beetle

• beetle 12 Jul 2011 17:31 UTC

  −5 points

  on: Ein­stein’s Arrogance

  I am not sure what this post is supposed to communicate. People are generally far from being perfect Bayesian agents.

  ...you have to gather “evidence” to confirm it—to convince the scientific community, or justify saying that you believe in your hunch.

  Are there arguments against this heuristic that are applicable to real world circumstances?

• beetle 12 Jul 2011 16:14 UTC

  9 points

  on: Hav­ing Use­ful Conversations

  A category of conversations that is extremely useful is small talk:

  Small talk (phatic communication) is an idiomatic expression which denotes informal discourse not covering any functional topics of conversation or any transactions that need to be addressed. Such talk serves two primary functions. The first is to fill in the gaps during awkward silences during conversations. The second function is to generate interest in having a conversation and start engaging the other party in order to start a deeper level of conversation.

  Small talk helps to strengthen socially bonds. But it is also widely perceived to be a valuable pastime.

  I bring this up because I suspect that people here are already pretty good at having functional conversations relative to their proficiency level of starting conversations.

• beetle 9 Jul 2011 14:37 UTC

  11 points

  on: Guardian column on ugh fields, men­tions LW

  Hi, I found this place because of that Guardian article. Do you know who authored http://​​lesswrong.com/​​lw/​​21b/​​ugh_fields? It only reads [deleted], was the account of the author suspended for some reason? I might cite that article on a future occasion and want to give due credit. Thanks.