Blame vs Constructive Criticism

lmn comments on Chaos and Consequentialism:

Of course, if looked at the kind of responsibility that is compatible with blame, you’d notice it’s a lot more in line with the common sense notion of the term.

Chaos and Consequentialism

There is an interaction between a culture’s common-sense understanding of a subject and science. For example, although folk psychology is partly a biologically-given human ability to reason about the mental state of others, the way people reason about the mental states of others…


Thoughts on Automoderation

I was intrigued by the recent discussion about a group discussion method called automoderation, introduced at Ferocious Truth and commented on by Agenty Duck and Don’t Worry About the Vase. (This post will not make much sense if you haven’t at least read the Ferocious Truth post.)…


The Accuracy / Usefulness distinction

Distinctions are useful. They probably would top my mindlist of meta-cognitive tools. The first such distinction I can recall is that between Map and Territory. The first explanation I can personally remember is Neil Gaiman’s, in American Gods;


What Does Long-Term Thinking Feel Like from the Inside?

Epistemic status: at high risk of single-study syndrome.

In my post on growth mindset, I mentioned time preference. This got me thinking about what kind of thought causes high time preference (meaning…


Scott Alexander doesn’t like growth mindset… yet.

I recently read Scott Alexander’s posts about growth mindset (one, two, three, four). He starts out admitting that he’s biased against it, and I agree — reading his criticism made me take growth mindset more seriously, because his criticism was…


Communication Protocol

Information cascades and availability cascades are a set of mechanisms by which mass belief shifts (or apparent belief shifts) can occur in a winner-takes-all manner. The subject is complex, and I will not attempt to summarize it here (although I’d like to discuss it further in later…


Judgement as Fake Explanation

Since writing Descriptive Before Prescriptive, I’ve thought a bit more about the general pattern I’m trying to point at. A big part of what goes wrong is: a value judgement becomes a fake explanation, stopping curiosity. If an atheist writes off a religious belief as “just…


Dutch Books and Bayesian Betting

The last two posts spent a fair amount of time trying to explain why you should be willing to bet, and why you need to offer fair odds. This one explains why, without a few critical caveats, that’s actually terrible advice.


Fair Betting, and Glitches in the Matrix

Last time, I talked about why betting is a good idea. I didn’t mention a key point — if you want your betting to help you the most, you should pick either setting the odds however you want, or which side of the bet to pick — not both.


Inevitable bets versus useful bets

Many people in the rationalist community advocate betting — either because of how socially useful prediction markets can be, because it helps you adjust your expectations, because you need to calibrate your beliefs, or because it helps you make your beliefs pay rent…