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I've read the article a few times, but found myself getting confused. After some thinking, I think I've narrowed it down to working better with examples rather than general universals. The above seems like good material, but is there any way I could convince anyone to give an example or two, maybe walk through the process step by step?
Essentially what I was trying to say, only put more succinctly and better than I did. Thanks. ^_^
In saying this, I am in no way saying that the average teenager is stupid, or lacks the cognitive abilities to full read and appreciate Less Wrong.
However, the readability of the Core Sequences isn't at a low reading level. To make them more teen-friendly, we may wish to consider how to make them more accessible. This may mean making them shorter, summarizing the main ideas more frequently, and using applicable real-life examples more.
I'd be interested in knowing what kind of help we're looking for to make this happen. I'd be willing to help with the writing of the new articles if I knew which were most wanted, and had a few people (and some teens) to bounce them off of when completed.
Completed. Huzzah! I feel like a participating member of the community.
I think it's mostly the shape of that curve. Why does it hit 80% gain at only 20% effort? Is that the same across many different tasks?
I'm a writer (novelist), and it's a common statement in writing circles (the ones I'm in, at least) that every writer has a million words of crap to get out. That's a rough estimate, of course, and I've always taken it to show that you have to work hard at your craft to improve. At an average of 1k words/hour, that's a good thousand hours of nothing but writing to get out.
Is that 20% effort? 50% 80% How does one chart or measure that?
But, if it's a newbie and you knew that changing it from a -3 to a -4 would end the discussion, wouldn't you just not down vote it, and explain your problem or correction?
This new change seems to me to be a way for someone to end a conversation, though they had to have 3 other people help them get it there. Is that an intentional change we want to make?
I think the biggest problem I initially have with accepting Silver's graph is the lack of evidence he gives for that arch. Putting that shape on a graph has quite a few ramifications.
Do you feel that the evidence he gave supported that shape?
I'm not sure that randomness from evolution and enculturation should be treated differently from random factors in the intuition-squaring process. It's randomness all the way through either way, right?
I think this statement is the fulcrum of my disagreement with your argument. You assert that "it's randomness all the way through either way". I disagree; it's not randomness all the way, not at all.
Evolution's mutations and changes are random; evolutions adaptions are not random - they happen in response to the outside world. Furthermore, the mutations and changes that survive aren't random either: they all meet the same criteria, that they didn't hamper survival.
I believe, then, that developing an internally consistent moral framework can be aided by recognizing the forces that have shaped our intuitions, and deciding whether the direction those forces are taking us is a worthy destination. We don't have to be blind and dumb slaves to Evolution any more. Not really.
It's certainly related. Cached Thoughts have always suggested repeating a meme, to me, which is different than supplying a ready-made answer. For example: Cached Thoughts rely on the conclusion coming from outside of your mind, and merely accepted as truth without any analysis. Canned Answers can be your own conclusions from earlier, thoughtlessly applied to a situation they might not be relevant to, or just used as an escape so new thought doesn't have to be done.
But yeah, quite similar. Good to know I originally came up with someone found here. Go ego boost. ^_^
When I did discussion groups like these, one useful term I introduced was a "canned answer". This is any answer that can be supplied without any original thought or analysis, as if they just went into the cellar of their mind and pulled out a can. Introducing this term as a negative thing and banning "canned answers" puts focus on taking a moment to think before speaking. It got to the point where I was able to just look at someone and twist my hand - they'd instantly stop and think. The group also became self-policing and started asking, "that seemed a little fast; do you think it was canned?" to check themselves.
It's a term I found useful. I hope your group continues to go well!
Thanks for sharing. I'm going to have to spend a while trying to envision how that kind of upbringing and pacing would change the way I currently view the world and learn. It certainly seems different from my own. ^_^
A Newtonian physics simulator simulates infinitely small conceptual points and/or quantum-cubes in an euclidean space at fixed positions. Not "billiard balls", AFAIK. I've always found the "balls" concept supremely absurd and immediately assumed they were talking about conceptual zero-space point entities.
How old were you when you learned this part of science? I got the "billiard ball" diagram and analogy when I was fairly young, before I knew a whole lot of science, or the art of questioning what my teacher told me. Looking back, it seems implausible to me to ever "immediately assume" she was talking about "conceptual zero-space point entities".
After all, isn't that one reason why some biases and mental images are so hard to grow past? They help form our basis of reality, they're working deep in our understanding and aren't easily rooted out just because we've updated some aspects of our thinking.
I'm a little late to the party, but I thought I'd mention something that hasn't gotten brought up yet.
I have some experience at leading/organizing groups like this. Something to consider when dealing with sequential learning is how to deal with people who are absent. Ideally, of course, you'll have a core group of people who want to do nothing more than attend every session diligently, take notes, and study the material as soon as they wake up, and before they retire at night. This, however, isn't going to happen. Life intrudes; people will miss some sessions.
