Why was this post downvoted like crazy? Is Less Wrong not the sort of place to post this sort of question?
Should we have a Q&A site for this sort of purpose? It's been discussed before.
Or is it just that this should have been posted to Discussion or the open thread?
I have made a terrible mistake judgement-wise by posting this topic in the fashion I did.
The situation was like this:
I've been at the librabry, studying for an exam when I took a not unusual 10-minute procrastination break to surf whe web. I went onto planetrationalist.com (a website that collects the newest articles from a wide variety of "rationalist" websites of varying quality including LW), where an article about the mentioned paper was one of the most recent ones.
At that point I made at least three faulty assumptions/ mistakes that were to some extent connected:
1) "It's the top post so this is actually news." (I think it was actually a week old at that point already).
2) "The article about the article does not point out any obvious flaws, and because it's linked on planetrationalist.com I assign some trust/probability that it's not complete garbage" (by far my worst irrational crime)
3) "I'll take a look on lesswrongs discussion board to find what people say about this topic because right now I haven't any time to really check out this paper myself. [...] Oh, there's no post yet in the discussion section, but since it's news (which it wasn't) that makes sense, so I guess I'll open the first topic to see what others think about this paper."
If I had realized that it was old news I would have taken the absence of discussion about this paper/topic in the discussion section as a vital hint. Bad choices and assumptions all along.
So right now I just hope people stop upvoting this and let it die in silence because more people who thinks this thread hasn't enough downvotes yet show up all the time ruin my karma yet further, which overall has been rather positive up until very recently. On the upside however I've learned a valuable lesson about lesswrong at the cost of some karma I wouldn't have learned otherwise.
I've already linked to that on the Open thread, and incurred the inevitable downvotes for giving any kind of publicity to Rossi (I didn't whine about the downvotes at all, though).
Short version is that the "independent" verification is still mighty fishy (conducted at Rossi's facility, somewhat under his control, and not using accepted methodology).
Thanks for the link, I recalled something about an Italian guy trying to pull something a few years back so I became suspicious by two of the four authors being Italian from the get-go, but other than that I just don't have any clue about whether or not cold fusion is actually doable.
I'll look into that tread right away, thanks for the heads up.
Some of you may have heard about the following paper already:
http://arxiv.org/ftp/arxiv/papers/1305/1305.3913.pdf
Here's a news article wrapping up the main points:
http://atom-ecology.russgeorge.net/2013/05/20/an-italian-cold-fusion-tide-lifts-all-boats-arvix-independent-review-paper-confirms-rossi-fusion/
I'm way out of my depth here so I find it hard to judge, is this a pile of BS or are we finally getting somewhere for real?
Is burning coal (and using chemical reactions in general) for the purpose of producing energy coming to an end in the upcoming decades?
EDIT: Here's a review of the article, it should be read. http://scienceblogs.com/startswithabang/2013/05/21/the-e-cat-is-back-and-people-are-still-falling-for-it/
By the same logic, you should mass produce children until you can no longer feed them all.
Islam, Catholocism and others approve, though they're vague about what happens once you run out of space or can no longer feed them. Sharp tongues may claim that has already happened.
As someone with a tulpa, I figure I should probably share my experiences. Vigil has been around since I was 11 or 12, so I can't effectively compare my abilities before and after he showed up.
He has dedicated himself to improving our rationality, and has been a substantial help in pointing out fallacies in my thinking. However, we're skeptical that this is anything a more traditional inner monologue wouldn't figure out. The biggest apparent benefit is that being a tulpa allows him a greater degree of mental flexibility than me, making it easier for him to point out and avoid motivated thinking. Unfortunately, we haven't found a way to test this.
I'm afraid he doesn't know any "tricks" like accessing subconscious thoughts or super math skills.
While Vigil has been around for over a decade, I only found out about the tulpa community very recently, so I know very little about it. I also don't know anything about creating them intentionally, he just showed up one day.
If you have any questions for me or him, we're happy to answer.
