Open Thread May 16 - May 22, 2016

[-]username29y210

I know anecdotes are not a statistically significant form of argument, but perhaps they do convey emotional ramifications. With that in mind, I'd like to share a rather extreme anecdote explaining one aspect of what is wrong with political discourse where the people making the arguments are attacked, rather than the arguments themselves.

Years ago, I knew this girl - lets call her Alice. We were very good friends, but that changed. I don't know why for certain - I cannot read minds - but I think it started when I disagreed with one of her feminist opinions. I didn't say anything particularly offensive, I didn't say all feminists are 300 pound whales (which is not true) nor did I say that women should not be allowed to vote. She said that in the US, the only legal way for a woman to defend herself against rape was by sticking her fingers up her assailants nose, with the implication that the US legal system does not care whether women get raped. I disagreed, saying that there are reasons why Americans have so many guns, and the biggest one is self defence. I said that lethal force is allowed to defend against much lesser crimes such as trespass, at least in some states, and that I cou... (read more)

0TimS9y

I urge you to consider why you think this is true. You say that many other people warned this couple about the risks and all were blown off. If they had listened to your (or anyone's advice), there is a non-trivial chance of a different outcome. But was there a non-trivial chance you would persuade them differently? (I'm also skeptical that your political disagreement had any effect on your persuasiveness regarding the danger of these drugs.)

0username29y

I said I think other friends brought it up, but I'm not certain. What I meant is that while the chance of my talking them out of it, or at least talking them into some kinda moderation, is low, when the stakes are high even low probabilities are non-trivial in terms of expected value. Why are you skeptical that political disagreements can break friendships? It can be worse - sometimes people get beaten up for supporting the wrong party.

0TimS9y

Of course political disagreement can break friendships. But I'm urging you to consider that maybe you weren't friends, so that the likelihood that you could effect outcomes was negligible to the point that Pascal's Mugging considerations mean that your feelings of moral responsibility do not benefit you and might instead be some sort of Just-World distorted thinking.

-1entirelyuseless9y

Whether it's true in that case or not, it frequently happens that someone will start to act like they disagree with you about everything, because they happen to disagree about a few issues. And that definitely can cause them to do things that they otherwise wouldn't do, just because you suggest that doing them is a bad idea.

4TimS9y

Alternatively, the causal arrow goes in the other direction. People don't give your practical opinions much weight, but you don't realize the gulf until you have a flare up about ideological disagreement. I agree that ideological disagree can lead to lower weight to opinions, but if the gulf is as large as OP described, then I suspect the blow up was a symptom, not a cause.

0entirelyuseless9y

I know at least a few people who have >90% chance of agreeing with basically anything I say, if they happen to be in a good mood, and almost the same chance of disagreeing, if they happen to be in a bad mood.

2Lumifer9y

Do they actually mean anything by their (dis)agreement, or it's just content-free social noises indicating "good, good" or "bad, bad"?

0protostar9y

This sounds like the type of attitude I hope to encounter every time I navigate to a lesswrong page. Yes it's a basic version, but you felt you should post it, so maybe it's not obviously instantiated. You say also "I've always tried to follow the advice that... if possible." Is it really that you're trying to do this, or is it just what you seem to do? Maybe you just do it, and when you think about it you can also come up with some reasons why it might be a good thing.

0username29y

Well, I was heavily socialised to walk away from conflict, but I think it was more than that. It seemed like the rational thing to do, getting into arguments being the emotional and atavistic thing. In retrospect, this seems like straw vulcanism.

3ChristianKl9y

To be fair talking a group of drug addicts out of taking a specific drug isn't easy. If you don't have strong social skills and therefore the expectancy of success is low, it's not that necessarily bad to avoid a fight.

-2username29y

Wow that is quite possibly the worst advice I have ever heard, without exaggeration. Walking away is a 'solution' that will literally never solve the problem. Now there are times when the best strategic move is to not engage, but that is a statement of priorities and/or timing. But never, not once do you solve a problem by ignoring it. Walking away is not a solution. I hope at least that lesson was learned from this tragic accident :(

[-]Lumifer9y120

But never, not once do you solve a problem by ignoring it.

Some problems are not for you to solve. Don't just do something, stand there.

5Pimgd9y

Walking away from problems in traffic (like when you have a near miss because someone else made a steering mistake) is usually a lot better than getting into a heated argument about what an this other person is for not noticing you even although you had your lights on and everything. Walking away works if you're not likely to interact with the other person in the future. Walking away also works if you're not likely to interact in the context of X with the other person in the future. As always, there is a middle path where sometimes walking away is good and some times it isn't, but "that will literally never solve the problem" is only correct if you see "the problem" as "the grievance that has just occurred".

