There's nothing rational about refusing to believe data you don't like, and linking Eliezer doesn't change that.
It's good to have an absurdity filter. You can't investigate every claim on the internet in great detail, so dismissing the more unbelievable ones out of hand is not a bad strategy. But you need some kind of reason. Either a known bias or untrustworthiness of the author, or knowledge that at least some of the claims made are false. Assuming you don't have some personal beef with the author, I don't see how you can dismiss this post out of hand. T...
The US federal budget is 3.7 trillion. The president probably can't meaningfully affect the spending of most of that, but his impact is still significant. If I had to ballpark it I'd say a trillion over 4 years seems likely. Plus his long term effect on the nation through laws and regulations.
How many Americans vote? About a hundred million? So the average value of a vote is in the area of $10,000. That is a lot of money. Sure it is much less if you live outside a swingstate, but not by a factor 100k.
Even if your non-swingstate vote was meaningless there i...
Very droll.
But define winning. In many situations, finding the truth is winning.
For example take global warming. Maybe I'm lobbyist for big oil and for me winning means making sure no one takes global warming seriously. But even then knowing the facts is still in my interest. So if I'm amongst fellow lobbyists who I trust it is in my interest to take an open, truth seeking approach. This will help me identify the strong and weak points in my opponents' arguments. It will help in formulating distractionary strategies. Etc. I will just have to make sure no one records the meeting and then leaks it.
I think that's somewhat missing the point of a lot of advice like that though. Often advice in the form of proverbs or popular quotes is not meant to be taken literally. It's meant to offer you a new angle from which to look at the problem.
Just because two quotes contradict each other, doesn't mean they can't both be good advice. If you think someone is being too rash, quoting a proverb like "discretion is the better part of valour" can be good advice. But if you think they are being too cautious, the opposite ("nothing ventured, nothing gained") can also be good advice.
Most advice is context dependent.
Sure, cryonics would help. But it wouldn't be more than a drop in the ocean. If QI is true, and cryonics is theoretically possible, then 500 years from now there'll be 3 kinds of universes: 1) Universes where I'm dead, either because cryonics didn't pan out (perhaps society collapsed), or because for some reason I wasn't revived. 2) Universes where I'm alive thanks to cryonics and 3) Universes where I'm alive due to quantum fluctuations 'miraculously' keeping me alive.
Clearly the measure of the 3rd kind of universe will be very very small compared to the o...
The problem with Quantum Immortality is that it is a pretty horrible scenario. That's not an argument against it being true of course, but it's an argument for hoping it's not true.
Let's assume QI is true. If I walk under a bus tomorrow, I won't experience universes where I die, so I'll only experience miraculously surviving the accident. That sounds good.
But here's where the nightmare starts. Dying is not a binary process. There'll be many more universes where I survive with serious injuries then universes where I survive without injury. Eventually I'll g...
When I was a little kid we used to make blackberry jam. You can just pick wild blackberries in some places, which is quite a lot of work, but hey, you're out in nature, it's fun, and it's free. Looking back I think it was mostly my parents picking berries while my sisters and I were running around and playing in the forest and eating half the berries our parents picked.
The recipe for making jam is indeed just berries, water and sugar. We used a large pot though, not a frying pan. Just cook and steer until it's done. Pour the jam into a jar while it's still...
The article is unclear in its terms. At the top is says "92 percent of the Universe's habitable planets have yet to be born" and at the bottom it says "Earth is in the first 8 percent". Those two statements can only both be true if no habitable planets were formed between the formation of the earth and now (which is, of course, not the case). If the former is correct, earth might be significantly higher than top 8%.
I still don't see how this escapees the Fermi paradox though. Even if we're top 1%, that still means there must be great, great many potential alien civilizations out there. A factor 100 isn't going to significantly affect that conclusion.
It seems to me that there is an important difference between 'flipping the switch' and 'flipping the switch back', which is the intent of the action.
In the first scenario, your intent is to sacrifice one person to safe many.
In the second scenario, your intent is to undo a previous wrong.
Thus a deontologist may perfectly consistently argue that the first action is wrong (because you are never allowed to treat people only as means, or whatever deontological rule you want to invoke), while the second action is allowed.
