Describes some of the many complex considerations that determine what sort of happiness we most prefer to have - given that many of us would decline to just have an electrode planted in our pleasure centers.
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describes some of the many complex considerations that determine what sort of happiness we most prefer to have - given that many of us would decline to just have an electrode planted in our pleasure centers.
How should a rationalistrationalists use their near and far modes of thinking? And how should knowing about near vsversus far modes influence how we present the things we believe to other people.people?
The conclusion of the Beisutsukai series.
The bystander effect is when groups of people are less likely to take action than an individual. There are a few explanations for why this might be the case.
An intriguing dietary theory which appears to allow some people to lose substantial amounts of weight, but doesn't appear to work at all for others.
You can excuse other people's shortcomings on the basis of extenuating circumstances, but you shouldn't do that with yourself.
Extremely rare events can create bizarre circumstances in which people may not be able to effectively communicate about improbability.
The idea behind the statement "Rationalists should win" is not that rationality will make you invincible. It means that if someone who isn't behaving according to your idea of rationality is outcompeting you, predictably and consistently, you should consider that you're not the one being rational.
There are a lot of bad habits of thought that have developed to defend religious and spiritual experience. They aren't worth saving, even if we discard the original lie. Let's just admit that we were wrong, and enjoy the universe that's actually here.
What works of fiction are out there that show characters who have acquired their skills at rationality through practice, and who we can watch in the act of employing those skills?
People hear about a gamble involving a big payoff, and dismiss it as a form of Pascal's Wager. But the size of the payoff is not the flaw in Pascal's Wager. Just because an option has a very large potential payoff does not mean that the probability of getting that payoff is small, or that there are other possibilities that will cancel with it.
When we talk about rationality, we're generally talking about either epistemic rationality (systematic methods of finding out the truth) or instrumental rationality (systematic methods of making the world more like we would like it to be). We can discuss these in the forms of probability theory and decision theory, but this doesn't fully cover the difficulty of being rational as a human. There is a lot more to rationality than just the formal theories.
Reputational, experimental, and organizational: the different strengths of evidence needed to (a) prevent a school from degenerating, (b) systematically test particular techniques, or (c) credential individuals.
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The classic failure modes of martial arts schools transfer over as direct warnings to would-be rationalists.
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Why do people seem to care more about systematic methods of punching than systematic methods of thinking?
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This page contains summaries of LessWrong posts published in 2009.
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