0username29y

Well, sometimes things have gone wrong from my not walking away from drunk angry people, and instead arguing back, escalting the situation to the point at which I have needed to use physical violence to defend myself. But in this case, yes I should not have walked away, as there was too much to lose by walking away. Basically I agree with Pimgd - walk away only if you don't need to interact with that person again, and there is nothing at stake, or if you certainly can't win the conflict.

-5Douglas_Knight9y

[-]DataPacRat9y210

Wrote Something Story-like

Living in Weirdtopia: Week One

6RolfAndreassen9y

This is awesome. Please write Week Two.

4DataPacRat9y

I'm currently out of decent ideas to keep Weirdtopia appropriately weird, so I'm focusing on other writing projects until such time as I can write a sequel that does justice to Week One. I can't promise it'll ever happen, but it's not out of the realm of possibility.

0RomeoStevens9y

Liking it a lot. Have you read Return from the Stars?

0DataPacRat9y

Indeed I have, along with many other "Portal Fantasy" style SF stories in which a protagonist from a relatively recognizable culture is thrust by the authour into a less recognizable one. :)

0RomeoStevens9y

highlights? I'm a fan of the sub-genre but haven't encountered many likeable instances, probably mostly because I haven't spent much time searching for short stories rather than novels.

2DataPacRat9y

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/TrappedInAnotherWorld is probably your best place to start.

0MockTurtle9y

I really enjoyed this, it was very well written! Lots of fun new concepts, and plenty of fun old ones being used well. Looking forward to reading more! Even if there aren't too many new weird things in whatever follows, I really want to see where the story goes.

0WalterL9y

I enjoyed this. Please let LW know if you ever write a chapter 2.

[-]Gleb_Tsipursky9y120

Did anybody do any rationality-themed body modifications? I recently got a rationality-themed tattoo, and so have some other folks I know. I was curious about what other Less Wrongers do.

[-]gjm9y120

a rationality-themed tattoo

That's not a rationality-themed tattoo, it's an Intentional-Insights-themed tattoo. So far as I can tell, the only connection between the word "intentional" and rationality is that your organization uses "intentional" to mean roughly what some other people mean by "System 2".

(It's not even as if "use System 2 rather than System 1" is itself a particularly rational, or particularly rationalist, principle. Our brains take the shortcuts they do for reasons, and often we should let them do it.)

4Gleb_Tsipursky9y

I would never get an organization-themed tattoo - yuck! I am not wedded to the name Intentional Insights. The term intentional really resonates with me and other folks who were founding the organization, which is why it was named how it was. Anyway, the word intentional for me is a way of speaking about personality to my system one, anyway thank you, which is one reason that the two has so many colors, so special language is key for system one.

6skeptical_lurker9y

I think magnetic finger implants for a sixth sense seems a pretty cool transhumanist body mod thing. Along the same lines, there are Programmable Subcutaneous Visible Implants where you stick a LCD screen under the skin, although I think that is more of a "maybe we'll have the tech worked out in five years" sort of thing.

6username29y

To each his own. Personally, I think that unless you live in a community where most people have tattoos, the most rational decision is to have no tattoos. I believe they close more doors than they open. Maybe I am mistaken, maybe situations were tattoos help you are more common than I think. Please correct me then.

8Viliam9y

Tattoos that signal group membership are a costly signal of loyalty, and the cost is precisely closing those other doors. It's just, with the "rationality tattoos", I am not sure what exactly one gains in exchange for paying the cost. I'd say that a truly rational tattoo is the one that can be easily removed. :D I could imagine a specific situation where having a rationality tattoo could be the rational thing to do (for reasons other than impressing people who are easily impressed by tattoos), but those are quite unlikely situations. Having a rationality tattoo doesn't reliably signal rationality -- even a stupid person may decide to get one -- so what exactly would be the purpose? Signalling hostility towards groups that openly identify as anti-rationality? Not sure there are many such groups.

0[anonymous]9y

whispers Voldemort, Voldemort...

2Lumifer9y

Meh

4Gleb_Tsipursky9y

I think there's a benefit to signaling weirdness and commitment, and that's what the tattoo does.

