Concepts Flashcards
Illusion of Transparency
The illusion of transparency is the misleading impression that your words convey more to others than they really do. Words are a means of communication, but they don’t in themselves contain meaning. The word apple is just five letters, two syllables. I use it to refer to a concept and its associations in my mind, under the reasonable assumption that it refers to a similar concept and group of associations in your mind; this is the only power words have, great though it may be. Unfortunately, it’s easy to lose track of this fact, think as if your words have meanings inherently encoded in them, leading to a tendency to systematically overestimate the effectiveness of communication
Confusion vs reality
Confusion exists in our minds, not in reality. A blank spot on your map does not correspond to a blank territory.
Inferential Distance
Inferential distance is a gap between the background knowledge and epistemology of a person trying to explain an idea, and the background knowledge and epistemology of the person trying to understand it.
Explainers shoot too high
“The lesson was not that his fellow scientists were stupid, but that we tend to enormously underestimate the effort required to properly explain things.”
Explainers shoot way, way higher than they think they’re aiming, thanks to the illusion of transparency and self-anchoring. We miss the mark by several major grades of expertise. Aiming for outside academics gets you an article that will be popular among specialists in your field. Aiming at grade school (admittedly, naively so) will hit undergraduates. This is not because your audience is more stupid than you think, but because your words are far less helpful than you think. You’re way way overshooting the target. Aim several major gradations lower, and you may hit your mark.
Kahneman - Memory self vs experiential self
Our memory self is a story teller - 2 weeks holiday is not better than one, because nothing new happened, it has not changed the story in memory
The memory-self makes decisions, we choose between memories of experiences, not experiences themselves.
HPMOR - On a single reality for all observations
There is only one reality that generates all of the observations.
If different observations seem to point in incompatible directions, it means the true hypothesis is one you haven’t thought of yet.
And in those cases, when you finally think of the correct hypothesis, everything aligns behind it, beyond denial or horror, tearing away every doubt and every emotion that might stand in its path.
Reality settled down into a single known state, one coherent state-of-affairs that compactly generated the observation set.
The admonition of E.T. Jaynes
“If you were ignorant about a phenomenon, that was a fact about your own state of mind, not a fact about the phenomenon itself; that your uncertainty was a fact about you, not a fact about whatever you were uncertain about; that ignorance existed in the mind, not in reality; that a blank map did not correspond to a blank territory. There were mysterious questions, but a mysterious answer was a contradiction in terms. A phenomenon could be mysterious to some particular person, but there could be no phenomena mysterious of themselves. To worship a sacred mystery was just to worship your own ignorance.” - HPMOR
The many different voices needed to make up a rationalist (HPMOR version)
“Is there some amazing rational thing you do when your mind’s running in all different directions?” she managed. Harry: “My own approach is usually to identify the different desires, give them names, conceive of them as separate individuals, and let them argue it out inside my head. So far the main persistent ones are my Hufflepuff, Ravenclaw, Gryffindor, and Slytherin sides, my Inner Critic, and my simulated copies of you, Neville, Draco, Professor McGonagall, Professor Flitwick, Professor Quirrell, Dad, Mum, Richard Feynman, and Douglas Hofstadter.”
HPMOR - Hesitation
“Hesitation is always easy, rarely useful. Did some plans call for waiting? Yes, many plans called for delayed action; but that was not the same as hesitating to choose. Not delaying because you knew the right moment to do what was necessary, but delaying because you couldn’t make up your mind - there was no cunning plan which called for that.
Did you sometimes need more information to choose? Yes, but that could also turn into an excuse for delaying; and it would be tempting to delay, when you were faced with a choice between two painful alternatives, and not choosing would avoid the mental pain for a time. So you would pick a piece of information you couldn’t easily obtain, and claim that you couldn’t possibly decide without it; that would be your excuse. Although if you knew what information you needed, knew when and how you would obtain that information, and knew what you would do depending on each possible observation, then that was less suspicious as an excuse for hesitating.
If you weren’t just hesitating, you ought to be able to choose in advance what you would do, once you had the extra information you claimed you needed.” - HPMOR
Zorro Circles
“We are mere bundles of habits” Kaizen self improvement - much more realistic. Create small zorro circles of success, and expand it outwards with more small circles. Inside these small circles, one at a time, you exercise control
Modern Day Masochism
“In his study of the form that masochism takes in modern man, Theodor Reik puts forth an interesting view. Masochism is more widespread than we realise because it takes an attenuated form. The basic dynamism is as follows: a human being sees something bad which is coming as inevitable. There is no way he can halt the process; he is helpless. This sense of helplessness generates a need to gain some control over impending pain - any kind of control will do. This makes sense; the subjective feeling of helplessness is more painful than the impending misery. So the person seizes control over the situation in the only way open to him: he connives to bring on the impending misery; he hastens it. This activity on his part promotes the false impression that he enjoys pain. Not so. It is simply that he cannot any longer endure the helplessness or the supposed helplessness. But in the process of gaining control over the inevitable misery he becomes, automatically, anhedonic (which means being unable or unwilling to enjoy pleasure). Anhedonia sets in stealthily. Over the years it takes control of him. For example, he learns to defer gratification; this is a step in the dismal process of anhedonia. In learning to defer gratification he experiences a sense of self-mastery; he has become stoic, disciplined; he does not give way to impulse. He has control. Control over himself in terms of his impulses and control over the external situation. He is a controlled and controlling person. Pretty soon he has branched out and is controlling other people, as part of the situation. He becomes a manipulator. Of course, he is not consciously aware of this; all he intends to do is lessen his own sense of impotence. But in his task of lessening this sense, he insidiously overpowers the freedom of others. Yet, he derives no pleasure from this, no positive psychological gain; all his gains are essentially negative. In summary - the modern day masochist does not enjoy pain; he simply can’t stand being helpless.” - from Valis by Philip K. Dick
Signals vs Cues
Signals are traits, including structures and behaviours, that have evolved specifically because they change the behaviour of receivers in ways that benefit the signaller.[2] Traits or actions that benefit the receiver exclusively are called cues. When an alert bird deliberately gives a warning call to a stalking predator and the predator gives up the hunt, the sound is a signal. When a foraging bird inadvertently makes a rustling sound in the leaves that attracts predators and increases the risk of predation, the sound is a ‘cue’
Emotional pain of Infatuation and Fear of loss
Infatuation and fear of loss - The pain you are feeling in infatuation or fear of loss is a product of you overvaluing a projected imaginary relationship with the person or thing.
Hawthorne effect (also referred to as the observer effect)
A form of reactivity whereby subjects improve or modify an aspect of their behavior, which is being experimentally measured, in response to the fact that they know that they are being studied,not in response to any particular experimental manipulation.
Pluralistic ignorance
A situation where a majority of group members privately reject a norm, but assume incorrectly that most others accept it, also described as “no one believes, but everyone thinks that everyone believes.” In short, pluralistic ignorance is a bias about a social group, held by a social group.Lack of public opposition then helps perpetuate a norm that may be, in fact, disliked by most people. A lot of people are wrong about something but because everyone sees this wrong idea as the perceived social norm, no one speaks up against it.
