Title: Theory / Unimportant / Human / blog / Less wrong / RFATZ
Tags: récupéré MissingMedia

Question: What are "floating" beliefs?
Answer: beliefs that are only connected to each other, that don't predict things about what will happen
Making Beliefs Pay Rent (in Anticipated Experiences)

Name: a fake explanation?
Definition: a verbal behavior that is not an anticipation-controller
Page: Guessing the Teacher's Password

Question: What is higher than a solemn vow to pursue truth?
Answer: A burning itch to know.

Question: A burning itch to know is higher than what?
Answer: A solumn vow to pursue truth.

Question: What is required to feel the burning itch of curiosity? (2 things)
Answer: 1. Ignorance
2. The desire to relinquish that ignorance

Question: What makes questioning purposeless? (2 things)
In my heart I . . .
Answer: Believe I already know.
Answer2: Do not wish to know.

Question: Curiositiy seeks to [...] itself.
Answer: Curiositiy seeks to annihilate itself.

Question: There is no curiosity that does not want
Answer: an answer.

Question: The glory of glorious mystery is to be
Answer: solved.

Question: There is a time to [...] your ignorance and a time to [...] your ignorance.
Answer: There is a time to confess your ignorance and a time to relinquish your ignorance.

Question: Be wary of those who speak of being
Answer: open-minded

Question: Be wary of those who modestly
Answer: confess their ignorance

Question: P.C. Hodgell said:
Answer: "That which can be destroyed by the truth should be."

Question: The thought I [...] controls me more than the thoughts I [...].
Answer: The thought I cannot think controls me more than the thoughts I speak aloud.

Question: Do not [...] from experiences that might destroy my beliefs.
Answer: Do not flinch from experiences that might destroy my beliefs.

Question: Do not flinch from experiences that might
Answer: destroy my beliefs

Question: [...] the emotion which rests upon a mistaken belief.
Answer: Relinquish the emotion which rests upon a mistaken belief.

Question: Relinquish the emotion which rests upon a
Answer: mistaken belief.

Question: Seek to [...] that emotion which fits the facts.
Answer: Seek to feel fully that emotion which fits the facts.

Question: Seek to feel fully that emotion which
Answer: fits the facts.

Question: Test myself in
Answer: fire

Question: If the iron approaches my face, and I believe it is hot, and it is cool, the Way
Answer: opposes my fear.

Question: If the iron approaches my face, and I believe it is cool, and it is hot, the Way
Answer: opposes my calm

Question: [...] my beliefs first and then [...] at my emotions.
Answer: Evaluate my beliefs first and then arrive at my emotions.

Question: Let myself say, "If the iron is hot,
Answer: I desire to believe it is hot

Question: Let myself say, "If the iron is cool,
Answer: I desire to believe it is cool."

Question: Beware lest I become [...] to beliefs I may not want.
Answer: Beware lest I become attached to beliefs I may not want.

Question: Beware lest I become attached to beliefs I
Answer: may not want.

Question: Let the [...] blow my about as though I am a leaf, with no direction of my own.
Answer: Let the winds of evidence blow my about as though I am a leaf, with no direction of my own.

Question: Let the winds of evidence blow my about as though I am a [...], with no direction of my own.
Answer: Let the winds of evidence blow my about as though I am a leaf, with no direction of my own.

Question: Let the winds of evidence blow my about as though I am a leaf, with no
Answer: direction of my own.

Question: Beware lest I fight a [...] against the evidence.
Answer: rearguard retreat

Question: Beware lest I fight a rearguard retreat against
Answer: the evidence

Question: [...] to the truth as quickly as I can.
Answer: Surrender to the truth as quickly as I can.

Question: Be [...] to my cause and betray it to a stronger enemy.
Answer: Be faithless to my cause and betray it to a stronger enemy.

Question: Be faithless to my cause and [...] it to a [...].
Answer: Be faithless to my cause and betray it to a stronger enemy.

Question: If I regard evidence as a [...] and seek to free myself, I sell myself into the chains of my whims.
Answer: If I regard evidence as a constraint and seek to free myself, I sell myself into the chains of my whims.

Question: If I regard evidence as a constraint and seek to [...], I sell myself into the chains of my whims.
Answer: If I regard evidence as a constraint and seek to free myself, I sell myself into the chains of my whims.

Question: If I regard evidence as a constraint and seek to free myself, I [...] into the chains of my whims.
Answer: If I regard evidence as a constraint and seek to free myself, I sell myself into the chains of my whims.

Question: If I regard evidence as a constraint and seek to free myself, I sell myself into the
Answer: chains of my whims.

Question: I cannot make a [...] by sitting in a room with my eyes shut.
Answer: I cannot make a true map of a city by sitting in a room with my eyes shut.

Question: I cannot make a true map of a city by
Answer: sitting in a room with my eyes shut.

Question: One who wishes to believe says, “[...]”
Answer: One who wishes to believe says, “Does the evidence permit me to believe?”

Question: One who wishes to disbelieve asks,
Answer: “Does the evidence force me to believe?”

Question: If I pick and choose my data, then
Answer: less I know.

Question: Beware lest I place [...] only on propositions I dislike.
Answer: Beware lest I place huge burdens of proof only on propositions I dislike.

Question: Beware lest I place huge burdens of proof only on
Answer: propositions I dislike

Question: When a conclusion is written, it is already
Answer: correct or already wrong.

Question: If I [...] inspect for flaws, then every flaw I learn to detect makes me that much stupider.
Answer: If I selectively inspect for flaws, then every flaw I learn to detect makes me that much stupider.

Question: If I selectively inspect for flaws, then [...] makes me that much stupider.
Answer: If I selectively inspect for flaws, then every flaw I learn to detect makes me that much stupider.

Question: If I selectively inspect for flaws, then every flaw I learn to detect makes me
Answer: that much stupider.

Question: To be clever in argument is not [...] but [...].
Answer: To be clever in argument is not rationality but rationalization.

Question: [...], to be useful, must be used for something other than defeating itself.
Answer: Intelligence, to be useful, must be used for something other than defeating itself.

Question: Intelligence, to be useful, must be used for something other than
Answer: defeating itself

Question: Do not seek to argue for one [...] or [...].
Answer: Do not seek to argue for one side or another.

Question: If I knew my [...], I would already be there.
Answer: If I knew my destination, I would already be there.

Question: If I knew my destination, I would
Answer: already be there.

Question: Those who smile wisely and say, "I will not argue," both
Answer: remove themselves from help
Answer2: withdraw from the communal effort

Question: In argument strive for
Answer: exact honest.

Question: The part of myself that distorts [...] also distorts my own thoughts.
Answer: The part of myself that distorts what I say to others also distorts my own thoughts.

Question: The part of myself that distorts what I say to others also distorts
Answer: my own thoughts

Question: The part of myself that [...] what I say to others also [...] my own thoughts.
Answer: The part of myself that distorts what I say to others also distorts my own thoughts.

Question: Do not believe I do others a [...] if I accept their arguments; the favor is to me.
Answer: Do not believe I do others a favor if I accept their arguments; the favor is to me.

Question: Do not believe I do others a favor if I [...]; the favor is to me.
Answer: Do not believe I do others a favor if I accept their arguments; the favor is to me.

Question: Do not believe I do others a favor if I accept their arguments; the favor is to
Answer: me

Question: Fairness to all sides does not mean [...] between propositions.
Answer: Fairness to all sides does not mean balancing myself evenly between propositions.

Question: [...] is not handed out in equal proportions.
Answer: Truth is not handed out in equal proportions.

Question: Truth is not handed out in
Answer: equal proportions.

Question: Seek a [...] that lets reality judge between you.
Answer: test

Question: Seek a test that lets [...] judge between you.
Answer: Seek a test that lets reality judge between you.

Question: The roots of knowledge are in
Answer: observation

Question: The fruit of knowledge is
Answer: prediction

Question: Do not ask which [...], but which [...].
Answer: Do not ask which beliefs to profess, but which experiences to anticipate.

Question: Always know which [...] I argue about.
Answer: Always know which difference of experience I argue about.

Question: Jerry Cleaver said: “[...] It’s overlooking the basics. Not keeping your eye on the ball.”
Answer: Jerry Cleaver said: “What does you in is not failure to apply some high-level, intricate, complicated technique. It’s overlooking the basics. Not keeping your eye on the ball."

Question: Do not be [...] by words.
Answer: Do not be blinded by words.