3Anders_H9y

The Economist published a fascinating blog entry where they use evidential decision theory to establish that tattoo removal results in savings to the prison system. See http://www.economist.com/blogs/freeexchange/2014/08/tattoos-jobs-and-recidivism . Temporally, this blog entry corresponds roughly to the time I lost my respect for the Economist. You can draw your own causal conclusions from this.

2Gunnar_Zarncke9y

Some time ago I considered getting a useful tattoo. Useful like * name, birthdate and maybe other information suitable to locate relatives in case of emergency * ruler (if you stopped growing) * Morse alphabet * Smith Chart * graphical rendering of an encryption algorithm (I imagine that there are pleasant renderings)

2[anonymous]9y

I think skin might stretch or shrink. I now carry a spool of bright yellow thread and scissors, in case I have to measure things (and a needle:)

1Fluttershy9y

I'm curious that you know others with rationality-themed tattoos, too; do they either live in your area, or work for Intentional Insights? I hadn't been aware that people had these sorts of tattoos at all.

[-]Gleb_Tsipursky9y110

They are members of my Less Wrong meetup, and some of them volunteer for InIn, while others don't.

For instance, one person has a tattoo of an elephant and a rider, with the elephant breaking the chain of an anchor. Another has a Bayesian math-themed tattoo.

2gjm9y

Did you have any involvement in their decisions to get tattooed?

[-]Gleb_Tsipursky9y110

Nope, they actually influenced me - they both got theirs before I did.

0[anonymous]9y

I know of one person with a Bayes formula tattoo, but that's it. The tattoo of rationalists is most likely not having a tattoo. This is also a more universal signal that can be used in later groups without permanently marking yourself as a member of a temporary group. Better to become a rational person and signal that than to signal that you're part of an in-group called "rationalists".

[-]harshhpareek9y120

Are there any newbies wandering these parts? Leave a comment here! I want to know if there's any interest in a weekly/fortnightly/monthly newbie thread?

By newbie, I mean that you've found LessWrong somewhat recently and are getting exposed to many ideas like those in the Sequences but you don't post because you wonder if the things you would talk about get discussed later or might have already been discussed somewhere.

LW has a reputation of being very harsh on newbies, so maybe a newbie thread where we can discuss things without annoying those critical people would give people a place to hang out.

[-][anonymous]9y110

I signed up a few years back then left, slightly intimidated by the community (though I enjoyed reading the Sequences and discovered HPMOR through this site, which I then recommended to friends).

I also held back on posting from thinking regs would tire of rehashing old-to-them, new-to-me topics. The reason I just recently came back was from showing HPMOR to my boyfriend. I think a newbie thread would bring out some lurkers and help people better integrate into the community.

Great idea. :)

7Viliam9y

Okay, here is the Welcome Thread.

[-]Pimgd9y130

This thread made me sign up because it is a big enough sign that you apparently care about new people - you're willing to go to that length to get people to sign up, so I'll guess I could create an account. Maybe that ought to lower the barrier for me to participate.

[-]Kaj_Sotala9y110

I made a new blog on Tumblr. It has photos of smiling people! With more to come!

Why? Previously I happened to need pictures of smiles for a personal project. After going through an archive of photos for a while, I realized that looking at all the happy people made me feel happy and good. So I thought that I might make a habit out of looking at photos of smiling people, and sharing them.

Follow for a regular extra dose of happiness!

4username29y

I remember seeing a study where clicking pictures of happy people improved their happiness but I can't find it now.

[-]gwern9y90

Some people here may be amused by my recent series of insomnia-inspired tweets, what if light novel titles were about statistics and children's series vs SF/horror movies.

[-]Gleb_Tsipursky9y60

I'm going to the CFAR workshop that starts May 18th, and want to ask anyone who went to previous workshops about what you would have recommended to your pre-workshop self to do before and during the workshop? What would you have done differently? Thanks for any advice, and I'll convey it to fellow workshop attendees.

8TheAltar9y

Normally I say get plenty of sleep, but I think you asked a bit late to get that answer.

0Gleb_Tsipursky9y

I'm worried about missing out on conversations with other interesting people - what do you think about that tradeoff?

[-]morganism9y40

What to do with billions of useless humans ?

Yuval Harari, author of “Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind

http://www.koreaherald.com/view.php?ud=20160428000669

5gjm9y

(Emphasis mine.) The article gives no reason to think that AI will make billions of humans actually useless. Only that it will make them unable to earn enough money to live on by selling their labour. These are not the same thing.

