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Epistemic Learned Helplessness (2019)

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Re: Epistemic Learned Helplessness (2019)

#101

Post by bloaf »

thadt wrote: post #25

> The medical establishment offers a shiny tempting solution. First, a total unwillingness to trust anything, no matter how plausible it sounds, until it’s gone through an endless cycle of studies and meta-analyses. Isn't this just... science? We learned from the ancient philosophers that really smart people can reason powerfully about a whole lot of things. But - if we want to know whether that reasoning holds up, i…

Right, and I think the distinction he draws between this and engineering is interesting.

My experience (as an engineer) is that engineers get paid to manipulate the world around them in precise, predictable ways. As such, they tend to cultivate a core set of relatively simple principles (e.g. heat and material balances) which they take seriously by using to plan/design/etc their manipulations of the world. The engineer's creativity lies in finding new ways to combine the known-reliable principles, and stake their reputation on the result.

Scientists, on the other hand, are expected to come up with new principles. If they take too many ideas seriously, there is no room left for creative new explanations.

Medicine lies somewhere in between, insofar as doctors are trying to manipulate patient's health with the best principles they can find, but they also have to wear a scientists hat via diagnosis, i.e. figuring out which principles to apply to a patient.

And so the reaction to e.g. fundamentalism makes sense:

An engineer likes having a fundamental set of universal principles, and is comfortable using them to make plans for manipulating the world. They expect the religious world to work the same way as they do, and take those principles seriously.

A scientist wants to know "well I've got a new idea for a fundamental principle, how can we find out if I'm right?" And the fundamentalist has no answer.

A doctor will want to know how certain the fundamentalist is, and how they know those principles even apply to current situation, and the fundamentalist will have no answer.

Re: Epistemic Learned Helplessness (2019)

#102

Post by staticman2 »

helicalmix wrote: post #74
bitzun wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been to dozens of rationalist meetups (I don't know why), people are constantly talking out of their ass while constantly referencing contrived rhetorical devices. A lot of "just asking questions", confidently asserting solutions to e.g. palestine, cartels, etc. and contending with things TV pundits say. I like some of Scott Alexander's writing, but "rationalists" in general online or IRL have not been very impr…

Haha yeah, I've been to rationalist meetups too, and have come to the same conclusion that I don't like them very much. Too much IQ stroking for my tastes. Scott specifically though, has an established history of thinking through arguments that I find much better than most, and I still think someone who trains at this stuff will do better. To extend my analogy a little further from before, if you go to a boxing gym o…

With boxing you know who won because the judges say so. If Scott argues something at a party, and the other person says "I don't know why you are wrong but you are." Who is to say who "won"? Scott comes away thinking he's an amazing thinker. The other person comes away thinking he is a contrarian good at inventing plausible sounding nonsense. Who won here?

Re: Epistemic Learned Helplessness (2019)

#103

Post by FredPret »

nineplay wrote: post #12

>engineering trains you to have a very black-and-white right-or-wrong view of the world based on a few simple formulae, and this meshes with fundamentalism better than it meshes with subtle liberal religious messages. Back in the usenet days it was taken as given that any creationist was also an engineer. Creationism was nice and neat and logical unlike that handwavy big bang thing that was probably dreamed up by woo…

Don't know about this one. Engineering taught me that reality is complex and nuanced and that success is defined on a spectrum, not zero or one.

Re: Epistemic Learned Helplessness (2019)

#104

Post by AnimalMuppet »

nineplay wrote: post #29
0xdeadbeefbabe wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Creationism was nice and neat and logical Also requires less faith

To some degree the idea of a Creator is easier to wrap one's head around than the idea of nothing-->something. Of course it really just rolls the question uphill since you're now faced with 'Where did the Creator come from?'. Happily there are no academic theories on this matter so there's no need to engage with it. Ultimately satisfaction doesn't come from the belief itself, satisfaction comes from the feeling of be…

> Of course it really just rolls the question uphill since you're now faced with 'Where did the Creator come from?'.

Creationists aren't actually faced with that question - not Creationists who believe in a God who is eternal, anyway. Things without beginnings don't have origins.

If you want to actually attack that belief, you need to either 1) show that God isn't eternal, or 2) show that eternal things are impossible. Or you have to do the hard work of 3) persuading them that a purely naturalistic process fits the available evidence better than a Creator does.

Re: Epistemic Learned Helplessness (2019)

#105

Post by dkjaudyeqooe »

wins32767 wrote: post #84
NhanH wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The nuance here lies within the “hours” quantifier. A junior member being blocked for 3-8 hours semi-regularly is expected. Once every other month you probably should be blocked for several work days as well. In your example, the challenge would have been realizing you wouldn’t have been the first one trying to send an email in the team. Recognizing that and it is very easy to know that you should just ask the questi…

This is really bad advice. Don't let yourself be blocked for several days. Try for 2-3 hours and ask for help.

