Chuck's Questions

Originally posted by googlefudge

[b]"Reading books is good, but..."

* How would you advise young Chuck to start?

Well young chuck is quite young, and may not be ready for some of the ideas/books i might otherwise direct him towards.

So my first starting point would be to recommend a mix of popular science and literature that is both fun and exciting as well ...[text shortened]... e, but so unlikely that it's not worth considering, not worth bothering about.[/b]

'Because we evolved to survive as hunter gatherers not to be rational agents.'

Does being a hunter gatherer really entail irrationality?

Originally posted by Bosse de Nage
'Because we evolved to survive as hunter gatherers not to be rational agents.'

Does being a hunter gatherer really entail irrationality?

Yes.

If you read the links/watch the video's that I posted you will see a whole host of examples
of ways our brains take short cuts and badly process information that leads to us being
irrational by default.

Rationality is hard, and requires constant concious effort.

Originally posted by googlefudge
Yes.

If you read the links/watch the video's that I posted you will see a whole host of examples
of ways our brains take short cuts and badly process information that leads to us being
irrational by default.

Rationality is hard, and requires constant concious effort.

Hunter gatherers make rational decisions all the time. Their survival depends on it ... But I suppose you are saying that we are not essentially more rational than hunter gatherers.

What sort of 'constant conscious effort' would you recommend to an aspiring rationalist?

Originally posted by Bosse de Nage
Hunter gatherers make rational decisions all the time. Their survival depends on it ... But I suppose you are saying that we are not essentially more rational than hunter gatherers.

What sort of 'constant conscious effort' would you recommend to an aspiring rationalist?

That is a subject too long for me to type in here...

However I would highly recommend the sequence of posts listed here as a starting point.

http://wiki.lesswrong.com/wiki/Map_and_Territory_%28sequence%29


Even if you don't agree, it is a good explanation of where I am coming from.

If nothing else I recommend the first two as essential reads if you want to understand
(if not agree with) my position.

http://yudkowsky.net/rational/the-simple-truth

http://lesswrong.com/lw/31/what_do_we_mean_by_rationality/


EDIT: also...
http://yudkowsky.net/rational/virtues

Originally posted by googlefudge
That is a subject too long for me to type in here...

However I would highly recommend the sequence of posts listed here as a starting point.

http://wiki.lesswrong.com/wiki/Map_and_Territory_%28sequence%29


Even if you don't agree, it is a good explanation of where I am coming from.

If nothing else I recommend the first two as essential reads ...[text shortened]... lw/31/what_do_we_mean_by_rationality/


EDIT: also...
http://yudkowsky.net/rational/virtues

AND

http://singularity.org/files/CognitiveBiases.pdf

Originally posted by googlefudge

That is a subject too long for me to type in here...

However I would highly recommend the sequence of posts listed here as a starting point.

http://wiki.lesswrong.com/wiki/Map_and_Territory_%28sequence%29


Even if you don't agree, it is a good explanation of where I am coming from.

If nothing else I recommend the first two as essential ...[text shortened]... com/lw/31/what_do_we_mean_by_rationality/


EDIT: also...
http://yudkowsky.net/rational/virtues

Googlefudge, please consider listening (with pen and paper in hand) whenever you've got seven minutes
out of 60 x 24 = 1,440 x 7 = 10,080 or 7 / 10,080 or .0006944 or .06944% of a week to spare...

YouTube

Thank you.
-

Originally posted by Grampy Bobby
Googlefudge, please consider listening (with pen and paper in hand) whenever you've got seven minutes
out of 60 x 24 = 1,440 x 7 = 10,080 or 7 / 10,080 or .0006944 or .06944% of a week to spare...

[b]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ARBvVarF1KY

Thank you.
-[/b]

Why?

Having looked at the beginning it seems to be about to tell me about angels, the rapture,
JC and god.

All of which are fictional.


Unless at some point in the video it presents a convincing reason/evidence that any of
those things are real then why should I be interested?


