the general public being unaware of the fact that stock prices are an equilibrium of beliefs about whether the stock will rise or fall is not a major cause for concern.
nazgulnarsil3
Karma: 65
AA is willing to pay in order to achieve a more egalitarian outcome. in other words: AA is willing to pay money in order to force others to be more like him.
a desire to change the payoff matrix itself is my point: one monkey gets the banana and the other monkey cries justice. justice is formalized fairness. I can easily envision that AA would also pay in order to alter the payoff matrix.
So let’s set up another trial of this with an added meta dilemma: in each case the disadvantaged member of the trial can forfeit another 5 points in order to alter the payoff matrix itself in an egalitarian direction. The caveat is that the advantaged person can pay an additional 5 points to stop you. or make it so they can contribute any number of points and the other has to contribute an equal number to stop you. what sort of equilibrium would result here?
god damn communists. always on about income inequality instead of trying to maximize the amount everyone gets. I always refer to Mind the Gap by Paul Graham in these cases.
Richard that can be described as near/far. also I’m not sure the cynic/idealist is the correct dichotomy, as cynicism seems a form of idealism. idealist/realist optimist/cynic ?
I regretted posting the original comment immediately but felt like your comment “maybe this is why africa stays poor” was kind of a pandora’s box for this sort of thing.
all discussions lead inexorably towards ever more fundamental issues until eventually you’re talking about axiomatic beliefs. This seem to fall in line with the idea that either you have different priors or one of you has made a mistake. Since this is a community of intelligent commenters it follows that most disagreements are probably due to different core values/assumptions.
But anyway, you’re right. this stuff will have plenty of opportunity to be aired out when the blog transition occurs. Until then arguing about government is counter productive to the focus of the site since there is limited comment space.
my bad.
it’s disingenuous to blame NASA, as if we couldn’t afford both!
the point here is that the money that the government spends is 100% wasted on these things, not that we should find ways to pay for more stuff. I don’t support government spending at all. when I talk about environmentalism I’m talking about the government whipping people into a frenzy in order to justify ridiculous schemes that private enterprise would never support. If there was less taxation and people were rational about picking charities to reduce overall suffering micronutrient and clean water programs would get huge boosts. They get practically nil right now because they aren’t glamorous, and the government takes a large percentage of money that people would otherwise be generous with.
Do you feel the same indignation toward spending on, say, NASA?
of course. environmentalism is just the latest in a long string of justifications for government subsidy. NASA is another great example of breathtaking levels of waste.
A big part of the reason Africa stays poor is because nutrition and education is so poor that sub-saharan IQ’s average about 70. Environmentalism pisses me off because for a fraction of what we are spending on the public hysteria we could be providing micro nutrients that would lead to huge decreases in overall suffering. Ditto with providing clean water.
What the hell is green tech? Is it just more efficient tech? Or does it have less to do with the technology and more to do with economic agents acknowledging externalities, consciously choosing to internalize some of that cost?
terrifying freedom
I believe this is one of the prime motivators for religion, conspiracy theories, and all other manner of hidden organization schemes. the thought that this is literally IT and no one will judge the wicked, no one is guiding the leviathan, no one will care if you make a stupid mistake and it costs you your life.
“The cold, suffocating dark goes on forever and we are alone. Live our lives, lacking anything better to do. Devise reason later. Born from oblivion; bear children, hell-bound as ourselves, go into oblivion. There is nothing else. Existence is random. Has no pattern save what we imagine after staring at it for too long. No meaning save what we choose to impose. This rudderless world is not shaped by vague metaphysical forces. It is not God who kills the children. Not fate that butchers them or destiny that feeds them to the dogs. It’s us. Only us.”—Rorschach
Huh, I was unaware that the whole concept of spandrels had originated with Gould. Point taken, one can reinterpret seemingly random noise as being itself an adaptation that overcomes simple hill climbing perhaps. Mutations themselves are a random walk, selection is not random. Environment acts as a hill, organisms as hill climbing algorithms, with the top of the hill being maximally efficient use of resources for reproduction. Is this correct?
we have X because it increased inclusive genetic fitness, full stop.
if evolutionary psychologists actually believe this it is a good example of why they aren’t taken very seriously. what about spandrels?
yes, the easiest way to spot scientism is to look for value statements being conflated with factual statements. This is done unintentionally in many cases, the persuaders can’t help it because they can’t distinguish between the two. 1) you falsify the data that someone thought was factual that they used to support their values. They take this as an attack on said values. 2) you point out errors in the train of logic between factual statements and values, and/or point out that there is no valid logic train between their values and facts. 3) you make a factual statements and it is confused for a value statement. This happens because we’re taught to value truth and this valuation occasionally glitches. People assume that because you say something is true that you are also saying that it is good. 4) vice-versa of the above. you make a value statement and people take it as a factual statement. this is the goal of a persuader.
I’m sure there are other common examples.
three worlds collide would make a decent movie...just have to make the reasoning of the characters more explicit for people unfamiliar with concepts involved.
scientists fight over the division of money that has been block-allocated by governments and foundations. I should write about this later.
yes you should. this is a very serious issue. in art the artist caters to his patron. the more I see of the world of research in the U.S. the more I am disturbed by the common source of the vast majority of funding. science is being tailored and politicized.
if the SHs find humans via another colony world blowing up earth is still an option. I don’t believe the SHs could have been bargained with. They showed no inclination towards compromise in any other sense than whichever one they have calculated as optimal based on their understanding of humans and babyeaters. Because the SHs don’t seem to value the freedom to make sub-optimal choices (free will) they may also worry much less about making incorrect choices based on imperfect information (this is the only rational reason I can come up with for them wanting to make a snap decision when a flaw in their data could lead to more of what they don’t want: suffering). It is probably the norm for SHs to make snap decisions based on all available data rather than take no action while waiting for more data. They must have had a weird scientific revolution.
keeping the signal to noise ratio in a community is easy. Just make sure to wright long detailed posts about obtuse subjects (we have that covered) and don’t respond to trolls. Any commoner that stumbles upon it will get bored and leave. This seems to have worked with Hacker News so far.
with regards to the Steve Jobs Quote: Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want and deserve to get it good and hard. - H.L. Mencken
but an eden with a reversible escape option is surely better than an eden with a non-reversible escape option yes?
ZM: I’m not saying that the outcome wouldn’t be bad from the perspective of current values, I’m saying that it would serve to lessen the blow of sudden transition. The knowledge that they can get back together again in a couple decades seems like it would placate most. And I disagree that people would cease wanting to see each other. They might prefer their new environment, but they would still want to visit each other. Even if Food A tastes better in every dimension to Food B I’ll probably want to eat Food B every once in awhile.
James: Considering the fact that the number of possible futures that are horrible beyond imagining is far far greater than the number of even somewhat desirable futures I would be content with a weirdtopia. Weirdtopia is the penumbra of the future light cone of desirable futures.
the likely result is that pundits would start taking more care to make their predictions untestable.
this is already the norm 1) make qualitative prediction 2) reject criticism with “no true scotsman” fallacy (x wasn’t really an example of y because z)