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I know that. People are so lame. Not me though. I am one of the genius ones.
You know, it would be interesting if Yvain had put something else there just to see how many people would try to cheat.
Time on Less Wrong/IQ: -.164 (492)
Wait, this means that reading less wrong makes you dumber!
Hmmm, there was something about correlation and causation... but I don't remember it well. I must be spending too much time on less wrong.
I felt so rebel giving passwords right above Google's message:
Never submit passwords through Google Forms
There aren't enough interesting sequences of 40 coinflips to ever see one.
Every sequence of 40 coin flips is interesting. Proof: Make a 1 to 1 relation on the sequence of 40 coin flips and a subset of the natural numbers, by making H=1 and T=0 and reading the sequence as a binary representation. Proceed by showing that every natural number is interesting.
So they are building their reputation on their marketing skills, not on the future.
That quote seems to be very good in making idiots who think they are not (the majority) to behave like idiots.
At the moment I feel like health isn't as important as good reinforcement
You traded HP for XP.
Math is a significant topic!
I think the blog post was basically speaking in favor of the charity principle.
That's a really insightful comment!
But I should correct you, that you are only talking about the Spanish conquest, not the Portuguese, since 1) Mesoamerica was not conquered by the Portuguese; 2) Portuguese possessions in America (AKA Brazil) had very little gold and silver, which was only discovered much later, when it was already in Portuguese domain.
Someone in Sweden apparently did
People tend to conform to it's peers values.
Lets abstract about this:
There are 2 unfair coins. One has P(heads)=1/3 and the other P(heads)=2/3. I take one of them, flip twice and it turns heads twice. Now I believe that the coin chosen was the one with P(heads)=2/3. In fact there are 4/5 likelihood of being so. I also believe that flipping again will turn heads again, mostly because I think that I choose the 2/3 heads coin (p=8/15). I also admit the possibility of getting heads but being wrong about the chosen coin, but this is much less likely (p=1/15). So I bet on heads. So I flip it again and it turns heads. I was right. But it turns out that the coin was the other one, the one with P(heads)=1/3 (which I found after a few hundreds flips). Would you say I was right for the wrong reasons? Well I was certainly surprised to find out I had the wrong coin. Does this apply for the Gettier problem?
Lets go back to the original problem to see that this abstraction is similar. Smith believes "the person who will get the job has ten coins in his pocket". And he does that mostly because he thinks Jones will get it and has ten coins. But if he is reasonable, he will also admit the possibility of he getting the job and also having ten coins, although with lower probability.
My point here is: at which probability the Gettier problem arises? Would it arises if in the coin problem P(heads) was different?
I think the only problem with the article is that it tries to otheroptimize. It seems to address a problem that the author had, as some people do. He seems to overestimate the usefulness of his advices though (he writes for anyone except if "your career is going great, you're thrilled with your life and you're happy with your relationships"). As mentioned by NancyLebovitz, the article is not for the clinical depressed, in fact it is only for a small (?) set of people who sits around all day whining, who thinks they deserve better for who they are, without actually trying to improve the situation.
That said, this over generalization is a problem that permeates most self help, and the article is not more guilty than the average.
I think I have heard of such studies, but the conclusion is different.
Who the parents are matter more than things like which school do the kids go, or in which neighborhood they live, etc.
But in my view, that's only because being something (let's say, a sportsman), will makes you do things that influence your kids to pursue a similar path
If you could eliminate all human flaws, you would end up with something more intelligent than the most intelligent human that has ever lived
This seems true...but it doesn't argue against a bounded intelligence, just that the bound is very far.
"Bias" has a strict definition. Not all errors are biases. One can clearly be wrong and rational, for example, by not gathering enough information (laziness, or lack of time...).
This method of reducing bias only works for rational decisions using your current utility. Otherwise you will be prone to circular decisions like those you describe (decisions that feed themselves).
I would like to upvote the Feynman quote. I am not interested in upvoting the Stephenson quote.
I would like to upvote the Stephenson quote, and not the Feynman quote.
You two talk between yourselves so that only one of you upvote the entire comment.
I think you are 75% right.
Not always, since:
The average human has one breast and one testicle
Des McHale
In other words, the average of a distribution is not necessarily the most probable value.
No, you can think on the rationals, for example.
Yes, that's it! Thanks.
Maybe I didn't express myself well, but this strategy should work regardless of the distribution I choose. For example, if I choose a distribution in which 1 has probability 0, than your strategy yield 1/2 chance.
Oh... I misunderstood you then.
