Open thread, Jan. 23 - Jan. 29, 2017

Prediction: Government regulations greatly reduce economic growth. Trump, with the help of the Republican Congress, is going to significantly cut regulations and this is going to supercharge economic growth allowing Trump to win reelection in a true landslide.

Derek Parfit (author of "Reasons and Persons", a very influential work of analytic philosophy much of which is concerned with questions of personal identity and which comes up with decidedly LW-ish answers to most of its questions) has died. (He actually died a few weeks ago, but I only just heard of it, and I haven't seen his death mentioned on LW.)

A few years ago I used to be a hothead. Whenever anyone said anything, I’d think of a way to disagree. I’d push back hard if something didn’t fit my world-view.

It’s like I had to be first with an opinion – as if being first meant something. But what it really meant was that I wasn’t thinking hard enough about the problem. The faster you react, the less you think. Not always, but often.

-- Give it five minutes

Hi everyone,

I'm a PhD candidate at Cornell, where I work on logic and philosophy of science. I learned about Less Wrong from Slate Star Codex and someone I used to date told me she really liked it. I recently started a blog where I plan to post my thoughts about random topics: http://necpluribusimpar.net. For instance, I wrote a post (http://necpluribusimpar.net/slavery-and-capitalism/) against the widely held but false belief that much of the US wealth derives from slavery and that without slavery the industrial revolution wouldn't have happened, as well as another (http://necpluribusimpar.net/election-models-not-predict-trumps-victory/) in which I explain how election models work and why they didn't predict Trump's victory. I think members of Less Wrong will find my blog interesting or, at least, that's what I hope. I welcome any criticisms, suggestions, etc. Sorry for the shameless self-promotion, but I just started the blog and I would like people to know about it :-)

Philippe

How do you weight the opinion of people whose arguments you do not accept? Say you have 10 friends who all believe with 99% confidence in proposition A. You ask them why they believe A, and the arguments they produce seem completely bogus or incoherent to you. But perhaps they have strong intuitive or aesthetic reasons to believe A, which they simply cannot articulate. Should you update in favor of A or not?

I'm curious if anybody here frequents retraction watch enough to address this concern I have.

I find articles here very effective at announcing retractions and making testimonies from lead figures in investigations a frequent fallback, but rarely do you get to see the nuts and bolts of the investigations being discussed. For example, "How were the journals misleading?" or "What evidence was or was not analyzed, and how did the journal's analysis deviate from correct protocol?" are questions I often ask myself as I read, followed by an urge to see the cited papers. And then upon investigating the articles and their retraction notices, I am given a reason that I can't myself arbitrate. Maybe data was claimed to have been manipulated, or analyzed according to an incorrect framework.

Studies such as these I find alarming because I'm forced to trust the good intentions of a multi-billion dollar corporation in finding the truth. Often I find myself going on retraction watch, trusting the possibly non-existing good intentions of the organization's leadership, as I read the headlines without time to read every detail of the article. I am given certain impressions from the pretentious writing of the articles, but none of the substance, when I choose to skim selections.

Perhaps I am warning against laziness. Perhaps I am concerned about the potential for corruption in even a crusade to fight misinformation that retraction watch seems to fight. Nonetheless, I'm curious if people here have had similar or differing experiences with these articles...

In a crack of time between doing my last data analysis for my PhD and writing my thesis, I couldn't stop myself from churning out a brief sparsely-sourced astrobiology blog post in which I argue that the limited lifespan of planetary geospheres and the decay of star formation rates means that even though the vast majority of star-years are in the distant future around long-lived small stars, we are still a typical observer in that we are occurring less than 15 billion years into an apparently open-ended universe.

https://thegreatatuin.wordpress.com/2017/01/29/on-the-death-of-planets/

I think either you're misunderstanding the paper, or I'm misunderstanding you. (Or of course both.) The point isn't that scientists should be looking at consensus instead of actually doing science; of course they shouldn't. It's that for someone who isn't an expert in the field and isn't in a position to do their own research, the opinions of those who are experts and have done their own research are very useful information. (In cases -- such as this one -- where there is near unanimity among the experts, I think the only reasonable options are "accept expert consensus, if only tentatively" and "become expert at a level comparable to theirs and form your own opinion". Of course no one is obliged to be reasonable.)