3Lumifer9y

I am sure one can come up with a... modest proposal to do something about those billions X-)

1morganism9y

I have been thinking about this a bit along with the basic minimum wage. It would also seem that we would need a universal "kickstarter" type clearinghouse to vote on projects that should get done. You would have to login and vote on a project say, once a week to get your basic funding, and you could volunteer of build things or do research to earn credits for travel.

0Lumifer9y

Huh?

-1morganism9y

Well, there will be plenty of motivated people wanting to do medical research, space exploration, maths and physics projects, etc. But how will we prioritize other new and ongoing research and development projects? We will prob end up micro-voting projects that are within our sphere of interests, hence a kickstarter type of R-D, instead of a venture capital based, or top down Govt mandated system. Neither of the above have proved very effective or even that profitable, might as well try a different model...

2Lumifer9y

What do you mean, "will be"? There are now. In the usual way? The way we do it now? What is the problem that you're trying to solve?

-1morganism9y

These guys seem to think that there will only be a 10% displacement of workers https://robotenomics.com/

[-]username29y40

A repost from an earlier open thread.

I am looking for sources of semi-technical reviews and expository weblog posts to add to my RSS reader; preferably 4—20 screenfuls of text on topics including or related to evolutionary game theory, mathematical modelling in the social sciences, theoretical computer science applied to non-computer things, microeconomics applied to unusual things (e.g. Hanson's Age of Em), psychometrics, the theory of machine learning, and so on. What I do not want: pure mathematics, computer science trivia, coding trivia, machine learni... (read more)

2John_Maxwell9y

Would Andrew Gelman's blog count? (Author of recommended textbook on Bayesian statistics.) Maybe it would be useful for you to share the entire blogroll you've accumulated thus far and just ask people to recommend more blogs like the ones you already have. For example, I'm guessing you found Gelman already since he's present in Robin Hanson's blogroll--but I could think of a way you would have plausibly found lots of potential recommendations. You could even create a "show us your blogroll" discussion post, in order to harvest OPMLs to mine through.

[-][anonymous]9y30

A stupid question... If I ask people (n = several hundreds to thousand) to put a coin down on the table such that it wouldn't roll away, heads or tails up... I expect the overall results to be near 1:1 ratio of heads to tails... But it wouldn't be as random as when I (or they) just tossed the coin on the table, right?

4[anonymous]9y

This is an interesting case. If people are free to place the coins as they wish, I wouldn't be surprised if P(heads)>P(tails) due to biases about which way is "right side up". When a face appears on a coin many people seem to think of this as the front of the coin, and in numismatic circles, the obverse is typically "heads" if a head appears on only one side (although no surprise that there are contentious debates about obverse/reverse in specific circumstances).

2MrMind9y

"Random", in objective Bayesianism, just means that you have no information privileging one alternative or the other. In this case, the reasons why you don't know which outcome each single experiment will have are different, but the end result is the same. There are possibly differences in their Ap distributions though, depending on how you model human behaviour...

2Good_Burning_Plastic9y

"Random" doesn't mean anything but "unpredictable", and a possibly relevant question is "unpredictable by whom?". But yes, probably. (If you ask 1000 people for a number from 1 to 10 many more than 100 of them will say "7" etc.)

6gjm9y

I think "random" does mean something more than "unpredictable". It means something more like "independent of things you care about". More precisely, that's what it should mean in most places where it's used. (I'm not quite satisfied with this formulation; e.g., a "random" thing that always takes the same value is independent of everything, but you wouldn't usually want to call it random. What we're really trying to get at is "statistically indistinguishable from idealized randomness" but it would be nice to find a way of saying it that doesn't appeal to an existing notion of randomness. Perhaps something like "incompressible, on average, given the accessible state of all the other things we care about".) Imagine, if you will, a lottery that works as follows. Each lottery ticket bears a SHA-256 hash of (the ticket's lottery numbers + a further string); the further string is not revealed until the time of the draw. When drawing time comes, the winning numbers and the further string are revealed on national TV, and if you think you might have a winning ticket you can bring it to have the hash checked. In Scenario 1, the winning numbers are chosen "at random". In Scenario 2, you (and only you) have the magical power to make the winning numbers be the ones hashed onto your ticket. You don't know the further string. You also don't know what your ticket's numbers are. You just know that after you perform your magical ritual the numbers drawn will match the numbers on your ticket. The numbers drawn are still unpredictable. No one knows what numbers are on your ticket. (Let's suppose that the tickets are made by some process that after making each ticket erases all evidence of what numbers have been hashed onto it.) But something is predictable, namely that the numbers drawn will match yours and you will win the lottery. The lottery numbers in Scenario 2 are still "random" in some sense, but this is exactly the kind of situation you're trying to avoid when you deliberat

