This essay, on “The 38 most common fiction writing mistakes”, offers advice to writers. But the rest of us can also learn useful details on how fiction can bias our thinking. Here are my summary of key ways it says fiction differs from reality (detailed quotes below):
“When humans can't know something, humans often make up answers anyway, by various forms of handwaving of varying level of sloppiness. That is religion and philosophy, homebrew or academic.“
> That's an odd comment, dmytryl, unless I'm misunderstanding you. First, Kahnmeman has no truck with transhumanists
Transhumanists however absolutely love Kahneman.
> You would have to look at the research on controlled and automatic processes, which has been a mainstay of experiments in cognitive psychology for half a century.
Where's a trial that has regular folks predict people's actions, and the people who have been explained the dual process theory trying to predict people's actions?
Besides, the notion is ridiculous. If you do any task that is "controlled", each step is still "automatic" and so is the decision how to break down the task. Some tasks require several serial steps to solve.
> empirical theorizing
What is empirical about it? Yudkowsky is anti-philosophy in words, not in deed.
I am somewhat anti-philosophy - I do consider that most philosophical questions are absolutely non-questions, while some are genuine questions that may be either solvable or otherwise resolved by mathematics in maybe 100 maybe 10 000 years maybe never. For example, the question whenever the euclidean 3d space is some intrinsic reality, has been resolved - the idea was pretty damn silly. The questions concerning consciousness have not and the approach is nowhere in sight (and we can't reasonably discard those questions as non-questions either, not yet). When humans can't know something, humans often make up answers anyway, by various forms of handwaving of varying level of sloppiness. That is religion and philosophy, homebrew or academic.
where is the massive evidence that shows the people who use "system 1" and "system 2" false dichotomy perform better at predicting other people? I don't see any.You would have to look at the research on controlled and automatic processes, which has been a mainstay of experiments in cognitive psychology for half a century.
this one is clearly Freud's id and ego re-branded in a way particularly attractive for aspies and transhumanists That's an odd comment, dmytryl, unless I'm misunderstanding you. First, Kahnmeman has no truck with transhumanists (nor do I--although I have some aspy traits, mainly difficulty appreciating context emotionally.). Second, ego and id are not the same distinction. Ego contains conscious, preconscious, and unconscious; id is entirely unconscious. The distinction is equivalent to part what Freud called his topographical analysis: conscious, preconscious, and unconscious, which, as I say, cross-cuts the structural analysis. Freud first came up with the topographical analysis; later the structural analysis, inasmuch as the topographical analysis is much more obvious and is essentially embraced by almost all psychologists today in one name or another.
pontificating about field(s) that they don't understand (with better social grace, perhaps, but the general approach is the same).
Well, I think you do that regarding philosophy and psychology. It's annoying, but it can still be of interest. I think the important thing is to distinguish belief from opinion. (See my "Is epistemic equality a fiction" — http://tinyurl.com/6kamrjs )
I prefer arguing opinions, but the distinction is not itself widely accepted. (I'm going to have to explain it in construal-level theory terms.)<g>
if a confidence in something can't be decreased by some event, not even a little, it should not be increased by the negation of that event.
I think you're making a "false dichotomy." The nonexistence of unequivocal prediction doesn't mean that confidence isn't decreased by evidence.
Look, you draw conclusions without precise prediction all the time in everyday life. Science isn't qualitatively different.
The problem with Yudkowsky's disdain for philosophy is that it is pure hypocrisy.
Whereas I think he really is deeply antiphilosophical and doesn't have an inkling about what philosophy is about--admits here he can't even read "ordinary books." Like you, he tries to solve philosophical (conceptual) problems by purely empirical theorizing. The difference is that your science is better, not that you have a different attitude toward philosophy.
if a confidence in something can't be decreased by some event, not even a little, it should not be increased by the negation of that event. I'm not aware of any mathematical formalism that would allow this. (Perhaps there is misunderstanding? I did not mean that a single experiment should be able to overturn a theory completely).
