Comment author: Steven_Bukal 29 October 2014 06:49:58AM 0 points [-]

I've read that the CEO of Levi's recommends washing jeans very infrequently.

Won't they smell? I have a pretty clean white-collar lifestyle, but I'm concerned about wearing mine even once or twice between machine washing. Is it considered socially acceptable to re-wear jeans?

Comment author: KnaveOfAllTrades 01 November 2014 10:34:06PM *  2 points [-]

Not sure if it's in addition to what you're thinking of or it is what you're thinking of, but Tommy Hilfiger 'never' 'washes his Levis'. I heard this and confirmed with a fashion- and clothing-conscious friend that they (the friend) had tried it. I used to wash jeans and chinos after a few consecutive days of wearing them. For the past five or six weeks I've been trying out the 'no wash' approach. I wore one pair of jeans for about thirty five days (maybe split into two periods of continuous wearing) and washed them probably once or never during that time. So far as I could tell they did not smell anywhere near enough to be offensive, and I only stopped wearing them because I got too small for them. This included doing some form of exercise like pushups, circuits, or timed runs at the track in the jeans (and then not showering for a few hours afterwards) on most days.

After those jeans I've been wearing the same pair of chinos for eight days and they seem to be fine. It's worth giving a try to see if it works for you too, in your circumstances. It is very plausible that climate, bathing frequency, sensitivity to own sweat, sensitivity to laundry products, underpants use etc. provide enough variation between people that doing it is a no-brainer for some and not doing it is probably right for others.

During this period, before showering each night, I take the trousers off, shake them off, then (assuming I don't have any reason to think the outside of them had accumulated much ickiness during that day) drape them inside out over a chair, which hopefully lets them air out and let moisture evaporate off. (In fact, I now do this with most of my clothes, and it seems like it might indeed make them smell fresher for longer.)

https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=tommy+hilfiger+wash+jeans http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-2459720/Tommy-Hilfiger-thinks-crazy-throw-jeans-laundry-wear.html

Comment author: skeptical_lurker 27 October 2014 08:24:10PM 2 points [-]

Well, how did it go?

Comment author: KnaveOfAllTrades 30 October 2014 10:04:52AM 1 point [-]

Thanks for reminding me to do a meetup report! I've added it at the end of the announcement for this Sunday's meetup. Let me know in the comments there whether you think you can still make it this weekend.

Meetup : Bath, UK: Agreement, practical meetups, and report from last meetup

3 KnaveOfAllTrades 30 October 2014 09:24AM

Discussion article for the meetup : Bath, UK: Agreement, practical meetups, and report from last meetup

WHEN: 02 November 2014 02:00:00PM (+0000)

WHERE: 5-10 James St W, Avon, Bath BA1 2BX

Bath, UK will be having its second meetup this Sunday 2nd November at 14:00 in the King of Wessex, which is a Wetherspoons pub in the city. I shall wait at least ninety minutes (i.e. until 15:30) for the first arrivals.

I'll put a sheet featuring a paperclip and saying 'Less Wrong' on the table so you know you've found us. Make sure you venture into the pub, since there's no guarantee our table will be near the door.

In case you need to contact me (e.g. if the venue is unexpectedly busy and we have to move elsewhere and you can't find us), my mobile number is the product 3 x 3 x 23 x 97 x 375127, preceded by a zero (so eleven digits total).

We have a Facebook group.

At the start we'll chat for a bit, then move onto an agreement exercise: Unlike last meetup, where we made predictions for our own PredictionBook accounts somewhat independently without necessarily sharing all our information, this time we shall try to reach consensus in our probabilities and then see how our consensus is calibrated, by means of a single PredictionBook account for the meetup group.

After that, we shall discuss ideas for future meetups and activities. In particular, we shall discuss how we can move forward with practical meetups and instrumental rationality, and how to balance this with discussion and 'abstract' or epistemic stuff.

====Previous meetup (2014-10-19 Sunday)====

It went well. There was me, someone who tagged along with me, someone from Bristol, and someone from Bradford-on-Avon. I think everyone had arrived by 14:30, and we probably stayed until 17:30 or 18:00. (We stayed long enough that we all got something to eat in the pub.)

We got to know each other a bit then did 15 predictions. The previous night, I had prepared a list of prompts for things to make predictions about, ranging from things where I thought we might have very high (or low) confidences, to things where I expected that most of the attendees would be basically indifferent (e.g. whether an even or odd number of elements have been observed, whether the density of water is above or below 1kg per liter, etc.).