Question: When [...] are subtracted, anticipation remains.
Answer: words

Question: When words are subtracted, [...] remains.
Answer: anticipation

Question: Antoine de Saint-Exupéry said:
Answer: Perfection is achieved not when there is nothing left to add, but when there is nothing left to take away.”

Question: Simplicity is virtuous in
Answer: belief
Answer2: design
Answer3: planning
Answer4: justification

Question: Each additional [...] is another chance for the belief to be wrong.
Answer: Each additional detail is another chance for the belief to be wrong.

Question: Each additional detail is another chance for the belief to be
Answer: wrong

Question: Each specification adds to your
Answer: burden

Question: If I can [...] my burden I must do so.
Answer: If I can lighten my burden I must do so.

Question: Of artifacts it is said:
Answer: The most reliable gear is the one that is designed out of the machine.

Question: In mathematics, a [...] cannot atone for a single sin.
Answer: In mathematics, a mountain of good deeds cannot atone for a single sin.

Question: In mathematics, a mountain of good deeds cannot atone for a
Answer: single sin

Question: Be careful on every
Answer: step

Question: To be humble is to take [...] in anticipation of my own errors.
Answer: To be humble is to take specific actions in anticipation of my own errors.

Question: To be humble is to take specific actions in anticipation of [...].
Answer: To be humble is to take specific actions in anticipation of my own errors.

Question: To confess my fallibility and then do nothing is [...].
Answer: To confess my fallibility and then do nothing is boasting of my modesty.

Question: The [...] are those who most skillfully prepare for the deepest and most catastrophic errors in their own beliefs and plans.
Answer: The most humble are those who most skillfully prepare for the deepest and most catastrophic errors in their own beliefs and plans.

Question: The most humble are those who most [...] for the deepest and most catastrophic errors in their own beliefs and plans.
Answer: The most humble are those who most skillfully prepare for the deepest and most catastrophic errors in their own beliefs and plans.

Question: The most humble are those who most skillfully prepare for the deepest and most catastrophic errors in
Answer: their own beliefs and plans.

Question: It is useless to be
Answer: superior.

Question: The best physicist in ancient Greece could not
Answer: calculate the path of a falling apple.

Question: If I [...] I will not see the biases that all humans share.
Answer: If I compare myself to others I will not see the biases that all humans share.

Question: If I compare myself to others I will not see the biases that
Answer: all humans share.

Question: To be human is to make
Answer: ten thousand errors

Question: To be [...] is to make ten thousand errors.
Answer: To be human is to make ten thousand errors.

Question: No one in this world achieves
Answer: perfection.

Question: The more [...] I correct in myself, the more I notice.
Answer: The more errors I correct in myself, the more I notice.

Question: The more errors I correct in myself, the more I
Answer: notice

Question: If I [...] error and do not correct it, I will not advance to the next level.
Answer: If I tolerate error and do not correct it, I will not advance to the next level.

Question: If I tolerate error and do not [...] it, I will not advance to the next level.
Answer: correct

Question: If I tolerate error and do not correct it, I will not [...].
Answer: If I tolerate error and do not correct it, I will not advance to the next level.

Question: If perfection is [...] that is no excuse for not trying.
Answer: If perfection is impossible that is no excuse for not trying.

Question: If perfection is impossible that is no excuse for
Answer: not trying

Question: Hold myself to the highest [...] I can imagine, and look for one still higher.
Answer: standard

Question: Hold myself to the highest standard I can imagine, and look for one
Answer: still higher

Question: Do not be content with the answer that is [...] right.
Answer: Do not be content with the answer that is almost right.

Question: Seek the answer that is [...] right.
Answer: Seek the answer that is exactly right.

Question: What is true of one [...] may not be true of another [...].
Answer: What is true of one apple may not be true of another apple.

Question: More can be said about a [...] than about [...].
Answer: More can be said about a single apple than about all the apples in the world.

Question: The [...] statements slice deepest.
Answer: narrowest

Question: The narrowest statements slice
Answer: deepest.

Question: Do not walk to the truth, but
Answer: dance

Question: Study the [...] and absort their power as my own.
Answer: Study the sciences and absort their power as my own.

Question: Study the sciences and absort their [...] as my own.
Answer: Study the sciences and absort their power as my own.

Question: Each field I consume makes me
Answer: larger.

Question: If I am gluttonous I will become
Answer: vaster than mountains.

Question: The [...] must have a purpose other than itself.
Answer: The Art must have a purpose other than itself.

Question: The Art must have a [...] other than itself.
Answer: The Art must have a purpose other than itself.

Question: Every step of my [...] must cut through to the correct answer in the same movement.
Answer: Every step of my reasoning must cut through to the correct answer in the same movement.

Question: Every step of my reasoning must [...] in the same movement.
Answer: Every step of my reasoning must cut through to the correct answer in the same movement.

Question: Every step of my reasoning must cut through to the correct answer in the same
Answer: movement.

Question: More than anything, I must think of
Answer: carrying my map through to reflecting the territory.

Question: I do not improve my concept of rationality by saying,
Answer: It is my duty to be rational.

Question: Do not ask whether it is “[...]” to do this or that. Ask whether the sky is blue or green.
Answer: Do not ask whether it is “the Way” to do this or that. Ask whether the sky is blue or green.

Question: Do not ask whether it is “the Way” to do this or that. Ask [...].
Answer: whether the sky is blue or green.

Question: Miyamoto Musashi, The Book of Five Rings:
“[...] Whenever you parry, hit, spring, strike or touch the enemy’s cutting sword, you must cut the enemy in the same movement. It is essential to attain this. If you think only of hitting, springing, striking or touching the enemy, you will not be able actually to cut him. More than anything, you must be thinking of carrying your movement through to cutting him.”
Answer: The primary thing when you take a sword in your hands is your intention to cut the enemy, whatever the means.

Question: Miyamoto Musashi, The Book of Five Rings:
“The primary thing when you take a sword in your hands is your intention to cut the enemy, whatever the means. Whenever you parry, hit, spring, strike or touch the enemy’s cutting sword, you must cut the enemy in the same movement. It is essential to attain this. If you think only of hitting, springing, striking or touching the enemy, you will not be able actually to cut him. [...]”
Answer: More than anything, you must be thinking of carrying your movement through to cutting him.

Question: Jerry Cleaver said: “What does you in is not failure to apply some high-level, intricate, complicated technique.
Answer: It’s overlooking the basics. Not keeping your eye on the ball.

Name: Intuitive Prediction Errors
Definition: Overreading into intuitional judgement without questioning the correlation coefficient you are using
Example: reading ability at age 4 was in top 10% => GPA would be 3.7
Extra: But this doesn't take into account GPA base rate, and correlation between GPA and reading rate.

Name: how to notice when you might be anchoring internally
Definition: try to notice when you are adjusting a figure in search of an estimate.

Name: self deception
Definition: * we like to think well of ourselves and our groups, we tend to overestimate our abilities and morality, exaggerate our inﬂuence, and take credit for our successes while blaming external factors for our failures

Question: how to deal with an affective death spiral?
Answer: slow down, stop, consider each additional nice claim as an additional burdensome detail, and focus on the specific points of the claim apart from its positiveness. Demand sufficient evidence to compensate for complexity, searching for flaws as well as support, invoking curiosity.
The really dangerous cases are the ones where any criticism of any positive claim about the Great Thingy feels bad or is socially unacceptable.
Example: while it may be possible for "science to cure cancer", a cancer patient writing journal papers isn't going to experience a miraculous remission.  That specific proposed chain of cause and effect is not going to work out.

Name: To arrive at a poor conclusion requires ....
Definition: only one wrong step, not every step wrong.
Example: If your current computer stops working, you can't conclude that everything about the current system is wrong and that you need a new system without an AMD processor, an ATI video card... even though your current system has all these things and it doesn't work.  Maybe you just need a new power cord."

Name: compartmentalization
Definition: tendency to restrict application of a generally-applicable skill, such as scientific method, only to select few contexts.
 More generally, the concept refers to not following a piece of knowledge to its logical conclusion, or not taking it seriously.
Feynman: If our small minds, for some convenience, divide this glass of wine, this universe, into parts — physics, biology, geology, astronomy, psychology, and so on — remember that Nature does not know it!
-> reality is a single unified process governed by mathematically simple low-level rules.
- If, outside of their specialist field, some particular scientist is just as susceptible as anyone else to wacky ideas, then they probably never did understand why the scientific rules work.
- So my theory is that much of compartmentalization is simply because the search space is so large that people don't end up seeing that there might be a plausible connection between two domains.

