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Epistemic learned helplessness (2013)

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Re: Epistemic learned helplessness (2013)

#41

Post by eru »

mtdewcmu wrote: post #30
greendestiny wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've thought down these paths a lot, and I came to similar but different conclusion. It's not simply that I don't trust argument - I weight arguments with evidence. If you take the simulation argument for instance - if you're contemplating the probability that we are living in a lifelike simulation you must factor in the number of lifelike simulations you have seen.

>> you must factor in the number of lifelike simulations you have seen Right. I take the position that there are problems that are unsolvable by technology; simulating the universe seems likely to be in that category. That position is fundamentally unprovable, but call it a hunch. Also, Occam's Razor argues against it, FWIW.

> I take the position that there are problems that are unsolvable by technology; simulating the universe seems likely to be in that category.

Why?

Re: Epistemic learned helplessness (2013)

#42

Post by Kenji »

>This is the correct Bayesian action, by the way. If I know that a false argument sounds just as convincing as a true argument, argument convincingness provides no evidence either way, and I should ignore it and stick with my prior.

Wrong. The correct scientific methodology would be to store the new conflicting theories in your head while being unsure whether or not they are true (withholding judgement); later on, if new evidence sheds light on the issue, you can discard or keep it. The silliest thing to do is what this guy advises: Persistence on arbitrary facts because they were first. That's how religion works. Despicable.

I don't like how this guy treats "high school dropout" as an example for someone particularly stupid and naive. It sounds elitist and smug and detracts from the main point of the text. It reminds me of lesswrong.com

> I've heard a few good arguments in this direction before, things like how engineering trains you to have a very black-and-white right-or-wrong view of the world based on a few simple formulae

Oh no, nothing is further from the truth. In engineering, you have to do a lot of subtle design decisions that aren't black-and-white at all. Difficult tradeoffs like cache invalidation, where there's no right answer in general.

All in all, a subpar article that goes on way too long and could be shortened to a couple of lines.

Re: Epistemic learned helplessness (2013)

#43

Post by TeMPOraL »

paulsutter wrote: post #29
ThrustVectoring wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd be very surprised if he hasn't read Kahneman. And even if he has, knowing about cognitive biases is a completely different skill than avoiding them. It's basically why the Center for Applied Rationality exists.

Well if he read it, he certainly didn't understand it. > When I was young I used to read pseudohistory books; Immanuel Velikovsky's Ages in Chaos is a good example of the best this genre has to offer. I read it and it seemed so obviously correct, so perfect, This guy believes in PROVING PSEUDOHISTORY. It's hard to understand what that even means, but let's look at specifics: "Noah's Flood couldn't as a cultural memor…

> This guy believes in PROVING PSEUDOHISTORY. It's hard to understand what that even means, but let's look at specifics

No, he does not. He only said that a good book proving pseudohistory sounds totally convincing to a history layman like him, and so does a book disproving the previous book. Since he can't tell what is false from what is true without huge amount of effort into studying history (no one has time to study everything in that amount of detail), he concludes that his only solution to stay sane is to ignore both arguments and stay with the general science consensus.

> But it is utter nonsense to assign 100% probability to any of these (that's what proof means, it means 100% likely). These just aren't provable matters.

That's your implication, nowhere written in the text. The guy hangs out in rationalists circles, he knows better than to assign P=1.0 to stuff. I know because I read quite a lot of his articles.

Re: Epistemic learned helplessness (2013)

#44

Post by shanusmagnus »

bpchaps wrote: post #15
danteembermage wrote: post #4

If I find myself being convinced by the argument, does that mean I should adopt Epistemic learned helplessness in response or not adopt Epistemic learned helplessness in response? I'm partly being facetious, but it would be interesting to try to use a non-argumentative approach to persuade to use one, I'm just not exactly sure what that would look like. As a kid I remember being told "brush your teeth in circles, it'…

I've been thinking lately that "do the best that your intuition can" is the optimal way to solve these sorts of mini tasks. That way, when your intuition is right about 10,000 things in your life, you have a bit of leeway with the other 10,000 it's wrong about. I'd imagine that this really only works as long as your intuition is in constant check, though.

I like this heuristic, since for things for which it is effective, intuition basically _is_ rationality, on a species-level timescale. The problem is the things for which it is not effective. The other problem is knowing which kind of thing you're dealing with, since determining that requires intuition.

Re: Epistemic learned helplessness (2013)

#45

Post by Confusion »

paulsutter wrote: post #16

> given that at least some of those arguments are wrong and all seemed practically proven, I am obviously just gullible Not gullible, he just needs to read Kahneman's "Thinking Fast and Slow". The intuitive mind is unable to distinguish between consistency and truth. That is, a consistent story will always seem "proven" to the intuitive mind. "Seeming practically proven" means little. You need to use the more logical…

You underestimate the author significantly. Read it again, but this time asssume the author is extremely smart and wise and is truthfully relating experiences. Then draw conclusions about what this tells you about the general trustworthiness of 'arguments'.

