Why the answer is different: Because 1.C asks what are expectations are, and 1.B asks what the state of the class is
For b) and c), the questions were supposed to be the same—my bad, I have edited it. Please edit your answer accordingly.
Not all of your answers were correct (unsurprisingly, because I find some of the questions extremely hard—even I couldn’t answer them at first :D). I’ll wait for a few more replies and then I’ll post the correct answers plus explanations.
I meant to say, a close match to what the person said. And I’m not entirely confident that 2 makes sense, I’d like to clarify something but that would give out the answer. Please tell me of the other questions you don’t understand.
9 months ago, I designed something like a rationality test (as in biological rationality, although parts of it depend on prior knowledge of concepts like expected value). I’ll copy it here, I’m curious whether all my questions will get answered correctly. Some of the questions might be logically invalid, please tell me if they are and explain your arguments (I didn’t intend any question to be logically invalid). Also, certain bits might be vague—if you don’t understand it, it’s likely that it’s my fault. Feel free to skip any amount of questions and selectively answer only the ones you like the most. Needless to say, I’m not a psychometrician and I can’t guarantee the correlation between someone’s rationality and his answers to this test.
1: Assume that exactly 10% of the people in the world are left-handed. Also assume that there are absolutely no differences between left-handed and right-handed people (so that the only groups of people where the expected percentage of left-handers is different from 10% are ones where membership explicitly depends on handedness). For these examples, we are looking at a randomly picked class of 24 students from a randomly chosen school. Note: all the examples are independent and in no particular order.
a) If we randomly pick three students—turns out that all of them are left-handed—do we still expect the average number of left-handers among the remaining 21 students to be 10%?
b) We count 10 right-handers (assuming that we managed to find at least 10 right-handers—if we didn’t, we would have changed the group). Among the remaining 14 students, is the average number of left-handers still 10%?
c) We randomly count 10 students. Turns out that all of them are right-handed. Is the average number of left-handers for the rest of the class still 10%? If your answer to this question was different from your answer to b), please explain why was this the case.
d) You happen to know one of the students in this class. You met him one day from a meeting, which was attended by all of the students from three of the classes in the school (out of 13 classes, each class has 24 students) - on that meeting, you randomly picked a left-handed person, out of all the left-handers who were there. Does this fact mean that the average number of left-handers in the remaining 23 students is different from 10%?
e) Out of all the left-handers in the world (about 700 million), you pick one at random. He happens to be from that class. Does this affect the average number of left-handers out of the remaining 23 people? (note that even very low changes in probability count as changes)
2: You are in Bulgaria. The number plates there always have four random numbers from 0 to 9. A person next to you claims to have psychic abilities and he says that the next car that you’ll come across will have the number 1337. The next car you come across has the number 1307. You are amazed by this and think that he might have real powers. He was very close to the actual number—what is the probability for someone to guess a number as close as he did, if we assume that he only made a guess?
3: Assume that A and B are psychological factors, both significantly correlated with school grades. It’s still possible (but unlikely) to have a good grades with a low score on either of them, or even both of them. Also we assume that A and B are totally uncorrelated, and that the only criteria for acceptance in a university is grades. a) If you are in a university of average quality (with correspondingly average requirements for grades), and you aim to find people who score as high on A as possible, is it a good strategy to place higher priority on people who score as high on B as possible, or should they score as low as possible? Why? b) Does your answer to a) change if the university is of low quality? What if it’s of high quality? If yes, why?
4: You have to pick between a certain profit of 10$ or 35% chance of winning 30$. Assume you already are financially stable and have a lot of money. Which is the correct choice, if you want to have as much money as possible?? Why?
I’ve heard that it’s often a fraud and that it usually comes at the cost of reduced reading comprehension. But I have no actual experience with it.
Don’t sweat about karma, it’s there mostly for feedback and filtering, not as a judgment tool.
I didn’t get this. Isn’t it that people should vote down everything they disagree with?
If you define “rational” as “those who understand what I mean, rather than what I say, and agree with me”, then no, you have not.