Name: what to beware of when listening to someone holding an obviously false belief
Definition: that they can still be worth learning from since they might have comparmentalized their skill into specific areas (in which they are worth listening to)

Name: conformity bias
Definition: tendency to behave similarly to the others in a group, even if doing so goes against your own judgment.
Example: Asch's conformity experiment:
Which of the lines A, B, and C is the same size as the line X? the subject is seated alongside a number of other people looking at the diagram—seemingly other subjects, actually confederates of the experimenter.  The other "subjects" in the experiment, one after the other, say that line C seems to be the same size as X.  The real subject is seated next-to-last.  3/4 of the subjects gave a conforming answer
Extra: bandwagon

Name: how does conformity bias scale
Definition: * Conformity increases strongly up to 3 confederates, but doesn't increase further up to 10-15 confederates.
* Adding a single dissenter—just one other person who gives the correct answer, or even an incorrect answer that's different from the group's incorrect answer—reduces conformity very sharply, down to 5-10%.(from 75%)
=> Being the first dissenter is a valuable (and costly!) social service, but you've got to keep it up.

Name: how does conformity vary with gender?
Definition: all-female groups (a female subject alongside female confederates) conform significantly more often than all-male groups.
Around one-half the women conform more than half the time, versus a third of the men

Name: how does conformity vary with ingroup-outgroup manipulations
Definition: Ingroup-outgroup manipulations (e.g., a handicapped subject alongside other handicapped subjects) similarly show that conformity is significantly higher among members of an ingroup.

Name: pluralistic ignorance
Definition: everyone agreeing with the group, swayed by the confident voices of others, careful not to let their own doubts show

Name: what does the conjunction fallacy say about making your own theories
Definition: should be very careful in adding details to any claim, as even though each such detail may make the claim so much more convincing, it also inevitably subtracts from its validity.

Name: lonely dissent
Definition: What takes real courage is braving the outright incomprehension of the people around you, when you do something that isn't Standard Rebellion #37, something for which they lack a ready-made script.  They don't hate you for a rebel, they just think you're, like, weird, and turn away.
Example: Feels like going to school wearing a clown suit (and not only dressed in black)
Extra: There are rebellions worth joining.  It does take courage to brave the disapproval of your peer group, or perhaps even worse, their shrugs.  Needless to say, going to a rock concert is not rebellion.  But, for example, vegetarianism is. I expect it takes a noticeable amount of quiet courage to tell people that hamburgers won't work for dinner.

Name: contagion heuristic
Definition: leads people to avoid contact with people or objects viewed as "contaminated" by previous contact with someone or something viewed as bad  — or, less often, to seek contact with objects that have been in contact with people or things considered good.
Definition2: two things which have interacted, or were once part of a single entity, retain their connection and can exert influence over each other
source: anthropologists looking at what constitutes magic across all cultures
Example: view a person who has touched a diseased person as likely to carry the disease (regardless of the actual contagiousness of the disease).
Example2: viewing a sweater worn by Adolf Hilter as bearing its negative essense or a cloth used by Jesus as holy
Abbreviation2: tend to view food that has touched the ground as contaminated by the ground, and therefore unfit to eat

Name: group think
Definition: groups don't effectively pool their information (when individual have partial or biased information) because discussion tends to be dominated by (a) information that members hold in common before discussion and (b) information that supports members' existent preferences.
Example: In a political caucus simulation, group members individually read candidate descriptions that contained partial information biased against the most favorable candidate and then discussed the candidates as a group. Even though groups could have produced unbiased composites of the candidates through discussion, they decided in favor of the candidate initially preferred by a plurality rather than the most favorable candidate.

Name: generalizing from fictional evidence
Definition: drawing real-world conclusions based on statements invented and selected for the purpose of writing fiction.
A story is never a rational attempt at analysis - the author can't say the three magic words "I don't know."  The protagonist must thread a single line through the future, full of the details that lend flesh to the story - and make it entertaining to the reader
Example: Introduce AI. "Oh, you mean like the Terminator movies / the Matrix / Asimov's robots!"
the Matrix is not an example!
 If someone starts out by asking whether or not AIs are gonna put us into capsules like in "The Matrix", they're jumping to a 100-bit proposition, without a corresponding 98 bits of evidence to locate it in the answer space as a possibility worthy of explicit consideration.
Extra: If journalists ask: "Will the future be like 2001, or will it be like A.I.?"  This is just as huge a framing issue as asking "Should we cut benefits for disabled veterans, or raise taxes on the rich?"

Name: Orwell on Cliches
Definition: "What is above all needed is to let the meaning choose the word, and not the other way around... When you think of something abstract you are more inclined to use words from the start, and unless you make a conscious effort to prevent it, the existing dialect will come rushing in and do the job for you, at the expense of blurring or even changing your meaning"

Name: in group bias
Definition: preferential treatment of people and ideas associated with your own group.
Example: Robbers Cave Experiment intended to test intergroup conflict. How would they spark an intergroup conflict to investigate?  Well, the 22 boys were divided into two groups of 11 campers, and that turned out to be quite sufficient:
eventually stolen flags and fistfights and holding noses when members of the other group passed.

Name: how to end rivalry due to in group bias (Robbers Cave experiment)
Definition: Outside Enemy
The boys were informed that there might be a water shortage in the whole camp, due to mysterious trouble with the water system—possibly due to vandals.  (The Outside Enemy, one of the oldest tricks in the book.)
The two groups of boys discussed where the problem might lie, pounded the sides of the water tank, discovered a ladder to the top, verified that the water tank was full, and finally found the sack stuffed in the water faucet.  All the boys gathered around the faucet to clear it.  Suggestions from members of both groups were thrown at the problem and boys from both sides tried to implement them.

Name: scoring rule
Definition: a measure of the performance of probabilistic predictions
Example: consider a sports magazine dealing with horse races that gives the winning chance of each horse for each race the day before. If we gather data regarding those predictions and compare it to the actual results, we have a measure – a scoring rule - of the magazine’s performance.

Name: I say that I am 99% confident that 2 + 2 = 4 does is mean I think "2 + 2 = 4" is true 99 times out of 100?
Definition: no - The proposition in which I repose my (99%) confidence is the proposition that "2 + 2 = 4 is always and exactly true
Given the seeming absolute stability and universality of physical laws, it's possible that never, in the whole history of the universe, has any particle exceeded the local lightspeed limit.  That is, the lightspeed limit may be, not just true 99% of the time, or 99.9999% of the time, or (1—1/googolplex) of the time, but simply always and absolutely true.
But whether we can ever have absolute confidence in the lightspeed limit is a whole 'nother question.

Name: confidence levels inside and outside argument
Definition: an argument might give a probability of 0.999999999 for an event
=> the majority of the probability is in "that argument is flawed" - even if you had no reason to believe the argument is flawed the background chance of flaw is greater than one in a billion

Name: settled science
Definition: if you only care about scientific issues that are controversial you will end up with a head stuffed with garbage
vs
well written textbook with careful explanation for incoming students, experiments and a good guarantee that what you are learning is true

Name: rationality and time constraints
Definition: You want the best possible outcome, but this requires simultaneously weighing various things like time, cost, value, and risk.

Name: free-floating belief
Definition: a belief that doesn't follow observations and doesn't restrict which experiences to anticipate
- unfounded and useless
If you can't find any difference of anticipation when arguing about a seemingly factual questions then you're arguing about labels in your belief network or floating beliefs

Name: improper belief
Definition: belief that isn't concerned with mapping the territory
types:
free-floating
belief as attire
belief in belief
belief as cheering

Name: is emotion rational?
Definition: I label an emotion as "not rational" if it rests on mistaken beliefs, or rather, on irrational epistemic conduct: "If the iron approaches your face, and you believe it is hot, and it is cool, the Way opposes your fear. If the iron approaches your face, and you believe it is cool, and it is hot, the Way opposes your calm."
 When people think of "emotion" and "rationality" as opposed, I suspect that they are really thinking of System 1 and System 2—fast perceptual judgments versus slow deliberative judgments. Deliberative judgments aren't always true, and perceptual judgments aren't always false; so it is very important to distinguish that dichotomy from "rationality". Both systems can serve the goal of truth, or defeat it, according to how they are used.