We skipped some of the ambiguous prompts, and for a couple we had to sort of figure out what we'd use to judge the prediction midway through. I'd state the prompt, then where necessary we'd pin it down into something we could judge objectively enough. There might be some brief discussion, but we weren't trying to share all our information. I would type in (but not submit or write my probability for) the final wording of the prediction on PredictionBook. At a suitable point, when everyone understood what we were predicting and how it would be judged, I would give 90 seconds for everyone to stop communicating and log their final probabilities. I'd then type in my probability and create the prediction on Predictionbook, then we'd go round stating the probability we'd written down.

Some of the prompts were intentionally underspecified. For example, the first prediction was about Wladimir Klitschko's mass. In that case we each independently (to avoid priming) wrote down a figure (after explaining who he is, of course). Then we took the usual mean of the figures to obtain a 'wisdom of crowds' estimate and used that as the mass for the prediction.

(If you're worried that averaging the guesses would lead everyone to put 50% probability on the proposition, then you can shift by some amount to encourage more extreme confidences. But remember that it's still useful to test calibration at the 50% level!)

That was one of the cases where we had to decide partway through how we were going to judge the prediction, since we realised his mass would fluctuate a lot depending on e.g. whether he'd cut weight for a weigh-in. We agreed that if Google gave a unique figure and it seemed plausible, then we'd go with that. I'm not certain, but I don't think we actually shifted the average in this case, and the mean of our initial guesses turned out to be exactly correct (110kg).

In some cases, where the initial estimates varied wildly, I suggested we use a 'logarithmic average', i.e. use the exponential of the mean of the logarithms of the estimates, i.e. exp(arithmetic_mean(log(estimates)).

Then we'd check the prediction and I'd mark it Right or Wrong accordingly on Predictionbook. When they got home, the others marked the prediction Unknown, then put in the probability they'd made a note of, then re-mark the prediction as Right or Wrong as before.

I had my laptop and used the pub's Wi-Fi to create the predictions on PredictionBook with my estimate. The others made a note of their probabilities. After each prediction, we checked the prediction and I marked it Right or Wrong on PredictionBook accordingly. When they got home, each of the others who attended then marked the prediction Unknown, then submitted their probability from earlier, then re-marked the Prediction as Right or Wrong.

Discussion article for the meetup : Bath, UK: Agreement, practical meetups, and report from last meetup

Comment author: skeptical_lurker 11 October 2014 05:02:00PM 2 points [-]

Start time is 14:00, and I'll wait at least ninety minutes after that for the first arrivals.

Do you know for certain if anyone is going to turn up, or are you just hoping? I'm definitely in bath the following weekend, so if it was postponed a week you could at least have one person turn up for certain :)

Comment author: KnaveOfAllTrades 12 October 2014 09:08:59AM 3 points [-]

Currently expecting at fewest two others with joint probability >70%, so I'll still do the original day. But I'll bear the next week in mind; we might do two weeks in a row.

Meetup : Bath: Introduction and PredictionBook

2 KnaveOfAllTrades 10 October 2014 08:36PM

Discussion article for the meetup : Bath: Introduction and PredictionBook

WHEN: 19 October 2014 02:00:00PM (+0100)

WHERE: 5-10 James St W, Avon, Bath BA1 2BX

I'll be hosting a meetup for Bath, UK on Sunday 19th October at 14:00.
The meetup will be held at the King of Wessex, which is a Wetherspoons pub in the city. Start time is 14:00, and I'll wait at least ninety minutes after that for the first arrivals. I'll put a Less Wrong paperclip print-out on the table so you can identify me. In case you need to contact me (e.g. if the venue is unexpectedly busy and we have to move elsewhere and you can't find us), my mobile number is the product 3 x 3 x 23 x 97 x 375127, preceded by a zero (so eleven digits total). Since this is the first meetup, we'll start off with introductions and chit-chat. I will also formulate and bring along (but not check the veracity of) some propositions for us to place probabilities on, as calibration training. I recommend you create and play around with a PredictionBook account in advance of the meetup to get to grips with it and in case you have any questions about it we can discuss on the day. (Why not register right now? It only takes one or two minutes.) Bonus points if you bring a device to log your predictions on PredictionBook as we go along, and as a back-up in case my laptop dies. (The venue has free Wi-Fi that you can register for in a few minutes.)

Discussion article for the meetup : Bath: Introduction and PredictionBook

Comment author: shminux 07 August 2014 04:38:53PM 2 points [-]

Huh, this is one of the worst misinterpretations of my LW comment in a long time. I don't even know where to start, so I'll just express my general disappointment with it, downvote and move on.

