Meaning and Magic

Category: Uncategorized

  • Brain burning

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    divia
    in

    Here’s a thought experiment: If you could burn ten claims about the nature of the world into everyone’s brain, so that they truly grokked them, which ones would you choose?   My answers, stolen from all over the place, in rough order of perceived importance: Reality is not vague. The past is sunk. There is no failure,…

  • Sticky claims and surprise meters

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    by

    divia
    in ,

    I’ve been rereading the early posts of Mysterious Answers to Mysterious Questions, and will now, as an exercise for myself, try summarize my best understanding of the relevant concepts and how I relate to them using my own jargon: I will describe two natural clusters of mental representations “sticky claims” and “surprise meters” and their respective…

  • A confession and a concise answer

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    by

    divia
    in

    I have a confession: for at least a couple of weeks after I started hanging out a bunch with SingInst people, I was pretending I knew what an “alief” was. Eventually, I asked, and the answer Jasen gave me was: Your “aliefs” are what your elephant believes.  Nick has suggested that “cesires” (what the elephant wants) be talked about as…

  • Parts, parts everywhere!

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    by

    divia
    in

    Once I started thinking in terms of the different parts of my mind, I started seeing references to them all over the place in books I was reading. Here are some examples: “We are compassionate with ourselves when we are able to embrace all parts of ourselves and recognize the needs and values expressed by…

  • Less Wrong Sequences decks

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    by

    divia
    in

    I read Eliezer’s Sequences back when he was posting them to Overcoming Bias, and both enjoyed them and thought they were full of lots of good rules about how to think. Just as with communication advice, the hardest time for me to remember rationality advice has been when I most needed it. So far I’ve…