Again, a math task:

https://protokol2020.wordpress.com/2017/01/21/a-math-question/

I'm new to writing resumes and am currently writing one for an internship application. I don't know if trying to optimize for uniqueness or quirkiness comes at significant social costs, or if there are many benefits. If anyone is good at this sort of thing (listing / bragging skills), general tips would be very welcome.

On a lighter note (Note: this is open access)

Several state attorneys general have initiated them.

Could you give some examples? I'm failing to find any instances where any such action has actually been brought.

What I can find is an investigation by several state AGs into ExxonMobil, which appears to be focusing on what EM's management knew about climate change; there's some suggestion that they're now digging into possible misrepresentations of how big oil reserves are, presumably with a view to arguing that they misled investors. Note that investigating what Exxon management knew about climate change is exactly what we should not expect if this were really about criminalizing skepticism about global warming; the whole point is that allegedly Exxon management tried to spread global warming skepticism while knowing it was probably wrong.

I think in practice it's likely to be [...]

Well, obviously neither your guesses about the future nor mine are much evidence here. The laws prosecutions might use, so far as I know, require evidence of actual dishonesty.

I wasn't aware courts had access to sincerity brain-scanners.

It is absolutely commonplace for legal guilt to depend on state of mind, even though courts don't have brain-scanners, telepaths, etc.

OK, and how is this distinction supposed to manifest in practice?

One distinction is that someone accused under (2) could defend themselves by showing that they genuinely didn't believe anyone was paying attention to their expression of disbelief in global warming, whereas that defence presumably wouldn't be open to them under (1).

[..] in any case when (2) happens who exactly will be forbidden to assert that global worming isn't real? Does it matter if [...]?

Since it suffices to give one operationalizable difference between (1) & (2) for gjm's claim of a distinction to go through, it's not necessary to answer these questions about how a specific practical implementation would work.

Note that the people doing the prosecution haven't presented any evidence of [...]

To which specific people are you referring? To which specific prosecution are you referring?

Thus it is clear that (2) is little more than a fairly transparent excuse to do (1).

It sure isn't clear to me. Your basis for saying so is your (implied) failure to think of a difference between (1) & (2) that could manifest in practice; that you don't know specifically how (2) would be implemented in practice; and an unverifiably generic assertion that unspecified people haven't presented evidence of "promulgation of assertions [etc.]" "beyond the fact that the people in question are asserting that global warming isn't real". Weak stuff.

Given that gjm has just demonstrated that (3) is false,

You do nothing to substantiate that, and in light of your own relatively poor track record, I'm not going to take it on trust. And so...

I'm inclined to believe the real reason for your bias is that you belong to a tribe where agreeing with gjm's conclusion is high status.

...is not an accusation I take seriously, especially since you're a sockpuppeteer with a history of downvote rampages, including against gjm. Incline all you want, mate.

Catholic theologians are experts in what the Roman Catholic Church believes. If you claim that the RCC isn't really trinitarian, then "bullshit, look at what all the Catholic theologians say" is a perfectly good response.

They claim (or at least let's suppose arguendo that they do) to be experts on the actual facts about God. It turns out they're wrong about that. So ... is their situation nicely parallel to that of climate scientists?

Why, no. Look at all the people in the world who claim to be God-experts and have studied long and hard, got fancy credentials, etc. That includes the Catholic theologians. It also includes the Protestant theologians (who are almost all also trinitarian but disagree about a bunch of other important things). And it includes Islamic scholars, who are very decidedly not trinitarians. It includes Hindu religious experts, whose views are more different still. By any reasonable criterion it also includes philosophers specializing in philosophy of religion, whose views are very diverse.

This is very much not the same as the situation with climate science. (And not only because the term "climate science" has been somehow coopted; there aren't university departments doing heretical climate science and using a different name for it, so far as I can tell.)

Eric Raymond's list of "warning signs" is pretty bullshitty. One warning sign with his warning signs: he prefaces it with a brief list of past alleged junk-science panics, and at least some of the things he lists are definitely not junk science and he only has the luxury of pretending they are because governments listened to the scientists and did something about the things they were warning about. It's amusing that he lists "Past purveyers of junk science do not change their spots" among his signs, incidentally, because to a great extent the organizations (and in some cases the people) supporting global warming skepticism are the same ones that argued that smoking doesn't cause cancer. Why? Because their opinions are on sale to the highest corporate bidder.

