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Epistemic learned helplessness (2013)

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Re: Epistemic learned helplessness (2013)

#51

Post by mbubb »

It is interesting that Pascal gets cited in this. With Pascal's Wager there is no leap really. It is very internal idea - an individual's relationship with God. "I might as well believe, there is no risk if I do so. If I am right there is a great reward. If I am wrong the result is what it would be anyway."

This is what I believe is a distinction between atheism and agnosticism. Belief vs a pragmatic ethic.

Pascal is identifying a throughly modern disconnect between what we privately might think and believe and how we act in public. His idea is radical because that split would probably not been conceived in the same way before. Over time this idea would become more socially grounded. Weber in "The Protestant Ethich and Spirit of Capitalism" would put forth a similar idea in terms of 'visible forms of God's grace'. Thus I am more blessed because there is an Audi A8 in my driveway and you are driving a Jetta...

Another perhaps more relevant case is Kierkegaard in "Fear and Trembling". I am probably misremembering political threory classes from 20+ years ago but the idea I retained is:

Think of Abraham and Isaac. In a nutshell Isaac is the much loved (and only) son and God tells Abraham to sacrifice Isaac. He takes his son up to the mountaintop and builds an altar. At the last second an animal is substituted. (Hmmm just occured to me that Miyazaki could do an interesting treatment of this)

The key idea is Abraham's resignation - which is different from passivity. He is willing to follow through. He hears God's voice telling him to do something batshit crazy. Because it is God he is willing to follow it through to its logical end. He has belief and resignation to God's will is the first step of that belief.

Now to the outside world Abraham is the worst kind of criminal. You would imagine him thrown in a dreadful prison and the guards looking the other way while that staple of tv dramas - prison justice is meted out. That doesn't change.

And Abraham doesn't even know if he is hearing God or if he is just crazy. And no one else knows either.

Back a decade or so ago when Intel's 'Trusted Computing Platform' was cause for debate, I remember someone saying "Just because Richard Stallman is paranoid doesn't mean that Microsoft is not after you" which I thought was hilarious and true and adopted it as my email footer for a while...

When I think of Stallman - I have enormous respect for the man, for his beliefs and his courage in following out his convictions. In my everyday life I use a Mac and install nonfree packages on my Linux servers so my actions are not consistent with that respect. It is too hard for me to browse the web in emacs and I enjoy twitter and the various inane 'Distractions from distraction by distraction' that are the internet.

I think Stallman is more right than wrong. I also believe in a Kantian imperative sense that we would all be better if we aligned our ideas of freedom and use of technology with his ideas. Without his ideas and his actions which broght thse ideas to life, we would be in a very different situation.

But I am much more 'pascalian' in my everyday life choices and actions.

Re: Epistemic learned helplessness (2013)

#52

Post by ArkyBeagle »

mbubb wrote: post #48

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/lib…

On "Should I press point 'x'", do a divide and conquer on it. Try to reduce the number of degrees of freedom from that decision point to a minimum.

IMO, you have to live with the ambiguity, but try to craft strategies that cover both with minimal ... perturbation. Waiting helplessly is not an option :) If all else fails, strawman the least cost solution first.

I also think there's value in having some measure of dissent from within the team. Done right, you'll synthesize solutions you would not otherwise have come up with. But you want this to be without rancor and without sinking large amounts of time.

On "... where and how to involve QA processes in the build/deploy process" - make a complete list of steps, then balance which gets included as the risk profile emerges. Good risk analysis includes a comprehensive and complete plan for what happens when a step fails.

Finally, you simply have to manage perception. Quantify, quantify, quantify. As if you don't have enough to do....

Re: Epistemic learned helplessness (2013)

#53

Post by ArkyBeagle »

mbubb wrote: post #51

It is interesting that Pascal gets cited in this. With Pascal's Wager there is no leap really. It is very internal idea - an individual's relationship with God. "I might as well believe, there is no risk if I do so. If I am right there is a great reward. If I am wrong the result is what it would be anyway." This is what I believe is a distinction between atheism and agnosticism. Belief vs a pragmatic ethic. Pascal is…

But if it is indeed Stallman v. Gates ( which I doubt ) then Gates won the big war, while Stallman continues to win small skirmishes.

This is just all too convenient and narrative for my tastes. IOW, "It's complicated." That's my epistemic learned helplessness.

Re: Epistemic learned helplessness (2013)

#54

Post by mtdewcmu »

eru wrote: post #41
mtdewcmu wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> 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?

