Meetup : A Game of Nomic

2 alyssavance 29 June 2012 12:49AM

Discussion article for the meetup : A Game of Nomic

WHEN: 21 July 2012 03:00:00PM (-0400)

WHERE: Midtown Manhattan, New York, NY 10010

Hi everyone. I'll be holding a Saturday meetup at my apartment to play Nomic, not this Saturday, but next Saturday (July 7th, nine days from now). For those not familiar with Nomic, it's a game where playing the game is about changing the rules of the game. The last time we played with the NYC rationalist group was super-awesome, and I'm looking forward to doing it again.

Meetup will start at 3 PM, and will be followed by pizza or other forms of dinner (depending on interest).

NOTE: Due to conflict with other events, this has been moved to Saturday, July 21st.

Discussion article for the meetup : A Game of Nomic

Comment author: JGWeissman 21 June 2012 01:41:46AM 11 points [-]

"Now, just to be clear," Harry said, "if the professor does levitate you, Dad, when you know you haven't been attached to any wires, that's going to be sufficient evidence. You're not going to turn around and say that it's a magician's trick. That wouldn't be fair play. If you feel that way, you should say so now, and we can figure out a different experiment instead."

Harry's father, Professor Michael Verres-Evans, rolled his eyes. "Yes, Harry."

"And you, Mum, your theory says that the professor should be able to do this, and if that doesn't happen, you'll admit you're mistaken. Nothing about how magic doesn't work when people are sceptical of it, or anything like that."

-- HPMOR, chapter 2

An important aspect of a scientific experiment is that you figure out the design of your experiment and how you are going to interpret the resulting data before you execute it. When you are using an experiment to resolve a disagreement, everyone involved should agree to this procedure in advance (assuming trust in intellectual honesty, which I think holds here).

Polls and surveys have self selection issues. It is good to take some step to counteract the tendency of blog readers to like reading stuff on blogs, but is it sufficient? Should Luke be convinced the bias has been remedied?

Luke was arguing in part that academic papers published in journals helps to reach a small but highly valued class of people. Should a poll that doesn't track his value of reaching the participants influence his policy decision?

I think it would be a better process, if Tom first presented the design of the poll, and allow some time for the community to critique the design. Only after modifications have been made to address criticisms, and Luke and Tom agree that it is a valid test of the question they are interested in, should the poll itself (if that is still the form of the experiment) be conducted.

Comment author: alyssavance 21 June 2012 02:04:04AM -1 points [-]

I would agree if I were going to spend a lot of hours on this, but I unfortunately don't have that kind of time.

Comment author: drethelin 21 June 2012 01:38:37AM 23 points [-]

Vote this up if this poll format is terrible. An ordered list will have more information, and there are sites that let you post a poll where you can make your order preference known.

Comment author: alyssavance 21 June 2012 02:02:27AM 1 point [-]

What would you propose as an alternative? LW (to my knowledge) doesn't support polls natively, and using an external site would hugely cut response rate.

Comment author: alyssavance 21 June 2012 12:39:46AM 39 points [-]

Vote up this comment if you would be most likely to read a post on Less Wrong or another friendly blog.

Comment author: alyssavance 21 June 2012 12:39:27AM 2 points [-]

Vote up this comment if you would be most likely to read a book chapter, available both on Kindle and in physical book form.

Comment author: alyssavance 21 June 2012 12:39:18AM 0 points [-]

Vote up this comment if you would be most likely to read a mailing list post, made available through a public archive.

Comment author: alyssavance 21 June 2012 12:39:11AM 15 points [-]

Vote up this comment if you would be most likely to read an academic paper, downloadable over the Internet as a PDF.

Comment author: alyssavance 21 June 2012 12:39:03AM 6 points [-]

Vote up this comment if you would be most likely to read a static HTML page on the Singularity Institute's website.

Comment author: alyssavance 21 June 2012 12:38:44AM 0 points [-]

Vote up this comment if you would be most likely to read a page on a Singularity Institute or Less Wrong wiki.

Comment author: alyssavance 21 June 2012 12:38:36AM 3 points [-]

Vote up this comment if you would be most likely to read a speech, downloadable as an audio file.

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