= 27d567bc2d48d9f40e9ccc20ea370b15)
Repeating MattG's question: What do you expect to do that MTurk and the others don't already do? Why is your project an improvement on what already exists?
Stannis has proof that the red lady has magical powers from when she ghearq uvz vagb n funqbj perngher fb ur pbhyq xvyy uvf oebgure. http://www.rot13.com/index.php
Magical powers is not the same as powers divinely granted by a being that has your best interests at heart and whose servants have no agenda of their own. And, going genre savvy for a moment, the incident you refer to is pretty strong evidence that Mellie's powers tend to the less-luminous side.
(sings)
The lymph node is connected to the... central nervous system! The central nervous system is connected to the... brain lobes! The brain lobes are connected to the... Descartian ghost! Doing the consciousness dance!
In response to
Is Determinism A Special Case Of Randomness?
If mathematicians measure randomness with probability, then there must be some things that have a 100% occurrence probability
Er... what? I think you need to state your train of thought in more detail; at the moment it doesn't seem precise enough to engage with.
In response to
High impact from low impact
Therefore it is reduced impact to output the correct x-coordinates, so I shall.
This seems to me to be a weak point in the reasoning. The AI must surely assign some nonzero probability to our getting the right y-coordinate through some other channel? In fact, why are you telling the X AI about Y at all? It seems strictly simpler just to ask it for the X coordinate.
In response to
Even better cryonics – because who needs nanites anyway?
I'll observe that cold vessels fail gradually; pressure vessels may fail catastrophically.
Are you sure that is the particular Moldbug post you meant to link to?
There may be a better one; Moldbug's financial ideas are spread over so many words that I gave up on finding the perfect link and just posted one that at least gestures in the right direction.
In response to
Open thread, Apr. 01 - Apr. 05, 2015
On the assumption that there's some overlap between LW and readers of Mencius Moldbug, this report on how to improve the monetary system, commissioned by the government of Iceland, might be interesting. It seems the author has been reading some Moldbug; his favoured suggestion, the "Sovereign Money Proposal", is closely related to Moldbug's suggestion that fractional-reserve banking with a lender of last resort might just as well be replaced with a sovereign lender of first resort, and banks that do not issue demand deposits.
In response to
Open thread, Mar. 16 - Mar. 22, 2015
Is avoiding death possible is principle? In particular, is there a solution to the problem of the universe no longer being able to support life?
None currently known. But I suggest that this is not a very high-priority problem at the moment; if you solve the more pressing ones, you'll have literally billions of years to figure out an escape path from the universe.
= b715d02e85f7b3b4ae65ca3d3e450868)
Subscribe to RSS Feed
= f037147d6e6c911a85753b9abdedda8d){kind=logo}
How do I add probabilities? Say I have 23% chance of A, and 48% chance of B, what are the chances of either? I used to think I would just add the probabilities, intuitively...then I came across problems where it sums to greater than 100%, but it's not certain. If you think like I used to think, this abstract example won't help you. So I'll give a descriptive version below. For anyone who can explain it to me, feel free to skip the next part:
Say Jimmy wants to destroy an unwanted statue. From research on statue destruction, he believes there is a 95% chance that the statue will be destroyed if he places it in front of the train. He also knows from research that if he puts a rope around it and drops it from a height, the force of the snap back will break the statue in half. He reasons that he can put a rope around it then attach that rope to the tracks, so that when the train comes, the snapping force will apply with the same destructive probability that the research cites - 96%. If the statue isn't destroyed, Jimmy is going to have to take care of the pieces, which will be a lot of work, so Jimmy wants to know what he's getting into. I wonder if there a way to combine the probabilities for an overall probabiltiy given that both apply?
You take the probability of A not happening and multiply by the probability of B not happening. That gives you P(not A and not B). Then subtract that from 1. The probability of at least one of two events happening is just one minus the probability of neither happening.
In your example of 23% and 48%, the probability of getting at least one is
1 - (1-0.23)*(1-0.48) = 0.60.