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felipec

unbelief

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felipec


								

								

								
								
								

								
							
					
 
				


				
unbelief

				
				
				

				

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					joined 2022 November 04 19:55:17 UTC
				


				
					

					
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				Friday Fun Thread for February 10, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I want to prompt all the contestants: @TheDag, @f3zinker, @felipec, and @Pitt19802.


Did you find the topic difficult to write about?


I think people judging our essays might be very quick to criticize and say: why didn't the writer mention X? how didn't the writer connect Y with Z? (it's obvious)


I think the readers might not be aware of the vast idea space that can be explored. It takes time to explore a branch, and as you do you realize there's many more branches that can be explored that probably would take even longer time. And if you do take the time to explore other branches, you realize that the first branch you explored was not as important as you initially thought, and might not even be worth mentioning (there's plenty of examples I ended up not mentioning).


This is particularly worse if you've never written about the topic (as I), and then of course the time limit doesn't help (although without it I probably would have delayed the work even more than I did).


It's very easy to criticize, but I think only the people that actually sat down and tried to write about the topic would understand why a particular try might not have turned out to be as fruitful as many readers would hope, but it's still worthy of praise. Also, the end result might not necessarily be a reflection of your thoughts on the subject, which are probably evolving as we speak (the very next day I had yet another insight that I feel should be worthy of writing about).


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Call for Submissions: TheMotte Intuition Effortpost Competition
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


Having read a few Malcolm Gladwell books in my life, my first instinct is "put in your 10,000 hours".




Isn't it weird that in most submissions (3/4 in my count) the role of experience always comes up? In 2/4 Thinking, Fast and Slow is mentioned.


My insight was that intuition is analytical thinking encoded. The more hours one puts into a task, the better one becomes and intuiting. However, hours alone isn't enough, those hours have to be of a certain quality. Veritasium's video: The 4 things it takes to be an expert explores what that quality is.


The list is: valid environment, many repetitions, timely feedback, deliberate practice.


Putting 10,000 hours alone is not enough. Following your baseball examples, 10,000 hours without analytics is not going to be the same as 10,000 with analytics.


I think people are too quick to dismiss intuition based on bad examples.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				My intuition about intuition
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Am I? I wasn't aware of that.


What makes you think so?


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of January 30, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
What you seem to be talking about is the overemphasis of structured analytical thought over common sense thought. This seems to be very similar to what Nassim Taleb says about the Intellectual Yet Idiots.


The best example is Taleb's hypothetical interaction between Dr. John and Fat Tony:


Taleb: “I am going to flip this fair coin 100 times, and after the 99th toss, I want each of you to tell me the probability of the 100th being heads. You should know that each toss is independent and the that the coin is fair.”


Taleb flips the coin 99 times and each of the 99 tosses results in a heads.


Taleb: “Now before, I toss the coin for the 100th time, I want each of you to tell me the probability of heads on this next toss.”


Dr. John using principles of probability arrives to the wrong answer, and Fat Tony using common sense arrives to the correct answer.


Your example of mask mandates is a good example of how Dr. John types tend to favor institutional wisdom over common sense, I did argue with many of these types what evidences was there of masks actually working, and no one ever gave me a definitive study. A lot provided this "study" An evidence review of face masks against COVID-19, but when I read it, it says the current studies don't show conclusive evidence, and this paper does is develop a model that shows how effective masks would be if certain percentage of the population uses them given that they do work.


The model actually shows that if mask do not work, 100% of the population using them do not matter.


Now, I'm in the opposite camp, my common sense tells me masks should work, not in protecting me, but in protecting others. I have seen no study proving that though. I used masks not because I knew the worked, but because I didn't know that they didn't. Small price to pay just in case they did work I guess.




I do not think the role intuition has been properly assessed though. In my entry My intuition about intuition, I try to build a case as to why I think it's much more important than people realize. However, I suspect Dr. John types are going to be biased against intuition and in favor of analytical thinking, because obviously if they are good at it, it has to be more important.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of February 6, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I think this doesn't appreciate how important intuition is.


Also you dismiss System 1 and 2 rather quickly. The important point of thinking slowly is not just that you arrive to more a "correct" conclusion, but that if you think slowly enough times, that thinking gets encoded into your System 1.


When you are driving your are not mindlessly making "involuntary" dumb decisions. Those decisions are based on all the slow thinking you did when you were being trained to drive.


Chess master players also make fast "involuntary" decisions, but these decisions are anything but dumb.


Consider how Einstein started his journey into general relativity. He explained his "happiest thought" of his life when he considered the equivalence of free falling to zero gravity and realized they must be the same phenomenon. How did he arrive to that thought? Intuition.


A toddler could not arrive to Einstein's happiest thought, only a physicist with thousands of hours of experience could, so his intuition wasn't dumb. The fact that this thought was "involuntary" doesn't make it any less valuable than considered, analytical, conscious, "voluntary" thoughts.


