At a guess, "certain organizations beyond Britain's shores" is most likely to imply "somewhere we don't have to worry about pesky 'laws'".
Doug McGuff, MD, fitness guru and author of the exercise book with the highest citation-to-page ratio of any I've seen.
I had a curious skim through this guy's blog. Soon happened upon this interview with Joe Mercola. I get that people sometimes do questionable things they wouldn't otherwise do for publicity, but this is pretty out there. For those unfamiliar with the good Dr Mercola, he's second only to Mehmet Oz in damage done to public understanding of the scientific basis of medicine. That's no flaw in McGuff's own work, but I'm a little dubious of ...
Imagine mapping my brain into two interpenetrating networks. For each brain cell, half of it goes to one map and half to the other. For each connection between cells, half of each connection goes to one map and half to the other.
What would happen in this case is that there would be no Manfreds, because (even assuming the physical integrity of the neuron-halves was preserved) you can't activate a voltage-gated ion channel with half the potential you had before. You can't reason about the implications of the physical reality of brains while ignoring the p...
Can someone post a ROT13ed link? I'm curious.
I'm not totally sure of your argument here; would you be able to clarify why satisficing is superior to a straight maximization given your hypothetical[0]?
Specifically, you argue correctly that human judgement is informed by numerous hidden variables over which we have no awareness, and thus a maximization process executed by us has the potential for error. You also argue that 'eutopian'/'good enough' worlds are likely to be more common than sirens. Given that, how is a judgement with error induced by hidden variables any worse than a judgement made using ...
Yes, indeed, we don't always have conscious control over the same set of things over which we intuitively believe we have conscious control. That's the foundation of (among other things) the difference between System 1 and System 2 in the biases literature. It's also (as Kaj_Sotala noted) one reason habit is such a powerful influence on human behaviour, and the reason things like drug addiction exist. But how could it be any other way? Brains aren't made of magical-consciousness-stuff, they're physical, modular, evolved entities in a species descended from...
Nitpick: 'anencephalic'. 'cephalon' is head, 'encephalon' is brain.
First off, I should note that I'm still not really sure what 'Bayesianism' means; I'm interpreting it here as "understanding of conditional probabilities as applied to decision-making".
No human can apply Bayesian reasoning exactly, quantitatively and unaided in everyday life. Learning how to approximate it well enough to tell a computer how to use it for you is a (moderately large) research area. From what you've described, I think you have a decent working qualitative understanding of what it implies for everyday decision-making, and if everyday... (read more)