Good point, about the cloning tech. I still think that the protagonists act more rationally than most TV characters in that they generally don’t repeat mistakes, but thats mostly me having very low expectations.
beoShaffer
quoted text The art of concluding from experience and observation consists in evaluating probabilities, in estimating if they are high or numerous enough to constitute proof. This type of calculation is more complicated and more difficult than one might think. It demands a great sagacity generally above the power of common people. The success of charlatans, sorcerors, and alchemists — and all those who abuse public credulity — is founded on errors in this type of calculation.
Benjamin Franklin and Antoine Lavoisier, Rapport des commissaires chargés par le roi de l’examen du magnétisme animal (1784), as translated in “The Chain of Reason versus the Chain of Thumbs”, Bully for Brontosaurus (1991) by Stephen Jay Gould, p. 195, http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Benjamin_Franklin
Sounds cool any ideas on how we can test it experimentally? The theory fits with what I have already obsevered about quailia and does technically allow me to make predictions in advance, but all of the ones I can both think of and observe are ones I would have already been able to make based off of prior experience with qualia. There’s a good chance thats just because I have a head ache and am not thinking to clearly, but I would still be interested in hearing if you have any predictions that you would care to make that aren’t already clear from peoples intuitive understanding of qualia/other formal theories. I can thing of some new predictions regarding what I would expect to see if I directly obsevered the functioning of the human brain more closely than I am actually capable of.
Ahh, novel predictions, it felt like there should be a more elegant way of saying that.
I wonder if this means that recoding, historical events via more realistic mediums will, ceteris paribus, seem more real. For example WWII feels more real to me than say the revolutionary war. Obviously there are quite a few other factors to consider, but it seems likely that the fact that I’ve seen footage of WWII, lots of footage(I used to watch the History channel) rather than just reading about it and seeing some paintings/woodcuts is pretty significant as well.
Yes, but only once you brought up comics.
Tom smiled. “Yes, Don’t you like that idea?” “Liking it and having it be true aren’t the same thing, Tom.”
-Clive Barker, Abarat
I think it was a bit later than elementary school, but showing why this “proof” is invalid was a test question at some point in my American academic career
I wonder are these people you know, and if so is there anything about your reputation that might encourage them?
I like this suggestion but might tweak it a bit to say that everybody draws from a deck of cards(or some similar method) instead of trying to slip cards just to a specific person. It seems easier and doesn’t create the problem of the person doing the slipping knowing who the subverter is. Also, it is easy to repurpose if we need other randomly assigned positions.
@ 1,2&9 are trains a viable method of transport in your area?
For 4 is internet poker an option?
I know someone IRL who was having that problem. They modified their computer so that they were simply unable to access certain sites. I believe it involved having the browser block certain IP addresses but I can’t really remember. It was possible to undo this but it took far to much work for a stalling activity.
I should note that per the EY’s request I haven’t read the other comments before posting, so sorry if I duplicate anything.
The ability to make predictions in advance seems like one of the most important important, and assuming that you have enough time easiest to test measures of rationality. For the experimental and potentially the organizational level success on the prediction markets seems like an obvious choice, that also has the benefit of showing how good the person is at avoiding certain money related biases. There would of course need to be some controls in terms of equal access to capital and access to information, but I think we can work that out.
At the reputational level set up something like the David Brin prediction wiki for EY http://earthbydavidbrin.pbworks.com/w/page/15607657/Predictions though in this case we would be focusing on ones he explicitly makes rather than stuff culled from a work of fiction.
Try to simulate the apparently supernatural/ create other hoaxes and see who can debunk them. There is enough domain specific knowledge that it wouldn’t work too well with individuals, particularly if they have a motivation to game the system. Still if a school doesn’t generally increase its students ability to deal with the apparently supernatural and false information it’s almost certainly bad sign.
I strongly agree about David Brin’s blog, but the other site is horrible idea. The Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technology also carries Brin’s work and is usually pretty good.
Personally I thought it was a good comment even before the edit.
Um, who are you quoting? -edited to add Ah, E.A Manuel thanks for adding that bit
It doesn’t explicitly promote rationality, but in terms of demonstrating rationalist virtues in action I believe that the Stargate franchise, or at least the parts I’m thinking of* do a pretty good job. It strongly emphasizes curiosity, both for its own sake and in an instrumentalist knowledge = power sense. Secondly, there are large amounts of seemingly supernatural events that are reliable shown to be explainable by non-supernatual means. Admittedly the phelmtonium involved sometimes advanced enough that it effective works a magical black box, but its made clear that this is a property of the protagonists’ rather than inherent to the phelmtonium. Lastly and far from least, most characters actually learn from their own and others experiences then modify there behavior accordingly. Furthermore, how good they are at this is one of the strongest factors in how effective they are. It does have some weakness, for example the characters are somewhat prone to generalizing from fictional example, but I think it comes out as a net positive.
*More or less all of SG-1, including the directed to DVD movies and the parts of Atlantis that I’ve actually seen.