A "school" in Britain provides primary or secondary education (tertiary is "a university", you wouldn't find a UK person saying "Cambridge is a good school"). A "public school" in Britain is a secondary school where the parents pay a fee for their kids to attend. Confusingly, if you also describe it as a private school, people will know what you mean. ISTR the name arises because in the Olden Days if you were properly posh you'd have a personal tutor, so shared (but fee paying) schools were "public&quo...
Note that there's some discussion on just what Eliezer means by "logic all the way down" over on Rationally Speaking: http://rationallyspeaking.blogspot.co.uk/2013/01/lesswrong-on-morality-and-logic.html . Seeing as much of this is me and Angra Maiynu arguing that Massimo Pigliucci hasn't understood what Eliezer means, it might be useful for Eliezer to confirm what he does mean.
You mention naturalism as a "bad habit" for using science to understand the world?
No, he doesn't (which is why I downvoted this comment, BTW). Luke says that even naturalistic philosophers exhibit these bad habits. He does not say that naturalism is a bad habit, or that it's a bad habit because it uses science to understand the world.
The latest Rationally Speaking post looks relevant: Ian Pollock describes aspects of Eliezer's view as "minimalism" with a link to that same SEP article. He also mentions Simon Blackburn's book, where Blackburn describes minimalists or quietists as making the same point Eliezer makes about collapsing "X is true" to "X" and a similar point about the usefulness of the term "truth" as a generalisation (though it seems that minimalists would say that this is only a linguistic convenience, whereas Eliezer seems to have a...
Perhaps I should amend that to "don't be obviously indiscriminate in a sleazy way". The bad thing isn't finding lots of people attractive, it's apparently caring nothing for them as a person (which is about having had no conversational interction with them before asking them out, some small amount of buildup is necessary, though as siduri says, if you're a decent chap, it's probably less than you think) or alternatively appearing desperate (which is about demeanor, I think). Things I've heard remarked upon have been bemusement at dinner invites f...
Even better than book groups, though, are dance classes.
Amen to that. I'd add a slight caution that chemistry generated on the dancefloor can sometimes just be about the dancing, and telling when it is more than that is possibly an advanced skill. So, as this Mefi comment says, don't push your luck on the dancefloor itself.
Workaround: ask after the class or when you're standing around chatting (assuming you don't dance all the time). Don't be the guy who asks everyone in turn: the women talk to each other :-) EDIT: I elaborate on what I mean by this below....
I think I'm free. The same time the following weekend is bad for me, but Sunday 20th is OK.
which I'm pretty sure I first found here, HT
Glad you liked it.
Suber seems to concentrate on tactics where one person avoids responding to the argument by making some statement about the arguer ("you're saying that because of your hopeless confirmation bias!") That sort of rudeness is a potential problem if someone has a belief which includes explanations of why other people don't believe it. I'm not sure what to do to about that, since I certainly have such beliefs. As far as I can make out, if I want to avoid being rude, I end up having to resp...
So, the context is whether it's ethical to let people believe they've understood how the tricks work when their understanding is that it's done with psychic powers or with NLP.
...DERREN: Well, I not a big a fan of it, but I've done it and think in some contexts there's some use--that's a whole other conversation--but it's a dirty word as far as I'm concerned. If somebody came up to me and said, "Look, I really liked your show, and I'm going to go to an NLP course," which I've had happen, I would say to them, "Well, if you want to do that, do
I admire Derren Brown enormously for his cleverness, but he's not doing NLP (if indeed there's anything to do: an article which addressed the evidence would be good, I think). He just wants you do think he is. The bit at the end of the trick where he gleefully shows you how he did it using NLP to implant words in people's minds is itself misdirection. It's part of his act, as pretending to be psychic would have been back in the days when people kind of believed in that.
Brown: "Years ago the issue was whether or not you told people it was psychic beca...
Me too! (But gjm knew that).
Eliezer Yudkowsky can isolate magnetic monopoles
Nah, that's Dave Green. You'd better hope Dr Green doesn't find out...
I feel like I might have seen this game on Overcoming Bias before, but I can't find it there
The game is familiar to me from Yes, Minister, a TV programme which was an expert satire on British politics. Bernard Woolley, a senior civil servant, would refer to these as "irregular verbs". From the quotes page at IMDB: "That's one of those irregular verbs, isn't it? I give confidential security briefings. You leak. He has been charged under section 2a of the Official Secrets Act. "
You've taken Yvain's example of a bad argument to use as if it were his argument, and then called it wrong headed. You're agreeing with Yvain. There is a difference between using an argument and quoting it.
My empathies: that happened to me about 6 years ago (though thankfully without as much visible vacillation).
My sister, who had some Cognitive Behaviour Therapy training, reminded me that relationships are forming and breaking all the time, and given I wasn't unattractive and hadn't retreated into monastic seclusion, it wasn't rational to think I'd be alone for the rest of my life (she turned out to be right). That was helpful at the times when my feelings hadn't completely got the better of me. I suppose we can be haunted by stuff that is real.
Argh, I mistyped "fee" as "free". Fixed.
Yes, though I'm not sure whether the USA has the similar phenomenon of a few private schools providing so much of the ruling establishment figures or whether there's a similar "private school bluffer" / Upper Class Twit archetype there.