So I did what you suggested and plotted the number of top level posts and total posts over time. The attached graph is averaged over the last 20 open threads. Code available here: https://gist.github.com/TRManderson/6849ab558d18906ede40
I don't trust myself to do any analysis, so I delegate that task to you lot.
EDIT: Changed GitHub repo to a gist
Sorry about not having units, I added code to set them but apparently it was the wrong code and I wasn't paying enough attention.
Green line is total comments, blue is top level comments. X-axis is minutes, y axis is number of comments.
So I did what you suggested and plotted the number of top level posts and total posts over time. The attached graph is averaged over the last 20 open threads. Code available here: https://gist.github.com/TRManderson/6849ab558d18906ede40
I don't trust myself to do any analysis, so I delegate that task to you lot.
EDIT: Changed GitHub repo to a gist
At present, the LessWrong presence in Brisbane is essentially non-existent. We have Brisbane Skeptics in the Pub, and that's the closest you can get. During the most recent Australia-wide LessWrong hangout, Nick Wolf of Melbourne and Eliot Redelman of Sydney persuaded me to create a Facebook group for LessWrong in Brisbane. This post is solely to announce that.
The group can be found here.
Ideally a meetup will occur once more than the small handful currently on the group have joined.
The new Canberra meetup has spurred me on to think about creating a Brisbane, Australia meetup for LessWrong. I would have posted this in the open thread, but this is significantly more likely to be seen by any potential attendees.
This post is obviously to see who, if anyone, would be wanting to attend a LessWrong meetup if one was to be started in Brisbane. I'm also curious to see how many LessWrongers also attend things like Brisbane Skeptics in the Pub (at the Plough Inn) or are members of UQ Skeptics etc (and if those people would be interested in a dedicated LW meetup nonetheless).
Comment away, Brisbane-ites!
EDIT: People of now, I'm not making any assumptions about upvotes so please comment if you're interested. Those of you who are upvoting anyway, thanks.
EDIT 2: People of the distant future, feel free to comment however old this post is when you stumble upon it.
For what of the two? An example for the first is to think He will either buy the car or leave or I take a course of action I have not yet forseen where the action could be something malevolent or something happens that renders my plans irrelevant. An example for the second is to think I believe people are motivated by money. If I see a sizeable group of people living in voluntary poverty I should stop believing this.
That's not quite the law of the excluded middle. In your first example, leaving isn't the negation of buying the car but is just another possibility. Tertium non datur would be He will either buy the car or he will not buy the car. It applies outside formal systems, but the possibilities outside a formal system are rarely negations of one another. If I'm wrong, can someone tell me?
Still, planting the "seed of destruction" definitely seems like a good idea, although I'd think caution in specifying only one event where that would happen. This idea is basically ensuring beliefs are falsifiable.
Does the average LW user actually maintain a list of probabilities for their beliefs? Or is Bayesian probabilistic reasoning just some gold standard that no-one here actually does? If the former, what kinds of stuff do you have on your list?
Because doing so will lead to worse outcomes on average. Over a long series of events, someone who just follows the math will do better than someone who is risk-averse wrt to 'utility'. Of course, often our utility functions are risk-averse wrt to real-world things, because of non-linear valuation - e.g, your first $100,000 is more valuable than your second, and your first million is not 10x as valuable as your first $100,000.
Thanks. Just going to clarify my thoughts below.
Because doing so will lead to worse outcomes on average.
In specific instances, avoiding the negative outcome might be beneficial, but only for that instance. If you're constantly settling for less-than-optimal outcomes because they're less risky, it'll average out to less-than-optimal utility.
The terminology "non-linear valuation" seemed to me to imply some exponential valuation, or logarithmic or something; I think "subjective valuation" or "subjective utility" might be better here.
Is there any reason we don't include a risk aversion factor in expected utility calculations?
If there is an established way of considering risk aversion, where can I find posts/papers/articles/books regarding this?
While we're on the topic of an Australian meetup, are there any other LW ppl in Brisbane? If there's some we could organise a meetup.
Just found this in a search for "Brisbane". I'd show up, and maybe bring a friend who is a non-LW rationalist.
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Could you add labels so stupid people like me could figure out what that graph means? I'm guessing the blue line is top level comments and the green line is total comments; both averaged from all the weekly open threads. The y axis would be number of posts and the x axis should be time but I'm not sure what unit it's in. Also, why does the blue line suddenly stop?
The blue line suddenly stops because the last comment is posted at that time. I was kind of lazy about this graph and did have labels and a legend, but apparently I was too out of it to realise they didn't show on the png.
As said by gwillen, x axis is minutes.