Something can be "truth" of proposition, or usefulness of proposition, doesn't matter. If you are concerned with usefulness, ala functionalism - where is the massive evidence that shows the people who use "system 1" and "system 2" false dichotomy perform better at predicting other people? I don't see any.
with regards to the "system 1" and "system 2", they are fiction even according to Kahneman himself ( http://www.newappsblog.com/... ). People love dichotomies of this kind, and this one is clearly Freud's id and ego re-branded in a way particularly attractive for aspies and transhumanists (whom really love inappropriate engineering analogies for states of mind). Also: when deliberately adding a fictional dichotomy, Kahneman ought to have used wording that is less prone to inducing bias; one can hardly come up with something worse than "system 1" and "system 2". Especially given that, plain as day, the examples of the "system 2" thinking, such as his own choice of example of multiplication of 17 by 24, are broken down into "system 1" steps by "system 1" itself. Specifically: I multiply 24 by 20, then I substract 24*3 which I know . The plan is a "type 1" knee jerk reaction, each step is a "type 1" knee jerk reaction. Multi step reasoning can provide answers in many circumstances where single step reasoning can not, everyone knows that, without any false dichotomies like "system 1" for single step and "system 2" for multi step.
re: the philosophers and engineers, the biggest difference is that latter sometimes have a lot of money, and are far more numerous. The Katja that you referenced as some sort of philosopher authority, bought into this scam to the point of moving to different continent, no?
with regards to philosophers of science or historians of science: how's about referencing scientists for once, rather than this crowd which does the same thing that Yudkowsky does and what you do not like: pontificating about field(s) that they don't understand (with better social grace, perhaps, but the general approach is the same). The problem with Yudkowsky's disdain for philosophy is that it is pure hypocrisy.
Also note that Thomas Kuhn was a historian of science, not<t i=""> a philosopher. He probably did the most to rubbish the verificationist/falsificationist mythology.
I suppose that you, like Yudkowsky, have a particularly low opinion of historians as well as philosophers. (The fact that most of them are full of crap doesn't distinguish them from other endeavors. Almost all of Yudkowsky's fan club are engineers. Philosophers and historians make their own stupidities, but at least they know enough to stay away from that kind of con. You won't see them contrlibuting $20,000 to a Singularity fund drive, as you find engineers doing.)
No true predictions, as you would require, even in physics. Only plausibility arguments--although more decisive arguments, relatively speaking, in the "hard" sciences.
Far from "defining" anything, philosophy is squabbling over the matters under which everything is invariant (or should be invariant), such as choice of words, and generally has detrimental effect on progress of science in so much as anyone gives any weight what so ever to it. See Boltzmann and positivism.
Did I say philosophy defines things? The point isn't philosophy's grandeur but that certain of its critics are themselves prisoners of (stupid) philosophies--of Popperian nonesense that every thinking person who has seriously considered the matters have rejected.
Falsibiability as a criterion died with the failure of verisimilitude. Both falsificationism and verificationism are both dead. And those are the schools that tried to "define things"--but they were creatures of academic philosophy.
And what bearing it has exactly on the issue? A theory can have evidence in favour of its usefulness, or against, or it's greater usefulness than alternatives, and it works the same. If theory does not actually predict the variance in the observables, then it is not useful (or not even a theory).
Far from "defining" anything, philosophy is squabbling over the matters under which everything is invariant (or should be invariant), such as choice of words, and generally has detrimental effect on progress of science in so much as anyone gives any weight what so ever to it. See Boltzmann and positivism.
When people try to compensate for their cowardly loss aversion, they do what usually happens when you try to compensate for unconscious bias consciously: they overcompensate. (Re overcompensation bias, see my "The deeper solution to the mystery of moralism" — http://tinyurl.com/9exlxlk )
Far-mode (and its adjunct, literature) are more efficient compensation mechanisms than the conscious effort that engenders excess.
The tendency (both heuristic and biasing in effect) evolved when losses were more costly than today: i.e., absent the ability to save long-term, any loss presumably readily meant death.
The biasing effect of this heuristic becomes obvious when you consider that what's experienced as loss depends on how narrowly you draw the categories.
Katja Grace posted a theory of loss aversion about a month ago. She, like others, try to present it as rational adaptation. The rational-agent theory dies hard. (Ask Drewfus. If evolution were as perfectionist as he requires, there might be good reason to believe in "God.")
Yes, and this would be getting close to my position - that when the individual is taken out of the lab and embedded into a society, his/her apparent biases start making sense.
What we need now is a much improved understanding of society, so that individual behavior can be studied in the proper context. The accepted ideas of Sociology with its emphasis on rehashed Marxism is a problem in this regard, and perhaps one of the main bottlenecks to scientific progress.
Biases Of Fiction
“When humans can't know something, humans often make up answers anyway, by various forms of handwaving of varying level of sloppiness. That is religion and philosophy, homebrew or academic.“
Don’t sprain your wrist tipping that fedora: https://m.encyclopediadrama...