Maybe you’re right, I can’t possibly judge how did it look like when read from a different person. Mental contamination.
Famous last words...
Would you still say that if I said “it’s 15:00 here, therefore it’s not night—this contradicts your claim that it’s night here, I can’t possibly be biased here”? Because I said something of similar probability, and by “can’t possibly”, I obviously didn’t mean “100% confidence”, because that would be an oxymoron (I can’t have 100% confidence). I expected you to point at some of my statements and claim them to be wrong, that would help me to reach your conclusion, if it’s any different from mine.
Unfortunately, it’s not as simple as that. My sister (yes, I was talking about her all this time) is so prejudiced against me, she even thinks I’m physically weak (despite that I’m not just average, I’m well above the average and I even receive compliments for that; also, my lifts are significantly above the average, according to some papers I saw).
I’ve contradicted her so many times, she didn’t bother to change her opinion. Not only that, but I’ve met a few of her friends who reacted like “wow, you’re either an entirely different person, or your sister outright lied me about you”, but I haven’t done it recently and they might have not expressed this opinion loud enough.
I can’t understand how this is a popular post, giving the number of assumptions you made.
First, I don’t have a brother. In my analogue of the situation, I’m kind to that person and he isn’t kind to me. I never did anything bad to him (and I don’t do bad things to people, by the way). But this is irrelevant, because the point here is to change the mind of someone you know who didn’t change his opinion when the subject of that opinion has changed a lot.
Re your friend: “Change him to be like you” seems like a bad idea in general
By “like you”, I meant in respect of skepticism. Isn’t that the whole point of the community, to make other people more rational? Isn’t that the whole point of popularizing skepticism? Of course I didn’t mean to make him a person more like me, I thought this is so obvious that it’s implicit.
“One of your friends is very deeply religious” is not necessarily a bad thing if this friend is also happy being religious.
The same person is the best (out of the people I’ve seen) programmer in the whole 1st year in my uni. He has a huge potential and he’s wasting it. He prays 5 times per day, each taking about 30 minutes. And he does all this, because he is rigorously following what seems to be the best idea, according to his information—to be religious. Indeed, he is one of the most rational people I know. Isn’t that a good thing?
“You have a friendly new acquaintance of about average intelligence”—that sounds pretty condescending. Are you sure that you are smarter?
Okay, I used that to illustrate a person who is pretty much an average person, because personality matters a lot here. You’re right that it sounds doesn’t sound like what I meant and I have edited it. When I was writing it, I was very sleep deprived and I probably have other ambiguities.
Is that what I got the negative karma for? When I saw it at first, I thought I have said something wrong. But the karma on your post suggests that many people were thinking the same as you. Is it that the majority of LessWrong thinks that it’s bad to change someone’s mind even when it’s only for his own good?
It seems that my opinion of LessWrong was very optimistic. It saddens me to think that probably I have not found the community of people who are actually rational, unlike the rest of the world. I can’t possibly be biased here, because half of my counterarguments don’t include significant judgments, but plain facts (2 and 3 include judgments, but the judgment part is so insignificant that I’m only saying this out of perfectionism). Any counter-counterarguments are welcome, I would be happy to see myself proven wrong here.
Edit: I have edited my original post. It did indeed sound like I’m a dark lord on the mission to bind people to his will and be like you, their opinions doesn’t matter, etc.. Instead of a rationalist striving for a better world with less delusion and wasted resources.
Also, I forgot to say again how much I dislike it when people make assumptions about what I said. I didn’t write “your brother” because I have a brother, but because I wanted to more accurately describe the template (but this doesn’t mean that real life situations should be more similar to that example situation, I have only wanted the template to be closer to what I originally thought).
However, we assume that the social interaction itself isn’t enough to justify my ticket. Let’s say it’s just a warm greeting and a short small talk with someone I find sympathetic, but probably won’t play a decisive role in my future. And I’m buying the ticket, because I rationally know that I might win the lottery (despite that I find it so unlikely that I don’t actually expect it). I have only included the social interaction to offset the wasted time.