A video explaining to me how to be raptured is as exactly as useful (and probably less interesting)
as a video explaining how to level-up in World Of Warcraft for someone who doesn't play and
has no intention of ever playing.

Also why would I want/need a pen and paper to hand while watching?
Are you planning a quiz for later?

Originally posted by googlefudge

Why?

Having looked at the beginning it seems to be about to tell me about angels, the rapture,
JC and god.

All of which are fictional.


Unless at some point in the video it presents a convincing reason/evidence that any of
those things are real then why should I be interested?


A video explaining to me how to be raptured is as exactly as ...[text shortened]... o why would I want/need a pen and paper to hand while watching?
Are you planning a quiz for later?

"What else should I do? Do you think I'm stupid or wierd to be thinking this way?
Is there really a person up there running the sun and the moon and the stars?"
(Chuck)
-

Originally posted by googlefudge
That is a subject too long for me to type in here...

However I would highly recommend the sequence of posts listed here as a starting point.

http://wiki.lesswrong.com/wiki/Map_and_Territory_%28sequence%29


Even if you don't agree, it is a good explanation of where I am coming from.

If nothing else I recommend the first two as essential reads ...[text shortened]... lw/31/what_do_we_mean_by_rationality/


EDIT: also...
http://yudkowsky.net/rational/virtues

All you've done is dump a load of links on me. I could just as well list a bunch of books and say 'come back to me'.

For what it's worth, I skimmed Yudkowsky; not much there to get excited about, frankly -- in terms of 'rationalism', that is. Better you - having internalised Yudkowsky and the rest - provide a succinct, compelling statement of what you're on about. (You know, like you encourage GB to do).

Originally posted by Grampy Bobby
"What else should I do? Do you think I'm stupid or wierd to be thinking this way?
Is there really a person up there running the sun and the moon and the stars?"
(Chuck)
-

Many stories have been told about this.

"Thoth, who was represented as an ibis-headed man or a dog-headed baboon, was, as Ptah's 'spoken word,' the orderer of the cosmos, the personification of wisdom, the inventor of language, letters and numbers, astronomy, architecture, medicine, indeed of all knowledge. It was he who set the stars in their courses, instituted temple worship and devised the incantations by which the magicians controlled both the natural and the supernatural world."
...
"According to the Mazdean legends, there were in the beginning two primeval spirits, Ormazd (Ahura-Mazdah), the personification of light and good, and his twin brother, Ahriman, the personification of darkness and evil. These two brothers were pitted against each other in perpetual warfare. To aid him, Ormazd had created the male principle, Mithra, out of whose light and heat were compounded the sun and moon, and the female principle, Anahita, or moisture, rain and water; these in turn brought forth the seven 'holy immortal ones': Justice or Truth, Right Order, Obedience, Prosperity, Piety or Wisdom, Health and Immortality, all of whom had the nature of angels."

From a search on "personification" finding these at 17 and page 102 of the book I recommended for the 13 year old, at

http://www.thevenusproject.com/downloads/ebooks/30426379-Homer-W-Smith-Man-and-His-Gods.pdf

Originally posted by Bosse de Nage
All you've done is dump a load of links on me. I could just as well list a bunch of books and say 'come back to me'.

For what it's worth, I skimmed Yudkowsky; not much there to get excited about, frankly -- in terms of 'rationalism', that is. Better you - having internalised Yudkowsky and the rest - provide a succinct, compelling statement of what you're on about. (You know, like you encourage GB to do).

I'll come back to this when I am not so tired...
But what I asked GB to do was post something actually comprehensible.

I hope you will agree that my posts (whether you agree with them or not) make
their meaning clear.

And are (I hope) formatted in such a way as to make reading them easy.

My problem with GB is that he posts gibberish or fortune cookie 'wisdom'.




As for just dumping links on you...

Well first off....
I am rather tired and long detailed well thought out posts take effort and
time I frankly either don't have or feel like right now, Especially when someone else has
created A whole string of well thought out easy bite size blog posts that explain the
ideas I want to explain to you.

