While it may not be the point of the exercise, from examining the situation, it appears that the best course of action would be to attempt to convert as many people in Rationalistland as possible to altruism. The reason I find this interesting is because it mirrors real world behavior of many rationalists. There are a bevy of resources for effective altruism, discussions on optimizing the world based on an altruistic view, and numerous discussions which simply assume altruism in their construction. Very little exists in the way of openly discussing optimal egoism. As an egoist myself, I find this to be a perfectly acceptable situation, as it is beneficial for me if more people who aren't me or are in groups that do not include me become altruistic or become more effective at being altruistic.

I haven't compiled any data relating rudeness to karma, and thus only have my imperfect recollection of prior comments to draw on, but I can certainly see your point here. I doubt, however, that an unpopular opinion or argument would benefit from rudeness if the post is initially well formed. I would expect rudeness to amplify polarization, thereby benefiting popular arguments and high status posters, and politeness to mitigate it. Would you be willing to provide me with some examples for or against this expectation from your observations?

Yet if it is about "10 good ways to prepare for the job interview" I usually don't read this kind of objections. On the contrary it is assumed that when going for an interview candidates will dress as well as they can, have polished their CVs and often waded through lists of common questions/problems and their solutions(speaking as a computer programmer here). Not doing so would be considered sloppy. It is rare to hear: "People, just go to the interview and present yourself as you are, if the company likes you it will take you."

While most of this post seems weakly designed and poorly edited (I will assume due purely to excessive haste), this statement brings up a point worth discussing. In truth, misrepresenting oneself in a job interview is a poor choice for one who desires stable and fruitful employment. Certainly one should strive to display their positive qualities while minimizing their negative qualities, but such a tactic is certainly not deceitful, as it is assumed by your interviewer that you will be performing such an optimization of your facade and will adjust their expectations accordingly. Likewise I believe that a critical difference between the "PUA" culture that is being discussed here and the central essence of optimizing one's ability to attract a mate is in the level of misrepresentation applied to an altered goal set.

A person not interested in keeping a job for any significant duration would have no motivation to be honest during an interview, as actually being effective is no longer a concern. A person attempting to attract a mate with no intention of producing offspring or maintaining a relationship that includes emotional investment is also lacking the motivation for honesty. One need not be in any way sexist for such a duplicitous mode of operation to be effective, it is merely the circumstance that our current culture expects male initiation of courtship rituals toward females. Refining the technique of initiating and succeeding in such social interactions is in and of itself a neutral goal, like any tool or technique, but when applying such an "art", there can certainly exist distasteful methods. The difference between a shrewd businessman and a con-man often lies primarily in the level of respect for the other member of their transactions, and the same can be said of this mating technique.

(As promised, I post description of my attempts here)

Case 1: Julius Caesar. The existence of Caesar seems very likely for me. Therefore, I will think about evidence that would convince me that Caesar is a myth.

I decided that the following three pieces of evidence will be enough for me to start doubting existence of Julius Caesar:

1) I don't know anything about the process of burial of the Roman emperors. Hence it wouldn't be inconsistent to assume that there is an official "emperor's tomb", a luxurious necropolis where the crypts of every emperor are located. Having assumed that this true, I imagine a discovery saying that the crypt of Julius Caesar is missing, or his tomb is empty, or the body inside couldn't belong to Julius, or something along those lines.

2) Similarly, the existence of a reliable independent Arabian historian similar to Herodotus wouldn't contradict my worldview. So I can assume that there indeed was such a historian. If his book about Roman Empire had failed to mention Julius Caesar at all, that would have been an evidence pointing to Julius being a myth.

3) Why can't I imagine the second Arabian history book failing to mention Caesar?

Having imagined all that, I decided that it would be enough for me to start doubting Julius Caesar's existence.

Let's turn to the probabilities.

1) P(no crypt|no Julius Caesar) ~ 1. P(no crypt|Julius Caesar) = ?

It doesn't look like there's some way to easily estimate that quality. I notice that I'm confused, but let's try anyway. It's possible to convert this probability into the relative frequency: there were cases of some monarch's bodies having been removed from their graves. I know two such cases: False Dmitriy I of Russian Tsars and Akhenaten of the Eighteenth dynasty of Egypt. Counting the other people of their lineage gives the approximate figure around 2/350 which I consider kind of satisfying, though it appears to be somewhat higher than desired. However, I had to consult Wikipedia to get this estimate, and that kind of violates the "no gathering other relevant real-world data" rule.

2) and 3) P(no mention of Caesar in the Arabic book|no Julius Caesar) ~ 1 P(no mention of Caesar in the Arabic book|Julius Caesar) = ?

I have trouble estimating that at all. I have no slightest idea how to estimate this without a lot of imaginary betting, and imaginary betting kind of defeats the whole point. Why shouldn't I estimate P(Julius Caesar existed) via betting?

Well, betting makes sense only when my utility function is linear in money, and that holds only when the probabilities are sufficiently close to 0.5. Maybe I should break my prior into several parts via Good's device and then estimate the parts via betting.

It seems plausible. However, I think that if Jaynes had meant his exercise to be done in that way, he would have explicitly told so.

I notice that I'm confused. Let's try to find my mistake:

1) The alternative hypothesis "Julius Caesar existed" is too vague, and hence it is difficult to come up with the conditional probabilities. It seems likely, but I can't come up with something better.

2) The experiment is bad. I should think about something else: for example, I draw a random portrait of Roman emperor from the urn containing portraits of every Roman emperor, how many non-Caesar's portraits are enough? Coming up with something like that seems very difficult for me. I'm very bad at selling non-apples.

This is a reason I wanted to find a new perspective and don't wanted to spoil anyone by anchoring him/her to my vision.

3) The evidence is bad. I should come up with some new evidence such that I can calculate the probability P(E|Julius Caesar)

4) There is a good way to estimate conditional probabilities, I just missed it.

I haven't worked much with the other cases, but it seems that it would be difficult to calculate their relevant probabilities as well (how can I calculate anything about geology in (3), for example?). So I think that I've misunderstood something, and maybe someone there can describe the correct way of doing this exercise to me.

I think it would be simplest to use an existing game. Players would send you their moves and you'd make the changes to the game by hand (at least at first). For possible games you could look for suitable turn-based games in this list of multiplayer browser games. Would poker or chess be a possibility?

I have the same reservation regarding the probability regarding propositions 1) and 2) as army1987. In particular, I find that the probability that all writings regarding the aforementioned people are true is exceedingly low for both, but the probability that some person existed bearing that name, who performed at least one action or bore one trait that was subsequently recorded is rather high. Considering that this is meant to be an exercise on evaluating one's priors (or at least that is how it appears to me), I would consider choosing one interpretation or the other and work from that. If you feel the need, simply try both interpretations or find a middle ground that you feel comfortable with. If this is not your issue with the propositions, then I would require more information on your attempts to solve the exercise in order to provide meaningful feedback.