GilPanama

Karma: 333

GilPanama Oct 9, 2011, 8:57 AM
6 points
in reply to: Logos01’s comment on: Rationality Lessons Learned from Irrational Adventures in Romance
Wait, wait, I think I see something here. I think I see why we are incapable of agreeing.

If and only if you meant “always” in the first place and want to be less than perfectly accurate. “In the majority of cases” is an inaccurate method of expressing how S-O S’s work—as I mentioned above, with “the largest minority” being the representative entity of the body.

This seems more like a description of how S-O S’s fail.

Can you offer any reason why I should treat S-O S’s as a useful or realistic representational scheme if my goal is to draw accurate conclusions about actual, existing people?

Let me try to make my confusion clearer:

If I come upon a Halloween basket containing fifty peanut butter cups without razorblades, and ten peanut butter cups with razorblades, what is the second-order simulacrum I use to represent the contents of that basket? “A basket of delicious and safe peanut butter cups?”

Is this even a legitimate question, or am I still not grasping the concept?

GilPanama Oct 9, 2011, 3:20 AM
2 points
in reply to: Logos01’s comment on: Rationality Lessons Learned from Irrational Adventures in Romance
Upvoted for clear communication.

I’m sort of puzzled, though, as to how I could have possibly interpreted your statements as applying to anything but the post and the comments on it; I saw no context clues suggesting that you meant “in everyday conversation.” Did I miss these?

That said, if one of us had added just three or four words of proviso earlier, limiting our generalizations explicitly, we could have figured the disconnect out more quickly. I could have said that my generalizations apply best to essays and edited posts. You could have said that your generalizations apply best to situations where the added cost of qualifiers carries a higher burden.

Because we did not explicitly qualify our generalizations, but instead relied on context, we fell prey to a fake disagreement. However, any vindication I feel at seeing my point supported is nullified by the realization that I, personally, failed to apply the communication strategy that I was promoting.

Oops.

GilPanama Oct 6, 2011, 9:36 AM
14 points
in reply to: Logos01’s comment on: Rationality Lessons Learned from Irrational Adventures in Romance

When someone adds that proviso “asexual/homosexual”—they are changing the relevant level of precision necessary to the conversation.

No, they are pointing out that in order to apply to a case they are interested in, the conversation must be made more precise.

For example; if I say “Men and women get married because they love each other”, then the fact that some men/women don’t marry, or the fact that intersex people aren’t necessarily men or women, or the fact that GLBT people who marry are also likely to do so because of love, or the fact that some marriages are loveless is only a distraction to the conversation at hand.

The last one isn’t a distraction, it’s a counterexample. If you want to meaningfully say that men and women marry out of love, you must implicitly claim that loveless marriages are a small minority. If someone says, “A significant number of of marriages are loveless,” they aren’t trying to get you to add a trivializing proviso. They’re saying that your generalization is false.

Consider the difference in meaning between “Men and women marry each other because they love each other” and “Men/women/intersex individuals and other men/women/intersex individuals may or may not marry one another in groups as small as two with no upper bound for reasons that can vary depending on the situation.”

This isn’t a reductio, it’s a strawman. When you add provisos to a statement that is really nontrivial, you do not turn “generally” into “may or may not.” You turn “always” into “generally”, or “generally” into “in the majority of cases”.

In any case, what about “People who marry generally do so out of love?” This retains the substance of the original statement while incorporating the provisos. All that is gained is real clarity. All that is lost is fake clarity. (And if enough people are found who marry for other reasons, it is false.)

GilPanama Oct 6, 2011, 9:07 AM
3 points
in reply to: Logos01’s comment on: Rationality Lessons Learned from Irrational Adventures in Romance

Each of those little “costs next to nothing” statements actually do have a cost, one that isn’t necessarily clear initially.

The cost of omitting them isn’t clear initially, either.

Are you familiar at all with how errors propagate in measurements? Each time you introduce new provisos, those statements affect the “informational value” of each dependent statement in its nest. This creates an analogous situation to the concept of significant digits in discourse.