It's hard to make a compelling argument for why a particular problem will never be solved. However, I think it's a reasonable supposition that such unsolvable problems exist. Resurrecting the dead, for instance. In order to faithfully simulate the universe, you'd apparently need complete understanding of the laws of physics. And, you'd probably need a tremendously large (and presumably very power-hungry) computer to run the simulation. There's no particular reason to think that physics will ever be completely understood, and the computer might need more power than all the stars in the universe can supply.

Again, it's extremely difficult to argue compellingly for why something can't be solved: even if it seems to be ruled out by known laws of physics (like traveling faster than light), you can always argue that new laws will be found someday that will be more favorable than the current ones. That argument never terminates, because you don't know what you don't know.

Re: Epistemic learned helplessness (2013)

#55

Post by paulsutter »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #49
paulsutter wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 con…

> assigning probabilities of 0 and 1 to anything is a very bad idea

THAT'S MY WHOLE POINT. Thank you. When a person says something is true/false/proven/disproven, that person is assigning a probability of 0 or 1 to it.

> http://lesswrong.com/lw/mp/0_and_1_are_not_probabilities/

I nearly cited this exactly. I love that article because it clearly spells out what's disturbed me for years about cloudy thinking.

When someone says a matter has been "proven" or "disproven", they are saying the matter is closed, and they feel no need to update in the future.

It's not pointless arguing. That's really what the words mean, and that's usually what people intend when they use those words. Other uses are misuses. It's perfectly OK to mis-speak in casual conversation and we're all obliged to understand each other in the most charitable way possible. On the other hand - when someone consistently speaks in a way that sure to be misunderstood, it's helpful to point this out.

And seriously - Kahneman made the overall point more clearly, with a practical antidote we can use every day. Being "totally convinced" is a clean indicator that our intuitive mind has latched onto consistency. And that's a very useful guideline to introspecting that very conclusion.

Re: Epistemic learned helplessness (2013)

#56

Post by TeMPOraL »

paulsutter wrote: post #55
TeMPOraL wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 con…

> assigning probabilities of 0 and 1 to anything is a very bad idea THAT'S MY WHOLE POINT. Thank you. When a person says something is true/false/proven/disproven, that person is assigning a probability of 0 or 1 to it. > http://lesswrong.com/lw/mp/0_and_1_are_not_probabilities/ I nearly cited this exactly. I love that article because it clearly spells out what's disturbed me for years about cloudy thinking. When some…

Ok. So I guess we miscommunicated, and have been thinking about the same thing all along. :).

As for your original comment - the author of this article is none other than Yvain from LW, whom you will most likely recognize if you read stuff on that site. You can safely assume that he knows all this stuff we discussed and (being a practicing psychiatrist) is aware of Kahneman. Knowing this, and taking into account his typically casual style I invite you to re-read the article while applying the principle of charity, and see if your original criticism still applies.

Re: Epistemic learned helplessness (2013)

#57

Post by JesperRavn »

thom wrote: post #38

"Well, you can prove anything with facts, can't you?" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4n-UGQcG3Jw

Well that's a good example of what the original argument was talking about since the comedian's argument was terrible (e.g. by the same logic we should not say that slavery is immoral, because the ancient Greeks practiced slavery).

Re: Epistemic learned helplessness (2013)

#58

Post by eru »

mtdewcmu wrote: post #54
eru wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

It's hard to make a compelling argument for why a particular problem will never be solved. However, I think it's a reasonable supposition that such unsolvable problems exist. Resurrecting the dead, for instance. In order to faithfully simulate the universe, you'd apparently need complete understanding of the laws of physics. And, you'd probably need a tremendously large (and presumably very power-hungry) computer to…

Oh, I am happy to accept speed of light as the limit.

I was more thinking about (hypothetically) using the same techniques as a quine to store a simulation of the universe inside a universe.

Re: Epistemic learned helplessness (2013)

#59

Post by mtdewcmu »

eru wrote: post #58
mtdewcmu wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's hard to make a compelling argument for why a particular problem will never be solved. However, I think it's a reasonable supposition that such unsolvable problems exist. Resurrecting the dead, for instance. In order to faithfully simulate the universe, you'd apparently need complete understanding of the laws of physics. And, you'd probably need a tremendously large (and presumably very power-hungry) computer to…

Oh, I am happy to accept speed of light as the limit. I was more thinking about (hypothetically) using the same techniques as a quine to store a simulation of the universe inside a universe.

I have no idea how that would work.
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