Would you care to summarize the main claim of that article and outline the evidence (similar to an "abstract" in a scientific article")? I've read a chunk of the article (and several of the linked articles), and despite seeing lots of insinuations I don't really see anything nefarious in the timeline so far. The worst accusation seems to be that Andersen et al received a crash course on coronavirus physiology from a couple of experts who were not included or acknowledged in the final paper; at worst, this is mildly scummy, but there's a good chance i...
Hi all. I haven't been to LessWrong in a while...but the mess in the world has reminded me how important it is for us to strive for clear thinking as a community. With that, I'd like to share a Coronavirus pandemic information site that has really good analysis for tracking the progress of the pandemic. It's here: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/daily-covid-cases-3-day-average
(it seems that I cannot embed or add images)
<iframe src="https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/covid-confirmed-daily-cases-epidemiological-trajectory" style="width: 100%; height: 600px; border: 0px none;"></iframe>
"One can reasonably conclude that in politics, as with math, the "average person" is ignorant and their opinion is not based on any sort of expertise."
Even if you limit the population to those who are well informed, that population is still rather evenly split and so his points still hold.
Good points, but it was inappropriate to question the author's motives and the attacks on the SI were off-topic.
If I were to downvote, it would be because of the unfair/inaccurate description of particle physics (existential threats, not that important, arbitrary conclusions)
Especially in the modern environment with many thousands of scientists, there won't be much delay caused by a few scientists witholding their results. The greatest risk is that the discovery is made by someone who will keep it secret in order to increase their own power.
There is also a risk that keeping secrets will breed mistrust, even if the secret is kept without evil intent.
"any other belief"
This invites us to look at why beliefs differ. First we have to acknowledge that we are talking about differences between people with comparable levels of expertise, so this isn't the same as the disagreements that exist between experts and novices.
For elections, I think we can say that people disagree in large part because the situation is incredibly complicated. It it hard to know how government policies will affect human welfare, and it is hard to know how elected officials will shape government policy.
The only interesting fa...
Thanks for putting this together. There are many interesting links in there.
I am hopeful that Bayesian methods can help to solve some of our problems, and there is constant development of these techniques in biology.
Scientists should pay more attention to their statistical tests, and I often find myself arguing with others when I don't like their tests. The most important thing that people need to remember is what "NHST" actually does -- it rejects the null hypothesis. Once they think about what the null hypothesis is, and realize that they have done nothing more than reject it, they will make a lot of progress.
Saying that people should be better is not helpful. Like all people, scientists have limited time and need to choose how to allocate their efforts. Sometimes more observations can solve a problem, and sometimes more careful thinking is necessary. The appropriate allocation depends on the situation and the talents of the researcher in question.
That being said, there may be a dysfunctional bias in how funding is allocated -- creating a "all or none" environment where the best strategy for maintaining a basic research program (paying for one's own s...
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As a biologist, I can say that most statistical errors are just that: errors. They are not tricks. If researchers understand the statistics that they are using, a lot of these problems will go away.
A person has to learn a hell of a lot before they can do molecular biology research, and statistics happens to be fairly low on the priority list for most molecular biologists. In many situations we are able to get around the statistical complexities by generating data with very little noise.
But such psychological stress arises from your perception of reality. If it is caused by an erroneous perception of reality, then the rational thing to do is correct your perception, not take the error for granted. If you are certain that you made the right decision, then you shouldn't feel stressed when you "lose".
I initially chose 1A and 2B, but after reading the analysis of those decisions, I agree that they are inconsistent in a way that implies that one choice was irrational (in the context of this silly little game). So I did some introspection to figure out where I went wrong. Here's what I found:
1) I may have misjudged how small 1/34 is, and this only became apparent when the question was phased as it is in example 2.
2) I think I assumed an implicit costs in these gambles. The first cost is a delay in learning the outcome of these gambles; the second is the i...
These are good insights on how communities function... but I'm a bit lost.
What is the purpose of a "rationalist community?"
I'm a bit new here, and often the essays seem to rest upon some prior understanding that I do not have. For this particular article, there seems to be some previous discussion about rationalist communities and why they are desirable... but I don't see it in the linked articles or on the main page.
So can you tell me why I would want to participate in a "rationalist parenting club" rather than a regular one. Why not engage with mainstream institutions and try to make them as pro-reason as possible?
Back in 2009, Eliezer Yudkowsky wrote about a dream of rationality dojos devoted to perfecting the art of human rationality.
In 2010, the Less Wrong meetups in New York became a tight-knit community — not quite a rationality dojo, but a human community with rational group norms. For many, the New York group is the exemplar of the future of the modern rationality movement.
Now Less Wrong meetup groups are popping up all over the place.
Randomization of test subjects...
I've had this in the back of my mind for the past week, and finally put my finger on how this problem is solved in most experimental sciences. Sorry if I've overlooked part of the discussion, but the typical solution to this problem is to randomly assign subjects to the two groups in the experiment. That way, it is very unlikely that some underlying variable will distort the outcome in the way that the sex of the subjects did in the above example, where the women were concentrated in the A group and men in the B group.
Of course, you can't always randomize assignment to the control and treatment group, but you could in the example given (testing a medical intervention).
Hi. I just joined the site yesterday to post a comment. I've been tracking the feed for about a week, having recently decided to re-engage with the Internet. I learned of the site about three months ago, by way of a blogger who was blogging about social issues. I disagreed with him very strongly on those issues, but I checked out his other posts and he mentioned a discussion over here (I think he's a participant).
I think that the post that originally attracted my attention was something relating to the singularity idea. Being a geek myself, I'm kinda inter...
Hi. I'm new here. Great blog. Great post.
One maxim that I rely on for acting rationally is "know what your time is worth". In my first real job, I was on a one-week project with a scientist who told me that my time is valuable (I think he was implying that my boss was wasting my time). This really opened up my eyes. My first application of this idea was professionally -- I can get more out of my job than just a paycheck. I can learn skills and make contacts and list accomplishments that will advance my career. I can also enjoy what I do (I'm a re...
So your/their assertion is that the 'lab leak' claims were always a reasonable exploration of the possible origins of COVID-19 (i.e. not a conspiracy theory)? If that's the claim, then the timeline I'd like to see is how the lab leak claims were being promoted at this time and what evidence was presented to support the claims to show that they weren't just baseless accusations.
Edit: I found a timeline of high-profile claims/accusations, published May 2020
https://www.forbes.com/sites/jackbrewster/2020/05/10/a-timeline-of-the-covid-19-wuhan-lab-origin-theory... (read more)