No one can truly say he knows God until he has handled something.

What does it mean? What do I need to handle to know God?

The beauty of the teachings of the Lord is that they are true and that you can confirm them for yourself.

It would be beautiful if you could, but alas, either the teachings are not testable, or the test fails, or there is a simpler explanation.

If we understood the process of creation there would be no mystery about it, it would be all reasonable and plain, for there is no mystery except to the ignorant.

This is true as far as it goes, but note that astrophysicists admire the night sky at least as much as lay folks, despite being able to describe in some detail how the stars shine and galaxies form. So "reasonable" doesn't mean "plain".

This we know by what we have learned naturally since we have had a being on the earth.

I don't understand what this sentence means.

Their not being able to prevail against it does not prove it to be the Kingdom of God, for there are many theories and systems on the earth, incontrovertible by the wisdom of the world, which are nevertheless false.

Does this say that one cannot tell the difference between many models giving the same predictions? Then yes, it is pretty reasonable.

I like the taste of some alcoholic beverages; but, for some weird reason, being drunk makes me feel quite dizzy -- and that's it. There are no positive effects: no social disinhibition (as far as I can tell, anyway), no warm fuzzy feelings, just dizziness. For this reason, I tend to drink rarely, and little.

Edit: I love olives, FWIW.

I was in this exact situation, and I chose to buy some headphones. If I analyze my decision-making process, I can come up with two reasons:

1). My own personal cost of buying and wearing headphones was much lower than the cost of having pissed-off neighbours who hate me. Obviously, YMMV.

2). My neighbours were polite, and even somewhat deferential, in their request (for me to stop playing loud music). They did not threaten me with coercion, despite the fact that they had plenty of coercion at their disposal -- they could've complained to the building manager, filed a noise complaint with the cops, etc. Instead, they chose to ask me for a favor, thus becoming indebted to me in some small way. In other words, they could've easily defected, but they chose to click that "Cooperate" button, and I responded in kind.

I think that these reasons, when combined, constitute what counts as "not being a jerk" in general society: a reciprocal agreement to make small sacrifices in exchange for future cooperation.

How do you evaluate whether any given model is useful of not?

One way is to simulate a perfect computational agent, assume perfect information, and see what kind of models it would construct.

If you reject the notion of an external reality that is accessible to us in at least some way, then you cannot really measure the performance of your models against any kind of a common standard.

Solomonoff induction provides a universal standard for "perfect" inductive inference, that is, learning from observations. It is not entirely parameter-free, so it's "a standard", not "the standard". I doubt if there is the standard for the same reasons I doubt that Platonic Truth does exist.

All you've got left are your internal thoughts and feelings

Umm, no, this is a false dichotomy. There is a large area in between "relying on one's intuition" and "relying on an objective external word". For example, how about "relying on the accumulated knowledge of others"?

See also my comment in the other thread.

I've got feeling that the implicit LessWrong'ish rationalist theory of truth is, in fact, some kind of epistemic (Bayesian) pragmatism, i.e. "true is that what is knowable using probability theory". May also throw in "..for a perfect computational agent".

My speculation is that the declared LW's sympathy towards the correspondence theory of truth stems from political / social reasons. We don't want to be confused with the uncritically thinking masses - the apologists of homoeopathy or astrology justifying their views by "yeah, I don't know how it works either, but it's useful!"; the middle-school teachers who are ready to threat scientific results as epistemological equals of their favourite theories coming from folk-psychology, religious dogmas, or "common sense knowledge", because, you known, "they all are true in some sense". Pragmatic theories of truth are dangerous if they come into the wrong hands.

Also, having quadcopters flying around zapping insects is at least going to be visually distracting.

Your confusion is a clever ruse, but your username gives away your true motives!

This may be a stupid question, but is that mosquito laser drone thing really the best way to solve the problem of... what problem is it even solving ? "Too many mosquitoes" ? "Malaria" ?

Data: pretty much all male Hollywood stars wear (natural-looking) makeup whenever they appear on camera.

Obvious potentially useful moves:

• Buy time with discussion of secret powers (partial Transfiguration and true Patronus), since we're optimizing primarily for surviving the immediate situation and not for preventing Voldemort from knowing useful powers.

• Partially Transfigure himself in some useful way, depending on subsequent access to PStone to avoid T. sickness.

• Cast Patronus centered on himself to blind and to block AKs. (Problem: doesn't block other curses. But if he moves, Death Eaters might fire at the shiny thing instead of at him.)

• Un-Transfigure glasses into whatever emergency countermeasure Harry could have chosen. (Note: will still be stuck to Harry's face, so no bombs or suchlike.)

I've been primarily thinking along the lines of defense, escape, mobility. Once Harry gets to the Time Turner or the pouch he has more options.