View this post, with discussion, on Less Wrong.

Consider an idea consisting of a group of strongly connected sub-ideas. If any sub-idea is an error (doesn’t work), then the whole idea is an error (doesn’t work). We can metaphorically model this as a metal chain made of links. How strong is a chain? How hard can you pull on it before it breaks? It’s as strong as its weakest link. If you measure the strength of every link in the chain, and try to combine them into an overall strength score for the chain, you will get a bad answer. The appropriate weight to give the non-weakest links, in your analysis of chain strength, is ~zero.

There are special cases. Maybe the links are all equally strong to high precision. But that’s unusual. Variance (statistical fluctuations) is usual. Perhaps there is a bell curve of link strengths. Having two links approximately tied for weakest is more realistic, though still uncommon.

(A group of linked ideas may not be a chain (linear) because of branching (tree structure). But that doesn’t matter to my point. Stress the non-linear system of chain links and something will break first.)

The weakest link of the chain is the bottleneck or constraint. The other links have excess capacity – more strength than they need to stay unbroken when the chain gets pulled on hard enough to break the weakest link.

Optimization of non-bottlenecks is ~wasted effort. In other words, if you pick random chain links, and then you reinforce them, it (probably) doesn’t make the chain stronger. Reinforcing non-weakest links is misallocating effort.

So how good is an idea made of sub-ideas? It’s as strong as its weakest link (sub-idea). Most ideas have excess capacity. So it’d be a mistake to measure how good each sub-idea is, including more points for excess capacity, and then combine all the scores into an overall goodness score.

Excess capacity is a general feature and requirement of stable systems. Either most components have excess capacity or the system is unstable. Why? Because of variance. If lots of components were within the margin of error (max expected or common variance) of breaking, stuff would break all over the place on a regular basis. You’d have chaos. Stable systems mostly include parts which remain stable despite variance. That means that in most circumstances, when they aren’t currently dealing with high levels of negative variances, then they have excess capacity.

This is why manufacturing plants should not be designed as a balanced series of workstations, all with equal production capacity. A balanced plant (code) lacks excess capacity on any workstations (chain links), which makes it unstable to variance.

Abstractly, bottlenecks and excess capacity are key issues whenever there are dependency links plus variance. (Source.)

Applied to Software

This is similar to how, when optimizing computer programs for speed, you should look for bottlenecks and focus on improving those. Find the really slow part and work on that. Don’t just speed up any random piece of code. Most of the code is plenty fast. Which means, if you want to assign an overall optimization score to the code, it’d be misleading to look at how well optimized every function is and then average them. What you should actually do is a lot more like scoring the bottleneck(s) and ignoring how optimized the other functions are.

Just as optimizing the non-bottlenecks with lots of excess capacity would be wasted effort, any optimization already present at a non-bottleneck shouldn’t be counted when evaluating how optimized the codebase is, because it doesn’t matter. (To a reasonable approximation. Yes, as the code changes, the bottlenecks could move. A function could suddenly be called a million times more often than before and need optimizing. If it was pre-optimized, that’d be a benefit. But most functions will never become bottlenecks, so pre-optimizing just in case has a low value.)

Suppose a piece of software consists of one function which calls many sub-functions which call sub-sub-functions. How many speed bottlenecks does it have? Approximately one, just like a chain has one weakest link. In this case we’re adding up time taken by different components. The vast majority of sub-functions will be too fast to matter much. One or a small number of sub-functions use most of the time. So it’s a small number of bottlenecks but not necessarily one. (Note: there are never zero bottlenecks: no matter how much you speed stuff up, there will be a slowest sub-function. However, once the overall speed is fast enough, you can stop optimizing.) Software systems don’t necessarily have to be this way, but they usually are, and more balanced systems don’t work well.

