You can also apply "Pascal's wager" to many weird ideas; if X is true, what does thinking X is false do to me? And versa vice?
Most of the "big ticket" items have been found (don't drink molten lead, it's bad for you) so the marginal effects are going to be relatively low on all these things.
"[Pascal's wager] posits that human beings wager with their lives that God either exists or does not. Pascal argues that a rational person should live as though God exists and seek to believe in God. If God does not exist, such a person will have only a finite loss (some pleasures, luxury, etc.), whereas if God does exist, he stands to receive infinite gains (as represented by eternity in Heaven) and avoid infinite losses (an eternity in Hell)" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pascal%27s_wager
Another way of looking at is the "two way" and "one way" doors. Two ways doors are actions no matter how crazy, we can turn around and recover from, while one way doors are very hard/expensive/impossible to recover from.
> But more broadly, she was following a good strategy: For most people, “just do what your doctor says” will give better results than, “take unsolicited medical advice from uppity relatives.”
Rule of brainstorming: Start with weird ideas to get to good ideas.
At my company, when faced with tough problems, we encourage absurd, weird and hilarious ideas. Why? Because at minimum it takes the edge off high stakes problem solving. At best, it frees up creative thinking and generates good workable ideas.
I suppose, if the definition of "weird" is loosely-related to "low probability of truth" or "wildly deviant from existing orthodoxy," the highest-upside ideas would seem to be "weird."
In that vein, the question is how many "weird" ideas can your portfolio of time and money afford at any point?
On the subject of poisonous tomatoes: most of the tomato relatives and look-alikes of North America are quite poisonous, so the reluctance of the English immigrants to New England is perhaps understandable. Take a look, and ask if Solanum carolinense is easy to distinguish from a green version of edible Solanum lycopersicum:
Spaniards and Italians who imported the Mexico/Central American cultivar developed by native American cultivators had a different opinion, but the English weren't interest for several hundred years, say the historians:
good piece. there's too much openness and naivete and goodwill for wrong and weird ideas (somehow many people seem to be convinced the opposite is the case). When the Jehova's witnesses come knocking at your door you don't hold a theology seminar to disprove them, you just close the door again.
>"Skepticism of weird ideas is a kind of “immune system” to prevent us from believing in nonsense."
That's a useful way to frame things and I think we'd do well to go back to Dawkins original concept of 'memes'. Ideas don't spread by virtue of their truthfulness but by virtue of their fitness which is to say primarily their virality. (it's why hucksters with bad ideas love debates and attention, even if they're obviously wrong).
with all the talk about need for open-mindedness and criticism of filter bubbles, a good filter is the best thing you can have in the modern world because that's nothing else than an immune system to a lot of not merely wrong, but predatory ideas.
It's called 'idiosyncrasy points'. If you have built up a reputation for quality work, then you are allowed to have some weird/crazy ideas. Most people do not have this privilege. The don't yet have the reputation.
Social shaming is another problem...people can face serious irreparable social or workplace consequences for having bad ideas.
Life is not like a Ted talk, where you can keep failing until you succeed. Sometimes you need to get it right fast. Survivorship bias means you only hear about the people whose weird ideas turned out correct and were vindicated.
The weirdness of ideas can also behave cyclically.
Consider nuclear power. Until this year, it was roundly condemned as an unworkable solution to CO2 reduction and energy supply. The waste problem hadn't been solved and never was going to be. The effects of an accident, no matter how unlikely, were not worth the risk.
That largely came about because of Fukushima accident a decade earlier. Prior to that point nuclear power was tolerated, if not welcomed. After that accident, the idea became weird. Plants were decommissioned and plans to build new plants shelved.
Oddly enough nothing about nuclear power itself changed at those two inflection points. Same principles of operation. Same reactor designs (mostly). Same risks. Same potential.
What changed was people's minds - on a large scale.
With no weirdness points, you duplicate others' work. With too many weirdness points, you're almost certainly wrong. The sweet spot for innovation is in between.