...many people argue for (their) god by pointing out that they are often "feeling his presence" and since many claim to speak with him as well, maybe that's really just one form of tupla without the insight that it is actually a hallucination.
Surely that's not how most people experience belief, but I never really considered that some of them might actually carry around a vivid invisible (or visible for all I know) hallucination quite like that. Could explain why some of the really batshit crazy ones going on about how god constantly speaks to them manage to be quite so convincing.
From now on my two tulpa buddies will be Eliezer and an artificial intelligence engaged in constant conversation while I make toast, love, and take a shower. Too bad they'll never be smarter than me though.
I wonder if Magic Cards (Specifically the Power Nine cards and Beta Dual Lands) are not a good investment? They have multiplied by about 10 in price over the last ten years. I've known people who had 300 Serra Angels, a terrible investment whose price decreased from 8 dollars to about 1 or less over the years.
Magic is both a collectible and a game, I don't know how that factors in expected value return.
Usually the top 0,3% (in future relative scarcity in Type1 and Legacy) increase steadily in price no matter what, top 1% unless they are reprinted (in which case both up and down can happen) and most of the rest goes down. But only with years and years of experience can a player tell whether a card will belong to the select few. Svi may have informed opinions on that.
Just to spend some time calibrating future-me confidence in Magic price calibration, I'll say some outrageous hypothesis: Up: Time Vault, Mana Drain, P9 except timetwister, FOW, Karakas, Fetch, Duals, mutavault, moxen. Down: All non-tribal creatures pre-2008, jace, all dual trual lands except above, baneslayer, wrath of god. There you go future 2017 me, stop trusting yourself that much and never invest in what you mind thinks it is superexpert at without much evidence.
I wouldn't know about magic cards, sorry.
Stamps would be my choice because they have many advantages over other types of collectibles. Magic cards may share many of the benefits stamps have over other collectibles considering the similar format, but stamps surely have special perks magic cards don't.
Stamps have the advantage, that they are the number 1 collectible in Germany and many other parts of Europe and they have been forever. Coins and other things don't come close in terms of how widely they are collected and the bigger the demand, the easier it is to monetize if you have a worthwhile collection that is interesting to the collector base. There are stamps which one can assume will be interesting for many decades to come - there is for example a deep fascination with the Third Reich so stamps that came from Germany and the occupied territories during that time are generally sought after. What's also interesting is "catastrophy mail", that is mail that was delivered on planes or zeppelins that were destroyed while the letters themselves could be salvaged from the wrecks.
There are many nieche topics that stamp collectors could choose to base their collection(s) on, which may indeed suffer from vaning interest over time in the collector base, but there are also some other topics that will probably remain interesting in the very long run and thus demand will always be there and fluctuate less than the demand for other topics.
I know that magic is huge but will it remain so for another fifty years? (Assuming the absence of apocalyptic scenarios). I'm quite sure stamps will be there because they are carrying historical information and are an integral part of the first "reliable" long distance communication technology humans managed to make work (apart from books perhaps, though they usually had no specific individual as recipient in mind and thus really are quite a different communication technology).
That's one interpretation, but I certainly wouldn't have used the phrasing he did if I meant to convey that meaning.
When think "A name for children," I think of variations on ordinary names which people usually grow out of, like "Timmy."
No I meant it like you interpreted it, "Timmy" and "Benny" are names that you would clearly associate with children rather than adults. And my impression is that Kevin is also in that category, though perhaps it's not as extreme a case as those two names. I never understood why parents would call their son Benny, why not officially call him Ben and use Benny in the family as long as he's a kid and doesn't mind?
No one ever heard of Benny the mighty conquerer or Benny the badass CEO. Benny is a cute name, not a serious name for a grown man. Kevin may be perceived differently in America, perhaps because the name is older there while in Germany it's indeed a rather new name...
http://www.freakonomics.com/2009/10/22/kevin-is-not-a-name-its-a-diagnosis/
...and oddly enough all the Kevins I remember from my old school years were always the class clown.
