Open thread, Mar. 27 - Apr. 02, 2017

I usually make notes for my lectures, but I usually find myself unable to read and follow them in real time. Not sure why.

I have this vague feeling that written notes usually have some "tree structure", while speech has a "linear structure", and that creates the tension. Like, writing "1, 1.a, 1.b; 2, 2.a, 2.b" on paper makes sense, but when you speak, it helps to have some smooth transition from e.g. "1.b" to "2", and sometimes it is easier to go from "1.b" to "2.b" instead. But maybe I am just making things up now.

I've had the experience where I read for a long time and then go talk to people and my voice doesn't work correctly on the first try and is barely audible. I assume it is because my brain got too good at suppressing subvocalization while reading.

Explaining to actual kids is fun, and a good rationalist exercise. I recently told this to my two years old daughter, when she asked me what I was writing about, when I was preparing a blog article on my computer. (She liked the explanation a lot. She insisted that I repeat it to her for the rest of the evening.)

Daddy has a lot of books, but these five he likes most: The first book says that people should eat tomatoes, and cucumber, and carrot, and cabbage, and peas, and beans. The second book says that people should exercise, like do squats, or hang from a bar. The third book says people should talk nice, not yell at each other, and say 'please' when they want something. The fourth book is about a lady who taught dogs and dolphins. And the fifth book says people should not do stupid stuff.

But yeah, for more complex topics, 5 years seem like a more appropriate age. I wonder how well people are actually calibrated about this; whether the actual 5 years olds would understand most of the ELI5 posts. Maybe someone could do an experiment with real kids -- tell them the stories, and then report how they repeated the lesson using their own words.

I am looking forward to the "Being reasonable: smart robots and dead walking people" book. :D

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I just tried this out for a project I'm doing at work, and I'm finding it very useful--it forces me to think about possible failure modes explicitly and then come up with specific solutions for them, which I guess I normally avoid doing.

Great! Automated psychology... I wonder what other things could be done this way.

Please hide the input line in the first robot when it's over.

Awesome! Helps you to destroy the world. Literally.

What do you want to do? | Destroy the world Step 1 | Find suitable weapon Step 2 | Use it Plausible failure: | Did not find suitable weapon Solution: | No idea

let's say theta is modeled by a Gaussian

The conjugate prior of the binomial distribution is the beta distribution, so if you use a beta distribution for theta, the posterior is also a beta distribution, and the expected value of the posterior predictive is just (u0 + u)/(u0 + u + d0 + d) where u and d are the number of up- and downvotes and u0 and d0 are the parameters of the prior distribution, or pseudocounts.

ISTR reading an article about how reddit's "best" sorting worked, and I would have described it roughly like that.

Aha, see http://www.evanmiller.org/how-not-to-sort-by-average-rating.html via https://redditblog.com/2009/10/15/reddits-new-comment-sorting-system/. I, uh, don't actually understand it. It's possible I read the text and made up a thing that seemed like it would do something like what the text sounded like it did.

There are two separate issues: what to display and how to sort comments.

LessWrong displays the net number of positive votes; and, if you hover your mouse over the score, also the proportion of upvotes.

It offers several ways to sort the comments, mainly copied from Reddit, which now offers fewer ways. Go up to the top of a post. Just above the comment box, on the right, but below the tags is a triangle and the words "Sort By," probably "Sort By: Best." Click on the triangle and you can choose among Best, Popular, New, Controversial, Top, Old, and Leading. I think Top is net score. I'm not sure what is the difference between Popular, Best, and Leading. I suspect Leading is closest to what you suggest. Once you make a choice, all posts will be displayed that way until you choose again.

Here's a thought: Weight votes according to how often the voter votes the same way you do.

It would neuter the effectiveness of serial downvoting, while simultaneously encouraging more participation. Your votes would benefit yourself as well as others, by training the system.

I haven't had my own self-awareness raised by poetry. What makes you think that it's a good tool for that purpose?