All of omslin's Comments + Replies

omslin80

If you use the Bayes approach with a Beta(x,y) prior, all you do is for each post add x to the # of upvotes, add y to the # of downvotes, and then compute the % of votes which are upvotes. [1]

In my college AI class we used this exact method with x=y=1 to adjust for low sample size. Someone should switch out the clunky frequentist method reddit apparently uses with this Bayesian method!

[1] This seems to be what it says in the pdf.

omslin20

Adding on to that, these three links seem to be broken because of a stray %0A:

Alexander Wissner-Gross. Planetary-scale intelligence.

Tyler Cowen & Michael Vassar. Debate on the Great Stagnation.

Dileep George and Scott Brown. From planes to brains: building AI the Wright way.

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0[anonymous]
Nevermind retracting it, it's even more distracting now. -.-
0MichaelAnissimov
Fixed.
omslin120

I think that the answer to 2 is incorrect.

Yeah. According to Google, the experiment did find that people neglect base rates:

Kahneman and Tversky (1973) observed that the mean [estimate of the probability that Jack is an engineer] in the two groups, one receiving the base rate information 30 to 70, the other receiving 70 to 30, were for the most part the same

Ironically, when analyzing the experiment, the Vanity Fair writers failed Bayes theorem in the opposite way: neglecting evidence, thus making the posterior equal to the prior.

We conclude that people don't understand Bayes.

omslin20

Students manage conflicts by simply skipping class sessions. Last semester, I often skipped two thirds of my class sessions. As long as you read lecture notes, do the work, and show up to tests, you're fine.

2Hyena
Ah, okay. This is strictly forbidden elsewhere.
2pedanterrific
Whaa? How do you even manage to get signed up for conflicting classes- is MIT's registration system set up such that it allows you to do that?
omslin80

At MIT, some students take 8+ classes over ~15 weeks. This involves lots of busywork and an expectation of getting the highest grade (an A). [They also often do side projects.]

Scott Young aims to complete classes at the same rate. But he's skipping much of the busywork and requiring merely passing grades. I wouldn't be surprised if he pulls it off.

I'm an MIT student and currently spend 60-100 hours/class. Taking Young's approach, I could probably average 30 hours/class, which for 33 classes might be doable in about 2 months... Maybe doing 33 MIT classes in 1 month is something for a Tim Ferriss.

7ScottHYoung
The pace I'm planning on sustaining (at least for the initial period) is roughly 1 class per week. I'm trying to go faster initially so I can do 2-3 weeks on later courses where I plan to do more project work. You're absolutely right that cutting out the busywork makes my approach a lot easier than trying to do this in actual MIT classes. But that's one of the possible benefits of doing this streamlined approach to learning rather than in an institution, one of the tradeoffs I hope to discuss as the challenge progresses.
1Hyena
How is this done? When I was at university, scheduling conflicts would start becoming a problem at 5 classes and be almost insurmountable at 7.
omslin10

So, if I were to make you a bet that #1-and-#2 is true [then you should rationally accept it if] gjmgain0.01>owengain0.99..

If you seriously made such a bet, then gjm would probably update on that evidence and revise his 99% probability upwards.

[But as gjm says the bet is impractical anyway because it's too hard to resolve]

0Owen_Richardson
We'd get it settled by a respected public figure. Someone like Eliezer obviously springs to mind in the context of LW. And believe me, I thought of how me just offering the bet should update him above his current level. I'm just trying to get him to read books, obviously :P
omslin120

nobody has bothered much with trying to steer [discussions] closer to reality

Feels like you have forbidden knowledge. Not coincidentally, I want to know what it is.

What is it roughly? That innate differences across the sexes play a strong role in causing statistically different mating behaviors to develop? That these differences end up somewhat resembling "females want high-value sex and a devoted father while males want sex and sexually faithful partners"? That females are often attracted to high value behavior (e.g. PUA stuff)? That many peo... (read more)

6lessdazed
Look for where people are told not to do or think things because they are evil or manipulative rather than wrong or ineffectual. Look for people inveighing against supposedly commonly held beliefs or behaviors without citing actual examples of offenses.
wedrifid120

Feels like you have forbidden knowledge. Not coincidentally, I want to know what it is.

It goes something like "Do this... No, that is the opposite of what works, do this... No, you're manipulative and it's unethical to say that... No, saying that it is manipulative is crazy political indoctrination... People here are Pigs... No we're not... Yes you are, manipulative pigs... that's not what your mom said last night." (And somehwere in there is HughRistik writing a massive treatise. If you want to get all the best of such conversations just read through this)

9Vladimir_M
There is no forbidden knowledge involved. Just search for old LW discussions on these topics, and you'll see what I'm talking about. And yes, often the problems revolve around issues such as those you've mentioned. (Though I wouldn't really agree with the way you've worded most of them, and there are many additional issues that are also apt to cause problems when brought up.) Analyzing and documenting all the sources of bias and discourse breakdown that appear when these topics are discussed would be a large and fascinating project in its own right. It's an extremely incendiary mix of ideological preconceptions and biases, personal emotional investments, urges to switch from factual discussions to moral superiority contests, signaling-driven opinions, unwillingness to face ugly truths, and so on.
omslin150

Simon Cowell is known as the brutally honest [singing contest] judge. He worked himself up in the music industry and doesn't seem to be a nutjob. Personally, I think his name is good for the reputation of cryonics.