I was generally taught to carry significant figures further than strictly necessary to avoid introducing rounding errors. If my final answer would have 3 significant digits, using a few buffer digits seemed wise. They’re cheap.

Propagation of uncertainty is not a reason to drop qualifiers. It’s a reason to use them. When reading an argument based on a generalization, I want to know the exceptions BEFORE the argument begins, not afterwards. That way, I can have a sense of how the uncertainties in each step affect the final conclusion.

For a topic like lukeprog’s, in other words, the difference between 99% and 80% of women is below the threshold of significance. Eliminating it altogether (until such time as it becomes significant) is an important and valuable practice in communication.

If I want an answer to three significant figures, I do not begin my reasoning by rounding to two sigfigs, then trying to add in the last sigfig later.

If one person thinks that an argument depends on an assumption that fails in 1 in 100 cases, and someone else thinks the assumption fails in 1 in 5 cases, and they don’t even know that they disagree, and pointing out this disagreement is regarded as some kind of map-territory error, they will have trouble even noticing when the disagreement has become significant.

Failure to effectively exercise that practice will result in needless ‘clarifications’ distracting from the intended message, hampering dialogs with unnecessary cognitive burden resultant from additional nesting of “informational quanta.” In other words; if you add too many provisos to a statement, an otherwise meaningful and useful one will become trivially useless.

This tends to happen to bad generalizations, yes. Once you consider all of the cases in which they are wrong, suddenly they seem to only be true in the trivial cases!

Good generalizations are still useful even after you have noted places where they are less likely to hold. Adding any number of true provisos will not make them trivial.

As for the cognitive load, why not state assumptions at the beginning of an essay where possible, rather than adding them to each individual statement? If the reader shares the assumptions, they’ll just nod and move on. If the reader does NOT share the assumptions, then relieving them of the cognitive burden of being aware of disagreement is not a service.

GilPanama Oct 6, 2011, 7:22 AM
5 points
in reply to: Iabalka’s comment on: Rationality Drugs
I did quite a bit of EEG neurofeedback at the age of about 11 or 12. I may have learned to concentrate a little better, but I’m really not sure. The problem is that once I was off the machine, I stopped getting the feedback!

Consider the following interior monologue:

“Am I relaxing or focusing in the right way? I don’t have the beeping to tell me, how do I know I am doing it right?”

In theory, EEG is a truly rational way to learn to relax, because one constantly gets information about how relaxed one is and can adjust one’s behavior to maximize relaxation. In practice, I’m not sure if telling 12-year-old me that I was going to have access to electrical feedback from my own brain was the best way to relax me.

The EEG did convince me that physicalism was probably true, which distressed me because I had a lot of cached thoughts about how it is bad to be a soulless machine. My mother, who believed in souls at the time, reassured me that if I really was a machine that could feel and think, there’d be nothing wrong with that.

I wonder how my rationality would have developed if, at that point, she had instead decided to argue against the evidence?

GilPanama Oct 6, 2011, 4:53 AM
10 points
0
in reply to: Logos01’s comment on: Rationality Lessons Learned from Irrational Adventures in Romance
A statement like “Women want {thing}” leaves it unclear what the map is even supposed to be, barring clear context cues. This can lead to either fake disagreements or fake agreements.

Fake disagreements (“You said that Republicans are against gun control, but I know some who aren’t!”) are not too dangerous, I think. X makes the generalization, Y points out the exception, X says that it was a broad generalization, Y asks for more clarity in the future, X says Y was not being sufficiently charitable, and so on. Annoying to watch, but not likely to generate bad ideas.

Fake agreements can lead to deeper confusion. If X seriously believes that 99% of women have some property, and Y believes that only 80% of women have some property, then they may both agree with the generalization even if they have completely different ideas about what a charitable reading would be!

It costs next to nothing to say “With very few exceptions, women...”, “A strong majority of women....” or “Most women....” The three statements mean different things, and establishing the meaning does not make communication next-to-impossible; it makes communication clearer. This isn’t about charity, but clarity.

