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Comment by Jurily on Open Thread May 23 - May 29, 2016 · 2016-05-25T18:23:59.469Z · LW · GW

Yes, it's obvious. That's why it was surprising when I couldn't find a single study on schizophrenia where all children were separated from the parents immediately after birth. Feel free to enlighten me.

Comment by Jurily on Open Thread May 23 - May 29, 2016 · 2016-05-25T17:22:43.848Z · LW · GW

It is my understanding that due to ethical concerns, the scientific field of psychology does not have a data collection methodology capable of distinguishing between effects caused by the parents' genes and effects caused by the parents' actions, and as such, no possible statistical approach will give a correct answer on the heritability of traits caused by the latter, like schizophrenia a.k.a. religion or intelligence. In order to clear up my "misunderstandings and ignorance", you will need to demonstrate an approach that can, at the very least, successfully disprove genetic contribution in circumcision.

Comment by Jurily on Open Thread May 23 - May 29, 2016 · 2016-05-25T10:26:28.821Z · LW · GW

How does this reject the genetic factors causing circumcision in Jews?

Comment by Jurily on Open Thread May 9 - May 15 2016 · 2016-05-14T03:08:55.424Z · LW · GW

Psychology produces useful information at the same rate as Christianity. If you want practical results, learn hypnosis.

Comment by Jurily on The Growth of My Pessimism: Transhumanism, Immortalism, Effective Altruism. · 2015-12-04T04:59:03.919Z · LW · GW

I gave directions to Hogwarts. I gave the simplest, easiest and most fun testable claim I could think of. It is part of the claim that the process of testing it is guaranteed to improve your life. No study will change any of that. Go observe reality.

Comment by Jurily on The Growth of My Pessimism: Transhumanism, Immortalism, Effective Altruism. · 2015-12-03T13:29:23.128Z · LW · GW

Your impression of what psychologists believe is outdated. Today's psychologists already know that Freudian psychoanalysis doesn't work. It's been years since it was part of the standard understanding of psychology.

That's nice, but what about the axiom of medicine, when was that examined? How did they prove the idea that statistics is an effective research method for neural networks of 10^14 synapses trained on unique input exhibiting mostly unique symptoms?

And the placebo effect is already accounted for in every serious randomized trial.

Yes, I applaud their very effective ways to completely ignore it. Where's the research on producing better and permanent placebo? Where are the results? Don't you think that's in scope for a field called psychology? If not, who should be researching it? In what way is "placebo" not a thought-stopper for psychology?

Your implication that depression is not a real thing needs to be explained in more detail, especially with such a kilometer-tall red flag as your use of square quotes for evidence-based medicine.

Depression is a real thing, it's just not a hardware problem. They should be doing tech support, not medicine. Half of NLP is basically trying to find out what they see on the screen, and they still get better results. Psychology needs to qualify their methods as "evidence-based" to distinguish it from "result-based".

If you think medicine is a better fit for the human brain than a computing metaphor, feel free to demonstrate the existence of a mental immune system.

So, what's your evidence that stage hypnosis is a viable therapy?

I mention stage hypnotists a lot because they need to make it blatantly obvious that something is happening. They optimize for entertainment, not therapy. You can observe their results on Youtube.

For therapy, my evidence is Mark Cunningham's work. When he does an erotic hypnosis demo on a subject with anorgasmia, you can tell she was telling the truth because the session lasts about 20 minutes longer than usual. The results are also blatantly obvious. Look for Adina in his Renegade Hypnotist Project. It's up on TPB, along with a bunch of his other stuff. Some of his other demos are also up on Youtube.

Here is Richard Bandler dealing with a schizophrenic. He's also using hypnosis everywhere he goes, also up on TPB.

You will not find one person who has done erotic hypnosis on either side of the chair who believes it possible to hang on to anything diagnosed as depression after ten orgasms in half an hour. One.

Comment by Jurily on The Growth of My Pessimism: Transhumanism, Immortalism, Effective Altruism. · 2015-12-02T22:41:45.478Z · LW · GW

When physicists have two experiments proving two mutually exclusive theories, they come up with a theory that explains both, no matter how ridiculous it sounds, and then redesign their methodology to test the new predictions. Newtonian physics is still accurate enough to explain a soccer game, reality hasn't changed when GR explained the quirks.

Under the current "understanding" of psychology, people want to fuck their parents at age 3 and depression is an "illness" even though 150 years of research hasn't demonstrated the cause or a cure. Their "treatments" look to me like trying to close a Chrome tab by radiating the box while I can produce permanent results just by telling people to basically calm down and stop being stupid after they have already given up on "evidence-based therapy". What does it mean when "PTSD" is frequently "misdiagnosed" as "ADHD" and neither has a cure? What does it mean when we literally have self-driving cars before a professor of psychology comes up with a way to scare people into not texting on the road to save their lives?

