Choose well is a nice salutation for instrumental rationality. But what about, “Know much and choose well” to cover epistemic and instrumental rationality?
Yossarian
Karma: 225
“When did you stop beating your wife?”
This is basically framing effect, no?
The quote struck me as a poetic way of affirming the general importance of metacognition—a reminder that we are at the center of everything we do, and therefore investing in self improvement is an investment with a multiplier effect. I admit though this may be adding my own meaning that doesn’t exist in the quote’s context.
I’ve always seen that whole speech as a pretty good example of reasoning from the wrong premises: Henry V makes the argument that God will decide the outcome of the battle and so if given the opportunity to have more Englishmen fighting along side them, he would choose to fight without them since then he gets more glory for winning a harder fight and if they lose then fewer will have died. Of course he doesn’t take this to the logical conclusion and go out and fight alone, but I guess Shakespeare couldn’t have pushed history quite that far.
Rewatching Branagh’s version recently, I keyed in on a different aspect. In his speech, Henry describes in detail all the glory and status the survivors of the battle will enjoy for the rest of their lives, while (of course) totally downplaying the fact that few of them can expect to collect on that reward. He’s making a cost/benefit calculation for them and leaning heavily on the scale in the process.
Contrast with similar inspiring military speeches:
William Wallace says, “Fight and you may die. Run and you may live...for awhile. And dying in your beds, many years from now, would you be willin’ to trade ALL the days, from this day to that, for one chance, just one chance, to come back here and tell our enemies that they may take our lives, but they’ll never take our freedom!” He’s saying essentially the same thing as Henry, but framing it as a loss instead of a gain. Where Henry tells his soldiers what they’ll gain from fighting, Wallace tells them what they’ll lose if they don’t. Perhaps it’s telling that, unlike Henry, he doesn’t get very specific. It might’ve been an opportunity for someone in the ranks to run a thought experiment, “What specific aspects of my life will be measurably different if we have ‘freedom’ versus if we don’t have ‘freedom’? What exactly AM I trading ALL the days for? And if I magically had that thing without the cost of potentially dying, what would my preferences be then?” Or to just notice their confusion and be able to recognize they were being loss averse and without the ability to define exactly what they were averse to losing.
Meanwhile, Maximus tells his troops, “What you do in life echoes in eternity.” He’s more honest and direct about the probability that you’re going to die, but also reminds you that the cost/benefit analysis extends beyond your own life, the implication being that your ‘honor’ (reputation) affects your placement in the afterlife and (probably of more consequence) the well being of your family after your death. Life is an iterated game and sometimes you have to defect (or cooperate?) so that your children get to play at all.
And lastly, Patton says, “No bastard ever won a war by dying for his country. He won it by making the other poor, dumb bastard die for his.” He explicitly rejects the entire ‘die for your country’ framing and foists it wholly onto the enemy. It’s his version of “The enemy’s gate is down.” He’s not telling you you’re not going to die, but at least he’s not trying to convince you that your death is somehow a good or necessary thing.
When taken in this company, Henry actually comes across more like a villain. Of all of them, he’s appealing to their desire to achieve rational interests in an irrational way without being at all upfront about their odds of actually getting what he’s promising them.
Additionally, fitness roughly breaks into two broad categories—resistance and cardiovascular. Starting Strength covers resistance training, but the cardiovascular version of Starting Strength is Couch To 5K. It uses the same basic concept of progressive overload applied to running.
All things be ready if our minds be so.
William Shakespeare, Henry V
Having now concluded Rationalist Lent, I have determined that it is worth my time and I do genuinely prefer to keep watching the Daily Show.
At Lent’s conclusion, I started rewatching and ended up watching all the episodes that I missed (the ones still available anyway) with a renewed appreciation. Coincidentally, I also just finished a comprehensive cleanup of all my harddrives, stretching back over ten years, and at the bottom of one of the oldest (pulled from my closet), I found an episode from 1999. I have no earthly idea why I downloaded/saved it in the first place, but I watched it and lo and behold, it wasn’t that funny. The real culprit here, I think, was Nostalgia Bias.