I keep proposing Dynamic Relational (DR) be implemented, but the idea is dismissed for vague or inconsistent reasons. The "NoSql" movement has dynamic products, but they are too different from existing RDBMS. DR only tweaks what's needed to get dynamism, but otherwise sticks to most RDBMS and SQL conventions to shrink the learning curve for existing RDBMS shops. You can have your dynamic cake and RDBMS cake at the same time. To me it's a no-brainer.
( https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15352786 )
Note: JSON column types in existing RDBMS treat JSON-derived columns as second-class citizens. In DR all columns are equal citizens.
Athletics is full of good testcases for this: people develop very strongly held beliefs about things that don't hold up with empirical evidence, and can be very resistant to change. Many of the patterns discussed in the linked essay can be observed, as well as many biases (surely X would have been adopted by professional players if it worked / wouldn't have been adopted by professionals if it didn't work).
I enjoyed the article, but I’d like to push back on a few of the rules.
Rule 1: Working at the population level can be like the story of sheep going over a cliff. This is not necessarily a biologically protective trait for the individual. Expedient yes, but not necessarily advantageous.
Rule 2: Getting trusted information from other people requires that first one knows the provenance of the information. A cult is an example of “trusted information” within a group originating from one charismatic source. In this case the “weird idea” is actually normalized within the group.
Rule 6: If one is to consider a fraction of weird ideas, then one has the capacity to consider all weird ideas. In fact, there is something to be gained from considering everything and using the knowledge gained in other ways.
Rule X: if a weird idea looks like a horse, smells like a horse, and it whinnies like a horse, then it’s probably not a zebra.
Good way to think through weird ideas. Something can be just plain weird (dare I say, the Earth is triangular, no evidence for that) or just sound weird but with good understanding you realize it isn't so weird (no one knows how to make a pencil).
I think if you have a weird idea X, you may need to teach the less weird prerequisites first. Then sell the idea once people are acquainted.
I enjoyed the article and I think there should be more thought on gnoseology (that's what the post is about). The problem is: you don't know what weird means. You could think of it as something outside what the majority thinks, but then you have a biased idea of what the majority thinks. It's way harder then what is presented here
> Lots of people reject it just because it’s weird (#1) or because they don’t understand the argument (#3).
> But they feel like they aren’t “supposed” to reject it for those reasons, so they give a misleading impression that they reject the argument in detail.
> This creates an illusion of a false consensus that everyone thinks the argument is wrong, screwing up the social process that’s supposed to eventually lead to truth.
I feel this also describes how discourse usually plays out online for some reason. A lot of this is subconscious of course, we try to rationalise our instincts, but it's difficult to prevent instincts from becoming confirmation bias and undermine our reasoning.
I've certainly felt this way when it becomes blatantly obvious that I'm wrong, yet I argued with such reason... probably embarrassingly so if I search through enough of my HN comments.
Why this pressure to make me necessarily reject or accept an idea? Seems like a false dichotomy. Instead, why can't I be aware of all sorts of ideas, have them bouncing around my head, loosely held, and believe more or less in them, even opposing ones, as I learn more?
I'm never really sure about anything, really, so there's a constant internal debate going on over various topics. While that's not necessarily good for making quick decisions, I do appreciate the mental flexibility that my uncertainty ends up giving me. Weird, controversial, silly, or obvious ideas can be useful also in order to connect with other viewpoints, practicing empathy in a way.
I agree. A simple example might be nutrition science and the competing ideas there.
Rice is good for you! Rice is bad for you!
Coffee is good for you! Coffee is bad for you!
Wine. Acidic foods. Cooking temps. Sweets.
This is why I think the “everything in moderation” idea about food choices is an acceptable approach. There can be competing truths in my head about what is okay or bad, whether or not I should eat red meat.
Maybe I’ll eat it tonight, but I probably shouldn’t eat it every night.
That is a great example. I've been bounced between different sides in that exact field myself, on various topics.
Everyone has an opinion about food too, I find. Diets and science and morals and ethics. So, when I meet someone who has their feet firmly on either side of some issue, and are more knowledgable than me about their viewpoint, I can usually get a good talk out of it. Since I know a little bit, I can ask good questions as if from the other camp, and we can challenge eachother's statements. In the end I might yield the debate to make peace and show that I'm not really in opposition, though I may secretly still remain unpersuaded. But I'm sure to have had my internal debate enriched with food for thought! And it might even have turned into an enjoyable and memorable social encounter.