I believe most scientists have their most revolutionary insights in a similar way: they come "involuntarily" from "nowhere". The only thing special about Einstein's happiest thought is that he recognized it.


Most people don't introspect how they think, but any experienced mediator (mindfulness) knows that thoughts come from "nowhere", all of them. There's no such thing as "voluntary" thoughts. And it's no surprise that most mediators agree that free will cannot possibly exist, as do most neuroscientists, and philosophers (if you ask them about libertarian free will).


Therefore it stands to reason that this admiration we have for scientific "voluntary" analytical, conscious thinking, is just an illusion,


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				My intuition about intuition
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


Your work would probably be received better if you stopped referencing previous slights.




Everyone's a critic.


You can't tell my intuition what it should have generated. It generated what it generated.


Should it have generated something "better"? Sure, maybe, but I can only work with the intuition that I've got, which can't be not influenced by experiences in the past.


The good thing about this challenge is that if you think you could have written something better than what I wrote, well, you had the chance.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				In defense of simplicity
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


Then why didn't you do it!




Because I cannot think what I do not think.




This is on a post where you are arguing about the benefits of simplicity and you can't be bothered to follow your own advice?




I did it as simple as I could. That doesn't mean other people cannot take my output and make it even simpler.


I do not have the mind of other people. Only my mind.




If you aren't making the same points as him, how is it a better version?




Because I would be making a more general point, that includes his point.




Other people get annoyed because you have removed features.




You don't understand what refactoring is. The codes has exactly the same functionality. That means no features are removed.


It does exactly the same thing, just with simpler code.




But sometimes a junior programmer goes in a removes a critical piece of code to the functioning of the program, because they didn't understand why it was necessary.




I'm not a junior programmer. I can spot when a piece of code is truly not doing anything.


Here's an example where I found a line of code that wasn't doing absolutely anything in Linux: lib/kstrtox.c: remove redundant cleanup. For some reason the best programmers in the word didn't see this in the core of Linux, but they agreed my assessment was correct.


I can show you much more complex examples where I reorganized the code and get rid of 50% of the code, and it still does exactly the same.


Why didn't they spot these issues? Because they don't have my mind.




Or if you want to maintain the coding metaphor think of a piece of writing as a bit like a piece of code, but it is a set of instructions for the human brain rather than a computer.




Source code is for humans to read. Machine code is for computers. When I refactor code it's for other humans to be able to make sense of it in an easier way. When the source code is simpler, humans have an easier time understanding it and spotting problems.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Call for Submissions: TheMotte Intuition Effortpost Competition
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
OK, here's my submission: My intuition about intuition.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				In defense of simplicity
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


I’m throwing in all these links not (just) because I expect it to annoy you, but because I find it amusing that you’ve done all this work to agree with some blog posts from 2008.




Who cares if you find it amusing?


It has not been established that I did agree with that litany of articles you linked, you just stated that. And how is anyone supposed to refute your claim? Presumably they would need to spend around 8 hours to read all that information, and then refute it, which you know nobody is going to do.


So you intentionally raised the bar so high as to make your claim virtually irrefutable. Congratulations, you "win".


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				In defense of simplicity
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


Not to get too autistic here, but I think we can roughly model a given post's quality as






Q = density^1.2 * length




If we follow this, then a 500-word post with a density of 10 is better than a 1000-word post with a density of 5. Even a post with 100 words and a density of 40 is better.


Of course you would prefer a 1000-word post with high density over a 100-word post with high density, but you as a reader don't get to choose. People write what they write.


What I'm saying is that if you see a post with 100 words, it shouldn't be discriminated in favor of posts with 1000 words, because clearly it's possible for the short one to be better.




and the effort it takes to write it as






E = density ^ 3 + length ^ 1.5




This makes no sense. The effort should be proportional to both density and length, 500 words more at density 40 takes more effort than at density 5.


Moreover, if you start from this end, then you are going to be clearly biased, because you are going to assume that it's unlikely somebody spent 8 times the energy to achieve 4 times the density of a short post. You are just going to presuppose it's low quality from the start.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Most Education is Wasteful and Immoral
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
No, it's not. A person can gain knowledge with zero education. They are independent.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				2+2 = not what you think
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Yes there is.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				2+2 = not what you think
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


It's a badly posed question.




No, it's not. You are refusing to answer because the answer destroys your belief.


Are you denying that mathematical expressions exist?


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				In defense of simplicity
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


You would probably be rightly frustrated because you'd feel that you addressed that point, but my summary simplified your explanation away.




Because it's too simple. But if you try to do it in say two paragraphs you might be able to extract the gist of it.




I notice this with Scott Alexander's writings pretty often, where I think 'I don't need all this extra stuff', but then see comments from people that didn't closely read the piece. They object in a way that was answered by the thing I thought was unnecessary




I'm pretty sure I can come up with better versions of at least some of Scott Alexander's writings that are in fact simpler. I wouldn't be making the same points as him though.


People have too much ego though and think that their ideas cannot be explained better by other people, or even find it offensive for example if I claim I can explain something better than Scott Alexander. Why?