Name: value of seeking truth for instrumental use?
Definition: such uses create an outside criterion of verification: if your airplane drops out of the sky, or if you get to the store and find no chocolate milk, it's a hint that you did something wrong.
.. what set humanity firmly on the path of Science was noticing that certain modes of thinking uncovered beliefs that let us manipulate the world. As far as sheer curiosity goes, spinning campfire tales of gods and heroes satisfied that desire just as well, and no one realized that anything was wrong with that.

Name: belief as cheering vs profession
Definition: As she recited her tale of the primordial cow, with that same strange flaunting pride, she wasn't even trying to be persuasive—wasn't even trying to convince us that she took her own religion seriously.  I know people who believe they believe ridiculous things, but when they profess them, they'll spend much more effort to convince themselves that they take their beliefs seriously.
Rather, by launching into a five-minute diatribe about the primordial cow, she was cheering for paganism, like holding up a banner at a football game. A banner saying "GO BLUES" isn't a statement of fact, or an attempt to persuade; it doesn't have to be convincing—it's a cheer.

Name: belief in belief
Definition: As Daniel Dennett observes, where it is difficult to believe a thing, it is often much easier to believe that you ought to believe it. What does it mean to believe that the Ultimate Cosmic Sky is both perfectly blue and perfectly green? The statement is confusing; it's not even clear what it would mean to believe it - what exactly would be believed, if you believed. You can much more easily believe that it is proper, that it is good and virtuous and beneficial, to believe that the Ultimate Cosmic Sky is both perfectly blue and perfectly green.
Belief in belief is a situation where a model of the world you claim and believe to have is at odds with a model of the world that explains your actions and drives your anticipation of experience. You are always ready to provide an excuse for the next experiment not supporting your stated belief, because you know the outcome of the experiment in advance, but have to rationalize it in terms of the stated belief. (see Carl Sagan's invisible non-material heat-less dragon story)
It's not always easy to tell who just believes in belief, since the actions motivated by believing in belief (while not actually believing in God) are – with the exception of those rare sotto voce confessions – well-nigh indistinguishable from the actions of genuine believers: say the prayers, sing the hymns, tithe, proclaim one's allegiance, volunteer for church projects, and so on. Sometimes I wonder if even 10% of the people who proclaim their belief in God actually do believe in God.

Name: will people who believe in belief normally admit it to themsleves
Definition: probably not
If you believe in belief, you cannot admit to yourself that you only believe in belief, because it is virtuous to believe, not to believe in belief, and so if you only believe in belief, instead of believing, you are not virtuous. Nobody will admit to themselves, "I don't believe the Ultimate Cosmic Sky is blue and green, but I believe I ought to believe it"—not unless they are unusually capable of acknowledging their own lack of virtue. People don't believe in belief in belief, they just believe in belief.

Name: belief as attire
Definition: A belief promoted by identification with a group or other signaling concerns, not by how well it reflects the territory.
Example: Jewish skullcap
 once you get people to identify with a tribe, the beliefs which are attire of that tribe will be spoken with the full passion of belonging to that tribe.
Name2: I encounter people who very definitely believe in evolution, who sneer at the folly of creationists.  And yet they have no idea of what the theory of evolutionary biology permits and prohibits.  They'll talk about "the next step in the evolution of humanity", as if natural selection got here by following a plan.

Name: how do humans evade sharing rules?
Definition: (From Wiblin's report of a savage society)
* eating during food collection so there was less by the time he returned to camp
* giving spears to their eldery relatives and then refusing requests from others since "it was good his to give"
* hide resources (or even lie and ask for more when you have some spares) - e.g. cigarettes in socks

Name: guessing the teacher's password
Definition: There is an instinctive tendency to think that if a physicist says "light is made of waves", and the teacher says "What is light made of?", and the student says "Waves!", the student has made a true statement.
=> This is not a hypothesis about light.  This is not even a proper belief.  It is an attempt to guess the teacher's password - a simple verbal behaviour.
 This is Bayescraft; we are scoring your anticipations of experience.

Name: Egan's law
Definition: Apples didn't stop falling when General Relativity supplanted Newtonian mechanics. The purpose of a theory is to add up to observed reality, rather than something else. Quantum mechanics is not some strange alternative universe, told as a story to delight us with its counterintuitiveness; quantum mechanics is where we have always lived. Science sets out to answer the question "What adds up to normality?" and the answer turns out to be "Quantum mechanics adds up to normality."
A weaker extension of this principle applies to ethical and metaethical debates, which generally ought to end up explaining why you shouldn't eat babies, rather than why you should.

Name: unspoken ugly quantities
Definition: any human legal system does embody some answer to the question "How many innocent people can we put in jail to get the guilty ones?", even if the number isn't written down.

Name: difference between deontology and consequentialism
Definition: c: something that happens after the act you judge is the basis of your judgment.
d: relies on things that do not happen after the act judged to judge the act. examples:
* The agent's intentions (e.g. meaning well or maliciously, or acting deliberately or accidentally)
* Historical facts (e.g. having made a promise, sworn a vow)
* The reference class of the act (e.g. it being an act of murder, theft, lying, etc.)
* Features of the people affected by the act (e.g. moral rights, preferences, relationship to the agent)

Name: lazy form of deontology
Definition: "because lying is on a magical list of things that I'm not supposed to do"
"because I swore an oath to be honest"

Name: complexity of value
Definition: thesis that human values have high Kolmogorov complexity; that our preferences, the things we care about, cannot be summed by a few simple rules, or compressed. The human equivalents of a utility function, our terminal values, contain many different elements that are not strictly reducible to one another. A human brain implements a thousand shards of desire E.g., Frankena lists: life, health, strength, pleasures, beauty, love, cooperation, freedom, security, honor....
Example: An expected paperclip maximizer doesn't disagree with you about morality any more than you disagree with it about "which action leads to the greatest number of expected paperclips", i
 "But it's just paperclips! What a dumb goal! No sufficiently intelligent agent would pick such a dumb goal!" is a judgment carried out on a local brain that evaluates paperclips as inherently low-in-the-preference-ordering means that someone will expect all moral judgments to be automatically reproduced in a sufficiently intelligent agent, since, after all, they would not lack the intelligence to see that paperclips are so obviously inherently-low-in-the-preference-ordering. This is a particularly subtle species of anthropomorphism and mind projection fallacy.

Name: value is fragile
Definition: There is more than one dimension of human value, where if just that one thing is lost, the Future becomes null.
Metaphor: getting 9/10 digits right in phoning a friend doesn't connect you to someone 90% similar
You can imagine a mind that contained almost the whole specification of human value, almost all the morals and metamorals, but left out just this one thing - boredom
- and so it spent until the end of time, and until the farthest reaches of its light cone, replaying a single highly optimized experience, over and over and over again.

Name: optimization criterion of an optimization process
Definition: the region into which an agent tries to steer the future

Name: Why hold off on proposing solutions?
Definition: When a group faces a problem, the natural tendency of its members is to propose possible solutions as they begin to discuss the problem.  Consequently, the group interaction focuses on the merits and problems of the proposed solutions, people become emotionally attached to the ones they have suggested, and superior solutions are not suggested.  Maier enacted an edict to enhance group problem solving: "Do not propose solutions until the problem has been discussed as thoroughly as possible without suggesting any."
echoes the principle of the bottom line, that the effectiveness of our decisions is determined only by whatever evidence and processing we did in first arriving at our decisions—after you write the bottom line, it is too late to write more reasons above.  If you make your decision very early on, it will, in fact, be based on very little thought, no matter how many amazing arguments you come up with afterward.

Name: fake justification
Example: "How can you justify buying a $1 million gem-studded laptop," you ask your friend, "when so many people have no laptops at all?"  And your friend says, "But think of the employment that this will provide—to the laptop maker, the laptop maker's advertising agency—and then they'll buy meals and haircuts—it will stimulate the economy and eventually many people will get their own laptops."
problem: But it would be even more efficient to buy 5,000 OLPC laptops, thus providing employment to the OLPC manufacturers and giving out laptops directly.
they were really thinking, "Ooh, shiny" and that was the one true causal history of their decision to buy a laptop.  No amount of "justification" can change this, unless the justification is a genuine, newly running search process that can change the conclusion
Name2: example2: To genuinely justify the Bible as a lauding-object by reference to its literary quality, you would have to somehow perform a neutral reading through candidate books until you found the book of highest literary quality
=> But of course nothing like this happened.  No search ever occurred.

