= 27d567bc2d48d9f40e9ccc20ea370b15)
The British agricultural revolution involved animal breeding starting in about 1750. Darwin didn't publish Origin of Species until 1859, so in reality it took about 100 years for the other shoe to drop.
100 years is nothing in the evolution of a civilization though. The time between agricultural revolution and the discovery of evolution is not a typical period in the history of humanity.
It seems surprising that this is true. Why are functional things beautiful, even when they serve only their own purposes?
Perhaps a better word would have been 'elegant'.
In response to
Ethics and rationality of suicide
I passionately hate that all of the mental health people are obligated by law to commit me to an asylum if they think I’m about to kill myself. They can’t be objective. You know, if they could talk to me without such stupid constraints, they might have prevented this very suicide.
This is a serious problem, but I should inform people that it's not as much of a catch-22 as it sounds. A sane therapist can tell the difference between "I'm going to shoot myself tonight" and "I wish I were dead a lot of the time, but I know it would wreck my family if I went through with it," and he won't hospitalize the second person. It may take a little gentle probing to see if your therapist is sane, but such people do exist; it is possible to talk to someone even about very dark thoughts without being committed. If you're very, very risk-averse about such things, there are suicide hotlines.
Suicide hotline operators will sometimes call the police on you...
In response to
San Francisco Meetup 4/28
I haven't been able to get to any of the east bay meetups yet, so I'm excited to see this in SF. I'll do my best to be available for it. With all the talk about the NYC group, I keep thinking "What could SF do?"
On the Human
Just wanted to point you guys at On the Human, a site which focuses on understanding the science and philosophy of humanism. There is often overlap between topics there and here at Less Wrong. The Forum is where most of the articles are posted (basically in blog format).
Apologies if everyone was already aware of them.
Agreed, re: the limitations of my method. As you suggested, I ran another pass using only the top 7 candidates (wins >= 19 in my previous comment). Here are the results:
3: blue/red
5: blue/green
7: blue/blue
7: green/green
7: green/red
9: green/blue
11: green/yellow
Choosing the top 10 (wins >= 17 from before):
7: blue/red
7: red/green
9: green/green
9: green/red
11: blue/blue
11: blue/green
11: blue/yellow
11: green/blue
11: yellow/yellow
13: green/yellow
Yellow/yellow pops up as a surprise member of the 5-way tie for second place. The green sword is less effective once you introduce these new members. There are probably a lot of surprises if you keep varying the members you allow. And all of this still assumes a normal distribution, which is unlikely.
Pursuing this stupidity to its logical conclusion, I just did an elimination match with 16 rounds. Start with all combinations and cull the weakest member every round. Here's the result: http://pastie.org/1217255
Note the culling is sometimes arbitrary if there's a tie for last place. By pass 14, we have a 3-way tie between blue/blue, blue/green, and green/yellow. Those may very well be the best three combinations, or close to it.
Final version of program here: http://pastie.org/1217284
(Removed randomness and just factored in the probability of evasion into damage directly. This lets me use smaller numbers and runs much faster. Verified that the results didn't change as a result of this.)
This, and your much clearer second test, are useful, but only insofar that the weapons are chosen equally. Though, as some have found out, they clearly won't be. This would be more useful if you tested with the combinations that seem best [e.g. blue/blue, blue/green, green/green] and dropped the ones that no one who can run even some of the math would play [e.g. red/any]. Could you try that and see if it changes any of the results drastically?
Agreed, re: the limitations of my method. As you suggested, I ran another pass using only the top 7 candidates (wins >= 19 in my previous comment). Here are the results:
3: blue/red
5: blue/green
7: blue/blue
7: green/green
7: green/red
9: green/blue
11: green/yellow
Choosing the top 10 (wins >= 17 from before):
7: blue/red
7: red/green
9: green/green
9: green/red
11: blue/blue
11: blue/green
11: blue/yellow
11: green/blue
11: yellow/yellow
13: green/yellow
Yellow/yellow pops up as a surprise member of the 5-way tie for second place. The green sword is less effective once you introduce these new members. There are probably a lot of surprises if you keep varying the members you allow. And all of this still assumes a normal distribution, which is unlikely.
In response to
Swords and Armor: A Game Theory Thought Experiment
Deleted earlier comment due to a bug in the code.
Here's the result of a naive brute force program that assumes a random distribution of opponents (i.e. any combo is equally likely), sorted by number of wins:
185: red/blue
269: red/red
397: yellow/blue
407: yellow/red
438: red/yellow
464: red/green
471: yellow/green
483: yellow/yellow
512: blue/yellow
528: green/green
539: green/red
561: green/blue
567: green/yellow
578: blue/red
635: blue/green
646: blue/blue
The program is here: http://pastie.org/1217024 (pipe through sort -n)
It performs 30 iterations of all 16 vs 16 matchups. Note that the player that attacks first has an advantage, so doing all 16 vs 16 balances that out (everyone is player 1 as often as he is player 2).
I signed up today to comment in this thread, so don't mock me too heavily. :)
Edit: Bumped iterations to 30 and hit points to 80,000 to try to smooth out randomness in the results.
I'm thinking iterations just confuses things. With a high enough HP value we should be able to eliminate "luck". So here's a pass with 1 iteration and 20 million initial HP:
2: red/blue
8: red/red
13: yellow/blue
13: yellow/red
15: red/yellow
15: yellow/green
17: blue/yellow
17: red/green
17: yellow/yellow
19: blue/red
19: green/blue
19: green/green
19: green/red
19: green/yellow
21: blue/blue
23: blue/green
In response to
Swords and Armor: A Game Theory Thought Experiment
Deleted earlier comment due to a bug in the code.
Here's the result of a naive brute force program that assumes a random distribution of opponents (i.e. any combo is equally likely), sorted by number of wins:
185: red/blue
269: red/red
397: yellow/blue
407: yellow/red
438: red/yellow
464: red/green
471: yellow/green
483: yellow/yellow
512: blue/yellow
528: green/green
539: green/red
561: green/blue
567: green/yellow
578: blue/red
635: blue/green
646: blue/blue
The program is here: http://pastie.org/1217024 (pipe through sort -n)
It performs 30 iterations of all 16 vs 16 matchups. Note that the player that attacks first has an advantage, so doing all 16 vs 16 balances that out (everyone is player 1 as often as he is player 2).
I signed up today to comment in this thread, so don't mock me too heavily. :)
Edit: Bumped iterations to 30 and hit points to 80,000 to try to smooth out randomness in the results.
= b715d02e85f7b3b4ae65ca3d3e450868)
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It's important to avoid the if-not-for-the-worst-waste-of-money-in-the-budget-the-most-worthy-unfunded-program-would-have-been-funded argument.
Still it seems reasonable to point out the opportunity cost of spending a couple trillion dollars on a misguided war effort. It is true that the economy would be in better shape without those expenditures, and it's also probably true that US federal budget constraints would be different as a result. (However it may still have been spent elsewhere instead of scientific research.)