Straight out of the box, the new machine plays at the same level as the best conventional chess engines, many of which have been fine-tuned over many years. On a human level, it is equivalent to FIDE International Master status, placing it within the top 2.2 percent of tournament chess players. But even with this disadvantage, it is competitive. “Giraffe is able to play at the level of an FIDE International Master on a modern mainstream PC,” says Lai. By comparison, the top engines play at super-Grandmaster level.
That's a pretty hard contradiction right...
O wow.
I've been following Lesswrong for months now, and only because of this post did I found out that there's more posts hidden under 'main' than just the promoted ones. So Thanks Elo!
I now wonder if there are any other hidden site features I don't know about.
I have to say this is not very good design. Why would you hide posts in such a non-obvious way. It's also rather inconsistent. The discussion page opens an overview page of newest posts, while the main page shows only a subset of newest posts, and shows the full content instead of an overview. There ...
Slightly unrelated to the point made above, but there is one particular weird argument that always seems to come up (at least in my circle of friends and acquaintances) when talking about immortality.
I tell someone plan to live forever, and the response is "Not me! That must be terrible! Imagine being forced to watch as everybody you know dies. And what if humanity dies out? You'll be sitting on a barren world for all eternity. Imagine how bored you will get."
I call this the 'cursed with immortality' argument. It is of course utterly ridiculous, ...
Sleeping Beauty is right not to cancel the bet if she is woken up on not-Wednesday (so Monday or Tuesday, but she does not know which). But this is not the optimal strategy. instead she should she roll a 4-sided die and cancel the bet if she rolls a 1. In other words she should keep the bet with 75% chance.
If she always keeps the bet, her expected payout on Wednesday is 0.5 1.5 - 0.5 1 = 0.25. That is she makes 25 cents per dollar bet, on average. But if she cancels the bet with 25% chance each time she wakes up, her expected win is 0.5 0.75 1.5 - 0.5 ...
Honestly the easiest explanation is just that Aumann is a very muddled thinker when it comes to religion. That's hardly a surprising explanation - muddled thinking is extremely common when it comes to religion. And it doesn't mean that such a person can't otherwise be very rational. I know I'm being blunt here, but I see no reason to look beyond superficial appearances here. Just because a statement is religious doesn't mean it's deep.
All this stuff about non overlapping magisteria is honestly just confused nonsense. There's only one truth. Sure you can ap...
No that one in a billion was meant to be illustrative, not a real estimate of probability. But honestly even if you lower that 5% probability by only 1 or 2 orders of magnitude the proposition already becomes very dubious.
Don't forget that you can also extend your life by spending that money some other way. I think the singularity will probably happen somewhere between 2040 and 2060. So when I'm between 58 and 78 years old. This means I have a good chance to make it even without cryonics. Instead of taking that extra life insurance to pay for cryonics, I ...
I'd say the most important objection to cryonics is the one you raise last, and only spend 1 line on. As a result your entire list seems rather weak. Because it's not just that cryonics has a low chance of working. If cryonics was free I'd sign up tomorrow, low chance be damned. But it isn't free, it is in fact very expensive.
So let's rephrase your question 12: You have a rare fatal disease. There is a complicated medical procedure that can cure you. The good news is that it is painless and has no side effects. The bad news is that it costs $200,000 and ha...
Missing your very first turn is a bad sign for future reliability. I don't know about webdiplomacy.net's etiquette, but on the site where I usually play such players are generally booted straight away, and a replacement is sought.
I'm willing to jump in if Germany doesn't show up. I'll be online again later tonight.
Slow reply, but two things:
Whether that is game theoretically sound highly depends on the other player's behavior. If it makes other players afraid to stab you for fear of retribution in the next game, then yes, it works. But I think that among experienced diplomacy players, it is more likely to get you excluded from the game entirely. Also people will be less likely to ally with you in the first place if you have a reputation if responding badly to stabs.
This kind of behavior is explicitly against the rules in most online diplomacy communities. Becaus
Seems like I have missed the fun. Maybe if someone drops out, or otherwise next time. I used to play a lot of diplomacy online, but I haven't in a while. It would be fun to play another game.