Until psychology adopts a research methodology strong enough to conclude the Oedipus complex has always been bullshit or at least develop the idea that their theories are supposed to explain placebo as part of observed reality, it is not a field of science. They're just priests of the Church of the Published Article.

Be a skeptic, just don't think that means you're supposed to stick your fingers in your ear and chant "pseudoscience" until men stop going into labour on stage just because someone told them to. If nothing else, at least give me the courtesy of assuming for five seconds that I might have some sane reason to come to a den of rationalists and profess my crackpot beliefs.

Comment by Jurily on The Growth of My Pessimism: Transhumanism, Immortalism, Effective Altruism. · 2015-12-02T21:00:27.152Z · LW · GW

I've linked a stage hypnotist training class and made testable predictions you find obviously false. It's meaningless to discuss smartphone design until you've shown the willingness to press the power button and see what happens.

Comment by Jurily on The Growth of My Pessimism: Transhumanism, Immortalism, Effective Altruism. · 2015-12-01T23:52:00.222Z · LW · GW

Let me get this straight. When faced with a theory saying the human brain is intelligent, you have trouble considering it possible. You don't expect a theory that explains something you can't explain, to say things that sound ridiculous to you, in a universe that runs on quantum mechanics. Your response to a theory that explains something you can't explain, is to ignore the evidence and sneer at it. You are upvoted.

Could you please point me at some learning material so I can fit in better around here?

Comment by Jurily on The Growth of My Pessimism: Transhumanism, Immortalism, Effective Altruism. · 2015-12-01T10:58:46.283Z · LW · GW

That sounds like a wildly overreaching claim. We can do that now / in the near future? I don't think so.

Getting people drunk/high is one of the classics of stage hypnosis. What steps have you taken to observe reality before reaching that conclusion?

/blinks. What do you expect installing a Death Star power core in the root chakra to do?

Establish and maintain a higher baseline of subjective well-being. People already have concepts like "chi" or "mental energy"; a generator produces more energy; and the "root chakra" is "where energy enters the body". I know that last one because I decided it sounds good.

These concepts are "real" in the same sense as a programming language. There is no inheritance in the transistors, but you can pretend as long as the compiler does the right thing with your code. Apparently the human brain is intelligent enough that we can simply make shit up.

Comment by Jurily on The Growth of My Pessimism: Transhumanism, Immortalism, Effective Altruism. · 2015-11-30T17:43:32.552Z · LW · GW

Our technologies can’t and won’t for a while lead our minds to peaks anywhere near the peaks we found by simply introducing weirdly shaped molecules into our brains. The strangeness of Salvia, the beauty of LSD, the love of MDMA are orders and orders of magnitude beyond what we know how to change from an engineering perspective.

The technology does exist. In hypnosis, we do party tricks including the effects of the weirdly shaped molecules. Think about this redirect. We do lucid dreaming. We do all the cool stuff from eastern meditations and some that probably haven't been done before ("ultra-height"). We can do everything the human mind is capable of experiencing. We produce usable social/dating/relationship advice, sports training, sales training, therapy, anything that involves using your brain better. We can redesign our own personality.

It sounds like magic, but it's just sufficiently advanced. When installing a Death Star power core in the root chakra does exactly what I expect, the only observation of objective reality is that the brain figured out what I'm trying to do and made it happen somehow. It could be a fun research topic to find out the neurology of different techniques, but the current dominant scientific theory says hypnosis is a form of placebo.

Comment by Jurily on Non-communicable Evidence · 2015-11-27T15:14:25.548Z · LW · GW

Yes, it's a learnable skill. Stage hypnotists exist.

Comment by Jurily on Non-communicable Evidence · 2015-11-18T05:51:16.739Z · LW · GW

And the only way to distinguish is to find an observation you can make. Crockford's model offers none I can recognize, not even "System I coordinates your muscles to move your mouse".

Comment by Jurily on Non-communicable Evidence · 2015-11-17T15:25:36.754Z · LW · GW

I predict that if the Pope declares Jesus is God, there will be more worlds in which Jesus is God than worlds in which Jesus is merely the son of God.

If a statement does not say anything about observable reality, there is no objective truth to be determined.

Comment by Jurily on Non-communicable Evidence · 2015-11-17T13:54:54.983Z · LW · GW

The claim is not observable in any way and offers no testable predictions or anything that even remotely sounds like advice. It's unprovable because it doesn't talk about objective reality.

