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Promotion and a raise!
In response to
Open Thread, Jul. 27 - Aug 02, 2015
Does anybody know of a way to feed myself data about current time/North? I noticed that I really dislike not knowing time or which direction I'm facing, but pulling out a phone to learn them is too inconvrnient. I know there's north paw, but it'd be too awkward to actually wear it.
Something with magnets under the skin, maybe?
Instead of real-time directional data, could you improve your sense of direction with training? Something like: estimate North, pull out phone and check, score your estimate, iterate. I imagine this could rapidly be mastered for your typical locations, such that you no longer need to pull out your phone at all.
In response to
Open Thread, Jul. 6 - Jul. 12, 2015
I’m asking after advice. Here’s my predicament;
I will soon fall over dead from social deprivation. I’m only exaggerating somewhat. I’m living in my hometown, where for unspecified reasons all previous contacts are lost to me. I am unlikely to be able to move for months, at least. I live far from rationalist circles. I’ve decided to try out the study hall to fill the gap a little (yet to do this, time for bed). I will also probably try to forge new circles by going to town and searching for groups to join that are at least adjacent to my interests. This feels (flagging for overconfidence) unlikely to work here, it’s a smallish town. Nice, but still, not academically active in a suitable fashion, that I've noticed.
There are specifics to group-finding in meatspace I am able to work out fine, so I don’t need help there. But that is the extent of my creativity. Am I missing something glaringly obvious? Please tell me I am.
EDIT: Issue solved! Thanks! :D
"searching for groups to join that are at least adjacent to my interests." Why limit it even to these? To extend your analogy: if you're about to fall over dead from starvation, you'd accept most any food.
Common hardship is great for quickly cementing group relationships. You could volunteer time at a charity that will throw together a random group of people at sweaty, repetitive work for an afternoon. You could join a sports team and coalesce around hatred of your rivals.
In response to
A Federal Judge on Biases in the Criminal Justice System.
Your link is a 42 page document. It's probably very interesting and it's certainly an area that interests me in particular, but summary would have been nice to see alongside the link. I doubt you're going to see much discussion here, because of that reason.
Let's cut to the reforms, listed below with their headers.
- Require open file discovery.
- Adopt standardized, rigorous procedures for dealing with the government’s disclosure obligations
- Adopt standardized, rigorous procedures for eyewitness identification.
- Video record all suspect interrogations.
- Impose strict limits on the use of jailhouse informants.
- Adopt rigorous, uniform procedures for certifying expert witnesses and preserving the integrity of the testing process.
- Keep adding conviction integrity units.
- Establish independent Prosecutorial Integrity Units.
C. Judges
- Enter Brady compliance orders in every criminal case.
- Engage in a Brady colloquy.
- Adopt local rules that require the government to comply with its discovery obligations without the need for motions by the defense.
- Condition the admission of expert evidence in criminal cases on the presentation of a proper Daubert showing.
- When prosecutors misbehave, don’t keep it a secret.
D. Miscellaneous
- Abandon judicial elections.
- Abrogate absolute prosecutorial immunity.
- Repeal AEDPA § 2254(d).
- Treat prosecutorial misconduct as a civil rights violation.
- Give criminal defendants the choice of a jury or bench trial.
- Conduct in depth studies of exonerations.
- Repeal three felonies a day for three years.
In response to
Open Thread, Jun. 29 - Jul. 5, 2015
How do I add probabilities? Say I have 23% chance of A, and 48% chance of B, what are the chances of either? I used to think I would just add the probabilities, intuitively...then I came across problems where it sums to greater than 100%, but it's not certain. If you think like I used to think, this abstract example won't help you. So I'll give a descriptive version below. For anyone who can explain it to me, feel free to skip the next part:
Say Jimmy wants to destroy an unwanted statue. From research on statue destruction, he believes there is a 95% chance that the statue will be destroyed if he places it in front of the train. He also knows from research that if he puts a rope around it and drops it from a height, the force of the snap back will break the statue in half. He reasons that he can put a rope around it then attach that rope to the tracks, so that when the train comes, the snapping force will apply with the same destructive probability that the research cites - 96%. If the statue isn't destroyed, Jimmy is going to have to take care of the pieces, which will be a lot of work, so Jimmy wants to know what he's getting into. I wonder if there a way to combine the probabilities for an overall probabiltiy given that both apply?
The other responses are absolutely correct. If they clarified things for you, great! However, you indicated that your intuition wasn't getting you to the correct answer, so let's try to formulate these into a new intuition.
You are starting along a path from left to right. The left side is where you started, and way over on the right side are different outcomes. The 'chances' you mention above are forks in the path, and you are taking each path with some probability.
At the first fork there are two paths, one in which A happened and one in which A did not. The path where A happened is picked 23% of the time. These two paths (A and not A) each branch again at the second fork, one in which B happened and one in which B did not. At this fork, the path where B happened is picked 48% of the time.
Two forkings means there is a total of 4 end points: One for (A, B), one for (A, not B), one for (not A, B), and one for (not A, not B).
The chance of ending up in each endpoint is equal to the product of chances. If A happens with 23% chance and B happens with 48% chance, then both happening is (0.23 times 0.48). The chance of something not happening is (1.00-(chance of happening)). So, (A, not B) is (0.23 times (1.00-0.48)) (not A, B) is ((1.00-0.23) times 0.48) and lastly: (not A, not B) is ((1.00-0.23) times (1.00-0.48))
When you say you want either, you are saying that you consider the (not A, not B) endpoint unacceptable, but that you are satisfied with the other three: (A, B), (A, not B), and (not A, B) are all equally good.