Name: don't say complexity/emergence
Definition: Well, I think the AI needs complexity to do X, and complexity to do Y—"
I said, "Complexity should never be a goal in itself.  You may need to use a particular algorithm that adds some amount of complexity, but complexity for the sake of complexity just makes things harder."  (I was thinking of all the people whom I had heard advocating that the Internet would "wake up" and become an AI when it became "sufficiently complex".)
technically: complexity doesn't concentrate your probability mass
you must avoid is skipping over the mysterious part; you must linger at the mystery to confront it directly. There are many words that can skip over mysteries, and some of them would be legitimate in other contexts—"complexity", for example.  But the essential mistake is that skip-over, regardless of what causal node goes behind it.

Name: we change our minds much less often than we think
Definition: once I could guess what my answer would be—once I could assign a higher probability to deciding one way than other—then I had, in all probability, already decided.

Name: avoiding your belief's real weak points
Definition: The reason that educated religious people stay religious, I suspect, is that when they doubt, they are subconsciously very careful to attack their own beliefs only at the strongest points—places where they know they can defend. E.g. Jews doubting that universe was created in 7 days rather than looking at slaying of first born
corrollary: "Not Spontaneously Thinking About Your Belief's Most Painful Weaknesses".
combat: When you're doubting one of your most cherished beliefs, close your eyes, empty your mind, grit your teeth, and deliberately think about whatever hurts the most. Ask yourself what smart people who disagree would say to your first reply, and your second reply. Whenever you catch yourself flinching away from an objection you fleetingly thought of, drag it out into the forefront of your mind

Name: An amazing creative solution has to obey at least one law.....
Definition: the criterion that makes it a "solution".  It's the one box you can't step outside:  No optimization without goals.
Rather, the creative surprise is the idea that ranks high in your preference ordering but low in your search ordering.

Name: when you find yourself trying to find the floating essence of a word ...
Definition: stop and start thinking about where to cut reality in order to carve along the joints
So I might reply:  "I think it has to do with admiration of craftsmanship: work going in and wonder coming out.  What the included items have in common is the similar aesthetic emotions that they inspire, and the deliberate human effort that went into them with the intent of producing such an emotion."
The real point is that you could well dispute either the intension or the extension of my definition.
You could say, "Aesthetic emotion is not what these things have in common; what they have in common is an intent to inspire any complex emotion for the sake of inspiring it."  That would be disputing my intension, my attempt to draw a curve through the data points.  You would say, "Your equation may roughly fit those points, but it is not the true generating distribution."
Or you could dispute my extension by saying, "Some of these things do belong together—I can see what you're getting at—but the Python language shouldn't be on the list, and Modern Art should be

Name: absence bias
Definition: we tend not to notice that which is absent
e.g. we don't notice the disasters we avoided by taking safety precautions. Practical side: managers who run a calm (and therefore better organised) shop get paid less than those constantly dealing with disasters

Name: There's always a very good reason why someone will/will not do something and there's always a real reason.
Definition: Why does the kid want to go to the movies? "It's a classic and I've never seen it," she says. That sounds like a good reason. The real reason is that friends will be there and she wants to hang out with friends, maybe BOYS.
Or when an employee says, "that's not technically possible because X, Y, or Z." That might be a very good reason. But most things are technically possible with a little bit of work. The real reason might be that is he was just being lazy.
Another time I wanted to sell an investment and it required permission of the CEO. The good reason was "it would look bad to other shareholders".
The real reason was, "I don't want you to have money."
Don't enter other people's bullshitorium. Just note it and move on.

Name: a problem is ...
Definition: a difference between things as desired and things as perceived
# meaning that
# 1) you can solve by modifying your perceptions/desires
# 2) you will see more or less problems depending on your perceptions/desires

Name: mental shift that should occur when faced with a (singular) problem
Definition: ask who has a problem and what problem each person has
# E.g. pollution causing bad air
a) me - worried about health
b) other people - might get sick
c) tourist industry - less visitors and cash
d) gov - increasing medical fees
e) environmental groups - their own failure
....

Name: problem-solving - don't mistake other people's solution method for ...
Definition: the problem definition
# e.g. someone says they need a custom program to automate their marketing - maybe a prebuilt program/salesperson/or a single adwords campaign might do it
# everything is a nail to a carpenter reasoning

Name: problem-solving - when ought you be especially careful to avoid mistaking the solution method for the problem definition
Definition: when it's your solution method
# I want to apply ANKI/code/marketing to everything when it might not work
# I know music theory so I see musical problems in light of my toolkit

Name: problem-solving - most important question to ask
Definition: what is the problem
# remember to keep asking this and refining and questioning your definition
# communciate your definition with others to check if they can add anything to your understanding

Name: problem-solving - can you ever really get rid of problems?
Definition: no—we just hope that the problems we subtitute are less troublesome than the ones we "solve"

Name: problem-solving - if you cannot think of at least three things wrong with your proposed problem definition
Definition: then you don't understand the problem
# thus make finding your own flaws a part of your problem solving toolkit

Name: problem-solving - what is a misfit
Definition: a solution that causes problems to those who have to live with the solution
# happens because problem-solvers in some fields, such as classical design, do not see the full consequences of their solution
# e.g. early razer blades led to many injuries before covers were invented
# e.g. poor web usability because team don't use the same interface users do

Name: whenever you see a "persuasive" word such as
-clearly
-obviously
-certainly
-therefor
Definition: substitute the argument you think belongs in its place

Name: whenever you see a list with
- etc.
- and so forth
- and so on
Definition: add one more explicit example to the list to test your understanding

Name: problem-solving - why should you let others solve their own problems (even if you could do so efficiently)
Definition: because if people figure stuff out on their own then they are ego-involved in seeing the solution through
# principle: don't solve other people's problems when they are capable of doing it themselves (but perhaps give them the space or remind them to figure it out)

Name: problem-solving - if a person is in a position to do something about a problem but doesn't have the problem make it such that...
Definition: he or she does have that problem
# e.g. create a petition so the CEO knows there is a cleanliness issue
# e.g. park in the dean's reserved parking space against the rules to get him or share in the problem of insufficient parking

Name: problem-solving - the source of the problem is often....
Definition: you
# Look inside yourself and at your role in the situation
# e.g. when facing bureacracy hell with administrators maybe it's because your face (and people like you in the past) signals unfriendliness and makes the staff member defensive. Try starting a human conversation as if he were someone you met at a hostel.
# when the code Will gave you for the apartment in Wicker Park Chicago didn't work you should have blamed yourself and tried the other floor

Name: surface level problems, like a single chip on a tooth on smiling side, will be noticed and corrected straight away. The blackened decay on the inside surface of your teeth, however, will remain undetected until fatal.
Definition: bring problems to the outside; don't discount the unseen

Name: An unsolicited opinion is more useful than one you ask for.
Definition: B. "It's none of my business, and I'm a complete stranger, but I think you should do something about that mole on your forehead. You look like a damn unicorn."

Name: what anchoring results shows here?
Definition: adding a useless option anchors the price and the majority of people end up buying the expensive option (as opposed to the majority going for the cheap option elsewhere)
subscribe to The Economist web version for $59, the print version for $125, or subscribe to both the print and web versions for $125

Name: swimmer's body illusion (and it's use in advertising)
Definition: Professional swimmers don’t have perfect bodies because they train extensively. Rather, they are good swimmers because of their physiques. How their bodies are designed is a factor for selection and not the result of their activities.
good universities are largely good because good students go there
lots of advertising relies on this incorrect attribution

Name: law of numbers life hack:
Definition: Whatever you do, don’t focus on succeeding or get sidetracked by your failures;
before starting figure out your percentage success rate and aim to get those numbers
e..g if you need 100 sales calls for 10 sales don't get annoyed if the first 12 say no.

Name: frequency illusion
Definition: when we learn a new word in a language we see it everywhere
see a movie trailer on TV then the next day you notice the posters everywhere
=> it's not a coincidence... those words and posters were always there... your brain just started bringing them to your attention

Name: Alien perspective for thinking
Definition: Philosophers often look at problems from the point of view of an alien observing our society from outer space, unencumbered by social norms or history, and already something is looking strange to these hypothetical extra terrestrials.

