That would (I'd have thought) take quite a lot more than CDN$20 worth of time. (Unless I were just skimming through it rather than reading it thoroughly enough to be any use.) Though I'd presumably expect some nonzero benefit from reading the book, at least in the "99%" scenario, and that would need factoring in.
Also, how would the bet actually get resolved? I mean, in the "1%" case you're a Scientologist and willing to lie brazenly about the fact; conditional on that, other Scientologists are probably very unreliable too so I can't just ask whatever gathering of Scientologists is closer to what you say is your physical location (note: actually I'm pretty sure Scientologists are very unreliable anyway); so how could I be sufficiently -- well over 99% -- convinced?
That would (I'd have thought) take quite a lot more than CDN$20 worth of time. (Unless I were just skimming through it rather than reading it thoroughly enough to be any use.) Though I'd presumably expect some nonzero benefit from reading the book, at least in the "99%" scenario, and that would need factoring in.
I already thought of all that. You know I'm just trying to get you to read the books. :P
Obviously, we'd both have to give our bets (well, my money and your promise) to a respected public figure, someone like Eliezer being an obvious ca...
[NOTE: This was a discussion post asking if anyone would mind giving feedback on a very rough draft in progress.
If you are downvoting it because you do not want to see discussion posts asking for feedback like this, then by all means, that's a valid use of a downvote.
But if you are downvoting it in order to express your opinion of the quality of the draft, I urge you to reconsider]
This is another work in progress coming at the DI issue from a somewhat different direction. It's contained in the comments of the original, and I'm posting this to ask for more wonderful beta-reader critics to tell me if it's a step in the right direction. (It's still very informal writing, but it's the ideas I'm dealing with now.)
And about what I'm looking for in the LW audience, someone asked me in a private message:
And I said:
Well, that's the major part of what I want that's important here. I also had to add:
But that's not important here (except to disclose that is where I'm coming from). LWers would first have to understand DI to fully grasp that. And I am significantly less certain of my current beliefs about those 'strategic twists' (although still pretty certain), and LWers proficient in DI would be the best to evaluate the ideas.