Concepts
This is a collection of some of the most interesting concepts I've learned about over time. I think this list should be included as a core part of any education.
These are not in any particular order, and if you think something should be added, please let me know in the comments or via email.
Graham's Disagreement Hierarchy: How to Have High-Quality Disagreements
There are good and bad ways to argue. This diagram depicts the hierarchy described here in the original post by Paul Graham.
The Naturalistic and Moralistic Fallacies
A stunning piece regarding two problems in basic moral logic:
- The Naturalist Fallacy: the tendency to believe that what is natural is good; that what is, ought to be.
- The Moralistic Fallacy: the leap from ought to is, the claim that the way things should be is the way they are.
A great many moral arguments are based on one of these two foundations. Being able to identify them is the first step to countering them.
The Theory of Constraints
Dr. Eliyahu M. Goldratt introduced The Theory of Constraints in his 1984 book titled The Goal. It is based on the application of scientific principles and logic reasoning to guide human-based organizations. The publicity and leadership behind these ideas has been dominated by Dr. Goldratt through a series of books, seminars and workshops. Main concepts:
- Strategic Questions
- Focusing Steps
- Buy-In processes
- Effect-Cause-Effect
- The Thinking Process
The Dunning-Kruger Effect
The idea is that in skills as diverse as reading comprehension, operating a motor vehicle, and playing chess or tennis, “ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge”. With a typical skill which humans may possess in greater or lesser degree,
- Incompetent individuals tend to overestimate their own level of skill.
- Incompetent individuals fail to recognize genuine skill in others.
- Incompetent individuals fail to recognize the extremity of their inadequacy.
- If they can be trained to substantially improve their own skill level, these individuals can recognize and acknowledge their own previous lack of skill. This is basically the scientific description of the, “know-it-all who doesn’t know shit” phenomenon.
The Pareto Principle (The 80/20 Rule)
Also known as the Law of the Vital Few, it states that for many events, roughly 80% of the effects come from 20% of the causes. Commonly seen in business as, “80% of your sales comes from 20% of your clients.”Pseudocertainty Effect
From Wikipedia:
Scenario one An epidemic breaks out that’s likely to kill 600 people if left untreated. Treatment strategy A will save 200 people. Treatment strategy B has 1/3 chance of saving 600 people and 2/3 chance of saving nobody. From 152 people questioned, 72% recommended strategy A and 28% recommended strategy B. Most respondents preferred the definite positive outcome of saving 200 people, over the conditional but larger positive outcome of saving 600 people. Scenario two Next, 155 people were given the same data in a different way. They were told: under treatment strategy A, 400 people will die. Under treatment strategy B, there is a 1/3 probability that nobody will die, and a 2/3 probability that 600 people will die. With this formulation, 78% of the 155 respondents chose strategy B. They were willing to accept the risk of a larger negative outcome (600 people dying) to have a chance of averting an otherwise definite negative outcome (400 people dying). Conclusion Scenarios one and two are exactly the same except worded in a different way, yet the respondents reach opposing conclusions for each scenario. Thus, the way a scenario is worded influences the decision of the respondent.Postel’s Law: The Robustness Principle
“Be conservative in what you do; be liberal in what you accept from others.” This is usually applied to the creation of standard protocols and such, which require a balance between stability and interoperability.Parkinson’s Law
Work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion. Or, “work expands to fill the time available”. Basically, if you give yourself eight weeks to complete a report, it will likely take you that long.
But if you give yourself just three days you may be able to do it in that time as well, especially since you’re only likely to spend that amount of time total on it anyway.It’s the Educated vs. Those Easily Fooled by Propaganda
A brilliant piece on the REAL problem facing America–the staggering rise of ignorance and predjudice-based gullibility in the United States.A List of Logical Fallacies, or, “How to Identify Weak Arguments”
An invaluable resource. Study this first to ensure your own arguments are strong, then use it to tighten up those that you’re debating with. If they take debate seriously (but are uneducated in the matter) then sending them this link often helps. [ Logical Fallacies | logicalfallacies.info ]
The Argument Pyramid
In the same spirit as the logical fallacies link, here’s another way of looking at the quality of an argument. Excellent stuff.Occam’s Razor
aka “The Law of Parsimony”, or “The Law of Succinctness”. Occam’s Razor is an interesting one, as there is the newer, accepted, and technically incorrect meaning, and then there is the real one. First the modern, common, and wrong one: This one reduces to the idea that all things being equal, the simpler of two explanations for something is probably correct. A common interpretation of this is “entities must not be multiplied beyond necessity”, from the Latin, “Entia non sunt multiplicanda praeter necessitatem”. There are many similar or related versions of this, e.g. “Make everything as simple as possible, but no simpler.” (Einstein), and “The simplest answer is usually the correct answer.”
