All of Omegaile's Comments + Replies

I know that. People are so lame. Not me though. I am one of the genius ones.

You know, it would be interesting if Yvain had put something else there just to see how many people would try to cheat.

Time on Less Wrong/IQ: -.164 (492)

Wait, this means that reading less wrong makes you dumber!

Hmmm, there was something about correlation and causation... but I don't remember it well. I must be spending too much time on less wrong.

I felt so rebel giving passwords right above Google's message:

Never submit passwords through Google Forms

There aren't enough interesting sequences of 40 coinflips to ever see one.

Every sequence of 40 coin flips is interesting. Proof: Make a 1 to 1 relation on the sequence of 40 coin flips and a subset of the natural numbers, by making H=1 and T=0 and reading the sequence as a binary representation. Proceed by showing that every natural number is interesting.

So they are building their reputation on their marketing skills, not on the future.

5Baughn
Which is to say, causality goes only one way.

That quote seems to be very good in making idiots who think they are not (the majority) to behave like idiots.

0Laoch
Dunning–Kruger effect?

At the moment I feel like health isn't as important as good reinforcement

You traded HP for XP.

You traded HP for XP.

Alternately, he abused Toughness, trained Willpower, gained a piety boost and moved his alignment a few beads towards L+.

Math is a significant topic!

0FiftyTwo
*Topics where my inability to work out the answer immediately implies a lack of ability or puts me at risk.

I think the blog post was basically speaking in favor of the charity principle.

2taryneast
I don't think I agree on that one. The article isn't about choosing the reinterpret the other person's statements in a more favourable light. It's about not sweating the small stuff and not drawing attention your way and letting somebody else have fun without ruining it with detail that, in this social situation is not actually necessary.

That's a really insightful comment!

But I should correct you, that you are only talking about the Spanish conquest, not the Portuguese, since 1) Mesoamerica was not conquered by the Portuguese; 2) Portuguese possessions in America (AKA Brazil) had very little gold and silver, which was only discovered much later, when it was already in Portuguese domain.

Lets abstract about this:

There are 2 unfair coins. One has P(heads)=1/3 and the other P(heads)=2/3. I take one of them, flip twice and it turns heads twice. Now I believe that the coin chosen was the one with P(heads)=2/3. In fact there are 4/5 likelihood of being so. I also believe that flipping again will turn heads again, mostly because I think that I choose the 2/3 heads coin (p=8/15). I also admit the possibility of getting heads but being wrong about the chosen coin, but this is much less likely (p=1/15). So I bet on heads. So I flip it again and it ... (read more)

0mfb
I think it arises at the point where you did not even consider the alternative. This is a very subjective thing, of course. If the probability of the actual outcome was really negligible (with a perfect evaluation by the prediction-maker), this should not influence the evaluation of predictions in a significant way. If the probability was significant, it is likely that the prediction-maker considered it. If not, count it as false.

I think the only problem with the article is that it tries to otheroptimize. It seems to address a problem that the author had, as some people do. He seems to overestimate the usefulness of his advices though (he writes for anyone except if "your career is going great, you're thrilled with your life and you're happy with your relationships"). As mentioned by NancyLebovitz, the article is not for the clinical depressed, in fact it is only for a small (?) set of people who sits around all day whining, who thinks they deserve better for who they are... (read more)

0NancyLebovitz
One of the comments at dreamwidth is by a therapist who said that being extremely vulnerable to shame is a distinct problem-- not everyone who's depressed has it, and not everyone who's shame-prone is depressed. Also, I didn't say clinically depressed. I'm in the mild-to-moderate category, and that sort of talk is bad for me.
8Multiheaded
I think I'll just quote the entirety of an angry comment on Nancy's blog. I basically can't help agreeing with the below. Although I don't think the article is entirely bad and worthless - there are a few commonplace yet forcefully asserted life instructions there, if that's your cup of tea - its downsides do outweigh its utility. What especially pisses me off is how Wong hijacks the ostensibly altruistic intent of it as an excuse to throw a load of aggression and condescending superiority in the intended audience's face, then offers an explanation of how feeling repulsed/hurt by that tone further confirms the reader's lower status. This is, like, a textbook example of self-gratification and cruel status play. Conclusion: a truth that's told with bad intent beats all the lies you can invent. And when you mix in some outright lies...

