Rationality quotes January 2012

Thomas

Here's the new thread for posting quotes, with the usual rules:

Please post all quotes separately, so that they can be voted up/down separately. (If they are strongly related, reply to your own comments. If strongly ordered, then go ahead and post them together.)
Do not quote yourself.
Do not quote comments/posts on LW/OB.
No more than 5 quotes per person per monthly thread, please.

Here's the new thread for posting quotes, with the usual rules:

Please post all quotes separately, so that they can be voted up/down separately. (If they are strongly related, reply to your own comments. If strongly ordered, then go ahead and post them together.)
Do not quote yourself.
Do not quote comments/posts on LW/OB.
No more than 5 quotes per person per monthly thread, please.

I think you are. Here it is without the funny business:

As I'm sure you already know, if you really think you have paranormal powers, you can use them to win a huge amount of money and fame. I'm sure you could come up with some good use for the money, and the skeptics would have to admit they were wrong.

(P.S. I was taking the comment I was responding to seriously. Did you mean it that way?)

The positive results in parapsychology tend to be like 35% hit rates where chance would give a 25% hit rate. It isn't really financially feasible for researchers to gather enough data for a p value of 0.000001 (which, quite reasonably is what Randi requires-- who wouldn't take a 5 in 1000 shot at a million bucks?).

Which isn't to say I think psy is the best explanation for the p= 0.005 results out there, just that no one challenging for the Randi prize doesn't say much about academic parapsychology.

-1Will_Newsome14y

I meant it seriously, though I'll probably regret the strong language and it makes me kinda sad that skeptics are so good at inadvertently trolling me. (ETA: Yup, regretted it. Edited comment to be less in-your-face.) And what I meant with my chess comment, without the funny business, is that I'm aware of the Randi prize, aware that no one has claimed it, and still assign a decent amount of probability mass (aghhhh that doesn't actually work, probability isn't fundamental like that, but whatever) to the magick hypothesis. So I guess maybe I was annoyed at the implication that I hadn't thought these things through carefully already. I apologize for being brusque.

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Rationality quotes January 2012

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Rationality quotes January 2012

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