Found the Alt-Rightist.
So many fedora tippers in the comments sections.
Don’t sprain your wrist tipping that fedora.
“If an author isn't also a psychologist of the caliber of Freud and Nietzsche”
Nietzsche was a pig who was in love with his sister: https://m.encyclopediadrama...
> That's an odd comment, dmytryl, unless I'm misunderstanding you. First, Kahnmeman has no truck with transhumanists
Transhumanists however absolutely love Kahneman.
> You would have to look at the research on controlled and automatic processes, which has been a mainstay of experiments in cognitive psychology for half a century.
Where's a trial that has regular folks predict people's actions, and the people who have been explained the dual process theory trying to predict people's actions?
Besides, the notion is ridiculous. If you do any task that is "controlled", each step is still "automatic" and so is the decision how to break down the task. Some tasks require several serial steps to solve.
> empirical theorizing
What is empirical about it? Yudkowsky is anti-philosophy in words, not in deed.
I am somewhat anti-philosophy - I do consider that most philosophical questions are absolutely non-questions, while some are genuine questions that may be either solvable or otherwise resolved by mathematics in maybe 100 maybe 10 000 years maybe never. For example, the question whenever the euclidean 3d space is some intrinsic reality, has been resolved - the idea was pretty damn silly. The questions concerning consciousness have not and the approach is nowhere in sight (and we can't reasonably discard those questions as non-questions either, not yet). When humans can't know something, humans often make up answers anyway, by various forms of handwaving of varying level of sloppiness. That is religion and philosophy, homebrew or academic.
where is the massive evidence that shows the people who use "system 1" and "system 2" false dichotomy perform better at predicting other people? I don't see any.You would have to look at the research on controlled and automatic processes, which has been a mainstay of experiments in cognitive psychology for half a century.
this one is clearly Freud's id and ego re-branded in a way particularly attractive for aspies and transhumanists That's an odd comment, dmytryl, unless I'm misunderstanding you. First, Kahnmeman has no truck with transhumanists (nor do I--although I have some aspy traits, mainly difficulty appreciating context emotionally.). Second, ego and id are not the same distinction. Ego contains conscious, preconscious, and unconscious; id is entirely unconscious. The distinction is equivalent to part what Freud called his topographical analysis: conscious, preconscious, and unconscious, which, as I say, cross-cuts the structural analysis. Freud first came up with the topographical analysis; later the structural analysis, inasmuch as the topographical analysis is much more obvious and is essentially embraced by almost all psychologists today in one name or another.
pontificating about field(s) that they don't understand (with better social grace, perhaps, but the general approach is the same).
Well, I think you do that regarding philosophy and psychology. It's annoying, but it can still be of interest. I think the important thing is to distinguish belief from opinion. (See my "Is epistemic equality a fiction" — http://tinyurl.com/6kamrjs )
I prefer arguing opinions, but the distinction is not itself widely accepted. (I'm going to have to explain it in construal-level theory terms.)<g>
if a confidence in something can't be decreased by some event, not even a little, it should not be increased by the negation of that event.
I think you're making a "false dichotomy." The nonexistence of unequivocal prediction doesn't mean that confidence isn't decreased by evidence.
Look, you draw conclusions without precise prediction all the time in everyday life. Science isn't qualitatively different.
The problem with Yudkowsky's disdain for philosophy is that it is pure hypocrisy.
Whereas I think he really is deeply antiphilosophical and doesn't have an inkling about what philosophy is about--admits here he can't even read "ordinary books." Like you, he tries to solve philosophical (conceptual) problems by purely empirical theorizing. The difference is that your science is better, not that you have a different attitude toward philosophy.
srdiamond:
if a confidence in something can't be decreased by some event, not even a little, it should not be increased by the negation of that event. I'm not aware of any mathematical formalism that would allow this. (Perhaps there is misunderstanding? I did not mean that a single experiment should be able to overturn a theory completely).
