How to Measure Anything
Douglas Hubbard’s _... (Read More)
_Epistemic status: trying to vaguely gesture at vague intuitions. What CFARcalls “purple”. A similar idea was ... (Read More) | Continue reading
Summary: the Kalman Filter is Bayesian updating applied to systems that arechanging over time, assuming all our distributions are Gaussians and all ourtransformations are linear.Preamble - the general Bayesian approach to estimation: the Kalman filter is anapproach to estimating … | Continue reading
INTRODUCTIONI've been following the ... (Read More) | Continue reading
Previously (Marginal Revolution): [Gambling Can Save Science](https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2018/08/gambling-can-save-science-2.html)A study was done to attempt to replicate 21 studies published in _Science _and _Nature. _Beforehand, prediction markets were us … | Continue reading
You are unlikely to see me posting here again, after today. There is a saying here that politics is the mind-killer. My heretical realization lately is that philosophy, as generally practiced, can also be mind-killing.As many of you know I am, or was running a twice-monthly Ratio … | Continue reading
_[EDIT: Previous version of this post had a major error. Thanks for ... (ReadMore) | Continue reading
I just want to put this idea in the form of a post, to gather your impressions.I think it's my main rationalist failure mode.Recently in a Facebook group, some poster has proposed this synthesis ofHarari's book '21 lessons':In the 21st century, three narratives were used to expla … | Continue reading
Slippery slopes are themselves a slippery concept. Imagine trying to explain them to an alien: "Well, we right-thinking people are quite sure that the Holocaust happened, so banning Holocaust denial would shut up some crackpots and improve the discourse. But it's one step on t … | Continue reading
This is a cross post from 250bpm.com [http://250bpm.com/blog:132].INTRODUCTIONThere's a trope among Slovak intellectual elite depicting an average Slovak asliving in a village, sitting a local pub, drinking ... (Read More) | Continue reading
This essay consists of summaries, explanations, and discussions of severalpapers which provide high-level arguments and intuitions about why,conceptually, deep learning works. Particular areas of investigation are "Whichclasses of functions can deep neural nets approximate well i … | Continue reading
**Followup to**: [Tsuyoku Naritai](/lw/h8/tsuyoku_naritai_i_want_to_become_stronger/), [Reversed Stupidity is not Intelligence](/lw/lw/reversed_stupidity_is_not_intelligence/)The criticism is sometimes leveled against rationalists: "The Inquisition thought _they_ had the truth! … | Continue reading
**Followup to**: [Einstein's Speed](/lw/qj/einsteins_speed/)Imagine a world much like this one, in which, thanks to gene-selection technologies, the average IQ is 140 (on our scale). Potential Einsteins are one-in-a-thousand, not one-in-a-million; and they grow up in a school s … | Continue reading
**Previously in series**: [Mandatory Secret Identities](/lw/9c/mandatory_secret_identities/)I've noticed a serious problem in which aspiring rationalists vastly overestimate their ability to optimize other people's lives. And I think I have some idea of how the problem arises.Y … | Continue reading
a working prediction market FUNDED BY TRADERS. If someone else will sponsor/subsidize them, a lot more becomes possible. [https://t.co/OgEMahI7ZS](https://t.co/OgEMahI7ZS)> > — Robin Hanson (@robinhanson) [July 26, 2018](https://twitter.com/robinhanson/status/1022535475410731009 … | Continue reading
There is a lot of bad science and controversy in the realm of how to have a healthy lifestyle. Every week we are bombarded with new studies conflicting older studies telling us X is good or Y is bad. Eventually we reach our psychological limit, throw up our hands, and give up. I … | Continue reading
This is the sort of post I'd feel comfortable writing on FB, don't quite feel comfortable writing on LW for some reason, and am currently trying to override that while taking note of why that is.Recently I was having a conversation with a friend about personal growth (any … | Continue reading
Here's an illustrated rendition of a semiformal explanation of certain effects of meditation. It was inspired by, but differs significantly from, Kaj's post on meditation. Some people appreciated ... (Read More)
| Continue readingConsider an AI that is trying to achieve a certain result in a toy world running on a computer. Compare two models of what the AI is and what it's trying to do: first, you could say the AI is a physical program on a computer, which is trying to cause the physical computer tha … | Continue reading
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Epistemic Status: Resident ExpertI’m a little late on this, which was an old promise to Robin Hanson (not that he asked for it). I was motivated to deal with this again by the launch of Augur (REP), the crypto prediction market token. And by the crypto prediction market token, I … | Continue reading
For years, my self-education was stupid and wasteful. I learned by consuming blog posts, Wikipedia articles, classic texts, podcast episodes, popular books, video lectures, peer-reviewed papers, ... (Read More)
| Continue readingWe’ve discussed signaling and status endlessly on LW; I think this is right up our vein: a 2011 review of research on the connections betwee | Continue reading
Lots of people agree the internet is full of outrage content these days. I think this is so obvious I'm not even going to post sources that say it.Why this is the case isn't completely clear. I count at least four common theories which of course aren't exclusive:media … | Continue reading
I'm constantly on the lookout for _words and phrases that map well to reality. _If you study history and if you study language, even just a little bit, you wind up realizing that for most of history, there was often _a_ distinct lack of words and phrases crucial to understand … | Continue reading
TL;DR: The Great Filter from the Fermi paradox could be escaped by choosing a random strategy. However, if all civilizations acted randomly, this could be the actual cause of the Fermi paradox. Using a meta-random strategy solves this.----"Death in Damascus" is a decisi … | Continue reading
A community blog devoted to refining the art of rationality | Continue reading
Previously in series: My Way
Followup to: ... (Read More)
A community blog devoted to refining the art of rationality | Continue reading
Part of the sequence: The Science of Winning at Life
After three months of practice, I now use a single algorithm to beat procrastination most of the times I face it.1 It ... (Read More)
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Some have suggested ... (Read More)
| Continue readingRelated to: Best career models for doing research?, (Virtual) Employment Open Thread In the spirit of offering some practical real world a | Continue reading
Part of the sequence: ... (Read More)
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Douglas Hubbard’s _... (Read More)
LessWrong seems to be a big fan of spaced-repetition flashcard programs like Anki, Supermemo, or Mnemosyne. I used to be. After using them religiously for 3 years in medical school, I now categorically advise against using them for large volumes of memorization.
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