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Analects
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Stress promotes bias—stereotypical thinking and behaving. Less stress
promotes cognitive flexibility—an openness to new ways of thinking and
behaving. Neither is better than the other. It’s about the situation you
deploy them in.
Bias vs Noise pt. II: Stress
Article
Bias is just you using your expectations and assumptions to ignore the
noise, and see the picture more clearly. The trade-off is that, sometimes,
the noise is useful or your expectations are off. The human stress response
is perhaps the most fundamental example of this in behaviour, and a very
valuable tool.
Stress promotes bias—stereotypical thinking and behaving. Less stress
promotes cognitive flexibility—an openness to new ways of thinking and
behaving. Neither is better than the other. It’s about the situation you
deploy them in.
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article
The behavioural economists treat bias as an error. But the brain isn’t an
economist. It’s more like a statistician, using bias as a trade-off. Bias
ignores noise to see something more clearly, though of course, sometimes the
noise shouldn’t be ignored.
Bias vs Noise pt. I: Bias vs Bias
Article
The perils of cognitive bias is a subject that’s dominated a substantial slice
of social psychology, and appears in any leadership or personal development
course as something to be avoided at all costs. It’s interesting, but it’s not
actually that useful. You can’t sift through 200+ biases to work out what you
might do wrong. The brain treats bias differently. Bias is a strategy to
solve certain kinds of problems. Let me show you how.
The behavioural economists treat bias as an error. But the brain isn’t an
economist. It’s more like a statistician, using bias as a trade-off. Bias
ignores noise to see something more clearly, though of course, sometimes the
noise shouldn’t be ignored.
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article
AI has human-like output, but a very different environment and different
<em>values</em> for than environment, and until all three align, they will never
<em>actually</em> be human-like.
AI is never human-like
Article
People treat lots of stuff like they treat humans. AI is one of them. We
talk about how human-like they are. How long until their ‘intelligence’ is
like our intelligence. How long until they start doing human things, like
murdering their competitors. Things like this. But AI isn’t even
approaching human-like. In two very fundamental ways. And until those
things change, they’ll continue to be completely incomprehensible to us.
AI has human-like output, but a very different environment and different
values for than environment, and until all three align, they will never
actually be human-like.
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article
Cynosure is the idea betterment is empty without gratification and
connection. No true betterment can occur without celebrating the fruits of
our success and betterment is only meaningful in its reflection in the lives
of others. Everyone agrees.
On Cynosure
Article
I use a lot of odd words around here, to mark out my interpretation of things
to others. But they aren’t unique ideas. And mapping them to where I found
them is one way of explaining them. So here I explain the idea of cynosure:
the three values I hold closest, and the three things I think we should all
focus on.
Cynosure is the idea betterment is empty without gratification and
connection. No true betterment can occur without celebrating the fruits of
our success and betterment is only meaningful in its reflection in the lives
of others. Everyone agrees.
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article
Our brain clusters things that are similar to each other together. This
includes ideas and the words we attach to them. If your words are attached to
the wrong ideas, you’re going to struggle to make the connection for them.
Language is a barrier to communication
Article
To make the leap from someone else’s idea to your own understanding of it is
often troubled by something I call ‘the language problem’. Most of the time
this is because of a difference in experience. Knowledge is sometimes a
barrier to learning, and this is almost always related to the language
problem. Let me show you what I mean.
Our brain clusters things that are similar to each other together. This
includes ideas and the words we attach to them. If your words are attached to
the wrong ideas, you’re going to struggle to make the connection for them.
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