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Comment by William on The Problem With Trolley Problems · 2010-10-25T02:10:25.818Z · LW · GW

Fondly regard creation.

Comment by William on Love and Rationality: Less Wrongers on OKCupid · 2010-10-22T01:41:44.299Z · LW · GW

Of course, in a dating context, it's at least as important to know the answer to the Shadow Question: "What do you want?"

Comment by William on Memetic Hazards in Videogames · 2010-09-11T00:55:06.572Z · LW · GW

Star Control II did something very similar--as time went on, the world changed, and eventually one of the villains would start their omnicidal rampage.

Comment by William on Our House, My Rules · 2009-11-05T21:50:33.256Z · LW · GW

But should stupid adults have no rights?

Comment by William on Do Fandoms Need Awfulness? · 2009-08-20T22:39:31.974Z · LW · GW

Bond's article was mostly referring to fans of fiction and movies, but as someone who has spent time on fora related to both sports fandom and anime fandom, I can safely say they're very similar. You see the same sort of memetics in both--sports message boards frequently fill up with people "quoting"(I don't think this is the best word) the chants made in the stadium itself, much like you'll often see anime-related boards fill up with people quoting famous lines from certain series. You see the same sort of provincialism in both--"If you're a fan of X, you're not allowed to be a fan of Y, and vice versa" is a common refrain in certain tvtropes pages about Fan Dumb, and that's also pretty much the definition of a sports rivalry. And there's also the internecine stuff, where you have endless debates over the worth of a player or the motivations of a character.

So yeah, I'd say fandom is universal.

Comment by William on Macroeconomics, The Lucas Critique, Microfoundations, and Modeling in General · 2009-06-07T20:38:22.780Z · LW · GW

You don't, you use a decision model that incorporates bias.

Comment by William on Changing accepted public opinion and Skynet · 2009-05-22T12:50:10.395Z · LW · GW

It already is a socially accepted factoid. People are afraid of AI for no good reason. (As for Wolfram Alpha, it's at about the same level as ALICE. I'm getting more and more convinced that Stephen Wolfram has lost it...)

Comment by William on The End (of Sequences) · 2009-05-19T23:51:43.497Z · LW · GW

Next time, you can use ^W ;)

Comment by William on Hardened Problems Make Brittle Models · 2009-05-11T23:00:27.746Z · LW · GW

To make it look more fair than it actually is.

Comment by William on Generalizing From One Example · 2009-04-30T20:03:56.954Z · LW · GW

I know that PUA is "pickup artist" but what is AFC?

Comment by William on The Sin of Underconfidence · 2009-04-24T16:40:19.908Z · LW · GW

Only if you have some sort of information about the unanswered prayers.

Comment by William on Aumann voting; or, How to vote when you're ignorant · 2009-04-24T15:26:53.541Z · LW · GW

The assumption is that you're in a two-choice vote, where there is no way to pull the rope sideways.

Comment by William on Well-Kept Gardens Die By Pacifism · 2009-04-24T12:00:51.076Z · LW · GW

Usenet.

Comment by William on Well-Kept Gardens Die By Pacifism · 2009-04-22T02:55:47.027Z · LW · GW

On the other hand, "lonely voices of reason" are unlikely to overrun a community of idiots the way idiots can overrun a more intelligent community.

Comment by William on Well-Kept Gardens Die By Pacifism · 2009-04-21T20:10:54.318Z · LW · GW

The idea of a null hypothesis is non-Bayesian.

Comment by William on Well-Kept Gardens Die By Pacifism · 2009-04-21T04:11:51.053Z · LW · GW

On the other hand, 4chan's view of "fun" includes causing epileptic seizures in others.

Comment by William on The ideas you're not ready to post · 2009-04-20T07:57:38.696Z · LW · GW

You can force yourself to parse the sentence but I suspect that the part of your brain that you use to parse it is different from the one you use in normal reading and in fact closer to the part of the brain you use to solve a puzzle.

Comment by William on Bayesians vs. Barbarians · 2009-04-19T03:27:44.287Z · LW · GW

"Composition of my mind" is a bad phrase for it, but what I mean is that I have a collection of neurons that say "I'm a one-boxer" or similar.

Comment by William on Mechanics without wrenches · 2009-04-17T00:48:35.600Z · LW · GW

Speaking of differential equations in economics, a friend of mine has had an idea that there should be an economics textbook for mathematicians, because it annoyed him so much that they seem to dance around mathematical concepts--for example, marginal anything is clearly a derivative, although normal econ textbooks never call it that.

Comment by William on Bayesians vs. Barbarians · 2009-04-16T20:53:12.424Z · LW · GW

I can choose through the composition of my mind to save 3 lives by wanting to refuse to take the money to save 2 lives. Or I can choose to save the two lives and thus not get 3 lives. Why the hell would I take both boxes?

Comment by William on Of Gender and Rationality · 2009-04-16T20:17:54.507Z · LW · GW

But if the tribe expands?

Comment by William on Tell it to someone who doesn't care · 2009-04-14T22:55:37.286Z · LW · GW

This also shows the dangers of such a method--if Rush gets too powerful, it goes from "You naughty boy, Rush!" to "You naughty boy, critic of Rush!", like what's happening now with respect to Michael Steele. And too much extremism can result in evaporative cooling.

Comment by William on Collective Apathy and the Internet · 2009-04-14T09:08:37.242Z · LW · GW

SuicideWatch

Comment by William on Rationality is Systematized Winning · 2009-04-03T23:31:02.696Z · LW · GW

The result of two-boxing is a thousand dollars. The result of one-boxing is a million dollars. By definition, a mind that always one-boxes receives a better payout than one that always two-boxes, and therefore one-boxing is more rational, by definition.

Comment by William on Rationality is Systematized Winning · 2009-04-03T15:09:31.870Z · LW · GW

Personally, I think the word "win" might be the problem. Winning is very binary, which isn't how rationality is defined. Perhaps "Rationalists maximize"?

Comment by William on Church vs. Taskforce · 2009-03-29T06:14:08.712Z · LW · GW

The use of "some of which" suggests that he considers most of the holes to be Fruitful Voids, merely not all of them.

Comment by William on Church vs. Taskforce · 2009-03-29T05:04:01.302Z · LW · GW

Agreed. TVTropes works very well without any but the lightest semblance of neutrality.

Warning, though: It is horrendously addictive

Comment by William on Defense Against The Dark Arts: Case Study #1 · 2009-03-29T04:52:24.472Z · LW · GW

What does IAWYC mean?

Comment by William on Defense Against The Dark Arts: Case Study #1 · 2009-03-29T04:51:17.380Z · LW · GW

As a sidenote, it's a very good sign that this discussion has followed the path of

Case studies in medicine are most interesting when all the student doctors disagree with each other.

Comment by William on Contests vs. Real World Problems · 2009-03-27T01:36:10.519Z · LW · GW

One warning though: Gambler's ruin is very possible with betting systems, even if your strategy has a positive expected value.