Possible confounding variable: people who don't think they can tell the difference might be less likely to do the test. I remember Brienne doing something similar on facebook. I read a couple of entries, spent a while agonizing about whether I thought they were slightly more likely to be genuine or fake, got bored/frustrated and gave up.

I'm rather frustrated that there's not a guide to being generally healthier that uses probabilities and payoffs and such to convince readers that they should bother to do any specific activity, or adopt any specific intervention to make themselves healthier. Health information is so disorganized-- which is fine for the cutting edge stuff, but for stuff that many people get that we've known how to treat for a while, such as cavities, acid reflux, and so on, I feel like it should be way the buck easier to find detailed info on how much certain activities increase or decrease your risk of getting that problem by, and what the base rate is.

For example, a week ago, I would have guessed that maybe 5% of adults in the US had ever had a cavity, but a quick Google search suggests that the actual number is closer to 95%. I've gone from rarely flossing to flossing daily since finding this out!

I'm probably way late to this thread, but I was thinking about this the other day in the response to a different thread, and considered using the Kelly Criterion to address something like Pascal's Mugging.

Trying to figure out your current 'bankroll' in terms of utility is probably open to intepretation, but for some broad estimates, you could probably use your assets, or your expected free time, or some utility function that included those plus whatever else.

When calculating optimal bet size using the Kelly criterion, you end up with a percentage of your current bankroll you should bet. This percentage will never exceed the probability of the event occurring, regardless of the size of the reward. This basically means that if I'm using my current net worth as an approximation for my 'bankroll', I shouldn't even consider betting a dollar on something I think has a one-in-a-million chance, unless my net worth is at least a million dollars.

I think this could be a bit more formalized, but might help serve as a rule-of-thumb for evaluating Pascal's Wager type scenarios.

It seems conventional wisdom that tests are generally gameable in the sense that an (most?) effective way to produce the best scores involves teaching password guessing rather than actually learning material deeply, i.e. such that the student can use it in novel and useful ways. Indeed, I think this is the case for many (most, even) tests, but also think it possible to write tests that are most easily passed by learning the material deeply. In particular, I don't see how to game questions like "state, prove, and provide an intuitive justification for Pascal's combinatorial identity" or "Under what conditions does f(x) = ax^3 + bx^2 + cx + d have only one critical point?'', but that's more a statement about my mind than the gameability of tests. I would greatly appreciate learning how a test consisting of such questions could be gamed, thereby unlearning an untrue thing; and if no one here can (or, at least, is willing to take the time to) explain how such a thing could be done, well, that's useful to know, too.

I was just struck by a thought, which could combine the two approaches, by applying some sort of probability measure to one's acquaintances about how likely they are to become a blood relative of one's descendants. The idea probably needs tweaking, but I don't think I've come across a system quite like it before... Well, at least, not formally. It seems plausible that a number of social systems have ended up applying something like such a heuristic through informal social-evolutionary adaptation, which could provide some fodder for contrasting the Bayesian version against the historically-evolved versions.

Anyone have any suggestions on elaborations?

Seeking plausible-but-surprising fictional ethics

How badly could a reasonably intelligent follower of the selfish creed, "Maximize my QALYs", be manhandled into some unpleasant parallel to a Pascal's Mugging?

How many rules-of-thumb are there, which provide answers to ethical problems such as Trolley Problems, give answers that allow the user to avoid being lynched by an angry mob, and don't require more than moderate mathematical skill to apply?

Could Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs be used to form the basis of a multi-tiered variant of utilitarianism?

Would trying to look at ethics from an Outside View such as, say, a soft-SF rubber-forehead alien suggest any useful, novel approaches to such problems?

(I'm writing a story, and looking for inspiration to finalize a character's ethical system, and the consequences thereof. I'm trying to stick to the rules of reality, including of sociology, so am having some trouble coming up with a set of ethics that isn't strictly worse than the ones I know of already, and is reasonably novel to someone who's read the Sequences. Other than this post, my next approach will be to try to work out the economic system being used, and then which virtues would allow a member to profit - somewhat unsatisfying, but probably good enough if nobody here can suggest something better. So: can you suggest something better? :) )

The International Phonetic Alphabet was originally meant to be used as a natural language writing system (for example, the journal of the International Phonetic Association was originally written in IPA: http://phonetic-blog.blogspot.com/2012/06/100-years-ago.html). Between IPA's theoretical (physiological) grounding, its wide use by linguists, and its near-legibility by untrained English literati, IPA is over-determined as the obvious choice for a reformed orthography, if English were every made to conform phonetically to a standard pronunciation. That said, it's not going to happen, because spelling reform is not urgent to anyone with capital to try it. Like, someone could make a browser extension that would replace words their IPA spellings, so that an online community could familiarize themselves with the new spelling, but no one has made that, or paid for it to be made, and this places a strong upper bound on how much anyone cares about spelling reform.

How conscious are our models of other people? For example; in dreams it seems like I am talking and interacting with other people. Their behavior is sometimes surprising and unpredictable. They use language, express emotion, appear to have goals, etc. It could just be that I, being less conscious, see dream-people as being more conscious than in reality.

I can somewhat predict what other people in the real world will do or say, including what they might say about experiencing consciousness.

Authors can create realistic characters, plan their actions and internal thoughts, and explore the logical (or illogical) results. My guess is that the more intelligent/introspective an author is, the closer the characters floating around in his or her mind are to being conscious.

Many religions encourage people to have a personal relationship with a supernatural entity which involves modeling the supernatural agency as an (anthropomorphic) being, which partially instantiates a maybe-conscious being in their minds...

Maybe imaginary friends are real.

A college education is a terrible investment for the average person in today's economy. The money and (more importantly) the time spent would be much better utilized to obtain the same human capital and signaling power at a cheaper monetary cost and a faster rate than those at which universities are willing to provide.

I'm surprised no one has pushed through a cell-phone tracking app as a replacement for the ankle monitors.

First, all cell phones have tracking already built-in as a free (and undeletable) feature X-/

Second, if I know I'm going out to do some robbery and muggery, will it inconvenience me much to leave my cell phone at home?