All of cody-bryce's Comments + Replies

Quite possibly.

The epidemiological studies, as I understand it, make the association between claims of flossing and improved tooth health unambiguously exist (though not huge). HHS didn't analyse them and find them too week, exactly; they simply want controlled studies for this purpose (for good reason, of course). Nonetheless, everything we know makes it sound like flossing is at least a little effective.

Whether the effect justifies spending minutes every week, who knows.

For what it's worth, the situation isn't really that we've established that it isn't clear flossing helps, it's that we haven't established with the kind of evidence HHS requires that flossing helps. Those sorts of studies are hard to do reliably with things like flossing.

0DanArmak
Do you think the evidence we do have, which doesn't rise to the level required by the HHS, is in fact strong enough and that we should rely on it? The quote doesn't sound encouraging:

"Fortune favors the prepared mind." -Louis Pasteur

  1. GP clearly thinks so to, which is why they presented the question, clearly trying to accuse GGP of a similar equivocation.

  2. Your actual claim is ridiculous. It is most certainly not the case that believing in God can only connect to Stage One morality. Even in the face of a punishing god, this wouldn't be true, but not all gods are punishing anyway, making it even more off.

Convincing people to offer others programming help on the internet isn't a special accomplishment of SO. From usenet to modern mailing lists to forums to IRC, there are tons and tons of thriving venues for it. The gamification might have helped SO's popularity some, but taking time out of their busy lives to answer others' questions was alive and well.

SO is a dangerous trash heap. It doesn't encourage helping people make good programs; it answers extremely literal questions. Speed of post is important. Style of post is important. Blatantly wrong answers ar... (read more)

0[anonymous]
So? That's fine. "Helping people make good programs" is awfully fuzzy and is likely to start by major holy wars breaking out. SO is useful, at least for me, because it offers fast concise answers to very specific and literal questions I have on a regular basis. I can't say anything about the internal politics of SO since I don't play there.
0[anonymous]
So? That's fine. "Helping people make good programs" is awfully fuzzy and is likely to start by major holy wars breaking out. SO is useful, at least for me, because it offers fast concise answers to very specific and literal questions I have on a regular basis. I can't say anything about the internal politics of SO since I don't play there.
1Lumifer
So? That's fine. "Helping people make good programs" is awfully fuzzy and is likely to start by major holy wars breaking out. SO is useful, at least for me, because it offers fast concise answers to very specific and literal questions I have on a regular basis. I can't say anything about the internal politics of SO since I don't play there.

"Because the dollar is dirty" is one of those pained, stretched explanations people come up with to explain why they do what they do, not the actual reason (even in some small part) the bookmark was invented and became popular.

0wedrifid
The question wasn't "Why was the bookmark invented?". If it was, I might have, for example, tried to determine the first time someone used a bookmark (or when it became popular). Then I could have told you precisely how many dollars in present value that dollar would have been worth. That is, moving the goalposts in this way has made your quote worse, not better. Not even is some small part? That's absurd. Can you not empathise in even a small part with the aesthetic aversion many people have to contaminating things with used currency?

But you don't have to be perfect to be the right person in a team, and you don't have to be "the" right person to be an asset to a team.

Who said anything about being perfect?

And if you're an asset, you sound prettymuch like the right person to me.

Maybe. I don't have any actual sources, so I could be totally wrong. Still, I'm not sure I like the focus on "being" rather than doing things.

To me the clause "be the right person" sounds very much active/action-based.

It would seem that most of the responders are hopelessly literal....

2wedrifid
Your quote is both literally and connotatively poor. If Spielberg had asked "Why spend two dollars on a bookmark? ... Why not use a dollar as a bookmark?" then there would at least have been some moral along the lines of efficient practicality. Even then it would be borderline.
7Jiro
I find it hard to come up with a deeper meaning for the original statement, so yeah. Besides, it's not hard to come up with a deeper meaning behind what the responders are saying; in pointing out that an object specifically designed as a bookmark makes a better bookmark than a dollar bill, they're making a statement about more than just dollar bills and bookmarks, but about specialization in general.

I assume the original intent of the quote was about romantic partners, where it means, "Instead of searching so hard, make sure to prioritize being awesome for its own sake."

