Thanks, I hadn't noticed that there was a wiki.
But of course I have done nothing of the sort.
Is there a glossary of your jargon somewhere?
Engaging in hyperbole instead of rational discussion is a choice.
I don't think the kind of rhetorical hyperbole I'm using in my post, that any normal person can recognize as such, is incompatible with rational discussion. Other than that, what you say is fair enough.
(On another topic, you're using the verb "steelman", which I think you already used before. I had never encountered this word before. I'm guessing that it's local jargon for the opposite of "to strawman", meaning something like "making the position you attack as strong as possible"?)
I find it funny, by the way, that people here are criticizing me for not giving evidence for a claim that is not only known to be true by almost everyone, but which can be verified in 5 seconds with Google if you have a doubt, while recommending a piece that begins with a very strong and arguably unverifiable claim about the evolutionary origin of the way in which humans talk about politics... (Which is not to say, to be clear, that I disagree with everything Yudkowsky says in that essay.)
Yes, I read it, there was a link in one of the first replies I got.
But look, I think we're both wasting our time here, since I've already decided to tone down my language and not to post anything here that is directly related to politics. So I'll just leave it at that, because I really have work to do :-p
The issue isn't what you see, the issue is what intelligent people from outside of your echo chamber see.
Okay, let me rephrase what I originally said: it's not incompatible. Do you think it's incompatible? Based on what you say later in your comment, I guess you do. So let me ask you a more general question: do you think there are no claims one can make, such that if someone denies them, one can reasonably conclude that the person denying it is not seriously engaging with one? I'm sure you don't (obvious counterexamples are not hard to come up with), so...
I don't see how that's incompatible. If I say that Trump often speaks unintelligibly and someone denies it or even claims not to be sure that it's true, provided that person is intelligent and has a decent mastery of the English language, I would not believe they are saying that in good faith. Similarly, when I say that immediately after the election a lot of people were asserting that Trump's victory had caused a substantial increase in the number of hate crimes and someone denies it or claims not to be sure it's true, I think it's perfectly reasonable of...
I think one can reach a point past which asking for evidence is not a sign of rationality, but rather of pedantry. And I think that asking for evidence in favor of the first claim you mention definitely falls under that description. I didn't provide evidence for that claim, because if someone denies it, I simply don't believe they are saying that in good faith. Of course, you could argue that one could totally deny in good faith what I literally said in the passage you quote, because it's probably not true that almost everyone seemed convinced of the claim...
This sounds right to me, but I think it mostly applies to discussions that are directly related to politics, whereas my post was primarily about the evidence for a claim that is very popular and only indirectly about politics insofar as this claim has become part of the political debate.
But, as I explained in the post I published yesterday about what I would like to do with my blog, I don't want it to become an echo chamber. So I don't just want to increase the number of people, I also want to attract intelligent people. I'll probably just post here only things which deal with evidence and I will tone down the language so as not to turn off people. That being said, I think the argument in my piece on hate crimes was perfectly sound and did provide evidence, notwithstanding the abrasive language.
Actually, you're probably right, I should work on my dissertation.
I was just reading my post again, and I guess this passage is also misleading, for exactly the same reason: "if you had calculated a probability that Clinton was going to win in each state using the method I explained above (which you then use to compute a probability that Clinton is going to win the electoral college)".
I agree that shev's comment was informative, but he or she also made claims I disagree with. Just because they are only indirectly related to my original question, I don't see why I should not explain why I disagree with the claims in question. If shev doesn't think continuing this conversation is likely to be productive, which I would understand, I imagine he or she will just not stop replying. I know I'm new here, so I'm not used to your customs, but this kind of comment strikes me as weird.
You're clearly not interested in discussion of your condemnation of liberals, and certainly not rational discussion.
Look, if you had just said that my tone makes it unlikely that I'm interested in rational discussion for someone who doesn't know me, I would have conceded that point to you. But it's simply not true that I'm not interested in rational discussion and, crucially, anyone who has read my post can see that it's not true. Indeed, in the note at the end of the post, I say that on the blog where the original version of this post was published, I ...
