Advices needed for a presentation on rationality
post by Worthstream · 2012-06-13T10:41:50.494Z · LW · GW · Legacy · 10 commentsContents
10 comments
Hi, next month I'm going to be doing an hour long presentation on rationality to Mensa members. It needs to be rather introductory, since High QI != Rationality and most of them are not familiar with the concepts discussed here.
I'm planning to talk about what rationality is (any good quotes?), what is the difference between the brain and the conscience, why being rational does not mean having a perfect willpower, some common and easily avoided fallacies (sunk cost, scope insensitivity).
I did a search on the site for this kind of introductory posts and have quite a large pool of interesting arguments to touch. Does anyone have any suggestion on which topics should be included, any pointers to interesting posts that should be summarized or used as source material, etc.?
10 comments
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comment by stcredzero · 2012-06-13T18:54:04.828Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
The idiomatic wording would be, "Advice needed for a presentation on rationality." Advice is a type of information, so making it plural is redundant. This is also why you never hear people saying, "I need your advices." (Or, for that matter, "I need your helps.")
EDIT: However, it's idiomatic to say, "I need your services," as well as, "I need your service." It could be that people who provide service generally provide possibly multiple types of service. The tenor of "I need your service" is more imperative, however. There's more of a presumption of the asker knowing what they want ahead of time, versus "I need your services." The above doesn't apply to advice/advices, however. It may be arbitrary.
Replies from: Worthstream↑ comment by Worthstream · 2012-06-14T10:18:09.736Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
Thank you! As you may have guessed, english is not my first language. While it is easy to find grammar rules, it is actually difficult to find informations on the correct wording to choose.
Replies from: arundelo, stcredzero↑ comment by arundelo · 2012-06-14T19:06:51.423Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
The concept to be aware of here is mass noun versus count noun. A lot of words can be used both ways (often with slightly different meanings) but "advice" and "information" are always mass nouns. (Which means they are grammatically singular but cannot take an indefinite article; that is, you don't say "an advice" or "an information".)
↑ comment by stcredzero · 2012-06-14T18:46:59.777Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
You're welcome. "Information" should be singular for the original reason discussed in this thread.
comment by Cyan · 2012-06-13T11:20:31.364Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
There's good material here and here.
Replies from: Worthstream↑ comment by Worthstream · 2012-06-14T10:21:33.928Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
Great, thank you! The first post is what convinced me to have this presentation, but i did lose the link.
comment by Desrtopa · 2012-06-15T23:50:26.182Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
I would probably focus on evidence; why you need evidence to locate hypotheses, conservation of expected evidence, absence of evidence as evidence of absence](http://lesswrong.com/lw/ih/absence_of_evidence_is_evidence_of_absence/. Add in the ability to make beliefs pay rent and what makes a real explanation, and how to avoid treating science as a piece of attire or genre, and you'll have covered some of the primary bases people tend to use to signal rather than apply intelligence.
comment by [deleted] · 2012-06-13T14:59:03.382Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
I know you're looking for lesswrong posts but I would also consider this video. Keith Stanovich introduced me to a lot of concepts in rationality and I would highly recommend any material from him.
Replies from: Manfred