I was trying to repurpose it to express that action is better than preparing for something to fall into place more generally, and I think it's appealed to people.

4dspeyer
I originally read it as being about politics. We keep thinking that somewhere there's a candidate worth voting for, and then things will be ok, but instead we should be trying to become the worthy candidates, even if only for local office. Or perhaps toward improving the world generally. Instead of deciding whether to pay Yudkowsky or Bostrom to work on existential risk, we should try applying our own talents. Similar to "[T]he phrase 'Someone ought to do something' was not, by itself, a helpful one. People who used it never added the rider 'and that someone is me'." Skimming Gloria Steinem's biography, I am more confident in this reading.
2Document
How isn't "looking for" or "searching hard" action?

.

[This comment is no longer endorsed by its author]Reply
1duckduckMOO
Why shouldn't they be? The idea that if you don't rate yourself highly no one should is just an excuse for shitty instincts. Obviously it's a useful piece of nonsense to tell yourself. People are more likely to come to your side if you are confident. But the explicit reasoning is reprehensible. (not that any explicit reasoning probably went in, it's such a common idea that it is repeated without thought. It's almost a universal applause light.) This is more of an irrationality quote. A bit of of paper thin justification for a shitty but common sentiment which it's useful to adopt rather than notice.

You still have to be the right person to be the right person in a team....?

3Document
But you don't have to be perfect to be the right person in a team, and you don't have to be "the" right person to be an asset to a team. People with low self-confidence plus low social confidence (plus possibly moralistic ideas about self-reliance) will try to self-improve through their own efforts rather than seeking help, regardless of how much less effective it is, believing they're not worth someone else's attention yet, or being afraid of owing someone, or whatever; quotes like Steinem's reinforce that. ...Maybe. I don't have any actual sources, so I could be totally wrong. Still, I'm not sure I like the focus on "being" rather than doing things.

This is both insightful and highly quotable.

I'm afraid I don't know what that stands for.

4Eliezer Yudkowsky
Logical Fallacy: Generalization from Fictional Evidence

There are no happy endings. Endings are the saddest part, So just give me a happy middle And a very happy start.

-Shel Silverstein

MixedNuts160

But but peak/end rule!

0Document
X will never reach [arbitrary standard], so let's not try to improve X.

If Tetris has taught me anything it's that errors pile up and accomplishments disappear.

-Unknown

0A1987dM
How is that a rationality quote?
DanielLC100

It's funny, but you really shouldn't be learning life lessons from Tetris.

If Tetris has taught me anything, it's the history of the Soviet Union.

9DanArmak
We can reformulate Tetris as follows: challenges keep appearing (at a fixed rate), and must be solved at the same rate; we cannot let too many unsolved challenges pile up, or we will be overwhelmed and lose the game.
CronoDAS350

It's ridiculous to think that video games influence children. After all, if Pac-Man had affected children born in the eighties, we'd all be running around in dark rooms, eating strange pills, and listening to repetitive electronic music.

-- Paraphrase of joke by Marcus Brigstocke

-8Eliezer Yudkowsky

Why spend a dollar on a bookmark? ... Why not use the dollar as a bookmark?

-Steven Spielberg

5Bugmaster
The answer may very well be, "because I find this bookmark that I bought at a dollar store a lot more aesthetically pleasing than the raw dollar bill". You may as well ask, "Why spend $20 on a book ? Why not just save the $20 ?"
A1987dM190

I'm reminded of a picture I saw on Facebook of a doorstop still in its original packaging used as a doorstop.

2A1987dM
I do neither. I use any piece of sufficiently stiff paper I happen to have around (bookmarks purchased by someone else, playing cards, used train tickets, whatever).
-1MugaSofer
Why use a bookmark that's worth a whole dollar? I use scrap paper, or a sticky note if falling out is a risk (it almost always isn't.)
2cody-bryce
It would seem that most of the responders are hopelessly literal....
James_K110

My bookmark is made of two prices of fridge-magnet material. It can be closed around a few pages and the magnetism holds it in place, preventing it from falling out.

Plus dollars in my country are exclusively coins, the smallest note is $5.

