CTVKenney

• CTVKenney 16 Mar 2021 1:12 UTC

  12 points

  on: What’s So Bad About Ad-Hoc Math­e­mat­i­cal Defi­ni­tions?

  The VARIANCE of a random variable seems like one of those ad hoc metrics. I would be very happy for someone to come along and explain why I’m wrong on this. If you want to measure, as Wikipedia says, “how far a set of numbers is spread out from their average value,” why use E[ (X—mean)^2 ] instead of E[ |X—mean| ], or more generally E[ |X—mean|^p ]? The best answer I know of is that E[ (X—mean)^2 ] is easier to calculate than those other ones.

• CTVKenney 14 Mar 2021 16:15 UTC

  4 points

  on: Apollo Creed prob­lems and Club­ber Lang prob­lems—fram­ing, and how to ad­dress the lat­ter?

  Dear CraigMichael,

  I am by no means a guru. It seems like you prefer Apollo Creed problems to Clubber Lang problems because you’re more able to motivate yourself to do Apollo Creed problems. I feel the same way. I find it exciting to start new projects, and grueling to continue my existing projects. My advice:

  If you need to solve a Clubber Lang problem, then in moments of clarity, you should establish habits/​systems to solve the Clubber Lang problem that don’t require you to be motivated on any given day.

  E.g. go for a jog even when you’re not feeling motivated to go for a jog, because you set out your jogging clothes and shoes the night before, & you made a program to pay your rival $5 on venmo if you don’t log your jog on MapMyRun.com

  Wishing you the best,

  CTVKenney

[Question] How do you es­ti­mate how much you’re go­ing to like some­thing?

• CTVKenney 21 Feb 2021 14:29 UTC

  3 points

  on: What Money Can­not Buy

  Money should be able to guarantee that, over several periods of play, you perform not-too-much-worse than an actual expert. Here: https://​​www.cs.cmu.edu/​​afs/​​cs.cmu.edu/​​academic/​​class/​​15859-f11/​​www/​​notes/​​lecture16.pdf is a paper about an idealized CS-version of this problem.

• CTVKenney 28 Jan 2021 23:54 UTC

  3 points

  in reply to: Jeffrey Ladish’s comment on: How likely is it that SARS-CoV-2 origi­nated in a lab­o­ra­tory?

  With regard to the rootclaim link, I agree that it would be good to try to adapt what they’ve done to our own beliefs. However, I want to urge some caution with regard to the actual calculation shown on that website. The event to which they give a whopping 81% probability, “the virus was developed during gain-of-function research and was released by accident,” is a conjunction of two independent theses. We have to be very cautious about such statements, as pointed out in the Rationality A-Z, here https://​​www.lesswrong.com/​​s/​​5g5TkQTe9rmPS5vvM/​​p/​​Yq6aA4M3JKWaQepPJ

• CTVKenney 26 Jan 2021 14:45 UTC

  3 points

  in reply to: Lantalia’s comment on: How likely is it that SARS-CoV-2 origi­nated in a lab­o­ra­tory?

  I mean to include all the alternatives that involve the virus passing through a laboratory before spreading to humans; so all the options you list are included. There’s nothing wrong with asking about the probability of a composite event.

[Question] How likely is it that SARS-CoV-2 origi­nated in a lab­o­ra­tory?