GilPanama Sep 26, 2011, 7:55 AM
1 point
in reply to: nshepperd’s comment on: Consequentialism Need Not Be Nearsighted
The fact that it sounds accurate is what makes it a funny category error, rather than a boring category error. “2 + 2 = 3 is morally wrong” is not funny. “Deontological ethics is morally wrong” is funny.

It calls to mind a scenario of a consequentialist saying: “True, Deontologist Dan rescued that family from a fire, which was definitely a good thing… but he did it on the basis of an morally wrong system of ethics.”

That″s how I reacted to it, anyway. It’s been a day, I’ve had more sleep, and I STILL find the idea funny. Every time I seriously try to embrace consequentialist ethics, it’s because I think that deontological ethics depend on self-deception.

And lying is bad.

EDIT: I am in no way implying that other consequentialists arrive at consequentialism by this reasoning. I am simply noting that the idea that consequentialist principles are better and more rational, so we should be rational consequentialists (regardless of the results), is very attractive to my own mental hardware, and also very funny.

GilPanama Sep 26, 2011, 7:55 AM
−1 points
in reply to: wedrifid’s comment on: Consequentialism Need Not Be Nearsighted

Cracked you up? Rather than just seeming like a straightforward implication of conflicting moral systems?

I think it is not a straightforward implication at all. Maybe this rephrasing would make the joke clearer:

“A deontological theory of ethics is not actually right. It is morally wrong, in principle.”

If that doesn’t help:

“It is morally wrong to make decisions for deontological reasons.”

What makes it funny is that moment wherein the reader (or at least, this reader) briefly agrees with it before the punchline hits.

GilPanama Sep 25, 2011, 12:03 PM
2 points
on: Consequentialism Need Not Be Nearsighted
“But what’s actually right probably doesn’t include a component of making oneself stupid with regard to the actual circumstances in order to prevent other parts of one’s mind from hijacking the decision.

What you probably meant: “Rational minds should have a rational theory of ethics; this leads to better consequences.”

My late-night reading: “A deontological theory of ethics is not actually right. It is wrong. Morally wrong.”

I am not sure what caused me to read it this way, but it cracked me up.

GilPanama Sep 25, 2011, 11:03 AM
2 points
in reply to: orthonormal’s comment on: Consequentialism Need Not Be Nearsighted
This doesn’t strike me as an inherently bad objection. Even the post offers the caveat that we’re running on corrupt hardware. One can’t say that consequentialist theories are WRONG on such grounds, but one can certainly object to the likely consequences of combining ambiguous expected values with brains that do not naturally multiply and are good at imagining fictional futures.

I think the argument can be cut down to this:
1. In theory, we should act to create the best state of affairs.
2. People are bad at doing that without predefined moral rules.
3. Can we at least believe that we believe in those rules?
This is lousy truth-seeking, but may be excellent instrumental rationality if enough people are poor consequentialists and decent enough deontologists. It’s not my argument of choice; step 3 seems suspiciously oily.

But then again, “That which can be destroyed by the truth, should be” has kind of a deontological ring to it...

GilPanama Apr 25, 2011, 5:54 AM
30 points
0
on: The benefits of madness: A positive account of arationality
How to step outside the rational box without going off the deep end. Essentially, techniques for maintaining a lifeline back to normality so you can explore the further reaches of the psyche in some degree of safety.

I developed some of these!

I had a manic episode as well, but it was induced by medication and led to hypersocial behavior. I quickly noticed that I was having bizarre and sudden convictions, and started adopting heuristics to deal with them. I thought I was normal, or even better than normal. Then I realized that such a thought was very abnormal for me, and compensated.

Mania, for me, was like thinking in ALL CAPS ABOUT THINGS I USUALLY IGNORED. It was suddenly giving credence to religion not because I ceased to be an atheist, but because WE ARE ALL CONNECTED REALLY! It was fuzzy thinking, but damned if it didn’t make people like me more for a bit. It was looking people IN THE EYE, BECAUSE THAT IS WHAT TRUST AND SOCIAL COMMUNICATION IS ALL ABOUT, all the time, when I am normally shy of eye contact.

