Hans

Hi. I've made a few posts here and there, but have mostly been lurking lately.

I know that the student would be studying a related field; that was not the point. I as a hypothetical viewer would not care what the grad student was studying, exactly, I would care that he was only a 20-year old graduate student still studying at a university (that I would assume to be populated with liberal professors).

"Winners don't win by playing dumb."

And that is why I don't get this proposal. It is assumed that this college student would absolutely destroy the creationist debater and persuade the open-minded and objective audience through ... (read more)

Okay, but he's clearly young. I don't see how sending a low-status person to debate a high-status person could ever convince the adherents of the high-status person.

So I've turned on the tv to watch a debate on evolution and creationism on CNN (or Fox News). The creationists have sent an older, respectable-looking gentleman in a suit, bible in hand. The evolutionists have sent a scrappy-looking college kid in jeans, barely out of his diapers and studying something fancy-shmancy at the University of Liberal Professors, Berkeley.

A priori, whose side will I be on?

How many people will think: "Is this the best guy the evolutionists have to offer?"

As previous comments have said, it would be possible to sell the 15% chance for anything up to $150k. Once people realise that the 15% chance is a liquid asset, I'm sure many will change their mind and take that instead of the $500.

What does this mean? If the 15% chance is made liquid, that removes nearly all of the risk of taking that chance. This leads me to believe that people pick the $500 because they are, quite simply, (extremely) risk-averse. Other explanations (diminishing marginal utility of money, the $1 million actually having negative utility, etc.) are either wrong, or they are not a large factor in the decision-making process.

yeah, what he said, except that i couldn't find the words to explain it in English.

They emphasize the legs and the thighs, and create a more "female" body posture.

What a fascinating case of parallel evolution: As the cicada has a life cycle of 17 years (a prime number) to avoid predators with shorter life cycles, so too does the common or garden nerd choose clothes that are fashionable only once every 17 years, to minimize overlap with other, dangerous fashions.

"someone who's never heard of X (in this case the many-worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics and the anthropic principle) isn't going to have a clue what the hell you're talking about."

Yeah, that must be why I didn't understand anything. But I got the tolkien reference!

Indeed. As a consequence, once you can narrow the answer down to two or three choices, you're always better off guessing.

It sounds like your fellow students understood the concept of a guessing penalty, but did not realise that the guessing penalty was too low in this case. One approach to convince them might have been:

Assume you get -0.0001 points for guessing an incorrect answer. Obviously, you should answer every question, because the penalty for guessing is so low. Now, assume that the guessing penalty is -20 points. Again, you obviously shouldn't guess. What would the penalty have to be where you're indifferent between guessing and not guessing? Obviously, when the pena... (read more)

Seth godin has a few examples of sunk costs. I believe these examples better represent true sunk costs than some of the examples given here (such as the movie ticket).

For example, suppose you have paid 50 dollars for a Bruce Springsteen concert. You have searched long and hard for tickets this cheap. Suddenly, somebody offers you 500 dollars for the ticket. Do you sell it? The ticket is now worth $500 to you, and you would have never paid $500 for a ticket in the first place.

What do the women reading this post think of these statements?

As a man, I often find myself thinking the same thing, however I have yet to meet a woman who does.

Yes, and if there was a utility lever that you could pull to gain utility, you would spend your entire life pulling the lever. But there isn't. And you cannot teleport, nor will you be able to in the foreseeable future. So Alicorn will have to continue taking the burden of travel into account when deciding whether or not to visit a place he would like to have visited.

I second that. Here in the LW/OB/sci-fi/atheism/cryonics/AI... community, many of us fit quite a few stereotypes. I'll summarize them in one word that everybody understands: we're all nerds*. This means our lives and personalities introduce many biases into our way of thinking, and these often preclude discussions about acting rationally in interpersonal situations such as sales, dating etc. because we don't have much experience in these fields. Anything that bridges this gap would be extremely useful.

*this is not a value judgment. And not everybody conforms to this stereotype. I know, I know, but this is not the point. I'm talking averages here.

But many poor/middle-class people also believe that they can never become rich (except for the lottery) because the only ways to become rich are crime, fraud, or inheritance. And this leads them to underestimate the value of hard work, education, and risk-taking.

The median rationalist will perform better than these cynics. But his average wealth will also be higher, assuming he accurately observes his chances at becoming succesful.

Another reason for honoring the sunk cost of the movie ticket (related to avoiding regret) is that you know yourself well enough to realize you often make mistakes. There are many irrational reasons why you would not want to see the movie after all. Maybe you're unwilling to get up and go to the movie because you feel a little tired after eating too much. Maybe a friend who has already seen the movie discourages you to go, even though you know your tastes in movies don't always match. Maybe you're a little depressed and distracted by work/relationship/what... (read more)

Your post definitely illustrates your point, by misleading otherwise well-informed LW readers for at least a few paragraphs.*

Therefore, I believe it's a useful post. However, as you can see in the comments, the temptation to write lame follow-up jokes is just too big. Don't expect too much serious discussion here.

*unless they were previously familiar with the joke, of course.

Those people died after ingesting impure DHMO, which is 'watered down' by relatively unharmful minerals, making it only fatal after ingesting large amounts. 100% pure, distilled DHMO is actually extremely dangerous even in small quantities, as it leeches essential nutrients from your body through a nefarious process called 'reverse osmosis'.

[EDIT: this is actually not true, according to the wisdom of the interwebs. Thank you, extremely expensive European public school system, for filling my young impressionable mind with this untrue factoid. Nevertheless, the dangers and risks of DHMO ingestion remain poorly understood.]

I don't have anything to say but...

fuck yeah!