The fact that selection pressure for mental ability is everywhere present is an excellent point; thanks. As to why it’s a troublesome subject, I always maintain “If there is a quantitative difference, I sure as hell hope we never find it.”
I think that’d lead to some pretty unfortunate stuff.
I don’t think this is a stupid question, but everyone else seems to—that is, the immediate reaction to it is usually “there’s obviously no difference.” I’ve struggled with this question a lot, and the commonly accepted answer just doesn’t sit well with me.
If different races have different skin, muscle/bone structure, genetics, and maybe other things, shouldn’t it follow that different races could have different brains, too?
I know this is taboo, and feel the following sort of disclaimer is obligatory: I’m not racist, nor do I think any difference would necessarily be something drastic or significant, but the existence of a difference is something that seems probable to me.
Edit: Though it’s obviously included, I’m not talking specifically about intelligence!
I do not care at all about watching other people play sports. Everyone thinks it’s super boring.
… doesn’t seem to make much sense to me. In what context would he not mean that?
It took me a minute or two to figure out what you were trying to say. For anyone else who didn’t get it first-read, I believe Lumifer’s saying something like:
“World War II was 60 years ago. On a 1,400 year timescale, that’s not getting somewhere, that’s just a random blip of time where no gigantic wars happened; those blips have happened before. What do you mean ‘to get to where we are now’?”
Now, to answer that, I think he means “to get to a society where fear of being killed or kidnapped (then killed) isn’t a normal part of every day life, and women can wear whatever they want.”
I know this post is five years old, but can someone explain this to me? I understood that both questions could have an answer of no because one may want to minimize the monetary loss / maximize the monetary gain of the poorer family—therefore, the poorer family should get a higher reduction and a lower penalty. Am I misunderstanding something about the situation?
Ah! This puts everything into a sensible context—thank you.
I’d like to have a conversation on said fairness sometime; maybe I’ll make a thread about it.
Sorry, I’m a bit confused. Not being fully versed in the terminology of utilitarians, I may be somewhat in the dark...
… but, is the point of this piece “Money should be the unit of caring” or “Money is the unit of caring”? I expected it to be the latter, but it reads to me like the former, with examples as to why it currently isn’t. That is, if money were actually the unit of caring—if people thought of how much money they spend on something as synonymous with how much they care about something—then a lawyer would hire someone to work five hours at a soup kitchen instead of working there for an hour.
It sounds like, as it is now, money isn’t the unit of caring and you think it should be. But the end again reads more like the latter statement. Which one was your intent?
I… I don’t actually understand why this comment got so many downvotes—and I’m 100% for cryonics. In fact, I agree with the above comment.
Is this a toxic case of downvoting?
I really like this idea, but I can’t tell whether I failed the test, I passed the test, or the article-selection for this test was bad.
I very much felt the “condemnation of the hated telecoms” (and a bit of victory-hope). I think this means I’ve failed the test.
It took no time to realize that I was reading a debate over a definition and its purpose. I think this means I’ve passed the test.
I feel like the above realization was trivial. I didn’t consciously think “I am reading a debate of definition. ” In the same way that, when I’m playing a scary game, I don’t think “I am playing a scary game.” I thought the whole point of the article was to emphasize a debate of definition, why said debate is happening, and what side “won”. I think this means that the article was a bad one for the purposes of this test (that is: using this article feels more like a test of reading comprehension than rationality).
Which is the most appropriate result?
(To reiterate, though, I think this idea is an awesome one.)
Edit: I also don’t think the article failed to give information on what the reason behind said definition-changing was:
The FCC was having this debate because Congress requires it to determine whether broadband is being deployed to Americans in a reasonable and timely fashion. The first step is determining what speeds allow for broadband access. Congress made it clear in the Telecommunications Act of 1996 that broadband isn’t the bare minimum needed to use the Internet. Instead, it is “advanced telecommunications capability” that “enable[s] users to originate and receive high-quality voice, data, graphics, and video telecommunications using any technology.”
Edit 2: Now THIS article doesn’t emphasize the point that it’s purely a matter of definition: http://arstechnica.com/business/2015/01/tons-of-att-and-verizon-customers-may-no-longer-have-broadband-tomorrow/ The article in the OP feels like “We’ve changed the definition of broadband to increase broadband access.” The above-linked article feels like “THEY’RE TAKING AWAY OUR BROADBAND!!!” Does this seem like a reasonable differentiation, or am I being biased?
Wait, IlyaShipitser—I think you overestimate my knowledge of the field of statistics. From what it sounds like, there’s an actual, quantitative difference between Bayesian and Frequentist methods. That is, in a given situation, the two will come to totally different results. Is this true?
I should have made it more clear that I don’t care about some abstract philosophical difference if said difference doesn’t mean there are different results (because those differences usually come down to a nonsensical distinction [à la free will]). I was under the impression that there is a claim that some interpretation of the philosophy will fruit different results—but I was missing it, because everything I’ve been introduced to seems to give the same answer.
Is it true that they’re different methods that actually give different answers?
Sorry, I didn’t mean to imply that probabilities only apply to the future. Probabilities apply only to uncertainty.
That is, given the same set of data, there should be no difference between event A happening, and you having to guess whether or not it happened, and event A not having happened yet—and you having to guess whether or not it will happen.
When you say “apply a probability to something,” I think:
“If one were to have to make a decision based on whether or not event A will happen, how would one consider the available data in making this decision?”