2Lumifer9y

I don't understand what that means. It sounds like something I would call "noise" (="variation which I do not care about") which is a quite a different concept from "random". There is also "true" randomness, e.g. radioactive decay, which doesn't seem to be related to whatever I might care about. And if you put yourself into the paws of Schrodinger's cat, you might care a great deal about that trigger which breaks the poison vial, but does that make it not random? As you yourself point out that's entirely circular and, besides, I have no idea what "idealized randomness" is. You're basically talking about randomness as that which lies beyond the limits of (current) knowledge. Didn't you just come back to randomness meaning "unpredictable"?

0[anonymous]9y

Wouldn't idealized randomness mean utter lack of causality?

2Lumifer9y

Well, there is what is usually called quantum randomness. While many common kinds of randomness represent just lack of knowledge, contemporary physics says that quantum randomness (e.g. how much time will pass before a particular unstable atom decays) is different because it is impossible in principle to predict it. You can probably call it "utter lack of causality". As to "idealized", I don't know. Depending on which framework you pick, the notions of "idealized randomness" might well differ.

0[anonymous]9y

Hmm, it seems that I do not grok synergism, as well... Never could convince myself that a 'synergistic' outcome is 'more than the sum' as opposed to 'very different from the sum' - that is, I can imagine some chemical catalyst system which processes substrate faster than the combined rates of its subsystems, but... In the kind of biology to which I am used, the 'synergistic' outcome is usually different from the theoretical 'sum' in more ways than one, and the 'sum' might not exist... I mean, it's hard for me to see why two steps of randomness are more random than one. Yet your words are, somehow, an answer... The conclusion is probably that I have zero knowledge.

2TheOtherDave9y

I'm not exactly sure what you mean by "as random." It may well be that there are discernable patterns in a sequence of manually simulated coin-flips that would allow us to distinguish such sequences from actual coinflips. The most plausible hypothetical examples I can come up with would result in a non-1:1 ratio... e.g., humans having a bias in favor of heads or tails. Or, if each person is laying a coin down next to the previous coin, such that they are able to see the pattern thus far, we might find any number of pattern-level biases... e.g., if told to simulate randomness, humans might be less than 50% likely to select heads if they see a series of heads-up coins, whereas if not told to do so, they might be more than 50%. It's kind of an interesting question, actually. I know there's been some work on detecting test scores by looking for artificial-pattern markers in the distribution of numbers, but I don't know if anyone's done equivalent things for coinflips.

0[anonymous]9y

Thank you. I realized, as soon as I posted it, that the method of obtaining the sequence would not matter (as the previous commenter rightly said), but somehow, the 'feeling of a question' remained. I was not thinking of showing them part of 'the sequence so far'... But it might be fun to determine whether there is any effect on the subject's choice of knowing this 'flip' is a part of a pattern (or not knowing it), of the composition of the revealed pattern, and maybe - if there is an effect - the length of the washout period... I mean, it's only a coin flip! The preceding choices should have no bearing on it. It's, like, the least significant choice you can ever make...

2Dagon9y

If none of the participants can predict or influence the 50/50 outcome, then it's random. The procedure for generating the state doesn't matter - only that the individual events cannot be predicted and the aggregate converges toward a distribution.

[-]Lumifer9y20

Quotables from Nate Silver:

our early estimates ... weren’t based on a statistical model. Instead, they were what we [call] “subjective odds” — which is to say, educated guesses. In other words, we were basically acting like pundits, but attaching numbers to our estimates. And we succumbed to some of the same biases that pundits often suffer, such as not changing our minds quickly enough in the face of new evidence. Without a model as a fortification, we found ourselves rambling around the countryside like all the other pundit-barbarians, randomly setting fire to things.

3username29y

This SSC post is slightly related

[-]Ixiel9y20

Is there any precedent of a state going from direct election to something more like the electoral college for selection of a governor?

7Douglas_Knight9y

Venice introduced an electoral college system in 1172. I believe that their earlier system was direct elections, but I've never seen a very clear claim. This seems to claim so.