Did you consult a tax attorney on this? I have no idea what you're referring to when you claim you don't pay "extra" taxes on selling your stamps. Selling your possessions is certainly income and would at least be subject to income tax (and the rate would be higher than a capital gains tax rate on stocks).
I'm from Germany, here they tax gains in stock trade with a higher rate and the government tried to extend this higher rate on trade with stamps and other "art" formats multiple times, but realized its unfeasible and for now gave up. Currently you pay a whopping 25% in taxes on capital gains over ~1000$ and have other substantial losses. A few years back it could even climb as high as 50% if you were unlucky. Also you don't pay any special taxes here if you simply sell your private collection.
I think the current US tax rate on capital gains is at 0% if you earn little, 15% if your income is in a "medium" range and it can climb to 20% if your wallet is really thick.
This is not based on any personal research but on what my father told me, yet seeing how much time he is (and especially has been) spending in this field, that he keeps up to date, and that generally speaking he is a reasonably smart man, I have no reason to doubt his expertise in this topic. Naturally he's enthusiastic about this but he wouldn't warp facts. Every time I visit I unsually tend to leave with more insight in this field than I really want to. He also keeps close track on how the value of his private collection rose over the past, how it still rises, and I know what the figures look like.
Back on track, I should have made the disclaimer that I'm not really familiar with US tax law. The main point I'm making here however is that it is a very safe long term investment that is practically guaranteed to pay out substantially more than what you buy it for in the long haul. This should hold true regardless of what country you're from.
If you have a reasonable ammount of money that you would like to save long-term and (potentially) remonetize 10+ years later on (for example for your retirement or whatever) then decide against playing the stock market (duh) or putting it in low interest bank accounts and buy the right stamps instead.
My dad is a passionate collector, but I have hardly any interst in collecting useless historical artefacts because I'm more interested in the future of humanity than its past. However even without any historical interest in the particular subject, stamps are an amazing thing to put your money into, because:
Few stamps ever fall significantly in value, some remain stagnant and most rise significantly over time. So having many rather than a few really valuable ones is good and in a timeframe of decades many individual stamps can easily double or triple their value.
They are very small, light and portable. Unlike most other art-objects you could potentially remonetize quickly. Much lighter than coins or anything else, really.
If you remonetize them, you don't pay extra taxes which you may have to pay for gains from playing the stock market. If there will be a tax on that at some Point in the future (which is unlikely for some reasons I won't get into), it can be easily avoided - illegally and probably legally as well.
You can remonetize them very, very quickly for a very good price by knowing the right person / auction house.
Unlike numbers on a bank account they are inflation proof.
No inheritance tax, your significant others will get all the dough if they remonetize it themselves.
The downsides are that you have to put some significant time into this topic to know what a good deal is, learn how the market and auction houses operate and to build a diverse or highly specialized and sought-after collection that is very likely to rise in value compared to other possible collections you could compile (which overall will almost certainly rise in value too, but maybe not as much as a collection you put some thought into).
Also you obviously need to keep them safe from theft and environmental hazards. (If you want to make the collection a one-time endeavor instead of an ongoing process, you can finish up your collection and put it in a small or medium safe deposit box in any bank.) Consider optimal storage conditions as well, since stamps are essentially made of fancy paper.
If none of this interests you, then at least take this advice: If you ever inherit a stamp collection, don't sell it on a flea market, inform yourself and sell it properly. Just recently a friend of my dad asked his advice on a collection he was about to sell for low double digits to learn that it was worth at least 20000$.
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This evidently didn't bother me a few years ago when I wrote this post, but I want to say that if all of your interactions with women are like this, you are doing something wrong. It may be that the society around you is the main culprit for doing stereotypes wrong, but as a woman I still find this attitude frustrating.
EDIT: This comment was unclearly and unhelpfully worded; I was having fun being indignant at the expense of being specific. Will add more specificity when I'm not trying to run out the door to work.
Hi again.
I thought It's about time I replied to this topic. I've seen the response(s) earlier but didn't feel like responding at the time and unfortunately forgot all about it afterwards - up until now.
