recursion – Spencer Greenberg https://www.spencergreenberg.com Sat, 13 Aug 2022 01:52:19 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.9.4 https://i0.wp.com/www.spencergreenberg.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/cropped-icon.png?fit=32%2C32&ssl=1 recursion – Spencer Greenberg https://www.spencergreenberg.com 32 32 23753251 Twelve Recursive Explanations https://www.spencergreenberg.com/2021/03/twelve-recursive-explanations/ https://www.spencergreenberg.com/2021/03/twelve-recursive-explanations/#respond Sun, 21 Mar 2021 17:37:00 +0000 https://www.spencergreenberg.com/?p=2684
  • If the Overton Window were not inside of itself, you’d think I was crazy for writing this.
  • Is it just me, or has the Baader-Meinhof effect been popping up all over the place ever since I learned about it?
  • It’s hard to justify learning about opportunity costs when there are so many other things you could be doing with that time.
  • I don’t think the idea of being Pareto Optimal has made anyone better off without making at least one person worse off.
  • What can we infer from the fact that we find ourselves living in a world where we’ve invented the idea of “Anthropics”?
  • Everyone knows that everyone knows that everyone knows that everyone knows (and so on) what common knowledge is.
  • Ninety percent of explanations of Sturgeon’s Law are crap.
  • I would teach you about Inferential Distance, but it would take too long to explain it to you.
  • Let’s meet at the place where you think that I think that you think that I think that you think is a good place to discuss Schelling Points.
  • If you think this sentence is meta, you’re mistaken; it is one level higher than that.
  • You should use some of your time learning about new ideas, like the explore-exploit tradeoff, and the rest of your time applying ideas you already know well.
  • I wasn’t going to include this explanation of the sunk cost fallacy because it’s obviously bad, but at this point, I’ve already invested time into it.

    • If you liked this piece, you may also like 50 β€œLaws” of Everything.

    This piece was first written on March 21, 2021, and first appeared on this site on March 18, 2022.

    ]]>     https://www.spencergreenberg.com/2021/03/twelve-recursive-explanations/feed/ 0 2684     These epistemic methods really want you to trust them https://www.spencergreenberg.com/2020/11/these-epistemic-methods-really-want-you-to-trust-them/ https://www.spencergreenberg.com/2020/11/these-epistemic-methods-really-want-you-to-trust-them/#respond Fri, 27 Nov 2020 01:50:00 +0000 https://www.spencergreenberg.com/?p=2851 These epistemic methods really want you to trust them. Each tries to prove itself to you:

    1. Tautologies are true by definition, ’cause tautologies are true by definition. 😎

    2. Induction worked in the past, so it probably will in the future. πŸ˜‰

    3. If deduction solves your problem, and you want it solved, then you’ll want to use deduction! 😊

    4. If you thought Bayesianism had 3:1 odds, and you think this sentence is 2x more likely if Bayesianism than if not Bayesianism, now you should give it 6:1 odds. 🀠

    5. If frequentism wasn’t true, you’d have a low probability of reading a sentence as extreme as this one. πŸ€“

    6. You should trust your gut because your gut is telling you to trust it. 😘

    7. The theory that Occam’s Razor is true is simpler than the theory that it is false. πŸ€”

    8. The best explanation for why humans use abduction often is because it is useful for helping them figure out the truth. 🧐

    If you liked this piece, you may also like Twelve Recursive Explanations.

    This piece was first written on November 26, 2020, and first appeared on this site on August 12, 2022.

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