I'd say that's excessive. An hour max would be more reasonable otherwise you're just creating a discouraging workplace. Note that would be an hour of real effort though, not half arsed googling. Making a genuine effort is more important than the time taken.

Re: Epistemic Learned Helplessness (2019)

#106

Post by pdonis »

helicalmix wrote: post #74
bitzun wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been to dozens of rationalist meetups (I don't know why), people are constantly talking out of their ass while constantly referencing contrived rhetorical devices. A lot of "just asking questions", confidently asserting solutions to e.g. palestine, cartels, etc. and contending with things TV pundits say. I like some of Scott Alexander's writing, but "rationalists" in general online or IRL have not been very impr…

Haha yeah, I've been to rationalist meetups too, and have come to the same conclusion that I don't like them very much. Too much IQ stroking for my tastes. Scott specifically though, has an established history of thinking through arguments that I find much better than most, and I still think someone who trains at this stuff will do better. To extend my analogy a little further from before, if you go to a boxing gym o…

> Scott specifically though, has an established history of thinking through arguments that I find much better than most

He has an established history of writing down detailed articles about arguments, yes.

Unfortunately, a significant number of his articles contain schoolboy errors that anyone who wants to claim they are better at thinking through arguments than the average person should never have made.

I'll mention just one such article:

http://slatestarcodex.com/2013/12/01/empireforest-fire/

Scott says:

"...democratic nations, like the US and UK, which have gone three hundred or so years with only the tiniest traces of state-sponsored violence (and those traces, like the camps for the Japanese during WWII, have not come from the Left)."

The two obvious, egregious schoolboy errors here are:

(1) Don't wars count as "state-sponsored violence"? The US and UK certainly haven't gone three hundred years without wars. And some of those wars were civil wars, so even the lame excuse of "well, wars are violence, but not against the state's own people" doesn't count.

And even if we let that pass, what about the US's treatment of Native Americans? What about the UK's treatment of Ireland? And so on. To say that the US and UK have gone three hundred years with "only the tiniest traces of state-sponsored violence" shows a level of historical ignorance that is just staggering.

(2) But even if we let all of the above pass: doesn't Scott know that the President who interned Japanese citizens in WWII was from the Left?

Re: Epistemic Learned Helplessness (2019)

#107

Post by SkyBelow »

Aurornis wrote: post #43

> 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, Whenever the rationalist writers start talking about engineering, programming, or machine learning in technical terms I have a sudden Gell-Mann Amnesia realization that these people's primary domain is writing and pontificati…

To further expand on the "a few simple formulae", many of those experienced in these fields will note that complexity can emerge from simplicity. Conway's Game of Life is my go to example. Following some of about the simplest rules you can have, you can create a fully Turing complete system able to emulate itself.

Re: Epistemic Learned Helplessness (2019)

#108

Post by bluetomcat »

picometer wrote: post #73

Summary: Scott Alexander recounts his gullibility to various well-reasoned crackpot arguments on a topic, and describes how he to decided to trust experts instead of investing time into learning enough to assess the topic for himself. Then he reflects on the nature of argument-accepting and its relation to rationality. I don’t think the term “learned helplessness” fits well here. It suggests a lack of agency, whereas…

He talks about the pitfalls of pure rationality. There can be competing explanatory frameworks for the same thing, and they often contradict each other. Rational arguments may seem rigorous like math, but are in practice standing on shifting sands.

It ultimately comes down to what you decide to believe in. This is where traditional values and religion come at play.

Re: Epistemic Learned Helplessness (2019)

#109

Post by peppermint_gum »

bongripper wrote: post #3

>I don’t think I’m overselling myself too much to expect that I could argue circles around the average uneducated person. Like I mean that on most topics, I could demolish their position and make them look like an idiot. Reduce them to some form of “Look, everything you say fits together and I can’t explain why you’re wrong, I just know you are!” Or, more plausibly, “Shut up I don’t want to talk about this!” > And th…

Being an expert doesn't necessarily make you a good debater. Debates aren't about who's "right", they're about who has made a more convincing argument.

The article used alternative history cranks as an example of someone good at conjuring up seemingly convincing arguments, despite being pretty much the opposite of an expert.

Re: Epistemic Learned Helplessness (2019)

#110

Post by fooop »

bluetomcat wrote: post #108
picometer wrote: post #73

Summary: Scott Alexander recounts his gullibility to various well-reasoned crackpot arguments on a topic, and describes how he to decided to trust experts instead of investing time into learning enough to assess the topic for himself. Then he reflects on the nature of argument-accepting and its relation to rationality. I don’t think the term “learned helplessness” fits well here. It suggests a lack of agency, whereas…

He talks about the pitfalls of pure rationality. There can be competing explanatory frameworks for the same thing, and they often contradict each other. Rational arguments may seem rigorous like math, but are in practice standing on shifting sands. It ultimately comes down to what you decide to believe in. This is where traditional values and religion come at play.

I, for one, am glad that the rationality-bubble is popping.
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