Overview for thales - Less Wrong

In response to comment by simplicio on Five-minute rationality techniques

Comment author: cupholder 14 August 2010 06:24:45AM 12 points [-]

'Why would I need to demand evidence? My wife freely gives me evidence of her love, all the time!'

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In response to comment by cupholder on Five-minute rationality techniques

Comment author: thales 18 August 2010 06:52:06PM 7 points [-]

I had a similar discussion with a family member, about the existence of the Christian god, where I received that exact response. My wife was sitting right there. I responded with something along the lines of, "True, but my 'faith' in her love is already backed up by evidence, and besides, I have plenty of evidence that she exists. If there was evidence for God and evidence of His love, I would happily put faith in that too."

But I agree - it definitely caused me to pause to consider a tactful response.

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In response to Collective Apathy and the Internet

Comment author: lix 14 April 2009 06:52:57AM 0 points [-]

Here is one proposal:

http://blog.wired.com/business/2009/03/yes-we-plan-how.html

Their idea seems to be to combine a social networking site with facilities for coordinating action and a karma system. If it can be designed in such a way that signals are honest, karma is fair and the system becomes widely-used, I imagine it could be highly effective. On the other hand, Facebook and co. give free karma that's instantly visible to all your associates, so I fear it will be very difficult for the new site to invade the market.

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In response to comment by lix on Collective Apathy and the Internet

Comment author: thales 14 April 2009 10:11:06PM 0 points [-]

I'm new here and didn't know if this has been a topic of discussion yet, but I found this story to be fascinating:

http://www.physorg.com/news158928941.html

In short, two psychologists modeled decision-making in a variation of the Prisoner's Dilemma with a "quantum" probability model. Their motivation was to reconcile results from actual studies (the participants consistently made apparently irrational choices) with what classical probability theory predicts a rational agent would choose.

Oh, and the quantum thing isn't new-age mysticism at all. It's simply a model wherein instead of a binary choice, a choice can sort of be 0 and 1 simultaneously. I don't claim to fully understand it, but it sounds awfully interesting.