That's interesting! I got the same answer but I visualized it differently. (Imagine, for each possible subpattern, i.e. "plus shape" or "dots", considering which items it appears in. In each case the answer is four, forming a rectangle. Two of the rectangles should extend into the ninth item, the one we're looking for.)

The enemy of the enemy of my enemy is my enemy.

Harrap's First Law

In fact, a book has already been written describing hell very similarly. But even in that book, there were three people. And cushions.

The point Eliezer is addressing is the one that RichardKennaway brought up separately. Causal models can still function with feedback (in Causality, Pearl works through an economic model where price and quantity both cause each other, and have their own independent causes), but it's a bit more bothersome.

A model where the three are one-time events- like, say, whether a person has a particular gene, whether or not they were breastfed, and their height as an adult- won't have the problem of being cyclic, but will have the pedagogical problem that the causation is obvious from the timing of the events.

One could have, say, the weather witch's prediction of whether or not there will be rain, whether or not you brought an umbrella with you, and whether or not it rained. Aside from learning, this will be an acyclic system that has a number of plausible underlying causal diagrams (with the presence of the witch making the example clearly fictional and muddying our causal intuitions, so we can only rely on the math).

In my opinion, the best fix would be to steelman the argument as much as possible.

The concept of inferential distance suggests to me that posts should try and make their pathways as short and straight as possible. Why write a double-length post that explains both causal models and metabolism, when you could write a single-length post that explains only causal models? (And, if metabolism takes longer to discuss than causal models, the post will mostly be about the illustrative detour, not the concept itself!)

Psi doesn't even explain consciousness or qualia.

[edit] Oops, necro. Disregard me.

[edit edit] okay! nevermind that then :D

As an aside; the use of "Org" (i.e. Rationality Org) seems really unusual and immediately makes me think of Scientology (Sea Org); am I unusual in having this reaction?

I posted this originally in the discussion section but deleted it since JGWeissman suggested that the meetup post be in the front page. Sark reposted this since I haven't been posting almost anything on LW, I didn't have enough karma to put the post on the front page.

To reiterate, I will be there and sark will almost certainly be there.

I've noticed lately a lot of websites seem to use some bizarre font that looks awful. But since they keep doing it, I'm beginning to wonder if it's just me that sees it looking awful. Does it look like this for anyone else?

http://img268.imageshack.us/img268/7224/fontyo.png

Either the answer is even in every possible world, or it is odd in every possible world.

Which is the case? What do you do if you're uncertain about which is the case?

Imagine this scenario happens 10000 times, with different formulae.

Given our prior, 5000 of the times the actual answer is even, and 5000 times the answer is odd.

In 4950 of the 5000 Q-is-even cases, the calculator says <correct answer>. And in the other 50 cases of Q-is-even, the calculator says <incorrect answer>. Then, in 4950 of the Q-is-odd cases, the calculator says <correct answer> and in 50 cases it says <incorrect answer>. Note that we still have 9900 cases of <correct answer> and 100 cases of <incorrect answer>.

Omega presents you with a counterfactual world that might be one of the 50 cases of Q-is-even, <incorrect-answer> or one of the 4950 cases of Q-is-odd, <correct answer>. So you're equally likely (5000:5000) to be in either scenario (Q-is-odd, Q-is-even) for actually writing down the right answer (as opposed to writing down the answer the calculator gave you).