I think I have heard of such studies, but the conclusion is different.

Who the parents are matter more than things like which school do the kids go, or in which neighborhood they live, etc.

But in my view, that's only because being something (let's say, a sportsman), will makes you do things that influence your kids to pursue a similar path

If you could eliminate all human flaws, you would end up with something more intelligent than the most intelligent human that has ever lived

This seems true...but it doesn't argue against a bounded intelligence, just that the bound is very far.

"Bias" has a strict definition. Not all errors are biases. One can clearly be wrong and rational, for example, by not gathering enough information (laziness, or lack of time...).

This method of reducing bias only works for rational decisions using your current utility. Otherwise you will be prone to circular decisions like those you describe (decisions that feed themselves).

I would like to upvote the Feynman quote. I am not interested in upvoting the Stephenson quote.

I would like to upvote the Stephenson quote, and not the Feynman quote.

You two talk between yourselves so that only one of you upvote the entire comment.

5A1987dM
This reminds of how two high school classmates of mine eluded the prohibition from voting for themselves as class representatives by voting for each other.
2wedrifid
Or, you both downvote the conglomerate and each write a comment expressing objection to the combination, approval of the desired quote and indifference to the other. (I downvoted the conglomerate on the principle "I wish to see less quote-comments that people believe should be separate, especially when said quotes are verbose anyway". There is an implied "...and would upvote both comments if they were split to encourage trivial improvements in response to feedback".)
3[anonymous]
Let's do 1000 trials and see if it converges, verify that p<0.05, write a paper and publish.

Not always, since:

The average human has one breast and one testicle

Des McHale

In other words, the average of a distribution is not necessarily the most probable value.

0simplyeric
Not to be a bore but it does say "Lady Average" not "Sir or Madam Average".
0Shmi
Lady Main Mode? Does not sound that good. Lady Median?

In my high school health class, for weeks the teacher touted the upcoming event: "Breast and Testicle Day!"

When the anticipated day came, it was of course the day when all the boys go off to one room to learn about testicular self-examination, and all the girls go off to another to learn about breast self-examination. So, in fact, no student actually experienced Breast and Testicle Day.

In other words: expect Lady Mode), not Lady Mean.

No, you can think on the rationals, for example.

Maybe I didn't express myself well, but this strategy should work regardless of the distribution I choose. For example, if I choose a distribution in which 1 has probability 0, than your strategy yield 1/2 chance.

-1wedrifid
If that kind of selection of distributions is possible then there is no free lunch to be found. For any strategy of envelope switching a hostile distribution selector who knows your strategy in advance can trivially select distributions to thwart it.

Oh... I misunderstood you then.

Actually there are no uniform distribution in this set (an infinite enumerable set). You may select numbers from this set, but some of them will have higher probability than others.

0wedrifid
That is what I was getting at with 'ruled out of being distributions'.

There is another very cool puzzle that can be considered a followup which is:

There are two envelopes in which I, the host of the game, put two different natural numbers, chosen by any distribution I like, that you don't have access. The two envelopes are indistinguishable. You pick one of them (and since they are indistinguishable, this can be considered a fair coin flip). After that you open the envelope and see the number. You have a chance to switch your number for the hidden number. Then, this number is revealed and if you choose the greater you win, l... (read more)

0Pentashagon
Isn't there an additional requirement that there is a minimum element in the set?
1Vaniver
I believe you're thinking of this blag post.
0wedrifid
Well natural numbers and simple greater than satisfying makes it easy. "If one THEN swap ELSE keep."

On the other hand, perhaps you only want to think about distributions for which it seems the paradox still holds: ones in which that, regardless of how much money you find in envelope A, envelope B still has an equal chance of being twice as much or half as much

I don't see your conclusion holding. I am inclined to say: Therefore there are no distributions which that, regardless of how much money you find in envelope A, envelope B still has an equal chance of being twice as much or half as much.

