Good link, thanks. So Robin knows that zero-sum markets will be "no-trade" in the theoretical limit. Can you explain a little about the mechanism of subsidizing a prediction market? Just give stuff to participants? But then the game stays constant-sum...

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Shannon's bounds mean that you won't see crazy progress in general in data compression.

What are the real world scenarios it corresponds to? The only one I know of is the hitchhiker one, which is still pretty fantastic. I'm interested in learning about this.

Interesting! I hadn't heard of Shapley Value before.

Regarding voting, let me do a back of the envelope calculation: every voter (that voted the same way) would, by symmetry arguments have contributed equal value. And since Shapley averages over every possible voter subset, and voters would only get credited for those subsets where they are the determining vote (which is proportional to the factorial of the margin of victory I think) then the value each voter (for policy A given two alternatives) contributes is something like:

 RB
----
n MV!

Where n is the number of voters for policy A, RB is relative benefit of policy A compared to B, and MV is the margin of victory. But I think I made a mistake of ome kind somewhere.

This commits the fallacy of assigning all of Google's worth to Page and Brin. While they certainly deserve a large share of the credit so too do Craig Silverstein, Jeff Dean, Sanjay Ghemawat, Eric Schmidt, Marissa Mayer, Susan Wojcicki, the original VCs who invested in Google, and at least one hundred thousand other people, probably more.

Anyone know a name for this fallacy? I.e. attributing the entire value of some group or action to a few salient individuals while ignoring the contributions of all the other people involved. This strikes me as a major failure mode in a lot of discussion on LessWrong about effective altruism and life choices. I don't know how to apportion credit and blame to individual people for group actions (and almost all effective actions are group actions). I'm not sure it's even a meaningful question.

Does your rational advice differ from the common folk wisdom/cargo culting on this topic? And if so, what was your research process?

You are 10% to 20% likely to die before you enjoy even your first retirement year.

I wonder if there are any death insurance companies, where you give them your retirement savings, and when you retire they pay you money continuously until you die. That way, they can pay you extra to take into account that you might not live that long.

Last, but not least: That person is not even you that much anyway.

The question is how much you care about that person. Does having a worldline connecting you matter regardless of length? Does it matter at all? Do you care about them inversely to their chronological distance to you? There's not a particular rational answer. It's just a question of your values.

What is it about being religious that gives one the more privileged position in love?

Look, sex needs a yes from every partner (at least two total "yes" responses). You're describing a "yes" and a "no." Thus, no sex. In terms of the sex act, it literally doesn't matter why one partner says no.

EDIT: Asking why we privilege "no" over "yes" is . . . let's just say problematic.

In terms of the relationship, I agree with the other commentators that the relationship you've described doesn't seem like it is going anywhere, and thus, has no reason to continue.

Holden's analysis seems sensible. To it I would add only two points:

1) Ratchet up your giving each time you get a higher income - at the time the new money is coming in, and before you start thinking about how to spend it. After you get a raise, especially an unexpected raise, is the best time to donate - rather than waiting to think about it at the end of the year.

2) Holden's analysis implies that if you have no income, e.g. as a student, you should wait to donate until later. This strikes me as basically correct but it is really really surprisingly important to give something on a regular basis - and put cognitive effort into efficient altruism / optimal philanthropy / rational charity, to get into that habit as well, even for small amounts.

At the end of every year, for example, you might donate $100 - or even $10, if $100 is too much - after looking over the latest list of efficient charities and doing some thought about where the $100 ($10) will do the most good, for purchasing utilons rather than fuzzies, just as if you were about to give $10,000. If the end of the year is far enough away and you don't have a trustworthy reminder system already set up, you might do that part now, then again a year later or at the end of the year, etc.

If you don't do this part, I would evaluate a surprisingly low chance that you would remember to start giving, and giving efficiently, later in life when you have income.