ask whether “Ma” means Mother (English) or Horse (Chinese).
“Ma” also means mother, depending on the tone. Actually, this example backfires since the word “mama” or some variation of it (ma, umma) means “mother” in almost every language in the world.
I haven’t read the book but this sounds pretty good to me. Since Harris himself is the judge calling his argument “stupid” might not be the best idea.
Implying that whether his post should be censored hinges on the conclusion reached and not just the topic?
What I would do? Probably nothing. I can’t vote and I’ve never been very interested in politics. This question does not have the same confusing unfathomable quality as the examples in the article (souls and god existing). The world looks the about the same either way. Though I admit I misremembered what a line of retreat is, just extrapolating from the name I guess.
I haven’t had a real opinion on gun control for years… Am I deluding myself when I say I have no strong feelings one way or the other? The idea that I am having an argument with myself when I think about gun control, and must offer myself a way to save face and concede to myself that I was wrong is silly.
If I am self-aware enough to think “I need to trick myself into being neutral,” I couldn’t have been too close-minded in the first place.
Lines of retreat are for offering to other people during arguments. I think I can trust myself to be neutral.
To me this just looks like a bias-manipulating “unpacking” trick—as you divide larger categories into smaller and smaller subcategories, the probability that people assign to the total category goes up and up.
How do you know the raised estimate with this “trick” is worse than the estimate without?
I could just as easily say, “As you merge smaller categories into larger and larger categories, the probability that people assign to the total category goes down.”
I’m not sure… I think the topics I find most interesting are simply used up (except for a few open questions on TDT or whatever). Also the recent focus on applied rationality / advice / CFAR stuff… this is a subject which seems to invite high numbers of low quality posts. In particular posts containing advice are generally stuffed with obvious generalizations and lack arguments or evidence beyond a simple anecdote.
Also, maybe the regular presence of EY’s sequences provided a standard for quality and topic that ensured other people’s posts were decent (I don’t think many people read seq reruns, especially not old users who are more likely to have good ideas).
I think this site is dying because there’s nothing interesting to talk about anymore. Discussion is filled with META, MEETUP, SEQ RERUN, links to boring barely-relevant articles, and idea threads where the highest comment has more votes than the thread itself (i.e. a crappy idea). Main is not much better. Go to archive.org and compare (date chosen randomly, aside from being a while ago). I don’t think eternal september is the whole explanation here—you only need 1 good user to write a good article.
I am 16 and I think I started reading this site 13. I think there is no need for another site. I also oppose any new forum/category of LW simply because interesting content here is getting thinner and thinner, half the discussion page is [META] (“Italics formatting is broken!”) or [SEQ RERUN] and a new forum would dilute that even further.
Make sure you decide whether to give a report before you do it or else we’ll be getting filtered information.
The Economist recently had an article about how sitting in wobbly furniture makes people crave “emotional stability.” They also mention a study finding that people sitting in chairs that lean to the left reported more liberal opinions.
http://www.economist.com/node/21558553
The difference is not huge, but it is statistically significant. Even a small amount of environmental wobbliness seems to promote a desire for an emotional rock to cling to.
As far as I can tell they are completely serious.
It’s not just a community norm, big chunks of the sequences seem to be built on small amounts of recent research.
you’re not vulnerable to people ringing you up and asking what your password is for a security audit, unless they can persaude you to log on to the system for them
Easier to avoid with basic instruction.
you’re not vulnerable to being kidnapped and coerced remotely, you have to be coerced wherever the log-on system is
Enemy knows the system, they can copy the login system in your cell.
edit: i suspect it would float, but only for a little bit before the lighter gas diffuses out.
Because there could still be too much of the solid part for it to have a density less than air’s?
edit: i suspect it would float for a little bit before the lighter gas diffuses out
I don’t care if he gets a few meaningless internet points for making a poll.
If the ants have different decision theories and/or different preferences, how can they work together?
EDIT: I should say that I realize the game works with a bot controlling the whole colony, but I don’t think that changes the problems in principle, anyway.
What?
The ants are not even close to individuals. They’re dots. They’re dots that you move around.
The wormhole-wing-trumpet logo thing is a bit aliased.
Can you give an example for Ants?
Are you sure this is true?