One additional note: During RL, news broke that Stewart would be taking a hiatus from hosting and be replaced by John Oliver, starting this summer. That sort of wrecked my experiment, since I knew right away my preferences would be to continue watching in that case. Though you could still make the argument that 22 minutes, four days a week, over 3 months would be a significant savings. And even disregarding entirely, it was still a nice exercise in willpower; a demonstration to myself that I am in control of the choices I make and that I can counteract the habits and urges of my System 1.
“If you test theories by how precisely they predict experimental results, you will have many more opportunities to have sex and look cool.”
This was the case for me in my uniforms required school. The obvious and conspicuous item we could control was our tie, but thinking back on it now, kids signalled identity and status through shoes, belts, and other accessories (though I was effectively blind to such things at the time).
Seniors were also allowed to wear khaki pants, a conscious allowance on the administrators’ part designed to reinforce the different classes.
Has this idea been considered before? The idea that a self-improving capable AI would choose not to because it wouldn’t be rational? And whether or not that calls into question the rationality of pursuing AI in the first place?
Because I know enough people in the entertainment industry that I’m not applying Fundamental Attribution Error? I’m not sure what your question is.
My suspicion is that somebody is thinking of this (and possibly pitched it) as the reality version of “The Big Bang Theory.” If that’s the case, consider that the BBT’s showrunner, Bill Prady, is himself a genuine nerd. Then imagine how bad BBT is and how bad it would be if its showrunner wasn’t a nerd. Then turn that into a reality show.
It still pales in comparison to the power of invented meaning through editing.
It’s the Kuleshov Effect turned up to 11.
It wouldn’t happen that way. The person participating in the story has no power compared to the person orchestrating the story.
I think most people here would be surprised to know the tremendous extent to which narratives are manipulated in editing in reality TV. Watch ten minutes of any of the ghost hunter/paranormal type shows. Those will show how much can be constructed from the barest of actual events.
And they’ll engineer that into existence one way or another. There is great, nuanced storytelling to be found on television, but the reality genre is not that place.
There are huge benefits to getting the right kind of TV exposure, but this is probably not it.
I would advice against participating. It’s not impossible for this to be a worthwhile project that would result in overall beneficial PR for the community, but I estimate the odds as HEAVILY against it.
All storytelling is based around drama and conflict, this show will be no different. The only question is how nuanced and truthful is that conflict and as I’m sure I don’t have to tell anyone here, the reality TV genre is not known for its nuance or truthfulness.
I believe Mr. Inman is sincere in his desire and ambition, but without any other information, heavily doubt his artistic vision would carry through to a portrayal that most people here would be happy with or deem beneficial. TV/film production is a team effort and Mr. Inman will likely be one voice in a chorus. He may fight battles with the network executives about the direction of the show, but in this case, I doubt he would win.
I think it’s also fairly obvious to say that one should be tremendously wary of participating in any narrative about oneself where one isn’t in control of that narrative, as would be the case here.
For context, I live in Los Angeles, work in film production, and have worked on reality TV shows in the past (and know many people who work on them in various capacities).
Give people permission to bug you.
If you commit to doing or following up on something for somebody, tell them to bug you if you don’t get back to them about it. You’ll feel less stressed about remembering or being obligated to do it because you’ve shifted at least some of the responsibility to them and given yourself external pressure, which is ultimately more efficient than relying on your own willpower anyway.
Conversely, give yourself permission to bug people, though without judgment. You know how you feel when you have email in your inbox that you know you really ought to get to, but don’t? Somebody is feeling that way about your email right now. How helpful would it be if they electronically tapped you on the shoulder as a reminder? More helpful than getting more and more resentful because they’ve forgotten/don’t care/don’t consider you valuable enough to bother replying.
Yeah, I explicitly unchecked the boxes that said they would do that and it still showed up in my Twitter feed (which automatically forwarded to my Facebook feed).
Not “Common Room”? Ravenclaw or otherwise?
Too obvious? :)
Does anyone know if there is/are narrative fiction based around the AI Box Experiment? Short stories or anything else?