6wedrifid
It will fall out. Apart from that, money isn't particularly clean and (especially if considering US currency) not particularly pretty either. I expect people to find a bookmark far more aesthetically pleasing than a note. How is this a rationality quote? It is rationality-neutral at best.
CronoDAS160

My bookmark is prettier than the dollar.

Document110

exposure to objects common to the domain of business (e.g., boardroom tables and briefcases) increased the cognitive accessibility of the construct of competition (Study 1), the likelihood that an ambiguous social interaction would be perceived as less cooperative (Study 2), and the amount of money that participants proposed to retain for themselves in the “Ultimatum Game” (Studies 3 and 4).

-Abstract, Material priming: The influence of mundane physical objects on situational construal and competitive behavioral choice (via Yvain)

Dollars are floppy. It's nice to have a relatively rigid bookmark. I've used tissues and such as bookmarks in the past but they're unsatisfactory. Of course, that was back when I still read books in dead tree format.

Far too many people are looking for the right person, instead of trying to be the right person.

-Gloria Steinem

DanArmak100

I read that as "looking for the right person to fall in love with". Then the sense is "be the right person for someone else". But that achieves a different goal entirely, since it doesn't make the other person right for you.

There are many cases where you want a different person right for the task.

Name three!

Romantic partners (inherently), trading and working partners (allowing you to specialize in your comparative advantage), deputies and office-holders (allowing you to deputize), soldiers (allowing you to send someone else to their death to win the war).

2Document

I just think it's good to be confident. If I'm not on my team why should anybody else be?

-Robert Downey Jr.

1Vladimir_Nesov
This works as a rationalization growing from the conclusion that others should be "on your team". If on well-calibrated assessment you yourself are not "on your team", others probably shouldn't be either, in which case projecting confidence amounts to deceit.
2dspeyer
Maybe I'm misunderstanding the quote, but this seems to wither if you have something to protect. If I'm having surgery, I don't really want the team of expert surgeons listening to my suggestions. I shouldn't be on my team because I'm not qualified. Highly qualified people should be so that my team will win (and I get to live).
0cody-bryce
A somewhat similar sentiment: http://lesswrong.com/lw/2o3/rationality_quotes_september_2010/2kol
Document120

I think it's good to be well-calibrated.

If Sagan had actually looked for it happening in politics and religion, he'd have found plenty of examples. Especially in the latter.

1Desrtopa
If it really does happen in politics and religion at a comparable rate, then the quote is certainly misleading, but I rather doubt that that is the case. Sagan did not say that it never happens in politics or religion, only that he could not recall an instance.

Inspiring, but not true.

0Desrtopa
In what respect is it not true? I've certainly observed it. I haven't observed it every day, but most scientists in the world are not under my observation.

Can you explain why you wanted to post this?

3katydee
Certainly: I thought it was funny.

Every book is a children's book if the kid can read

Mitch Hedberg

When we roll our eyes at business school grads, it isn't because we don't believe in measuring anything. It's the same eyeroll that the 10 O'Clock news gets when they report the newest study linking molasses and cancer, which has nothing to do with my lack of belief in studies about cancer.

Doesn't seem all that silly to me.

But if it is silly, then Harry just found out Dumbledore is humoring him.

If not Hermoine, the only possible person to have died was McGonagall.

That being said, Hermoine's dead. No tricks.

Mr. AI, what sort of person do you think I am? Don't you mean "eight billion copies"?

That's ridiculous.

That only serves to shut down discussion. Not only are analysis based on only part of the work fundamentally valid, they are exceedingly popular at the moment, and they are being participated in by the author. Besides...as Akin's 9th law of spacecraft design states, "Not having all the information you need is never a satisfactory excuse for not starting the analysis."

Velorien120

Whether or not I agree with the conclusion, your argument here is weak.

  • Calling an opposing viewpoint ridiculous (with formatting for emphasis, no less) does not advance the discussion. It's just a way of saying "I disagree with you strongly enough to be rude about it".

  • Saying that analyses based on only part of the work are fundamentally valid doesn't automatically make it so. You have to actually justify your claim.

  • Popularity is no indicator of validity.

  • If Eliezer is indeed participating in critical discussions of unfinished works, that m

... (read more)

In fact, he said that it was the one character he had a choice with...

