For a while now I've often felt tired and sleepy even after getting seemingly enough sleep. I also had a frustrating tendency to wake up at night for no apparent reason, then have trouble falling asleep. My partner noted my loud snoring and suggested nasal airway strips (the kind that go on the outside of your nose).
I was skeptical, thinking "How could a little plastic strip have an impact?" and "I'm not overweight, so sleep apnea shouldn't be a concern anyway." I've tried them for ~1 week now.
Positive Results: I seem to fall asleep muc...
I'm going to be more arrogant and say p << 1%:
Prior probability that a super-intelligent, reclusive, crypto-guy that values anonymity would use his given name as his pseudonym: very very low.
Subsequent evidence to believe Dorian is Satoshi: He's an apparently intelligent guy that knows how to program + a quote wherein he appears to admit that he was once involved with Bitcoin, but he later claimed was misinterpreted and out of context.
I had a similar experience with elance. I applied to a bunch of jobs and only got a reply back from one. That job ended up being not worth the time I ended up spending.
However, Uvocorp (uvocorp.com) is another freelancing site I use, and my experience there has been much better. You have to pass a pretty easy writing test to be able to work at all. Once you pass, though, you can browse all the job offers, and you are assigned the job as soon as you hit 'apply'.
I'm very selective about what jobs I choose, in order to make them worth my time and to make sure...
I don't agree with this.
Your thought experiment with the dumbbell is an incorrect way of thinking about ambient pressure. Ambient pressure pushes against an object from every direction. It does not work to deform or break, only compress from all sides.
Picture this: You have a hand-sized water balloon on a table. You place the two dumbbells on it; it breaks. You have another water balloon. You take this one, tie it to a dumbbell, and drop it into deep water. Do you expect it to break when descends to 3 feet (i.e. 10% increase in pressure)?
I would not expect...
This is very misleading. Most of the discomfort would be from the hard table against the back of your hand, and this would be because of local pressure on specific points.
Pressure causes problems when there's a big change in a relatively short time. Ears, for example, have a hard time with this, but you can equalize them by closing your nose and mouth and trying to blow out. Before I knew about this trick, I could never dive to the bottom of the pool. Now, no problem.
A more realistic example would be to bury your hand in a foot or two of fine sand. Does th...
I've been to doctors for the major joint problems, but they've said various contradictory things that have never helped. They've told me that it's aging. When I had my knee scoped the orthopedic surgeon told me that I "have naturally soft cartilage" . I don't think highly of that diagnosis.
In my experience, modern medicine is not that good with things unfamiliar to it.
I have been to doctors many times, but I don't believe that they've given me information that's useful.
A newly created copy or electronic upload of me (call him 'Copy B') would have all my behavioral attributes and memories. He could be called $myName by anyone else observing either of us (we could be indistinguishable to a third observer).
However, to me (the guy writing this response, call me 'Copy A'), there would be an obvious observable difference between Copy A and Copy B. I see the world from Copy A's point of view, with his eyes and ears and I would observe Copy B from the outside as I would any other person, without knowing what is going on in his m...
Yes, my duplicate would think the same way as me.
In a world that has duplicators, my duplicate would not claim to be original without evidence one way or the other.
In our real world, if a copy of me were made using "magic", both versions would believe themselves to be the original (at least at first). I had this kind of very specific scenario in mind when I said both would claim to be original, but did not explain this in the earlier comment (inferential distance and all that).
I don't know: If someone I knew had their physical body destroyed but they were uploaded with complete accuracy, I would consider them to be the same person (consistent with psychological view). I would not opt for that procedure for myself, though, because I don't accept that my upload would really be me (more like physical view).
I'm open to evidence and argument on this, though.
Whether the duplicate claimed to be the original or not depends on the individual, I suppose.
If I lived in a world that contained such duplication chambers, and found myself waking up in one, I would not know whether I was "the copy" or not without some outside evidence. I'd be inclined to accept that either I was a copy, or someone was playing a trick on me to make me think so.
