[HN Gopher] Humans are not automatically strategic (2010)
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Humans are not automatically strategic (2010)
Author : walterbell
Score : 50 points
Date : 2023-12-27 04:18 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.lesswrong.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.lesswrong.com)
| jdksmdbtbdnmsm wrote:
| This sounds like someone who has studied a lot of math or physics
| but has never even heard of the humanities, art, philosophy, etc.
| pringk02 wrote:
| Well, it was posted on lesswrong.com
| dang wrote:
| Related:
|
| _Humans are not Automatically Strategic (2010)_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9948600 - July 2015 (11
| comments)
|
| _Humans are not automatically strategic_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1673144 - Sept 2010 (35
| comments)
| sjfjsjdjwvwvc wrote:
| > I have enough abstract reasoning ability to understand [...]
| that ice cream is not healthy
|
| Ice cream might be healthy though:
| https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2023/05/ice-cre...
| vjerancrnjak wrote:
| That sentence lacks context. It's like saying strawberries are
| healthy. Makes no sense without any context. Diet and lifestyle
| can be healthy or unhealthy. Single ingredient, not really.
| There's no measure of healthiness for a single ingredient and
| I'm pretty sure you could have ice cream every day and still be
| healthy long term.
| bbor wrote:
| Can someone summarize the findings for those without a
| subscription? I can totally understand "due to some hidden
| dynamics, ice cream consumption is correlated with health in
| type 2 diabetics", but I can absolutely not understand "ice
| cream is a healthy food to eat in general".
| sjfjsjdjwvwvc wrote:
| From an earlier discussion on here:
|
| >the "health benefits" of ice cream are not explored because
| the scientists "do not believe in them"
|
| Hence the ,,might be". So there have been some positive
| effects, but no deeper investigation yet so we can't know for
| sure.
| bee_rider wrote:
| So what's the deal with lesswrong? People there seem to take a
| generally academic-ish or intellectual-ish tone, but there aren't
| any sources in this article and:
|
| > Why? Most basically, because humans are only just on the cusp
| of general intelligence. Perhaps 5% of the population has enough
| abstract reasoning skill to verbally understand that the above
| heuristics would be useful once these heuristics are pointed out.
|
| Is a _wild_ claim to make unsupported, right?
| bbor wrote:
| My main issue with this article, as well.
|
| Generally they're essays about cognitive science so they feel a
| _little_ more free to pontificate than, say, biologists are,
| but yeah I also would like to see a lot more sources. They are
| in their own discourse - note that this is a response to
| another (anonymous) post on the forum.
|
| When you're having a discussion that the scientific consensus
| (of the 2010s, at least...) finds alarmist and non-scientific,
| you can see why you'd be attracted to sources in your own
| little ecosystem. It is quite a diverse ecosystem, despite its
| shared interests
| klysm wrote:
| I mean it's not stated as a strong claim, but a rough guess
| given the "perhaps". I do agree saying an exact number with 0
| basis is not a great argument though.
| VoodooJuJu wrote:
| LessWrong is _well, akshyually_ personified. It 's where a
| bunch of guys with an IQ of 120 go to circle jerk each other to
| feel superior to people with an IQ of 110. Similar to reddit,
| whereas reddit is where the 110 IQ people go to feel superior
| to people with an IQ of 100.
| mempko wrote:
| They are 'less wrong' in the sense that you can't tell if they
| are right.
| sdenton4 wrote:
| "Cos-playing academia" is not bad as a description of
| lesswrong...
| JohnFen wrote:
| It's an extremely wild claim that demands some sort of
| supporting evidence.
|
| But it's pretty standard sort of fare for lesswrong. Despite
| the air it tries to put on, lesswrong is essentially just an
| opinion site.
| FergusArgyll wrote:
| Every time I read an article from there I think, "I wish I can
| slap a Wikipedia 'citation needed' on this"
| QuadmasterXLII wrote:
| Less wrong can really only be understood in context, and the
| context is recovering children of ferverent evangelicals. If
| you grew up in a reasonable household, The thought "maybe I, a
| mildly gifted 12 year old, am right and every trusted adult
| I've ever seen and all of the books they have and all of the
| people they talk to are wrong" is going to be disproven every
| time. If you grow up in the sort of household that produces
| less wrongers, you need to take that sort of thought seriously
| or you will end up believing the Earth is 2000 years old and
| hurricanes are caused by gay people.