And secondly, not all ideas are simple enough that you can effectively boil them down
to a simple bumper-sticker.

The most succinct definition of rationality is probably this...

1. Epistemic rationality: believing, and updating on evidence, so as to systematically improve the
correspondence between your map and the territory. The art of obtaining beliefs that correspond
to reality as closely as possible. This correspondence is commonly termed "truth" or "accuracy",
and we're happy to call it that.

2. Instrumental rationality: achieving your values. Not necessarily "your values" in the sense of being
selfish values or unshared values: "your values" means anything you care about. The art of choosing
actions that steer the future toward outcomes ranked higher in your preferences.
On LW we sometimes refer to this as "winning".

However that does absolutely nothing to explain HOW you go about doing that.

And the whole point of the Less Wrong site is that it's not simple.

There is no quick one size fits all rationality algorithm that you can just learn by rote and then apply.

The problem being that our brains are not wired to do rationality, we jump to conclusions and take short-cuts
often completely unconsciously that give us wrong or misleading answers and just listing all the different biases
let alone how to combat them would take the entire post.

Combating them takes an entire ever expanding website.


And secondly...
Giving you a few links is entirely not the same as dumping books on you for several reasons.
1, books tend to cost money, and the contents of the links are free.
2, books take time to acquire, the links are instant.
3, books tend to be quite long, the links are to bite-sized blogs.
4, books tend to be broader and less narrowly focused, the links are to blogs that are right on point.

The major issues with 'dumping links' is usually people responding with posts that are just links to some
youtube video or website with no reference as to whether the person agrees with any or all the content
or what it is, or why it's relevant.

I hope I haven't done that.

Those were links to specific articles detailing succinctly what I wanted to say.



How is it any harder to read those blogs I linked than to read posts written by me saying the same thing?
And knowing me probably they would be less succinctly and in more words.

Originally posted by Grampy Bobby
"What else should I do? Do you think I'm stupid or wierd to be thinking this way?
Is there really a person up there running the sun and the moon and the stars?"
(Chuck)
-

I appear to be in a loop...

I seem to remember writing quite a long post answering those very questions earlier in the thread.

Try reading it.


EDIT: and then I appear to have written an even longer post in reply to your response to that post...
Why are we back at the beginning of this conversation?

Originally posted by Grampy Bobby
Googlefudge, please consider listening (with pen and paper in hand) whenever you've got seven minutes
out of 60 x 24 = 1,440 x 7 = 10,080 or 7 / 10,080 or .0006944 or .06944% of a week to spare...

[b]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ARBvVarF1KY

Thank you.
-[/b]

I got 2 minutes in before that poorly constructed video started trying to give me a migraine.

And in that 2 minutes I learned that the person who created it is useless and can't create a
decent presentation.

What it was trying to convey I don't know because I couldn't read all that whirling text amidst
the flashing lights and actually take any of it in.



So what was the point that video (and apparently you) were trying to make?

Originally posted by googlefudge
I'll come back to this when I am not so tired...
But what I asked GB to do was post something actually comprehensible.

I hope you will agree that my posts (whether you agree with them or not) make
their meaning clear.

And are (I hope) formatted in such a way as to make reading them easy.

My problem with GB is that he posts gibberish or fortu
And knowing me probably they would be less succinctly and in more words.

To BdN:

And secondly...
Giving you a few links is entirely not the same as dumping books on you for several reasons.
1, books tend to cost money, and the contents of the links are free.
2, books take time to acquire, the links are instant.
3, books tend to be quite long, the links are to bite-sized blogs.
4, books tend to be broader and less narrowly focused, the links are to blogs that are right on point.

The book I recommended does not suffer from #1 and 2 and arguably #4, and has a fine section on rationalism and is searchable by the fairly proficient. But I can't way it would be a book you would recommend. I would search on "rationalism" not in quotes, to see.

http://www.thevenusproject.com/downloads/ebooks/30426379-Homer-W-Smith-Man-and-His-Gods.pdf

James Charles Williamson's poor head is spinning.