Two remarks though.
One: Like I said, I haven't played diplomacy online for a while, so this information might be outdated, but I think playdiplomacy.com is a much better platform than webdiplomacy.net. In my experience is a more mature site, with a more mature audience. Webdiplomacy also doesn't allow illegal orders, which in my opinion is completely against the spirit...
Well yes. I wasn't claiming that "why is there suffering" is a new question. Just that I haven't seen it applied to the simulation hypothesis before (if it has been discussed before, I'd be interested in links).
And religion can't really answer this question. All they can do is dodge it with non-answers like "God's ways are unknowable". Non-answers like that become even more unsatisfactory when you replace 'God' with 'future humans'.
For me, one of the strongest arguments against the simulation hypothesis is one I haven't seen other make yet. I'm curious what people here think of it.
My problem with the idea of us living in a simulation is that it would be breathtakingly cruel. If we live in a simulation, that means that all the suffering in the world is there on purpose. Our descendants in the far future are purposefully subjecting conscious entities to the worst forms of torture, for their own entertainment. I can't imagine an advanced humanity that would allow something so blatantly ...
I nteresting ending. I liked it.
Before I was hoping for more action. I wanted Hermione to take down Azkaban. I wanted to see here reaction to the whole story. I wanted to learn more about the source of magic and the mirror.
But this ending is fitting somehow.
And you know. Writing up those final parts could be an interesting community effort. Doubtless we'll see lots of meta-fan-fictions emerge the coming days.
Excellent chapter! The last few were a bit short, but this one more than made up for it!
I really hadn't seen the twist with Dumbledore coming. I am really, really, really glad that Dumbledore turns out to be sane after all. I really liked Eliezer's take on Dumbledore. I was convinced he was much saner than most people believed, but I couldn't figure out what game he was playing either.
The reference to Harry's pet rock was brilliant. This story clearly has been planned out long in advance.
Honestly I think even the wand thing is way overblown.
In story, there was only a few minute or so between the making of the unbreakable vow (which did require Harry to have his wand) and Harry using it to kill the Death Eaters. Voldemort makes the "You have 1 minute to tell me your secrets or you die" offer immediately after the vow, after all.
Voldemort could have reasoned that he wanted to kill Harry as quickly as possible. Forcing him to drop his wand would have taken time. It also would have shown weakness in front of the Death Eaters. And Vo...
Voldemort could have reasoned that he wanted to kill Harry as quickly as possible. Forcing him to drop his wand would have taken time.
This is silly. He'd taken the time to do exactly that before. And now, if he's going to give him a full minute just to think...
The whole thing falls to the "plausible excuse" vs "what you'd expect to happen" problem, which Harry explains in Answers and Riddles:
...the laws governing what constitutes a good explanation don't talk about plausible excuses you hear afterward. They talk about the probabilitie
In story, there was only a few minute or so between the making of the unbreakable vow (which did require Harry to have his wand) and Harry using it to kill the Death Eaters. Voldemort makes the "You have 1 minute to tell me your secrets or you die" offer immediately after the vow, after all.
Not so. At T-20 seconds, Harry starts verbally stalling while he keeps working on the transfiguration.
It also would have shown weakness in front of the Death Eaters.
After he's already given them lengthy and detailed instructions about all the many diffe...
Well done Eliezer!
I have read lots and lots of 'partial transfiguration' solutions over the past few days. I didn't really like them, they seemed artificial, unrealistic.
But somehow when you told the solution, it didn't feel artificial at all. It felt like it made sense. And I really liked the way Harry stalled for time as well. A few very nice tricks there.
I'm not sure why Harry went through all the trouble of covering up his involvement though. Is there a reason he doesn't want to to take the credit? Is he afraid it will give away the secret of partial transfiguration? Or perhaps he doesn't want Draco to know he, presumably, killed Lucius? I guess we'll find out tomorrow ;)
One bit of information that I haven't seen anyone bring up before, is about the original prophecy (the Harry vs. Voldemort one).