Applied to Ideas

I propose viewing ideas from the perspective of chains with weakest links or bottlenecks. Focus on a few key issues. Don’t try to optimize the rest. Don’t update your beliefs using evidence, increasing your confidence in some ideas, when the evidence deals with non-bottlenecks. In other words, don’t add more plausibility to an idea when you improve a sub-component that already had excess capacity. Don’t evaluate the quality of all the components of an idea and combine them into a weighted average which comes out higher when there’s more excess capacity for non-bottlenecks.

BTW, what is excess capacity for an idea? Ideas have purposes. They’re meant to accomplish some goal such as solving a problem. Excess capacity means the idea is more than adequate to accomplish its purpose. The idea is more powerful than necessary to do its job. This lets it deal with variance, and may help with using the idea for other jobs.

Besides the relevance to adding up the weight of the evidence or arguments, this perspective explains why thinking is tractable in general: we’re able to focus our attention on a few key issues instead of being overwhelmed by the ~infinite complexity of reality (because most sub-issues we deal with have excess capacity, so they require little attention or optimization).

Note: In some ways, I have different background knowledge and perspective than the typical poster here (and in some ways I’m similar). I expect large inferential distance. I don’t expect my intended meaning to be transparent to readers here. (More links about this: one, two.) I hope to get feedback about which ideas people here accept, reject or want more elaboration on.

Acknowledgments: The ideas about chains, bottlenecks, etc., were developed by Eliyahu Goldratt, who developed the Theory of Constraints. He was known especially for applying the methods of the hard sciences to the field of business management. Above, I’ve summarized some Goldratt ideas and begun relating them to Bayesian epistemology.

This question is directed to people who think gender matters for behavior and mental capabilities. Similar questions could be asked about race and other traits.

Suppose that gender is a social construct. Suppose that gendered behavior is due to just culture, not a mix of culture and genes. Suppose that women are born with equal mental capabilities to men.

If you conceded all that, what would you change your mind about, if anything? Why?

I ask this because a lot of effort is spent denying that gender is a social construct. Many right wing people are quite hostile to the social construct theory and view it as dangerous. But what negative consequences do they think it implies?

I interpret people as thinking something like "If the left was correct that gender is a social construct, then a lot of their political philosophy would be correct, and I'd have to change my mind about a bunch of stuff." I am doubtful of this and don't see that the social construct theory implies much leftist political philosophy.

If gender is a social construct, that doesn't mean it doesn't exist. Social constructs exist and matter. They can't be instantly or trivially changed or gotten rid of. Culture and memes are important.

This issue is complicated by biological differences between the genders for e.g. muscles. Men are stronger on average. The difference is significant. Reasonable people don't deny that. Try to focus your answer on basically intellectual differences, personality differences, behavior differences, mental differences, etc., which are the things that might be cultural.

Note that the anti social construct view claims that genes influence gendered mental traits, but do not fully determine them. They think a mix of biology and culture leads to gendered traits. They don't claim it's all biology. The social construct view, by contrast, denies the role of biology. It rejects the mixed factors view in favor of a single dominant factor.

For people who think gender is a social construct, I have similar question: What (classical) liberal ideas do you think that contradicts, if any?

David Horowitz asked on Twitter:

How do people like Victoria get so stupid?

I wrote a generic reply which has nothing to do with the partisan political statements Victoria said, which I didn't even read before replying.

At age 2 her parents order her around. She doesn't understand most orders & is punished for clarifying questions. She has to try to follow orders she doesn't understand. She ends up lowering her standards for what understanding is and goes through school not understanding much.

When she does understand something about reality correctly, it sometimes actually makes things worse. She learns the world is based on authority and social status. You can't correct the people with power over you; you must try to conform to their confused view of reality.

She learns no one understands. Everyone is just pretending to understand and hiding their weakness. Her parents and teachers are confused in many ways but have power over her anyway. She aspires to gain social status and power – to move up in the system – not to be a scientist.

My main idea here is that overreaching begins due to pressure to act before one is ready. Even if the parents orders make sense and are reasonable, it doesn't matter if a kid is being pressured to act according to ideas he doesn't yet understand. It teaches him the very bad policy/habit of trying to act before you're intellectually ready and understand what you're doing well enough.

