scrape_r_rational/data/cache/3qact4.md

[D] Monday General Rationality Thread

Post:

Welcome to the Monday thread on general rationality topics! Do you really want to talk about something non-fictional, related to the real world? Have you:

• Seen something interesting on /r/science?
• Found a new way to get your shit even-more together?
• Figured out how to become immortal?
• Constructed artificial general intelligence?
• Read a neat nonfiction book?
• Munchkined your way into total control of your D&D campaign?

Comments:

• u/alexanderwales:

  I've lately come to the conclusion that reversing (or upending) cached thoughts can make for some really good speculative fiction. If you take something that people *know* but don't actually think about, then turn it on its head somehow. This pretty cheaply forces the brain to recompute all the things that it had previously cached in order to fit with the new counterfactual world.
  
  This is my hypothesis, anyway. What I'd really like is a way to test it, but I fear that it's far too qualitative to do that, because you'd have to define both "cached thought" and "compelling". I also don't have the resources (or education) necessary to run a study which actually finds out whether my hypothesis is right or not. I also think the (or a) general principle of what makes a compelling idea might be how much it disrupts the cache, but I don't know how to tell whether that's actually right.
  

  • u/PL_TOC:

    You should research comedy. That's the basis for some of the greatest jokes.
    

    • u/alexanderwales:

      I knew that, but hadn't really made the connection to the reversal of expectations. You're completely right.
      
      If we're talking about cognitive theories of humor, the dominant one seems to be that we get a sort of reward for bumping up against a wrong cached thought and having it corrected (and jokes are just a superstimulus). But I don't really know why this revelation causes *humor* instead of something like *epiphany*, which is different but seems to work on similar principles.
      

      • u/None:

        I read somewhere that humor is about the relief at the absence of danger. "There's a tiger!" "Ah! Where?" "Ha, just fooling!" And everyone laughs. And so does the tiger.
        

        • u/Transfuturist:

          IIRC, Grandpa has a boner.
          
          But seriously, that theory is shit.
          

      • u/AmeteurOpinions:

        Something something social bonding?
        

• u/Nighzmarquls:

  This might sound super obvious, but having well fitted clothes and an un-slouching posture REALLY helps with one's mood and probably has a bunch of hard to pin down feedback loops in it relating to success.
  
  I felt this was worth mentioning because I've been noticing a LOT of people in LA seem to affect a kind of curled over "reading my phone posture" even when their not reading their phones.
  
  It might be worth a few extra bits of attention through your day to pay attention to how your standing.
  

  • u/Jules-LT:

    Also, smiling is good for you (and those around you). Let it be your resting face 😊
    

    • u/nicholaslaux:

      However, telling that to others, especially in a directed manner (ie "You should smile more, be happy!") for many people will have the opposite effect and cause them to be less likely to do so.
      

      • u/Jules-LT:

        There is indeed good reason for why I said it the way I did ;-)
        

• u/ulyssessword:

  Now that the Canadian election is safely over, what are your opinions on strategic voting? I'm conflicted about it because on the one hand, you are doing the utilitarian thing and helping that way,  while on the other hand, it is sending false signals.
  

  • u/alexanderwales:

    I'm fully in favor of strategic voting, but as a natural extension of that I'm also fully in favor of switching to a voting system where the best strategy for voting is also the one that's properly expressing personal choice.
    
    (Trudeau vowed to do away with first-past-the-post along with some other election reforms, but we'll see whether he can accomplish that, and if he can, what it gets replaced with.)
    

    • u/Gigapode:

      Playing devil's advocate:
      In NZ we have the Mixed Member Proportional (MMP) system of voting, which gives Parties a number of seats in parliament based on the number of votes they receive. Its designed to give them voting power in parliament relative to the % of votes they received in the last general election, thereby making it useful to vote for the party you prefer. Even if they aren't likely to lead the next government it gives them a say and makes them more attractive to bigger Parties looking to form a coalition.
      
