All of Swimmy's Comments + Replies

Garett Jones' work seems relevant here. See this and this paper for instance. Short story: IQ has a modest effect on individual earnings but average national IQ has a large effect on a nation's GDP. He cites spillover effects as the cause, which, if true, renders the question in the OP a bit difficult to answer.

I have not read these papers carefully enough to comment on the statistical work contained therein.

Ha, clearly Gjvyvtug Fcnexyr vf Oryyngevk va qvfthvfr naq gur jubyr guvat jnf fbzr ovmneeb frghc gb znxr Uneel guvax Dhveeryy vf qlvat.

Some of the very basics I know from researching veganism:

Moderate meat-eaters seem to have longer lifespans than heavy meat-eaters and vegans. I can't remember if vegetarians are equivalent or a little shorter. This is epidemiological data so take it with a grain of salt--you can eat french fries all day and be considered a vegan, likewise many vegetarians probably substitute meat with unhealthy amounts of cheese. But eating meat-heavy meals for every meal appears to be bad for longevity.

Fish is effective at preventing alzheimer's. This does not seem to be... (read more)

I don't know if accounting is underrated, and I don't know if anyone has made accounting look awesome and exciting on its own. But conditional on finding scam-busting interesting, which I guess a lot of skeptics do, there are several books on auditing, how companies cook the books, how to detect unethical accounting practices through various statistical techniques, etc. In fact most of the techniques are subtle because they tend to bend the rules just a little bit more than auditing professionals prefer. The rules can already be legally bent significantly because of how many different ways there are to operate a business.

For what goal? Longevity, weight loss, muscle gain, ethics?

Avoiding mockery is probably not a terminal value of most of the denominations you're referring to. Regardless, if you accept the doctrine of the Trinity, God gets to be both a third party and a first party to the transaction, problem solved! And most Christians probably see it more as God making a sacrifice to appease the cosmic legal system that he instituted rather than himself directly, if that makes any sense.

Vonnegut in Slaughterhouse Five. I think it comes off a little awkward--more a reminder that Vonnegut was himself in Dresden than anything pertaining to the story.

Scott Sumner is aware of free banking and seems somewhat supportive of it. Same for Lars Christensen. Alex Tabarrok is critical of the Fed and Cowen in response is critical of the anti-Fed case. (But note that the anti-Fed case is not the same as the case FOR free banking--I don't know Tabarrok's actual policy preference.) I can't find any Krugman mentions of free banking but he has offered arguments for a central bank. David Andolfatto, VP of the St. Louis Fed, has said that he sees some merit in free banking arguments but finds some of its modern propone... (read more)

Well, if you're looking for criticism, let's start with this: As someone who has almost certainly spent much more time around economists than you have, I think both of your explanations for the unpopularity of free banking are very bad. On the second point, self-interest has little influence on individuals' politics. This is a robust result in political science across a large range of policies, and so should be the default when discussing why others have the politics they do. Unless you have very good evidence, rather than weak conjecture, you should assum... (read more)

I doubt it will much improve anyone's rationality. It does nicely illustrate a few issues on how science is done, and could be a fun way of explaining for the layman.

Well, I'll stick up for OB and Hanson.

Hanson posts about interesting things in a droll way. That's intentional, I believe: sometimes he seems to be trying to get a rise out of people, but most of the time he's trying to reduce emotional reactions to his posts.

He's really, really invested in ideas like evolution: simple theories that explain lots of different phenomena. This is why we get lots and lots of posts about signaling, near/far, and farmers/foragers. He thinks that these explain far more than people currently give them credit, so he's trying to exp... (read more)

Compound interest gains most of its power when large amounts have been saved. So if you don't make much money, compound interest simply won't make you rich, you won't be able to save enough (though you can still have a decent retirement). If you make a lot, it doesn't matter as much anyway. If you're middle class and willing to save half your income, then it might make you rich, but that is a painful 30-40 years. Explore the graphs and savings calculator here for examples of what you would need to do to have a million by 60.

"If you type 'AI destroyed' right now, you'll be wasting a good opportunity for a fun conversation. You'll still have 'won' if you do it later, and nobody will be impressed with you for just typing 'AI destroyed' immediately, so why not wait?"

I thought of what would work on me, were I playing the game with someone I found interesting. In general, I'd say your best bet is to make the other person laugh hard.

Most people don't usually make these kinds of elaborate things up. Prior probability for that hypothesis is low, even if it might be higher for Tuxedage than it would be for an average person. People do actually try the AI box experiment, and we had a big thread about people potentially volunteering to do it a while back, so prior information suggests that LWers do want to participate in these experiments. Since extraordinary claims are extraordinary evidence (within limits), Tuxedage telling this story is good enough evidence that it really happened.

But o... (read more)

What are "sufficiently huge stakes," out of curiosity?

http://www.overcomingbias.com/2007/01/extraordinary_c.html

I think it's almost certain that one "could," just given how much more time an AI has to think than a human does. Whether it's likely is a harder question. (I still think the answer is yes.)

