All of EngineerofScience's Comments + Replies

One thing I have noticed relating to this in school is that on tests sometimes I put down an answer on a quiz that I know is wrong because the teacher will give me points if I put that. For example, on a Physical Education quiz the teacher briefly talked about how sugar affects the human body. One of the questions was multiple choice and it said "Sugar is a..." and I selected carbohydrate even though I knew it was wrong because that is what we were taught.

I certainly agree. Most of those I instantly believed, and I had a bit of doubt for the one about southern blacks preferring southern to northern white officers (or maybe that is belief as attire, or hindsight bias) but as you said it is crazy that the opposite of what is true is believable when told it is correct.

So is there ever a time where you can use absence of evidence alone to disprove a theory, or do you always need other evidence as well? Because is some cases absence of evidence clearly does not disprove a theory, such as when quantum physics was first being discovered, there was not a lot of evidence for it, but can the inverse ever be true will lack of evidence alone proves the theory is false?

What is a Fermi Estimate? If you could provide a link to an article talking about that I would be thankful.

I agree. It is bad to do what scams say, even if you think that you can trick the scammer. Plus, they will put you on a "vulnerable" list and you will get more scams.

I'm not sure how effective this is considering most people who would see this are rationalists and people like to think good of themselves.

I am not so sure that rationalists don't win, but rather that "winning"(ie. starting a company, being a celebrity, etc.) is rare enough and that few people are rationalists that people that win tend not to be rationalists because being a rationalist is rare enough that very few people that win are rationalists, even if each rationalist has a better chance of winning.

I think this is a really good idea. I have wished I could "blink" and then be in the future but still have been doing work during that time, and this is just the way to do that. I am trying to to this because it is a really great idea.

If all of those asteroids are owned by one company, then they can sell the metal of the asteroids for as much as it was before because they would be the only people with that much metal, having something similar to a monopoly. They would have the choice of lowering the value of the metals, because if they only made $10/ton. of metal and they sold 1 million tons, then they make ten million dollars. However, if a different company with ten tons of metal making $10/ton. of metal would make one hundred dollars, perhaps not be able to pay their workers, and go ... (read more)

I don't know the exact numbers, nor how carefully that was found out. The point is that asteroids contain mor metals than we ever mined ever and that adds up to be a lot of money.

No. In this case, game theory says that if both people are using the same logic and they know that, then what I showed above is correct: cooperating is the best choice. However, that is not always the case in reality.

Also, can I write in my asteroid essay the potential helpfullness of asteroids? We belive that one asteroid(just one!) could be worth $1,000,000,000,000. In other words, catching one asteroid could be worth one-trillion dollars. Could I mention that in my hundred word blurb?

I will do asteroids.

I would say... defect! If all the computer cares about is sorting pebbles, then they will cooperate, because both results under cooperate have more paperclips. This gives an oppurtunity to defect and get a result of (d,c) which is our favorite result.

Just wondering, where will the donated money actually go? An important thing to think about.

I can probably write one of the hundred word descriptions. I also could probably make an image as well.

I see your point. According to game theory you should cooperate( as I stated above). However, I will show what my thinking would be in reality...

If I cooperate, they could to, and if that happened we would at up at a payoff of 12,12. However, if they defect then I will loose points.

If I defect, I would have a chance of getting a payoff of 5,0 or a payoff of 2,2. This is the only way to get more than 12 points, and the only way to be give at least two points every time.

Then, you defect every time. If your oppponent also defects every time, you end up at the pareato boundry with a total payoff of 8,8.

Both people who are identical and know they are identical cooperate.

I see your point, but according to game theory in this scenario you assume that your opponent will make the same move as you will, because if both of you are in the same situation then assuming you both are using "perfect" logic then you will reach the same decision.

I would say that according to rationality and game theory cooperating is the best choice. I will show my logic as if both people were thing the same thing.

If I defect, than they will too, and that will give a result of 2,2

If I cooperate, than they will too, and that will give a result of 3,3

I could defect and hope they use the logic above and get a gain of 5,0 but if they use this logic too, then we end up back at the nash equilibrium of getting a result of 2,2.

If I cooperate then I am giving the opponent an oppurtunity to defect but if both people are us... (read more)

It also is less reliable when you cite only one source because what that source says could be false(either intentionally or accidentally).

That works for some purposes but it is not truly random so it would be better to use a dice or other more random number if available. Of course, be realistic with getting random numbers. If the situation calls for a quickly thought decision, that works. If you have dice in your pocket go ahead and pull them out.

Why would you want to choose defect? If both criminals are rationalists that use the same logic than if you chose defect to hope to get a result of (d,c) than the result ends up being (d,d). However if you used the logic of lets choose c because if the other person is using this logic than we won't end up having the result of (d,d).

I am a new user, what did I get voted down for?

13% of subjects finished their project by the time they had assigned a 50% probability level; 19% finished by the time assigned a 75% probability level; and only 45% (less than half!) finished by the time of their 99% probability level. As Buehler et. al. (2002) wrote, "The results for the 99% probability level are especially striking: Even when asked to make a highly conservative forecast, a prediction that they felt virtually certain that they would fulfill, students' confidence in their time estimates far exceeded their accomplishments."

I ... (read more)

But you want to be purely unpredictable or the opponent( if they are a super ai) would gradually figure out your strategy and have a slightly better chance. A human(without tools) can't actully generate a random number. If your opponent was guessing a non-completely random number/ a "random" number in their head, then you want your choice to be random. I should have said if the opponent chooses a non-completely random number then you should randomly determine your number.

Going into game theory, if an opponent makes a truly random decision between two numbers, and you win if you guess which number they guessed, that would be a time that you should fight randomness with randomness. There aren't a lot of other situations where randomness should be fought with randomness but in situations similar to that situation that is the right move.

I joined lesswrong because my friends suggested it to me. I really like all the articles and the fact that the comments on the articles are useful and don't have lots of bad language. This really surprised me.

I can see that, and I realize that there are advantages to having a store that can sell illegal things. I would now say that such a store would be benificial. There would have to be some restrictions to what that type of store could sell. Explosives like fireworks still could be for use by a licensed person, and nukes would not be sold at all.

This article might answer that questionDiseased thinking: dissolving questions about disease

I think that this shows not just that splitting people into groups makes the people in one group like themselves and hate the people in the other group, but also that when people figure problems out together that they like eachother more.