I don’t know if there’s enough of a specific, meaningful claim there for me to disagree with, but Yvain-2012 probably would not have written those same words. Yvain-2012 would probably say he sometimes feels creeped out by the levels of signaling that go on in the skeptical community and thinks they sometimes snowball into the ridiculous, but that the result is prosocial and they are still performing a service.
(really I can only speak for Yvain-2011 at this point; my acquaintance with Yvain-2012 has been extremely brief)
ETA2: I really dislike skeptics. Do other people really dislike skeptics? If so maybe I like you! (This comment was previously a lot more aggressive in tone; I said I wanted to cast not-particularly-harmful magical fireballs at skeptics because I hated them. I probably don’t actually even know what hatred is so I decided to edit my comment to more accurately reflect my emotions.)
ETA: I’m guessing my testosterone levels are up ’cuz I just seriously kicked ass at ultimate frisbee, but still.
Dean Radin thinks there’s something real going on with Ganzfeld telepathy experiments, and runs the numbers on what it’d cost to set up a satisfactory demonstration based on the assumption that people are getting a 32 % success rate instead of the statistically expected 25 % without any known physical causation. He comes up with an experiment that takes 14 years to run and costs somewhat in the excess of $1 million, and concludes that it’s not worth doing for a million dollar price but would probably be for ten million dollars.
He could make additional money from bets. After getting preliminary results, he could ask for donations. He could just contact the X prize foundation and possibly some other skeptics’ organizations and ask for ten million rather than one, showing a slightly more detailed version of his post (especially how blinding is done). I expect they would agree.
I think you are. Here it is without the funny business:
As I’m sure you already know, if you really think you have paranormal powers,
you can use them to win a huge amount of money and fame. I’m sure you could
come up with some good use for the money, and the skeptics would have to admit
they were wrong.
The positive results in parapsychology tend to be like 35% hit rates where chance would give a 25% hit rate. It isn’t really financially feasible for researchers to gather enough data for a p value of 0.000001 (which, quite reasonably is what Randi requires—who wouldn’t take a 5 in 1000 shot at a million bucks?).
Which isn’t to say I think psy is the best explanation for the p= 0.005 results out there, just that no one challenging for the Randi prize doesn’t say much about academic parapsychology.
I meant it seriously, though I’ll probably regret the strong language and it makes me kinda sad that skeptics are so good at inadvertently trolling me. (ETA: Yup, regretted it. Edited comment to be less in-your-face.)
And what I meant with my chess comment, without the funny business, is that I’m aware of the Randi prize, aware that no one has claimed it, and still assign a decent amount of probability mass (aghhhh that doesn’t actually work, probability isn’t fundamental like that, but whatever) to the magick hypothesis. So I guess maybe I was annoyed at the implication that I hadn’t thought these things through carefully already. I apologize for being brusque.
Inadvertent trolling is impossible, trolling is in intent. If your own reaction is similar to being trolled, it is a the genuine emotions trolls try to create through dishonest means… also it makes it seem like you are trying to paint yourself the victim which would make a real troll happy but a non-troll sad. Well, it would also make someone who dislikes you happy, and someone who wants two way communication without signaling that you are wounded and deserve special reprimands sad. I don’t want to make you angry, I want to have a conversation.
The magick hypothesis can be tested, can’t it? I mean, at this point it seems to me either magick is false, or there is a conspiracy to prevent it from being proven true, like all the White Wolf World of Darkness games have. Some settings have several competing conspiracies to keep the masses ignorant of the nature of reality, some have a big monolithic one. It affects the availability of that hypothesis, for me, at least.
If bits of magic were already discovered and incorporated into science, would that count for the skeptics or magicks? The way herbalism and alchemy have been eaten up by chemistry, skeptics kept pace with the abilities traditionally handled by wise old people and shared the knowledge for many. If, say, life auras were found, skeptics would want to use the knowledge of that too. If auras do not respond to machines we can build, we’ll train animals, like aura sniffing dogs as well as gunpowder and drug sniffing ones we already have. The fact that it looks like we are using familiars to find poisons does not deter us now.
What, exactly, is it that makes skeptics so infuriating? Is it mostly the way to point out a link to someone saying something snarky and then walk away, instead of conversing? I know I find that infuriating when someone says something snarky and acts like the conversation is over. I can’t sit through creationism movies sometimes without wanting to punch through the internet when they make a joke about apes having human chests and leaving the subject implying because it’s funny then it is not a valid point that humans and apes are related lets move on. rage rage rage...
Hello welcome to less wrong please don’t mind if we obsess and fail to notice you’re upset like aspies it is the culture here. :P
Well, even if Yvain-2012 does not disagree with Yvain-2004, it would be nice to have the year attached. I would like that the year-attachment convention for attributing quotes and ideas becomes more widespread. Right now, the default assumption that everybody makes is that people are consistent over time. In reality, people almost surely change over time, and it is unreasonable to expect them to justify something which their earlier selves said. So, it would be really nice if the default was year-attachment.
That would seem to have benefits relative to no further information (except the author’s name), but would the benefits be greater than those afforded by the current convention of citing the relevant work? Or maybe you think people don’t follow that convention enough and they would be more likely to cite something if the thing they had to cite was just a date?
Citing the original work would be the best I suppose. But in relatively informal contexts, like internet forums, it is probably easier for the reader to quickly have a sense of when the given quote was said if the year is attached.
More accurately, Yvain-2004
Is it more accurate to put it thus because Yvain-2012 disagrees with Yvain-2004 on this issue?
I don’t know if there’s enough of a specific, meaningful claim there for me to disagree with, but Yvain-2012 probably would not have written those same words. Yvain-2012 would probably say he sometimes feels creeped out by the levels of signaling that go on in the skeptical community and thinks they sometimes snowball into the ridiculous, but that the result is prosocial and they are still performing a service.
