Our experience, attention and functioning is affected by endless prameters (examples: expectations, framing, level of experiencing various aspects of a situation, etc.)
There are even more ways to manipulate experience and attention. Many of them quite effective when taken to the extreme. And various manipulations seem to lead into desirable ends.
Why not use all these tricks? (we already use some without thinking of with. But it sounds an open vault to improve life)
1) Management costs. Nothing happens on its own. It takes attention and actions (at least mental actions). We are not always rich in these. Sometimes attention is needed to more stressing needs.
2) Complexities. Every approach in life and the like is related and involved in a wide variety of activities and cognitions. It is not so obvious what other effects and shortages is created by every change of approach.
Showing posts with label latent variables. Show all posts
Showing posts with label latent variables. Show all posts
Sunday, May 17, 2009
Tuesday, February 3, 2009
The block of multi-parameter optimizations
Assuming there are good ways to improve life, that almost nobody follows. Why?
People are not entirely stupid (they are, but that is a different story).
A person moves through life from choice to choice and by all kinds of circumstances and decisions he is getting a whole life put in place with various preferences, learned wisdom (which is mostly depending on his own situations), obligations, etc.
The guy may have his life truly optimized, if we are watching one parameter at a time, and asking what other levels for this specific parameter would be right. For every single thing the person looks at he finds that his current preference is about optimal.
What we perceive as a possible unrealized optimization potential that is different from what the lad does, involves usually changing several things in life together (a perception of things, priorities, and anything else that is under an individual's control).
This is a very different story. Objectively, it is much harder to optimize and even check all various combinations of changes in a system.
A person does not - and cannot - check all possible combinations to find what theoretical mix would be better than the status quo.
Then, we will have both things true.
1) Every parameter in this life is optimal. i.e. No other value state is better.
2) There are unexploited states that are better. These are made of combinations of several at once.
This brings about a very intriguing state. The better options are quite hidden because they involve complex changes. These combined changes, are states we know much less about because they are far from the status quo.
PS. Risks and rewards of changing several things together
We know less about what will happen.
You cannot understand properly what happened. If you have changed more than one thing in your life and you see changes in how you feel and function, you cannot know which change has caused the change in feeling. I had a similar situation when I changed four central things in life together and life became horrible. It was hard to truly know what part every single thing has. With less knowledge, you can manage life less effectively (assuming you manage life, you know to manage life, and that it is good that you manage your life [1])
A person learns a lot about himself throught life. Much knowledge and practical know-how, are based on his regular way of living. When life changes significantly, older habits and knowledge become less relevant, which implies a loss whihc is serious at times.
Some will say that changing makes a person younger, and maybe even makes life worthwhile living (why?).
Living vs. feeling good. Some philosophers believe that being alive is more important than feeling good. changing etc. can make a person more alive. I disagree that anything can be more important than feeling good. But the claim is relevant to the question. I am not sure what people think/act in this regard (i.e. feeling goood vs. "being alive").
People are not entirely stupid (they are, but that is a different story).
A person moves through life from choice to choice and by all kinds of circumstances and decisions he is getting a whole life put in place with various preferences, learned wisdom (which is mostly depending on his own situations), obligations, etc.
The guy may have his life truly optimized, if we are watching one parameter at a time, and asking what other levels for this specific parameter would be right. For every single thing the person looks at he finds that his current preference is about optimal.
What we perceive as a possible unrealized optimization potential that is different from what the lad does, involves usually changing several things in life together (a perception of things, priorities, and anything else that is under an individual's control).
This is a very different story. Objectively, it is much harder to optimize and even check all various combinations of changes in a system.
A person does not - and cannot - check all possible combinations to find what theoretical mix would be better than the status quo.
Then, we will have both things true.
1) Every parameter in this life is optimal. i.e. No other value state is better.
2) There are unexploited states that are better. These are made of combinations of several at once.
This brings about a very intriguing state. The better options are quite hidden because they involve complex changes. These combined changes, are states we know much less about because they are far from the status quo.
PS. Risks and rewards of changing several things together
We know less about what will happen.
You cannot understand properly what happened. If you have changed more than one thing in your life and you see changes in how you feel and function, you cannot know which change has caused the change in feeling. I had a similar situation when I changed four central things in life together and life became horrible. It was hard to truly know what part every single thing has. With less knowledge, you can manage life less effectively (assuming you manage life, you know to manage life, and that it is good that you manage your life [1])
A person learns a lot about himself throught life. Much knowledge and practical know-how, are based on his regular way of living. When life changes significantly, older habits and knowledge become less relevant, which implies a loss whihc is serious at times.