EY seems to believe that Chapter 93 is going to be some kind of slam-dunk answer to critics

My thoughts exactly. When I read the chapter, I really didn't see why EY was so damn proud about it in that regard.

pjeby180

I really didn't see why EY was so damn proud about it in that regard.

Because Hermione's death was motivating a female character, not just a male one -- i.e., an answer to the "fridging" complaint.

(Hence the importance of pointing out it was written that way to start with, rather than as a "half-hearted sop" to patch the fridging issue. i.e., he's pointing out that he didn't kill Hermione just to get a rise out of Harry -- the death is going to affect the whole school, and Gryffindor in particular, through McGonagall.)

Draco is not only a girl, she was removed before being at Hogwarts 9 months, what with the baby almost here.

1jefftk
But then it's not mpreg!

If posting things said on lesswrong or OB or from HPMOR aren't in scope, it seems a little odd things said in HPMOR discussion on a forum run by you that doesn't happen to be those two is.

If posting things said on lesswrong or OB or from HPMOR aren't in scope, it seems a little odd things said in HPMOR discussion on a forum run by you that doesn't happen to be those two is.

The idea of the rule is to not have this thread be an echo chamber for LessWrong and Yudkowsky quotes. As a sister site, Overcoming Bias falls under the same logic (though I think, given that the origin of LessWrong in OvecomingBias constantly becomes more distant in time, I wouldn't mind that rule getting relaxed for OvercomingBias more recent entries.)

But either way,... (read more)

4Said Achmiz
I don't think Eliezer runs r/HPMOR/ ...

There's a saying about India, "Whatever you can rightly say about India, the opposite is also true."

-1itaibn0
To extend on ygert's comment, if the opposite of a statement about India is true, that make it less right to say. Note that this also applies for ambiguous statements with no clear truth-value and for statements whose opposites are not their negation.
ygert320

"Whatever you can rightly say about India, the opposite is false."

I don't know. Death is not a holy mystery; death is a problem that should, ultimately, be cheap to solve. I will be very happy if HPMoR ends with the general problem of "people dying" being solved.

3Sheaman3773
...what? They have a respectful nod because they recognized the seriousness of the situation, that it was not a time for pranks. They only left when the situation got more serious yet, and they pseudo-remembered that they could help.

Truth would quickly cease to be stranger than fiction, once we got as used to it.

H.L. Mencken

6Randy_M
Used to truth? or used to fiction?

You may have missed the idea of a quote here.

Although it's still a point worth making that those technologies were adopted, they were not innovations--they were eastern inventions from antiquity that were adopted.

Stirrups in particular are a fascinating tale of progress not being a sure thing. The stirrup predates not only the fall of Rome, but the founding of Rome. Despite constant trade with the Parthians/Sassanids as well as constantly getting killed by their cavalry, the Romans never saw fit to adopt such a useful technology. Like the steam engine, we see that technological adoption isn't so inevitable.

0gwern
It's not clear stirrups would've been helpful to the Romans at all, much less 'such a useful technology'; see the first Carrier link in my reply to asr.

Why do you find the idea of having the level of technology from the Roman empire to be so extreme? It seems like the explosion in technological development and use in recent centuries could be the fluke. There was supposedly a working steam engine in the Library of Alexandria in antiquity, but no one saw any reason to encourage that sort of thing. During the middle ages people didn't even know what the Roman aqueducts were for. With just a few different conditions, it seems like it's within the realm of possibility that ancient Roman technology could have been a nearly-sustainable peak of human technology.

Much more feasible would be staying foragers for the life of the species, though.

2mwengler
I guess we could have just skipped all the evolution that took us from Chimp-Bonobo territory to where we are and would never have had to worry about UAI. Or Artificial Intelligence of any sort. Heck, we wouldn't have even had to worry much about unfriendly or frienly Natural Intelligence either!
5asr
Some good ideas were lost when the Roman Empire went to pieces, but there were a number of important technical innovations made in formerly-Roman parts of Western Europe in the centuries after the fall of the empire. In particular, it was during the Dark Ages that Europeans developed the stirrup, the horse collar and the moldboard plow. Full use of the domesticated horse was a Medieval development, and an important one, since it gave a big boost to agriculture and war. Likewise, the forced-air blast furnace is an early-medieval development. The conclusion I draw is that over the timescale of a few centuries, large-scale political disruption did not stop technology from improving.
4asr
I am surprised by this claim and would be interested to hear more.
0PaulS
What makes you think that? Technological growth had already hit a clear exponential curve by the time of Augustus. The large majority of the time to go from foraging to industry had already passed, and it doesn't look like our history was an unusually short one. Barring massive disasters, most other Earths must fall at least within an order of magnitude of variation from this case. In any case, we're definitely at a point now where indefinite stagnation is not on the table... unless there's a serious regression or worse.