Also social status hierarchies are a big deal and very dangerous.

They broke Robin Hanson. http://mason.gmu.edu/~rhanson/JuneteenthApology.html

Hanson chose to be an icon and leader. Giving in is a betrayal of his followers, fans and values. It signals that you can't succeed by standing up for truth and free speech. He's discouraging them. He took on a responsibility and failed at it.

He was some sort of role model. He knew it and wanted to be. And that's why he was targeted. And then, with little fuss, RIP.

At the same time, Scott Alexander stood up to the NYT. Though, interestingly, Alexander wasn't even given the option to apologize and recant.

They gave Alexander the options fight back or not fight back, and be attacked either way using the same weapon (dox him by printing his name).

I saw something recently, forget where, about a revolution long ago, I think somewhere in China. I don't know if it's a true story or just designed to make a point. Was like:

What's the penalty for being late? Death.

What's the penalty for a revolution? Death.

So then they revolted cuz it's the same penalty anyway.

Did Hanson naively think that his job would always be safe when he criticized mainstream ideas? Did he think he lived in a society with free speech and tolerance of intellectual diversity? Or just that his particular university was especially great? I doubt it.

He ought to have known a confrontation was possible. If he wasn't prepared for the confrontation, what the hell was he doing? If his plan was to give in, he misled his readers about that.

Hanson is trying to proceed with blogging like nothing happened, without any explanation to his readers (other than the official apology, which doesn't explain it – a real explanation would be e.g. "they threatened my job, and i wanted to keep it, so i spoke out against the cause". That particular explanation would raise some questions before he was accepted back as an advocate and leader of the cause. If he has a better one, let's hear it. If he's muzzled, and can be threatened into not saying whatever the university leaders choose, then can we trust anything he blogs to be his real opinion?).

I was not much of Hanson fan anyway, but he's one of the symbols we have ... well had. I don't know of a bunch of better ones.

People should not accept him back. Don't act like this didn't happen. He's clearly compromised and there is no plan or strategy in place to enable his free and honest speech going forward. There are problems here which Hanson is trying to ignore instead of present solutions to. He's doing no post mortem. He's making no plan to be more successful next time. He's presumably just decided on a bunch of things he's no longer willing to say publicly, and he's hiding the list from his audience. And I doubt it's even a list, in writing, or that he has any policies to ensure he consistently follows his plan. He may well behave inconsistently and get in trouble more, or refrain from saying things that aren't on the list, or both, and there's no transparency.

Gamings Metoo is a Profitable Catastrophe

Hundreds of people in gaming industry, e.g. Twitch streamers and pro gamers, have recently faced MeToo type allegations about e.g. sexual assault. There's a big outpouring of accusations.

Some are no doubt true and horrible. Others are much milder accusations even if true, which shouldn't be lumped together as if everyone who is accused must be a vile creep. Other accusations are partially or even mostly false. Some pictures of chat logs are photoshopped (I saw an example of photoshopping when looking at a few accusations on the Competitive Overwatch subreddit in the last few days).

Accusers gain a lot of social media followers. The narrative that they have nothing to gain here, besides justice, and therefore they must be telling the truth, is false. That's a theme of the video linked above. (They also have revenge/punishment to gain – hurting their ex.)

This has major witch hunt elements. Standards of proof are low. People don't get a trial before they get fired and lose their fanbase. People aren't getting due process. This is very dangerous.

Many of the accusations are about old events which also violates the concept of a statue of limitations. Time limits being accused of most kinds of crime are important so people can feel safe and done with things, and move on in their life, after a while. Plus the older it is, the harder to investigate objectively. But this witch hunt is happy to use old accusations with little or no hard evidence. Also the cultural rules about acceptable behavior in relationships change over time, and people get cancelled for doing things that were acceptable when they did them, but which are unacceptable now (this also happens with e.g. making jokes that used to be allowed but now are considered unacceptably racist).