Re: Epistemic learned helplessness (2013)

#47

Post by paulsutter »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #43
paulsutter wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well if he read it, he certainly didn't understand it. > When I was young I used to read pseudohistory books; Immanuel Velikovsky's Ages in Chaos is a good example of the best this genre has to offer. I read it and it seemed so obviously correct, so perfect, This guy believes in PROVING PSEUDOHISTORY. It's hard to understand what that even means, but let's look at specifics: "Noah's Flood couldn't as a cultural memor…

> This guy believes in PROVING PSEUDOHISTORY. It's hard to understand what that even means, but let's look at specifics No, he does not. He only said that a good book proving pseudohistory sounds totally convincing to a history layman like him, and so does a book disproving the previous book. Since he can't tell what is false from what is true without huge amount of effort into studying history (no one has time to st…

I don't see how you're replying to my core point, which is that getting "totally convinced" is a function of the intuitive mind, and the intuitive mind will be totally convinced of anything that is consistent.

Could you help me understand the difference between "totally convincing" and proving? If you are "totally convinced" of something, isn't that a p=1.0?

Whether the topic is history or pseudohistory, words like "true", "false", "prove" and "disprove" really don't belong. Those words are fine in casual conversation, but they can't be part of the thinking of a serious person.

Re: Epistemic learned helplessness (2013)

#48

Post by mbubb »

Great read and interesting discussion. Reminder of how good HN has been over the years.

The idea of "institutional learned helplessness" is a useful one. There is a French term which I will mangle instead of google: 'Deformation professionelle' - built in blind spots which come from having T shaped expertise...

I've been part of a hiring team for a sysops person and found this of interest:

http://www.heavybit.com/library/video/2015-02-24-charity-maj...

Overall the talk is ok - the point which stuck with me was the idea that you should look for a sense of institutional helplessness and filter for it when you hire Ops folks.

The speaker also said to look for folks with 'strong opinions which are lightly held' - a double edged sword.

In a devops role there is an internal debate. Should I press point "x" ahead on principle? Or should i hold off and wait on the business/product requirements. Thinking slow and waiting on a full discussion of requirements before charging forth into battle can be seen as good process or passivity...

At work we wre having a discussion on where and how to involve QA processes in the build/deploy process. Devops took the stance - "this is a business decision - we will implement it as product sees fit" and we got push back for being too passive.

But this is a trivial example. I guess the bigger issues which inspire a "What can i do about it?" response. Recent readings on surveillance state and corporate interests (ie Bruce Schneier, etc) make me vacillate between deep, helpless feelings we are FUBAR to learning about constructive things like gpg, tor, etc

Re: Epistemic learned helplessness (2013)

#49

Post by TeMPOraL »

paulsutter wrote: post #47
TeMPOraL wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This guy believes in PROVING PSEUDOHISTORY. It's hard to understand what that even means, but let's look at specifics No, he does not. He only said that a good book proving pseudohistory sounds totally convincing to a history layman like him, and so does a book disproving the previous book. Since he can't tell what is false from what is true without huge amount of effort into studying history (no one has time to st…

I don't see how you're replying to my core point, which is that getting "totally convinced" is a function of the intuitive mind, and the intuitive mind will be totally convinced of anything that is consistent. Could you help me understand the difference between "totally convincing" and proving? If you are "totally convinced" of something, isn't that a p=1.0? Whether the topic is history or pseudohistory, words like "…

> I don't see how you're replying to my core point, which is that getting "totally convinced" is a function of the intuitive mind, and the intuitive mind will be totally convinced of anything that is consistent.

Well, I think that was actually his point - that if you're not an expert on a topic and don't have the explicit knowledge to counter your intuition, every relatively consistent set of arguments will sound convincing.

> Could you help me understand the difference between "totally convincing" and proving? If you are "totally convinced" of something, isn't that a p=1.0?

No, it's not, and assigning probabilities of 0 and 1 to anything is a very bad idea. See: http://lesswrong.com/lw/mp/0_and_1_are_not_probabilities/.

Otherwise, exept of pointing out that we have intuitive and explicit parts of reasoning that often oppose one another, I'm not sure what you're getting at.

> Whether the topic is history or pseudohistory, words like "true", "false", "prove" and "disprove" really don't belong. Those words are fine in casual conversation, but they can't be part of the thinking of a serious person.

Yes and no. They are shorthands. Unlike maths, in the real world you can't assign absolute true value to anything, but you can still be really, really sure. If I jump out of the fourth-floor window, I will hurt myself. That is true. Arguing that it's not true because you can't be absolutely positively 100% sure is just pointless arguing about words, a failure in communication. C.f. https://xkcd.com/1576/.

Re: Epistemic learned helplessness (2013)

#50

Post by TeMPOraL »

tgb wrote: post #46

The author is now blogging at: http://slatestarcodex.com/ It's really one of the most consistently interesting blogs I read. Check out the top-posts section to see if anything catches your eye: http://slatestarcodex.com/top-posts/

It's one of my favourites too.

There've been a few lists of his best posts created by readers, e.g. [0] and [1].

Personally, my absolute favourite is Meditations on Moloch [2]. It's long, but has high concept density and highlights the very important causes of problems in the world that many people miss entirely when discussing important issues.

[0] - http://nothingismere.com/2015/09/12/library-of-scott-alexand...

[1] - http://lesswrong.com/lw/mmg/yvains_most_important_articles/

[2] - http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/07/30/meditations-on-moloch/

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