cursed

I don't know if you're purposely being antagonistic, but I'll respond because I try to assume that people are arguing in good faith.

You predict nothing of that sort in the linked comment. The antibody test being negative is a distinct event from immunization. 

The first linked comment I said that "there's a 1-2% chance here that you've effectively immunized yourself from COVID.". In the second linked comment, I clarified that an anti-body test would be the the predictor of immunization.

I picked 50% because of the comment:

My rough guess is that there's

I don't understand the argument about SAD. 

Should I conclude from my inability to find any published studies on the Internet testing this question that there is some fatal flaw in my plan that I’m just not seeing?

A simple Google search shows thousands of articles addressing this very solution. The first Google result I found is a paper from 1984 with 2,758 citations: https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamapsychiatry/article-abstract/493246

We report our preliminary attempts to modify these depressions by manipulating environmental lighting conditions. We

You can buy nasal sprays over-the-counter, while I can't think of a single injectable medicine that you can buy legally without a prescription. I don't think the "stab people in the arm" argument is very strong.

Would you like to make a friendly wager? (Either Dentin, or johnswentworth, or anyone else making their own vaccine). We can do 50/50, since its in between our estimates. If you have two positive back-to-back anti-body tests within 2 months, you win (assuming you don't actually contract covid, which I trust you'll be honest here). If not, I win. To start off with, I'm willing to put down $100, but happy to go up or down.

Vaccines that are brought to clinical trials have a 33.4% approval rate, which seems like a reasonable estimate of the chances that this vaccine works if executed correctly.

I don't follow. Don't vaccines have trials on cells, mice, primates, before clinical? So unless radvac has also done similar testing, this 33.4% isn't comparable.

Props to you for taking action here, this is some impressive stuff.

That being said, I'm extremely skeptical that this will work, my belief is that there's a 1-2% chance here that you've effectively immunized yourself from COVID.

What do you believe is the probability of success? 

Why are established pharmaceutical companies spending billions on research and using complex mRNA vaccines when simply creating some peptides and adding it to a solution works just as well?

With Sam Altman (CEO of YCombinator) talking so much about AI safety and risk over the last 2-3 months, I was so sure that he was working out a deal to fund MIRI. I wonder why they decided to create their own non-profit instead.

Although on second thought, they're aiming for different goals. While MIRI is focused on safety once strong AI occurs, OpenAI is trying to actually speed up the research of strong AI.

Great analysis, thanks!

This isn't bad, though I feel like:

This I call "pretending to be Wise". Of course there are many ways to try and signal wisdom. But trying to signal wisdom by refusing to make guesses - refusing to sum up evidence - refusing to pass judgment - refusing to take sides - staying above the fray and looking down with a lofty and condescending gaze - which is to say, signaling wisdom by saying and doing nothing - well, that I find particularly pretentious.

would apply to the XKCD example, but not to the people claiming that the Lebanon attacks should've been publicized more than the Paris attacks. I hope I'm not treading too much into political territory here.

Is there a good word for https://xkcd.com/774/? The closest word I can think of is "countersignaling", but it doesn't precisely describe it. I've noticed this sort of behavior a lot on Facebook recently, with the Paris terrorist attacks.

Whenever the conjunction fallacy is brought up, it always irks me, because it doesn't seem like a real fallacy. In the example given by Rationality A to Z, "[...] found that experimental subjects consdiered it less likely that a strong tennis player would lose the first set than he would lose the first set but win the match."

There's two valid interpretations of this statement here:

1) The fallacious interpretation: P(Lose First Set) < P(Lose First Set and Win Match)

2) P(Lose First Set) < P(Win Match | Lose First Set), which is a valid and n... (read more)

I haven't really looked into it, but there was an odd message that he left in his IAMA in regards to Girardian philosophy: http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/2g4g95/peter_thiel_technology_entrepreneur_and_investor/ckfn9rj?context=3 . Would love for anyone who knows more to jump in.

I like Bill's EA tendencies.

I'm not sure if this response was directed towards me, because I don't know what their reasonings are.

As noted in http://lesswrong.com/lw/lfg/cfar_in_2014_continuing_to_climb_out_of_the/, they haven't even started yet. Also, just replicating a study they cite in their rationality training would be a good step.

One of the future premises of CFAR is that we can eventually apply the full scientific method to the problem of constructing a rationality curriculum (by measuring variations, counting things, re-testing, etc.) -- we aim to eventually be an evidence-based organization. In our present state this continues to be a lot harder than we would like; and o

On CFAR's front page:

In the process, we’re breaking new ground in studying the long-term effects of rationality training on life outcomes using randomized controlled trials.

Despite CFAR's 2-3 year existence (probably longer informally, as well) they have yet to publish a single paper on these "randomized controlled trials". I would advise not donating until they make good on their claims.

edit: I've also made some notes on CFAR and their use of science as an applause light in previous comments.

Thinking about a quote from HPMOR (the podcast is quite good, if anyone was interested):

But human beings had four times the brain size of a chimpanzee. 20% of a human's metabolic energy went into feeding the brain. Humans were ridiculously smarter than any other species. That sort of thing didn't happen because the environment stepped up the difficulty of its problems a little. Then the organisms would just get a little smarter to solve them. Ending up with that gigantic outsized brain must have taken some sort of runaway evolutionary process, something

Personally, I prefer more produced podcasts, in the style of Serial, Freakonomics, etc, because very few people are good interviewees. I would like to hear more if you could improve the microphone quality - I couldn't distinguish some words, even upon relistening. I'm sure the person behind HPMOR Podcast would offer more tips if you contacted him.