I wonder if Eliezer has or should read this review of Ender’s Game (a book I never read myself, but the reviewer seems to provide a useful warning to authors).
MC_Escherichia
To rephrase komponisto’s reply to this in a simpler manner, and minus the controversial bit:
I wish everyone would extend to the unattractive people of the world, of either sex, our right to feel bitter. This does not make us rapists. Thank you for your attention.
- 12 Sep 2010 10:46 UTC; 19 points) 's comment on More art, less stink: Taking the PU out of PUA by (
being convinced you deserve something that it’s totally unreasonable (socially) for you to be granted
There’s some sort of ambiguity in the word “deserve”. I would say that every harmless person deserves to be loved, or deserves an enjoyable job, but that doesn’t mean anyone owes anyone anything. The world is the way it is.
If the null hypothesis was true, the probability that we would get 3 heads or less is 0.08
Is the idea that the coin will land heads 90% of the time really something that can be called the “null hypothesis”?
Either the prayer is answered, or not, so the odds must be 50%, right? :)
Someone’s snapped it up now: http://whois.domaintools.com/overpoweringfalsehood.com
“Overcoming” doesn’t really work as an adjective.
No, nobody would ever say that.
That you are given three of the four letters for “lake” in correct, consecutive order.
You can’t conclude this
Yes you can. The real calculator in the real world had a 99% chance of being right. The counterfactual case is (in all probability) the 1% chance where it was wrong.
I’m not following you.
Imagine this scenario happens 10000 times, with different formulae.
In 9900 of those cases, the calculator says , and Omega asks what the answer is if the calculator says .
In 100 of those cases, the calculator says , and Omega asks what the answer is if the calculator says .
So you are more likely to be in the first scenario.
Ignoring Bostrom’s book on how to deal with observer selection effects (did Omega go looking for a Wrong Calculator world and report it? Did Omega go looking for an Odd World to report to you? Did Omega pick at random from all possible worlds? Did Omega roll a four-sided die to determine which world to report?)
Actually, isn’t this the very heart of the matter? In my other comment here I assumed Omega would always ask what the correct answer is if the calculator shows The Other Result; if that’s not the case everything changes.
I’m still not following. Either the answer is even in every possible world, or it is odd in every possible world. It can’t be legitimate to consider worlds where it is even and worlds where it is odd, as if they both actually existed.
Which is the case?
Your initial read off your calculator tells you with 99% certainty.
Now Omega comes in and asks you to consider the opposite case. It matters how Omega decided what to say to you. If Omega was always going to contradict your calculator, then what Omega says offers no new information. But if Omega essentially had its own calculator, and was always going to tell you the result even if it didn’t contradict yours, then the probabilities become 50%.
I’ve noticed lately a lot of websites seem to use some bizarre font that looks awful. But since they keep doing it, I’m beginning to wonder if it’s just me that sees it looking awful. Does it look like this for anyone else?
I might come, though there’s a conflicting Starcraft 2 tournament...
[Edit] But since I failed to qualify in a satelite tournament, I shall attend the LW meeting.
As an aside; the use of “Org” (i.e. Rationality Org) seems really unusual and immediately makes me think of Scientology (Sea Org); am I unusual in having this reaction?
intentional out breeding [elimination] of more sexes
A comparative analysis of Mammalia shows this to be extremely doubtful, unless you think that only humans have these extra sexes. In all mammals the vast bulk of individuals can be cleanly assigned to male or female without ambiguity, and no such intentional elimination was required. [Note “outbreeding” means something else.]
You have to look at quite distantly related species before hermaphrodites show up at interesting frequencies. Certainly some fish can be hermaphrodite.
Yes, that seems reasonable. There are four biologically possible scenarios I can think of to explain the numbers:
It’s developmental noise.
Mutations that cause hermaphroditism arise at a certain rate and are eliminated by natural (or artificial) selection at a certain rate; this is mutation-selection balance.
Multiple genes at different loci are required to produce a hermaphrodite (this is epistasis); natural selection doesn’t act against these genes since it is rare for them to be found in the same invididual, and they may produce some benefit when apart.
Hermaphrodites have reasonable fitness and are held at an equilibrium frequency in the population.
Four seems far and away the least likely; I’d be suspicious of an equilibrium that’s so low, not only in our species but all our mammalian relatives. Perhaps there are answers in the literature; I don’t have the time.
Are the words “women” and “men” reversed in your opening sentence?