Just out of curiosity, why did you think that my post wasn't very relevant or appropriate for Less Wrong? I ask this because, based on what you're saying (again I just arrived here), according to some people here, it's a community for people to rationally discuss topics of interest to the group. I think that, on a common understanding of "rational", my post was rationally discussing the claim that Trump's election caused a substantial increase of the number of hate crimes. After all, I'm using evidence to argue logically that, even though a large...
I now understand that people on LW don't like to talk about politics here, and like I said I don't really care about this particular incident, nor do I want to argue that you should change the customs around here. But I want to point out that, as far as the claim I was attacking in my post was concerned, I don't think I was assuming anything controversial to show that it was not supported by the evidence.
I'm guessing that's not really what you meant when you said that "[I] wrote in a style that assumed a lot of opinions are held by [my] readers, witho...
The assumed opinions I'm talking about are not the substance of your argument; they're things like "I think that most of these reactions are not only stupid, but they also show that American liberals inhabit a parallel universe", and what is implied in the use of phrases like 'completely hysterical', 'ridiculous', 'nonsensical', 'proposterous', 'deranged', 'which any moron could have done', 'basically a religion', 'disconnected from reality', 'save the pillar of their faith', etc. You're clearly not interested in discussion of your condemnation ...
Okay, I honestly don't really care about this particular incident, I just want to know the rules so I don't violate them again. I hope someone in charge can explain to me.
Also, to be clear, in order to compute his prediction, Wang did assume that non-sampling errors were somewhat correlated, just not nearly enough. As I say in the post, he is a very smart guy, so it's not as if he didn't know the things I explain.
To be clear, this is just a random thought I had as I was reading Drescher's book, I'm really not sure there is anything particularly deep or even interesting about it.
I agree with you that the probabilities of Clinton winning individual states are correlated, but I'm not sure this makes what I wrote false, although you're probably right that it's a bit misleading. The fact that the probabilities of Clinton winning individual states are correlated is only relevant to calculate the probabilities for each possible outcome in the electoral college. It means that, as I explain later in my post, you have to take into account the fact that non-sampling polling errors in different states are correlated in order to calculate the...
I think models that rely on fundamentals are worthless. I don't have time to explain why in details, though perhaps I will post something on that at some point, but if you want to know the gist of my argument, it's that models of that kind are massively underdetermined by the evidence.
Oh I see. I had totally missed the fact that it was a reply to another comment. Apologies to tgb.
I'm not sure you have read my post. Nowhere in it do I say that we should have focused on one poll rather than another. So I'm not sure what relevance your comment has.
I'm sure pollsters sometimes "cheat" by constructing biased samples, but this can happen even if you're honest because, as I explain in my post, polling is really difficult to do. To my mind, the problem had more to do with commentators who were making mistaken inferences based on the polls, than with the polls themselves, although evidently some of them got things badly wrong.
I just tried to post a link to the one about slavery and capitalism, but it remains a draft and I don't know how to actually publish it. Any idea what's going on?
Thanks! That's a good idea, I'll do that shortly, starting with the post about slavery and capitalism.
Hi everyone,
I'm a PhD candidate at Cornell, where I work on logic and philosophy of science. I learned about Less Wrong from Slate Star Codex and someone I used to date told me she really liked it. I recently started a blog where I plan to post my thoughts about random topics: http://necpluribusimpar.net. For instance, I wrote a post (http://necpluribusimpar.net/slavery-and-capitalism/) against the widely held but false belief that much of the US wealth derives from slavery and that without slavery the industrial revolution wouldn't have happened, as well ...
Hi everyone,
I'm a PhD candidate at Cornell, where I work on logic and philosophy of science. I learned about Less Wrong from Slate Star Codex and someone I used to date told me she really liked it. I recently started a blog where I plan to post my thoughts about random topics: http://necpluribusimpar.net. For instance, I wrote a post (http://necpluribusimpar.net/slavery-and-capitalism/) against the widely held but false belief that much of the US wealth derives from slavery and that without slavery the industrial revolution wouldn't have happened, as well ...
This is definitely something I can understand.