I need to start signing letters to my mom "Cody Bryce, Ph.D"

Not having all the information you need is never a satisfactory excuse for not starting the analysis.

-Akin's Laws of Spacecraft Design

One needs the right balance between conversation and action, and overall, it's probably too much of the latter and too little of the former in this world.

5savageorange
Or more precisely: ..Most actors don't think enough, and most thinkers don't act enough. cf. Dunning-Kruger effect. Extroverts and Introverts typically line up with those two categories quite neatly, and in my observation tend to associate mainly with people of similar temperament (allowing them to avoid much of the pressure to be more balanced they'd find in a less homogenous social circle). I believe that this lack of balanced interaction is the real source of the problem. We need balanced pressure to both act and think competently, but the inherent discomfort makes most people unwilling to voluntarily seek it out (if they even become aware that doing so is beneficial).
3katydee
I'm not sure I agree in the general case, and I think that among LessWrongers things are certainly unbalanced in the other direction.

A while back here a few people revealed they were Mr Money Mustache fans. One of the more intriguing blog posts of his I read touches on this topic

http://www.mrmoneymustache.com/2012/06/11/get-rich-with-trust/

1buybuydandavis
Interesting anecdotes in the article, but I think the guy missed a couple of points. Part of why Mr. Moneybags was relaxed and secure was his money. He had power. He was likely fully insured for property damage, and fully assured of getting his way should it become a legal matter. Property damage is at worst an annoyance, while it is a bigger deal for people of lesser means. On the other hand, I'd expect that trust elicits trustworthiness in the majority in those not habitually criminal or predatory. Sounds like something Kahneman would look into. Anyone have citations on this?
2Viliam_Bur
More trust leads to less security expenses and more business proposals, thus creating wealth. But is the trust itself at the beginning of this causal chain, or something that enabled the trust? Because that would make a difference in the optimal behavior. Just starting to trust people around you might be a bad move. As an example, if you are surrounded by bad people, and you start trusting them, you will probably get hurt. As another example, if in the past you were surrounded by bad people and now you are not, it is good to update properly, if you already haven't. (Most people probably don't update enough.) Alternatively, maybe your ability to detect bad people have improved, so the probability of the person you consider safe to be really safe has increased even if your environment stayed the same. (Or perhaps the important ability is to not speak about your ability to detect bad people, so you don't get criticized all the time by the people who don't have it.)

65-year old you will not want to live like a grad student

Great food for thought. My rather wealthy grandparents were much more frugal than most of today's twentysomethings.

That's only true if you prefer ports reached sooner or ports on this side of the ocean.

I don't see how this criticism applies to the original quote.

(And yes, the Cheshire Cat's entire schtick is being difficult.)

1DSimon
Even if you don't know which port you're going to, a wind that blows you to some port is more favorable than a wind that blows you out towards the middle of the ocean.
1Jiro
It is possible that you don't know which port you're sailing to because you have ruled out some possible destinations, but there is still more than one possible destination remaining. If so, it's certainly possible that a wind could push you away from all the good destinations and towards the bad destinations. (It is also possible that a wind could push you towards one of the destinations on the fringe, which pushes you farther from your destination based on a weighted average of distances to the possible destinations, even though it is possible that the wind is helping you.) (Consider how the metaphor works with sailing=search for truth, port=ultimate truth, and bad wind=irrationality. It becomes a way to justify irrationality.) The difference between "no knowledge about your destination whatsoever" and "not knowing your destination" is the difference between "I don't care where I'm going" and "I don't much care where I'm going" in the Cheshire Cat's version.
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