Creating a plan to keep people updated and current when they miss things, or how to remind them of what they've already learned (something LW could improve upon, in my opinion) will allow everyone to stay together. Consider creating a summary to give them to take home. Likely, you'll be doing a summary any way at the end of your talk (if you aren't planning this, please do), and that ought to be sufficient. Also, you may want to leave room at the end and beginning of your sessions for questions about the concepts.
Also, make an effort to apply whatever concept you're working on to people's daily lives. One of the reason people find the extra material more useful than a lot of the core sequences as that they're more immediately applicable to what we deal with, while it takes more creativity to figure out why some of the more basic or obscure steps matter right now. You may consider challenging people to look for examples of the current concept in their daily life, papers, or current events and bring it to share next time.
I hope something in here was useful. What you're doing sounds really awesome - let us know how it goes!
For this to illuminate the psychology of power, we'd first have to be able to accurately articulate the differences between "men" and "women" (the quotes are because I understand those terms to be gender roles, which makes universals tricky; I still don't know all the true differences between males and females).
Another thing to keep in mind in this regard, is that this forum has a filter that blocks posts with enough of a negative score. Downvoting a comment posted by a troll can swiftly block it from public consumption, which means only those who want to read it will.
It might be off topic for this thread, but I think a claim like this is worth some sort of separate post. If you truly believe that civilization is that close to the brink, then it seems helpful to display the argument somewhere to inform others of the danger. Even if we can't stop the collapse, we could be prepared. And if your argument doesn't convince us, you'll have tried and have that off your conscience.
And while I can't prove it, I think a society where people live to (even) 200 is extreme hubris, playing with fire. Individuals have an incredibly strong motivation to keep themselves alive. If it runs against the common good (which it could in any number of ways) it would be very hard to stop. I'm not sure how LWers got so terribly afraid of death -- usually atheists accept death.
When you accept that "death" is the end of existence, and I mean really the end of it, then you don't accept it. At least, I haven't been presented with a philosophy that would support seeking death if all things were equal. Maybe if your death somehow saved or preserved the lives or happiness of others, but that's not the issue.
So, when you ask why LWers got "terribly afraid" of death, i'd say that this community seems to embrace the truth of death. It's the end. Why would you choose to cease if there was a chance of continuing beyond, and that chance didn't take away anything from anyone?
I know I'm not presenting anything new, but I thought the clarification (of my understanding) might help.
I'd like to add interest into hearing a proposed criteria in how various propositions are assessed.
It may be useful to actually type out how you use the above thought experiment to explain Bayes. That would make it more useful for those of us still confused or unsure about what Bayes means (hey, I'm a newbie, be nice), and it would help people critique the example in how it teaches the theorem.
For example, why is it better to ask, "If a 3 is pulled, is it more likely to be an 8-sided dice or not?" than to ask, "If a random dice is rolled, is it more likely to be a 3 or not?"
I, personally, tell the difference by paying attention to and observing reality without making any judgments. Then, I compare that with my expectations based on my judgments. If there is a difference, then I am thinking I am interacting instead of interacting.
Over time, I stop making judgments. And in essence, I stop thinking about interacting with the world, and just interact, and see what happens.
I think it'd be useful to hear an example of "observing reality without making judgements" and "observing reality with making judgements". I'm having trouble figuring out what you believe the difference to be.
Hey all. i figured that after a few long months of lurking, I might as well introduce myself (that way when I post elsewhere, someone doesn't feel obligated to smack my nose politely with a rolled-up newspaper and send me here), even though I can never figure out what to say.
I've now finished all the Sequences and I've successfully resisted the urge to argue with comments that are years old, and I think I've learned a lot. One of the high moments was that I had just finished reading the Zombie sequence when I met a friend of a friend, who started to postulate the Zombie world and concept. Thanks to my reading here, I'd already done some thinking about the matter and could engage with him intelligently. How awesome is that?
One of my biggest struggles is coming up with how some of the stuff on Lesswrong is applicable to normal life. I'm not a IA researcher, I get confused with computers, and I'm a fairly normal person. I'm into the outdoors, writing (dream job, right there), teaching, history, and board games. A lot of times, then, I wish the Sequences had parts after each post that suggested ways that the principles impacted normal life. Trying to figure out how to connect the Bayes way to more normal decisions is challenging. Perhaps this is already been addressed - Lesswrong is also a labyrinth for newbies. ^_^
As far as posting go, I'm still finding the right line between investigating and defensive/aggressive. Generally, I'm impossible to offend and I don't take things personally. I'll try and live that creed as well as just say it, but now it's on record. I also believe strongly in giving someone the benefit of the doubt, or taking their statement in the best possible light.
I'm not sure what else to say, but if there's one thing I've learned here, it's that people are always happy to point out areas that are lacking in both information and depth. Hope to see y'all around and I'm looking forward to exploring various things with awesome folk.