Overcoming Bias

New York OB Meetup (ad-hoc) on Monday, Mar 24, @6pm

Correction:  The giant Starbucks is at 13 Astor Place #25, not 51 Astor which is a smaller Starbucks.  (Yes, there are two Starbucks a block apart, here.)  The smaller Starbucks has metal steps and a ramp leading up; don't go here.  The giant Starbucks, which is where we want to go, is next to Lafayette and Astor.

I (Eliezer) am in New York at the moment, and will have some time free on Monday night, March 24th, to meet any interested New York Overcoming Bias readers.

Where:  The giant Starbucks at 13 Astor Place #25, New York, NY 10003
When:  6pm, this Monday (March 24th, 2008)
Who:  Eliezer Yudkowsky (866-983-597), Carl Shulman

If you plan on attending, please leave a comment, so we know to expect you.  If you're going to arrive later than 6pm, please note this as well.

I'll also be at Princeton on Sunday.  My time is already mostly spoken for, but if you're at Princeton and desperately want to meet up, comment or email before 7am tomorrow.

Penguicon & Blook

One million cumulative daily visits!  Woot n' stuff.  Also we're in the top 5,000 of all blogs on Technorati, and one of the top 10 econblogs by Technorati rank.

Seems like a good time to mention that I'll be appearing at Penguicon, a combination open-source/science-fiction convention in Troy, MI, Apr 18-20, as a Nifty.  I'll be doing an intro to Bayesian reasoning that you probably don't need if you're reading this, possibly a panel on the Virtues of a Rationalist, some stuff on human intelligence upgrades, and definitely "The Ethics of Ending the World" with Aaron Diaz (Dresden Codak).

After the jump, you can see some proposed cover art for the blook.

One Million Visits

Z.M.Davis calls our attention to the fact that Overcoming Bias has now had over one million distinct visits, and over two million page views.   For the last month we've averaged over four thousand visits per day.  And this is all ignores RSS reads.   Since starting in Nov. '06, we've had almost a thousand posts and eighteen thousand comments.  For the curious, here is our entire history of page views:

I didn't notice earlier as I'm on travel, giving the same "futarchy" talk in Zürich Monday, London Wednesday, and Oxford Friday, all the while suffering a severe cold. 

37 Ways That Words Can Be Wrong

Followup to:  Just about every post in February, and some in March

Some reader is bound to declare that a better title for this post would be "37 Ways That You Can Use Words Unwisely", or "37 Ways That Suboptimal Use Of Categories Can Have Negative Side Effects On Your Cognition".

But one of the primary lessons of this gigantic list is that saying "There's no way my choice of X can be 'wrong'" is nearly always an error in practice, whatever the theory.  You can always be wrong.  Even when it's theoretically impossible to be wrong, you can still be wrong.  There is never a Get-Out-Of-Jail-Free card for anything you do.  That's life.

Besides, I can define the word "wrong" to mean anything I like - it's not like a word can be wrong.

Personally, I think it quite justified to use the word "wrong" when:

1. A word fails to connect to reality in the first place.  Is Socrates a framster?  Yes or no?  (The Parable of the Dagger.)
   
   
2. Your argument, if it worked, could coerce reality to go a different way by choosing a different word definition.  Socrates is a human, and humans, by definition, are mortal.  So if you defined humans to not be mortal, would Socrates live forever?  (The Parable of Hemlock.)
   
   
3. You try to establish any sort of empirical proposition as being true "by definition".  Socrates is a human, and humans, by definition, are mortal.  So is it a logical truth if we empirically predict that Socrates should keel over if he drinks hemlock?  It seems like there are logically possible, non-self-contradictory worlds where Socrates doesn't keel over - where he's immune to hemlock by a quirk of biochemistry, say.  Logical truths are true in all possible worlds, and so never tell you which possible world you live in - and anything you can establish "by definition" is a logical truth.  (The Parable of Hemlock.)
   
   
4. You unconsciously slap the conventional label on something, without actually using the verbal definition you just gave.  You know perfectly well that Bob is "human", even though, on your definition, you can never call Bob "human" without first observing him to be mortal.  (The Parable of Hemlock.)
   
   
5. The act of labeling something with a word, disguises a challengable inductive inference you are making. If the last 11 egg-shaped objects drawn have been blue, and the last 8 cubes drawn have been red, it is a matter of induction to say this rule will hold in the future.  But if you call the blue eggs "bleggs" and the red cubes "rubes", you may reach into the barrel, feel an egg shape, and think "Oh, a blegg."  (Words as Hidden Inferences.)

My Favorite Liar

[the following recounts an exceptionally powerful teaching technique employed by an economics professor of mine at university; teaching fact-checking and skepticism by salting it into the content of his delivery]

One of my favorite professors in college was a self-confessed liar.

I guess that statement requires a bit of explanation.