(If you find the CAPSLOCK intrusions in the above paragraph annoying, imagine THINKING THIS WAY and you begin to see why mania is a very tiring thing and NOT RECOMMENDED unless you REALLY KNOW WHAT YOU’RE DEALING WITH.)

Compensation strategies:
- Another person in the mental ward, who had lived with mania for a longer time, taught me that breathing exercises can help. Stretch arms upward; inhale. Slowly lower them, exhaling. Repeat as needed.
- I realized that because I was now trusting people (read: believing everything I heard), I was susceptible to getting extremely paranoid. This is not as contradictory as it sounds. After all, if you trust people who don’t trust their doctors, you will trust in their paranoia. I therefore told myself, repeatedly, to trust my doctors. Over and over. This self-brainwashing was a good move in hindsight. Chaining myself to the mast of somebody else’s sane clinical judgment protected me and insured that I left the mental ward quickly.
- I tended to think that I should try to “help people.” Mania amplified that hero complex. I therefore repeated a mantra to myself, over and over, with manic fervor: People help themselves. People help themselves. You don’t help people. People help themselves.
- I was encouraged by a visiting parent to take notes of ideas, so I could pursue them later. Result: Lots of notes that I later sorted out into “reasonable” and “not worth pursuing.” This was helpful. Nothing permanently insightful, but some decent ideas.
- Another mantra: Even brilliant ideas are wrong 99% of the time. No matter how good your idea is, it is probably wrong. You are probably wrong. You are probably wrong. Under normal circumstances, this isn’t a great mantra. During mania, it is essential.
If anybody ever questions my credentials as a rationalist, I think I can safely say that I tried very hard to be a traditional rationalist with an eye for biases even when I was technically not in my right mind.

GilPanama Apr 22, 2011, 5:13 AM
7 points
0
on: Learned Blankness
This is one reason why I worry about overemphasis on “learning styles” in teaching. Yes, we shouldn’t overgeneralize from our own brains to those of others, and different people learn differently. But it’s too easy to say that because I am Not a Visual Person, Having Been Born Blind and Treated By Surgery, I therefore can’t learn to excel at visual tasks.

This internal sense that I am “not a visual learner” caused me serious difficulty in training to do many tasks, until I learned to just compensate by practicing for a longer period of time!

The danger of learned blankness isn’t that it’s entirely inaccurate. A person really might be slower to pick up skills in one domain than in another. The danger, I think, is that we overestimate our own specialization and lock ourselves out of useful and fun skills. I CAN draw and shade a simple shape; it’s not magic. I CAN dissect a small insect in the lab; it just takes longer.

GilPanama Apr 19, 2011, 3:45 PM
10 points
on: Vanilla and chocolate and preference judgements

In a universe that contained no minds, a clean table and a cluttered table would both be neutral objects, but in the world-simulation that Mary’s brain builds, a cluttered table is obviously bad and cleaning is neutral.

In a universe that contained no minds, a table with an image painted on it that offends most people in this universe’s US would also be a neutral object. As it stands, it would not be a good idea to keep such a table uncovered if you were expecting guests and wanted to maintain positive social status.

The same goes for a messy house. It may be a matter of subjective preference, but it’s a subjective preference that a lot of people share. If someone prefers a messy house to the labor of cleaning it up, they may inadvertently send the signal that they do not care about the aesthetic preferences of others, just as they would if they preferred not showering to the annoyance of showering.

Furthermore, a messy house, if allowed to become messier over time, will eventually become more difficult to navigate. Even if movement isn’t blocked or made hazardous, finding objects becomes a matter of mind-reading, as there is no longer an expectation that they will be returned to a specific place. Coordinating tasks also becomes more difficult—if there’s no place for dirty laundry and dirty dishes, ensuring that everything gets cleaned efficiently becomes a matter of approximation. Clean dishes are a preference insofar as not having cockroaches and ants is a preference. Clean laundry is a preference insofar as having a higher probability of keeping a job is a preference.