Name: difference between a hypothesis and a guess...
Definition: a hypothesis includes a means of verifying the correctness of the proposition

Name: what's the best way to persuade
Definition: AB testing
you might think that applying these behavorial biases will enrich your world view enough. Not necessarily so. In optimisnig organ donors social proof lost out to self-interested reciprocation with “If you needed an organ transplant, would you have one? If so, please help others”)
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/2/9d7d31a4-aea8-11e3-aaa6-00144feab7de.html#axzz32LEZiZ6W
AB tests are cheap and the result here was 100,000 expected extra donor signups

Name: hyperbolic discounting
Definition: Given two similar rewards, humans show a preference for one that arrives sooner rather than later. Humans are said to discount the value of the later reward
issue: we are time-inconsistent
Example: when offered the choice between $50 now and $100 a year from now, many people will choose the immediate $50. However, given the choice between $50 in five years or $100 in six years almost everyone will choose $100 in six years, even though that is the same choice seen at five years' greater distance.

Name: increase response rate of paying fines
Definition: SMS reminders; bullet-point summaries of letters with what to do

Name: orthello effect
Definition: when the lie catcher fails to consider that a truthful person who is under stress may appear to be lying.

Name: woozle effect
Definition: evidence by citation -frequent citation of previous publications that lack evidence misleads individuals, groups and the public into thinking or believing there is evidence
Example: prevalence estimates of human trafficking. Searching the relevant literature between 1990 and 2006, Weiner and Hala found 114 prevalence estimates in 45 publications. Only one of the publications cited original research and several prevalence estimates appeared unsourced

Name: Well travelled road effect
Definition: Frequently travelled routes are assessed as taking a shorter time than unfamiliar routes.
why?it is hypothesised that drivers use less cognitive effort when traversing familiar routes and therefore underestimate the time taken to traverse the familiar route
perhaps this applies to estimating time taken by frequent tasks

Name: valence effect
Definition: tendency for people to simply overestimate the likelihood of good things happening rather than bad things.
example: all other things being equal, participants assigned a higher probability to picking a card that had a smiling face on its reverse side than one which had a frowning face

Name: spiral of silence
Definition: the process by which one opinion becomes dominant as those who perceive their opinion to be in the minority do not speak up because society threatens individuals with fear of isolation
Example: person going out with a new group of people or on a date with someone you do not know very well.  When ordering pizza for this theory, I would conform to the mushroom lovers because I feel I am in the minority since I do not like mushrooms and i think everyone else does.  Therefore I do not want to be rejected or alone in my opinions.

Name: subjective validation
Definition: a person will consider a statement or another piece of information to be correct if it has any personal meaning or significance to them
Subjective validation explains why many people are seduced by the apparent accuracy of pseudoscientific personality profiles. Subjective validation deludes everyone from the housewife who thinks her happiness depends on her blood type or horoscope, to the FBI agent who thinks criminal profiles are spot on, to the therapist who thinks her Rorschach readings are penetrating portraits of psychological disorders.
in cold reading: most sitters are usually eager for the reader to succeed and are willing to work hard to find personal meaning in whatever the reader throws out.

Name: forer effect
Definition: Individuals will give high accuracy ratings to descriptions of their personality that supposedly are tailored specifically for them, but are in fact vague and general enough to apply to a wide range of people
e.g.
You have a great need for other people to like and admire you. You have a tendency to be critical of yourself. You have a great deal of unused capacity which you have not turned to your advantage. While you have some personality weaknesses, you are generally able to compensate for them. Disciplined and self-controlled outside, you tend to be worrisome and insecure inside. At times you have serious doubts as to whether you have made the right decision or done the right thing.

Name: self-fulfilling prophecy
Definition: a prediction that directly or indirectly causes itself to become true, by the very terms of the prophecy itself, due to positive feedback between belief and behavior
Example: In Canadian hockey, junior league players are selected based on skill, motor coordination, physical maturity, and other individual merit criteria. However, psychologist Robert Barnsley showed that in any elite group of hockey players, 40% are born between January and March, versus the approximately 25% as would be predicted by statistics. The explanation is that in Canada, the eligibility cutoff for age-class hockey is January 1, and the players who are born in the first months of the year are older by 9–12 months, which at the preadolescent age of selection (nine or ten) manifests into an important physical advantage. The selected players are exposed to higher levels of coaching, play more games, and have better teammates. These factors make them actually become the best players, fulfilling the prophecy, while the real selection criterion was age

Name: reactive devaluation
Definition: occurs when a proposal is devalued if it appears to originate from an antagonist.
experimenters showed Israeli participants a peace proposal which had been actually proposed by Israel. If participants were told the proposal came from an Palestinian source they rated it lower than if they were told (correctly) the identical proposal came from the Israeli government.

Name: pareidolia
Definition: vague and random stimulus (often an image or sound) being perceived as significant, includes seeing images of animals or faces in clouds, the man in the moon or the Moon rabbit, and hearing hidden messages on records when played in reverse.
people are hard-wired to recognise human faces-  also lead them to interpret random images or patterns of light and shade as being faces
The "stick figure face", despite its simplicity, conveys mood information (e.g. disappointment, happiness)

Name: apophenia
Definition: experience of seeing patterns or connections in random or meaningless data.
Example: In statistics, apophenia is an example of a Type I error (incorrect rejection of null hypothesis)– the identification of false patterns in data
Name2: rationale behind gambling, with gamblers imagining they see patterns in the occurrence of numbers in lotteries,
Abbreviation2: pareidolia is a specific example (e.g. finding the faces of religious figures in pieces of toast)

Name: overjustification effect
Definition: an expected external incentive such as money or prizes decreases a person's intrinsic motivation to perform a task.
overall effect of offering a reward for a previously unrewarded activity is a shift to extrinsic motivation and the undermining of pre-existing intrinsic motivation. Once rewards are no longer offered, interest in the activity is lost; prior intrinsic motivation does not return, and extrinsic rewards must be continuously offered as motivation to sustain the activity
Richard Titmuss suggested that paying for blood donations might reduce the supply of blood donors. To test this, a field experiment with three treatments was conducted. In the first treatment, the donors did not receive compensation. In the second treatment, the donors received a small payment. In the third treatment, donors were given a choice between the payment and an equivalent-valued contribution to charity. None of the three treatments affected the number of male donors, but the second treatment almost halved the number of female donors. However, allowing the contribution to charity fully eliminated this effect.[4]

Name: Money illusion
Definition: In other words, the numerical/face value (nominal value) of money is mistaken for its purchasing power (real value).
i.e. it's not the number, it's the amount of stuff you can buy with it
Watchout when taking employment: If workers use their nominal wage as a reference point when evaluating wage offers, firms can keep real wages relatively lower in a period of high inflation as workers accept the seemingly high nominal wage increase.
Contracts and laws are not indexed to inflation as frequently as one would rationally expect

Name: IKEA effect
Definition: cognitive bias that occurs when consumers place a disproportionately high value on products they partially created
In the second experiment, researchers asked subjects to make either origami frogs or cranes. They then asked the subjects how much they were willing to pay for their own work. Following this, researchers gathered another group of subjects who had not taken part in the origami creation.[1] The new subjects were asked how much they were willing to pay for an origami built by the participants.
Following this, the researcher asked how much they were willing to pay for an origami built by an expert.[1] They were willing to pay more for the latter.[1] The first test group were given a display of origami. It consisted of one set of origami they had built themselves and one set that had been built by experts.[1] Without knowing that their own origami was part of the display as well, these subjects were asked to bid on the different origami. They valued the origami they created equally high as those created by professionals.
The final, third experiment, involved two sets of subjects. The first set were told to completely assemble a piece of IKEA furniture. The second set were also instructed to assemble a piece of IKEA furniture, but only partially. Both groups then took part in bidding over these objects. Results showed that individuals who had built the box completely were willing to pay more than the individuals who only partially built the box.[1]

Name: illusion of asynmmetic insight
Definition: people perceive their knowledge of others to surpass other people's knowledge of themselves.
=> seems to be due to the conviction that observed behaviors are more revealing of others than self, while private thoughts and feelings are more revealing of the self
Beliefs people hold:
* We know our close friends better than they know us. We understand them better, too.
*We think we know ourselves better than our peers know themselves
We insist that our "outsider perspective" affords us insights about our
peers that they are denied by their defensiveness, egocentricity, or
other sources of bias. By contrast, we rarely entertain the notion
that others are seeing us more clearly and objectively than we see ourselves