0Ixiel9y

Thanks, I'll check that out. I live in a mostly rural state that elected - let's just say a governor for whom most of the state did not vote - because of the cityots in a couple districts. I don't actually think I could make it happen, but it'll aid my fantasy ;)

1Lumifer9y

Most of the people in the state did vote for him. Your basic problem is that a lot of people live in NYC and suburbs and not a lot live upstate. To overcome this just an electoral college won't be sufficient -- you will need something equivalent to the Senate election system where the number of people in a political unit is ignored.

0Ixiel9y

Well quite. I don't even think it's necessarily a good idea (unlike making NYC part of NJ. They have nothing in common with New Yorkers, but full disclosure I am in the only profitable county in the state so it's my tax dollars getting funneled down there.), it's just fun to think about. My grandpa said it best - okay maybe not but at least well - "We live in one of the best parts of one of the worst states in one of the best countries in the world."

2Lumifer9y

You think Manhattan (which is, technically speaking, a county) doesn't pay its own way?

2Ixiel9y

Update: Gov's office didn't dig up the study. On facts in evidence, including a closer look at whatall is included in Manhattan, my most plausible explanation is that the study results were not what I remember, whether that was misdirection or misremembering. Even though I could see a case for the tax draws being even bigger, it doesn't overcome the prima facie implausibility. Thanks for the update; "it ain't what you don't know but what you know that ain't so that kills ya," as I've seen attributed to Twain (but every quote has been attributed to Twain so grain of salt)

1Lumifer9y

One more possible explanation. NY state is not the most coherent organization and I've seen sets of statistics for NY counties that just did not include NYC boroughs. Evidently, even though they are counties, they are considered a special enough case to just ignore them on occasion. So maybe your study just said in a small footnote somewhere "Oh, we'll pretend NYC does not exist". By the way, you might find this report interesting.

0Ixiel9y

Yeah, even scrolling up to my own comment, referring to NY as a "mostly rural state" only works since in most cases with which I interact, the NYC residents don't count as TRUE Scottsmen... ;) Edit to comment on link also: Wow, that is definitely NOT the data I remember. Older, but still. Thanks for that. It all started in a stockholders' meeting for my family's business (employing 2500-7500 people largely in what this report calls the capital district depending how you count) so motivation for bad data is not hard to identify. This year's meeting is in a few weeks and I'll definitely be bringing this up. Thanks as usual.

-2Ixiel9y

I have no real knowledge of the subdistricts of NYC, I just know that it is a net loss as a whole (Edited to add: Lum hadn't stated in above post that NYC bureaus were counties when I wrote this, it was edited in, so don't think I'm ignoring it). I would not be surprised if one could slice out a profitable part of any county or cetera. Heck, as an extreme, draw a circle around the one richest guy and (maybe...) you've got a subset that's profitable. But any surplus in one city subdistrict is outweighed by the costs in the others, as of I think 2010 so might have changed. I'll see if I can dig up the study; it was sent to me by the governor's office but not created by them so it might take a bit to remember for what to search. I know Saratoga county was (and had been but we're starting to rely more heavily on my memory than I'm comfortable doing) the only county that generated more tax dollars than it consumed.

0Lumifer9y

The five boroughs of NYC are all bona fide New York state counties. Manhattan is its own county named "New York county" :-/

-2Ixiel9y

Huh, thanks for that, I didn't know. In that case, no, it turns out it draws more tax dollars than it generates. I know the study was county by county. I've only been to NYC a half dozen or so times, and just thought of it as NYC. I know there are bureaus, but I really don't know Manhattan from Long Island or Haarlem from Poughkeepsie (okay, ignorance exaggerated for comedic hyperbole; I know the last isn't TECHNICALLY NYC but for most of my intents and purposes I treat it thus), though from context I assume Manhattan includes Wall Street. Depending how much else it includes, my confidence in the study drops. I wanted to get ahold of it for you, and now I want to get it for me too :) Google fu failed but I asked Gov's office if they remember so I'll let you know when they get back to me.

2Douglas_Knight9y

Another example: France. The Second Republic had a directly elected President, while the Third Republic had the President chosen by the Senate. France returned to direct elections early in the Fifth Republic. It did not go directly from direct election to electoral college because it did not go directly from Second to Third. But I believe that the decision against direct election was motivated by the experience of the Second Republic and the memory of the prescient arguments Jules Grévy made at the drafting of its Constitution; indeed, Grévy himself was a leading figure of the Third Republic.

[-]Daniel_Burfoot9y20

One very important question a moral system has to answer is: how do you deal with people who won't adopt the moral system? Here are three basic answers:

Indifference - leave people who don't adopt the system alone. Let them do their own thing.
Compulsion - require people to adopt the moral system, using varying degrees of coercive power (social shaming, jail, financial penalties, etc)
Fences - build a fence, allow people who follow the system inside, and exclude everyone else.