Comment by Jurily on Open thread, Nov. 02 - Nov. 08, 2015 · 2015-11-06T00:48:57.182Z · LW · GW

Given the current scientific framework you don't change a theory based on anecdotal evidence and single case studies.

Oh, I see the problem now. You're waiting for research to allow you to decide to do the research you're waiting for. When the scientific framework tells you there isn't enough research to reach a conclusion, doesn't it also tell you to do more research? Picking a research topic should not be as rigorous a process as the research itself.

Even if all the anecdotal and single case studies are false, shouldn't you at least be interested in why so many people believe in it? NLP is not a religion, you pick it up as an adult. Even if the entire NLP/hypnosis/seduction/whatever industry is just a giant crackpot convention, they still demonstrate enough persuasion techniques to convince people it's real. Shouldn't you be swarming over that with the idea of eliminating your suicide rate?

Comment by Jurily on Open thread, Nov. 02 - Nov. 08, 2015 · 2015-11-03T15:31:17.680Z · LW · GW

I'm aware that Strugeon's law is in full effect within the NLP community, my questions were specifically about Bandler and his results.

I fail to see how anything you said has an impact on the observation that Andy did not need to return to the mental institute. Unless you dispute at least that single claim, the lack of research is better explained with the hypothesis that the researchers failed to understand the topic well enough to account for enough variables, like how Bandler almost always teaches NLP in the context of hypnosis.

If whatever Bandler does is producing verifiable results, shouldn't it be at least an explicit goal of science to find out why it works for him, as opposed to whether it works if you throw an NLP manual at an undergrad? Shouldn't it be a goal of science to find out how he came up with his techniques, and how to do that better than him?

Comment by Jurily on Open thread, Nov. 02 - Nov. 08, 2015 · 2015-11-03T03:41:43.252Z · LW · GW

So, apparently NLP is pseudoscience, and now I'm confused. Does anyone actually claim

  • Richard Bandler hasn't demonstrated even a single verifiable, undisputable result with his methods, and he's been fabricating things like this for decades?
  • his methods don't lead to his results in a way that matches his predictions?
  • the creator of NLP is not qualified to decide whether or not his methods are NLP?

If there are no claims to any of the above, what exactly was discredited?

Comment by Jurily on Nature publishes an article about alternative therapy · 2015-11-01T21:12:36.938Z · LW · GW

Don't think of it as "causes me to relax", you're the one doing the relaxing. You already know how to do it without the pill too, just pretend you're taking it. And then pretend you're pretending. And then practice a couple of times until you can do it automatically and don't need to think about it anymore.

Comment by Jurily on Roles are Martial Arts for Agency · 2014-08-30T11:14:17.560Z · LW · GW

Thinking about what to do is an action in itself. If you pause to think whether to brake or steer left to avoid a crash, you're not doing either. If a SWAT officer pauses to think during the part of a raid when the most important decisions happen, people get shot.

Most optimal algorithms do not involve questioning their own validity. There are times when you design and optimize, and there are times when you execute. Downtime is only useful when you're not up.

Comment by Jurily on Why Are Individual IQ Differences OK? · 2014-08-28T03:59:50.688Z · LW · GW

Is he a Bayesian racist?

If he got his opinion by updating it constantly and is willing to update it in the other direction given further evidence, yes. What he actually ends up doing with it is another matter entirely. I wouldn't expect a Bayesian redneck to join the KKK, for example.

Is she a Bayesian racist?

I'd think she's either committing the fallacy of trusting statistics to exactly predict the individual case, or simply not doing proper cost analysis. Even if the statistics say there are no unsolved crimes and none of the crimes are committed by Asians, the expected negative utility of running into the first Asian criminal in history should outweigh the inconvenience of avoiding one person on an otherwise empty street.

Comment by Jurily on Open thread, 25-31 August 2014 · 2014-08-27T23:10:08.475Z · LW · GW

Is there a name for the following pattern?

  • Argument or just noticing confusion
  • "He looks way too confident, he's probably better at the field or has significant information"
  • Catastrophic failure more or less matching my predictions

I seem to run into this a lot lately, but the alternative of assuming I'm correct seems even worse. I'm also often not in a position to ask about the source of their confidence.

Comment by Jurily on Why Are Individual IQ Differences OK? · 2014-08-26T19:05:02.518Z · LW · GW

I'm not sure HR would approve racial stereotype studies as part of the hiring process.

Comment by Jurily on Why Are Individual IQ Differences OK? · 2014-08-26T18:49:32.927Z · LW · GW

Adjusted for confidence in the factual accuracy of resumes, it's a tough call.

