posted on March 19, 2021 07:40 AM by
u/ExplainDeleuzeToMe
42
u/dgerard75 pointsat 1616143335.000000
bayesian reasoning was never meant to mean plugging numbers into
Bayes’ Rule
we never meant that you should, ahahaha, use the formula we
kept going on and on and on about for fucking ever and referred people
to EY’s Javascript Bayes calculator as if that was the sure fire 100%
effective evangelistic conversion tool of choice - or that you should
think in terms of the thing called “Bayesian epistemology” that existed
well before we started claiming our prejudices were numbers
i.e. this is direct advocacy of literary Bayesianism: thinking that
if you just say things in the correct form of words, then correct
reasoning will come out
the SMBC comic is a stereotype of literary Bayesianism because
they keep acting like this
the example she gives of tech sexism also describes how literary
Bayesianism fends off tech sexism, just as if we can’t see the real
world results. like, did James Damore exist
edit: and, as noted in other comments, Galef
taught CFAR courses on how to think you’re doing the
numbers.
The punchline of the comic is "sometimes I change my opinion and think it's math" and then she earnestly talks about how *other* people are much more reluctant to change their minds on politics and how being a *Bayesian* makes you so much better at understanding uncertainty and ~~updating you priors~~ eh change your mind but not in a robot way, idk just by being bayesian but definitely not in a robot way for sure
It's worse than that, it was a \_headliner\_ item for the whole weekend. "Building Bayes Habits" is what it was called. Talked about things like "base rate neglect", and "how to establish priors", and "strength of evidence".
It was one of the more popular workshops. CFAR was being sold as a way to use the science of cognitive biases to refine and improve your rationality.
> "of course it was never intended that a group named after a formula meant we used the formula, we just meant like, honor it".
Reminds me of the monks in Canticle for Leibowitz honouring the Blessed Blueprint.
They did the same thing with the Roko’s Basilisk nonsense. They took
it so seriously that they actually banned talking about it (weird coming
from libertarian free speech absolutists), but then when it went viral
and made them look crazy to outsiders, especially the outsiders with
money who fund their space like Elon Musk, Yud commented, “Don’t believe
journalists about Basilisk, story grossly wrong. Exotic decision theory,
badly described, huge barriers in real life”.
Non-sarcastically, that's how humans actually operate. The human brain is _amazing_ at doing heuristics that we can't yet come close to approximating with a machine.
The issue is that these jackasses think that they can make their brain into a machine, which is bullshit. The better approach has always been "humans are basically a giant heuristic processing machine, how can we work with that better without pretending that we can turn humans into something that they are not?"
> not be vulnerable to the problem where "If anyone claims X is offensive, then we can't use it, no matter how unrepresentative or insincere they are
I've never really understood this line of thought. Why would this ever remotely be a problem?
Is it like a limited vocabulary thing? "I only know 15 words, so if you manage to convince me that 'lame' is ableist, I literally won't be able to describe things that aren't cool anymore?" Or what?
Instead of running a regression analysis to derive the cost benefit ratio on whether you've decreased someone's net well being by some critical threshold, why not use that cognitive effort to go learn some new words? It's a big, exciting language out there kids.
Need a new word for "not cool?" Insipid, trite, cliched, colorless, pedestrian, monotonous, stale... See, you can be more specific and evocative -- and it will probably up your "Such A Smart Rationalist" affect at the same time!
This is a terrible comment . She says she's not vulnerable to that problem, so she isn't buying it. I don't think we need to misrepresent her to find flaws
In the tweet, she says she does not want to
>be **vulnerable to the problem** where "If anyone claims X is offensive, then we can't use it, no matter how unrepresentative or insincere they are"
You're right that she says she won't be subject to it, but she clearly thinks it's a real issue. When or where has that ever been a problem for anyone?
I intuitively detected that it is just a spell to keep the incumbency
in power. She cited Elon Musk and Jeff Beozos as examples of
entrepreneurs with the scout mindset, but it is just a back
extrapolation that factors out the privilege that started from and
didn’t correct for survivor bias. She also hypocritically asked for
pundits to make predictions but I couldn’t find any she made to her own
standards.
I agree with going back and tallying up pundit predicts, but also the
facts pundits cite to see if they are correct. I am still looking for an
affordable speech to text framework so I can push podcasts into
elasticsearch.
I need what ever book is the antithesis to the scout mindset because
it doesn’t benefit me because I am not an incumbent.
we never meant that you should, ahahaha, use the formula we kept going on and on and on about for fucking ever and referred people to EY’s Javascript Bayes calculator as if that was the sure fire 100% effective evangelistic conversion tool of choice - or that you should think in terms of the thing called “Bayesian epistemology” that existed well before we started claiming our prejudices were numbers
i.e. this is direct advocacy of literary Bayesianism: thinking that if you just say things in the correct form of words, then correct reasoning will come out
the SMBC comic is a stereotype of literary Bayesianism because they keep acting like this
the example she gives of tech sexism also describes how literary Bayesianism fends off tech sexism, just as if we can’t see the real world results. like, did James Damore exist
edit: and, as noted in other comments, Galef taught CFAR courses on how to think you’re doing the numbers.
[deleted]
They did the same thing with the Roko’s Basilisk nonsense. They took it so seriously that they actually banned talking about it (weird coming from libertarian free speech absolutists), but then when it went viral and made them look crazy to outsiders, especially the outsiders with money who fund their space like Elon Musk, Yud commented, “Don’t believe journalists about Basilisk, story grossly wrong. Exotic decision theory, badly described, huge barriers in real life”.
Rationality signalling.
https://mobile.twitter.com/juliagalef/status/1372643587872161802
Julia Galef is pissing me off with her incumbency apologetic she has been making with her book tour for The Scout Mindset.
I listened to Julia Galef on podcasts twice already. Once on Sean Carroll’s podcast and once again on The Neoliberal podcast.
I intuitively detected that it is just a spell to keep the incumbency in power. She cited Elon Musk and Jeff Beozos as examples of entrepreneurs with the scout mindset, but it is just a back extrapolation that factors out the privilege that started from and didn’t correct for survivor bias. She also hypocritically asked for pundits to make predictions but I couldn’t find any she made to her own standards.
I agree with going back and tallying up pundit predicts, but also the facts pundits cite to see if they are correct. I am still looking for an affordable speech to text framework so I can push podcasts into elasticsearch.
I need what ever book is the antithesis to the scout mindset because it doesn’t benefit me because I am not an incumbent.