Are there others? Which one of these options seems the best to you?

6username29y

* Interacting with those people in limited settings. Using different systems in different settings. A system doesn't have to encompass all human interactions. * Use rewards instead of punishments. Similar to your second point, but feels differently. By the way, your third point is a special case of your second one.

2Daniel_Burfoot9y

I feel strongly that there is a qualitative difference between fence-building and compulsion, especially if the fenced area is small. Your first suggestion seems like fence-building in different domains (social, financial, etc).

0TimS9y

That's a weird definition of compulsion in this context. Others want to make choices. Sometimes those choices impact things you value. Sometime they doesn't. But preventing people from acting on choices seems like the common thread. Privileging whether things you value are effected seems relevant to whether the prevention is morally justified, but from point of view of preventing the implementation of another's choice, the idea of compulsion seems identical. In short, I assert the morally neutral description of an action ought not to vary based on moral judgment about the action.

0Lumifer9y

I agree. In crude terms, compulsion is forcing other people to change; fence-building is yourself withdrawing.

2Stingray9y

This distinction is blurry. Which side do boycotts fall on?

3Lumifer9y

Public, organized boycotts are compulsion since they have the clear goal of changing the others' behaviour. If you just quietly stop buying products from Acme without telling everyone (including Acme) about it, that's withdrawal.

2Lumifer9y

Another one is (non-compulsive) persuasion. Note that compulsion requires you to have governmental (or quasi-governmental) power and exclusion ("fences") requires a certain degree of autonomy and, basically, property rights. However the question as asked is too high-level. Moral systems' responses critically depend on how acceptable the other moral belief is. Minor things are usually tolerated and major things are subject to compulsion or exclusion (given sufficient power). For example the US government doesn't care about the Mormons' conversion of deceased (indifference) but does care about polygamy (compulsion).

2ChristianKl9y

Specialized vocabulary and language in general can work well as a fence without needing property rights. Our community is perceived to do this via using terms not used outside of LW. The Esperanto community does this and Esperanto speakers are more likely to do favors for fellow Esperanto speakers than for other stangers.

0Lumifer9y

They certainly can help with exclusion, but they are not very useful for including people with specific morals and excluding people with different morals.

0ChristianKl9y

Language creates a barrier to entry. Willingness to learn the language then filters for certain values. To the extend that you can control the teaching of the language you can also add additional filters.

0Viliam9y

There are free online resources for Esperanto such as http://lernu.net/ or http://purl.org/net/voko/revo/ so now it can spread beyond control mwahahaha...

0ChristianKl9y

It's true that there are free resources, but for example you can't take the Duolingo course without also getting at least a bit indoctrinated with veganism. That factor likely isn't strong enough to turn someone by itself into a vegan but having many of such prompts does nudge the community in a certain direction and people who are really opposed to it won't have as much fun learning the language through those resources.

0MrMind9y

Yes, e.g.: * submit and cooperate - this is one of the staple of Christianity in its concept of martyrdom, also hinted in the Sermon of the Mount, when Jesus talked about turning the other cheek; * submit but do not cooperate - for example in the doctrine of non-violence.

0Elo9y

thoughts: * convert - try to sign them up to the system i.e. the way religions used to do it. Reason with them and tell them they want to join because it's better. * kill them - historic wars happened. * bind them explicitly - society today binds adults to legal responsibility to their own rights. children are not bound in the same way until we say they are capable of being responsible, in a way they are people who won't adopt the system (sometimes because it's too complicated for them). Our solution is to bind others to the responsibility and eventually bind them when they are old enough to adopt the system (18 years old is usually an adult in most countries) * (an instance of compulsion) threaten them with being cast as an entity with less rights within your system than other entities if they do not join your system.

-2ChristianKl9y

I think you mean ethics and not morals. ---------------------------------------- There are many ways to persuade people. You can control information flow. You can nudge people and optimize the nudging. There are physical changes that affect moral behavior. A lot of variables from temperature to diet have effects on moral decision making in certain instances. You can convince people through arguments.

2blacktrance9y

Those terms are synonymous under standard usage.

-2Lumifer9y

Depends on your standards. Under my standard usage they are not synonyms. Morals specify the value systems (what you believe) and ethics specify practical decisions in real life (what you do).

