I notice that the latest two posts from Yvain's blog haven´t shown up in the "recent from rationality blogs" field. If this is due to a decision to no longer include his blog among those that are linked, I believe this to be a mistake. Yvain's blog is in my view perhaps the most interesting and valuable among those that are/were linked. And although I am in no danger of missing his updates myself, the same might not be true of all LW readers that may be interested in his writing.
Huh. It seems like a lot of people in this discussion are convinced that Hermione is dead and will stay dead. I agree that she is probably currently quite dead; however, I assign a greater than 50 % probability that she will somehow be resurrected.
My prediction: Harry will convince a reluctant Dumbledore to put Hermione's body under some sort of stasis spell (cue discussion of cryonics) while he researches ways to revive her. The resurrection plot will resolve the question whether the HPMoR-verse is reductionist or if there is a body/soul dichotomy (my bet is on the former).
Isn't your whole argument merely a rediscovery of the mathematical concept of uncertainty? You admit at the outset that the priors for the magically falling pony must be bizzarely specific to render the exact probability of 1/2^100. In contrast, given a fair coin and a hundred coinflips, it's nothing at all bizzare about the fact that the probability that you'll get a straight run of heads is exactly 1/2^100. It's just math. The problem of course, is that the uncertainty as to whether magically falling ponies are possible isn't a question that is amenable ...
Right. The state still loses money when this roll-down happens, but this seems to have been intended as marketing, which makes measuring its total impact harder.
Well, wether the state is losing money or not when the roll-down happens depends on how you define "losing" in this context, or rather, I suppose, on bookkeeping. I would say not, for the simple reason that although the payout on rounds where the roll-down happens may exceed the income on that particular round, the excess payout, so to speak, is made with money that, as I understand it...
It says that the state made money on this, too... though I don't quite understand how. Clearly someone had to lose money.
If I understand the matter correctly, the "someone" who loses money is the same someone who always loses money when buying lottery tickets - the buyer. The construction of the roll down system just makes it so that some of the money lost by players from the (majority of) rounds during which the jackpot is built towards the cap, is redistributed towards the round where the roll down happens. So much so, that this roll down r...
Survey taken!