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Epistemic Learned Helplessness (2019)

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Re: Epistemic Learned Helplessness (2019)

#131

Post by _armchair »

jodrellblank wrote: post #118

> " 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!” " That isn't making them look like an idiot, reducing them, or demolishing their position. That is completely failing to demolish their position! While also failing to convincingly explain…

> That isn't making them look like an idiot, reducing them, or demolishing their position.

I think he's saying that he can reduce his opponent to those words - i.e., the author's argument fits together, the opponent says "it's just wrong" and gets frustrated.

Re: Epistemic Learned Helplessness (2019)

#132

Post by twelfthnight »

helicalmix wrote: post #59
twelfthnight wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I guess if I encountered two diametrically opposing arguments of equal validity I would increase my uncertainty, not just stick to my prior. That's super different to just ignoring new arguments, right? Like going from "I think X is the best candidate" to "I don't know who the best candidate is".

Oh, that's a good point, and I think you're idea is a better behavior model vs. the "stick with prior" idea. What if the conclusion forces behavior though? For voting, you can abstain from voting if you're unclear, but what if you're in a position where you have to choose two distinctly different options. In this case, I think you pretty much have to stick with your prior, but I'm curious if you have a more nuanced a…

> I think you pretty much have to stick with your prior

Yeah, at least to me that makes sense if you're forced to make a choice. Although in some ways if you really have no clear evidence it doesn't matter what choice you make, since both are equally reasonable.

> I'm curious if you have a more nuanced approach here

Not really :D. I do think things are often more complicated than "you must choose two options", for example you might have to choose between two candidates (in the US at least), but if you are more uncertain maybe you don't put a giant poster in your front yard or get upset at neighbors if they have a different opinion.

Re: Epistemic Learned Helplessness (2019)

#133

Post by ineptech »

JackFr wrote: post #35

I have to admit a weakness for reading not-quite-crackpot-but-likely-wrong theories. In particular, big fan of Julian Jaynes and The Development of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bi-cameral Mind, and the aquatic ape hypothesis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aquatic_ape_hypothesis I get that they're probably not true, but I do enjoy reading novel thinking and viewpoints by smart people with a cool hook.

Same. I found a book back in college claiming (on the basis of some theory about the Egyptian pyramids) that if you made a pyramidal shape with certain dimensions out of cardboard, it would make plants grow faster and keep your razorblades sharp. I didn't believe it, but I did make one for fun. All my physics-major friends made fun of me for being gullible. I was like, isn't testing stuff what we're supposed to be doing here?

(It didn't work)

Re: Epistemic Learned Helplessness (2019)

#134

Post by KineticLensman »

demondemidi wrote: post #121

I think it is a trope that engineering is "black or white". Having been a professional engineer for 35 years, it is anything BUT. Everything is a threshold for negotiation, there is give and take in every design decision. There is no black-white anywhere I've ever seen, except freshman-year logic texts. Even with digital logic, in reality, there is no such thing as digital: slopes, thresholds, manufacturing variation…

Exactly. Engineering often involves choosing a solution within some time / cost / performance envelope. I’m inclined to think that if you can’t see where trade-offs might exist, it’s because you don’t fully understand the domain.

Re: Epistemic Learned Helplessness (2019)

#135

Post by marcosdumay »

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…

Back in the usenet days everybody using it was either an engineer or a physicist, and every single one of those people had a bias about one of those groups being wrong more often than the other.

