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In Finland, there's pretty much never an expectation for you to tip, except possibly in cases where the other person has clearly gone far above the call of duty for you.
Same in Poland; although many people do tip in restaurants. I'm always a little bit confused by the American tipping rituals whenever I see it in a movie or whatever.
How about the rest of Europe?
In response to
Dark Arts 101: Using presuppositions
We can only hope that this was an artful stroke made from the shadows by some great master of the Dark Arts, and not a mere snowballing of an ignorant question.
Actually, I'd hope quite the opposite. Perhaps it'd be a sad conclusion, but yours strikes me as potentially more dangerous.
In response to
Confidence levels inside and outside an argument
In order for a single cell to live, all of the parts of the cell must be assembled before life starts. This involves 60,000 proteins that are assembled in roughly 100 different combinations. The probability that these complex groupings of proteins could have happened just by chance is extremely small. It is about 1 chance in 10 to the 4,478,296 power. The probability of a living cell being assembled just by chance is so small, that you may as well consider it to be impossible. This means that the probability that the living cell is created by an intelligent creator, that designed it, is extremely large. The probability that God created the living cell is 10 to the 4,478,296 power to 1.
Note that someone just gave a confidence level of 10^4478296 to one and was wrong. This is the sort of thing that should never ever happen. This is possibly the most wrong anyone has ever been.
Particularly in the light of the fact that he seems to have got the numbers the wrong way round from what he intended in the final sentence.
Did he? I thought he just meant 'odds' when he said 'probability'.
I find almost the reverse. Movies seem to be significantly more likely to have weird errors or other elements that break my suspension of disbelief, whereas in books the fact that I'm imagining most of the events allows me to kind of filter anything that seems too implausible into a more logical narrative.
Try and do that with Rudy Rucker, I dare you. I only endured first thirty or so pages of his "Postsingular" before all that was left of my suspension of disbelief were sad ashes and smoke started to come out of my ears.
EDIT: Although, to be fair, I haven't tried his other books. I hear the 'ware' trilogy is quite good. I can't shake off the distaste after trying "Postsingular", though.
In response to
Rationality Quotes: December 2010
"To lose one parent may be regarded as a misfortune... to lose both seems like carelessness." - Oscar Wilde (though he didn't mean it to refer to cryonics).
[Edit: correction, thanks ciphergoth]
Thanks for the explanation, wouldn't have thought about it from this angle without it. It's pretty good when read in this way. Upvoted.
In response to
Even if you have a nail, not all hammers are the same
For anyone interested, here is a decent algorithm for getting the "correct" number of lines in your linear regression.
http://www.cs.princeton.edu/~wayne/kleinberg-tardos/06dynamic-programming-2x2.pdf
Pages 5 and 6.
Ouch. Comic Sans.
Good cookbook, though.
In response to
Something's Wrong
And the poor atheist, after one question too many, is forced to say “I don’t know.”
The stronger answer to many of those questions is "nobody knows."
And sometimes knowing what you know you don't know is more important than what you actually know.
The stronger answer to many of those questions is "nobody knows."
Perhaps, but it would at best be a rethorical answer, and at worst an ignorant one.
For example, 341, 0011001100110001, and XXXI all represent the same number using different systems of representation.
Okay, this is silly, but I can't for the life of me figure out what that number and those systems of representation are.
Whoops, I think you forgot your closing ta-... </not paying enough attention> Ah! I get it now. I should've closed that tag years ago.
That's not particularly well-formed, is it now?
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Pardon me, illusion of transparency. This is an area I am interested in and have investigated enough that my default language and expression will be decidedly non-mainstream.
Absolutely. MDMA and psyclobin come to mind as good examples of things which could have positive uses in the right circumstances. And ketamine is damn near miraculous if used right. THC on the other hand could perhaps deserve a worse reputation than what it has. It is terrible stuff. All those IQ points lost and mood destabilisation. Yet even that can be useful in the right circumstances. Those circumstances being when F@#%ing up your brain is a good thing. In particular if I had a massively traumatic experience I would administer some pot to myself as soon as possible in order to reduce (bad) memory consolidation. (If I recall correctly some benefits can be observed even after the onset of PTSD.)
For my part I haven't bothered with illegal stuff (except for maybe being a little flexible regarding whether or not I happened to have a prescription at the time). There is just too much available that isn't illegal. Even for recreational purposes the big name street drugs aren't really the optimal way to get high. The same way alcohol was a good drug for its time. That is, about 4,000 years ago.
Would you be interested in writing up the results of your investigations? A structured article on tested useful drugs, if only with a terse summary of what each of them is good for, would be an interesting starting point for studying this topic further. Most such resources on the Internet seem to focus mainly on illegal drugs, which makes their use somewhat problematic.