MileyCyrus comments on Rationality Quotes September 2012 - Less Wrong

7 Post author: Jayson_Virissimo 03 September 2012 05:18AM

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Comment author: wallowinmaya 02 September 2012 10:30:35PM 34 points [-]

Nobody is smart enough to be wrong all the time.

Ken Wilber

Comment author: MileyCyrus 03 September 2012 03:11:36AM 15 points [-]

Lol, my professor would give a 100% to anyone who answered every exam question wrong. There were a couple people who pulled it off, but most scored 0<10.

Comment author: Decius 03 September 2012 03:26:56AM 11 points [-]

I'm assuming a multiple-choice exam, and invalid answers don't count as 'wrong' for that purpose?

Otherwise I can easily miss the entire exam with "Tau is exactly six." or "The battle of Thermopylae" repeated for every answer. Even if the valid answers are [A;B;C;D].

Comment author: MugaSofer 01 October 2012 11:51:13AM 2 points [-]

"The battle of Thermopylae" repeated for every answer.

Unless it really was the battle of Thermopylae. Not having studied, you wont know.

Comment author: Decius 01 October 2012 09:34:22PM 1 point [-]

"The Battle of Thermopylae" is intended as the alternate for questions which might have "Tau is exactly six" as the answer.

For example: "What would be one consequence of a new state law which defines the ratio of a circle's circumference to diameter as exactly three?"

I bet that you can't write a question for which "Tau is exactly six." and "The battle of Thermopylae" are both answers which gain any credit...

Comment author: Alicorn 01 October 2012 09:38:50PM 10 points [-]

I bet that you can't write a question for which "Tau is exactly six." and "The battle of Thermopylae" are both answers which gain any credit...

"Write a four word phrase or sentence."

Comment author: Decius 02 October 2012 01:16:42AM 4 points [-]

You win.

Comment author: shminux 01 October 2012 11:21:27PM 3 points [-]

Judging by this and your previous evil genie comments, you'd make a lovely UFAI.

Comment author: Jay_Schweikert 01 October 2012 11:14:38PM 3 points [-]

I hate to break up the fun, and I'm sure we could keep going on about this, but Decius's original point was just that giving a wrong answer to an open-ended question is trivially easy. We can play word games and come up with elaborate counter-factuals, but the substance of that point is clearly correct, so maybe we should just move on. </fun police>

Comment author: Decius 02 October 2012 01:43:41AM 2 points [-]

That was exactly the challenge I issued. Granted, it's trivial to write an answer which is wrong for that question, but it shows that I can't find a wrong answer for an arbitrary question as easily as I thought I could.

Comment author: shokwave 01 October 2012 02:29:49PM 0 points [-]

"The duel between the current King of France and the former Emperor of Britain". There, the answer won't ever be that phrase.

Comment author: [deleted] 01 October 2012 03:40:59PM 3 points [-]

What if you are in a literature class and you're taking a test about a fiction book you didn't read?

Comment author: MugaSofer 10 October 2012 08:03:29AM 0 points [-]

Care to bet on that?