      The is some dissatisfaction from people who view it as a system that doesn't result in strong leadership because, after a general election, the leading Party has always had to form coalitions with smaller Parties in order to create the majority needed to govern.
      In the words of my boss (a "project leader" from the UK, which still uses first-past-the-post): its too many voices diluting effective leadership.
      

      • u/alexanderwales:

        No voting system is perfect, some are just better at expressing preference than others. The problem with first-past-the-post is that it's not even at the level where you're making trade-offs; it's just *bad* in in ways that can be shored up.
        
        Proportional systems do have the perceived disadvantage of requiring coalitions and being "weaker", but if you thought that single-winner was the way to go, you could still do better than first-past-the-post and all of the problems that it has. (For example, doing instant-runoff within the Smith set.)
        

      • u/Escapement:

        Honestly, I am of the general opinion that laws that can't get broad support from more than one group are very often likely to be laws I don't actually want passed, so I am usually pretty OK with this. At least, within my present political context - Minority governments in Canada have not exactly ruined the country when they occurred, that I've noticed. And in Canada we have had first-past-the-post voting and it's resulted in both minorities and majorities in the past, so fptp is not empiricallly perfect protection against minority governments.
        
        I also agree very much with alexanderwales points that the present voting systems are flawed. The voting system we have here in Canada is one of the very best that the 19th century created. That doesn't mean it's good at anything or for anything - it's the 21st century now. We can rebuild the system better, we have the technology. No matter what your goals are, there are systems better for it than our present voting system.
        

      • u/Frommerman:

        I'd say your boss is just envious of Germany, which uses the same system to excellent results.
        

    • u/JackStargazer:

      >(Trudeau vowed to do away with first-past-the-post along with some other election reforms, but we'll see whether he can accomplish that, and if he can, what it gets replaced with.)
      
      I have a friend who worked on the Liberal campaign, he's the president of the Young Liberal auxiliary in Alberta, and is hoping to go to Ottawa soon to work for one of the MPs.
      
      He personally prefers STV (single transferable vote), and he thinks that's what the party will push for, though it'll probably be 2+ years before it gets implemented.
      

  • u/None:

    I think strategic voting might be some kind of Tragedy of the Commons.  Sure, if you vote strategically, it might help enforce your preferences *in this particular election*, but over the long term, it seems to distort the signal that elections provide *in the first place*, as officials come to assume that increasingly large portions of the vote are strategic, and therefore manipulable via means other than appealing to what voters want.
    

    • u/AugSphere:

      Yup. And if we're talking first-past-the-post, then it's even worse, since [strategic voting creates a race to the bottom](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s7tWHJfhiyo). And at the bottom you get two eternally deadlocked opposing parties, which then proceed to reshape the whole political landscape into "greens" and "blues".
      

• u/Salivanth:

  I've figured out a (hopefully) intuitive way to explain the very nebulous and strange (at least to me) concept of "If you can explain all outcomes equally, you have no knowledge." I'd like to run it by you guys for feedback/improvement.
  
  Imagine you have a co-worker who always knows everything, and you tell him that the economy went up last week. He then states several plausible-sounding reasons why of course the economy went up, it only makes sense.
  
  Then you reveal that you lied to him, and the economy went down, and now he starts to make some very plausible-sounding arguments about why THAT made sense all along.
  
  This triggers your bullshit detector. Clearly, he's talking crap. If he genuinely expected the economy to go up, he should have been shocked when you told him you lied. If he expected it to go down, he should have been shocked when you told him it hadn't. If you can come up with an argument for everything, you don't have a GOOD argument for anything. 
  
  And that's how, if someone can explain anything, they don't really know anything.
  

  • u/None:

    Yep!  Bayesian learning involves *letting yourself be surprised.*  If nothing can surprise you, then you more-or-less expect everything possible to happen with equal chances.  If you expect anything and everythinf, how can you claim to know anything in specific?
    

• u/Quillwraith:

  I have a problem with akrasia. (Who doesn't?) 
  
  There's a lot of advice out there on how to combat it, some of which seems likely to be moderately effective... but I find myself unable to put any of said advice into practice, even though I know it would be in my best interest to do so.
  

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