“Requiring someone to laugh in order to prove their non-cultishness [...] doesn’t quite work.”
But if they don’t laugh, and it’s not sufficiently obvious that the joke is too obvious, doesn’t the lack of laughter serve as (rather weak) Bayesian evidence of cultishness?
Which suggests—
Q: How many Overcoming Bias readers does it take to change a lightbulb?
A: None; the RAND experiment showed that lightbulbs are worthless.
Q: How many Overcoming Bias readers does it take to change a lightbulb?
A: Just one, but first they have to calculate (P(change|light)P(light))/((P(change|light)P(light) + P(change|no-light)*P(no-light)).
“How many Overcoming Bias readers does it take to change a lightbulb?”
“I think four. What do you think?”
“Um, I was going to say ‘One,’ and then the punchl—”
“Okay, then 2.5?”
If you don’t find the above funny, consider raising P(we’re-a-cult).
“Requiring someone to laugh in order to prove their non-cultishness [...] doesn’t quite work.”
But if they don’t laugh, and it’s not sufficiently obvious that the joke is too obvious, doesn’t the lack of laughter serve as (rather weak) Bayesian evidence of cultishness?
Which suggests—
Q: How many Overcoming Bias readers does it take to change a lightbulb? A: None; the RAND experiment showed that lightbulbs are worthless.
Q: How many Overcoming Bias readers does it take to change a lightbulb? A: Just one, but first they have to calculate (P(change|light)P(light))/((P(change|light)P(light) + P(change|no-light)*P(no-light)).
“How many Overcoming Bias readers does it take to change a lightbulb?” “I think four. What do you think?” “Um, I was going to say ‘One,’ and then the punchl—” “Okay, then 2.5?”
If you don’t find the above funny, consider raising P(we’re-a-cult).
Sure, but also, P(those-jokes-weren’t-funny) .