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John Backus
John Backus
John Backus
@backus

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John Backus

@backus

Seeking alternative compression. Hopefully wrong on average. Shameless. Started @getcognito and @bloom

San Francisco, CA
Joined August 2012

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    John Backus‏ @backus Apr 19

    Does personal knowledge about psychology or rationality actually help with large or small personal decision making? Seems like a premise of learning about cognitive biases, LessWrong, etc.

    10:48 PM - 19 Apr 2018
    • 1 Retweet
    • 11 Likes
    • Sar Haribhakti peter victor Tomas Fiers Patrick Renschler Taylor Hodge Noah Tye Anant Sharma Robert Mtz Nurrizky
    4 replies 1 retweet 11 likes
      1. New conversation
      2. John Backus‏ @backus Apr 19

        People who influenced my thoughts here: @rsnous for putting this question in my head in the first place @ctbeiser for concrete argument against: https://web.archive.org/web/20170916053902/http://cbeiser.me/on-time-free-theories-of-decision-making/ … @gwern tangential argument that sunk cost fallacies specifically might not apply to individuals

        1 reply 0 retweets 1 like
        Show this thread
      3. John Backus‏ @backus Apr 19

        Just going to throw out some ideas Well studied violations of rationality may pop up regularly for individuals, but most of it is about truth seeking and being more correct. There may be very few cases where a clear cognitive bias can be squashed while making personal decisions.

        1 reply 0 retweets 2 likes
        Show this thread
      4. John Backus‏ @backus Apr 19

        Lets say that LW rationality addressable problems do pop up in individual decision making. It could be that intuitive gut feelings integrate your values and priorities well. Overriding gut feelings in order to excise a bias you identified might throw you off more than you fixed

        2 replies 0 retweets 2 likes
        Show this thread
      5. John Backus‏ @backus Apr 19

        Maybe learning to identify bias *is* helpful for people but the folks gravitating to LW and reading about biases for fun are the least likely to benefit from this because their thinking might be more rigorous than average already.

        1 reply 0 retweets 4 likes
        Show this thread
      6. John Backus‏ @backus Apr 19

        Maybe we are worse at achieving goals if we remove our own bias in favor of correctness. Convincing yourself that your new company is a guaranteed success probably makes you a more convincing leader. Your politics are probably more convincing if you give in to confirmation bias.

        3 replies 0 retweets 2 likes
        Show this thread
      7. John Backus‏ @backus Apr 20

        FWIW, I do think LW rationality is helpful. Prob helps with decisions and at very least I'd bet it is helpful like reading a book that gives you a different perspective on the world is helpful. Mainly just fun to try doing a premortem for why it might not help. /cc @juliagalef

        0 replies 0 retweets 1 like
        Show this thread
      8. End of conversation
      1. New conversation
      2. Brian Lui‏ @brianluidog Apr 20
        Replying to @backus

        Possible answer: it's helpful to de-bias when using deliberative mindset, but very harmful to de-bias in implemental mindset. Few people can separate these mindsets. (Those that can are great leaders)

        1 reply 0 retweets 0 likes
      3. John Backus‏ @backus Apr 20
        Replying to @brianluidog

        Not familiar with the terms so I looked em up. Basically, are you saying de-biasing is good for figuring out whether to adopt a goal but harmful when planning the steps for achieving a goal? Is this a correct read?

        1 reply 0 retweets 0 likes
      4. Brian Lui‏ @brianluidog Apr 20
        Replying to @backus

        Sorry for not being clear! When we're figuring out our goals and how to reach them, it's helpful to de-bias, to be more accurate. Once we figure out our goals and process, we switch to implementation mindset. De-biasing is harmful here because it tends to reduce overconfidence.

        1 reply 0 retweets 0 likes
      5. Brian Lui‏ @brianluidog Apr 20
        Replying to @brianluidog @backus

        Forgot to mention that implementation mindset is where we actually work towards our goal. Overconfidence is useful because it improves the chances of success. I first came across deliberative/implemental mindset in Phil Rosenzweig's book "Left Brain, Right Stuff".

        1 reply 0 retweets 0 likes
      6. John Backus‏ @backus Apr 20
        Replying to @brianluidog

        John Backus Retweeted John Backus

        Cool, thanks for the clarification. Interesting you are optimizing for preserving over-confidence. Sounds like what I mentioned here https://twitter.com/backus/status/987223845575639040 … I might also argue that you might just waste your time too trying to debias each step vs. just executing

        John Backus added,

        John Backus @backus
        Maybe we are worse at achieving goals if we remove our own bias in favor of correctness. Convincing yourself that your new company is a guaranteed success probably makes you a more convincing leader. Your politics are probably more convincing if you give in to confirmation bias.
        Show this thread
        1 reply 0 retweets 0 likes
      7. Brian Lui‏ @brianluidog Apr 20
        Replying to @backus

        That's a good view! We should debias when planning things, but be biased when executing things. There is some spillover between these two mindsets, but the spillover can be reduced with practice

        0 replies 0 retweets 0 likes
      8. End of conversation
      1. New conversation
      2. Catherine Olsson‏ @catherineols Apr 20
        Replying to @backus

        This is one reason why CFAR focuses on practice over theory. Accruing *declarative* knowledge about "good decisionmaking" will not give you the *procedural* knowledge of how to make good decisions in your daily life.

        1 reply 0 retweets 4 likes
      3. Catherine Olsson‏ @catherineols Apr 20
        Replying to @catherineols @backus

        I also want to echo @juliagalef's point- while trying my hardest not to veer into "no true scotsman"- that most LW rationality explicitly distances itself from "squash your FEELINGS using LOGIC!" and puts a huge weight on integrating all sources of data, *especially* gut feelings

        1 reply 0 retweets 4 likes
      4. Julia Galef‏Verified account @juliagalef Apr 20
        Replying to @catherineols @backus

        Yeah I'm not even bothered when people make this assumption, because ignoring gut feelings IS a common mistake people make when trying to "Be more rational". Critics aren't crazy to complain about it. It's just that LWers are much more aware of this mistake than usual.

        0 replies 0 retweets 4 likes
      5. End of conversation
      1. New conversation
      2. Max Tagher‏ @MaxTagher Apr 20
        Replying to @backus

        It doesn’t have to be a premise, it can just be a way to explain the world and promote improving it with larger scale actions, akin to economics (economists aren’t in it to improve their business acumen).

        1 reply 0 retweets 0 likes
      3. Max Tagher‏ @MaxTagher Apr 20
        Replying to @MaxTagher @backus

        Maybe it would be helpful to talk about specific fallacies or errors and discuss if you get mileage out of them? I have thought of fundamental attribution error when counseling friends on (relation|friend)ship issues; basically it just reminds me to be more empathetic.

        1 reply 0 retweets 0 likes
      4. Max Tagher‏ @MaxTagher Apr 20
        Replying to @MaxTagher @backus

        Bayes, too. E.g. “it’s way more likely to be a bug in my code than a bug in the library.”

        1 reply 0 retweets 0 likes
      5. Max Tagher‏ @MaxTagher Apr 20
        Replying to @MaxTagher @backus

        Maybe a problem with determining if some specific rationality tool is useful is you’re encouraged to internalize the ideas. So you don’t think “Oh, per Bayes theorem the prior on a library bug is higher, so it’s probably that”, you just intuit that without crediting Bayes.

        0 replies 0 retweets 0 likes
      6. End of conversation

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