Have you tried landing on them with shift+g instead of flying into them? If so, I got nothing. They render for me, if slowly.

Not a videogame per se, but still a potential timesink for some of us. I like it anyway.

Space Engine is a free space simulation software that lets you explore the universe in three dimensions, starting from planet Earth to the most distant galaxies. Areas of the known universe are represented using actual astronomical data, while regions uncharted by human astronomy are generated procedurally. Millions of galaxies, trillions of stars, countless planets!

So, a space simulator. Allows FTL travel to get between universes. No interesting creatures like Noct... (read more)

Yeah, my first thought was, because we're animals that evolved to be quite social and have developed cognitive biases in light of that fact! Bet you can find powerful "groupthink" in introverts as well. . . like, say, an insistence on thinking in terms of introverts vs. extroverts.

There are two obvious effects (guns are more deadly than other weapons, but guns are also a deterrent) and it is not clear which is stronger. It's one of those issues where natural experiments or instrumental variables are our best bet for gaining knowledge, and of course anyone with a stat background will know the troubles with those techniques.

That said, there are studies using those techniques and they are better than a cursory glance at gun laws and homicide rates by country (or by state). And, to my understanding, the results of those studies are reso... (read more)

Here is a chapter from a book about feminism and evolutionary biology. Many pages are missing but you can get the general picture. Examples from the chapter:

Marzluff and Balda sought an "alpha male" in a flock of pinyon jays. The males rarely fight, so they tempted them with treats and considered instead glances from male birds as dominant displays and birds looking in the air as submissive displays. (This is actually plausible, since apparently the "dominant" males would get to eat the treat after doing this.)

About bird fighting, they ... (read more)

From my wife:

I learned many interesting and useful things from my Women's Studies class, and am glad I decided to try it out. However, I became a pariah when I questioned the professor's account of sexism in biology textbooks. "Eggs are portrayed as passive, while sperm compete to reach them." In my experience, textbooks say what actually happens in the reproductive system, with no sexism to be found. She stuck to her guns. It was unfortunate that she used that example, because there are real examples of gender bias in biology publications.

And back to me:

Just thought it would be useful to provide an example of a questionable claim. She says other people in the class hated her for pointing it out.

Here is the abstract for the dissertation linked on Wikipedia. It argues that it is impossible to reject trivialism, as there are no alternatives to trivialism. It furthermore argues that common refutations of trivialism are incorrect for various reasons.

I'm not sure any of that refutes what you just said.

The paper is offered freely on the page.

Here is one study, it is fairly typical of the kind. (I can gladly dig up more for you, but this is one of the better ones.) It finds family effects, but they are much smaller than many people would expect. Of course it is more difficult to find out whether a child is "rational" as opposed to intelligent, and the same is true for parents, so there are no data (to my knowledge) on how much parenting affects scientific inquisitiveness.

Neat! I'll put less confidence in such surveys now. HOWEVER! Many of the questions in such surveys are plain-ol' 50/50, and I have no idea how they could be very biased.

As an example, here is a scan from Carpini and Keeter's What Americans Know About Politics and Why It Matters. You'll notice that, in table 2.7, only 42% of Americans knew that Soviets suffered more deaths than Americans during World War 2. Seems like a coin flip to me, unless they asked, "Who had the most deaths during World War 2?" and ignored all answers besides US and USSR. I ... (read more)

I wonder how many disjunctivists have actually taken hallucinatory drugs?

Philosophical problems as a whole are a mix of all 3, and I don't know enough about modern philosophy to empirically determine which answer reigns in the "most." Voted "Other."

Voted "other" for this reason. Seems like a wrong question.

I'm not saying that your individual vote is going to make any noticeable difference, but the votes of every jaded rationalist in America on the other hand...

By voting, you will not make (or probably even encourage) every jaded rationalist in America to vote, so from a decision theoretical standpoint that observation is irrelevant. The instrumental value of voting is zero. There may be other values (signaling, pleasure, moral), but there is no instrumental value. You will not influence the election, so the expected value of any policy changes arising fro... (read more)

I thought the correct answer would be, "No time for programming, too busy pushing a boulder."

Though, since the whole thing was a punishment, I have no idea what the punishment for not doing his punishment would be. Can't find it specified anywhere.

What is the strong version of "taxation is theft", for example?

Simple: "taxation is theft and is also just as wrong as mugging because 1) the supposed benefits of government programs aren't really there and 2) majority voting doesn't make mugging any better than theft by a gang of robbers is better than theft by a single robber." All of these arguments can be made stronger by specifying the reasons you should ignore the major differences between the moral issue in question and the archetypal example's.

Maybe by chance I checked the one US state that's different from all others, and many EU countries? Probably not.