Shifting goalposts should not be viewed as shifting goalposts. Frequently, there are many things to address, especially complex and nuanced things like technology. Addressing all of someone's concerns is a positive thing to do.
What the author describes is not shifting goalposts. Shifting goalposts is only a useful concept in a defined project or where someone has set a criteria for acceptance.
E.g “I will wash the dishes if you clean the kitchen” becomes “oh I meant you also needed to clean the fridge and take out the trash” is shifting goalposts.
If someone had said e.g. “I will consume one pound of aspartame if limited trials show it not to be a carcinogen” and then that came to pass and they didn’t, that would be shifting the goalposts.
What people are saying here is “I don’t trust aspartame” and scientists are saying yeah, we should really check some
obvious areas where it seems to be connected to health issues since it is an evolutionarily novel substance.
Author is maybe over extrapolating from interactions with their own friends or family.
Nuclear energy for example obviously has plenty of concerns from the everyman, and addressing each one of them in turn, patiently, wins a lot of people over to this being a positive alternative to fossil fuels.
>I’m glad people persevered so we aren’t covering our pizzas with mayonnaise.
This throw-away metaphor was so stomach turning I found it hard to continue. But I did, and I found the article mostly harmless. But also pointless. In fact, I think the OP's greatest contribution is to provide yet another piece of evidence that people are obsessed with ideas, strange or otherwise. In fact, this obsession is so prevalent (especially on HN) that we don't even question it. That, in my opinion, is the more interesting topic. Why are ideas valued in some cultures more than others? (For example, they may not be valued as much in Japan; see: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kFER3QCAboc)
35 comments
[ 4.7 ms ] story [ 89.3 ms ] threadMost of the "big ticket" items have been found (don't drink molten lead, it's bad for you) so the marginal effects are going to be relatively low on all these things.
So, no.
At my company, when faced with tough problems, we encourage absurd, weird and hilarious ideas. Why? Because at minimum it takes the edge off high stakes problem solving. At best, it frees up creative thinking and generates good workable ideas.
In that vein, the question is how many "weird" ideas can your portfolio of time and money afford at any point?
https://eattheplanet.org/solanum-poisonous-relatives-of-toma...
Spaniards and Italians who imported the Mexico/Central American cultivar developed by native American cultivators had a different opinion, but the English weren't interest for several hundred years, say the historians:
http://www.vegetablefacts.net/vegetable-history/history-of-t...
Conclusion: what one culture views as weird, others might view as normal.
>"Skepticism of weird ideas is a kind of “immune system” to prevent us from believing in nonsense."
That's a useful way to frame things and I think we'd do well to go back to Dawkins original concept of 'memes'. Ideas don't spread by virtue of their truthfulness but by virtue of their fitness which is to say primarily their virality. (it's why hucksters with bad ideas love debates and attention, even if they're obviously wrong).
with all the talk about need for open-mindedness and criticism of filter bubbles, a good filter is the best thing you can have in the modern world because that's nothing else than an immune system to a lot of not merely wrong, but predatory ideas.
Disgusting goblin
> but ultrasonic humidifiers might not be
Enlightened patrician
Social shaming is another problem...people can face serious irreparable social or workplace consequences for having bad ideas.
Life is not like a Ted talk, where you can keep failing until you succeed. Sometimes you need to get it right fast. Survivorship bias means you only hear about the people whose weird ideas turned out correct and were vindicated.
Consider nuclear power. Until this year, it was roundly condemned as an unworkable solution to CO2 reduction and energy supply. The waste problem hadn't been solved and never was going to be. The effects of an accident, no matter how unlikely, were not worth the risk.
That largely came about because of Fukushima accident a decade earlier. Prior to that point nuclear power was tolerated, if not welcomed. After that accident, the idea became weird. Plants were decommissioned and plans to build new plants shelved.
Oddly enough nothing about nuclear power itself changed at those two inflection points. Same principles of operation. Same reactor designs (mostly). Same risks. Same potential.
What changed was people's minds - on a large scale.
With no weirdness points, you duplicate others' work. With too many weirdness points, you're almost certainly wrong. The sweet spot for innovation is in between.