Actually there are no uniform distribution in this set (an infinite enumerable set). You may select numbers from this set, but some of them will have higher probability than others.
There is another very cool puzzle that can be considered a followup which is:
There are two envelopes in which I, the host of the game, put two different natural numbers, chosen by any distribution I like, that you don't have access. The two envelopes are indistinguishable. You pick one of them (and since they are indistinguishable, this can be considered a fair coin flip). After that you open the envelope and see the number. You have a chance to switch your number for the hidden number. Then, this number is revealed and if you choose the greater you win, let's say a dollar, otherwise you pay a dollar.
Now, before everything I said happens, you must devise a strategy that guarantees that you have a greater than 1/2 chance of winning.
Some notes:
1- the problem may be extended for rational, or any set of constructive numbers. But if you want to think only in probabilities this is irrelevant, just an over formalism.
2- This may seem uncorrelated to the two envelopes puzzle at first, but it isn't.
3- I saw this problem first on EDITthis post on xkcd blag. Thanks for Vaniver for pointing out.
On the other hand, perhaps you only want to think about distributions for which it seems the paradox still holds: ones in which that, regardless of how much money you find in envelope A, envelope B still has an equal chance of being twice as much or half as much
I don't see your conclusion holding. I am inclined to say: Therefore there are no distributions which that, regardless of how much money you find in envelope A, envelope B still has an equal chance of being twice as much or half as much.
I used to be a frequentist, and say that the probability of the unfair coin landing heads is either 4/5 or 1/5, but I don't know exactly which. But that is not to say that I saw probabilities on things instead of on information. I'll explain.
If someone asked me if it will it rains tomorrow, I would ask which information am I supposed to use? If it rained in the past few days? Or would I consider tomorrow as a random day and pick the frequency of rainy days in the year? Or maybe I should consider the season we are in. Or am I supposed to use all available information I have? The latter I would call subjective probability. If someone instead passed me the children problem I would say 1/3 because this problem implicitly tells me to consider only the what tells the enunciate.
But simply asking for the probability without a context, I would say either that this is a no question, i.e. that the enunciate is imprecise and lacking information, or I would believe that the interrogator was asking for a intrinsic probability, in which case I would say either 0 or 1, but I don't know which.
But I did believe in intrinsic probability, in some cases, like quantum mechanics.
This view of mine became hollow after I started inquiring myself about this intrinsic probability. Even if such a thing existed, it couldn't be differentiated from what I called subjective probability. By Occam's razor I shouldn't create 2 kinds of probabilities that I cannot tell apart. This thought was partly inspired by reading lesswrong, not a particular post, but by seeing the ease in which what I called subjective probability was used in several occasions.
I think value was used meaning importance.
Just out of curiosity, how are you now, a little more than a year later? Taking out "3", that seems harder to change, how much of these points still apply in your life?
The staring one works on others by intimidation, as you look confident in an odd therefore unpredictable manner; the routine itself trains you to uncritically accept what's in the later, sillier material. That's interesting... you cannot fish without a bait. Without knowing Scientology much, I'd say they must provide some good things in order to attract followers. Seems like lukeprog decided to grab this things and leave.
Is this "click" you mention epiphany)?
Is this "click" you mention epiphany?
You could ask: Was the Trojan War an actual historical event?
It is not actually an popular question, but it is a question about a popular subject. I wouldn't say it's important, but it fits all other criteria. You could fill the listener about the details.
For some reason this seems to be a fairly common dream. I myself have had similar versions where I had discovered a perfectly reasonable method for flying ( although I was never able to speak out loud the method, it made perfectly sense in my head). And I also had this idea of waking up and telling people this so obvious method.
I find dreams very fascinating and wonder how many people have similar dreams than mine.
The truth is that neither cristians believe in a talking snake nor evolutionists believe in humans coming from monkeys. That's just a straw man falacy. Cristians believe that's a metaphor and evolutionists believe they have common ancestors.
“If I agree, why should I bother saying it? Doesn’t my silence signal agreement enough?”
The fact is that there is a strong motive to disagree: either I change my opinion, or you do.
On the other hand, the motives for agreeing are much more subtle: there is an ego boost; and I can influence other people to conform. Unless I am a very influent person, these two reasons are important as a group, but not much individually.
Which lead us to think: There is a similar problem with elections, and why economists don´t vote .
Anyway there is a nice analogy with physics: eletromagnetic force are much stronger than gravitational, but at large scale gravity is much more influent. (which is kinda obvius and made me think why no one pointed this on this post before)
Interesting... it reminded me of this comic: http://xkcd.com/690/