Yeah that's totally cool. LW style is different though. Not necessarily in a good way, and this difference might even be why it's less popular than other sites these days. But it's different in that LW doesn't, as far as I have observed, want lots of people from different sides. It wants an almost algorithmic approach to reality, where more colorful language is viewed as disrupting the truth by inflaming tribal parts of your brain.
Everything you're saying is totally reasonable for someone who doesn't understand the very very specific thing LW is trying to accomplish, and the idiosyncratic rules of engagement for this site.
Personally I don't come here as often as other sites in part due to these rules, at times, feeling stringent shrug
The style of your blog is very very much at odds with the style of Less Wrong. I would never submit anything here that classified as a cohesive set what 'liberals' think, and then attacked that classification. Writing here should map more to statistical estimation and modeling, where every word and claim is scrutinized, thoughtful, and attempts to avoid invoking needless emotion. That last point is harder to nail down. It is of course possible to have an excitable tone that runs orthogonal to the strict argument, but it's pretty hard to do right.
I do, sometimes, write more in line with the tone you choose on my personal blog, but I wouldn't ever submit it here. And as I write more and think more, I've become increasingly convinced it's not the best way to think. Trying to be persuasive, methodological, and charitable, is more fun since it's much more challenging.
You'd have better luck in the reactosphere, which probably gets more readers than LW anyway.
I thought it was interesting -- and frustrating for you. I haven't invested the time into proving to myself you're right, but in the case that you are I hope you're able to get someone to verify and lend you their credibility.
Why do you think two senior biostats guys would disagree with you if it was obviously wrong? I have worked with enough academics to know that they are far far from infallible, but curious on your analysis of this question.
Coming up with criteria and metrics on the economy is pretty easy
I agree. In fact, I think coming up with criteria and metrics on the economy is profoundly challenging within the US context. We know there are right tail events (inflation, unemployment, etc) that are very strong. But when they are all generally stable, or within the realm of stability, but the variation within demographics and geographies of the US is huge, the value of the metrics can start to dramatically collapse IMO.
It's hard to think of how one could do a lit review on that without, like, a thousand sources to try and characterize the general scope of the problem.
This is pretty cool. It reminds me of an article I read on brain surgery recently (https://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/03/magazine/karl-ove-knausgaard-on-the-terrible-beauty-of-brain-surgery.html). Where the surgeon keeps the patient awake, and zaps different parts of the brain to see what they map to. They don't even try to pretend they understand the system, but try to map simple correlations.
[Note, after rereading your post my comment is tangential]
I have always been empathetic to the argument, from people first presented with this, that they are different. Understanding how math deals with infinity basically requires having the mathematical structure supporting it already known. I'm not particularly gifted at math, but the first 4 weeks of real analysis really changed the way I think, because it was basically a condensed rapid upload of centuries of collaborative work from some of the smartest men to ever exist right into my brain.
Otherwise, at least in my experience, we operate in a discrete world that moves through time. So, what I predict is happening, is that when you ask that question to people their best approximation is a discrete world ticking through time.
Is 0.999...=1? Well, each tick of time another set of [0.0...9]'s is added, when the question is finally answered the time stops. You're then left with some finite number [0.0..01]. In their mind it's a discrete algo running through time.
The reality that it's a limit that operates absent of time, instantaneously, is hard to grasp, because it took brilliant men centuries to figure out this profoundly unintuitive result. We understand it because we learned it.
Can we elect a dictator?
Sincere question: Do you think the SSC comments section accomplishes politics while filtering out foam, spittle etc? (or perhaps the comments section there is more robust to simply ignoring bad comments, which isn't the same on a forum?)
Having no moderator experience, I guess there is probably a lot on that end that I don't know.
This.