The topic of Corporate Finance/Capital Markets is, even within the world of the Dismal Science, a exceptionally dry and boring subject matter, encumbered by complex mathematic models and obscure economic theory.

What made Dr. K memorable was a gimmick he employed that began with his introduction at the beginning of his first class:

"Now I know some of you have already heard of me, but for the benefit of those who are unfamiliar, let me explain how I teach. Between today until the class right before finals, it is my intention to work into each of my lectures ... one lie. Your job, as students, among other things, is to try and catch me in the Lie of the Day." And thus began our ten-week course.

Classic Sichuan in Millbrae, Thu Feb 21, 7pm

Followup to:  Bay Area Bayesians Unite, OB Meetup

The Bay Area Overcoming Bias meetup will take place in the Classic Sichuan restaurant, 148 El Camino Real, Millbrae, CA 94031.  15 people said they would "Definitely" attend and an additional 27 said "Maybe".  Oh, and Robin Hanson will be there too.

Dinner is scheduled for 7:00pm, on Thursday, February 21st, 2008.  I'll show up at 6:30pm, though, just to cut people some antislack if it's easier for them to arrive earlier.

If you're arriving via the BART/Caltrain station, just walk up from the Southbound Caltrain side and turn right onto El Camino, walk a few meters, and you're there.

If driving, I'd suggest taking the exit from 101 onto Millbrae Ave - the exit from 280 onto Millbrae surprisingly goes down a winding mountain road before arriving at downtown.  Doesn't mean you have to take 101 the whole way there, but I definitely recommend the 101 exit.

OB Meetup: Millbrae, Thu 21 Feb, 7pm

The Overcoming Bias meetup has been scheduled for Thursday, February 21st, at 7pm.  We're going to look at locating this in Millbrae within walking distance of the BART / Caltrain station.  The particular restaurant I had in mind turns out to be booked for Thursdays, so if you know a good Millbrae restaurant (with a private room?) in walking distance of the train station, please post in the comments.  I'll be looking at restaurants shortly.

Why not schedule to a day other than Thursday, you ask?

Because:

Robin Hanson will be in the Bay Area and attending!  Woohoo!

If you would be able to make Thursday the 21st, 7pm, in Millbrae, somewhere near the BART/Caltrain, please vote below.  No, seriously, please vote, now - the kind of restaurant I have to find depends on how many people will be attending.

Rationality Quotes 1

I'll be moving to Redwood City, CA in a week, so forgive me if I don't get a regular post out every day between now and then.  As a substitute offering, some items from my (offline) quotesfile:

---

"It appears to be a quite general principle that, whenever there is a randomized way of doing something, then there is a nonrandomized way that delivers better performance but requires more thought."
       -- E. T. Jaynes

"When you're young, you look at television and think, There's a conspiracy. The networks have conspired to dumb us down. But when you get a little older, you realize that's not true. The networks are in business to give people exactly what they want. That's a far more depressing thought. Conspiracy is optimistic! You can shoot the bastards!"
        -- Steve Jobs

"Saving a drowning child is no more a moral duty than understanding a syllogism is a logical one."
        -- Sam Harris, The End of Faith

Debugging Comments

Back in October, Greg Mankiw cancelled comments at his blog:

Unfortunately, a few (usually anonymous) commenters too often crossed the line.  I just don't have the time to police comments and enforce good behavior, especially since some posts were generating more than 100 comments. And I don't want to host a party in which a small vitriolic minority consistently tries to ruin the event for everyone else. So I decided to turn the comments feature off.

Xeni Jardin acted similarly:

When our audience was small in the early days, interacting was simple. ... No moderation, no complication, come as you are, anonymity's fine. ... The audience grew. Fast. And with that, grew the number of antisocial actors, "drive-by trolls," people for whom dialogue wasn't the point. ... With much regret, we removed the comments feature entirely. ...

Posting on Politics

Politics, ah, politics!  If human insanities could physically manifest as lumps of putrefaction, and the dripping slimes collected into a giant festering pit, and the mound of corruption formed itself into a monster and shambled forth to eat brains...

Ordinarily I prefer to discuss politics indirectly, rather than directly.  Politics varies from government to government.  Better to talk about human universals - cognitive biases that can be nailed down and examined in the laboratory - malfunctions of sanity that appear wherever humans go.  Then it's up to you to apply the knowledge to your own political situation.

This policy also avoids offending people, so I tend to suspect my clever-sounding rationale for following it.

Over the next two weeks, Iowa and New Hampshire will exercise their Constitutional right to appoint the next President of the United States.  I hope you will forgive me if I am, briefly, relevant.

I intend to do a series of three posts directly applying to politics.  Don't worry, after that it's back to the safe refuge of cognitive science.

Rest assured that I don't plan on endorsing a party, let alone a candidate.

If I say something that you disagree with, remember that my attempts at rationality are not sourced from a divine scripture, and hence are not a package deal. You read plenty of other blogs, I hope, where an author occasionally says something you dislike, from time to time?