Comment author: KnaveOfAllTrades 24 September 2014 12:42:08PM 0 points [-]

You more-or-less said, "gwern is imperfect but net-positive. So deal with it. Not everyone can be perfect.". I think such a response, in reply to someone who feels bullied by a senior members and worries the community is/will close ranks, is not the best course of action, and in fact is better off not being made. Even assuming your comment was not a deontological imperative, but rather a shorthand for a heuristic argument, I am very uncertain as to what heuristic you are suggesting and why you think it's a good heuristic.

Even if you ignored all that and rewrote your original comment differently, that might be sufficient to make headway.

Does that make things clearer? If this line of inquiry also seems too unweildy to begin replying to, can you go up meta levels and suggest a way to proceed?

Comment author: Dentin 12 August 2014 04:59:18AM 0 points [-]

That seems truly odd to me; I don't think I've ever noticed gwern being problematic or hard to understand. I remember him as a major character because he has contributed many things I've read and found valuable, and his comments have always seemed reasonable.

Comment author: KnaveOfAllTrades 24 September 2014 12:30:25PM *  0 points [-]

I'm not sure exactly which parts you're referring to, so can you quote the parts you find odd or by which you are confused?

Comment author: drethelin 07 August 2014 03:52:46PM 5 points [-]

1) I'm annoyed by this and sleep deprived so forgive me if this response is incompletely coherent.

2) Those aren't weird deontological rules and you're just throwing in those words to describe those phrases as boo lights. MOST things people say aren't meant as strict rules, but as contextual and limited responses to the conversation at hand. This guy is implicitly calling for Gwern to be banned, or saying that it's either Them or Gwern. Shminux is simply explicitly conveying that we clearly choose to have Gwern rather than not. He's not Making A Rule.

3) You can't treat everyone who complains about being bullied by the community seriously. That's like auto-cooperating in a world full of potential defectors. It creates an incentive to punish anyone you dislike by starting a thread about how mean they are to you, and also has a chilling effect on conversation in general. Despite the rudeness, Gwern's replies in the linked conversation were lengthy and tried to convey information and thoughts. I've seen plenty of examples of people afraid to talk because they might offend someone online, and I don't really want the threshold for being punished for rudeness to be that low on Lesswrong.

4) There is such a thing as overreaction. Regardless of whether this person feels bullied by Gwern, everyone can take a look at the threads involved and decide if it's an appropriate response. I don't think calling someone out for something like this in a top level post (not to mention that's a pretty low quality post even for discussion) and impugning the entire community as irrational or whatever is at all proportional.

5) If thisspaceavailable (or you) want Lesswrong as a WHOLE to be less rude, rather than making a post that (clearly in my mind) is just getting back at Gwern, there are a LOT better ways to do it.

Comment author: KnaveOfAllTrades 24 September 2014 12:14:10PM *  2 points [-]

Those aren't weird deontological rules and you're just throwing in those words to describe those phrases as boo lights. MOST things people say aren't meant as strict rules, but as contextual and limited responses to the conversation at hand.

There is a very particular mental process of deontological thinking that epistemic rationalists should train themselves to defuse, in which an argument is basically short-circuited by a magic, invalid step. If the mental process that actually takes place in someone's head is, 'This person criticised a net-positive figure. Therefore, they must be belittled', and that's as far as their ability to justify actually goes, that seems like the kind of thinking an epistemic rationalist would want to be alerted to and detrain, if it's taking place subconsciously.

You're proposing the alternative that shminux could justify it further but is using it as a shorthand, and that I'm confusing that omission for an absence of recursive justification. The bare bones of shminux's comment would be "gwern is imperfect but hugely net positive. So deal with it. Not everyone can be perfect." If that's not deontological thinking, then it remains such a general heuristic argument, bare of any specific details of the case at hand, that it's a crappy comment to make to someone who feels that they've been bullied by a senior member and is probably worried the community will close ranks. It's not just a matter of 'What is the most charitable interpretation of shminux's comment', it's also e.g. 'What is the distribution over interpretations that would actually occur to someone who feels bullied and aggrieved?'

It looks like I'm making a fully general counterargument against arguments by calling anything short of a computer-verifiable argument deontological. It looks like you're making a fully general counterargument against accusations of deontological argument.

Your point (3) is an example of a recurring thing where I question a particular comment someone makes to a post, and then someone comes along and makes a bunch of arguments about why the original poster is in fact an idiot or defector or whatever and gets a bunch of upvotes by (intentional or otherwise) sleight of hand; they look like they're refuting my comment, but all they've done is justify general skepticism of the original poster, rather than a specific justification of the response that I questioned. It introduces a false dichotomy between belittling the original poster and 'opening the floodgates', and (intentionally or otherwise) makes me look like the naive idiot who wants to open the floodgates and the other person like the heroic, gritty defender of the forum. When all I was saying was that being mean in that specific way isn't the best thing from a consequentialist perspective. Specifically:

You can't treat everyone who complains about being bullied by the community seriously.

