I can't think of a word that sits well between eccentric and crazy, but the following works similarly:

I'm eccentric. You're unusual. He's a freak.

"A might be the reason for symptom X, then we have to take into account both the probability that X caused A"

I think you have accidentally swapped some variables there

The more private a debate, the more likely people will be generous enough for this to happen; the more public, the more hostile they will be. Hostility is a status-grab, and people in arguments (including this forum) reward it if they think the grabber deserving. Similarly, generosity is low-status, and people who are generous in public debates have very little to gain. Publicly failing in the quantity necessary to maximize your learning growth is very low-status and not many people have the stomach for it.

EDIT: Being low-status also makes it much easier for people to stop responding to your arguments, as "That's not worthy of a response" is much more believable from the higher-status arguer when the status difference is high.

Is there such a convention?

Yes -- at least in the sense that I have found familiarity with (and sympathy toward) this practice to be an effective shibboleth for distinguishing the mathematically sophisticated.

(It's kind of like how it's a warning sign when someone doesn't think the word "dictionary" should be in the dictionary.)

I am curious as to how many LWers attempt to work out and eat healthy to lengthen life span. Especially among those who have signed up for cryogenics.

Okay, so....a confession.

In a fairly recent little-noticed comment, I let slip that I differ from many folks here in what some may regard as an important way: I was not raised on science fiction.

I'll be more specific here: I think I've seen one of the Star Wars films (the one about the kid who apparently grows up to become the villain in the other films). I have enough cursory familiarity with the Star Trek franchise to be able to use phrases like "Spock bias" and make the occasional reference to the Starship Enterprise (except I later found out that the reference in that post was wrong, since the Enterprise is actually supposed to travel faster than light -- oops), but little more. I recall having enjoyed the "Tripod" series, and maybe one or two other, similar books, when they were read aloud to me in elementary school. And of course I like Yudkowsky's parables, including "Three Worlds Collide", as much as the next LW reader.

But that's about the extent of my personal acquaintance with the genre.

Now, people keep telling me that I should read more science fiction; in fact, they're often quite surprised that I haven't. So maybe, while we're doing these New Year's Resolutions, I can "resolve" to perhaps, maybe, some time, actually do that (if I can ever manage to squeeze it in between actually doing work and procrastinating on the Internet).

Problem is, there seems to be a lot of it out there. How would a newcomer know where to start?

Well, what better place to ask than here, a place where many would cite this type of literature as formative with respect to developing their saner-and-more-interesting-than-average worldviews?

Alicorn recommended John Scalzi (thanks). What say others?

From quote in that post:

"One of [the Middle Ages'] characteristics was that 'reasoning by analogy' was rampant; another characteristic was almost total intellectual stagnation, and we now see why the two go together.

There's no reason to spread such myths about medieval history.

The main characteristics of the Early Middle Ages were low population densities, very low urbanization rates, very low literacy rates, and almost zero lay literacy rates. Being in a reference class of times and places with such characteristics, it would be a miracle if any significant progress happened during Early Middle Ages.

High and Late Middle Ages on the other hand had plenty of technological and intellectual progress.

I'm much more surprised why dense, urbanized, and highly literate Roman Empire was so stagnant.

Seems to be related to David Deutsch - A new way to explain explanation

Incidentally, if I don't have a good answer to a "guessing" problem immediately, I find it faster to just Google the relevant facts than to try to struggle to find a distinction between them that I can latch onto.

As for Hamburg vs. Cologne, my recognition heuristic is more familiar with Hamburg as a city than Cologne as a city (I know Hamburg is in Germany, I suspect that Cologne is in France). On the other hand, I know that I recognize Hamburg because I often eat hamburgers, which doesn't seem like it says much about the city. Nevertheless, if I have to guess, I'll guess Hamburg. Now to look up the actual answer...

Wikipedia gives 1.8 million for Hamburg, and Cologne (also in Germany, which surprised me) is slightly under 1 million. So I guessed right, but I still prefer the JFGI heuristic. ;)