Taubes understand the value of falsification, such as mice starving to death while getting fat from little eating. This falsifies the "calories in, calories out" hypothesis, which was quite ambiguous anyway. His talks, and writings, have many falsifications like this. The main post here has none.

If I decide whether you win or lose by drawing a random number from 1 to 60 in a symmetric fashion, then rolling a 60-sided die and comparing the result to the number I drew, this is the same random variable as a single fair coinflip. Unless you are playing multiple times (in which case you'll experience higher variance from the correlation) or you have a reason to suspect an asymmetric probability distribution of green vs. blue, the two gambles will have the exact same effect in your utility function.

The above paragraph is mathematically rigorous. You should not disagree unless you find a mathematical error.

Like I said below, write out the actual random variables you use as a Bayesian: they have identical distributions if the mean of your green:blue prior is 30 to 30.

There is literally no sane justification for the "paradox" other than updating on the problem statement to have an unbalanced posterior estimate of green vs. blue.

I think what you're saying is just that humans are risk-averse, and so a gamble with lower variance is preferable to one with higher variance (and the same mean)... but if the number of green vs. blue is randomly determined with expected value 30 to 30, then it has the same variance. You need to involve something more (like the intentional stance) to explain the paradox.

Preferring red is rational, because it is a known amount of risk, while each of the other two colours have unknown risks.

This is according to Kellys criterion and Darwinian evolution. Negative outcomes outweigh positive ones because negative ones lead to sickness and death through starvation, poorness, and kicks in the head.

This is only valid in the beginning, because when the experiment is repeated, the probabilities of blue and green become clearer.

I don't know if anyone can help me with this, but how do I tell the difference between flirting and friendliness? I grew up in pretty much total social isolation from peers, so neither really ever happened, and when they happen now I can't tell which is which. Also, how do you go from talking to someone at the beginning/end of class (or other activity) to actually being the kind of friends who see each other elsewhere and do activities together?

Edit: Thank you, this is good advice. Does anyone have any advice on how to tell with women? I'm bi, and more interested in women, and they are much harder to read than men on the subject, because women's behavior with female friends is often fairly flirty to begin with.

Can you expand on this? Do you think your experience is typical?

Anyone here working as a quant in the finance industry, and have advice for people thinking about going into the field?

That was a damn good article!

It was short, to the point, and based on real data, and useful as well. So unlike the polite verbiage of karma whores. Even William of Ockham would have been proud of you.

Kim0+

Concepts like species, subspecies and faimily are also constructs that are just about as arbitrary as race.

This is a matter of much dispute and a lot of confusion. See here.