Note: JSON column types in existing RDBMS treat JSON-derived columns as second-class citizens. In DR all columns are equal citizens.
I wrote a blog post about it here (https://soundmind.co/blog/is-your-product-too-weird)
People need a frame of reference to start from, and something that they can build a foundation of understanding on.
Rule 1: Working at the population level can be like the story of sheep going over a cliff. This is not necessarily a biologically protective trait for the individual. Expedient yes, but not necessarily advantageous.
Rule 2: Getting trusted information from other people requires that first one knows the provenance of the information. A cult is an example of “trusted information” within a group originating from one charismatic source. In this case the “weird idea” is actually normalized within the group.
Rule 6: If one is to consider a fraction of weird ideas, then one has the capacity to consider all weird ideas. In fact, there is something to be gained from considering everything and using the knowledge gained in other ways.
Rule X: if a weird idea looks like a horse, smells like a horse, and it whinnies like a horse, then it’s probably not a zebra.
I think if you have a weird idea X, you may need to teach the less weird prerequisites first. Then sell the idea once people are acquainted.
> But they feel like they aren’t “supposed” to reject it for those reasons, so they give a misleading impression that they reject the argument in detail.
> This creates an illusion of a false consensus that everyone thinks the argument is wrong, screwing up the social process that’s supposed to eventually lead to truth.
I feel this also describes how discourse usually plays out online for some reason. A lot of this is subconscious of course, we try to rationalise our instincts, but it's difficult to prevent instincts from becoming confirmation bias and undermine our reasoning.
I've certainly felt this way when it becomes blatantly obvious that I'm wrong, yet I argued with such reason... probably embarrassingly so if I search through enough of my HN comments.
I'm never really sure about anything, really, so there's a constant internal debate going on over various topics. While that's not necessarily good for making quick decisions, I do appreciate the mental flexibility that my uncertainty ends up giving me. Weird, controversial, silly, or obvious ideas can be useful also in order to connect with other viewpoints, practicing empathy in a way.
Rice is good for you! Rice is bad for you!
Coffee is good for you! Coffee is bad for you!
Wine. Acidic foods. Cooking temps. Sweets.
This is why I think the “everything in moderation” idea about food choices is an acceptable approach. There can be competing truths in my head about what is okay or bad, whether or not I should eat red meat.
Maybe I’ll eat it tonight, but I probably shouldn’t eat it every night.
Everyone has an opinion about food too, I find. Diets and science and morals and ethics. So, when I meet someone who has their feet firmly on either side of some issue, and are more knowledgable than me about their viewpoint, I can usually get a good talk out of it. Since I know a little bit, I can ask good questions as if from the other camp, and we can challenge eachother's statements. In the end I might yield the debate to make peace and show that I'm not really in opposition, though I may secretly still remain unpersuaded. But I'm sure to have had my internal debate enriched with food for thought! And it might even have turned into an enjoyable and memorable social encounter.
E.g “I will wash the dishes if you clean the kitchen” becomes “oh I meant you also needed to clean the fridge and take out the trash” is shifting goalposts.
If someone had said e.g. “I will consume one pound of aspartame if limited trials show it not to be a carcinogen” and then that came to pass and they didn’t, that would be shifting the goalposts.
What people are saying here is “I don’t trust aspartame” and scientists are saying yeah, we should really check some obvious areas where it seems to be connected to health issues since it is an evolutionarily novel substance.
Author is maybe over extrapolating from interactions with their own friends or family.
Nuclear energy for example obviously has plenty of concerns from the everyman, and addressing each one of them in turn, patiently, wins a lot of people over to this being a positive alternative to fossil fuels.
This throw-away metaphor was so stomach turning I found it hard to continue. But I did, and I found the article mostly harmless. But also pointless. In fact, I think the OP's greatest contribution is to provide yet another piece of evidence that people are obsessed with ideas, strange or otherwise. In fact, this obsession is so prevalent (especially on HN) that we don't even question it. That, in my opinion, is the more interesting topic. Why are ideas valued in some cultures more than others? (For example, they may not be valued as much in Japan; see: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kFER3QCAboc)