This is, however, incorrect. Occam’s razor is not concerned with the simplicity or complexity of a good explanation as such, it only demands that the explanation is free of elements that have nothing to do with the phenomenon (and the explanation) [Wikipedia]. Here’s a quote by Occam himself that shows the true meaning: “The source of many errors in philosophy is the claim that a distinct signified thing always corresponds to a distinct word in such a way that there are as many distinct entities being signified as there are distinct names or words doing the signifying.” (Summula Philosophiae Naturalis III, chap. 7, see also Summa Totus Logicae Bk I, C.51).
We are apt to suppose that a word like “paternity” signifies some “distinct entity”, because we suppose that each distinct word signifies a distinct entity. This leads to all sorts of absurdities, such as “a column is to the right by to-the-rightness”, “God is creating by creation, is good by goodness, is just by justice, is powerful by power”, “an accident inheres by inherence”, “a subject is subjected by subjection”, “a suitable thing is suitable by suitability”, “a chimera is nothing by nothingness”, “a blind thing is blind by blindness”, ” a body is mobile by mobility”. We should say instead that a man is a father because he has a son (Summa C.51). [Wikipedia]
Reciprocal Altruism
There have been numerous experiments regarding organisms that have been programmed programmed (think game theory) to take all of the time, take some of the time and share some of the time, share most of the time except with takers, or share all of the time. They run simulations of these various models to see who “wins” by having more resources/babies at the end.
As it turns out, the best way to get ahead is to share with others who share, with the caveat that you protect yourself from those who cheat. But the interesting thing is that the pure takers don’t dominate over the others. They get shunned by the sharers, and the intelligent sharers prosper the most. That to me is a model for an open society.Midas World [The Midas Plague]
A very cool concept (from a story) about how everything becomes so plentiful in the future due to robots creating things that an entire class of people was needed to consume them–the lower class. They are required to buy things, drive things, and wear things–constantly. The rich are the ones that can have a simple life.
Finally they realize they can use robots to consume as well, and they are left wondering what humans should do. Interesting question, and it’s the one we should be asking ourselves right now.Conformation Bias
The phenomenon whereby once you believe something too strongly you start to think any evidence you come upon agrees with your belief. This causes two people with opposite beliefs to grow farther and farther apart because when viewing the same information they come to the conclusion that supports their existing belief model.Cognitive Dissonance
Cognitive dissonance is an uncomfortable feeling caused by holding two contradictory ideas simultaneously. The “ideas” or “cognitions” in question may include attitudes and beliefs, and also the awareness of one’s behavior. [Wikipedia]
Women like when guys are nice to them, but only when they don’t have to be. Most guys exclusively using the “nice” approach are doormats, and many are so because that’s all they can be. They lack the attributes to attract a woman based on pure gravity (physical size/strength/prowess, ambition, sexuality, intelligence, money, etc.). As a result, these guys are essentially forced to grovel in order to attract a mate, which is patently unattractive.
To get the true benefit of nice in the way that women enjoy, one has to be able to attract that same woman without being nice, i.e. by the sheer force of masculine character. Only once that foundation of primal respect is in place can the higher-order offerings such as kindness be appreciated. [http://dmiessler.com/writing/the_nice_guy_paradox/]
Why the Future Doesn’t Need Us
If you only read one essay on futurism and technology, it should be this one by Bill Joy.a priori and a posteriori
This applies to so many things in an intellectual’s life. From Wikipedia: The terms “a priori” and “a posteriori” are used in philosophy (epistemology) to distinguish two types of knowledge, justifications or arguments. A priori knowledge or justification is independent of experience (for example ‘All bachelors are unmarried’); a posteriori knowledge or justification is dependent on experience or empirical evidence (for example ‘Some bachelors are very happy’). A priori justification makes no reference to experience; the issue concerns how one knows the proposition or claim in question—what justifies or grounds one’s belief in it.