Some will say that changing makes a person younger, and maybe even makes life worthwhile living (why?).
Living vs. feeling good. Some philosophers believe that being alive is more important than feeling good. changing etc. can make a person more alive. I disagree that anything can be more important than feeling good. But the claim is relevant to the question. I am not sure what people think/act in this regard (i.e. feeling goood vs. "being alive").
[1] If you do not like this comment, it is based on more complex stuff not introduced here.
Related posts:
The illusion of suboptimality and irrationality That by looking only at better options, we get the illusion that the current state is suboptimal. We ignore the whole picture whihc contains a lot of much worse options.
Jump to achieve/change That sometimes a change is costly short term, but worth it long term.
Latent potentials That there are various unseen potential in things. You see only the realized. Unrealized potential can come by incidently or intentionaly. the true space of possibilities is much wider than what we see.
WWDNGH 5: Technical optimization and human beings That humans are not optimizing their life technically. We are - for some unknown reasons - not optimization machines.
Saturday, September 27, 2008
Latent potentials
Every cell in the body had the potential to become liver/muscle/eye/neuron. Everything.
But it exhibits only one.
Your mind can load old scenes and feel the related emotions. It can concentrate on a technical text. It can analyze a social setting, meditate. Endless possibilities.
Now it does only one thing (that is reading this exciting text without an ability to wander to more boring stuff)
It has many *potentials* but only one realization.
We mistake the potential to represent some "inner" things. So if you can cry you have a little cry inside, only you do not express it. Boring mistake! you may have a potential to cry but now that you do not cry, you are possibly very happy (with this exciting text)
Because this is not always intuitive, we fall in many traps.
Psychology. Many think that rehashing traumatic events will cure them. Alas, research shows that forgetting is many times much more effective. The idea that "you must talk about it", comes partly from thinking that the potential has to be handled. Forgetting that potential may better stay as a dormant potential evil.
One can understand same for positive potentials. We all have many potentials to enjoy and to be more successful. Not being there just says that potentials have not been evoked (but do not be naive...... do not risk your savings/emotional life on "unrealized potential"
I am just reading by Thomas Gilovich ("why we don't know what isn't so") that a central reason for pursuing bad strategies is because we never try alternative strategies (he speaks about interpersonal stuff). So there are many latent strategies we can use. We just never tried them.
Closely related: Extreme and special cases and causes (Static vs. dynamic causes of phenomenons Latent possible effects may always be there Inference form extreme/artificial cases is problematic)
Wednesday, August 27, 2008
How different are you?
Estimate your variance (i.e. how normal you are)
Most what we know is about averages. General wisodm, as well as modern learned science.
The value of the above depends on the average + your deviation from the average. there is a randmo component in this. But everyone is different in how unusual he is (how much variance to expect). the less usual the person the less vaue of common knowledge, and more on other methods of learning (personal experience, or other forms of educarted guesses. Accepting lack of knowlwdge i.e. acting with knowing that you do not know).
Practicaly, estimate how your are usual of different in various areas.
Correct for bias! Since we tend to see ourselves as more unusual than we really are, you have to adjust your estimate by adding the usual error in this estimate... (on average people thing they are lss average than they really are. We tend to be nomre usual than we subjectively perceive). I wanted to add that some people can somehow guess more realistically. But this would make every reader thinking he is of this kind.
Daniel Gilbert ("Stumbling on Happiness") offers that we should learn from others (from the outside you can perceive emotional results more accurately) and surrogate decisions to others (they are not involved emotionally and biased). He claims - with interesting data - that people are more similar than we subjectively judge.Surrogating decisions and learning from others, builds on the common between people and is not good for differences. The usefulness of it is crucially dependent on how average you are. The less average - the less use you get from studying average folks.
If you are truly far from average, remember:
1) Learn from weired persons. Stories of unusual folks may be much more relevant for your personal life than than average stuff. Either personal - get to know. or via books etc. The weired the better.
2) Tolstoy says that all happy families are happy alike, but every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way. Not to make the weired unhappy, but every weired paerson can be weired in his own way.There are still similarities between many weired people, and between subclasses of them.
Good luck in the fascinating jungle of the weired!
Most what we know is about averages. General wisodm, as well as modern learned science.
The value of the above depends on the average + your deviation from the average. there is a randmo component in this. But everyone is different in how unusual he is (how much variance to expect). the less usual the person the less vaue of common knowledge, and more on other methods of learning (personal experience, or other forms of educarted guesses. Accepting lack of knowlwdge i.e. acting with knowing that you do not know).