In open source projects programmers have to get rid of that ego, and other people constantly suggest ways to simply the code, sometimes rewrite it completely, and guess what the original author says... Thanks. I've made better versions of some big wig programmers and nobody finds it impossible or offensive. We all think differently and some people think of thinks we just don't. Why would that hurt anybody's ego?


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				In defense of simplicity
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Except jokes contain information too. When two seemingly unrelated ideas are connected by the author, we find that funny. Jokes make ideas more accessible, and also more memorable, which makes them more likely to be remembered, and shared. That's why many quotes are funny, and so are memes.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Rationalists are too easily duped
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


I can trust that the evidence is truthfully reported which includes that the evidence of benefit is, let's say 70%.




Yes, you can, but you wouldn't be rationally justified in doing so, because "trust" means rely on.




I am just saying that my trust increases when I understand the subject matter more.




This makes no sense. Trust is binary, either you trust, or you don't.


You yourself said that you needed to trust something to make a decisions. So which is it?




And you conveniently ignored my argument.






So you accept that decisions can be made without trust.






Do you accept it now? Because you pretty much said it already.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				In defense of simplicity
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


I think longwinded posts do well because people perceive that a lot of effort went into it.




Yes, but as others have accepted in this thread: short articles can take more effort than a long one. Writing concisely and succinctly takes more effort than just typing whatever comes to mind.




But this does not mean short posts are automatically dismissed.




Doesn't it? Do you have an example of a short article that did well?


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				In defense of simplicity
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Yes, but I'm not complaining about long articles. If an idea requires a long explanation, so be it.


I'm talking about short articles. The assumption around here seems to be that if an article is short, it must be because the ideas are not novel and/or trivial.


But that's not true. Einstein's idea that E=mc2 is novel, consequential, and simple.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				In defense of simplicity
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


A short post, even with high information density, usually still doesn't have the time to explore its ideas fully.




You are making a fallacy here. You are saying that B (100 * 0.1) is not necessarily better than A (1000 * 0.025) because even if the information density is higher in B, the total ideas are not as many as A.


But you are assuming that C (500 * 0.05) doesn't exist.


You are also assuming an article needs a lot of information. But why? What's wrong with an article exploring a single idea, but an idea that is very important?


You also don't seem to understand what simplifying means. It doesn't mean compacting information, it means getting rid of unnecessary information.


For example recently I was discussing that a person claiming it's not profitable for them to lose $100k for an episode lost, while at the same time claiming the contract could be negotiated from $50m to $65m. The ratio is 150 mores of what they claim they "couldn't afford". I initially used an example of a $10 contract, but then I realized I can use percentages. They claim they cannot afford to lose 0.2%, but they can increase the contract 30%.


Using percentages the idea I wanted to convey it's still there, but a ton of unnecessary information is now gone.


Using bigger information chunks (one percentage instead of two numbers) the idea is easier to transmit. However, the information density is reduced, but not because it's "compacted".




the long effortposts will always get more upvotes because they are genuinely better.




Are they?


Will a long post always be better than a shorter post?


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				In defense of simplicity
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
That would be simple, but not what I contend.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				In defense of simplicity
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Agreed. But I think this tendency leads to a fallacious bias wall-of-text ⇒ interesting, ¬wall-of-text ⇒ ¬interesting.


Have you see a simple article upvoted by mottizens?


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Most Education is Wasteful and Immoral
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
You don't need education to gain knowledge. And you don't need to go to a school to be educated.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Rationalists are too easily duped
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


I had no evidence that I could trust






I did not trust the evidence




So you accept that decisions can be made without trust.




I can trust the evidence of the medicine with understanding that it is not 100% certainty.




That's not what the word "trust" means: "assured reliance on the character, ability, strength, or truth of someone or something".


You did not have any assured reliance of the evidence, so you didn't trust, and that's fine, because trust is not necessary to make decisions.




Medical decisions are not black swans because they are completely different things. Black swans are unpredicted events.




You have zero idea what I'm talking about. Black swans and black ravens are used as examples in confirmation theory to show what confirms and doesn't confirm your theory.


If your theory is that all ravens are black, you showing me a black raven means nothing. On the other hand me showing you one green raven should make you change your mind. I've shown you multiple green ravens, and you still believe all ravens are black.


Nassim Taleb used these examples to develop his notion of black swans as improvable events, but he didn't invent the problem of induction.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				not-guilty is not the same as innocent
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


You know what probability is according to a Bayesian, and you think they are factually wrong.




That is not what I'm saying.




Then a Bayesian would be willing to answer the question of what your that parameter you embedded in your simulation is, with answers like beta(51,51).




False. You know what they answer, and it's a single number.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				not-guilty is not the same as innocent
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I already explained how the encoding of the answer matters. If in 2021 they arrived to an answer of p=0.5, by 2023 it won't matter how their brains were when they arrived to that answer, because they already forgot. Brain states are not permanent.