The End of History Illusion

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« on: April 24, 2013, 06:24:09 pm »
Quote from: Twooars
http://www.sciencemag.org/content/339/6115/96.full

"Young people, middle-aged people, and older people all believed they had changed a lot in the past but would change relatively little in the future. People, it seems, regard the present as a watershed moment at which they have finally become the person they will be for the rest of their lives. This “end of history illusion” had practical consequences, leading people to overpay for future opportunities to indulge their current preferences."

I thought this is interesting, in the context of Bakker's philosophy in general, stressing how deluded we are about 'knowing' ourselves. :)

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« Reply #1 on: April 24, 2013, 06:24:15 pm »
Quote from: Madness
One of many biases involving decision making and our ability to reconcile what we want in the future, executing that plan, and the cognitive hiccups that occur in between planning and executing. Discounting seems to be the catchword among studies of this nature, usually involving economic decisions (less now, more later), if you find yourself interested.

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« Reply #2 on: April 24, 2013, 06:24:20 pm »
Quote from: Twooars
Sounds interesting. I have recently been reading bits and pieces about Daniel Kahneman's findings about our general optimism in planning. All really interesting stuff, but the question is, does knowing our shortcomings help us be better individuals?!

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« Reply #3 on: April 24, 2013, 06:24:26 pm »
Quote from: Haaska
Quote
All really interesting stuff, but the question is, does knowing our shortcomings help us be better individuals?!

Well, apparently,  there's no reason to be overly optimistic about this. Jorge posted a link (on Three Pound Brain) to a survey of the online community LessWrong, which is more or less dedicated to anticipating and managing the mentioned shortcomings.
In light of this, the survey is all the more discouraging. Scroll down to "calibration" and see for yourself!

http://lesswrong.com/lw/fp5/2012_survey_results/

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« Reply #4 on: April 24, 2013, 06:24:33 pm »
Quote from: Madness
Even worse, our biases are growing biases...

If its possible to overcome cognitive heuristics, it won't primarily result from rationally thinking about not giving into a heuristic.

+1, Haaska, for statistics :).

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« Reply #5 on: April 24, 2013, 06:24:39 pm »
Quote from: Callan S.
Quote from: Haaska
Quote
All really interesting stuff, but the question is, does knowing our shortcomings help us be better individuals?!

Well, apparently,  there's no reason to be overly optimistic about this. Jorge posted a link (on Three Pound Brain) to a survey of the online community LessWrong, which is more or less dedicated to anticipating and managing the mentioned shortcomings.
In light of this, the survey is all the more discouraging. Scroll down to "calibration" and see for yourself!

http://lesswrong.com/lw/fp5/2012_survey_results/
And as I asked on the TPB, what was the graph supposed to look like?

Do I get a 'emperors new clothes' cookie, for spotting that no actual graph configuration was visualised at all to compare against?

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« Reply #6 on: April 24, 2013, 06:24:44 pm »
Quote from: Jorge
The graph should look like a straight diagonal line for hyper-rationalists with a well-developed sense of their own cognitive shortcomings. (People who have 100% certainty should get the question right 100% of the time, 90% of the people with 90% certainty should get the question right, etc)

Instead, for whatever reason, the Bayesian reasoners of LessWrong ended up thinking themselves even more sure of Mr Bayes birthday than they should have.


Basically they thought:
"I'm so smart BECAUSE I'm a Bayesian!"

Where they should have thought:
"Hm, given that I am a Bayesian, I should BE CAREFUL about reaching an overly optimistic conclusion regarding Rev. Bayes birthday."

As it turns out, not even Wikipedia is 100% certain of Rev. Bayes real birthday, there is apparently some ambiguity as to the exact year, so the question was very well suited to this experiment.

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« Reply #7 on: April 24, 2013, 06:24:50 pm »
Quote from: Madness
Lol. +1 , Jorge.

Your avatar always reminds me of Hypnotoad. Welcome back - as I offered to Sci, I owe you title[/b] should you want it.

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« Reply #8 on: April 24, 2013, 06:24:57 pm »
Quote from: Callan S.
Quote from: Jorge
The graph should look like a straight diagonal line for hyper-rationalists with a well-developed sense of their own cognitive shortcomings. (People who have 100% certainty should get the question right 100% of the time, 90% of the people with 90% certainty should get the question right, etc)

Instead, for whatever reason, the Bayesian reasoners of LessWrong ended up thinking themselves even more sure of Mr Bayes birthday than they should have.

But...doesn't that diagnal line itself seemed a borked claim? It says someone who is 100% certain should be 100% right?? Should be?

That is the ideal?

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« Reply #9 on: April 25, 2013, 04:06:30 pm »
This puts Kellhus' mad exultation as he runs to Kyudea in TTT in new perspective.  Passionless my ass.
What is reason, but the blindness of the soul?

R. SCOTT RAP3ZT TERRIBLEZ LOLZ.

if Kellhus was thinking all of this, he's going to freak out when he get's back and Kelmomas is all "i lieks to eatum peeples da"

the whole thing is orchestrated by Kellhus who is wearing a Bashrag as if it were a suit