I think this version of Pascal's mugging could be rejected if you think that "infinite negative utility" is not a phrase that means anything, without appealing to probability of 0.
However, I still accept 0 and 1 as valid probabilities, because that is how probability is defined in the mathematical structures and proofs that underpin all of the probability theory we use, and as far as I know no other foundation of probability (up to isophorism)has been rigorously defined and explored.
The fact that measure#measure_space) is nonnegative, instead o...
What statement, specifically, would we be betting on? It's certainly plausible that I'm underestimating the difficulty in getting an entire group to above these standards in comparison to getting one person. Though, I think the main issue may be a difference in what we perceive as average, rather than a model of how hard learning these skills is.
. And while competence does tend to cluster (e.g. "G"), so the picture's not quite as bleak as the second half of this sentence, once you've got a dozen different domains and shooting to be above the 50% mark in all of them, you're looking at a person who's approximating one in four thousand,
I don't think these skills are anywhere near independent. It's also not obvious that they're normally distributed. And, being above the 50% mark in a dozen skills by coincidence being unlikely does not at all tell you how hard it is to gain skills if you p...
...I do somewhat agree with your objections to the list of specific skills attained after a year. I had hoped that the large word DRAFT at the top, plus the repeated statements that the whole plan was to iterate, and that I didn't expect to be able to figure out the right stuff on the first try, would've clued you in to the fact that I, too, am aware that the list is inadequate. Do you have specific suggestions for replacements? Keep in mind, the hard problem is to balance things-that-will-be-generally-useful-for-a-medium-sized-group-of-people against the fa
I thought contributors here tended to keep in mind ideas like Chesterton's Fence and "building institutions is hard." But I think it's important to recognize that just because people should have the right do something, doesn't mean it's good to encourage that thing. People shouldn't feel forced or trapped in unhappy marriages, but it's also not good for kids (particularly poor kids) and in some cases even the parents if we provide incentives to have lots of single parent homes.
The list of controls in the "prison reduces lifespan" study seems a little on the short side--race, age, gender, education, and the crime. It's fine if that's all that was available, but if you had some other data as well, I would expect to see the life span reduction reduced as well. Particularly if the major causes of death are homicide and drug overdose right after getting, a strong linear relationship between time spent in prison and life expectancy seems weird. I'm not sure how that would work, causally.
But mostly I agree with chron--you can't just completely ignore the possibility that the existence of prisons reduces crime.
This post strikes me as odd.
The "insufficient quantity" definition matches both what I have seen in economics textbooks, and the common definition of the word. The fact that then choices must be made follows from this definition. If the standard conception follows from your definition, they are equivalent, and I would use the one that matches standard terminology. If it doesn't, I would say that makes the first preferable (as the relevant fact is derived from the definition).
In the paraphrased or hypothetical exchanges above, OP at least made a claim that could be evaluated, and the other commenters dismissed even the possibility that they had anything worthwhile to say for pretty poor reasons. They didn't make any actual argument to give any charity to. "What experience do you have with economics?" and "what solutions do you propose?" are perfectly valid questions, but the other commenters follow-up doesn't continue the discussion, it seeks to end it.
I think these examples represent different sorts of fallacies. In the first, the person is making a variant on appeal to authority. In the latter, it's more like the Nirvana fallacy.
However, in either case the commenter doesn't seem worth arguing with. Especially if it's a random person on the internet.
Since your claims arent flawless,
What does that mean? I would expect no one's claims to be flawless, but even if OP claimed the sky is green, claiming that he is wrong because he's not a physicist is still wrong.
and their responses arent completely invalid
They seem pretty much like obvious examples of fallacies to me.
Your suggestions are possible ways to segue from what OP said into a better discussion, but the replies quoted or paraphrased above aren't conducive to such a discussion.
"(though you can make an argument that being hated by Kim Jong-un is a net benefit to a US politician). "
Yeah, sure, that works too, though then the 'threat of being nuked' seems like a red herring.
"In the case of my example, the market participants all genuinely believe that there is no causal effect of the election results. However, they are not ignoring it: The contracts are just written such that participants are not asked to bet on the causal effect of the election results, but on conditional probabilities."
That makes a lot more sense than the original post, IMO. I'm still trying to process it entirely though, and figure out how useful such an example is. Thanks for your responses.
Why are we told that Kim has been saying how much he hates Hillary if the probability of the US being nuked is the same whether Hillary or Jeb is elected (conditional on Kim being in power)? And why would the probability of Hillary being elected go up if Kim is still in power, in this situation? Even if the actual probability of Kim nuking is the same whether Hillary or Jeb is in office, his statements should lead us to believe otherwise. (I realize the latter has no effect on the analysis--if we switch the probabilities of jeb and hillary being elected in...
Is there a summary of the timeline in this example? In particular, when do we know if Kim is overthrown? In order for it to be the confounder you describe, we must know before the election--but then simply conditioning on the election result gives the same chance of being nuked in either case (1/2 if kim is still in power and 0 otherwise).
Maybe I'm not following, but the example is not intuitive to me, and seems contrived.
So then the probability you assign to their ability to actually affect that change can be assigned a correspondingly small, nonzero number, even if you don't want to assign 0 probability.