Suggestion to sticky the welcome thread. Stickying the welcome thread to the sidebar would encourage participation/comments/content. And perhaps in the future add emphasis on communication norms to the thread, specifically that negative reception and/or lack of reception is more obvious on LessWrong – So have thick skin and do not take it personal. I'd imagine that quality control will be what it has always been, critical comments.

I have just read a debate about whether high-IQ kids should be allowed to attend special schools, and the debate was predictable. So I used this as an opportunity to summarize the arguments against "smart segregation". (The arguments in favor of it seem quite straightforward: better education, less bullying, social and professional company of equals.) Here are the results; please tell me if some frequently-made argument is missing.

Note: different arguments here contradict each other, which is okay, because they are typically not made by the same people.

1 -- There is no such thing as "smart children", because...

1.A -- ...everyone who believes to be smart is actually just a conceited fool. Parents who believe that their children are smart are just typical parents uncritical about their children. (Insert anecdotal evidence about a kid from your elementary school who believed to be super smart, and so did his parents, but he was obviously a moron.)

1.B -- ...you cannot measure smartness on a single scale. There are many kinds of intelligence; everyone is special in a different way. Someone is better at math, but someone else may be better at dancing or spirituality. Belief in g-factor is debunked pseudoscience; it is racist and sexist and shouldn't be given a platform. (Quote S.J.Gould and/or insert example of Hitler believing some people were better than others.)

1.C -- ...you cannot measure smartness fairly. If a child is tested as smart, it only means they have rich parents who were able to buy them tutors, made them cram for the tests, and maybe even bribed the test evaluators. Also, it is known that tests provide unfair advantage to white cishet male children.

1.D -- A weaker version of the previous statement is that if you make programs for smart children, the children from poor or minority families will not be able to participate in them, for various reasons. This would leave them in a worse situation than they are now, because if it becomes a common knowledge that such programs exist, the fact that the child didn't participate in one would be taken as an evidence against being smart. That is, an average smart child would be actually harmed by such policy.

2 -- Having smart children together with dumb ones is better for the smart children, because...

2.A -- ...it will improve the smart children's social skills. The most important social skill is to be able to interact with average people, because they make a majority of the population, so you will interact with them most frequently as an adult. (This assumes that adult people actually interact with a random sample of population, as opposed to living in a bubble of their profession or socioeconomical level, both in professional and private lives.)

2.B -- ...it will allow the smart children to learn important things from the dumb ones, other than the academic skills. (This usually assumes some kind of cosmic justice, where smaller intelligence is balanced by greater emotionality or spirituality, so the dumb children can provide value that the smart children would not be able to provide to each other.)

2.C -- ...it will allow the smart children to have contacts outside of their bubble.

2.D -- ...the smart children can tutor the dumb ones, which will be an enriching experience for both sides. Explaining stuff to other people deepens your own understanding of the topic.

3 -- Having smart children together with dumb ones is better for the dumb children, because...

3.A -- ...having the smart children in the classroom will provide inspiration for the rest of the class.

3.B -- ...the smart children can tutor the dumb ones.

3.C -- ...it will allow the dumb children to have contacts outside of their bubble.

3.D -- ...the smart children in the classroom will motivate the teachers; having motivated teachers at school will benefit all students.

3.E -- ...the parents of the smart children (presumably themselves smart and rich) will care about improving the quality of education in their child's school, which will benefit all students.

4 -- We should actually not optimize for the smart children, even if it would be a net benefit, because...

4.A -- ...the whole "problem" is made up anyway, and a truly smart child will thrive in any environment. Optimizing for smart children should be such low priority that you should be ashamed for even mentioning the topic. (Insert anecdotal evidence about a smart kid who studied at average school, and became successful later.) Even the argument about bullying is invalid, because bullying happens among smart children, too.

4.B -- ...smart children usually have rich parents. Creating better educational opportunities for smart children therefore on average increases income inequality, which is bad.

Has the password changed on the username2 account?

Thoughts on punching nazis? I can't really wrap my head around why there are so many people who think it's 100% ok to punch nazis. Not sure if discussion about this has happened elsewhere (if so please direct me!) . For the purposes of this discussion let's ignore whether or not the alt-right counts as Nazism and speak only about a hypothetical Nazi ideological group.

