I don’t remember if the Sequences cover it. But if you haven’t already, you might check out SEP’s section on Replies to the Chinese Room Argument.
fortyeridania
Karma: 1,582
Scholarly article
Title: Do scholars follow Betteridge’s Law?
Answer is no
Nice.
I know this is Betteridge’s law of headlines, but do you happen to know if it’s accurate?
This was also explored by Benedict Evans in this blog post and this EconTalk interview, mentioned in the most recent feed thread.
True. I think Frum did this in law school, which he finished in 1987.
In addition to what you’ve cited, here are some methods I’ve used and liked:
Email professors to ask for recommendations. Be polite, concise, and specific (e.g., why exactly do you want to learn more about x?).
David Frum says he used to pick a random book on his chosen topic, check which books kept showing up in the footnotes, then repeat with those books. A couple rounds yielded a good picture of who the recognized authorities were. (I pointed this out in a Rationality Quotes thread in 2015. Link: http://lesswrong.com/lw/lzn/rationality_quotes_thread_april_2015/c7qp.) Cons: This is time-consuming, sometimes requires physical access to many books you don’t yet own, and tends to omit recent books.
but I don’t feel them becoming habitual as I would like
Have you noticed any improvement? For example, an increase in the amount of time you feel able to be friendly? If so, then be not discouraged! If not, try changing the reward structure.
For example, you can explicitly reward yourself for exceeding thresholds (an hour of non-stop small talk --> extra dark chocolate) or meeting challenges (a friendly conversation with that guy --> watch a light documentary). Start small and easy. Or: Some forms of friendly interaction might be more rewarding than others; persist in those to acclimate yourself to longer periods of socialising.
There’s a lot of literature on self-management out there. If you’re into economics, you might appreciate the approach called picoeconomics:
George Ainslie), picoecon pioneer
Caution: In my own experience, building new habits is less about reading theories and more about doing the thing you want to get better at, but it’s disappointingly easy to convince myself that a deep dive into the literature is somehow just as good; your experience may be similar (or it may not).
Is one’s answer to the dilemma supposed to illuminate something about the title question? Presumably a large part of the worth-livingness of life consists in the NPV of future experiences, not just in past experiences.
Title question: Yes. Proof by revealed preference:
(2) I am alive.
(3) Therefore, life is worth living.
Dilemma: Choose the second, on the odds that God changes its mind and lets you keep living, can’t find you again the second time around, is itself annihilated in the interim, etc.
Quibble: Annihilationism is an eschatalogical doctrine about the final fate of all souls, not the simple event of the annihilation.
I found this article linked here: https://www.cfr.org/blog/beijings-ai-strategy-old-school-central-planning-futuristic-twist
Maybe I should write a book!
I hope you do, so I can capitalize on my knowledge of your longstanding plan to capitalize on your knowledge of Adams’ longstanding plan to capitalize on his knowledge that Trump would win with a book with a book with a book.
And even if you have one, the further that real-life market is away from the abstract free market, the less prices converge to cost + usual profit.
True.
I suspect that there is no market for unique, poorly-estimable risks.
That’s probably true for most such risks, but it’s worth noting that there are markets for some forms of oddball events. One example is prize indemnity insurance (contest insurance).
The formatting is broken
Fixed, thanks.
For unique, poorly-estimable risks the insurance industry had strong incentive to overprice them
Plausible, and one should certainly beware of biases like this. On the other hand, given conventional assumptions regarding the competitiveness of markets, shouldn’t prices converge toward a rate that is “fair” in the sense that it reflects available knowledge?
From Marginal Revolution: http://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2017/05/viewpoint-diversity-experience.html
I know this is meant to be parody, but how closely does it resemble scenario analysis in the corporate world? From what I’ve read about the actual use of scenario analysis (e.g., at Shell), the process takes much longer (many sessions over a period of weeks).
Second, and more importantly: suits are typically not quants, and have a tendency to misinterpret (or ignore) explicit probabilities. And they can easily place far too much confidence in the output of a specific model (model risk). In this context, switching from full-on quant models to narrative models (as scenario analysis entails) can increase accuracy, or at least improve calibration. This is a classic “roughly right vs. precisely wrong” situation.
I found this article through Marginal Revolution: http://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2017/04/thursday-assorted-links-106.html
Authors: Ada C. Stefanescu Schmidt, Ami Bhatt, Cass R. Sunstein
Abstract:
During medical visits, the stakes are high for many patients, who are put in a position to make, or to begin to make, important health-related decisions. But in such visits, patients often make cognitive errors. Traditionally, those errors are thought to result from poor communication with physicians; complicated subject matter; and patient anxiety. To date, measures to improve patient understanding and recall have had only modest effects. This paper argues that an understanding of those cognitive errors can be improved by reference to a behavioral science framework, which distinguishes between a “System 1” mindset, in which patients are reliant on intuition and vulnerable to biases and imperfectly reliable heuristics, and a “System 2” mindset, which is reflective, slow, deliberative, and detailed-oriented. To support that argument, we present the results of a randomized-assignment experiment that shows that patients perform very poorly on the Cognitive Reflection Test and thus are overwhelmingly in a System 1 state prior to a physician visit. Assigning patients the task of completing patient-reported outcomes measures immediately prior to the visit had a small numerical, but not statistically significant, shift towards a reflective frame of mind. We describe hypotheses to explain poor performance by patients, which may be due to anxiety, a bandwidth tax, or a scarcity effect, and outline further direction for study. Understanding the behavioral sources of errors on the part of patients in their interactions with physicians and in their decision-making is necessary to implement measures improve shared decision-making, patient experience, and (perhaps above all) clinical outcomes.
For comparison, here are Robin Hanson’s thoughts on some Mormon transhumanists: http://www.overcomingbias.com/2017/04/mormon-transhumanists.html
Good point. You don’t have to go to the gym. I used to do jumping jacks in sets of 100, several sets throughout the day. Gradually increase the number of daily sets.
More (German): http://karl-schumacher-privat.de
Original Eliezer post: http://lesswrong.com/lw/jq/926_is_petrov_day/
Other LW discussions:
http://lesswrong.com/lw/7t7/stanislav_petrov_day/
http://lesswrong.com/lw/l06/petrov_day_is_september_26/
http://lesswrong.com/lw/mt0/happy_petrov_day/
http://lesswrong.com/lw/nyo/a_childs_petrov_day_speech/
http://lesswrong.com/lw/mqq/film_about_stanislav_petrov/
The anniversary of the relevant event will be next Tuesday.