1EvelynM
In addition, he demonstrated himself to be a very fast driver on Top Gear, the most watched television show in the world.
0Raemon
I also agree. As far as celebrity endorsements go, Cowell isn't bad.
3lsparrish
I agree with this. It seems to me that the publicity cryonics would tend to get from Simon Cowell would tend to be much better than if e.g. Brittany Spears or Paris Hilton were to go through with it.
omslin20

Animated GIFs look unprofessional.

2lukeprog
That is a problem. What do ya'll think of the new image?
omslin00

In rich countries, there are strong correlations between income inequality and imprisonment rates (graph), and between income inequality and homicide rates (graph). As for selection bias, the authors of the graphs took the 50 richest countries over population 3 million for which data was available. Data sources here.

omslin40

Yesterday as a creative activity I spent a couple hours making up tweets. It was actually really fun and cathartic! The last four had something to do with rationality:

I'm a politician and I'm not going to change my opinion because it'll make me look bad. So shut up.

Cached Selves

I'm a guy. I like that girl, so it's time to project my desires onto her and rapidly turn her off.

"Anti-game" is quite common and involves being excessively nice thereby signaling very low value. Related to how humans have difficulty modeling others (typical mind ... (read more)

omslin-30

Though potentially harmful to the LW community, such a post could be quite instrumental (especially given your scholarly style) for some, so I encourage you to write it. If deemed inappropriate for LW due to its negative externalities, the post can be placed on another site (or maybe in the discussion section?).

omslin10

Seems to me that Richard is roughly talking about instrumental rationality, while Konkvistador is roughly talking about epistemic rationality. Let's not quibble over the word rationality.

omslin60

During the Cuban Missile Crisis, a US reconnaissance plane over Cuba was shot down by a Soviet missile without authorization from Moscow. This "stray" shot very nearly caused nuclear war. (For more examples of a lack of government control in the Cuban Missile Crisis see section VI on this outline. By the way, it would be interesting to analyze the plentiful existential risk irrationality during this Crisis. The Crisis tapes are now declassified.)

If the US and the USSR had trouble controlling their guns, it's likely the amateurish, heavily-armed North Korean state also does.

8Pfft
Let me mention Graham Allison and Philip Zelikow's excellent book Essence of Decision: Explaining the Cuban Missile Crisis (2nd ed. 1999) here. The thesis of the book is that it's often a bad idea to try to understand the actions of countries by treating them as rational actors, and it illustrates it by three takes on the Cuban missile crisis. In the first chapter it uses the rational actor model and asks about each event "what was the Soviet Union trying to do here". It turns out to be extremely puzzling: for instance they shot down a recognizance plane in the last few days when they seemingly could not gain anything by such a provocation, they were extremely inconsistent with their camoflage (did they want to be discovered?), and they had weird reloading arrangements (seemingly signalling that they intended the missiles to be used for a first strike). Then in the next two chapters, the book dissolves these mysteries by instead considering the actions as flowing from different institutions or individual decision-makers within the Soviet Union. For instance, two different organizations were involved in managing camouflage, and the reloading arrangements were standard operating procedure for the Rocket Forces (and made sense for continental sites). And the U2 shoot-down? Well, the air defense forces had standing orders to shoot down American planes, but they were not able to get their radar system up and running until the last day of the crisis...
omslin60

And more generally this seems to be an instance of the anchoring and adjustment heuristic. In this case the anchor is the present situation (North Korea bombing stuff), and South Korea is evaluating the acceptableness of a policy option. Change the anchor and - voila - the evaluation changes.

Taking advantage of an enemy's thinking flaws is one of the most effective ways a small organization can influence a larger opponent. Distractions and disruptions can prompt overreaction or under-reaction. In the case of 9/11 or WikiLeaks, possibly overreaction by the US government. In the case of North Korea, possibly under-reaction by South Korea.

omslin20

Broken link; the tug-of-war link should be tug-of-war.

Edit: Link works for me now

omslin00

you could prove that (A => B) and (B => C) and (C => D) and (D => F) Justice would nod its head and agree, but then, when you turned to claim your coup de grace, A => F irrevocably, Justice would demur and revoke the axiom of transitivity, for Justice will not be told when F stands for freedom.

I think Justice really, really should let emself be told when F stands for freedom.

Since we overestimate the strength of conjunctions, transitive chains may be weaker than they appear. So unless the issue is entirely clear-cut, it's reasonable fo... (read more)