But a bird warning other birds that there is a snake in the grass does reveal a fact about the bird: that it is a good bird who will risk its life for the other birds, and therefore is helpful for the other birds to keep around, perhaps even with bribes.
clone of saturn
Karma: 1,791
What would be an example of energy not being conserved in a closed system?
If a spinning overbalanced wheel without additional energy input spun faster and faster instead of slowing down and stopping.
Does the law of thermodynamics even mean anything?
The laws of thermodynamics don’t seem to have the same problem of vagueness. It’s easy to tell whether a given situation would violate them or not.
I’m not sure what you’re trying to say, so it would probably be better to just state your point plainly.
I’m trying to figure out what you mean when you talk about EMH.
Like anything else, the EMH is useful insofar as it generates testable predictions about the world. One of the most useful predictions, as johnswentworth puts it: ‘you shouldn’t expect to make money trading stocks’.
Obviously some people have made money trading stocks. Does the EMH simply mean that less than 50% of people who trade stocks make money? That doesn’t seem to support the grandiose conclusions that are usually made on the basis of the EMH. The same would be true of a poker game, for instance, or simply a bet between 3 people where only one of them can be right.
What would be an example of asset prices not reflecting all available information?
If this kind of behavior is entirely consistent with EMH, does EMH even mean anything?
This seems like something that’s likely to be idiosyncratic and even if high quality studies exist, trying to mimic what works for the notional “average person” may not be a good idea.
I would consider them about the same. I’ve worn mine for ~5 hours at a time with minimal discomfort.
Nothing can be done about external interference like microwaves, but the base station can allocate time slots where lower priority traffic is not allowed to be sent.
I’m pretty sure this can’t be correct—they claim benzalkonium chloride has zero effectiveness, which is less than plain water! I think it has to be a data entry error.
This review cites some other studies that show benzalkonium chloride to be comparable to other disinfectants, although alcohol is still best by a considerable margin.
The basic idea is that the ratio of infected to susceptible people grows exponentially to infinity, which means the absolute number of infected people follows a logistic function.
I’m dismayed to hear that you think publicly double-checking someone’s claims might be too arrogant.
clone of saturn’s Shortform
Of course we should, but that is irrelevant to the question of whether this post is hazardous if people without LW accounts read it.
The level of handwringing about this post seems completely out of proportion when there are many thousands of people coming up with all sorts of COVID-related conspiracy theories on facebook and twitter. If it went viral my guess is that it would actually increase trust in the CDC by giving people a more realistic grounding for their vague suspicions.
And remember that CDC is an organization with legal constraints that make them unable to do some of the things you think are good ideas, and that they have been operating under a huge staff shortage due to years of a hiring freeze and budget cuts.
These sound like reasons to trust the CDC even less, is that what you meant?
The entire HBD community is seen as racist pseudoscientists by many.
Could someone explain what the “Eliezer bit” actually was, for those of us who weren’t there?
As a semi-outsider, rationalists seem remarkably unlikely to altruistically punish each other for this sort of casual betrayal. (This is a significant part of why I’ve chosen to remain a semi-outsider by only participating online.)
I’m going to assume this is a false flag attack on conflict theory by an insane, terroristic mistake theorist.
See also: The Best Textbooks on Every Subject