Falsification

3 TheatreAddict 12 March 2012 03:59AM

Alright, so this is going to sound a bit silly. I'm fairly sure I've read this on the Sequences somewhere, but for the life of me I can't find it. A friend of mine insists that there is a fifty-fifty chance that we live in the Matrix. His argument is that every bit of evidence we have to say that we exist outside of the Matrix is already based off of the idea that we live outside of the Matrix, and that we really have no evidence either way. He says there isn't a way of falsifying that we're not in the Matrix.

Yet I feel like he's wrong, and just can't explain why. I keep repeating that we don't have any evidence to suggest that we live in the Matrix, so why would we bother believing it? 

I feel like this could possibly be an analogy for the belief in God or something. >_> I'm tired, and I need help figuring this out.

LessWrong opinion of Nietzsche?

3 TheatreAddict 25 November 2011 04:08PM

So, at the risk of starting controversy, I'm not exactly sure what the policy is about asking questions on philosophy..

But would you mind giving your opinion on Nietzsche? I just bought Human, All Too Human. It's a tough read for me, and I'm sort of plowing through it, though it's interesting and stuff.

So... what do you all think? :D

Edit: I changed it from "Rationalist opinion of Nietzsche". Better?

How to write a mathematical formula on the fear of death?

1 TheatreAddict 20 November 2011 04:23AM

I was reading the Methods of Rationality, and I was reading the part about how it's irrational to fear death. Well I came across "All x: Die(x) = Not Exist x: Not Die(x)" I really don't get this.. I'm sorry, I'm not good at math. But does "x" here represent an unknown variable? If so, is it being like, multiplied when it's put in parenthesis? Could this be put into a simpler equation?

Because I totally get the part where you either have to want to keep living, because I want to live right now, I'll want to live tomorrow, so therefore I'll want to live forever. And then if I want to not live forever, it would mean that I don't really want to live very much.. Right?

This is what happens when someone who hasn't a clue about math and science reads a smart fanfiction. But if someone could either verify the part about "All x: Die(x) = Not Exist x: Not Die(x)" being the correct formula, and then explaining why, that would be like, really cool.

Thanks! :D

Any good visual images to explain complicated ideas?

1 TheatreAddict 03 November 2011 10:10PM

I'm not really looking for anything in particular, but I just recently took a look at http://lesswrong.com/lw/fc/you_are_a_brain/ at You Are a Brain presentation. It was really good, and helped things click for me. Does anyone else have any recommendations for extreme beginners? I'm interested in learning most anything really, I've read a few of the Sequences, like the Mysterious Answers to Mysterious Questions, How to Actually Change Your Mind, and half of Reductionism. The Quantum Physics section looks really cool, but unfortunately it's beyond me, as of now. I'm trying to get teachers to help me, but it appears to be beyond them as well. But anyway, if you don't have any videos, pictures, or presentations, do you at least have any good textbooks to recommend? For beginners?

Trouble with Bayes Theorem? (The actual math is confusing)

8 TheatreAddict 25 September 2011 04:49AM

This is probably going to sound utterly ridiculous, but I have a sad confession.

I've read Yudkowsky's post on Bayes' Theorem (http://yudkowsky.net/rational/bayes) five times. I've written down the equation. Tried to formulate an answer. 

I still don't understand it. That being said, I've lived my entire life under the false mentality that maths is boring and painful, and it's just recently I've tried to actually understand the concepts I learn in school, and not just temporarily memorize them for the next exam. 

Here's the problem, on Yudkowsky's post: 

"1% of women at age forty who participate in routine screening have breast cancer.  80% of women with breast cancer will get positive mammographies.  9.6% of women without breast cancer will also get positive mammographies.  A woman in this age group had a positive mammography in a routine screening.  What is the probability that she actually has breast cancer?" 

When Eliezer changes the percentages to real numbers:

"100 out of 10,000 women at age forty who participate in routine screening have breast cancer.  80 of every 100 women with breast cancer will get a positive mammography.  950 out of  9,900 women without breast cancer will also get a positive mammography.  If 10,000 women in this age group undergo a routine screening, about what fraction of women with positive mammographies will actually have breast cancer?"

 

When I see this equation, I can properly make the answer come out to 7.8 percent. I do this, by taking the 80 women, and dividing 80 women by the 80 women plus the 950 women, so 80/80+950 (or 80/1030=.078). So I get 7.8%, which should be the right answer.

 

But when I try to do the same with percentages, it all gets sort of screwy. I take the 80 percent of women (.8) divided by that same 80 percent (.8) plus 9.5 percent of women without cancer who test postive for it (.095). So I get .8/.8+.095=89%.

I feel like I'm making a really, really stupid error. But I just don't know what it is. >_> 

Subjective Realities

2 TheatreAddict 20 September 2011 07:10PM

So I have a friend who I sit next to in class, and we talk about philosophy. Well today, he brought up that when people leave your presense, and you can't observe them any longer, you no longer have proof they exist.

Well I pointed out that it would violate the conservation of mass law, right?

So then, with a bit more prodding, I figured out that by "no longer exist", he means they exist in their world, but they no longer exist in mine. So basically you can't prove that anyone exists unless they're directly in front of you.

I'm really not certain how to go about answering this question. I mean, he challenged me to prove that my mother existed, without seeing her. Obviously I couldn't.

Is he right? Or is there some flaw in his argument, some fallacy that I'm missing?

I went through a few of the Sequences, and the closest article I could find was about not believing in the invisible. But in this case, he doesn't literally (I think) believe they just vanish, he believes they enter alternate universes that are selected when I come in contact them again.

My mind is boggled. I also apologize if this is dumb question, and it's common knowledge or has already been answered, and to my credit, I did make an attempt to figure out the answer before bothering you all. Thanks.