Name: hot hand fallacy
Definition: fallacious belief that a person who has experienced success with a random event has a greater chance of further success in additional attempt
The "Hot Hand in Basketball" study provided a large body of evidence that disproved the theory the basketball players have "hot hands", that is, that they are more likely to make a successful shot if their previous shot was successful.
increases with age apparently
(1) Does a basketball player have a better chance of making a shot after having just made the last two or three shots than after having missed the last two or three shots? (2) Is it important to pass the ball to someone who has just made several shots in a row?[12] Participants were then asked to rate their level of interest in basketball from 1 to 6, 1 being low and 6 being high.
The main interest of the questionnaire was to see if a participant answered yes to the first question, implying that they believed in the hot-hand fallacy. The results showed that participants over 70 years of age were twice as likely to believe the fallacy than adults 40–49,

Name: conceptual model
Definition: a model not based on empirical data
e.g. Nate Silver's poker effert/gains charts
- you must always give evidence for the shape you give a graph

Name: first and most basic step to achieving goals
Definition: do something instead of nothing,

Name: levels of action
Definition: The most important difference between Level 1 and Level 2 actions is that Level 1 actions tend to be additive, while Level 2 actions tend to be multiplicative. If you do ten hours of work at McDonald's, you'll get paid ten times as much as if you did one hour; the benefits of the hours add together. However, if you take ten typing classes, each one of which improves your ability by 20%, you'll be 1.2^10 = 6.2 times better at the end than at the beginning:
Level 3 and working out a good decision system (e.g. for which skills to learn)

Name: key idea in improving something
Definition: if you want better route to work, you must necessarily explore a different route to work.

Name: lesson about humility from programming
Definition: never assume that you can do something (even if it seems simple) unless you've actually done it before, because there will probably be some sort of hidden surprise
The key benefit of doing lots of new, unfamiliar Level 1 actions is that world is an extremely complicated place, and as a general rule, no matter how much you read and learn about something (Level 2 actions), there's always some sort of surprise when you actually go and do it; something that the authors of the stuff you read didn't notice

Name: how do you judge how much trust should you give to other's people's truths
Definition: base it on the reliability of the methods they used to form those opinions.
So when you get business advice, you need to ask yourself: What evidence does she have for that advice, and are her circumstances relevant enough to mine?

Name: how to avoid narrative fallacy when planning?
Definition: map out at least two other outcomes
e.g.
And in many major life decisions, such as choosing a career, people envision one way things could play out (“I’m going to run my own lab, and live in a big city…”) – but they don’t spend much time thinking about how probable that outcome is, or what the other probable outcomes are.

Name: you believe you are a good driver, and you get into a car accident...
how does a normal person think vs a Bayesian
Definition: Normal: Reconcile what happened with belief: "I am a good driver.. it was that guy's fault"
Bayesian: ”Would this evidence (a car crash) be more likely if my belief that I was a good driver was true or if an alternative, that I'm not a good driver, was true? I should evalulate my belief downwards"
=> Assumes you are aware of your beliefs

Name: when someone says there are pretty sure, ask them to...
Definition: quantify their certainty in percent
("pretty sure" means a lot of things to a lot people)

Name: why is believing something 100% problematic given Baye's rule
Definition: because it implies P[not H(ypothesis)] is 0, leading P[H|E] to be 1, => means that no evidence E can convince you it's false
similarly believing something 0% means P[H] is 0, multipying all by 0, meaning no evidence can convince you it's true

Name: why should you be careful to use the word "rational" / "true"
Definition: because it doesn't add anything
"It's rational to believe the sky is blue", "It's true that the sky is blue", and "The sky is blue", all convey exactly the same information about what color you think the sky is - no more, no less.
Instead just talk about the territory the map allegedly corresponds to, instead of talking about the map.
exception: When can't you eliminate the word "true"?  When you're generalizing over map-territory correspondences, e.g., "True theories are more likely to make correct experimental predictions."

Name: drawing a circle
Definition: post-utopianism has the apparent consequence of colonial alienation, and if you ask what colonial alienation implies, it means the author is probably a post-utopian.  Test further to figure out if they are floating beliefs: draw a circle around both phrases, and see if they don't connect to anything else.

Name: verificationism
Definition: held that the sentence "Elaine is a post-utopian" is meaningless if it doesn't tell us which sensory experiences we should expect to see if the sentence is true, and how those experiences differ from the case if the sentence is false.
problems:  Suppose that I transmit a photon aimed at the void between galaxies - heading far off into space, away into the night. In an expanding universe, this photon will eventually cross the cosmological horizon where, even if the photon hit a mirror reflecting it squarely back toward Earth, the photon would never get here because the universe would expand too fast in the meanwhile. Thus, after the photon goes past a certain point, there are no experimental consequences whatsoever, ever, to the statement "The photon continues to exist, rather than blinking out of existence." Yet that statement seems true
=> It is both useful and wise to ask after the sensory consequences of our beliefs. But it's not quite the fundamental definition of meaningful statements. It's an excellent hint that something might be a disconnected 'floating belief', but it's not a hard-and-fast rule.

Name: moving atoms heuristic for whether a statement is meaningful
Definition: "How could a universe be arranged so as to make this claim true, or alternatively false?
E.g. to make the statement "I am in Paris" true, we would have to move the atoms comprising myself to Paris. I can imagine that => it's a meaningful statement
More controversially (but not necessarily untrue): "Suffering builds character"

Name: whenver you encounter an abstract concept unaccompanied by concrete examlpes
Definition: you should feel uneasy
Over-abstraction happens because it's easy to be abstract.  It's easier to say "red is a color" than to pause your thoughts for long enough to come up with the example of a stop sign.  Abstraction is a path of least resistance, a form of mental laziness.
=> think of examples

Name: Attack a straw man
Definition: To create the illusion of having refuted a proposition by replacing it with a superficially similar yet unequivalent proposition (the "straw man"), and to refute it, without ever having
Problem:  Never actually refuted the original position

Smaller0: possess an accurate anticipation-controlling model somewhere in his mind
Greater0: correctly anticipate, in advance, which experimental results shall need to be excused
Hide middle: yes
Prefix Greater: the dragon-claimant
Prefix Smaller: the dragon-claimant must
Smaller2: his free-floating propositional belief in the dragon
Suffix Smaller: )
Smaller3: his self-image of believing in the dragon
Connect Smaller1: and act cognitively to protect either (
Connect Smaller2: or

Name: Virtue of curiosity
Definition: A burning itch to know is higher than a solemn vow to pursue truth. To feel the burning itch of curiosity requires both that you be ignorant, and that you desire to relinquish your ignorance. If in your heart you believe you already know, or if in your heart you do not wish to know, then your questioning will be purposeless and your skills without direction. Curiosity seeks to annihilate itself; there is no curiosity that does not want an answer. The glory of glorious mystery is to be solved, after which it ceases to be mystery. Be wary of those who speak of being open-minded and modestly confess their ignorance. There is a time to confess your ignorance and a time to relinquish your ignorance.
Page: http://yudkowsky.net/rational/virtues/

Name: Virtue of relinquishment
Definition: P. C. Hodgell said: “That which can be destroyed by the truth should be.” Do not flinch from experiences that might destroy your beliefs. The thought you cannot think controls you more than thoughts you speak aloud. Submit yourself to ordeals and test yourself in fire. Relinquish the emotion which rests upon a mistaken belief, and seek to feel fully that emotion which fits the facts. If the iron approaches your face, and you believe it is hot, and it is cool, the Way opposes your fear. If the iron approaches your face, and you believe it is cool, and it is hot, the Way opposes your calm. Evaluate your beliefs first and then arrive at your emotions. Let yourself say: “If the iron is hot, I desire to believe it is hot, and if it is cool, I desire to believe it is cool.” Beware lest you become attached to beliefs you may not want.
Page: http://yudkowsky.net/rational/virtues/

Name: Virtue of lightness
Definition: Let the winds of evidence blow you about as though you are a leaf, with no direction of your own. Beware lest you fight a rearguard retreat against the evidence, grudgingly conceding each foot of ground only when forced, feeling cheated. Surrender to the truth as quickly as you can. Do this the instant you realize what you are resisting; the instant you can see from which quarter the winds of evidence are blowing against you. Be faithless to your cause and betray it to a stronger enemy. If you regard evidence as a constraint and seek to free yourself, you sell yourself into the chains of your whims. For you cannot make a true map of a city by sitting in your bedroom with your eyes shut and drawing lines upon paper according to impulse. You must walk through the city and draw lines on paper that correspond to what you see. If, seeing the city unclearly, you think that you can shift a line just a little to the right, just a little to the left, according to your caprice, this is just the same mistake.
Page: http://yudkowsky.net/rational/virtues/

