All of fx's Comments + Replies

I've thought about the same thing recently. I use Numbat as my main tool for calculations, and the main reason I use this is exactly this - units offer a way of "type checking" and finding errors. If I'm trying to calculate time it takes to upload an image and I get bit × px / s as a result, I'm probably doing something wrong.

Thanks. This makes sense, but I don't get how tracking your prediction would lead to improvement in your prediction skills. Do you have to actively look at your past prediction statistics and see how you can improve, or does this improvement just comes naturally with practice?

Green is an obvious choice when this is a hypothetical situation, but if an actual mad scientist kidnapped you and other people and presented you with the choice, it wouldn't be as easy. You'll still probably pick green, but the most probable outcome is that the majority of people will pick it, and you'll very likely feel guilt for the deaths of those who didn't.

I didn't say it would be a hard choice, I just said it would be harder; you'll actually think about it for at least some time, unlike the second choice, where the correct response is immediately obvious

Assuming you meant "less than 50%" in the second question, they're both isomorphic to the original pill problem, but the first choice would actually be harder to make.

With the first choice, there is somewhat of a moral dilemma - if you press the yellow button, you'll be safe, but you will potentially be responsible for deaths of many other people.

The second choice is closer to the original pill question, and the only reason to press the "DEATH" button is to "help the people who also pressed it" - but if you don't press it, it's the killer and those people's actions that led to their death, so you feel much less responsible for it

I've gotten a crush on a fake person from my dreams about 4 times. It was all the same girl that just randomly appeared in 4 of my dreams (they weren't like erotic or anything, just normal dreams)

Can anyone who uses this or similar websites (eg. Predictionbook) explain what practical purpose websites like that have? Do you just want to check how correct your predictions are, or do you actually do something with that? Do you find the most value in the calibration graph and other statistics?

Relevant xkcd

Thanks, that's really nice. I'll definitely use it, if not for real decisions, then at least for Metaculus predictions

Are you using a spaced repetition system like Anki? I find it to be great for learning theorems and formulas, you should try using that if you aren't already. It's literally like a memory hack, you can just take any information and embed it into your memory (assuming you find the time to go through your due cards every day)

That does seem great. The hardest part of donating to your friends though is that you have to make it really clear that you don't expect anything back, but that you also don't want to fully provide them for the rest of their life. You won't want to make your friends feel like they depend on you financially.

I guess you're right. Though the issue here is that it's hard to directly estimate the "impact per dollar" of a charity organization, and it is even harder to compare it to that of individuals, since organizations are obviously much more complicated. So you can't really be sure whether an individual donation is more or less efficient.

You can measure "impact" in "starving kids saved" (or whatever the charity is doing), but that doesn't account for other stuff that the charity spends money on. For example, marketing, while not helping directly, can raise awa... (read more)

I think this largely depends on the area to which you're donating. Donating money to individual researchers probably is more efficient than donating to research organisations, and the same can be said for certain businesses.

But you mentioned that the scale of outcomes plays a big role in deciding on whether to donate to companies or to individuals. And in some areas, such as health, donating to individuals is almost never as efficient as donating to an organization. Yes, funding a "help Jake battle cancer" GoFundMe page provides stronger feedback, but is it really as useful as helping many starving or ill children?

There is a lot of research on mortality from household air pollution, but I wasn't able to find anything on its passive effects. I wonder how regular exposure to "normal" levels of dust affects your life expectancy.