I click on the link, and I can't scroll down past the bullet point about American Idol conversations.

I saw this too, I think he means 'maximum entropy over the outcomes (ball draws)' rather than 'maximum entropy over the parameters in your model'. The intuition is that if you posit no structure to your observations, making an observation doesn't tell you anything about your future observations. Though, that interpretation doesn't quite fit since he specified he knew they were drawn with a known probability.

One of the things EY made me realize is that any modeling is part of the prior. Specifically a model is a prior about how observations are related. For example, part of your model might be 'balls are independently with a constant but unknown probability'. If you had a maximum entropy prior over the draws, you would say something more like 'ball draws are completely unrelated and determined by completely separate processes'.

I've been intending to get more involved in this community for a while. I will come on Saturday, but I won't be able to make the Wednesday meetings. Just out of curiosity, is there anybody who would be interested in a regular Antelope Valley meetup?

My understanding is that your conversion was based primarily on the goodness and love of your Mormon friends. If other evidence were to convince you that the Mormon God does not exist, would you expect them to continue to treat you with goodness and love?

This scenario is much farther along the impossible scale than reviving an intact brain. If I wanted to live forever, I would make absolutely sure that I had a plan that did not involve violating the laws of physics.

(Not that I'm an expert physicist, but my understanding is that decomposition is an irreversible process.)

This is the first time I've ventured out of the MoR and Luminosity threads, and I support 5. If the limit was 1, spambots would eventually learn to post "Hey, I'm new" then wait a few hours before spamming.

Of course, this would also mean that no one should vote up a "Hey, I'm new" comment beyond 4.

These past few chapters have been excellent. Now I'm curious about how effective a weaponized version of Elspeth's power would be against Bella. Does it penetrate Bella's shield, or does Bella need to consciously allow it through?

There's a potion too, right? (Whatever's in the cauldron before Wormtail's hand is added, although that might have only been in the movie.) If that has to be made before the grave is robbed and goes bad after a few hours, then you have a time limit.

Good idea. But this effectively makes failing to "go quietly" punishable by death.

"And before you ask, it must be the original grave, the place of first burial, the bone removed during the ritual and not before. Thus he cannot have retrieved it earlier; and also there is no point in substituting the skeleton of a weaker ancestor. He would notice it had lost all potency."

I wonder how long a ritual can last. If it was started ten years ago but never finished, would that be a loophole?