Practicaly, estimate how your are usual of different in various areas.
Correct for bias! Since we tend to see ourselves as more unusual than we really are, you have to adjust your estimate by adding the usual error in this estimate... (on average people thing they are lss average than they really are. We tend to be nomre usual than we subjectively perceive). I wanted to add that some people can somehow guess more realistically. But this would make every reader thinking he is of this kind.
Daniel Gilbert ("Stumbling on Happiness") offers that we should learn from others (from the outside you can perceive emotional results more accurately) and surrogate decisions to others (they are not involved emotionally and biased). He claims - with interesting data - that people are more similar than we subjectively judge.Surrogating decisions and learning from others, builds on the common between people and is not good for differences. The usefulness of it is crucially dependent on how average you are. The less average - the less use you get from studying average folks.
If you are truly far from average, remember:
1) Learn from weired persons. Stories of unusual folks may be much more relevant for your personal life than than average stuff. Either personal - get to know. or via books etc. The weired the better.
2) Tolstoy says that all happy families are happy alike, but every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way. Not to make the weired unhappy, but every weired paerson can be weired in his own way.There are still similarities between many weired people, and between subclasses of them.
Good luck in the fascinating jungle of the weired!
Friday, July 25, 2008
Jump to achieve/change
Our options are limited. We try to choose the best one (assume).
But we can create new interesting options.
For me, driving involves so much effort, that having a car is useless. But if I engage in driving for a long time, driving will become automatic. Then having a car may improve my life.
There are endless ways we can have better options by engaging a certain amount of negative/effortful experience.
Those endless possibilities do not occur naturally. They occur only when you forget everything you know about your own
life and experience. Questioning even the smallest basic assumption about how you feel, function, mind working, wants, etc.
Beware, that even with much effort, you will see only a minority of hidden options in your life. The scope of potential
possibilities is never seen fully.
Consider:
1) Over optimism. We expect life to get better after the change becoming natural. We are usually overestimating the
expected improvement. We may not learn the skill/get used to the situation. The very usefulness of the learned stuff can be illusory. Adaptation, that is human's tendency to get used to everything, cancels out various supposedly improvements of life.
2) Gamble. Skewed bets (like lottery, but with maybe positive expectation). Sometimes, the cost is relatively low, but the possible progress is enormous. No big loss if useless. But the change in life can be forever. Other changes to life are long investment, but small improvement for a little while only.
Life is short!
A change starts negatively, where we lose immediately from it. The trick is that sometimes, the later value is large. The farther the positive value, the larger the effort invested, the less worth it seems to be.
Hidden options are endless. It is a complex territory, sometimes worth the trouble.
But we can create new interesting options.
For me, driving involves so much effort, that having a car is useless. But if I engage in driving for a long time, driving will become automatic. Then having a car may improve my life.
There are endless ways we can have better options by engaging a certain amount of negative/effortful experience.
Those endless possibilities do not occur naturally. They occur only when you forget everything you know about your own
life and experience. Questioning even the smallest basic assumption about how you feel, function, mind working, wants, etc.
Beware, that even with much effort, you will see only a minority of hidden options in your life. The scope of potential
possibilities is never seen fully.
Consider:
1) Over optimism. We expect life to get better after the change becoming natural. We are usually overestimating the
expected improvement. We may not learn the skill/get used to the situation. The very usefulness of the learned stuff can be illusory. Adaptation, that is human's tendency to get used to everything, cancels out various supposedly improvements of life.
2) Gamble. Skewed bets (like lottery, but with maybe positive expectation). Sometimes, the cost is relatively low, but the possible progress is enormous. No big loss if useless. But the change in life can be forever. Other changes to life are long investment, but small improvement for a little while only.
Life is short!
A change starts negatively, where we lose immediately from it. The trick is that sometimes, the later value is large. The farther the positive value, the larger the effort invested, the less worth it seems to be.
Hidden options are endless. It is a complex territory, sometimes worth the trouble.
Saturday, July 12, 2008
Darwin's Epistemological insight: Unreliability of probabilities.
What are the probabilities of our existence?
OK. There could have been many "existence" so the question should be asked "what is the probability of an existence that is 'interesting'" or something like that.
Technically, we cannot calculate, because we have no knowledge about the variety of processes that could have happen.
But we may try intuitively, with some understanding of the space of possibilities, to gauge. Where are the odds going to land?