0bogus9y

Morals is definitely the right word here! The generally-recognized difference between morality and ethics is that the first implies either some kind of inner tendency in individuals (a 'moral core') or an expressly-given 'moral code'. By contrast, ethics refers to the problem of how moralities can play out in practical settings and even interact with each other - ethics does not pit "right versus wrong", but balances "right versus right", as Rushworth Kidder would put it. Although people will also use "ethics", or more properly "normative ethics", as an easy way of referencing values that are so widely shared among human societies that they can be considered near-universal - such as the values of honesty, fairness, good knowledge and a fully thriving life. But this is a derivative meaning and theoretically a less important one. (Anyway, yes, ethical argument is definitely one key way of balancing values, so you're on the right track there.) Thus, OP's question is itself one of the key problems in ethics; on a larger scale, it also explains the origin of politics itself, as dispute resolution in complex societies becomes reliant on government-like institutions and broadly-acknowledged formal rules of 'fairness'.

[-][anonymous]9y10

Oxford economists: 'day-to-day weather variation impacts life satisfaction by a similar magnitude to acquiring a mild disability'

Closer inspection reveals that the author's believe this has to do with biases in reporting life satisfaction rather than authentic comparisons of interpersonal wellbeing.

We find robust evidence that day-to-day weather variation impacts life satisfaction by a similar magnitude to acquiring a mild disability. Utilizing two sources of variation in the cognitive complexity of satisfaction questions, we present evidence that weathe

... (read more)

[-]morganism9y10

Source code depository for complex models in Astrophysics

http://ascl.net/

[-]morganism9y00

A Complete Tutorial to work on Big Data with Amazon Web Services (AWS)

http://www.analyticsvidhya.com/blog/2016/05/complete-tutorial-work-big-data-amazon-web-services-aws/

[-]morganism9y00

Public Good theory sure looks a lot like cancer dynamics

https://egtheory.wordpress.com/2016/05/16/vpg-cancer/

that's a good thing , right?

[-]morganism9y00

World War Zero, a switch of loyalties in ancient Turkey, manifested as an international excursion force. Attacks on Egypt, Cyprus, and the Hittites changed ancient Anatolia.

https://www.newscientist.com/article/2087924-world-war-zero-brought-down-mystery-civilisation-of-sea-people/

http://luwianstudies.org/sites

[-]harshhpareek9y00

I've been having digestive trouble recently and have started wondering if I've developed a new allergy/intolerance (Known: milk, cashewnuts, chocolate). Does anyone have a recommendation for tests to check for these?

Apparently, "Eight foods account for 90% of all food-allergic reactions: milk, eggs, peanuts, tree nuts (e.g., walnuts, almonds, cashews, pistachios, pecans), wheat, soy, fish, and shellfish." (source: http://www.foodallergy.org/file/facts-stats.pdf). However, nuts are good for you (eg. https://examine.com/faq/how-can-i-best-ensure-ca... (read more)

4ShardPhoenix9y

FODMAP sensitivity is one source of digestive troubles. This causes sensitivity to garlic, onion, pears, apples, beans, among other things. If you seem sensitive to those things you can get a hydrogen breath test to test it further.

2Elo9y

WRT allergies: Consider plants; things you are drinking; washing powders (although more relevant for skin irritations); pets (more relevant for respirator problems). As your problem is digestive it's probably safe to look at things you are consuming. I would suggest eliminating things; or running self-tests. i.e. eat nothing for a few hours then eat a slice of bread - if you are fine to eat that you are probably not sensitive to wheat. This can either be done by writing out your full diet and testing each part, or by testing the top 8 as mentioned above.

0PECOS-99y

Aside from allergies, also consider whether the digestive trouble could be due to anxiety or other psychological issues.

0NoSignalNoNoise9y

Flax and chia seeds are both very good sources of omega 3 (but flax seeds need to be ground for your body to absorb it, and once you grind them, you should store them cold), as are fish (especially salmon).

3Lumifer9y

Omega-3 is a group of several different fatty acids and flax seeds do not provide the ones you actually want.

0NoSignalNoNoise9y

Very good to know. Thanks for linking to that.

[-]morganism9y-10

Crowd sourcing courts and Justice, based on the Athenian system.

https://medium.com/the-crowdjury/the-crowdjury-a-crowdsourced-court-system-for-the-collaboration-era-66da002750d8

1Lumifer9y

4chan

LESSWRONG
LW

LESSWRONG
LW

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Open Thread May 16 - May 22, 2016

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