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James_Ernest
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Open Thread, Apr. 20 - Apr. 26, 2015
James_Ernest10y140

Physics lawyers definitely need to exist. I would strongly like to get an injunction against the laws of thermodynamics.

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LessWrong experience on Alcohol
James_Ernest10y10

I drink the equivalent of 1-2 bottles of wine per week (purchasing 2-3 bottles, some will be consumed by my girlfriend), mostly medium reds (shiraz, merlot; zinfandel and chianti when I can get them), some white aromatics (riesling, gewürztraminer, pinot gris), mostly 1-2 glasses at a time in the evening, for the purposes of relaxation and gustatory pleasure.

Beer is not good on my digestion, and I almost totally avoid it except for particularly tasty ones (prototypically, something like a Trappistes Rochefort 10). Even the thought of swilling a six-pack is enough to cause me pain.

When drinking socially (~biweekly), it will be whisky (Scotch, neat, naturally), neat Jäger, or possibly G&T or white/black russians if I'm mixing for other people, most usually not to the point of inebriation, just to maintain a comfortable level of sociable buzz. To this end, I adopt an approach informed by control theory, and deliberately front-load my consumption to give something close to an ideal dead-beat response when convolved with my internal alcohol-processing dynamics.

My palate is fairly typical, I have a (probably conditioned) liking for the taste of alcohol, a sweet tooth that I have a System II response against, and as far as I can tell, average-to-low bitterness tolerance (the only coffee I will drink is strong espresso, but I am very sensitive to improper extraction and the associated bitterness.

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Negative polyamory outcomes?
James_Ernest11y80

It's almost like there's something qualitatively different about the tractability of interactions between two bodies and N>2 bodies... (sorry)

One could also make an extremely laboured analogy about circumbinary orbits, and the spontaneous ejection of one party into deep space.

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Systemic risk: a moral tale of ten insurance companies
James_Ernest11y20

Interesting question. It is clear that the probability mass in excess of the reserves is equal in both distributions, yielding identical long-run numbers of industry-defaults-per-year, however the average magnitude of the unrecoverable losses is greater in the no-diversification model.

If you assume a linear cost function for the expected losses, and take the mean of the distribution past a variable reserve level, you will find a reserve level for a unified insurance agent which has the same expected loss-cost, a lower number of absolute industry-loss events, and a lower reserve requirement than the diversified case.

My Wolfram-fu fails me, but you would want to multiply the binomial PDF (or gaussian approximation) by x, and find the integral from y to 100 (or infinity) that is equal to the diverse expected loss, 1*10/200. For binomial distributions, y will be <90, so short answer, 'yes'.

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Neo-reactionaries, why are you neo-reactionary?
James_Ernest11y190

when the Neoreactionaries aren't busy reviving obscure archaic words for their own jargon, they're using Lesswrong-style jargon

I believe the fact that neoreactionaries make frequent use of LW jargon is down to more than a founder effect.

There are multiple aspects to the LW memeplex that perform significant legwork in laying an epistemological foundation to mug intelligent social liberals with reality, which is close to the defining trait of neoreaction. To wit,

  • Physicalism, determinism, a universe Beyond the Reach of God; the universe is capable of arbitrarily deviating from wishful standards of fairness and equality, there are no cosmic attractors towards justice, humans can be effectively damned beyond redemption by biological variables outside the loci of moral agency.
  • Generalised optimisation systems; once you understand these, the leap to criticism of democracy as a massive cybernetic failure mode is almost trivial.
  • Game theory, for the public choice extension to the above.
  • A deep epistemology of taboos, which form the Dark Matter of democracy, around which our governing narratives swirl otherwise inexplicably.
  • Beliefs as constraints on expectations, versus belief as attire; this in itself is sufficient to generate enough conflict with official truth to put one far beyond the Overton window.
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2014 Less Wrong Census/Survey
James_Ernest11y230

Was anybody else disappointed that the Sex Role Inventory wasn't nearly as raunchy as the name suggested?

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"NRx" vs. "Prog" Assumptions: Locating the Sources of Disagreement Between Neoreactionaries and Progressives (Part 1)
James_Ernest11y160

This should be an acceptable hypothesis to the LW population. c.f. "I'm considering getting my facial expressions analysed, so I'll know what I'm thinking".

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"NRx" vs. "Prog" Assumptions: Locating the Sources of Disagreement Between Neoreactionaries and Progressives (Part 1)
James_Ernest11y60

This is his explanation at its most explicit:

www.unqualified-reservations.blogspot.com/2010/02/from-mises-to-carlyle-my-sick-journey.html

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Jokes Thread
James_Ernest11y00

I don't think so. None of the available potential coin-states would generate an expected value of 600 heads.

p = 0.6 -> 600 expected heads is the many-trials (where each trial is 1000 flips) expected value given the prior and the result of the first flip, but this is different from the expectation of this trial, which is bimodally distributed at [1000]x0.2 and [central limit around 500]x0.8

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The insularity critique of climate science
James_Ernest11y00

complex thing with lots of variables and lots of uncertainty

The whole point of digital circuitry is that this form of uncertainty is (near)eliminated and does not compound. Arbitrary complexity is manageable given this constraint.

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