I spend a lot of time thinking about politics, and I find it hugely beneficial to force myself into assigning probabilities to my predictions. It's silly, on the one hand, to intone "There is a 90% probability that this behaviour will continue" with the sureity of a Vulcan - my numbers are very, very poorly calibrated - but when I actually sit back to consider "How certain am I of this?" it helps remind me that I don't know most of the time. This can motivate me to search for further evidence - and since I'm explicitly researching from a position of ignorance, I'm less prone to confirmation bias.

A second technique I employ is the Drake Equation to avoid the conjunction fallacy - I'll always try and boil the elements down to the individual events, and multiply the probabilities. An interesting side effect of this is that it destroys almost every ideological movement - I'm thinking of environmentalism in particular. [EG Anthropic global warming X Catastrophic global warming X Reversability X (Prius+Carbon capture are net positives)] There are no easy solutions.

Could you link to an explanation of why I should expect to see my Social Security payments again?

"-7.65% of your income into Social Security good luck getting that back"

The "Social Security will be eliminated before you collect any benefits" line is one of the great myths of USA politics. It's being intentionally propagated by one political party (hint: the one that voted against SS and has been fighting against it ever since.) SS's finances are in fine shape and the program can continue with minimal or no modification for many years to come.

Your link goes to a very brief piece arguing that most people don't think they will get Social Security benefits. Which is true! People have been told this so often they are starting to believei it! But that is a very different question from whether folks will actually get Social Security benefits.

Anyway I know this is only orthogonal to your main point, but I had to object. Spreading misinformation doesn't belong on a rationality blog.

I'm a bit baffled. What counts as "making a choice?" Is it the same as making a decision?

Here's where my question comes from. I play poker online. Last night, in fact, for the first time ever I opened 8 different tables, and then I played at all 8 for almost 5 hours straight. My software says I played over 2,000 hands of poker. Each hand represents at least one decision, and often a series. Decision 1, fold or play this hand from this position. Decision 2, if play, raise or call. Decision 3, if still in the hand on the flop, bet/raise/call. And so on. So I probably made between 5,000 and 10,000 different decisions ("choices"?) in one evening.

The study would imply that I had massively reduced self-control after that, I assume. I went to bed pretty shortly thereafter, so I can't speak to that one way or the other.

But it would also seem to imply that I must have played very bad poker during the last hour or so -- my self-control must have been dead, and a critical part of playing good poker is self-control: folding hands that need folding can be a very difficult effort, especially when you have a good hand but your instincts are telling you it's second-best. It's so, so easy to talk yourself into a call "just to see," but that habit costs real money.

Now it's true that sometimes I do play worse poker as a session goes on, but sometimes I don't. Last night, despite playing more hands in one session than I ever have before, I don't think I fell apart toward the end.

Am I missing something very basic here? Probably so.

Can someone explain what it is? Thanks.

It might be an awful experiment to perform, but if we can find a parent with a newborn child and sufficient self-honesty to be trustworthy, we can ask them whether or not, in all honesty, their own baby is cuter than those images, which were cute enough to make my head explode into candy.

If a trustworthy self-honest rationalist parent looks at that and says "yes, my baby is cuter"... I'd have to say that explains a lot about parents and a lot about the continued survival of the human species.

What word would you suggest I use to describe those who subscribe to the CAGW Hypothesis?

How about "those who subscribe to CAGW"? Certainly referring to them as alarmists begs the question. In general, the suffix "-ist" suggests an ideologue who can't be reasoned with (there are exceptions, such as philosophical positions, but in political discussions this is almost always the case). Whether or not those who hold the view you disagree with can in fact be reasoned with is irrelevant-- this coinage amounts to ad hominem by connotation.

And are you claiming that the "scientific establishment" subscribes to the CAGW Hypothesis?

I think the scientific establishment drops the 'C' (or at least doesn't hold the extremely terrifying beliefs a lot of non-scientists hold about global warming) but since you've coined new terms at few points in your blog do I know who you're actually critisizing.

I think this depends on how fair the rules are. Pretty much every discussion board, including this one, has rules and bans people who break those rules. Do you think my rules are unfair?

You don't have a discussion board, you have a personal blog. The rules here are mostly informal and they're designed to ensure quality of content and civility. We have a few rules about subject area but they are flexible and are only needed at all because they're often noisy for the large number of people that come here. Your rules limit discussion to one, very particular thesis. Which is fine if you've got a ton of readers and you're trying to sort signal from noise. We ban people who constanly post New Agey nonsense because no one wants to be distracted by that stuff. You don't have the readership to do that. You've had one dissenting commenter afaict. He was banned.

Your other rules: If someone here uses a straw man someone else replies "Hi. This is a straw man." On your blog, you promise to ban them. If someone equivocates here another person will reply "I think you're equivocating on this point." some discussion will then ensue about whether or not that person is in fact equivocating. On your blog however, if someone equivocates or is otherwise "weaslely" they must admit they are weasling or they will be banned. Here if person A criticizes person B's spelling person B will usually edit their comment and reply "Thanks." On your blog, if you are person B you will assume that person A has conceded your argument.

This only begins to describe your list of 9(?) rules. I can't see how they're actually implemented because it looks like you deleted the violating comments. They aren't so much unfair as preposterous. In the words of the one person who commented to the post listing your rules: "Dude, seriously, chill."

What evidence did I refuse to concede?

Put it this way: you argue like an attorney not a scientist. Is anyone not clear what I mean by that?

Suit yourself.

Look, presumably you want smart people who disagree with you to challenge your beliefs. I'm giving you strong reasons why they might be avoiding you. Do with that information what you wish.

What kinds of possible evidence would you expect to see if such positive feedbacks can happen?

I'm not sure what you mean by "can happen," since in some sense lots of things "can happen."

Anyway, it's not a full answer to your question, but the gold standard for substantiating the water vapor feedback hypothesis would be if the proponents of that hypothesis made specific interesting and accurate predictions about future events.

To paraphrase Eliezer, ceteris paribus and without anything unknown at work, water vapor is a greenhouse gas and ought to make the Earth hotter. Also, ceteris paribus and without anything unknown at work, a hotter Earth ought to lead to more water vapor in the air.

I disagree, and perhaps an anlogy would help: All things being equal, cooler weather can be expected to lead to more snow cover. And all things being equal, more snow cover can be expected to result in cooler surface temperatures because of effects on the Earth's albedo. So should we worry that the next big volcano will trigger an ice age?

The answer is "no," and I think the mistake here is two-fold. First, rough reasoning gets exponentially rougher as you travel along a chain of deduction. Second, we can't ignore the fact that the Earth's climate is a complicated system which has been around for a long time. The normal assumption should be that if you push on such a system, then it will probably push back at you.

Let me Google that for you.

This article http://www.alcor.org/printable.cgi?fname=Library%2Fhtml%2FWillCryonicsWork.html gives something like a drake equation for cryonics

I found this article in which John Bischof speaks out against cryonics, so I mailed him, and he very politely replied almost immediately to say that cryobiologists consider cryonics a "faith based approach". Sadly he provided no more detail; I've mailed again asking him to write on the subject at greater length.

Update: he replied to my reply. I have also had mail from Ralph Merkle! Will make a new post on my blog with details later.