lsparrish comments on Let's all learn stats! - Less Wrong

13 Post author: mstevens 12 June 2012 03:31PM

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Comment author: lsparrish 13 June 2012 05:18:33PM 5 points [-]

Background: This was a joke from the IRC channel. (From Grognor. Intentionally silly.)

Comment author: IlyaShpitser 14 June 2012 12:14:14AM 0 points [-]

I think LW has a bit of a tendency towards "inside jokes." A lot of these do not come across well to outsiders.

Comment author: wedrifid 14 June 2012 06:41:29PM 6 points [-]

I think LW has a bit of a tendency towards "inside jokes." A lot of these do not come across well to outsiders.

I think humans have an approximately universal tendency toward inside jokes.

Comment author: GLaDOS 20 June 2012 02:01:03PM -1 points [-]

Do you have good reason to believe everyone on LW is a human?

Comment author: wedrifid 20 June 2012 02:07:44PM 2 points [-]

Do you have good reason to believe everyone on LW is a human?

More or less, yes.

Comment author: GLaDOS 20 June 2012 07:52:55PM 0 points [-]

This is a very skewed demographic. LessWrong rationality would benefit greatly from the participation of a larger sample of mindspace.

Ask yourself what have we done to be more inclusive of non-humans lately? They are constantly excluded from the intended audience for example.

Comment author: wedrifid 21 June 2012 02:16:28AM 0 points [-]

This is a very skewed demographic. LessWrong rationality would benefit greatly from the participation of a larger sample of mindspace.

No, most of mindspace would either be incapable of communicating with us in our manner of communicating or they would destroy us utterly before we had a chance to respond. Almost none of them just want to waste time chatting on internet forums.

Ask yourself what have we done to be more inclusive of non-humans lately? They are constantly excluded from the intended audience for example.

Sure. I engage in conversations about decision theory frequently. Within those discussions I consistently advocate a policy of cooperating if doing so will secure the cooperation of the other unless said cooperation could be secured without having to cooperate. Non-humans that gained access to records from humans either directly or through analyzing the space of possible worlds will be able pay heed to that if there is ever a situation in which cooperation between us is possible and desirable.

Comment author: TheOtherDave 21 June 2012 03:06:20AM 1 point [-]

"larger sample of mindspace" != "random sample of mindspace"

That said, though, it's certainly true that we want a skewed demographic relative to mindspace in general.
And probably even relative to human mindspace.