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faul_sname comments on Irrationality Game II - Less Wrong Discussion

13 [deleted] 03 July 2012 06:50PM

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Comment author: sixes_and_sevens 03 July 2012 09:29:27PM 9 points [-]

Irrationality Game

It's possible to construct a relatively simple algorithm to distinguish superstimulatory / acrasiatic media from novel, educational or insightful content. Such an algorithm need not make use of probabilistic classifiers or machine-learning techniques that rely on my own personal tastes. The distinction can be made based on testable, objective properties of the material. (~20%)

(This is a bit esoteric. I am starting to think up aggressive tactics to curb my time-wasteful internet habits, and was idly fantasising about a browser plugin that would tell me whether the link I was about to follow was entertaining glurge or potentially valuable. In wondering how that would work, I started thinking about how I classify it. My first thought would be that it's a subjective judgement call, and a naive acid-test that distinguished the two was tantamount to magic. After thinking about it for a little longer, I've started to develop some modestly-weighted fuzzy intuitions that there is some objective property I use to classify them, and that this may map faithfully onto how other people classify them.)

Comment author: faul_sname 04 July 2012 10:47:04PM 4 points [-]

Such an algorithm need not make use of probabilistic classifiers.

Upvoted for this sentence.