All of TheCookieLab's Comments + Replies

8kithpendragon
I'm saying that since we know that "facts" offered by Trump to support his goals aren't always true, that part of his conversation with Zelenskyy is probably best viewed as part of a persuasion tactic that may or may not be factually connected with reality.
Answer by TheCookieLab100

“Market efficiency” is a useful model but one shouldn’t confuse it with reality.

3AhmedNeedsATherapist
Where exactly does the market efficiency (er, inexploitability (by me or my friend (when we use simple strategies))) model detach from reality?  Can we find an expectation that we disagree on?
1Oxidize
What do you mean by red flag? Red flag on the author's side? If so, I don't understand your sentiment here. Partisan issues exist.

Why? That's a fact about voting preferences in our toy scenario, not a normative statement about what people should prefer.

7Linch
Constitutionally protected free speech, efforts opposing it were ruled explicitly unconstitutional.  God LW standards sure are slipping. 8 years ago people would be geeking out about the game theory implications, commitments, decision theory, alternative voting schemas, etc. These days after the first two downvotes it's just all groupthink, partisan drivel, and people making shit up, apparently. 
3Dylan Richardson
This isn't "cheating", neither is it at all illegal. Essentially it entails nothing more than a conversation about politics. 
Answer by TheCookieLab10

The necessary raw tools (zero knowledge proofs) may already exist, so it’s just up to someone intrepid entrepreneur and engineer(s) to productize it.

After struggling to decide between the two candidates I've settled on not voting at all. I'm tired of choosing between the least bad option, and I will no longer legitimize this farce of democratic representation we supposedly have. 

1Zero Contradictions
That is a fallacious belief. The Overpopulation FAQs explains why you're wrong.

Some of the worst, most egregious logic I’ve ever seen on this site, including this gem: “How can Russia be threatened when NATO says they are a purely defensive alliance??”

0Danylo Zhyrko
To be honest, I can't catch your take. It isn't transparent for me. If you could put it more straightforwardly, I'd be thankful. Russia exploits the narrative about NATO enlargement. But I can't see any evidence why NATO threatens Russia's security.

The lack of Spider-Man in any Sims game is evidence Spider-Man doesn’t exist.

A questionable assumption undergirding this entire line of thought is that the universe can be finitely partitioned. Another assumption that could be considered a coin toss is that agents occupy and compete within a common size, space, and/or time scale. That there is no upper bound on need/“greed” or that there will still be multiple agents may seem a given within the current zeitgeist but again are far from guarantees. There are many other such assumptions but these are a few of the most readily apparent.

I don’t follow why “focus on fixing the current problem” doesn’t work, or at the very least why the anecdote you gave is sufficient to generalize a single failure incident into a universal axiom.

There could have been a variety of reasons why your seemingly reasonable fix wasn’t adopted as policy. Maybe your team didn’t fully understand your explanation, maybe they understood but held a grudge against you for unrelated reasons, etc. People are not perfectly rational which is why being persuasive is a skill in itself. Just because FCCC failed to fix an existing problem that one time doesn’t mean it’s the wrong approach for a benevolent ruler (especially one who has the unquestioning loyalty of his/her followers no?)

1FCCC
I'm not sure why you think I'm generalising from one example. Sure, I wrote only one example, but this article is not the sum of my knowledge. There are many, many examples of this. I'll give you another one. Policymakers in the area of university funding saw that universities were underfunded by about 15%. Their solution? Increase student fees by 15%. At no point did they ask themselves, “Why does funding get out of sync every decade?” Or “How could we design a system of scratch so that this will never be an issue, and so that degrees are always priced appropriately?” Focusing on fixing the current problem is often an incremental approach. It assumes that if we just tweak the dials a little, the problem is solved. And maybe it is. For a while. And then it stuffs up again. Or maybe it creates new issues, because they weren't focused on the things they couldn't yet see. The problem is basically that you can't polish a turd. And a lot of policy is pure shit. No underlying deductive argument with reasonable assumptions. Just “Oh, this sounds alright” and then they go with it.

Regarding the platinum rule where A treats B the way B wants to be treated, where is the interaction with A’s preferences? It seems A’s preferences have no bearing at all here unless I’m missing something.

1Rami Rustom
btw, my ideas on the golden rule, vs platinum rule, vs common preference finding have changed. My newer article explains it differently. See section 10.