Polling Thread

Gunnar_Zarncke

This is an experiment to use polls to tap into the crowd knowledge probably present on LW.

This is your chance to ask your multiple choice question you always wanted to throw in. Get qualified numeric feedback to your comments. Post fun polls.

There are some rules:

Each poll goes into its own top level comment and may be commented there.
You must at least vote all polls that were posted earlier than you own. This ensures participation in all polls and also limits the total number of polls. You may of course vote without posting a poll.
Your poll should include a 'don't know' option (to avoid conflict with 2). I don't know whether we need to add a troll catch option here but we will see.

If you don't know how to make a poll in a comment look at the Poll Markup Help.

This being an experiment I do not announce it to be regular. If it is successful I may. Or you may. In that case I recommend the following to make this potentially more usable:

Use "Polling Thread" in the title.
Copy the rules.
Add the tag "poll".
Link to this Thread or a previous Thread.
Create a top-level comment saying 'Discussion of this thread goes here; all other to-level comments should be polls or similar'
Add a second top-level comment with an initial poll to start participation.

EDIT: Added recommendations from KnaveOfAllTrades.

This is an experiment to use polls to tap into the crowd knowledge probably present on LW.

This is your chance to ask your multiple choice question you always wanted to throw in. Get qualified numeric feedback to your comments. Post fun polls.

There are some rules:

Each poll goes into its own top level comment and may be commented there.
You must at least vote all polls that were posted earlier than you own. This ensures participation in all polls and also limits the total number of polls. You may of course vote without posting a poll.
Your poll should include a 'don't know' option (to avoid conflict with 2). I don't know whether we need to add a troll catch option here but we will see.

If you don't know how to make a poll in a comment look at the Poll Markup Help.

This being an experiment I do not announce it to be regular. If it is successful I may. Or you may. In that case I recommend the following to make this potentially more usable:

Use "Polling Thread" in the title.
Copy the rules.
Add the tag "poll".
Link to this Thread or a previous Thread.
Create a top-level comment saying 'Discussion of this thread goes here; all other to-level comments should be polls or similar'
Add a second top-level comment with an initial poll to start participation.

EDIT: Added recommendations from KnaveOfAllTrades.

We all try to be stupid about it, but all sorts of biases will begin coming into play with nebulous criteria like that.

A model based on historical data becomes more trustworthy once it makes a prediction in a novel scenario. If the Phlogiston model tells you to predict that fire goes out when airflow is restricted, it doesn't increase the model's impressiveness because Becher knew that fact before he made the model.

You seem to have been saying that they don't

Yes, I was sort of saying that earlier when I was talking about generalities. But I am also in agreement with your previous statement, that they work for a subset of people who have certain goals.

We all try to be [I assume there is a missing "not" here] stupid about it, but all sorts of biases will begin coming into play.

That looks like a general argument against any kind of empirical testing.

once it makes a prediction in a novel scenario.

You join the Red team, go out to a bar, meet a girl you've never seen before. That is a novel scenario -- the alternative is to accept that the Red techniques work because of biological imperatives hardwired into all human females, something I think you'd be loath to do.

And not to accuse you of ra... (read more)

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