In short, I see that it feels that the probability is very low. Not 1 / 1 ^ infinite zeros. But rather 1 / 1 ^ very many zeros.
Darwin killed 99.9999% of the improbability of existence.
But I believe, that while we may (and have to) intuit about these probabilities, we should learn from this experience is how far our estimates can be from the ultimate numbers.
Before Darwin, if asked what are the odds for this world, reply would be infinitely low. Because the probabilities for all these species and their complexity and efficiency is so impossible.
One good algorithm of Darwin (gradual process of evolutionary selection) dumped the probabilities infinitely. They still seem low, but in relation to the odds we had before Darwin, the odds are infinitely more probable.
Statistically, Darwin taught us how a not thought of process can change dramatically our subjective probability assessments.
We Know that our estimates are terribly unreliable. That is, after Darwin
Epistemologically, that is Darwin's most important lesson!
OK. There could have been many "existence" so the question should be asked "what is the probability of an existence that is 'interesting'" or something like that.
Technically, we cannot calculate, because we have no knowledge about the variety of processes that could have happen.
But we may try intuitively, with some understanding of the space of possibilities, to gauge. Where are the odds going to land?
In short, I see that it feels that the probability is very low. Not 1 / 1 ^ infinite zeros. But rather 1 / 1 ^ very many zeros.
Darwin killed 99.9999% of the improbability of existence.
But I believe, that while we may (and have to) intuit about these probabilities, we should learn from this experience is how far our estimates can be from the ultimate numbers.
Before Darwin, if asked what are the odds for this world, reply would be infinitely low. Because the probabilities for all these species and their complexity and efficiency is so impossible.
One good algorithm of Darwin (gradual process of evolutionary selection) dumped the probabilities infinitely. They still seem low, but in relation to the odds we had before Darwin, the odds are infinitely more probable.
Statistically, Darwin taught us how a not thought of process can change dramatically our subjective probability assessments.
We Know that our estimates are terribly unreliable. That is, after Darwin
Epistemologically, that is Darwin's most important lesson!
Wednesday, July 11, 2007
Extreme and special cases and causes
Static vs. dynamic causes of phenomenons
Latent possible effects may always be there
Inference form extreme/artificial cases is problematic
Looking for relationships between a resulting phenomenon and various causes is very common nowadays. Part of the following is very confusing. So, turn off your logical powers, you will need them here.
Static = the "default" case. What causes things in the "usual" case: No special treatment was applied AND not for a very special group/case you have selected.
Dynamic = special cases. Extreme behaviors of one of the parameters. duefully applied intervention. Some effect was introduced that is never there in the "normal" case.
Potential = a latent effect that can be used to cause a huge (or small) effect. But when not applied it has zero effect.
An example for a latent "potential": Heart disease has various causes and surgeon knife is not one of them. But miracousely, a bypass operation can have near 100% effect on the heart state once applied. Hence, bypass surgery is a "potential" cause, that is totally absent from the causes of the static case, and strictly there in the dynamic/interevention case.
A big difference exists between what causes things in the static case, and the dynamic case.things that have zero or negligible effect in the static case may have a main effect when done on purpose to have an effect. This (1) gives hope to find - for example - effective intervention to improve happiness, but it also implies that (2) the inference form extreme cases to the average is limited. I will start with (2)
(2) The inference problem.
You cannot always infer from extreme cases to the normal case. Extreme cases may practically be different things.
Example 1. Are reshus monkeys violent (relatively) because of their genes, or because of culture? Frans de Waals has two pieces of evidence that culture plays a role. young reshus monkeys that grow up for six months mixed up with other non-violent monkeys, got used to live much less violent. Similarly, a group whose big aggresive males died, started to live peacefully for a decade, even after all males in the group were totally new (males change troops as adolescenes). This can be explained in two ways. The favorite way is that culture palys a big role in the violent behavior. I feel the more correct definition is that extreme cultural effects may change the behjavior, but I would guess that it is mainly genetic. It is only in very special cases
Example 2. The great psychologist Roy Baumeister in his book "meanings of life", says that people need their life to have value. One of the evidence is mothers that killed their babies. They show strong signs of distress for the anti-value acts they did etc.
Does it show that peolle need value in life? not at all. It only shows that extremely unjustified action carry a strong negative feeling. But it is quite possible that in the average case value does have to be there.
