Emily comments on Group Rationality Diary, November 16-30 - Less Wrong

2 Post author: therufs 16 November 2014 09:16PM

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Comment author: Emily 20 November 2014 03:15:18PM 1 point [-]

Sure, I don't think that contradicts what I said?

Comment author: James_Miller 20 November 2014 03:39:14PM *  1 point [-]

The issue is who can better predict what ilzolende's mom will think of cryonics, ilzolende who knows his mom, or me who has never met ilzolende's mom but who has talked to many women about cryonics. The chance of my being a better predictor is increasing in the number of women I have talked to about cryonics so while what I wrote didn't "contradict" what you said it does reduce the likelihood of your being right.

Comment author: ilzolende 21 November 2014 01:23:29AM 4 points [-]
  1. I'm female, but this site doesn't have a bio section in the user profile, so no big deal.
  2. My estimated probability that my mom will react negatively to discussion of cryonics is being adjusted upwards slightly, but the information I really need is what sort of things someone who is disgusted by cryonics would also be disgusted by.
  3. I would assume what James Miller is saying is that he has seen a wide variety of women react to cryonics, so in addition to having a reliable estimate of the average woman's behavior, he would know of more women who are similar to a described woman, and how those women reacted.

I would assume that you have more information about how different types of people react to cryonics, and that I have more information about what mental traits my mother has. I tried to pass on the knowledge of her mental traits which I thought were relevant to your estimate, so that you could make a better estimate. I wasn't suggesting that you didn't know how people react to cryonics.

Thanks for the data!

Comment author: Nornagest 21 November 2014 01:39:12AM *  1 point [-]

It actually is possible to create a bio section on your user profile, but it requires jumping through some hoops. Specifically, if there's a page for User:yourname on the wiki, the main site pulls it in as a profile and it becomes your main user page (you can still get to your comments by clicking "Comments" or "Overview"): see for example Gwern's user page on the main site, and on the wiki.

Most people don't bother, though.

Comment author: Lumifer 20 November 2014 04:53:33PM 3 points [-]

The chance of my being a better predictor is increasing in the number of women I have talked to about cryonics

Nope. By increasing your sample size you are getting your sample mean and so your estimate of the true mean closer to the population mean. But you can never get better than the population mean in your forecast. Someone who knows how the specifics of a particular data point differ from the average/expected value is quite likely to produce a better forecast.

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