Vladimir_Nesov comments on Never Leave Your Room - Less Wrong

66 Post author: Yvain 18 March 2009 12:30AM

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Comment author: Nick_Tarleton 19 March 2009 01:30:28AM 2 points [-]

Exactly. The point is to elicit the hidden opinion, which is presumed to be "good enough".

Comment author: Vladimir_Nesov 19 March 2009 01:35:49AM 1 point [-]

I expect the result of this experiment to depend on which side the coin actually came up.

Comment author: JamesAndrix 19 March 2009 06:08:13AM 2 points [-]

It certainly will sometimes: I suspect that sometimes both options are acceptable to me, and neither will feel like a great loss if not followed; in this case I will likely end up following the coin. Or I 'hiddenly' dread both options, or would feel either as loss, in which case I will recoil against the choice of the coin (and possibly recoil again against the other option as well, leaving back where I started.)

But I generally use this when I am otherwise indecisive, where further analysis is more trouble than it's worth. So even when the randomness leads me astray, it doesn't cost me much.