’s only an intuitive thing and doesn’t directly prove my approach. Or if it does, I’m missing something.

  One common way of thinking of expected values is as a long-run average. So If I keep playing a game with an expected loss of $10, that means that in the long run it becomes more and more probable that I’ll lose an average of about $10 per game.

  I’ve thought of this too, but all it does is to result in a different percentage, closer to the expected outcome. But it’s still a percentage, and it remains such if I don’t reach an infinite number of trials.

  Forget about the intuitive explanation, is there any evidence at all that 50% chance of winning 10$ is the same as 100% chance of winning 5$, in terms of efficiency? I can hardly imagine the expected value approach to be not valid, but I can’t find evidence either. Most of the people I want to explain it to would understand it.

  I have trouble understanding your setup in the second example. How is your lacking $10 to survive is related to the 30% chance of saving 10 people?

  It’s not related. It was a separate example.

Look­ing for an in­tu­itive ex­pla­na­tion of ex­pected outcome

A few ques­tions about Discussion

• BlackenedJun 12, 2012, 11:20 AM

  4 points

  on: Tell Your Ra­tion­al­ist Ori­gin Story

  To a considerable degree, I was “born rationalist” (although I can easily see how I could have been born as a lot more of a rationalist than I was). I have always passionately sought efficiency, and I liked rigor.

  I was raised by irrational people and it took me long to break some of the irrational beliefs—I was 16 when I realized that “older people are nearly always much smarter than kids, and this implies that they are also right in nearly all cases” is wrong. At that time, I already knew about expected outcome—in the past few years, I had the feeling that I have “greatly improved since last year”, but I don’t have a clue on what have caused that feeling. So, I was 16 when at one moment, I had a deliberate idea for something which was against my emotions (who were inactive during planning) and when it came to executing it, I found myself very hesitant, seeking ways to convince myself to discard the plan (all of my arguments for that were ridiculous) and I realized that my emotions might intervene in my thinking without me realizing it. That was a moment of big realization for me. After that, it became “my most important idea” and I don’t remember how exactly did it help me, but I was very convinced that it helped me a great deal. It still didn’t make me a skeptic, because I was usually thinking that “it’s most likely to be true if so many people support it” and “if there was any contrary evidence that is publicly available, every follower of the idea would just look up the evidence and resign from the idea, it would spread like fire”. That’s why I also believed in some supernatural ideas. There was even a popular TV show in my country for competing clairvoyants!

  Until I was about 18, I believed my father is very intelligent and should give very useful advice (I imagined myself after 20 years). At that point, I thought any sign of irrationality to come from lack of intelligence. Then I moved in London to live with him and study there. To my big mystery and surprise, I noticed that he has this “emotional thinking” and I couldn’t think of a possible explanation (“maybe I’ll be like that when I get 40 years old? I must preserve my rationality”). Then I received a PM on an online community and after a few messages, we exchanged Gmails and started chatting. That person familiarized me with the concept of dysrationalia, skepticism and biases. Until then, I only knew little of biases and I haven’t yet heard of the other ideas. But even before that, I always followed the expected outcomes and felt that all the fuss about terrorism is exaggerated and strongly avoided alcohol (although I liked it) because of the expected outcome again and so on. After my encounter with that mysterious Internet person (which lasted more than a month), I was a full-blown rationalist.

  And through all of that time, I was close with another person who thought like me. Then he met another guy who was like us and I “converted” someone I knew online and now there is 4 of us. We have some additional ideas about rationality that aren’t popular in the Sequences (not sure about the comments or the community as a whole).

• BlackenedJun 12, 2012, 12:59 AM

  4 points

  on: Wel­come to Less Wrong! (2012)

  Hello, LessWrong. I’m 20 years old, originally from Bulgaria, living and studying Software Engineering in London (just finished my 1st year). I have always wanted to know a lot about human thinking, because of my need to be as optimal as possible plus my interest in technical things plus my tendency to seek rigorous explanations. I still have a deep interest in psychology and I see some potential very powerful applications I’ll feel inefficient without. The second thing I love is programming.

  As a rationalist, I’m very strict to myself. I always go for the expected outcome, which usually brings me to sacrifice whatever brings short-term pleasure and happiness in favor of self-improvement (my time-management is too created with this in mind). Despite that, I’m usually quite happy in life. My ideal for spending my day is reading and studying and practicing programming, maybe exercising. Unfortunately, I can’t even spend half of my day so efficiently because of procrastination (btw I’m writing this in the efficient parts of today :D), but I’m gradually overcoming it, and I’m putting a lot of effort to battle it. While still battling it, I can use LessWrong a lot, as it’s productive and fun—hopefully it’ll replace less efficient activities.

  Google brought me here—I was reading Heuristics and Biases: The Psychology of Intuitive Thinking (2002) and I sought additional information on a certain thingy. It was then when I saw this community and my heart started beating fast—I already had my own idea of rationalism and I knew a few people who follow it and own it as much as I do (they are also my closest friends). Eventually, I found my idea to be more extremely rational than this community’s idea. I enjoyed Yudkowsky’s Harry Potter a lot and I’m quite similar to Harry Potter, although there are many cases where I consider his actions to be irrational (I’m quite convinced that the author is aware of those, as some of them can even be explained by simple biases) - despite this, I’m very much looking forward to the latest chapters.

  I am currently looking forward to meeting any rationalist (online), as I’m looking for exchange of information and I always have tons of questions, and rationalists are expected to have many of the answers I’m seeking, some of them are so hard to get. I have useful information to share as well.

  I will also post in “tell your rationalist story”.