I’ve seen the “if it bothers you, clean it” approach taken, and it quickly leads to a Tragedy of the Commons situation. Everyone can make a mess individually, but the cost is shared. Conversely, anyone can clean, but the social benefits go to everyone.

Likewise, negotiating with personal utility functions in mind simply gives an advantage (in terms of time spent on cleaning) to the person who dislikes cleaning. If cleaning is seen as a way of dealing with the collective harm of a mess, saying “I don’t like it or care, so I shouldn’t have to do as much as someone who cares about it” makes as much sense as saying “I don’t mind the smell of smoke, so why can’t I smoke in the house just because you dislike it? What if I only smoke in the house 50% of the time? Isn’t that a compromise?”

A heuristic that works well in cases of shared harm, I think, is to give each person responsibility over minimizing harm in some specific area. In other words, “you clean the bathroom, I clean the kitchen, and our own bedrooms will be as dirty or clean as we like.”

That said, all of this assumes that nobody prefers being surrounded by scavenging arthropods. Having once, some time ago, lived in such a messy way that a colony of pillbugs moved into my room to live off of the debris, I can vouch that they were pretty cute. But practically speaking, they had to go.

GilPanama Apr 16, 2011, 10:03 AM
10 points
in reply to: Nominull’s comment on: Offense versus harm minimization

The general US norm is not that drawing the prophet Muhammed is forbidden, it’s not that violent videogames are a sin, it’s not that the casual treatment of women as nothing but sex objects is unacceptable.

Either I’m being confused by a triple-negative, or we are living in very different contexts. Even people who are avowedly anti-feminist will usually say that casually treating women as nothing but sex objects breaks their norms. They might disagree that a model on a billboard is a sex object.

More generally, the problem is not manufacturing offense where none exists, but deciding where it can reasonably exist. And even if you don’t think that this is a meaningful problem, and that the best answer is to simply not take offense, ever, note that this:

we risk emboldening the true villains, the hypocrite brains who are torturing people to score cheap political points.

… sounds suspiciously like another kind of offense, the offense of anti-offense backlash. This line of argument also makes out feminists and game-pacifists to be “inexcusably ignorant” or “deliberately malicious,” and thus is wielding a very similar rhetorical club to the one that was just denounced.

There is no conscious consideration of this, but somewhere deep in our hypocrite brains, we decide to pretend that our desired norms are the actual norms.

“The actual norms?”

Like “general US norm,” that’s a phrase that does not, as far as I can tell, dissect the space of possible norms in a useful way. If there were a single agreed-upon set of norms, or even an agreed-upon set of rules for describing an agreed-upon set of norms, these discussions would be a lot easier. As it stands, declaring offense can, in fact, shift norms if done enough. In some cases, it can shift them for the better.

GilPanama Apr 16, 2011, 7:46 AM
72 points
0
on: Levels of Action
Level 1: Trying to deal with problems that cause human suffering.

Level 2: Using programs to help deal with those problems more effectively.

Level 3: Optimizing the way that those programs think and solve problems in general.

Level 4: Figure out better ways to think about programs that think, so that they are not only optimal at problem-solving, but also optimal at not killing us.

Level 5: Sharing essays on how we can be more rational about the level 4 problem without succumbing to bias.

Level 6: Commenting on those essays to support strong conclusions, question weak ones, and make them more memorable and effective by contributing to a community ethos.

Level 7: Upvoting my comment.

GilPanama Apr 16, 2011, 7:23 AM
2 points
in reply to: Swimmer963 (Miranda Dixon-Luinenburg) ’s comment on: Levels of Action
Thinking of Level 1 actions as maintenance is an excellent analogy.

This talk of swimming suggests another analogy for spending too much time on high level actions:

Overoptimizing is like trying to infer the properties of an optimal raft while you are drowning.