Cain posted this one on FB this morning, but I thought it would be useful to share. SlateStarCodex, by the way, is a rationalist blog by a guy that posts at LessWrong quite a bit. If you have time to go through the archives, there's some good stuff in there (some of which has been cross posted here, as well).
QuoteUnder Moloch, everyone is irresistably incentivized to ignore the things that unite us in favor of forever picking at the things that divide us in exactly the way that is most likely to make them more divisive. Race relations are at historic lows not because white people and black people disagree on very much, but because the media absolutely worked its tuchus off to find the single issue that white people and black people disagreed over the most and ensure that it was the only issue anybody would talk about. Men's rights activists and feminists hate each other not because there's a huge divide in how people of different genders think, but because only the most extreme examples of either side will ever gain traction, and those only when they are framed as attacks on the other side. (http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/12/17/the-toxoplasma-of-rage/)
This was a great read. I wish any of my friends, so many of whom were or are caught up in the Ferguson flamewar (any semblance of debate vanished weeks ago), would take the time to go through it. But they won't, because facebook.
At its most basic, the fact that news stations and blogs drum up controversy for ratings is like Mass Media Awareness 101, but this served to really dissect the reason why. Meditations on Moloch was one of my favorite reads from the last few months and has been pervasive in a lot of ideas I've been playing with. I hope to similarly keep this one in mind for the next inevitable shitstorm.
Quote from: Eater of Clowns on December 18, 2014, 03:10:32 PM
This was a great read. I wish any of my friends, so many of whom were or are caught up in the Ferguson flamewar (any semblance of debate vanished weeks ago), would take the time to go through it. But they won't, because facebook.
At its most basic, the fact that news stations and blogs drum up controversy for ratings is like Mass Media Awareness 101, but this served to really dissect the reason why. Meditations on Moloch was one of my favorite reads from the last few months and has been pervasive in a lot of ideas I've been playing with. I hope to similarly keep this one in mind for the next inevitable shitstorm.
Any semblance of "debate" died the moment the news broke. There were three camps.
1. The cops are out of control killers.
2. Brown "deserved it" because <insert reason>
3. I don't know/don't care, where is Ferguson?
Camp 1 hates camp 2.
Camp 2 hates black people.
Camp 3 hates everyone that talks about it.
http://slatestarcodex.com/2015/06/02/and-i-show-you-how-deep-the-rabbit-hole-goes/
Pretty awesome and clever steelmanning about a silly Tumblr meme.
Quote from: LMNO, PhD (life continues) on June 05, 2015, 02:55:13 PM
http://slatestarcodex.com/2015/06/02/and-i-show-you-how-deep-the-rabbit-hole-goes/
Pretty awesome and clever steelmanning about a silly Tumblr meme.
This is good! Very long though.
Fun read!
So I've been reading these as you or Cain bring them to my attention. Who is this person? I really dig the thought process, which while not always revelatory is thorough and accessible.
He's a Rationalist, got his start posting at LessWrong.
If you need to pass some time, read the blog from the beginning. There's a lot of good stuff in there. But be warned...
Quote from: Mesozoic Mister Nigel on June 05, 2015, 04:07:52 PM
Very long though.
Quote from: Eater of Clowns on June 05, 2015, 04:10:28 PM
Fun read!
So I've been reading these as you or Cain bring them to my attention. Who is this person? I really dig the thought process, which while not always revelatory is thorough and accessible.
He's known as Yvain on LessWrong.
Updating.
Interesting article about Bayes and neuroscience. I like how he presents the findings, but still comes away with questions. The hypothesis makes sense, but that doesn't mean it's right.
http://slatestarcodex.com/2016/09/12/its-bayes-all-the-way-up/
Quote from: LMNO on September 13, 2016, 01:33:36 PM
Updating.
Interesting article about Bayes and neuroscience. I like how he presents the findings, but still comes away with questions. The hypothesis makes sense, but that doesn't mean it's right.
http://slatestarcodex.com/2016/09/12/its-bayes-all-the-way-up/
I didn't read it all the way through, but I can tell you that neuroscience-wise this guy reads like a stoner rambling about quantum mechanics with a very shaky baseline comprehension of what that means.