0wedrifid
I suppose "numbers selected from all the numbers in the series 2^n" and so forth are ruled out of being distributions based on the "infinities and uncomputable things are just silly" principle? (I am fairly confident that) something on that order of difficulty is going to required to provide the envelopes. A task that is beyond even Omega in the universe as we know it but perhaps not beyond an intelligent agent in the possible universes that represent computational abstractions natively.

I used to be a frequentist, and say that the probability of the unfair coin landing heads is either 4/5 or 1/5, but I don't know exactly which. But that is not to say that I saw probabilities on things instead of on information. I'll explain.

If someone asked me if it will it rains tomorrow, I would ask which information am I supposed to use? If it rained in the past few days? Or would I consider tomorrow as a random day and pick the frequency of rainy days in the year? Or maybe I should consider the season we are in. Or am I supposed to use all available i... (read more)

I think value was used meaning importance.

Clearly some bits have value 0, while others have value 1.

Just out of curiosity, how are you now, a little more than a year later? Taking out "3", that seems harder to change, how much of these points still apply in your life?

The staring one works on others by intimidation, as you look confident in an odd therefore unpredictable manner; the routine itself trains you to uncritically accept what's in the later, sillier material. That's interesting... you cannot fish without a bait. Without knowing Scientology much, I'd say they must provide some good things in order to attract followers. Seems like lukeprog decided to grab this things and leave.

2David_Gerard
A common description from those who've been in it is that they had one auditing session where they had some amazing and brilliant internal experience, and they can spend years in Scientology trying to get that one feeling back. More often, it's the phenomenon where having a theory - any theory, even a bad one that doesn't work when properly tested - makes one feel more confident and therefore able to better apply the master hack to humans of telling people to do what you want them to, whereupon they often do. So yes, there is indeed bait. And, like bait, the bait's just part of a process centred on hooking you.

Is this "click" you mention epiphany)?

Is this "click" you mention epiphany?

You could ask: Was the Trojan War an actual historical event?

It is not actually an popular question, but it is a question about a popular subject. I wouldn't say it's important, but it fits all other criteria. You could fill the listener about the details.

1A1987dM
E.T. Jaynes in PT:TLoS used “Achilles is a real historical person (i.e., not a myth invented by later writers)” in an example. (I don't like it because it's not binary: there's a whole continuum between writers inventing him completely from scratch not based on any real individual at all, and writers having always been as truthful about him as they could have been. I don't think either extreme is true.)

For some reason this seems to be a fairly common dream. I myself have had similar versions where I had discovered a perfectly reasonable method for flying ( although I was never able to speak out loud the method, it made perfectly sense in my head). And I also had this idea of waking up and telling people this so obvious method.

I find dreams very fascinating and wonder how many people have similar dreams than mine.

The truth is that neither cristians believe in a talking snake nor evolutionists believe in humans coming from monkeys. That's just a straw man falacy. Cristians believe that's a metaphor and evolutionists believe they have common ancestors.

7ArisKatsaris
I assure you that many Christians do believe the snake really talked. Whatever Christians you are personally familiar with don't comprise the entirety or even the majority of the Christian population of the world.

The truth is that neither cristians believe in a talking snake nor evolutionists believe in humans coming from monkeys. That's just a straw man falacy. Cristians believe that's a metaphor and evolutionists believe they have common ancestors.

Don't overgeneralise. Many Christians do believe Satan appeared in the form of a human snake. I know many of them. I also don't consider this to be an inferior epistemic position than pulling out 'metaphors' wherever it is convenient.

For that matter many evolutionists do believe we came from monkeys, but only due to ignorance of the details history that they don't care enough to learn.

“If I agree, why should I bother saying it? Doesn’t my silence signal agreement enough?”

The fact is that there is a strong motive to disagree: either I change my opinion, or you do.

On the other hand, the motives for agreeing are much more subtle: there is an ego boost; and I can influence other people to conform. Unless I am a very influent person, these two reasons are important as a group, but not much individually.

Which lead us to think: There is a similar problem with elections, and why economists don´t vote .

Anyway there is a nice analogy with phys... (read more)

Interesting... it reminded me of this comic: http://xkcd.com/690/