Name: Virtue of evenness
Definition: One who wishes to believe says, “Does the evidence permit me to believe?” One who wishes to disbelieve asks, “Does the evidence force me to believe?” Beware lest you place huge burdens of proof only on propositions you dislike, and then defend yourself by saying: “But it is good to be skeptical.” If you attend only to favorable evidence, picking and choosing from your gathered data, then the more data you gather, the less you know. If you are selective about which arguments you inspect for flaws, or how hard you inspect for flaws, then every flaw you learn how to detect makes you that much stupider. If you first write at the bottom of a sheet of paper, “And therefore, the sky is green!”, it does not matter what arguments you write above it afterward; the conclusion is already written, and it is already correct or already wrong. To be clever in argument is not rationality but rationalization. Intelligence, to be useful, must be used for something other than defeating itself. Listen to hypotheses as they plead their cases before you, but remember that you are not a hypothesis, you are the judge. Therefore do not seek to argue for one side or another, for if you knew your destination, you would already be there.
Page: http://yudkowsky.net/rational/virtues/

Name: Virtue of argument
Definition: Those who wish to fail must first prevent their friends from helping them. Those who smile wisely and say: “I will not argue” remove themselves from help, and withdraw from the communal effort. In argument strive for exact honesty, for the sake of others and also yourself: The part of yourself that distorts what you say to others also distorts your own thoughts. Do not believe you do others a favor if you accept their arguments; the favor is to you. Do not think that fairness to all sides means balancing yourself evenly between positions; truth is not handed out in equal portions before the start of a debate. You cannot move forward on factual questions by fighting with fists or insults. Seek a test that lets reality judge between you.
Page: http://yudkowsky.net/rational/virtues/

Name: Virtue of empiricism
Definition: The roots of knowledge are in observation and its fruit is prediction. What tree grows without roots? What tree nourishes us without fruit? If a tree falls in a forest and no one hears it, does it make a sound? One says, “Yes it does, for it makes vibrations in the air.” Another says, “No it does not, for there is no auditory processing in any brain.” Though they argue, one saying “Yes”, and one saying “No”, the two do not anticipate any different experience of the forest. Do not ask which beliefs to profess, but which experiences to anticipate. Always know which difference of experience you argue about. Do not let the argument wander and become about something else, such as someone’s virtue as a rationalist. Jerry Cleaver said: “What does you in is not failure to apply some high-level, intricate, complicated technique. It’s overlooking the basics. Not keeping your eye on the ball.” Do not be blinded by words. When words are subtracted, anticipation remains.
Page: http://yudkowsky.net/rational/virtues/

Name: Virtue of simplicity
Definition: Antoine de Saint-Exupéry said: “Perfection is achieved not when there is nothing left to add, but when there is nothing left to take away.” Simplicity is virtuous in belief, design, planning, and justification. When you profess a huge belief with many details, each additional detail is another chance for the belief to be wrong. Each specification adds to your burden; if you can lighten your burden you must do so. There is no straw that lacks the power to break your back. Of artifacts it is said: The most reliable gear is the one that is designed out of the machine. Of plans: A tangled web breaks. A chain of a thousand links will arrive at a correct conclusion if every step is correct, but if one step is wrong it may carry you anywhere. In mathematics a mountain of good deeds cannot atone for a single sin. Therefore, be careful on every step.
Page: http://yudkowsky.net/rational/virtues/

Name: Virtue of humility
Definition: To be humble is to take specific actions in anticipation of your own errors. To confess your fallibility and then do nothing about it is not humble; it is boasting of your modesty. Who are most humble? Those who most skillfully prepare for the deepest and most catastrophic errors in their own beliefs and plans. Because this world contains many whose grasp of rationality is abysmal, beginning students of rationality win arguments and acquire an exaggerated view of their own abilities. But it is useless to be superior: Life is not graded on a curve. The best physicist in ancient Greece could not calculate the path of a falling apple. There is no guarantee that adequacy is possible given your hardest effort; therefore spare no thought for whether others are doing worse. If you compare yourself to others you will not see the biases that all humans share. To be human is to make ten thousand errors. No one in this world achieves perfection.
Page: http://yudkowsky.net/rational/virtues/

Name: Virtue of perfectionism
Definition: The more errors you correct in yourself, the more you notice. As your mind becomes more silent, you hear more noise. When you notice an error in yourself, this signals your readiness to seek advancement to the next level. If you tolerate the error rather than correcting it, you will not advance to the next level and you will not gain the skill to notice new errors. In every art, if you do not seek perfection you will halt before taking your first steps. If perfection is impossible that is no excuse for not trying. Hold yourself to the highest standard you can imagine, and look for one still higher. Do not be content with the answer that is almost right; seek one that is exactly right.
Page: http://yudkowsky.net/rational/virtues/

Name: Virtue of precision
Definition: One comes and says: The quantity is between 1 and 100. Another says: the quantity is between 40 and 50. If the quantity is 42 they are both correct, but the second prediction was more useful and exposed itself to a stricter test. What is true of one apple may not be true of another apple; thus more can be said about a single apple than about all the apples in the world. The narrowest statements slice deepest, the cutting edge of the blade. As with the map, so too with the art of mapmaking: The Way is a precise Art. Do not walk to the truth, but dance. On each and every step of that dance your foot comes down in exactly the right spot. Each piece of evidence shifts your beliefs by exactly the right amount, neither more nor less. What is exactly the right amount? To calculate this you must study probability theory. Even if you cannot do the math, knowing that the math exists tells you that the dance step is precise and has no room in it for your whims.
Page: http://yudkowsky.net/rational/virtues/

Name: Virtue of scholarship
Definition: Study many sciences and absorb their power as your own. Each field that you consume makes you larger. If you swallow enough sciences the gaps between them will diminish and your knowledge will become a unified whole. If you are gluttonous you will become vaster than mountains. It is especially important to eat math and science which impinges upon rationality: Evolutionary psychology, heuristics and biases, social psychology, probability theory, decision theory. But these cannot be the only fields you study. The Art must have a purpose other than itself, or it collapses into infinite recursion.
Page: http://yudkowsky.net/rational/virtues/

Name: 12th virtue of rationality
Definition: Miyamoto Musashi wrote, in The Book of Five Rings:
“The primary thing when you take a sword in your hands is your intention to cut the enemy, whatever the means. Whenever you parry, hit, spring, strike or touch the enemy’s cutting sword, you must cut the enemy in the same movement. It is essential to attain this. If you think only of hitting, springing, striking or touching the enemy, you will not be able actually to cut him. More than anything, you must be thinking of carrying your movement through to cutting him.”
Every step of your reasoning must cut through to the correct answer in the same movement. More than anything, you must think of carrying your map through to reflecting the territory.
If you fail to achieve a correct answer, it is futile to protest that you acted with propriety.
How can you improve your conception of rationality? Not by saying to yourself, “It is my duty to be rational.” By this you only enshrine your mistaken conception. Perhaps your conception of rationality is that it is rational to believe the words of the Great Teacher, and the Great Teacher says, “The sky is green,” and you look up at the sky and see blue. If you think: “It may look like the sky is blue, but rationality is to believe the words of the Great Teacher,” you lose a chance to discover your mistake.
Do not ask whether it is “the Way” to do this or that. Ask whether the sky is blue or green. If you speak overmuch of the Way you will not attain it.
You may try to name the highest principle with names such as “the map that reflects the territory” or “experience of success and failure” or “Bayesian decision theory”. But perhaps you describe incorrectly the nameless virtue. How will you discover your mistake? Not by comparing your description to itself, but by comparing it to that which you did not name.
If for many years you practice the techniques and submit yourself to strict constraints, it may be that you will glimpse the center. Then you will see how all techniques are one technique, and you will move correctly without feeling constrained. Musashi wrote: “When you appreciate the power of nature, knowing the rhythm of any situation, you will be able to hit the enemy naturally and strike naturally. All this is the Way of the Void.”
Page: http://yudkowsky.net/rational/virtues/