Probability: If the typical modern {person, LWer} knew all the positive and negative effects of taking {modafinil, piracetam, etc.} they would pay present prices to take them.
Confidence interval(s): If the typical LWer knew the extent of all effects of {cardiovascular, weight-training, other} exercise, and they were able to commit to any amount of said exercise and stick to it, how much would they do?
Assume that any time they spend doing exercise would otherwise have been spent doing other work.
If you want to be more specific, what advice would you give to healthy 25-year-olds, to healthy 40-year-olds, etc.?
What is the minimum effective period over which one should try a new dietary plan, before reaching conclusions on its effectiveness?
(In other words, what is the time granularity for dietary self-experimentation? This question could be generalized to other health issues where self-experimentation is appropriate.)
Probability: You are living in a simulation run by some sort of intelligence.
Probability: Other people exist independently of your own mind.
Probability: You are dreaming at this very moment. (Learning to dream lucidly is largely a matter of giving this a high probability and keeping it in mind, and updating on it when you encounter, for instance, people asking whether you're dreaming.)
Let G be a a grad student with an IQ of 130 and a background in logic/math/computing.
Probability: The quality of life of G will improve substantially as a consequence of reading the sequences.
Probability: Reading the sequences is a sound investment for G (compared to other activities)
Probability: If every person on the planet were trained in rationality (as far as IQ permits) humanity would allocate resources in a sane manner.
What's the probability that the Swiss central bank will maintain its cap on the franc vs. euro? And what is your confidence interval for when they might give it up if they do decide to give it up.
I have a question about Pascal's mugging. This does break the standard question-answer format, but you said not to be squeamish about that, so here goes the problem I am currently considering.
According to the wiki, the Standard Pascal's mugging is formulated like this:
Now suppose someone comes to me and says:
"Give me five dollars, or I'll use my magic powers from outside the Matrix to run a Turing machine that simulates and kills 3^^^^3 people."
Now, further suppose that someone says
..."Never give into a Pascal's Mugging except this one. I
What is the probability that a person who signs up for cryonics will be revived?
(Yes, I did already ask this, but my estimate is far enough from the apparent consensus here that I'd like to see more estimates)
I read once 15 years ago that when a child is born in a modern-day forager group, e.g., in the Amazon with a missing limb, he or she almost always dies because the tribe ostracizes the child unless there are anthropologists or other such visitors to bring the child to 'civilization'.
The OP instructs me to ask for the probability, but I am actually more interested in short descriptions of pieces of evidence that would move the probability by a factor of >3 or <.333 and how independent that piece of evidence is from all the other piece of evidence.
In s...
So, this is correct enough, but I would recommend generalizing the principle.
The (nominally) interesting thing about Pascal's Mugging scenarios (and also about the original Pascal's Wager, which inspired them) is that we can posit hypothetical scenarios that involve utility shifts so vast that even if they are vanishingly unlikely scenarios, the result of multiplying the probability of the scenario by the magnitude of the utility shift should it come to pass is still substantial. This allows a decision system that operates based on the expected value of a scenario (that is, the expected value of the scenario times its likelihood) to be manipulated by presenting it with carefully tailored scenarios of this sort (e.g., Pascal's mugging).
It's conceivable that a well-calibrated decision system would not be subject to such manipulation, because it would assign each scenario a probability that reflected such things... e.g., it would estimate the likelihood of there actually existing an Omega capable of creating 2N units of disutility as no more than .5 the likelihood of an Omega capable of creating only N units.
But I've never met any decision system that well calibrated. So, as bounded systems running on inadequate corrupted hardware, we have to come up with other tactics that keep us from driving off cliffs.
In general, one such tactic is to maintain a broader perspective than just the specific problem I've been invited to think about.
So when the Mugger asserts that there is a mugging, I can ask "Why should I care? What other things do I have roughly the same reason to care about, and why is my attention being directed to this particular choice within that set?"
The same thing goes when Pascal himself argues that I ought to worship the Christian God, for example, because no matter how unlikely I consider His existence, the sheer magnitude of the stakes (Heaven and Hell) dwarf that unlikelihood. If I find that compelling, I should find a vast number of competing Gods' claims equally compelling.
The same thing goes (on a smaller scale) when someone tries to sell me insurance against some specific bad thing happening.
Often, there are questions you want to know the answers to. You want other people's opinions, because knowing the answer isn't worth the time you'd have to spend to find it, or you're unsure whether your answer is right.
LW seems like a good place to ask these questions because the people here are pretty rational. So, in this thread: You post a top-level comment with some question. Other people reply to your comment with their answers. You upvote answers that you agree with and questions whose answers you'd like to know.
A few (mostly obvious) guidelines:
For questions:
For answers:
This thread is primarily for getting the hivemind's opinions on things, not for debating probabilities of propositions. Debating is also okay, though, especially since it will help question-posters to make up their minds.
Don't be too squeamish about breaking the question-answer format.
This is a followup to my comment in the open thread.