Fair point, I was p frustrated when I wrote it.
But the question itself, if you unload it, is worth asking.
Tim Liptrot
Karma: 746
[Question] If the reproduction number is socially “controlled” to its inflection point 1, what are the ethical and predictive implications?
Can you explain that more clearly? It seems that the sun exploding is so unlikely that the outcome doesn’t matter. Perhaps you are confusing odds and probability?
Stupid question for the guys here, but how long is optimal to counter-signal to a woman. i.e., how long do you pretend not to be interested in her, whether she is interested in you or not. Based on my non-trivial romantic experience, I have two theories.
1. Wait until she makes unusually-long eye contact with you. It should be pretty noticable, like ~5 seconds or longer, such that it would otherwise be unusual. Use Bayes theorem. THEN WAIT ANOTHER WEEK to stop countersignalling.
2. Three weeks. IDK it just seems to work that way.
3. You do not stop counter-signaling until you have been dating for several months. Just gradually decrease the amount of countersignaling by always signaling slightly less commitment to the relationship than your partner. You may be free to stop countersignaling.
I suspect that option 3 is the optimal strategy, but is taxing/emotionally draining. Any suggestions?
Follow up, it is not that hard to independently assess someone’s quality as a partner. You could assign someone a percentile at intelligence, kindness, attractiveness, emotional stability after a two weeks of knowing them. Like “this person is kinder than 40% of people but less kind than 50%”. So why rely do people rely so heavily on the weird countersignaling heuristic?
Having lived for years as a western man in the Mid East, can confirm that norms are VERY IMPORTANT. If you are a girl who has trouble getting laid though, it is paradise - Unless you dislike the other forms of gender discrimination, or witnessing gender-based violence, but that is another issue.
Also this is generally good advice.
The affect heuristic and studying autocracies
I like this post. It is clearly written, well-paced, and useful . Good job dude!
This is very true
My take -
A person using the techniques and not having increased success—weak evidence
People hating PUA—trivial evidence
A bunch of people active on a PUA forum having increased success in aggregagate—moderate evidence (would be strong but selection on dependent variable)
a large amount of unpublished ideas that are known to insiders because they are shared only informally but still influence the results published in the field in a way that is opaque to outsiders and beyond comment/consideration
That is a great point,. If I were describing my results to another expert who understood bayesian reasoning, I would speak differently. Perhaps I will do a writeup in that framework.
faking or exaggerating data/results in order to reach publication standards of evidence
so fucking true. Or dropping disconfirming evidence, which is easy to do. I had peer reviewers ask me to do this. If I find time, I will post an anonymized quote.
1. What is your probability that there is a god? (Svir creprag)
1/100. I could just be really wrong. It doesn’t say a god that cares about humans, which has a much lower probability.
2. What is your probability that psychic powers exist? (Bar va bar gubhfnaq)
1/10000 Goes against the spirit of the post but...
3. What is your probability that anthropogenic global warming will increase temperatures by at least 1C by 2050? (Avargl creprag)
80/100
4. What is your probability that a pandemic kills at least one billion people in a 5 year period by 2100? (Svsgrra creprag)
4/100
5. What is your probability that humans land on Mars by 2050? (Rvtugl creprag)
1/50
6. What is your probability that superintelligent AI (=AI better than almost every human at almost every cognitive task) exists by 2115? (Gjragl svir creprag)
7/10
This is a very interesting essay, thank you for sharing.
I too evicted long-held beliefs which had low-priors and poor evidence only after reading the sequences. It was scary at first, but very time I have found a better map leads to an easier life.
[Question] Non offensive word for people who are not single-magisterium-Bayes thinkers
hahaha no, I meant to link to this post https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/GTAFKjdQoSa9smKmj/one-magisterium-bayes
I updated it.
I agree with everything you said. Great brevity and clarity!
It helps withdraw from the conversation. You believe in <belief> and I believe in One-Magisterium Bayes is a script that people use to abandon disagreements. Like saying “You are a Muslim and I am a Christian, so we should change topics”.
I like your top comments a lot. Thanks for the answer!
So far I have found the LW voting behavior instructive and reasonable. It seems like LW’ers do vote on your epistemology rather than the content of your post (like in reddit). It’s very cool.
Carbon Democracy by Timothy Mitchell provides another piece of the puzzle. The international oil companies took big hits to their margins as oil producers nationalized in the early 70′s. Blaming the crisis on Arab politics allowed them to distract from the obscene margins they had previously been making. So they had an incentive to obfuscate what was really happening at OPEC, and the Saudi’s at the time had no lobbyists to represent them in Washington.