(really I can only speak for Yvain-2011 at this point; my acquaintance with Yvain-2012 has been extremely brief)
ETA2: I really dislike skeptics. Do other people really dislike skeptics? If so maybe I like you! (This comment was previously a lot more aggressive in tone; I said I wanted to cast not-particularly-harmful magical fireballs at skeptics because I hated them. I probably don’t actually even know what hatred is so I decided to edit my comment to more accurately reflect my emotions.)
ETA: I’m guessing my testosterone levels are up ’cuz I just seriously kicked ass at ultimate frisbee, but still.
It’s a tragedy that you can’t prove people wrong when they’re right, isn’t it?
Yes! That sure is a tragedy. Cuz at that point an inquisition is the only option, ya know? Everybody loses.
*cough* Million Dollar Challenge *cough*
Dean Radin thinks there’s something real going on with Ganzfeld telepathy experiments, and runs the numbers on what it’d cost to set up a satisfactory demonstration based on the assumption that people are getting a 32 % success rate instead of the statistically expected 25 % without any known physical causation. He comes up with an experiment that takes 14 years to run and costs somewhat in the excess of $1 million, and concludes that it’s not worth doing for a million dollar price but would probably be for ten million dollars.
He could make additional money from bets. After getting preliminary results, he could ask for donations. He could just contact the X prize foundation and possibly some other skeptics’ organizations and ask for ten million rather than one, showing a slightly more detailed version of his post (especially how blinding is done). I expect they would agree.
Fun fact: “radin” is French for “penny-pincher”.
It’s like we are playing chess and I play 1.Nf3 and you play …d5 and you annotate it as 1.Nf3?? d5!! . Am I misinterpreting the point of your comment?
I think you are. Here it is without the funny business:
As I’m sure you already know, if you really think you have paranormal powers, you can use them to win a huge amount of money and fame. I’m sure you could come up with some good use for the money, and the skeptics would have to admit they were wrong.
(P.S. I was taking the comment I was responding to seriously. Did you mean it that way?)
The positive results in parapsychology tend to be like 35% hit rates where chance would give a 25% hit rate. It isn’t really financially feasible for researchers to gather enough data for a p value of 0.000001 (which, quite reasonably is what Randi requires—who wouldn’t take a 5 in 1000 shot at a million bucks?).
Which isn’t to say I think psy is the best explanation for the p= 0.005 results out there, just that no one challenging for the Randi prize doesn’t say much about academic parapsychology.
I meant it seriously, though I’ll probably regret the strong language and it makes me kinda sad that skeptics are so good at inadvertently trolling me. (ETA: Yup, regretted it. Edited comment to be less in-your-face.)
And what I meant with my chess comment, without the funny business, is that I’m aware of the Randi prize, aware that no one has claimed it, and still assign a decent amount of probability mass (aghhhh that doesn’t actually work, probability isn’t fundamental like that, but whatever) to the magick hypothesis. So I guess maybe I was annoyed at the implication that I hadn’t thought these things through carefully already. I apologize for being brusque.
Inadvertent trolling is impossible, trolling is in intent. If your own reaction is similar to being trolled, it is a the genuine emotions trolls try to create through dishonest means… also it makes it seem like you are trying to paint yourself the victim which would make a real troll happy but a non-troll sad. Well, it would also make someone who dislikes you happy, and someone who wants two way communication without signaling that you are wounded and deserve special reprimands sad. I don’t want to make you angry, I want to have a conversation.
The magick hypothesis can be tested, can’t it? I mean, at this point it seems to me either magick is false, or there is a conspiracy to prevent it from being proven true, like all the White Wolf World of Darkness games have. Some settings have several competing conspiracies to keep the masses ignorant of the nature of reality, some have a big monolithic one. It affects the availability of that hypothesis, for me, at least.
If bits of magic were already discovered and incorporated into science, would that count for the skeptics or magicks? The way herbalism and alchemy have been eaten up by chemistry, skeptics kept pace with the abilities traditionally handled by wise old people and shared the knowledge for many. If, say, life auras were found, skeptics would want to use the knowledge of that too. If auras do not respond to machines we can build, we’ll train animals, like aura sniffing dogs as well as gunpowder and drug sniffing ones we already have. The fact that it looks like we are using familiars to find poisons does not deter us now.
What, exactly, is it that makes skeptics so infuriating? Is it mostly the way to point out a link to someone saying something snarky and then walk away, instead of conversing? I know I find that infuriating when someone says something snarky and acts like the conversation is over. I can’t sit through creationism movies sometimes without wanting to punch through the internet when they make a joke about apes having human chests and leaving the subject implying because it’s funny then it is not a valid point that humans and apes are related lets move on. rage rage rage...
Hello welcome to less wrong please don’t mind if we obsess and fail to notice you’re upset like aspies it is the culture here. :P
Well, even if Yvain-2012 does not disagree with Yvain-2004, it would be nice to have the year attached. I would like that the year-attachment convention for attributing quotes and ideas becomes more widespread. Right now, the default assumption that everybody makes is that people are consistent over time. In reality, people almost surely change over time, and it is unreasonable to expect them to justify something which their earlier selves said. So, it would be really nice if the default was year-attachment.
That would seem to have benefits relative to no further information (except the author’s name), but would the benefits be greater than those afforded by the current convention of citing the relevant work? Or maybe you think people don’t follow that convention enough and they would be more likely to cite something if the thing they had to cite was just a date?
Citing the original work would be the best I suppose. But in relatively informal contexts, like internet forums, it is probably easier for the reader to quickly have a sense of when the given quote was said if the year is attached.