You did. Most states require autopsy for any criminal/unnatural causes of death, including suicide. Oregon (and Washington) has a death with dignity law, which makes suicide non-criminal in some cases. The standard autopsy exemption in most states comes from a doctor's signature that the cause of death was known and natural. To my knowledge there's no compendium of state autopsy laws anywhere, you have to look state by state, but on average s... (read more)

Though the voice isn't, the sentiment seems similar to something Twain would say. Though I'd expect a little more cynicism from him.

I agree with the other commentors on two things: you very likely won't be able to change your father's mind and that shouldn't be your goal, and an evo-psych book probably won't help. There are successful statistical evo-psych studies, but I think you should take the conversation to another level.

Specifically, as another commenter posted, the Euthyphro dilemma makes his line of reasoning very questionable. God-centered theories of morality are SUBJECTIVE morality theories, as evidenced by a simple thought experiment: imagine Satan, instead of the Christian... (read more)

I registered as well. Not sure that I'll learn anything new, but I sure would like to.

Interesting, and I would happily bet against that prediction.

Electric razors hurt. They pull hairs out of my face, even when they are sharp. I used them from 15 years old to 26 and I am never going back.

For the hair on my upper neck, I never found an electric razor that much cut them at all, since they're at a funny angle. I would rub an electric all over them for a while and never get as close as I could on my face. Combine with the fact that electrics hurt and my change was obvious.

You're correct, of course, but I don't think "village idiot" traditionally refers to severly mentally disabled people. Usually it means a person in a group known for being a simpleton. Users on LW with many posts and extremely negative karma scores might be a better reference group.

It's irrelevant. In a world of world-destroying technologies, a really bad thing happening for only a small amount of time is all it takes. The Cold War wasn't even close to the horror of Nazi domination (probably)--there were still lots of happy people with decent governments in the west! But everyone still could have died.

What if Nazis had developed nuclear weapons? What if the AI self-reproduces, without self-improving, such that the Big Bad they're supporting has an army of super-efficient researchers and engineers? What if they had gotten to the hydr... (read more)

This is debatable, but I'm in the camp that many worlds is testable against collapse interpretations, if not other interpretations. Seeing typical quantum observations for a macroscopic body would settle it pretty easily. We just need to be able to accelerate baseballs in baseball accelerators.

I wouldn't look for Grand Arguments about why every sphere of the economy should adopt libertarian policies. Most of these are based on bad philosophy. Look instead at individual policy issues and see what libertarians say.

For example: Milton Friedman's Capitalism and Freedom is split into individual chapters on policy issues. Few parts of the book take a big picture view of things. This is probably what you're looking for, but you also have to remember that it's a popular rather than a technical book, so if you find yourself wary of any individual empiric... (read more)

Experimental economists use cogsci sometimes. Many economists incorporate those findings into models. And you can find Bayesian models in game theory, as alternate equilibrium concepts. But if you're looking for a school of universally Bayesian economists who employ research from cognitive science to make predictions, you won't find them. And I don't really know why it would matter. You won't find many biologists using cogsci rationality either, but that doesn't mean their research findings are false.

Ignore schools of thought entirely and focus on independ... (read more)

I propose a theory: It isn't the "strong nuclear interaction" that binds protons and neutrons together, it's actually very tiny little angels that live in between the particles and hold them together. They are also responsible for binding quarks together.

What's that you say? "Invisible fairies" is a complicated hypothesis that needs extra evidence to contend with strong nuclear interaction theory? Well, they are experimentally no different, so you need to directly falsify my angel theory.

What's that you say? The existence of indetectabl... (read more)

I've linked LW several times on a (videogame) forum and the reaction has been mostly positive. A few are regular readers now, though I don't believe any participate in discussion. I think two have read most of the sequences. At least one regularly links EY articles on Facebook.

Another small sample, of course. And I haven't really linked articles on FAI/MWI/cryonics.

Do you mean the average psychologist, the average elite academic psychologist, or what? Experimental econ is psychology, and lots of psychologists study it. I have no idea what the average psychologist thinks about supply and demand or eye tracking, though.

Furthermore, we should expect grants to go to those projects that show the most promise for publishing. "Publishable" does not mean "good," and publication bias is one of the biggest pathologies of modern science. This is a lousy metric.

Oh, lots of things. "Suspension of moral disbelief," I suppose, causes me to rage the hardest inside, though I rarely get in arguments over it. There's too much inferential distance to close before people change from defense/rationalization mode to actually-goddamn-thinking-about-it mode. So I don't generally go about to my family members screaming "YOUR GOD CONDONES RAPE!" even though every time I hear an argument about how morality comes from god, my blood boils.

In that case you are completely correct! But I think the counteropinion generally being expressed here, if not clearly, is that prisons are extremely brutal.

If your argument is simply "brutality acts as a deterrent," it's almost certainly true. If your argument is, "Therefore the current level of prison brutality is optimal," or, "we should be happy with prison brutality," the only counterargument needed is that nobody's provided any evidence at all for those positions.

But if either of those is the assertion, here are some counterarguments: 1) There is a countereffect: longer (and therefore more brutal) prison sentences increase rates of recidivism. 2) Flogging and caning are brut... (read more)