RolfAndreassen is showing that you can find the probability of either A or B by taking a double negative: since the chance of something not happening is (1.00-(chance of happening)), we can take (1.00-(chance I end up in the single bad endpoint)) which is equal to (1.00-(chance I end up at (not A, not B)) = (1.00 - ((1.00-0.23) times (1.00-0.48)))
Sarunas is showing that naively adding the probabilities of A and B returns too large a value. Only by subtracting out the probability of (A, B) can it be corrected.
Intuiting the probabilities as branching paths I found very helpful, especially when you get to situations where the probabilities depend on eachother. See http://www.yudkowsky.net/rational/bayes/ for an example
Hope this helps!
their main incentive is to not let too good folks in who would prove a too serious competition
How so? I mean, imagine you're a member of the National Academy and you get to choose between A, who is a brilliant scientist, clearly better than you are, and B, who is frankly a third-rater and definitely worse than you are. What's the incentive to prefer B?
If you choose A then the NA looks that bit more impressive, which means that when someone reads that you're a member of the NA they're that bit more impressed by you. And you're more likely to find yourself getting photographed or interviewed or whatever on an equal footing with A than you were before, which is probably good for your reputation. And A's impressiveness may make it easier for the NA to get funding, which pays for nicer dinners and scientific outreach and other things you probably care about.
What's the downside? That someone's going to hear about you, call up a mental list of NA members, and think "oh, X isn't very good compared with other members of the National Academy" and think worse of you in consequence?
I suppose you're a bit less likely to be elected president of the body if the new member is A rather than B, but if you were ever in the running (which presumably means you're pretty damn impressive yourself) and A would make you look bad then presumably A is impossibly eminent and it would frankly make the NA look bad not to let A in.
Maybe I don't understand the incentive structure well enough. But it doesn't look to me as if the members need to be saints to keep selection working reasonably well.
Is it better to be a bigger fish in a small pond or to be a member of the most dignified pond? It probably depends on how exactly the above analogy breaks down.
Perhaps the better way to cut these different conclusions is whether competition is within-group or versus other groups.
In response to
Solving sleep: just a toe-dipping
The link in source 2 appears to be broken:
2National Sleep Foundation. (2011, March 7). Annual Sleep in America Poll Exploring Connections with Communications Technology Use and Sleep. Retrieved August 17, 2011, from http://www.sleepfoundation.org/article/press-release/annual-sleep-america-poll- exploring-connections-communications-technology-use-.
excellent work on the notes,
I would suggest a number lower than 175 pounds, but that depends on your muscle vs fat composition.
sounds like a good call. What about other fitness/activity trackers? wearables etc. To further manage the health-balance
- Thanks!
- 175 will definitely trigger some sort of reevaluation, but I am not planning to toss out my workout routine or attention to what I am eating. By also continuing frequent measurement I hope to avoid bouncing back.
- Strongly considering the Fitbit Charge HR due to recommendations from a few friends with them. Do you have any experience on these?
In response to
Open Thread, Jun. 22 - Jun. 28, 2015
I don't know of Sam Altman, so maybe this criticism is wrong, but the quote: "If you join a company, my general advice is to join a company on a breakout trajectory. There are a usually a handful of these at a time, and they are usually identifiable to a smart young person." Absent any guides on how to identify breakout trajectory companies, this advice seems unhelpful. It feels like: "Didn't work for you? You must not have been a smart young person or you would have picked the right company."
Paired with the paragraph below on not letting salary be a factor, I am left with the suspicion that Sam runs what he believes to be a company with a 'breakout trajectory' and pays noncompetitive salaries.
Now to find a way to test that suspicion.
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Why do politicians bother with such offputting political ads?
Posting this in the stupid questions thread because it's unclear to me why obvious question is not, for the most, raised or answered elsewhere.
Requests For Intelligence Information
Political campaigning is expensive. I assume it takes up a large portion of political party's campaign funds. But what if (some of it is) a waste of time, or even counterproductive? If that was the case, as I have reason to believe (follow my links). If that's the case, political entities have reason to spend less in order to push their cause. If they need to spend less, there is less incentive to solicit funds from sources that may have undue influence over them leading to poorer public perception, or corrupt behaviour.
It is not public knowledge how the major Australian political parties assess their marketing effectiveness. They don't use the marketing evalution tools taught in marketing classrooms for the business world and academic studies on effectiveness are decades old, foreign or non-existent. The evidence that does exist, suggests that most political advertising is a waste of time, [except doorknocking. This suprises me, since it would piss me off if an average unelected candidate came to my door. Surveys of trusted political party members from both the Liberal and Labour parties suggests that ordinary members, including those active in subcommittees and minor official positions don't have access to this information. I expect that it is held either by:
a) external political consultants
b) senior party officials
c) elected party members
d) elected party member staffers
e) branch level marketing officials
f) unknown other categories
g) some combination of the above
This post is a call for information to fill in this knowledge gap. If you have any relevant intelligence, feel free to comment. If you have any relevant intelligence that you would like to have shared while preserving your anonymity, you can message me with it and I will post it here on your behalf without your username and reject any requests for identifying information about you should that case arise. If you have relevant intelligence and would not like it posted, I would still be interested to know privately and encourage you to contact me with it.
I have no idea which of the below are true, or to what extent: 1) They're not off-putting to everyone; you are not the target audience 2) Being off-putting is valuable, as decreasing voter turnout benefits their strategy 3) Being off-putting does not matter, as they remain effective regardless 4a) No one is checking if these are effective 4b) The people who DO check if these are effective have a vested interest in showing they are
If no one is gathering data on the effectiveness, then the next best strategy is to copy your competitor.