SSC
Predictions For 2014
Scott Alexander lists 60 predictions for 2014 across global events, online communities, and personal life, assigning probabilities to each.
6 min read 908 words
A thread through the archive
rationality
Essays tagged “rationality”. Follow an idea across the archive.
Essays on rationality
76 essaysSSC
If It’s Worth Doing, It’s Worth Doing With Made-Up Statistics
Scott Alexander argues for the value of using quantification and made-up statistics in decision-making, even when imperfect, as they often outperform intuition and reveal biases in our thinking.
10 min read 1,538 words
LW
2012 Survey Results
Scott presents comprehensive results from the 2012 Less Wrong Survey of 1195 respondents, covering demographics, beliefs, IQ measures, and a concerning calibration test showing poor performance at avoiding overconfidence bias.
35 min read 5,419 words
LW
Nonmindkilling open questions
Scott asks readers for examples of popular, important, factual questions with high uncertainty and no clear 'responsible' position, to use when teaching probabilistic thinking, noting that his previous examples like global warming have become too polarized.
3 min read 363 words
LW
How would you take over Rome?
Scott presents a thought experiment about using perfect knowledge and intellect to take over ancient Rome as an upper bound for understanding AI takeover scenarios.
3 min read 419 words
LW
Calibrate your self-assessments
Scott discusses how people's subjective self-assessments are often miscalibrated, using his own exam experiences and research on physical attractiveness and likeability to argue for replacing internal feelings with objective external measurements.
14 min read 2,050 words
LW
Reversed stupidity sometimes provides useful information
Scott argues against Eliezer's position that reversed stupidity is never intelligence, showing that observing many people believe something for bad reasons can help identify 'popular claims' that people assert regardless of truth, which lets you properly discount future assertions of those claims.
6 min read 864 words
LW
Tendencies in reflective equilibrium
Scott explores how people's moral intuitions often conflict and can be reconciled through reflective equilibrium, using the example of inconsistent punishment judgments for theft by people of different socioeconomic classes.
9 min read 1,298 words
LW
To what degree do we have goals?
Scott argues against negotiating with unconscious desires, distinguishing between behavior-executors (which have context-dependent urges) and utility-maximizers (which have stable preferences), and suggests we mistakenly model ourselves as the latter when we're actually the former.
13 min read 1,971 words
LW
Techniques for probability estimates
Scott describes six techniques for translating vague probability feelings into accurate numerical estimates, explaining the strengths and weaknesses of each method.
13 min read 1,936 words
LW
Efficient Charity: Do Unto Others...
Scott argues that charitable giving should be approached with rigorous cost-benefit analysis, comparing it to choosing survival gear for an Arctic expedition, and demonstrates how common charitable choices waste opportunities to save lives.
13 min read 1,936 words
LW
Book Review: The Root of Thought
Scott reviews a book arguing that glial cells are crucial for cognition (not just neuron support), and uses this century-long scientific oversight as a cautionary tale about how entire communities can miss important phenomena.
11 min read 1,605 words
LW
AndrewH's observation and opportunity costs
Scott argues that opportunity costs should be calculated based on what you'll realistically do with resources, not on theoretical optimal alternatives, using examples from cryonics spending, NASA budgets, and charitable giving.
4 min read 513 words
LW
Shut Up And Guess
Scott calculates that on exams penalizing wrong answers at half the reward for correct ones, guessing always has positive expected value, but none of his intelligent classmates would accept this logic despite clear explanations.
11 min read 1,700 words
LW
What I Tell You Three Times Is True
Scott argues that affirmations (repeatedly stating goals aloud) might actually work based on evidence that subconscious beliefs affect success and that verbal repetition influences subconscious beliefs, though he acknowledges this needs proper scientific study.
9 min read 1,379 words
LW
Generalizing From One Example
Scott explains the "typical mind fallacy" - the tendency to assume everyone's mind works like your own - using examples from mental imagery, personality differences, and social behavior, arguing that rationality requires overcoming this bias.
13 min read 1,950 words
LW
Extreme Rationality: It's Not That Great
Scott argues that "extreme rationality" (x-rationality) - the formal study of rationality beyond normal intelligent thinking - provides much less practical benefit than the rationalist community believes, estimating a correlation of only 0.1 with success.
16 min read 2,477 words
LW
Help, help, I'm being oppressed!
Scott analyzes why multiple groups in America simultaneously claim persecution, identifying psychological motivations behind these claims and warning against the rhetorical trick of presenting oneself as both persecuted underdog and inevitable winner.
11 min read 1,640 words
LW
Defense Against The Dark Arts: Case Study #1
Scott identifies five logical fallacies in a popular anecdote about Steve Jobs rejecting Indian spirituality, arguing it succeeded through tribal appeal rather than logical merit, and uses it as a case study for why careful argument analysis must become automatic.
13 min read 1,992 words
LW
Fight Biases, or Route Around Them?
Scott distinguishes between bias as a cognitive process versus bias as a faulty belief, then proposes using the Implicit Association Test to empirically test whether debiasing techniques work by either fighting bias directly or routing around it.
10 min read 1,518 words
LW
When Truth Isn't Enough
Scott distinguishes between a statement's denotation (factual content) and connotation (emotional implications), showing how technically true statements can mislead through subtext, and proposes ADBOC as a response technique.
7 min read 1,034 words
LW
Never Leave Your Room
Scott surveys research on priming, including studies showing it can sway political judgments and votes, and suggests deciding important matters in a neutral environment.
8 min read 1,116 words
LW
The Skeptic's Trilemma
Scott argues that good skeptics should try to explain strange claims, as Marinatos did with Atlantis and Santorini, rather than worship them or reflexively ignore them.
11 min read 1,647 words
LW
The Least Convenient Possible World
Scott argues that rationalists should test their objections against 'the least convenient possible world,' where convenient excuses are removed, in order to find their true reasons and avoid dodging hard questions.
10 min read 1,438 words
LW
The Apologist and the Revolutionary
Scott explains Ramachandran's theory that anosognosia and split-brain confabulation reflect a left-brain 'apologist' and a right-brain 'revolutionary' whose balance governs our ability to change our minds.
11 min read 1,618 words