Re: Epistemic Learned Helplessness (2019)

#136

Post by nerpderp82 »

spencerchubb wrote: post #55
philip1209 wrote: post #18

This article talks about learned helplessness in a learning context. I talked about it in a work context, and the two could be linked. I think social media is training people for everything to be quick, but learning + work aren't necessarily quick. > This insistence on constant availability disrupts the essence of focused work. Rather than encouraging employees to tackle complex problems independently, there’s a tren…

As a junior dev, sometimes I've been blocked for hours because I want to show that I can solve problems independently. But I've definitely had cases where I should've asked questions early. A question that takes 1 minute to answer could have saved hours. For instance, I was stuck on figuring out how to send an email through AWS. Turns out we have a lambda function that handles all the authentication and security thin…

Blocked for hours is you learning and totally OK if you are learning. If one is operating open loop and stabbing at configuration options in a brute force manner to "make something work quickly" that isn't learning. Not saying you did this, but I do see this in a number of folks. They don't learn, and they don't form a model of the system. Those folks can be replaced by an LLM and Z3.

Re: Epistemic Learned Helplessness (2019)

#137

Post by digital-cygnet »

pdonis wrote: post #106
helicalmix wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

While Scott does make errors, I've found he works hard to avoid making them and forthright when he does (e.g., not everyone has a Mistakes page in the main navigation bar of their site[1])

What you're missing in your example is that, in context, the state-sponsored violence he's talking about is "against one's own people" (e.g., he also refers to it as a "reign of terror" a few times, like those of Robespierre, Stalin, Pol Pot, etc). I think there's a difference of kind between say the 19th century US's (awful) treatment of Native Americans (who were explicitly treated as "other" very consistently) and Stalin's (also awful) dekulakization (in which one-time typical members of Russian society were declared enemies of the state and purged).

So his point isn't that the UK and US have done no wrong, it's that despite having democratic systems for centuries that haven't gone through the kind of reign of terror that Scott's interlocutors claim they should have

[1] https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/mistakes

Re: Epistemic Learned Helplessness (2019)

#138

Post by NoMoreNicksLeft »

staticman2 wrote: post #102
helicalmix wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

I think part of the trouble many here are having is that they don't even understand why Scott goes to the party, or argues, or wants to convince people of his arguments.

Surely, if no one reading my comment here ever agrees with me, my life doesn't change for the worse at all. And if people do agree with me, again, my life doesn't change for the better. I'm mostly here to learn from you people, you sometimes say interesting things I am unaware of, or introduce interesting perspectives I might not have seen for myself.

I have noticed among humans though, that you argue and debate like this, because you're basically monkeys and monkeys do the social monkey thing. You're trying to achieve higher status by climbing above the other monkeys, whose status will lower (if only a little). This is not as entertaining as violent fights, but much less risky (at least in some cultures). You're posturing.

It has little appeal to me. I am unable to determine if it holds appeal for the rest of you, or if you just can't help yourselves.

Re: Epistemic Learned Helplessness (2019)

#139

Post by nerpderp82 »

helicalmix wrote: post #11
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…

If anything, Scott is underselling himself, and could probably argue circles against the average educated person. Debates are the rationalists bread and butter, and you should expect them to be better at you the same way you would expect a trained boxer to beat you in a fistfight.

Debates aren't about arriving at the truth. They are rhetorical combat to 'win' an argument. Most people don't understand that.

Re: Epistemic Learned Helplessness (2019)

#140

Post by ineptech »

speak_plainly wrote: post #116

After spending many years studying philosophy I think that the right approach is that you don’t need to come to any conclusions about anything. Aristotle often started with common peoples’ viewpoints on any given topic, along with looking at what experts thought and built his own ideas from there, and of course was very successful with his methodology. Arguments are interesting and obviously some are more correct tha…

This is probably true, but not very helpful. We can shrug over historical curiosities, but in a lot of cases we have to make a decision.

Consider Linus Pauling's claim that you can prevent cancer with megadoses of vitamin C. It was never widely accepted, but Pauling is a titan of science with two Nobels and he wrote books with convincing-sounding arguments, so it's tempting to think maybe this is a case where the status quo is wrong (esp. if you have cancer).

I think that's the sort of thing Alexander is trying to navigate here - no matter how comfortable you get saying "I don't know", at the end of the day you need to take the vitamins or not take them.

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