Comment by Jurily on Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality discussion thread, July 2014, chapter 102 · 2014-08-02T21:06:52.352Z · LW · GW

Chapter 20:

"Yes, nuclear weapons!" Professor Quirrell was almost shouting now. "Even He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named never used those, perhaps because he didn't want to rule over a heap of ash! They never should have been made! And it will only get worse with time!" Professor Quirrell was standing up straight instead of leaning on his desk. "There are gates you do not open, there are seals you do not breach! The fools who can't resist meddling are killed by the lesser perils early on, and the survivors all know that there are secrets you do not share with anyone who lacks the intelligence and the discipline to discover them for themselves! Every powerful wizard knows that! Even the most terrible Dark Wizards know that! And those idiot Muggles can't seem to figure it out! The eager little fools who discovered the secret of nuclear weapons didn't keep it to themselves, they told their fool politicians and now we must live under the constant threat of annihilation!"

A wizard university seems out of the question.

Comment by Jurily on Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality discussion thread, July 2014, chapter 102 · 2014-07-30T01:53:49.792Z · LW · GW

I'm not sure he'd needed to do that. Until we hear otherwise, he has access to all the knowledge of Salazar, who knew enough to build Hogwarts. Which also means the source code to the wards and the means to change them.

Can you even transfigure something that transfigures itself back? Of course Quirrell can do it if it's possible, but is it possible?

Comment by Jurily on Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality discussion thread, July 2014, chapter 102 · 2014-07-26T11:39:08.669Z · LW · GW

What's the deal with spells and age? If Harry is really so far ahead of his class and can already cast spells nobody else can, why is it just now that he can cast "second-year" spells effortlessly?

Canon or not, this reminds me too much of the public school system of a certain country where kids are verboten to use words "they shouldn't know yet".

Comment by Jurily on Fifty Shades of Self-Fulfilling Prophecy · 2014-07-25T05:51:13.740Z · LW · GW

Which one of these do you claim?

  • the editors failed when identifying this book as "people want", since it only sold tens of millions
  • the editors weren't rewarded for their good judgement
  • since not every single person on Earth likes it, it should not be allowed to reach those who do
  • there is no market for romance novels
Comment by Jurily on [LINK] Claustrum Stimulation Temporarily Turns Off Consciousness in an otherwise Awake Patient · 2014-07-20T12:35:54.689Z · LW · GW

The hypnotic induction is just a Ritual designed to convince the client that they can be "hypnotized" in a way that matches their preconceptions. After the first session, it's much more efficient to use an instant reinduction trigger or suggestions like "I can hypnotize you in hundreds of ways impossible to resist" or "all my suggestion will work easily, automatically, whether or not you think you're hypnotized, in exactly the way that benefits you most".

As for amnesia, stage techniques are awesome. It's really hard to doubt you've been hypnotized when you count your 11 fingers, can't get up from the chair or watch your arm grow to twice the size.

Comment by Jurily on Be Wary of Thinking Like a FAI · 2014-07-19T07:12:49.420Z · LW · GW

So I should (a) not care about personal identity over time, even if it exists, and (b) stop believing that it exists.

That sounds like a thought-stopper. What is the utility of the belief itself? What predictions can we make if personal identity exists? What is the maximum set of incremental changes you can make to yourself until you stop being "you"? What is the utility of being "current you" as opposed to "optimized you", and which "you" gets to decide? What is the utility of being "you five years ago" as opposed to "current you", and which "you" gets to decide?

Comment by Jurily on How to Write Deep Characters · 2013-07-05T16:16:21.404Z · LW · GW

I seem to remember a story about Warren Buffett: whenever he tried to teach people to trade, they failed miserably. When people asked him on why he didn't follow his own teachings on specific successful trades he did, he simply said "Oh, I changed my mind at the last second."

I've never seen sources for it though, so take it with a grain of salt.

Comment by Jurily on Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality discussion thread, part 19, chapter 88-89 · 2013-06-30T09:23:30.605Z · LW · GW

I actually expected Harry to cast the Killing Curse as a last ditch desperation/rage effort. He knew what it does, has seen the wand movements and pronounciation (in the Dementor dream), knew and had the required state of mind. That should be enough to cast it, as per Ch26 ("He is in his sixth year at Hogwarts and he cast a high-level Dark curse without knowing what it did.").

Comment by Jurily on Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality discussion thread, part 19, chapter 88-89 · 2013-06-30T08:23:24.519Z · LW · GW

Or that since she ran for sunlight, she wasn't inside Hogwarts technically, therefore the wards didn't pick up her injury. We already have proof the attacker expected her to do that.

Which would also explain her last words.