Something can be "truth" of proposition, or usefulness of proposition, doesn't matter. If you are concerned with usefulness, ala functionalism - where is the massive evidence that shows the people who use "system 1" and "system 2" false dichotomy perform better at predicting other people? I don't see any.
with regards to the "system 1" and "system 2", they are fiction even according to Kahneman himself ( http://www.newappsblog.com/... ). People love dichotomies of this kind, and this one is clearly Freud's id and ego re-branded in a way particularly attractive for aspies and transhumanists (whom really love inappropriate engineering analogies for states of mind). Also: when deliberately adding a fictional dichotomy, Kahneman ought to have used wording that is less prone to inducing bias; one can hardly come up with something worse than "system 1" and "system 2". Especially given that, plain as day, the examples of the "system 2" thinking, such as his own choice of example of multiplication of 17 by 24, are broken down into "system 1" steps by "system 1" itself. Specifically: I multiply 24 by 20, then I substract 24*3 which I know . The plan is a "type 1" knee jerk reaction, each step is a "type 1" knee jerk reaction. Multi step reasoning can provide answers in many circumstances where single step reasoning can not, everyone knows that, without any false dichotomies like "system 1" for single step and "system 2" for multi step.
re: the philosophers and engineers, the biggest difference is that latter sometimes have a lot of money, and are far more numerous. The Katja that you referenced as some sort of philosopher authority, bought into this scam to the point of moving to different continent, no?
with regards to philosophers of science or historians of science: how's about referencing scientists for once, rather than this crowd which does the same thing that Yudkowsky does and what you do not like: pontificating about field(s) that they don't understand (with better social grace, perhaps, but the general approach is the same). The problem with Yudkowsky's disdain for philosophy is that it is pure hypocrisy.
Also note that Thomas Kuhn was a historian of science, not<t i=""> a philosopher. He probably did the most to rubbish the verificationist/falsificationist mythology.
I suppose that you, like Yudkowsky, have a particularly low opinion of historians as well as philosophers. (The fact that most of them are full of crap doesn't distinguish them from other endeavors. Almost all of Yudkowsky's fan club are engineers. Philosophers and historians make their own stupidities, but at least they know enough to stay away from that kind of con. You won't see them contrlibuting $20,000 to a Singularity fund drive, as you find engineers doing.)
And what bearing it has exactly on the issue?
No true predictions, as you would require, even in physics. Only plausibility arguments--although more decisive arguments, relatively speaking, in the "hard" sciences.
Far from "defining" anything, philosophy is squabbling over the matters under which everything is invariant (or should be invariant), such as choice of words, and generally has detrimental effect on progress of science in so much as anyone gives any weight what so ever to it. See Boltzmann and positivism.
Did I say philosophy defines things? The point isn't philosophy's grandeur but that certain of its critics are themselves prisoners of (stupid) philosophies--of Popperian nonesense that every thinking person who has seriously considered the matters have rejected.
Falsibiability as a criterion died with the failure of verisimilitude. Both falsificationism and verificationism are both dead. And those are the schools that tried to "define things"--but they were creatures of academic philosophy.
srdiamond:
And what bearing it has exactly on the issue? A theory can have evidence in favour of its usefulness, or against, or it's greater usefulness than alternatives, and it works the same. If theory does not actually predict the variance in the observables, then it is not useful (or not even a theory).
Far from "defining" anything, philosophy is squabbling over the matters under which everything is invariant (or should be invariant), such as choice of words, and generally has detrimental effect on progress of science in so much as anyone gives any weight what so ever to it. See Boltzmann and positivism.
When people try to compensate for their cowardly loss aversion, they do what usually happens when you try to compensate for unconscious bias consciously: they overcompensate. (Re overcompensation bias, see my "The deeper solution to the mystery of moralism" — http://tinyurl.com/9exlxlk )
Far-mode (and its adjunct, literature) are more efficient compensation mechanisms than the conscious effort that engenders excess.
The tendency (both heuristic and biasing in effect) evolved when losses were more costly than today: i.e., absent the ability to save long-term, any loss presumably readily meant death.
The biasing effect of this heuristic becomes obvious when you consider that what's experienced as loss depends on how narrowly you draw the categories.
Katja Grace posted a theory of loss aversion about a month ago. She, like others, try to present it as rational adaptation. The rational-agent theory dies hard. (Ask Drewfus. If evolution were as perfectionist as he requires, there might be good reason to believe in "God.")
I'm democratic centralist, if anyone doesn't know.
Quine maintained (I would say demonstrated) that no theory has unequivocal implications.
Yes, and this would be getting close to my position - that when the individual is taken out of the lab and embedded into a society, his/her apparent biases start making sense.
What we need now is a much improved understanding of society, so that individual behavior can be studied in the proper context. The accepted ideas of Sociology with its emphasis on rehashed Marxism is a problem in this regard, and perhaps one of the main bottlenecks to scientific progress.