malcolmocean comments on Model Combination and Adjustment - Less Wrong

49 Post author: lukeprog 17 July 2013 08:31PM

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Comment author: malcolmocean 14 July 2013 06:08:45AM 18 points [-]

I appreciate the snippets from EY's papers, which I don't read, because it's interesting to know what he's writing about more formally. I found the review mostly seemed like stuff I already know, although in returning to it I noticed that it did contain some new terminology around reference classes.

But this:

For example, gender-neutral language can reduce male bias in our associations (Stahlberg et al. 2007). In this spirit, I recommend we retire the phrase "the outside view..", and instead use phrases like "some outside views..." and "an outside view..."

Is really good. I mean, along with the general recommendation to use multiple reference classes. I guess my point is that the article is made possibly twice as awesome by the inclusion of this part, as it dramatically increases the probability that this will catch on memetically.

Comment author: Kaj_Sotala 14 July 2013 06:27:13AM *  8 points [-]

Thank you for highlighting that passage - by the time the text got to that point, I had already decided that this article wasn't telling me anything new and had started skimming, and missed that paragraph as a result. It is indeed very good.

Comment author: Technoguyrob 21 July 2013 10:44:37PM *  7 points [-]

In the mathematical theory of Galois representations, a choice of algebraic closure of the rationals and an embedding of this algebraic closure in the complex numbers (e.g. section 5) is usually necessary to frame the background setting, but I never hear "the algebraic closure" or "the embedding," instead "an algebraic closure" and "an embedding." Thus I never forget that a choice has to be made and that this choice is not necessarily obvious. This is an example from mathematics where careful language is helpful in tracking background assumptions.

Comment author: lukeprog 20 August 2013 06:49:53PM 1 point [-]

Thanks for sharing this.

Comment author: shminux 20 August 2013 07:22:04PM *  0 points [-]

This is an example from mathematics where careful language is helpful in tracking background assumptions.

I wonder how the mathematicians speaking article-free languages deal with it, given that they lack a non-cumbersome linguistic construct to express this potential ambiguity.