I understand to some extent the argument that reasonable discussion with Nazis is almost certainly futile and that they are perhaps a danger to others, however my main concerns with punching Nazis are: 1) It promotes violence as an acceptable means of dealing with disagreement 2) It doesn't accomplish much (though the hypothetical Nazi in question has said that he is more afraid of going outside, so I suppose it's accomplished at least fear which may be a pro or con depending on your point of view, besides that however I don't think it's hindered Nazis very much and has only worsened the image of the anti-Nazis)

some clothing, e.g., high heels, is rather impractical

I beg to disagree. To speak of practicality you need to have a specific goal in mind. High heels are very impractical for running, but they are quite practical for attracting the attention of a potential mate.

Do continue trying to put words into my mouth. That's absolutely going to convince me that it's worth responding to you with good arguments.

Note that the people doing the prosecution haven't presented any evidence of "promulgation of assertions that global warming isn't real in order to gain an unfair competitive advantage in a marketplace" beyond the fact that the people in question are asserting that global warming isn't real.

Are there in fact any such prosecutions yet? (I don't think there are, but maybe there are and I missed them.)

Does it matter if they believe it is in fact not real, does it matter if they have evidence?

Yes, because the proposed prosecutions are under laws that require deliberate falsehood. I think there may be some scope for claiming not "they said X and knew it was false" but merely "they said X despite knowing it might well be false, and didn't know it was false only because they deliberately didn't check" (i.e., X was bullshit rather than lies). But I'm pretty sure that "I looked carefully at the available evidence and honestly came to the conclusion that X" is, in principle, a valid defence in such cases.

Thus it is clear that (2) is little more than a fairly transparent excuse to do (1).

This must be some new meaning of the word "clear" of which I was not previously aware. Suppose we stipulate that you're right that in such prosecutions it wouldn't matter whether the accused sincerely believed that global warming is unreal (or very slight, or beneficial, or whatever); and suppose we stipulate that the people proposing such prosecutions have presented no evidence of misconduct besides asserting that global warming isn't real. How would that make it clear that #2 is a transparent excuse for #1? In particular, how would you distinguish it from a different conspiracy theory: that actually they couldn't care less who believes what about global warming, and what they actually want to do is stick it to the fossil fuel companies?

(For the avoidance of doubt, I do not agree that in such prosecutions it wouldn't matter what the accused believed; I don't know what evidence the people proposing them have offered, but the time when they actually need to offer such evidence is when actually prosecuting; and I don't actually think that different conspiracy theory is terribly likely.)

Given that gjm has just demonstrated that (3) is false

Er, no.

I think that "tribal bias" is the norm, not the exception, and accusing someone of having their reasoning messed with, to some extent, by tribal biases is a little like accusing them of having shit that stinks. I'd much rather hold off and only criticize people when they deal with visible bias poorly, and It's legitimately hard enough to see your own tribal biases and how they affect your thinking that I'm a little hesitant to accuse someone of being blatantly dishonest because they don't see and correct for what looks like a bias to me. Especially since sometimes what looks like a bias is actually just noticing that they're using a valid heuristic that you don't understand because you're not part of their tribe.

That said, it's clear that satt wasn't offering Lumifer the amount of charity that I think Lumifer deserves, and was more focused on finding holes in Lumifer's relatively (albeit intentionally and not overly, in my opinion) imprecise arguments than on finding the merits of Lumifer's arguments, which I'd argue is a much better way of going about things, in general.

I upvoted you because I think your explanation of Lumifer's point there is correct and needed to be said.

However, I'd like to comment on this bit:

Given that gjm has just demonstrated that (3) is false, I'm inclined to believe the real reason for your bias is that you belong to a tribe where agreeing with gjm's conclusion is high status.

I don't think this is fair to take away gjm's entire reputation based on one disagreement or even one confirmed counterexample.

I also think it's premature to conclude that satt is biased here due to tribal beliefs, because I think the comment satt made is perfectly consistent with a low to nonexistent amount of tribal bias, as well as consistent with a good ability to acknowledge and correct for tribal biases when pointed out. It's consistent with the alternative too, of course, but I'd want to see some distinguishing evidence before making a point of it.

I see downvotes are still disabled, so I'll just [throws back head and horse laughs].

We have satellite temperature data since the late 70s. Before that, yes, there is opportunity for shenanigans.

Economic growth basically means that workers get more productive. Less hours of work means more output. GDP growth is not really possible without making workers more efficient.

It's interesting how in the last years the old luddie arguments got revived. The idea that automation means that there won't be any jobs anymore get's more and more popular.

Does anyone have an electronic copy of the Oxford Handbook of Metamemory that they're willing to share?

Are there any forums explicitly about how to think about and act to best make humanity survive its future?