The recommendation is sound if: - You value good drivers. I've been to almost a dozen countries, and nobody comes CLOSE to the conscientiousness of Australian drivers; they honk as a THANK YOU for right of way in Victoria. They also have the the most dramatically sensical road system ever, which is mostly like the U.S., with one difference I particularly like: yield signs instead of the stop signs that American drivers only yield at anyway, usually for good reason. I'm a big fan of either enforcing rules or changing them, with as few exceptions as possible.

The recommendation is suspect if: - You care about what foods you eat. (Going from one country to another is going to dramatically change prices based on local crop/livestock viability and tradition.) - The way business is done provides uncomfortable culture shock. (I value free refills on soda disproportionally because I adore soda and consume a disproportional amount per purchase. Refill policies in Aus are inconsistent and necessarily more restrictive than a system that is consistently without restriction.) - Your hobby is taxed to death (video games in Aus are about 140-200% the price of video games in the U.S. - ouch). - Your utility function dramatically supports things other than accumulation of wealth which are represented by your current culture more than Australia's. (I support high freedom in media consumption and gun rights, things that Australia is good about, but not as much as the U.S... and if money is the unit of caring, then I care about those rights with my tax dollars.)

Isn't Sen's paradox essentially the same as the Prisoners' dilemma?

This may connect to the effect of self-fulfilling prophecies: We want a world with few threats, so we think that threats don't work, so we don't threaten people, so the world has fewer threats.

If anyone can give me the cliff's notes to this, I'd be appreciative. I am a big LW fan but aside from the obsession with the Singularity, I more or less stand at Eliezer1997's mode of thinking. Furthermore, making clever plans to work around the holes in your thinking seems like the wholly rational thing to do - in fact, this entire post seems like a direct counterargument to The Proper Use of Doubt: http://lesswrong.com/lw/ib/the_proper_use_of_doubt/

This has more to do with human psychology than strict mathematical game theory:

As an obsessive gamer and game designer: when fighting a random opponent, unless there is a ladder system and you end up in the top 2% or so of the population, the optimal strategy is to counter whatever is the optimal strategy vs. a null, average, or un-equipped person. That is to say, the vast majority of players who do not make a nearly-random selection will calculate the ideal strategy against a percieved "average" or "typical" set of values for damage/speed/armor/dodge, and then stop exactly there. So to win, you need to go exactly one step beyond that and then stop exactly there.

On the contrary, I would argue that our default belief state is one full of scary monsters trying to kills us and whirling lights flying around overhead and oh no what this loud noise and why am I wet

There is no mention of God in that state; therefore it is atheism. Any person who does not believe in God is an atheist. Anyone who has never thought about whether there is a god, or doesn't have the concept of god, is therefore an atheist.

First, welcome to Less Wrong! Be sure to hit the welcome thread soon.

Doesn't your hypothesis here predict compensation for overconfidence in every situation, and not just for easy tasks?

I originally wrote this for the origin story thread until I realized it's more appropriate here. So, sorry if it straddles both a bit.

I am, as nearly as I believe can be seen in the present world, an intrinsic rationalist. For example: as a young child I would mock irrationality in my parents, and on the rare occasions I was struck, I would laugh, genuinely, even through tears if they came, because the irrationality of the Appeal to Force made the joke immensely funnier. Most people start out as well-adapted non-rationalists; I evidently started as a maladaptive rationalist.

As an intrinsic (maladaptive) rationalist, I have had an extremely bumpy ride in understanding my fellow man. If I had been born 10 years later, I might have been diagnosed with Asperger's Syndrome. As it was, I was a little different, and never really got on with anyone, despite being well-mannered. A nerd, in other words. Regarding bias, empathic favoritism, willful ignorance, asking questions in which no response will effect subsequent actions or belief confidences, and other peculiarities for which I seem to be an outlier, any knowledge about how to identify and then deal with these peculiarities has been extremely hard-won from years upon years of messy interactions in uncontrolled environments with few hypotheses from others to go on (after all, they "just get it", so they never needed to sort it out explicitly).

I've recently started reading rationalist blogs like this one, and they have been hugely informative to me because they put things I have observed about people but failed to understand intuitively into a very abstract context (i.e. one that bypasses intuition). Less Wrong, among others, have led to a concrete improvement in my interactions with humanity in general, the same way a blog about dogs would improve one's interactions with dogs in general. This is after just a couple months! Thanks LW.

"I have decided to not believe your comments about doubting the God of creation" for a few reasons 1) your not perfect ! oh you try to seem perfect with your smooth deceptive vocabulary! that is why you are bothered by "Americans who claim the Bible is the word of God." that part about "impossible, illegal, or embarassing to follow nowadays".lol. those laws were made to keep people from sin and death, "lets say you have a wife, would she commit adultery if she knew she would be stoned to death? hopefully not! So God wanted to stop that sin to keep her from sin because sin = death remember? 2) you said " you were bothered by Americans who claim the Bible is the word of God. a handful of the people like you who are quick to throw stone`s at others for believing in something rather then being like you. Oh they would be soooooo much better of to be like you and hating on others.lol. so we would rather have a hope of salvation everlasting with God when we die. we are such awful people.lol. we deserve your punishment oh great imperfect one. why are you so bothered by that because that is what Jesus Christ gives to those who live for him, or would i like to see life you way, bro your filled with hate confess your sin and live the eternal life through faith "Now faith is the substance of things hoped for. hope for eternal life in Jesus Christ , if anyone can answer me this one question, would you rather have a blessed hope when you die or not. if not then fine have it your way , just keep it to yourself , i dont run around starting topics to bash you for not having a blessed hope when you die. i pray this right now that for you that Hell will not be a truth found out to late! Jesus was completely against religion, just confess with you mouth your sins and believe Jesus Christ died for you , he is faithful to forgive your sin and cleanse you of all unrighteousness. that is the will of the father not religion!