Here is the talk he gave at TED.
CharlesR
Karma: 511
The Center for the Advancement of Human Reason
When I wrote that I was thinking of people like Kahneman and Tversky. But you’re right. As a group, psychologists are less trustworthy.
When it comes to doctors and therapists, my general approach is:
Seek recommendations from people I trust who are in a position to know. Try them out. If it’s not working, find someone else.
We’re on our 8th speech therapist.
For material possessions, I plan to establish a trust and appoint a child or grandchild who is already signed up. Right now, I don’t trust either option with my body but will probably go with Alcor because of where I live.
who would you trust to take care of your affairs while you’re frozen, and why?
Do you mean material possessions or your body?
Here is my general heuristic:
Whenever you have a question, find out what the consensus view is. Then see what the contrarians are saying. Then see what the consensus people are saying about what the contrarians are saying. See how the contrarians respond. Then make up your own mind.
I solved vaccines and cryonics this way.
By “mainstream consensus view”, I don’t mean what your average man on the street thinks. I mean what the experts (usually the “right” scientists) are saying on a topic. So creationism isn’t the consensus view. Evolution is.
Sometimes there isn’t really a consensus view. In that case start with what the contrarians are saying. Cryonics is like that.
Some people say they trust “hard sciences” but not “soft sciences”. But I think that isn’t right. When I’m trying to decide who to believe, I use something like the following, from most trustworthy to least:
Mathematicians, physicists, chemists, biologists, psychologists, climatologists, economists, anthropologists, historians, medical doctors, philosophers, people who write self-help books, people who write parenting books.
This is when I don’t have specific information about the person or group making the claim. The best philosopher is more reliable than the worst physicist.
The Center for the Advancement of Human Thought
The Center for Improving Human Thought
The Bayes Center for the Advancement of Human Reason
The Center for Better Thinking
The Thomas Bayes Institute for Human Thought
Short: The Bayes Institute for Human Thought
Shorter: The Bayes Institute
The question came up at the West LA LW Meetup. Only two people knew what it meant.
“What Shock Level are you?”
Upvoted purely for the Anathem reference!
I once read a book on characterization. I forget the exact quote, but it went something like, “If you want to make your villian more believable, make him more intelligent.”
I thought my brain had misfired. But apparently, for the average reader it works.
I think the hardest step is deciding you just want to know what’s true.
When I search for keyword: rationality, I get HPMoR for #2, yudkowsky.net for #5, and What Do We Mean By “Rationality”? for #7. Not sure how much my search history is affecting this.
Quantum mechanics can be described by a set of postulates. (Sometimes five, sometimes four. It depends how you write them.)
In the “standard” Interpretation, one of these postulates invokes something called “state collapse”.
MWI can be described by the same set of postulates without doing that.
When you have two theories that describe the same data, the simpler one is usually the right one.
Software Engineering for Software as a Service opened today. If anyone else is taking and wants to form a study group, let me know.