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Any good advice on how to become kinder? This can really be classified as two related goals, 1) How can I get more enjoyment out of alleviating others suffering and giving others happiness? 2) How can I reliably do 1 without negative emotions getting in my way (ex. staying calm and making small nudges to persuade people rather than getting angry and trying to change people's worldview rapidly)?
I must have missed that thread, thanks. Though I can't see why I'm wrong. It has nothing to do with frequentism vs. bayesianism (I'm a bayesian). It's simply that likelihood is relative to a model, whereas probability is not relative to anything (or, alternatively, is relative to everything), as they're saying in that thread. Through this interpretation it's easy to see why likelihood represents a degree of belief.
It's a quirk of the community, not an actual mistake on your part. LessWrong defines probability as Y, the statistics community defines probability as X. I would recommend lobbying the larger community to a use of the words consistent with the statistical definitions but shrug...
To me, it makes a lot of sense to call someone an Evangelical Christian if they have in fact evangelized for Christianity.
The Pope would be surprised to hear that, I think.
All Christians of all denominations are supposed to spread the Good Word. Christianity is an actively proselytizing religion and has always been one. The Roman Catholic Church, in particular, has been quite active on that front. As have been Mormons, Adventists, Jehova's Witnesses, etc. etc.
Then let me respecify what I should have stated originally, Christians who evangelize for Christianity are effective at persuading others to join the cause. I am concerned with how bugging people about a cause (aka evangelizing for it) will effect the number of people in that cause. The numbers shown suggest that if we consider evangelizing Christians to be a group, then they are growing as support of my hypothesis.
Oh, I'm well aware that this technique could be used to spread irrational and harmful memes. But if you're trying to persuade someone to rationality using techniques of argument which presume rationality, it's unlikely that you'll succeed. So you may have to get your rationalist hands dirty.
Your call on what's the better outcome: successfully convincing someone to be more rational (but having their agency violated through irrational persuasion) or leaving that person in the dark. It's a nontrivial moral dilemma which should only be considered once rational persuasion has failed.
I haven't seen this shorthand explained anywhere here.
This would be the explanation http://lesswrong.com/lw/oj/probability_is_in_the_mind/ It really should be talked about more explicitly elsewhere though.
In response to
Am I Understanding Bayes Right?
*I keep seeing probability referred to as an estimation of how certain you are in a belief. And while I guess it could be argued that you should be certain of a belief relative to the number of possible worlds left or whatever, that doesn't necessarily follow. Does the above explanation differ from how other people use probability?
Probability is never used as a degree of belief. Likelihood is used as a degree of belief. See this thread: http://stats.stackexchange.com/questions/2641/what-is-the-difference-between-likelihood-and-probability
Once you understand likelihood it's easy to see why it represents degree of belief.
In light of the downvotes, I just wanted to explain that probability is frequently used to refer to a degree of belief by LessWrong folks. You're absolutely right that statistical literature will always use "probability" to denote the true frequency of an outcome in the world, but the community finds it a convenient shorthand to allow "probability" to mean a degree of belief.
I am not sure which data you are looking at.
My link shows the percentage of people who self-identify as Evangelicals. The data starts in 1991 and ends in 2005. The first values (1991-1993) are 41%, 42%, 46%, 44%, 43%, and the last values (2004-2005) are 42%, 39%, 42%, 47%, 40%.
I see no trend.
Your link shows the percentage of people who answer three proxy questions. The data starts in 1976 and ends in 2005. Over that time period one question goes up (47% to 52%), one goes down (38% to 32%) and the third goes up as well (35% to 48%). Do note that the survey says "When looking at the percentage of Americans who say yes to all three of these questions, slightly more than one in five (22%) American adults could be considered evangelical" and that's about *half* of the number of people who self-identify as such.
Given all this, I see no evidence that the mind share of the Evangelicals in the US is increasing.
The proxy I am specifically looking at for evangelical Christianity is people who claim to have spread the "good news" about Jesus to someone. In other words, asking people whether they themselves have evangelized (the data on this is the fairly clear 47% to 52% upward trend). To me, it makes a lot of sense to call someone an Evangelical Christian if they have in fact evangelized for Christianity. And if we disagree on that definition, then there is really nothing more I can say.
False, really? So looking at the data in these two links you think you see a statistically significant trend?
Don't forget that your (second) link is concerned with proxies for being an Evangelical...
The margin of sampling error is +- 3% while the difference the 1980 percentage and the 2005 percentage is 5%. I do think that a trend which has a p value less than .05 is statistically significant.
Do you have any reason to believe that Christian Evangelicals are ineffective at persuading people?
Yes. Their mind share in the US is not increasing.
False, according to both the source you cited and http://www.gallup.com/poll/16519/us-evangelicals-how-many-walk-walk.aspx
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I'd recommend Nonviolent Communication for this. It contains specific techniques for how to frame interactions that I've found useful for creating mutual empathy. How To Win Friends And Influence People is also a good source, although IIRC it's more focused on what to do than on how to do it. (And of course, if you read the books, you have to actually practice to get good at the techniques.)
Thanks! And out of curiosity, does the first book have much data backing it? The author's credentials seem respectable so the book would be useful even if it relied on mostly anecdotal evidence, but if it has research backing it up then I would classify it as something I need (rather than ought) to read.