This is the false dichotomy. You are (intentionally or otherwise) completely misrepresenting what I'm saying. It looks to me like I got rounded off in your mind to 'naive person who thinks all claims of bullying deontologically have to be taken seriously', which is what annoyed you. You should be more careful when interpreting in future in such situations.

That's like auto-cooperating in a world full of potential defectors.

Or I'm not using a deontological or generalised heuristic, and I'm just making the specific claim that the exact response from this exact person in this exact case was not great. Apply your own skepticism of assumptions of deontology to me, if you will insist they be applied to shminux.

It creates an incentive to punish anyone you dislike by starting a thread about how mean they are to you

It's not obvious to me that this slippery slope is slippery enough to justify the specific response in this specific case.

and also has a chilling effect on conversation in general.

If I'm correct and shminux's reply was inappropriate, then that also has a chilling effect on those who have grievances. Additionally, I found shminux's reply and the amount of support it originally had very off-putting. I knew that I'd have to take a long time responding to it to try to point out what was wrong with it, and risk downvotes and obnoxious responses to do so. Then I found that some of the responses I did actually get (including yours) made me feel emotionally disgusted enough, and seemed so fundamentally crappy down several inferential layers, that it took me this long to respond and even begin to be able to roughly convey my position. I say this not as a definitive assertion that nobody should have challenged me, but to point out that you only mentioned the chilling effects on the accused without mentioning the effects on the accuser and other community members.

Despite the rudeness, Gwern's replies in the linked conversation were lengthy and tried to convey information and thoughts. I've seen plenty of examples of people afraid to talk because they might offend someone online, and I don't really want the threshold for being punished for rudeness to be that low on Lesswrong.

This seems very far away from my specific criticisms of shminux's comment.

Point (4) also does not connect to the specifics of shminux's comment.

Point (5) is defused by the obsevation that I was not defending ThisSpaceAvailable's post, but rather was criticising shminux's comment on the grounds that there are better responses than shminux's to the post. I find it extremely telling that you then state there are much better ways to make Less Wrong less rude, when you failed to understand that my comment was saying to shminux that there are much better ways of responding to a post like this than making a comment that pattern-matches extremely strongly to closing ranks around a senior community member. I.e. the form of your (5) is similar to the form of my comment, yet you missed what my comment was saying, and this seems like significant evidence to me that you were mindkilled by my comment.

Comment author: Salemicus 20 September 2014 02:23:31PM *  3 points [-]

I found this post very funny. Sadly, I think it is meant to be serious.

I am sure this event will be just as successful as your street actions campaigning for immortality.

Comment author: KnaveOfAllTrades 21 September 2014 02:43:49PM *  2 points [-]

Whoever downvoted this comment, please explain your downvote.

turchin's proposed action makes me uneasy, but how would you justify this comment? Generally such comments are discouraged here, and you would've been downvoted into oblivion if you'd made such a response to a proposal that weren't so one-sidedly rejected by Less Wrong. What's the relevant difference that justifies your comment in this case, or do you think such comments are generally okay here, or do you think you over-reacted?

Comment author: satt 20 September 2014 03:38:21PM *  7 points [-]

I'm curious about the effectiveness of my post's central gimmick. I invite anyone who's read the post and hasn't looked at any of the data linked at the end of it to take this poll.

In each pair of opposing claims, which claim do you find more likely?

[Edit: LW's posting interface stripped out the "start='7'" attribute in the second half of my post's list, so it's re-numbered claims 7 to 12 as claims 1 to 6. Pretend the second half of the list starts at 7.]

Claims 1 & 7: harms and benefits from scientific research.

Claims 2 & 8: adult Republican/Democrat (non-)identification.

Claims 3 & 9: young vs. middle-aged adults on abortion.

Claims 4 & 10: young vs. middle-aged on the Vietnam War.

Claims 5 & 11: young vs. old on Vietnam War protesters.

Claims 6 & 12: smokers' (non-)regret.

Into which kind of culture are you most assimilated?

Submitting...

Comment author: KnaveOfAllTrades 20 September 2014 03:59:58PM *  2 points [-]

Oops, I didn't actually read 7 and assumed it was public opinion had grown more positive. Given the two choices actually presented, I'd say 7 more likely.

Edit: Relative credences (not necessarily probabilities since I'm conditioning on there being significant effect sizes), generated naively trying not to worry too much about second-guessing how you distributed intuitive and counterintuitive results:

1:07 : 33:67
2:08 : 33:67
3:09 : 67:33
4:10 : 40:60
5:11 : 45:55
6:12 : 85:15

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