Signalling with T-Shirt slogans

These might be good for signalling in-group membership, but graphic tees (especially quotes, equations, and 'witty' ones, but really any graphic tees) are not in the least fashionable and you'll lose social points with everyone outside of the in-group. You might get "I like your shirt" comments, but I almost guarantee you won't get "you look good in that shirt" comments.

"When you have eliminated the
impossible whatever remains
however improbable must be the truth."

There's a big problem with that. Eliminating the impossible does not ensure that you have thought of everything that is possible. This is classic "proof by lack of imagination".

Jaynes "something else" hypothesis in multiple hypothesis testing can keep you from this error.

I know people here don't love Rand, but one big miss was my "who is John Galt shirt. Sure, for the people who got it it worked as intended, but it generated so many stupid questions from people who didn't get it I never wear it anymore. The D'Anconia Copper and Rearden Steel shirts work perfectly.

Long story short, consider the people who don't get it as well as the people who do.

I have a T-Shirt with the Pioneer Plaque drawing and I sometimes go out of my way to wear it when I know I'll be meeting new people. To most people, it's just a nice drawing, and is filtered out quickly. A few that do recognize it always make a comment, and it's a great conversation starter. Would definitely recommend something like that.

I also have a few nerdy ones like you mentioned, but the "nerd and proud of it" can be perceived as obnoxious, so I try not to wear them in settings where that is likely to happen.

Aside:

I've never liked the Holmes quote as anything other than a neat fictional device. While it's strictly true, I suspect that you can not eliminate the impossible in a large portion of real life situations where the idea could be most useful. On top of that, I think the idea is seductive in a way that you can fool yourself into thinking you've eliminated the impossible.

So the quote sits in this odd place where its true, it makes sense, it feels good to read and say and believe, and yet it is dangerous to live by.

Careful with the Aumann agreement theorem, it doesn't state what EY seems to think it states and I've yet to see an example of the process being used correctly.

Note in particular that the final estimate need not even be between the initial two estimates. If the "Aumann process" looks like two people incrementally updating their beliefs towards each other, they're doing it wrong.

I wear a bunch of nerdy shirts (from xkcd, webcomics, thinkgeek) when I'm not at work (where I have to be business casual) and I'm really pleased by the effect! I've gotten into conversations with people who recognized the source, discounts on coffee from the nerdy barista, and I try to hold up my end of the bargain by saying "Nice shirt! I love [X]" to other people wearing similar shirts.

Drinking has surprisingly little impact on those parts of mathematics where you just mechanically apply a couple of rules, btw. Just mentioning this in case others didn't try to solve integrals as teenagers as a sort of self-check - it totally doesn't work. Your ability to walk is a better indicator of drunkenness.

On topic: don't wear these shirts if you aim at anything more than signalling affiliation with a particular tribe. It's also inefficient if you accept the existence of interesting people outside this very small tribe.

Please note that Rational Attire was not run by MIRI. It was always completely separate from MIRI.

The implicit claim that Tarski said "'This T-shirt is black' is true if this T-shirt is black" is true iff Tarski said "'This T-shirt is black' is true if this T-shirt is black."

Downvoted because I don't want people pitching specific products on lw.

Here's a shirt I made, stating that PA is consistent in mysterious looking symbols. Not directly rationality related, but could be a conversation starter. http://teespring.com/paconsistent

I for one benefited from this post as a reminder of the potential virtues of signalling.

After reading the title I assumed the post would be disparaging the signalling in question. I don't believe that signalling is always bad, but apparently I alieved it.

If you are the type of person who would solve puzzles like the one on the T-shirt in the original post, you're also someone who would have run across the same puzzle in the past. I find it very unlikely that anyone who sees that and cares about it would not have already run across it.