Live data from Hacker News

The Modern-Day Mind-Killer

keaganstokoe.com

11–20 of 74 posts

Re: The Modern-Day Mind-Killer

#11
post #3

The buffet line analogy doesn’t really work. Since you can’t go backwards or look too far ahead, you take the items at the beginning that are above your satisfaction threshold, not knowing whether there will be items further along that satisfy you.

I like the buffet analogy. It is a good example of "choice architecture" a la Cass and Sunstein from "Nudge". Nudge is one of a number of works arguing that we factor in more than economically rational criteria--such as marginal cost of going backwards in the buffet line--when making decisions.

While Cass and Sunstein argue for government action in framing healthier choices, this post puts the onus on us to a.) recognize that information consumption involves choices, and b.) be more active thinkers consumers of information.

Re: The Modern-Day Mind-Killer

#13

Starts off promising but spends a lot of space going nowhere. Lots of inline links that go to other articles on the same blog. Reads like a self-help or pop-business book and content marketing had a baby and it was raised by a TED talk.

dead on. - ultimately a let down

Re: The Modern-Day Mind-Killer

#15
post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With a buffet (and when browsing the Internet), you can absolutely go backwards. Just get back in line. Yet we act as if there is a shortage of $resource.

> Just get back in line. Which might take a long time, and by the time you're back at $item, it may be out.

I wonder how long the lines were in the study, or if this was controlled for at all.

Re: The Modern-Day Mind-Killer

#16
post #12

I didn't find a link to the buffet study, but isn't it possible that the operator of the buffet leveraged past experience and placed the most popular items first in the lineup?

Almost certainly this one, which explored the question of whether it would be an effective strategy to encourage healthier food choices:

https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal...

Also, interesting fact: this is a Wansink paper. Wansink is a bullshit artist of the highest order. So I think there's quite a meta-lesson here.

https://www.vox.com/science-and-health/2018/9/19/17879102/br...

Re: The Modern-Day Mind-Killer

#17
Since this is freshman-level "think, don't believe", here's an equally valid counterargument at roughly the same level.

In Heinrich's book "The Secret of our Success" on cumulative cultural evolution, he gives an example of pre-Columbus American cultures whose diet was based on bitter manioc (a.k.a. cassava).

Like the name suggests, in its raw form it's too bitter to eat, but these cultures evolved a set of traditions around the correct way to prepare it, and any deviation was taboo. The traditions involved pounding, scraping, straining and boiling the manioc over several days, most of the steps could only be performed by women (at least in the studied Tukanoa culture) and the women seem to have spend half their waking lives processing manioc.

So let's say you decide all the traditions are obviously bogus, do an experiment and find that just boling the thing for a couple of hours removes the bitter taste just as well.

The problem is the bitterness comes from cyanide, and boiling removes the taste but not the cyanide itself - something which the traditional process is really good at (Heinrich has studies and graphs to support this claim). Ten years later, you and the small pre-modern rationalist community you've founded are all in an advanced state of degeneration from cyanide poisoning.

The general principle here is called Chesterton's Fence (see the obvious wiki page for details), which is that if you come across a fence in a field and think it's stupid, make sure you really understand why it's there before you tear it down.

There are more examples like this in the book, such as a taboo in Polynesia on pregnant women consuming porpoises. It turns out that they do in fact contain chemical compounds that increase the risk of birth defects.

To quote a review in the now-deleted Slate Star Codex blog by Scott Alexander Ocasio-Cortez: "For basically all of history, using reason would get you killed."

My own view is that "don't take anything on faith ever" is as bad a life plan as "always follow traditions without question", and it's easy to think of lots of freshman philosophy level arguments why (your 5-year old is too young to properly understand electricity, would you want them to question your house rule against poking things in power sockets).

_P.S. it's become a kind of in-joke among SSC followers to invent a surname when they mention him now._

Re: The Modern-Day Mind-Killer

#18

So obviously this can tie into current social media and the spread of mal-information such as antivax, COVID mask protests, and memes that people let alter their impression of people. The traditional way to mitigate misinformation's harm was education and a respect for the educated. I think three things have happened that have prevented this from working: - We decided decades ago that people needed college degrees to…

We're also seeing an increasing number of cases where high-profile experts are making high-profile claims that then fold in full public view; or experts that make contradictory claims, under which case: from the perspective of a non-expert, who's right?

Education is essential, and yet is not a panacea for thinking well. So when experts can't seem to give people a straight answer, they'll simply turn to their peer group and hope for the best. And right now, as you noted, peer groups primarily consist of highly self-selected social media groups.

Re: The Modern-Day Mind-Killer

#19
The reason why people cut a cross in the base of Brussels sprouts is so they tough part cooks faster so the more delicate leaves don’t go soggy the evil spirits thing is just a nice story

Re: The Modern-Day Mind-Killer

#20
Is the thesis of this article: "it's important not to consume media or accept popular opinions that trigger cognitive dissonance BECAUSE our preferences are often determined by arbitrary aspects of our environment, bolstered by post-hoc rationalization?" If so, that seems like the exact opposite of a good idea, because the dissonance is probably there because of the exact same arbitrary forces.

It also seems to imply that majority opinions are things to reject, rather than interrogate. It applies a sort of inherent "don't be a sheep" mentality, but if it's very cold outside then covering yourself in wool and keeping your calorie ingestion up might actually be the most reasonable way to stay warm.

Maybe I'm just old-fashioned, but I think this realization leads to the need to challenge everything about your environment, accept the idea that different points of view exist, and carefully evaluate if ideas are good and truthful independently of their popularity. Implicitly siding with the minority opinion every time leaves you just as open to manipulation as trusting the majority every time, and we see both approaches used in many nation's politics.

Post reply on HN