The only time event A happening matters is if it happening generated new data. In the Bob-Alice situation, Alice rolling a die in separate room gives zero information to Bob—so whether or not she already rolled it doesn’t matter. Here are a couple of different situations to illustrate:
A) Bob and Alice are in different rooms. Alice rolls the die and Bob has to guess the number she rolled. B) Bob has to guess the number that Alice’s die will roll. Alice then rolls the die. C) Bob watches alice roll the die, but did not see the outcome. Bob must guess the number rolled. D) Bob is a supercomputer which can factor in every infinitesimal fact about how Alice rolls the die, and the die itself upon seeing the roll. Bob-the-supercomputer watches Alice roll the die, but did not see the outcome.
In situations A, B, and C—whether or not Alice rolls the die before or after Bob’s guess is irrelevant. It doesn’t change anything about Bob’s decison. For all intents and purposes, the questions “What did Alice roll?” and “What will Alice roll?” are exactly the same question. That is: We assume the system is simple enough that rolling a fair die is always the same. In situation D, the questions are different because there’s different information available depending on whether or not Alice rolled already. That is, the assumption of a simple-system isn’t there because Bob is able to see the complexity of the situation and make the exact same kind of decision. Alice having actually rolled the dice does matter.
I don’t quite understand your “likely or not likely” question. To try to answer: If an event is likely to happen, then your uncertainty that it will happen is low. If it is not likely, then your uncertainty that it will happen is high.
(Sorry, I totally did not expect this reply to be so long.)
I’m having a hard time answering this question with “yes” or “no”:
The event in question is “Alice rolling a particular number on a 6-sided die.” Bob, not knowing what Alice rolled, can talk about the probabilities associated with rolling a fair die many times, and base whatever decision he has to make from this probability (assuming that she is, in fact, using a fair die). Depending on the assumed complexity of the system (does he know that this is a loaded die?), he could convolute a bunch of other probabilities together to increase the chances that his decision is accurate.
Yes… I guess?
(Or, are you referring to something like: If Alice rolled a 5, then there is a 100% chance she rolled a 5?)
A quantitative thing that indicates how likely it is for an event to happen.
I still don’t understand the apparently substantial difference between Frequentist and Bayesian reasoning. The subject was brought up again in a class I just attended—and I was still left with a distinct ”… those… those aren’t different things” feeling.
I am beginning to come to the conclusion that the whole “debate” is a case of Red vs. Blue nonsense. So far, whenever one tries to elaborate on a difference, it is done via some hypothetical anecdote, and said anecdote rarely amounts to anything outside of “Different people sometimes treat uncertainty differently in different situations, depending on the situation.” (Usually by having one’s preferred side make a very reasonable conclusion, and the other side make some absurd leap of psuedo-logic).
Furthermore, these two things hardly ever seem to have anything to do with the fundamental definition of probability, and have everything to do with the assumed simplicity of a given system.
I AM ANGRY
This ends up being somewhat circular then, doesn’t it?
Olbers’ paradox is only a paradox in an infinite, static universe. A fininte, expanding universe explains the night sky very well. One can’t use Olbers’ paradox to discredit the idea of an expanding universe when Olbers’ paradox depends on the universe being static.
Furthermore, upon re-reading MazeHatter’s “The way I see it is...” comment, Theory B does not put us at some objective center of reality. An intuitive way to think about it is: Imagine “space” being the surface of a balloon. Place dots on the surface of the balloon, and blow the balloon up. The distance between dots in all directions expands. One can arbitrarily consider one dot as the “center,” but that doesn’t change anything.
I’m beginning to think that MazeHatter’s comments do not warrant as much discussion as has taken place in this thread. =\
Trial-and-error.
There are, of course, inconsistencies that I’m unaware of: These are known unknowns. The idea, though, is that when I’m presented with a situation, any such relevant inconsistencies come up and are eliminated (either by a change of the foundation or a change of the judgement).
That is, inconsistencies that exist but don’t come up aren’t relevant.
An example—extreme but illustrative: Say an element of this foundational set is “I want to ‘treat everyone equally’”. I interview a Blue man for a job and, upon reflecting, think very negatively of him, even though he’s more qualified than others. When I review the interview as if I were a 3rd party [ignorant of any differences between Blue people and regular people], I come to the conclusion that the interview was actually pretty solid.
I now have a choice to make. Do I actually want to treat people equally? If so, then I must think differently of this Blue man, his Blue people, give him this job, and make a very conscious effort to incorperate Blue people into my “everybody” perception. This is a change in judgement. Or, maybe I don’t want to treat everyone equally—maybe I want to treat everyone who’s not Blue equally. This is a change in foundation (but this change in foundation would have to coincide with the other elements in the foundation-set; or those, too, would change).
But, until now, my perception of Blue people was irrelevant.
Perhaps it would have been best to say: The process by which I make moral decisions is built to maximize for consistency. A lot goes into this. everything from honing the ability to look at a situation as a 3rd party, to comparing a decision with decisions I’ve made in the past. As a result, there’s a very practiced part of me that immediately responds to nigh all situations with “Is this inconsistent?”
(An unrelated note: Are there things in this post I could have eliminated to get the same point across, but be more succint? I often feel as if my responses [in general] are too long.)
Haha, that’s what I do.
If my cost is $14.32, I know $1.43 is 10%, and half of that is about $0.71, so the tip’s $2.14 (though I tip 20%, which is even easier).
Yes and no. It’s a different experience—like taking a bath and going swimming.
Why is the Newcomb problem… such a problem? I’ve read analysis of it and everything, and still don’t understand why someone would two-box. To me, it comes down to:
1) Thinking you could fool an omniscient super-being 2) Preserving some strictly numerical ideal of “rationality”
Time-inconsistency and all these other things seem totally irrelevant.
I don’t understand why this comment is met with such opposition. Calories are the amount of energy a food contains. If you use more energy than you take in, then you have to lose weight [stored energy]. There’s literally no other way it could work.
The statement can even be further simplified to: