Rationality Quotes Thread March 2016

Fools find no pleasure in understanding
but delight in airing their own opinions.

-- Proverbs 18:2

To avoid sucker problems, substitute the abstract "government" with "bureaucrats/politicians" & "science" with "scientists/journal editors".

Nassim Taleb

In short, the claim is that the experience of psychological practitioners allows them to go beyond the aggregate relationships that have been uncovered by research. The claim that clinical prediction is efficacious is, thus, easily test-able. Unfortunately, the claim has been tested, and it has been falsified. Research on the issue of clinical versus actuarial prediction has been consistent. Since the publication in 1954 of Paul Meehl’s classic book Clinical Versus Statistical Prediction actuarial prediction has been found to be superior to clinical prediction (Kahneman, 2011; Morera & Dawes, 2006; Swets et al., 2000; Tetlock, 2005).

The error of implying that psychological predictions can be made at the level of the individual is often made by clinical psychologists themselves, who sometimes mistakenly imply that clinical training confers an “intuitive” ability to predict an individual case. Instead, decades’ worth of research has consistently indicated that actuarial prediction (prediction in terms of group statistical trends) is superior to clinical prediction in accounting for human behavior

Keith E. Stanovich (member of CFAR's board of advisors) in How to Think Straight About Psychology

"Oh, but I only detest the mouth of the lion, where its fangs are kept; I do not detest the ear of the lion, nor its tail."

But the ear is how he found your brother, and when he leapt on your sister, the tail kept him straight.

Tycho of Penny Arcade, on the importance of systems thinking.

An investigator who hoped to learn something about what scientists took the atomic theory to be asked a distinguished physicist and an eminent chemist whether a single atom of helium was or was not a molecule. Both answered without hesitation, but their answers were not the same. For the chemist the atom of helium was a molecule because it behaved like one with respect to the kinetic theory of gases. For the physicist, on the other hand, the helium atom was not a molecule because it displayed no molecular spectrum.

Thomas Kuhn in The Structure of Scientific Revolutions

The failures to grasp the meaning which are the impressive feature of our third set of protocols are, therefore, not easy to range in order. Inability to construe may have countless causes. Distractions, preconceptions, inhibitions of all kinds have their part, and putting our finger on the obstructing item is always largely guesswork. The assumption, however, that stupidity is not a simple quality, such as weight or impenetrability were once thought to be, but an effect of complex inhibitions is a long stride in a hopeful direction. The most leaden-witted blockhead thereby becomes an object of interest.

― I. A Richard, Practical Criticism- A study of literature

Strict rules can be harsh. So can the whim and bias that tend to creep in when one relaxes the rules.

Nick Szabo

Unlike the engineer, and many doctors, and most theologians, the scientist need not choose problems because they urgently need solution and without regard for the tools available to solve them.

[...]

In this respect, also,The contrast between natural scientists and many social scientists proves instructive. The latter often tend, as the former almost never do, to defend their choice of a research problem—e.g., the effects of racial discrimination or the causes of the business cycle—chiefly in terms of the social importance of achieving a solution. Which group would one then expect to solve problems at a more rapid rate?

Thomas Kuhn in The Structure of Scientific Revolutions

Those who have never tried electronic communication may not be aware of what a "social skill" really is. One social skill that must be learned, is that other people have points of view that are not only different, but threatening, to your own. In turn, your opinions may be threatening to others. There is nothing wrong with this. Your beliefs need not be hidden behind a facade, as happens with face-to-face conversation. Not everybody in the world is a bosom buddy, but you can still have a meaningful conversation with them. The person who cannot do this lacks in social skills.

Nick Szabo

Psychology has been plagued by unfalsifiable theories, and that is one reason why progress in the discipline has been slow.

Keith E. Stanovich (member of CFAR's board of advisors) in How to Think Straight About Psychology

The Hidden Emotion Model is based on the idea that niceness is the cause of all anxiety. People who are prone to anxiety are nearly always people-pleasers who fear conflict and negative feelings like anger. When you feel upset, you sweep your problems under the rug because you don’t want to upset anyone. You do this so quickly and automatically that you’re not even aware you’re doing it. Then your negative feelings resurface in disguised form, as anxiety, worries, fears, or feelings of panic. When you expose the hidden feelings and solve the problem that’s bugging you, often your anxiety will disappear

David D. Burns (on of the people who popularized CBT) in "When Panic Attacks: The New, Drug-Free Anxiety Therapy That Can Change Your Life-Broadway"

Qin Shi Huang sought to live forever. So, he recruited a multitude of advisors to find the hidden secret to immortality. Unfortunately, the men he recruited had no ability to assess which magicians or alchemists might be experts in immortality elixirs. Furthermore, the emperor had no ability to assess which advisors might be experts in assessing experts in immortality elixirs. (Note even further that there are no true experts in the relevant domains here. This may remind you of fields such as technological forecasting.) In the end, as these things tended to go, a lot of advisors got executed.

...

In domains where reality does not give good feedback, they need to have a set of well-honed heuristics or proxy feedback methods to correct for better output if the result is going to be reliably good (this goes for, e.g., philosophy, sociology, long-term prediction). In domains where reality can give good feedback, they don't necessarily need well-honed heuristics or proxy feedback methods (e.g., massage, auto repair, swordfighting, etc.). All else equal, superior feedback loops have the following attributes (idealized versions below):

Speed (you learn about discrepancies between current and desired output quickly after taking an action so you can course-correct)

Frequency (the feedback loop happens frequently, giving you more samples to calibrate on)

Validity (the feedback loop is helping you get closer to the output you actually care about)

Reliability (the feedback loop consistently returns similar discrepancies in response to you taking similar actions)

Detail (the feedback loop gives you a large amount of information about the difference between current and desired output)

Saliency (the feedback loop delivers attentionally or motivationally salient feedback)

-http://effective-altruism.com/ea/tk/expertise_assessment/

“This cosmic dance of bursting decadence and withheld permissions twists all our arms collectively, but if sweetness can win, and it can, then I'll still be here tomorrow to high-five you yesterday, my friend. Peace.”

― Pendleton Ward, Adventure Time Vol. 1

adventure time...the candy people have taught me it's okay just to enjoy my life, I don't have to be force for good or evil. If I'm happy, that's good enough. I'm not a bad thing then. I'm kinda good too by default

It is comfortable for richer people to think they are richer because of the moral failings of the poor. And that justifies a paternalistic approach to poverty relief using vouchers and in-kind support. But the big reason poor people are poor is because they don’t have enough money, and it shouldn’t come as a huge surprise that giving them money is a great way to reduce that problem—considerably more cost-effectively than paternalism.

-- Charles Kenney, "For Fighting Poverty, Cash Is Surprisingly Effective", Bloomberg News, June 3, 2013

Sacrificing anonymity may be the next generation's price for keeping precious liberty, as prior generations paid in blood.

-Hal Norby, as quoted in The Transparent Society: Will Technology Force Us to Choose Between Privacy and Freedom? (1998), by David Brin, p. 3.

The corporate world is predatory, and the mercenary class of executives are certainly in it for no one but themselves, but for sheer thievery, I think only the financial industry can even begin to compete with the non-profit world. At least the corporations have to deliver to their customers on some level, or they go out of business.

Not so the non-profit charities and foundations, which often seem to exist primarily to provide those who run them a very good living.

Vox Day