Jonathan_El-Bizri2

There is no magic bullet now, more than any other time. If there is, people all jump on it, and it stops becoming a magic bullet. Gold is the perfect example: it's being pumped up so high by speculation and 'safety' investors that it's intrinsic worth is no longer relevant - it's in a bubble.

I believe that the effect of this downturn on technology research will be tempered somewhat by this fact: if 'safe' investments are more risky, more speculative endeavours become >relatively< less risky. Furthermore, human resources become more plentiful (half of silicon valley will be sitting around with nothing to do, and willing to work for cheap). Of course, this... (read more)

"Um... there really aren't any extremely strong arguments for majoritarianism. That position confuses conclusions with evidence."

What's more, it implies that human beliefs are normally distributed. I posit they are not, with extra weight being given to concepts that are exciting/emotional or arousing. We have a built in bias in the direction of things that are evolutionarily important (ie - babies, scarey stuff).

"I'm trying to comprehend how this is a dilemma... Science supposedly teaches that for any two theories that explain the same data, the simplest one is correct. Bayes can't talk about explaining data without invoking the science that collected the data... Can he?"

That's Occam's razor, not Science. The scientific method >is... (read more)