"Instead of generalizing situation-specific behavior to personality (i.e. "Oh, he's not trying to make me feel stupid, that's just how he talks"), people assume that personality-specific behavior is situational (i.e. "he's talking like that just to confuse me")."
Those aren't really mutually exclusive. "Talking like that just to confuse his listeners is just how he talks". It could be an attribution not of any specific malice, but generalized snootiness.
This may seem pedantic, but given that this post is on the importance of precision:
"Some likely died."
Should be
"Likely, some died".
Also, I think you should more clearly distinguish between the two means, such as saying "sample average" rather than "your average". Or use x bar and mu.
The whole concept of confidence is rather problematic, because it's on the one hand one of the most common statistical measures presented to the public, but on the other hand it's one of the most difficult concepts to understand.
What makes the concept of CI so hard to explain is that pretty every time the public is presented with it, they are presented with one particular... (read more)
By how many orders of magnitude? Would you play Russian Roulette for $10/day? It seemed to me that implicit in your argument was that even if someone disagrees with you about the expected value, an order of magnitude or so wouldn't invalidate it. There's a rather narrow set of circumstances where your argument doesn't apply to your own situation. Simply asserting that you will sign up soon is far from sufficient. And note that many conditions necessitate further conditions; for instance, if you claim that your current utility/dollar ratio is ten times what it will be in a year, then you'd better not have turned down any loans with APY less than 900%.
And how does the value of cryonics go up as your mortality rate does? Are you planning on enrolling in a program with a fixed monthly fee?
"Also there are important risks that we are in simulation, but that it is created not by our possible ancestors"
Do you mean "descendants"?
What about after the program, if you don't get a job, or don't get a job in the data science field?
1% of a bad bet is still a bad bet.o
They should have some statistics, even if they're not completely conclusive.
As I understand it, the costs are:
$1400 for lodging (commuting would cost even more) $2500 deposit (not clear on the refund policy) 10% of next year's income (with deposit going towards this)
I wouldn't characterize that as "very little". It's enough to warrant asking a lot of questions.
How would you characterize the help you got getting a job? Getting an interview? Knowing what to say in an interview? Having verifiable skills?
Are your finances so dire that if someone offered you $1/day in exchange for playing Russian Roulette, you would accept? If not, aren't you being just as irrational as you are accusing those who fail to accept your argument of being?
You might want to consider what the objective is, and whether you should have different resources for different objectives. Someone who's in a deeply religious community who would be ostracized if people found out they're an atheist would need different resources than someone in a more secular environment who simply wants to find other atheists to socialize with.
I think I should also mention your posting a URL but not making it clickable You should put anchors in your site. For instance, there should at the very least be anchors at "New atheists", "Theists", and "“Old” Atheists", and links to the anchors when you first list those three categories, if not an outline at the beginning and links to the parts. Organizationally, it's a bit of a mess; for instance, the "Communities of Atheists." heading isn't set out from the rest of the text at all.
Apparently, I am not entitled to be treated with basic civility. Or, at least, not according to gwern. It started when gwern wrote
>>All you're saying is that Saddam called the USA's bluff and was wrong and it was disastrous. That could EASILY have happened with an attempt by the US to demand inspections from Russia.
>Um, no, because the USSR had no reason to think and be correct in thinking it served a useful role for the USA which meant the threats were bluffs that were best ridden out lest it damage both allies' long-term goals.
http://lesswrong.com/lw/kfd/a_parable_of_elites_and_takeoffs/b1xz
I read this as saying the USSR should call the bluff, which made no sense in relation to... (read 249 more words →)
"Everyone on this site obviously has an interest in being, on a personal level, more rational."
Not in my experience. In fact, I was downvoted and harshly criticized for expressing confusion at gwern posting on this site and yet having no apparent interest in being rational.