Comments on: Open Thread

By: Aaron

Aaron — Sat, 16 Feb 2008 06:44:23 +0000

Funny quote from The Economist: "Unlike rats, people are rational."

By: P Bertine

P Bertine — Fri, 15 Feb 2008 17:31:02 +0000

pdf23ds:

I cannot point you in the direction of any relevant studies, I can only give you my perspective on mental illness and depression as a former sufferer of major depression who has found relief through 20 years of psychotherapy, psycho-pharmacology, advanced nutrition and advanced “physical therapy” (yoga, meditation, etc).

From my experience with extraordinary institutions in Manhattan and the group work I have done it is pretty clear to me that major depression causes enormous physical pain, inability to reason and suicidal ideation/manifestation. In other words depression is so painful that you loose sight of any possible relief other than death. From my experience I think that it is quiet evidently demonstrable that depression causes pessimistic thoughts… to put it mildly.

Add the fact that with depression often comes something called a “mixed state,” in which there are manic tendencies and you have what can simply be put “really crazy thinking.” Until you have met a depressed AND manic person in a clinical environment and tried to carry on a conversation you cannot begin to make sense of … I can go on and on.

If anyone wants me to go on and on I am happy to. I volunteer the 100′s of people I know in New York and London to be poked and prodded by Robbin and his peers toward the end that perhaps “proof” can be established once and for all that depression makes you think stupid thoughts and is a treatable illness that has a “reported” 20% mortality rate. It would be wonderful if that 20% can be quantified by some of the really incredible minds who post here.

By: Mason

Mason — Thu, 07 Feb 2008 15:36:26 +0000

I was skimming Intrade yesterday and found the lunar x-prize suggested by Robin, and was wondering if there was any more to that story. Mostly, how does knowing if it will be completed before 2012 provide valuable information? I’m sure it does becuase Robin is brilliant, but I don’t see it. Care to explain?

By: Ben Jones

Ben Jones — Tue, 05 Feb 2008 11:05:30 +0000

TGGP – I’ve read both. My point was that debiasing is difficult because it goes against our first intuitions. Yes, some of those intuitions are based in nature, but many are based in nurture. Young children don’t have the sophisticated mental machinery required to ‘examine the lens’, but then neither do they have all the psychological baggage that clogs up our abilities to see things rationally.

By: Z. M. Davis

Z. M. Davis — Tue, 05 Feb 2008 04:55:03 +0000

KapKool, sounds like American politics as viewed from a libertarian perspective (cf. the Nolan chart). Eliezer has written some good posts about group polarization. TGGP, duly noted.

By: KapKool

KapKool — Tue, 05 Feb 2008 03:27:52 +0000

Suppose that the vast majority of learned people are in 1 of 2 opposing camps about a controversial issue. Everyone in camp A believes A1 through AN and ~B1 through ~BN while everyone in camp B believes ~A1 through ~AN and B1 through BN. However, there is also a third, much smaller camp—Camp C—that is almost universally regarded as stupid, ignorant, and irrational, and believes some set of {AK} and {BK}. Even though everyone in camps A and B disagrees strongly with each other, they both agree that camp C is much more irrational than the other camp. That is, everyone in either camp A or B thinks the people in the other main camp are wrong, and at least somewhat irrational, but they think camp C is just a bunch of freaking moonbats.
In the abstract, it’s certainly possible for {AN} and {~BN} to be about equally probable as {BN} and {~AN}, while some set of propositions from both are wildly improbable, but in the real world I think that this is rare. However, it seems to me that a lot of academic disputes are like this, and that it points to a general bias against people with completely different takes on old disputes. I’d like to know if anyone else thinks a lot of academic disputes are like this and whether or not it points to a bias.

By: TGGP

TGGP — Tue, 05 Feb 2008 01:28:59 +0000

After all, something can only be counterintuitive if you’ve had time to make up your mind (conscious or otherwise) about what is intuitive.
That was the statement I was responding to.

By: Z. M. Davis

Z. M. Davis — Tue, 05 Feb 2008 01:07:22 +0000

TGGP, even if many biases are innate rather than learned in origin (to the extent that the old nature/nurture dichotomy holds up), it could still very well be the case that early education would be very effective compared to later education.

By: Brandon Reinhart

Brandon Reinhart — Mon, 04 Feb 2008 21:51:08 +0000

Interesting article on child political bias programming popped up on CNN:

http://www.cnn.com/2008/LIVING/wayoflife/02/04/politykes/index.html

By: TGGP

TGGP — Mon, 04 Feb 2008 15:34:00 +0000

Ben Jones, please read Steven Pinker's "The Blank Slate". Heck, just read over Eliezer's evolutionary psychiatry posts. Robin Hanson discussed his cult experience here. He discussed Scientology here.