Oh wait; I think I get it. I bet he took that Coursera class on neuroeconomics! Christ that was a shit class. Nobody should draw parallels between brain function and Bayesian economics based on that. Or anything really, ever.
Quote from: Mesozoic Mister Nigel on September 14, 2016, 04:24:16 AM
Quote from: LMNO on September 13, 2016, 01:33:36 PM
Updating.
Interesting article about Bayes and neuroscience. I like how he presents the findings, but still comes away with questions. The hypothesis makes sense, but that doesn't mean it's right.
http://slatestarcodex.com/2016/09/12/its-bayes-all-the-way-up/
I didn't read it all the way through, but I can tell you that neuroscience-wise this guy reads like a stoner rambling about quantum mechanics with a very shaky baseline comprehension of what that means.
Thanks for this, I read it and it sounded legit because I know jack all about how brains work.
Neurotransmitters are never single-purpose. That's his first mistake. You know how I am always saying that context matters? What a neurotransmitter does has less to do with the neurotransmitter than the context. What kinds of receptors are there, and what are their second messengers? What kind of cell is the receptor on? What kinds of cells does that cell communicate with? And so on.
I'm really glad you stepped in. I can still be wooed by this kind of writing, I suppose.
Quote from: LMNO on September 14, 2016, 04:49:09 AM
I'm really glad you stepped in. I can still be wooed by this kind of writing, I suppose.
This right here.
Quote from: Mesozoic Mister Nigel on September 14, 2016, 04:24:16 AM
Quote from: LMNO on September 13, 2016, 01:33:36 PM
Updating.
Interesting article about Bayes and neuroscience. I like how he presents the findings, but still comes away with questions. The hypothesis makes sense, but that doesn't mean it's right.
http://slatestarcodex.com/2016/09/12/its-bayes-all-the-way-up/
I didn't read it all the way through, but I can tell you that neuroscience-wise this guy reads like a stoner rambling about quantum mechanics with a very shaky baseline comprehension of what that means.
Is the top-down/bottom-up metaphor an okay one to use as a way of describing more complicated systems that are actually functioning, or is there something about it that's so fundamentally fucked that looking through that lens is going to lead me to idiot conclusions? Because I like it as a non-literal model, but I don't want to absorb it if it's going to make me look like an idiot.
Quote from: Q. G. Pennyworth on September 16, 2016, 05:48:13 PM
Quote from: Mesozoic Mister Nigel on September 14, 2016, 04:24:16 AM
Quote from: LMNO on September 13, 2016, 01:33:36 PM
Updating.
Interesting article about Bayes and neuroscience. I like how he presents the findings, but still comes away with questions. The hypothesis makes sense, but that doesn't mean it's right.
http://slatestarcodex.com/2016/09/12/its-bayes-all-the-way-up/
I didn't read it all the way through, but I can tell you that neuroscience-wise this guy reads like a stoner rambling about quantum mechanics with a very shaky baseline comprehension of what that means.
Is the top-down/bottom-up metaphor an okay one to use as a way of describing more complicated systems that are actually functioning, or is there something about it that's so fundamentally fucked that looking through that lens is going to lead me to idiot conclusions? Because I like it as a non-literal model, but I don't want to absorb it if it's going to make me look like an idiot.
Top-down/bottom-up is a profoundly flawed model for talking about biological systems, simply because there is no such thing as purely linear directionality in any complex system; there are feedback loops at multiple points along the way, and the information exchange is always bidirectional (if not multi-directional).
This diagram is a simplified but possibly useful example of the complexity I am trying to describe:
(http://www.scielo.br/img/revistas/pn/v6n1/08fig01.jpg)
Yeah, there's a lot of stuff going on. Our brains really don't intuitively grasp that much complexity, do they?
Quote from: LMNO on September 22, 2016, 07:28:39 PM
Yeah, there's a lot of stuff going on. Our brains really don't intuitively grasp that much complexity, do they?
We really tend to be binary-seekers, and I'm not sure how much of that is social conditioning and how much of it is neurobiology.