("need for value" may have other evidence. It is hardly the point here)
This problem is rampant with experimental and other kinds of scientific inquiry. Elegant and logicaly strong conclusions are many times exactly the kind I am condemning here. An extreme case can show minute details on how things actually work. You can iron out alternative hypotheses, and be clear of various biases and protocol problems etc.
That we have reason to choose a line of inquiry, does not eliminate its build-in problems. Truth does not work in our service. Reality never apologizes for being sonfusing and hard to decipher. Saying "that is the way to know" when you do not really know is stupid and pathetic.
(1) There may always be strong unknown potential cause.
The analisys of the static/default case does not tell us what potential causes are not being applied.
Example: Happiness research may give a gloomy feeling that we cannot improve happiness much, as half is genetic, 40% unknows, and the rest 10% are correlates we have little control of.
This is the static picture. Are there effective interventions? maybe. these shold be things not seen in the static case, but very powerful once discovered and applied in practice.
To sum up:
Static vs. dynamic causes. in default cases have one set of causes, while intervention may actually change part of the very structure of waht causes things.
Inference form extreme cases is problematic, as extreme/artificial cases may be very different in waht causes what.
Looking at static causes alone, one cannot conclude that there are no potential other causes.
Latent possible effects may always be there
Inference form extreme/artificial cases is problematic
Looking for relationships between a resulting phenomenon and various causes is very common nowadays. Part of the following is very confusing. So, turn off your logical powers, you will need them here.
Static = the "default" case. What causes things in the "usual" case: No special treatment was applied AND not for a very special group/case you have selected.
Dynamic = special cases. Extreme behaviors of one of the parameters. duefully applied intervention. Some effect was introduced that is never there in the "normal" case.
Potential = a latent effect that can be used to cause a huge (or small) effect. But when not applied it has zero effect.
An example for a latent "potential": Heart disease has various causes and surgeon knife is not one of them. But miracousely, a bypass operation can have near 100% effect on the heart state once applied. Hence, bypass surgery is a "potential" cause, that is totally absent from the causes of the static case, and strictly there in the dynamic/interevention case.
A big difference exists between what causes things in the static case, and the dynamic case.things that have zero or negligible effect in the static case may have a main effect when done on purpose to have an effect. This (1) gives hope to find - for example - effective intervention to improve happiness, but it also implies that (2) the inference form extreme cases to the average is limited. I will start with (2)
(2) The inference problem.
You cannot always infer from extreme cases to the normal case. Extreme cases may practically be different things.
Example 1. Are reshus monkeys violent (relatively) because of their genes, or because of culture? Frans de Waals has two pieces of evidence that culture plays a role. young reshus monkeys that grow up for six months mixed up with other non-violent monkeys, got used to live much less violent. Similarly, a group whose big aggresive males died, started to live peacefully for a decade, even after all males in the group were totally new (males change troops as adolescenes). This can be explained in two ways. The favorite way is that culture palys a big role in the violent behavior. I feel the more correct definition is that extreme cultural effects may change the behjavior, but I would guess that it is mainly genetic. It is only in very special cases
Example 2. The great psychologist Roy Baumeister in his book "meanings of life", says that people need their life to have value. One of the evidence is mothers that killed their babies. They show strong signs of distress for the anti-value acts they did etc.
Does it show that peolle need value in life? not at all. It only shows that extremely unjustified action carry a strong negative feeling. But it is quite possible that in the average case value does have to be there.
("need for value" may have other evidence. It is hardly the point here)
This problem is rampant with experimental and other kinds of scientific inquiry. Elegant and logicaly strong conclusions are many times exactly the kind I am condemning here. An extreme case can show minute details on how things actually work. You can iron out alternative hypotheses, and be clear of various biases and protocol problems etc.
That we have reason to choose a line of inquiry, does not eliminate its build-in problems. Truth does not work in our service. Reality never apologizes for being sonfusing and hard to decipher. Saying "that is the way to know" when you do not really know is stupid and pathetic.
(1) There may always be strong unknown potential cause.
The analisys of the static/default case does not tell us what potential causes are not being applied.
Example: Happiness research may give a gloomy feeling that we cannot improve happiness much, as half is genetic, 40% unknows, and the rest 10% are correlates we have little control of.
This is the static picture. Are there effective interventions? maybe. these shold be things not seen in the static case, but very powerful once discovered and applied in practice.
To sum up:
Static vs. dynamic causes. in default cases have one set of causes, while intervention may actually change part of the very structure of waht causes things.
Inference form extreme cases is problematic, as extreme/artificial cases may be very different in waht causes what.
Looking at static causes alone, one cannot conclude that there are no potential other causes.
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