I understand that the duplicate would have the same memories and personality as me, but would not have my subjective sense of experience.
Could this be a trick question?
The top of the paper says "1d12" or "2d6", right? The first number is either "1" or "2". If this interpretation is correct, then knowing the first number has a value of 500 pounds.
As has already been stated, you have a 50% chance of guessing correctly to win 1000, so you already have an expected value of 500. To raise that to 100%, you should be willing to pay 500.
My understanding of 'Utility Monster' is someone who gets increasing utility per resource unit when greater resources are spent (greater than linear return). For example it would get utility of 1x when getting one cupcake, and utility of >2x when getting 2 cupcakes.
If such a monster existed, you would increase the average utility by giving ALL of everyone's resources to it.
A child may get more enjoyment from the same amount of resource than an adult in some situations, but you don't raise the average utility by giving the entire cupcake to just one of your 2 children.
If the board is 3^^^3, per side and set up randomly, then it almost certainly would be instantiated with googolplexes of Turing-complete simulations of our entire universe by complete chance alone (similar to Boltzmann Brains), and there would be vastly more universes very much like ours.
Most of these universes would be wiped out quickly by local disturbances before they got very far, but still vast numbers would have enough clear or static space around them to permit reasonable durations. What's a reasonable size and duration: 10^150? 10^(10^150)? The siz...
Some articles said that the CR subjects exhibited more restlessness, or "foraging" type behavior. This hypothesis wasn't tested as far as I know, though.
Based on my experience, I didn't feel less active or lethargic, just hungry. I think my body conserved its calories by reducing resting metabolic rate: Decreases in pulse, blood pressure, body temperature, body mass. My desire to exercise did not diminish, and neither did my capacity for aerobic exercises like running and swimming.
It is possible I have missed an important point you are making, but here is how I interpret what you wrote:
Observer #1 in this scenario is a special class because he knows that he was created before Doomsday. Because of this, he knows that his retrospective probability for heads is 50% because he was created regardless of the coin's outcome.
In our world, the timing of Doomsday is not so well-defined that we can say whether we're in the same position as Observer #1 or not. Maybe we have lived past the most likely Doomsday scenario, and maybe we haven't.
Edit: grammar
Your worldview and your choice of people whose opinion to respect don't have to be selected rationally. I would argue, in fact, that a large proportion of people don't choose these rationally.
An alarmingly large fraction of Americans believe that the earth was created 6000 years ago, a position that most people here would find irrational. This is a worldview that is most often acquired from one's parents or from respected religious figures. Would such a worldview be considered to be rationally selected?
Other people hold the position that humans evolved fro...
It seems that people are more likely to believe conspiracy theories that already are in line with their worldview. This would be an example of confirmation bias, to an extent.
People are also more likely to believe a particular conspiracy theory if they hear it from someone whose opinion they already respect, or if many others in their social group believe such a theory.
I don't believe rational decision-making plays much part in the acceptance of conspiracy theories. You note that only 6% of Americans believe that the moon landing was hoaxed, and consider t...
As you describe them, an irrational Bob's beliefs are random, and a rational Bob bases and updates his beliefs on evidence. If he is trying to use a systematic method to determine his degree of rationality, or even trying to devise one, doesn't that automatically make him rational (even if it's only just his own definition of 'rational')?
Regarding Boltzmann brains:
If I'm not a Boltzmann brain, then my current understanding of the subject of Boltzmann brains correctly tells me that the overwhelmingly vast majority of Boltzmann brains would not have memories...
Regarding sleeping a lot and waking up tired: Is it possibly some degree of sleep apnea? As of a few months ago I had this problem.
Then I tried those breathing strips (despite my skepticism) that help prevent snoring. If I snore now it's at a much lower volume. The quality of sleep is vastly improved for me too. I generally wake refreshed after ~7 hours. The difference is like, ahem, night and day.