Voldemort claims it is already fulfilled. But in an earlier chapter Snape claims that as the one for whom the original prophecy was meant, he will know when it is fulfilled, and it hasn't yet. So assuming Snape isn't either lying or mistaken (and Dumbledore is also present, bringing down the chance of Snape being mistaken), then that particular prophecy is still in effect.
Snape makes another very important claim in that passage. H...
Looking back, I think I could have written that more clearly.
People were complaining about the mirror, and the Riddle-curse, being deus ex machina. I'm saying they weren't, because they weren't moving the plot forward. Take them out and the overall plot remains the same. That doesn't mean those scenes served no purpose in the story.
The Riddle-curse scene in particular I thought was very good. When I was reading chapter 111, when Harry got his wand back, I got all excited. I kept thinking perhaps Harry had a chance after all. I did of course wonder why Vold...
I disagree that the writing has deteriorated.
People complain a lot about the lack of foreshadowing of the mirror and the "Riddle can't kill Riddle" curse. But I don't think the lack of foreshadowing matters, because both of these things are minor details in the overall story line. Let's start with the "Riddle can't kill Riddle" curse. Voldemort wasn't just not killing Harry because of this curse. After all now that the curse is lifted he still isn't killing Harry. The curse is entirely unneeded to explain his earlier before, or his curr...
That was absolutely awesome. This story is really very well written. So much exposition, and it just all made perfect sense. And it was even somehow brought back far more in line with the original novel than I thought possible.
And I guess the '"Power the dark lord knows not" really is love, which is kinda awesome.
It's still kind of obvious how to defeat Voldemort though. Simply permanently disable him without killing him. Some magical prison, or a coma, or a permanent transfiguration into a stone. This is in fact so obvious that Voldemort himself...
I have really wanted to try MealSquares for a while now, but they are only sold in the US, with no timeline for availability elsewhere. In fact I don't think their site has been updated since I first encountered them a couple of months ago. Does anyone know if they still exist, and if they have plans to ever sell overseas?
You mean: "Just don't do it by lying to them about not easily verifiable facts" right?
Lying to your kids about certain classes of things is a great game, which, as others have pointed out, adults seem almost hard-wired to play. It's a great way to stimulate a child's inquisitive nature, in a safe and fun way. Adults will often tell their kids tall stories, or make up nonsense explanations for every day phenomenons, or play out fantasies as if they are real (Santa Claus falls in this latter category).
But for this game to work, the things you lie a...
I wonder if this can not be partially explained by people wanting to answer quickly. The teacher says you can make as many guesses as you like, but we still instinctively feel like we do better if we do it faster.
Imagine the same test, but now with the last line reading: "You can make as many guesses as you like, but you get graded on how fast you get the right result". With the rule it is a lot more rational to not spend too much time on verification of your hypothesized rule. I have no idea what the best strategy is, I guess it depends on your ...
Thanks!
You are right that there is also the scenario that the test givers are lying (which in this case turns out to be the truth). But this is not something Brennan in the story considers, so it can not have affected his decision. So he arrived at the correct answer, but did so by faulty logic. His two errors (not considering one possible scenario, and assigning wrong odds to the two scenarios he does consider) just happen to cancel out. It would certainly be a way to fix this story: Let Brennan first realize that he should trust everybody else over himse...
I know this is a very old story, but I have some thoughts on it I wanted to share.
Let me first share an experience that I think everybody who has ever seriously studied math (or any complicated subject) has had. You're working on a difficult math problem, say a complicated differential equation. You are certain your method is correct, but still your answer is wrong. You've checked your work, you've double checked it, you've checked it again. Your calculation seems flawless.. Finally, in desperation, you ask a friend for help. Your friend takes one glance a...
Your claim was that child abuse and trauma have barely any influence on adult life. This is clearly an extraordinary claim, that requires evidence to be taken seriously.
Your evidence are three quotations, two of which only contain more links, and the third is about the heritability of divorce, which has nothing to do with your claim.
So in other words you have given zero evidence for your claim. Maybe there is some evidence to be found in one of the many citations you gave, but without knowing which one or what to look for it would take many hours to invest... (read more)