Some guys (and girls) do bad things. People in relationships hurt each other. Cancel Culture is not a solution, it's a huge additional danger which tries to bypass the legal system and its protections for the accused. (And this aspect of cancel culture is very biased in a sexist way. Basically women can accuse men, but men mostly don't get to accuse women.)

iamok asked on Discord:

why is objectivism so small?

Oism disagrees with the left on tons of stuff and disagrees with the right on religion, and disagrees with everyone on secondhandedness, pandering, compromising, being a moderate, and altruism. there's more but that's plenty to have trouble being big. Rand disliked libertarians too b/c of their bad philosophy and morality, and also typically their inadequate seriousness re economics and capitalism.

and it's extremely big for the kind of thing it is. over 10 million books sold.

Oism also doesn't get along with academia. ARI wants to change that by betraying Oism which is working badly in many respects.

also Rand is dead without replacement and never got a chance to spread her ideas using the internet.

ofc i get the internet and that doesn't solve the problem of getting high quality rationality to be popular

the normal thing "big" philosophies do now is sell few books but get spread by cultural elites. journalists, authors, ppl who went to Harvard...

there's this small group of "ruling class" types and most of the masses are pretty damn gullible and are influenced way more than they realize by the NYT, CNN, etc. also, on a related note, way more influenced than they realize by advertising.

the elite group includes TV commentators (political or otherwise), reviewers, including video game reviewers and has strong ties and overlaps with many politicians, biz execs, top lawyers

and to wall street and big non profits

there's a whole social network of "elites" who have other friends in high places and trade favors and they have a ton of influence to spread their dumb ideas

oh i forgot to say professors! and all schools and teachers in general. the lower ones are controlled by govt curriculums and textbook companies and union bosses a bunch.

university administrators too

most professors aren't very influential. the connected ones get media coverage and more grants. the less elite ones still help spread the ideas to their students. which ideas? usually the ones their betters believe. the ones compatible with trying to socially climb and get admitted to more elite parties.

silicon valley, as a massive source of New Money, has challenged this in some ways and has been attacked a bunch by the elites, but also mostly panders and tries to get accepted and join existing ingroup.

I’ve been tutoring people to help them learn philosophy concepts. The videos are free and public.

InternetRules is learning about idea trees. We started with basics so anyone can start learning here.

Video: Tutoring InternetRules #1.

InternetRules lessons playlist.

Max is learning about grammar and philosophy. Max has more preexisting knowledge than InternetRules.

Video: Tutoring Max #1.

Max lessons playlist.

I recommend the tutoring videos. If you're interested, bookmark the playlists and/or subscribe to my YouTube channel and enable notifications. More videos are being added regularly. I also live stream the tutoring sessions as they happen.

Want your own lessons? Tutoring is available for purchase. Email me at [email protected]. My policy is to charge less if it’s public because I want others to be able to learn from it too.

Look for opportunities to use measurements to help your judgment. And also work on developing good judgment (about anything) and developing ways to prevent, detect and correct bias, dishonesty and irrationality.

How? Many ways. E.g. these articles could help:

• Lying
• Emotions
• Using Intellectual Processes to Combat Bias

Let's talk about a different way.

Assuming you're an adult, there are some things you're already good at judging. There are some areas where you're confident, competent, skilled, etc.

You can find more stuff which is similar or related and work on that. You can try to expand the good judgment you already have by applying it to more things.

Suppose you learn math to pass school tests. You might later find the math you already know is also useful for figuring out whether a system of pulleys will let you lift a large stone. And then later you you find the math you already know can help you analyze video game strategies, e.g. figuring out how much damage you can do in 60 seconds by casting different sequences of spells.

Skills often help with many things that weren't the original purpose you learned them for.

So you can take skills you already have and look for more stuff they can already help with. If the skill is related to judgment, and you find more ways to use it, then you're expanding the scope of what you can skillfully judge.

You can also expand on the skills as you apply them to more areas. E.g. you might find learning a few more mathematical techniques helps you with your pulleys or video games. Similarly, you could learn a few new things to help your judgment skills deal with new areas.