Given very limited resources, and very limited knowledge of what might work, I am pursuing an alternative pedagogical approach, of clearly laying out the principles and concepts from the beginning. That may work best for people who (like me) need to get the big picture first.
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Replying to @Meaningness @xuenay
The main question for my readers now is probably “what even is this supposed thing ‘metarationality’? does it exist? why should I care about it?” So I see step 1 as pointing out as clearly as possible what it is, which involves pointing out how it’s different from rationality.
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Replying to @Meaningness @xuenay
For anyone who holds rationality as a religion, that’s inevitably going to be confrontive, even if I emphasize that metarationality is in no way opposed to rationality, and indeed that neither can operate without the other *at all*.
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Replying to @Meaningness @xuenay
see I think it's things like this "people who hold rationality as a religion", that make it hard to parse for specifically rationalists that you'd want to make the transition. I think this reads as outright insulting to them (not to me, I fully get the point you're making)
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Replying to @againstutopia @xuenay
That point is well-taken, thank you! OTOH, “this is a silly religion” is a widespread assessment of LW rationalism, and I’d like to see that community take it more seriously instead of rejecting it unthinkingly.
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Replying to @Meaningness @xuenay
HAHA honestly I am with you in that assessment, I was ejected from the church in ~2012 for criticisms of solomonoff induction as justification for the general case of induction this was really more an argument for perspective-taking, but I can't disagree with your assessment
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Replying to @againstutopia @xuenay
There needs to be a canonical short clear explanation of "here's why Solomonoff induction is a mathematical curiosity that has no bearing on anything real" that could be pointed at whenever it comes up. I've been tempted to write one, but my queue is already infinite...
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@ProfJayDaigle, might you be implored to write something like this?1 reply 0 retweets 2 likes -
Something like that is in my queue, actually--look at how I end my post on Bayesian inference. I'm not sure I'll land exactly where you would on the issue, and I certainly don't think it will be the canonical anything: I'm an interested amateur here, not an expert.
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Replying to @ProfJayDaigle @Meaningness and
But I do think Solomonoff induction is both theoretically interesting and much less practically useful than some people give it credit for. (Of course, as a mathematician, "theoretically interesting" is enough to make it, well, interesting).
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Yes, I found it interesting enough to take a graduate seminar in it, which was one of best mathematical experiences I’ve had. The math is gorgeous and I leveled up my proof ability during it. (That was in 1982 I think...)
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Replying to @Meaningness @ProfJayDaigle and
For me, there would be two hard parts in writing this. One would be deciding how much detail to go into (= who the audience is, roughly). It’d be hard for me to keep it to a reasonable length and prevent it turning into a textbook.
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Replying to @Meaningness @ProfJayDaigle and
The other is, it would take some research to address the “yeah ok it’s uncomputable but we can approximate it” line. My intuition is there should be a strong theorem saying “no you can’t” but I don’t think that existed in 1982.
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