If the climate skeptics want to win me over, then the way for them to do so is straightforward: they should ignore me, and try instead to win over the academic climatology community, majorities of chemists and physicists, Nobel laureates, the IPCC, National Academies of Science, etc. with superior research and arguments.
-- Scott Aaronson on areas of expertise
CFAR Question 1: not constructively.
CFAR Question 6: what kind of archaic unit is ‘feet’? I was able to answer by remembering that 3 feet ~= 1 meter.
Income: before or after tax? I answered after taxes, which for me is 65% of the income before taxes.
Telecommuting might not be the best thing for everyone. At home I have less social interaction and more distractions.
The Central Limit Theorem (The Middle Thing-It-Goes-To Idea-You-Can-Show-Is-True-With-Numbers—when you take lots of Middle Numbers of lots of groups, it looks like the Normal Line!)
Does it really simplify things if you replace “limit” with “thing-it-goes-to” and theorem with “idea-you-can-show-is-true-with-numbers”? IMO this is a big problem with the up-goer five style text: you can still try to use complex concepts by combining words. And because you have to describe the concept with inadequate words, it becomes actually harder to understand what you really mean.
There are two purposes of writing simple English:
writing for children
writing for non-native speakers
In both cases is “sun-colored stuff that comes out of the ground” really the way you would explain it? I would sooner say something like: “yellow is the color of the sun, it looks like . People like shiny yellow metal called gold, because there is little of it”.
I suppose the actual reason we are doing this is
artificially constrained writing is fun.
If your boyfriend or girlfriend has a different meaning for ‘box’ than you do, and you give them a line, not only will they be cross with you, but you will be wrong, and that is almost as bad
“give them a line” and “be cross with you” are expressions that make no sense with the literal interpretation of these words.
I’ve wondered how many people were dissuaded from LW because they pick up things quickly, value their time, and were getting a frustratingly low insight/minute ratio from the Sequences.
For some people (myself included if I’m honest), a low insight/minute ratio might be a reason for liking the sequences. They enjoy seeing smart folks agree with and reiterate their beliefs. It makes the reader think “ah yes, this person is right, he is smart, just like me”.
the best way to not do it.
This sounds too punchliney. What do you actually mean? What part of not doing it needs figuring out? How to avoid it? What to do instead? Something else entirely?
The argument by majority fallacy means arguing that something is true because many people believe it. In the example of the headaches, the argument was that it was likely true because it is true for most people.
What you would want your doctor to do is take the action that maximizes your expected utility, E[U(action)]. Let’s simplify a bit, and say that action can be either “do nothing” or “find cause”. Then the utilities could be something like:
P(not sick) = 0.99 (most people have nothing to worry about)
U(not sick, do nothing) = 0
U(not sick, find cure) = -1 (unnecessary tests, drugs, worry)
U(sick, do nothing) = -10 (possibly more headaches, or something worse)
U(sick, find cure) = -1 (still need tests, drugs, etc.)
Then:
E[U(do nothing)] = P(not sick) * U(not sick, do nothing) + P(sick) * U(sick, do nothing) = -0.1
E[U(find cure)] = P(not sick) * U(not sick, find cure) + P(sick) * U(sick, find cure) = -1
So with these numbers I just made up, it is better for the doctor to tell you that there is likely nothing to worry about. And you can be pretty sure that in real life, people have done this calculation. Of course in real life there are many more possible actions, such as waiting for a week to see if the headaches go away, which they will likely do if there was nothing wrong. And that is what a doctor will actually tell you to do.
Papers have a tradition of violating the bottom line rule. In a classic paper, one starts with the conclusion in the abstract, and then builds up an argument for it in the paper itself.
While that is how paper are structured, it is in my experience not how they are written. The abstract is written last, or at least after the results are known, and summarizes the rest of the paper.
The real problem is the difficulty in getting negative results published, which pushes authors to make things appear better than they really are or to hunt for positive aspects.
Why would the price of necessities rise?
There are three reasons why the price might go up:
demand increases
supply decreases
inflation
Right now, everyone is already consuming these necessities, so if UBI is introduced, demand will not go up. So 1 would not be true.
Supply could go down if enough people stop working. But if this reduces supply of the necessities, there is a strong incentive for people on just UBI to start working again. There is also increasing automation. So I find 2 unlikely.
That leaves 3, inflation. I am not an economist, but as far as I understand this shouldn’t be a significant factor.
Does anyone have some actual numbers on what fraction of the expenses of existing cryonics companies are spent on cooling? That should give an indication on how much can be saved by scaling up.
If I decide to seek company of some people, because according to some metric M they are better than me, I am helping myself, because I am exposing myself to people better than me, but at the same time I am hurting them, because I expose them to a person that is worse than them, according to the same metric.
I am not convinced that being around people slightly worse than yourself is bad for you. Especially when you get into a mentor role. When you actively try to help others understand and improve, this forces you to think about what you are actually doing, which probably improves your behavior.
Disclaimer: purely anecdotal, and does not apply to all metrics.
I do the same thing. With the added effect that if I do notice the conversation after a while, I still fail to respond. The reason is that at that point, if I were to reply I would have to start with an apology like “Sorry it took so long to respond, I forgot / I don’t think this conversation is that important / I am a lazy bastard”. I don’t want to do that, so it’s best not to respond at all.
Yes, I know this is a stupid bias. Maybe I should try to fix myself. Any suggestions?
it costs $20 at a nearby store, and it costs $40 at a store that’s fifteen minutes away … which costs $2000 at a nearby store, and $2020 at a store that’s fifteen minutes
Shouldn’t these numbers be the other way around? I.e $40,$20 and $2020 and $2000? Why would you drive fifteen minutes to pay an extra $20?
This is another good explanation instead of / in addition to the Great Filter.
It could be that there are many local optima to life, that are hard to escape. And that intelligence requires an unlikely local optimum. This functions like an early Great Filter, but in addition, failing this filter (by going to a bad local optimum) might make it impossible to start over.
For example, you could imagine that it were possible to evolve a gray goo like organism which eats everything else, but which is very robust to mutations, so it doesn’t evolve further.
I sometimes have this problem when sleep deprived. Are you getting enough sleep?
I have no numbers for this, but the idea is that after interviewing for a job, competent people get hired, while incompetent people do not. These incompetents then have to interview for other jobs, so they will be seen more often, and complained about a lot. So perhaps the perceived prevalence of incompetent programmers is a result of availability bias (?).
This theory does not explain why this problem occurs in programming but not in other fields. I don’t even know whether that is true. Maybe the situation is the same elsewhere, and I am biased here because I am a programmer.
But alas, I fear that Professor Riddle would not have found lasting happiness in Hogwarts.”
“Why not? ”
“Because I still would’ve been surrounded by idiots, and I wouldn’t have been able to kill them,” Professor Quirrell said mildly.
The solution seems obvious (albeit hard and dangerous): make the students smarter so they are no longer idiots.
So every human has a right to their continued existence. That’s a good argument. Thanks.
That might be a bit drastic, but I too am worried about the deletion of perfectly legitimate (IMO) discussion.
Do keep in mind that screenshots are not always reliable, though.