It seems to me there is a major point I should make.
According to this definition of "stereotype" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stereotype) I would claim they are unavoidable and useful cognitive tools for categorizing and streamlining our internal map of the world, including other people. They are not to be confused with "prejudices", which include an affective judgement.
So me believing that most Italians like spaghetti and eat it more often than people of other nationality or origin is a stereotype. For me this is not an affective judegement because I could(n't) care less about spaghetti or whether someone is Italian or not. I would however be more surprised if an Italian told me he does not like spaghetti, than if a Russian told me likewise. Furthermore this stereotype may or may not be true, as in principle it is a claim about what reality is like - in this case the average food preferences of a certein group.
A prejudice on the other hand may be for example that Americans are on average less rational and less well educated than average central Europeans. If this view carried an affective judement it would be a prejudice, which is essentially a hybrid of a stereotype and an attached affective judgement. Personally I actually do believe this to be the case, but I do not know if it really is a prejudice or a stereotype on my part, since I don't really "feel" traces of affective judement wrapped into this belief. For me it is simply a simplified model of a huge group.
I admit to having this stereotype, and as far as I can tell it mainly results from me occasionally watching American news programs (several of which would be unthinkable to exist on this side of the pond, although standards seem to be falling) and watching TV programs like the Colbert Report or many years ago "Real Time with Bill Maher". I also read several statistics (like percentage of atheists, or prevalence of certein irrational non-religious beliefs etc. etc.) that roughly confirm my internal model of what an "average American" (whatever that is ecactly) believes, behaves like and thinks like.
Personally I'm not even sure this belief qualifies as a prejudice on my part, since it may be nothing more than a simple stereotype, since I cannot discern a "negative affective sting". For me this view is simply consistent with the data I know of and the things I experienced through the media it may or may not be true, but I certainly do not "hate" Americans and I sure don't waste time on ranting about "those impossible Americans".
If I know absolutely nothing more about a person other than the fact that he or she is American, what happens in my brain is that I correct the probability that said person is less well ducated, more religious, and has "republican" views upwards, because of some data I am aware of. Again this may or may not be true.
On the other hand I happen to know some statistical data on the religious views of Swedes as well, which is probably not true because it places the number of atheists at roughly 60-80% (I would rather estime something like 40% atheists with another 30-40% "believing in some metaphysical notions").
If you just grant me the axiom, that Americans are more religious then Swedes, we can play through this hypothetical situation: If you set up an experiment where you tell me I have to spend an hour conversing with a) a completely random American or b) a random Swede, that is an easy decision for me. However, that does of course not mean that I indiscriminately dislike every American I meet, because of no other reason than their country of origin which would be ridiculous. Americans also don't have to "prove themselves more" than Swedes do.
I'm perfectly aware that not every American -and in fact not even a single one- fits my stereotype of "the average American". And of course I'm also perfectly aware of a multitude brilliant people and inventions that are of "US-origin". Maybe it is just a case of the worst parts being the most salient.
So why write all this? It's obviously an analogy to my stereotypes of women and my internal model of what "they" like to converse about. In spite of what I wrote it doesn't actually matter to me if someone is American or not, because I -tada- update on incoming evidence and once I have an actual person in front of me that happens to be American he or she gets taken out of the drawer labeled "what I think an average American is like" and gets "promoted" into the category labelled "things I know ad beleive about James Smith", which includes a free and nearly effortless upgrade to a more complex and custom model of who that person is.
Same goes for women, I start out from my stereotype -or bayesian prior- (where else should I start from?) and update on the "evidence" as it rolls in. Not every conversation with every woman I meet is about the fluffy emotional stuff, if I pick up on signals that indicate she is interested in talking about "heavy" stuff then that's where I'll go. If I met you in real life, my prior/stereotype of you aka. "Swimmer963" looks different than the grossly oversimplified one that only says "women" on the drawer.
It's still a crude stereotype but hey you gotta start somewhere, right?