| troutwine wrote:
| It is a wild claim. I think it's important to understand that
| LessWrong -- whatever it eventually became -- comes out of the
| SF Bay Area "Rationalist" community. Despite claims to
| generality, it's a narrow way of reasoning about the world with
| some odd outcomes. Personally, I think the notion of an
| "information hazard" is a fine story point in a Neal Stephenson
| story but taking the idea seriously enough to have nightmares
| about Roko's basilisk and to ban discussion of it[1] is pushing
| past the bounds of 'rationality' I think. That a chunk of the
| core LessWrong crowd went into Effective Altruism ends-justify-
| the-means think or into neo-reactionary circles -- to a less
| degree -- is also worth noting: despite claims with regard to
| general well-being both political ideologies are more than
| happy to cause mass suffering so long as the expected outcomes
| are good, eventually, maybe.
|
| [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roko%27s_basilisk#Reactions
| joe_the_user wrote:
| Lesswrong is a strange and fascinating place with some elements
| that I find disturbing and problematic and others that are
| quite admirable. It's a place where "semi-crank" people can go
| and have their ideas taken moderately serious. Like academia,
| there's a lot of reference to past discussion but if anything
| they take ideas more seriously than academics - academics will
| drop ideas that seem like dead-ends or counter-productive but
| lesswrong won't give up on a thing 'till it's proven wrong. A
| lot of ideas have been developed, some rigorous and worth
| knowing, some I find pseudo-intellectual hogwash.
|
| The place indeed has a set of common assumptions that have
| developed over time and may seem strange to the average person
| - some of these are quite interesting and others I'd find
| rather twisted (recently upvoted articles: "AI Girlfriends
| Won't Matter Much"[1]).
|
| There's too much to summarize but I occurs to me that
| programmers generally have a certain tendency to
| instrumentalize human beings and human qualities, treat these
| as things or as control problems and a lot of lesswrong
| concerns (rationality, AI and AI-safety, effective altruism,
| "reproductive strategies", etc) come of this. If anything,
| Lesswrong is resisted the movement we've seen of libertarians
| drifting to the "alt-right" and so it's one forums for "this
| kind of stuff".
|
| Overall: worth looking at and even posting but also it's
| various ideologies have used by people doing real harm (Sam
| Bankman-Fried etc). Further, it can produce a situation where
| it's more reasonable concerns ("AI safety") get distorted by
| and tarred with it's more ideological concerns.
|
| [1] https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/pGhpav45PY5CGD2Wp/ai-
| girlfri...
| bbor wrote:
| I would love to hear a comment from someone who found this
| useful! It's well written, well reasoned, but IMO completely
| misses a key fact that makes this framing less useful: just
| because something isn't _intuitive_ doesn't mean it's not
| _natural_ --- if anyone doesn't find that obvious I can find some
| Chomsky clips giving the argument. I think the word "automatic",
| which is not one I've seen much in CogSci lit, is responsible for
| this loss of resolution and ultimate misunderstanding.
| geniium wrote:
| So how can we get more strategic?
| ketchupdebugger wrote:
| > Why do even unusually numerate people fear illness, car
| accidents, and bogeymen, and take safety measures, but not bother
| to look up statistics on the relative risks?
|
| Its all about the impact of the outcomes. No one is fearing
| stepping on a lego brick. Getting seriously ill or getting
| seriously injured in a car accident can be ruinous health wise as
| well as financially. They are serious implications. Some never
| recover from illness or car accident. You'll recover from
| stepping on a lego though ;)
| nmca wrote:
| You're missing the point, all the things are very bad but have
| very different relative risks.
| pixl97 wrote:
| No, I don't think this is a great example...
|
| Car accidents are something directly under your control if
| you're a driver and your choices dramatically affect your
| chances of getting in one. Fear of these events can change
| your behavior thereby changing the occurrence profile you fit
| under.
| JohnFen wrote:
| > No one is fearing stepping on a lego brick.
|
| No one? When my kids were little and lego bricks were hiding
| everywhere, I lived in overt fear of stepping on them in the
| middle of the night. It's why I developed a habit of wearing
| hard-soled slippers at home, even to this day.
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