I’m still not convinced that I shouldn’t buy lottery tickets.
Assume a hypothetical situation. There’s a lottery right next to where I study/work. Also, I realize how silly it is to actually expect to win the lottery after buying a lottery ticket, so I can’t use this as a source of positive emotions, even if I want to. However, buying lottery tickets let me engage in certain social situations, which just barely outweigh the time wasted for them (but not the money) - alternatively, you can instead assume that it takes me 0 seconds to buy a ticket and later to check if I won.
I reckon this question has already been answered, therefore links are a completely acceptable response.
Also, I’d never buy a lottery ticket. It’s because of expected value. However, I’m still trying to solidly prove that decision-wise, expected value is equivalent to predicted reality (of course, after uncertainty is taken into account).
Registered a few days ago, now trying to run the course, but for some reason it’s not working.
Edit: working now.
My Skype is velizar.hristov, my Facebook is Velizar Hristov (I’m in the LW group), my email is 8lackened(at)gmail(dоt)com. I’ll be happy to get contacted by anyone from LessWrong. I don’t know why I didn’t give them in my earlier post.
Also, don’t worry about keeping any social rules, for which there is no rational reason to exist. I saw there was a thread indicating a high number of aspies among rationalists. I might even have some interesting information to share about Asperger Syndrome.
I’m looking to exchange Skype or equivalent with fellow rationalists. It’s very hard to find rationalists in real life. My purpose is mainly to exchange information (apparently many of my questions aren’t Google-able), but also to try out certain psychological tests/questions (many of them are invented by me) and see how well they score, to test my hypotheses.
I didn’t give information on how much priority did I put on the author’s religion, but it’s relatively low, because I’ve seen some quite rational religious people. Also I’m not sure about the significance of the correlation between
The issue I have with the author’s religion isn’t about the fact that his religion might prevent him from accepting certain bits of knowledge. It’s because he believes in religion in the first place—this had negative implications on his personality - I’m talking mostly about Keith Stanovich’s dysrationalia, but it also says that he isn’t a strict follower of the scientific approach. Truly, he’s born in 1900 when that wasn’t so popular, but the fact still remains.
Shortly, because if someone believes in a single incorrect thing (also a quite big one that can’t be overlooked), it increases the probability of him believing in other incorrect things.
The long explanation is that if the author believes in religion (something that’s wrong—I know I might be wrong about it, but for reasons too long and irrelevant to write, I act as if I was certain that God doesn’t exist), not only that he had tens of years of exposure to information and that didn’t change his mind about it, but he actually believed in religion in the first place—following a conclusion from premises that don’t lead to that conclusion. This is a (not necessarily strong) counter-indicator of ability to perceive the truth (I’m not sure if “critical thinking” is a synonym to that). Although it is entirely possible that he is in fact absolutely right, the expected outcome (I can’t explain “expected outcome”, I even started a thread on that—I trust on the reader to know what is it, otherwise the debate usually cannot happen) is that he is more likely to have flaws. Especially in a subject where he might follow anecdotal evidence and neglect the importance of scientific approach (some subjects might be more intuitive).
Of course, if I’ve read the book, all the information about the author becomes irrelevant, because it only serves to predict the content of the book. However, reading the book requires many hours (especially in my case—I currently desperately need time, and I tend to be inefficient in it, even when I’m not procrastinating).
P.S. Sorry if you can’t understand how I use expected value to get to that conclusion, I just cannot explain it intuitively and I even (small) doubts about the validity of that approach, because I’m yet to see evidence of it.
I got the point, no need to explain it. The only think I didn’t know is that there is actually a way to post my question besides starting a new thread in Discussion, all the rest is obvious enough. I think this information should be included in the Welcome thread.
Sorry, I don’t know how Discussion works and I still don’t know why I got negged. Is there an explanation to what is the Open Thread for and what not, and what is and isn’t for Discussion?
Am I right to assume that the Open Thread is for any post that seems not big enough to deserve a whole separate thread?
I’m not sure I got what you’re saying. That low-level psychological mechanisms always participate in more than a single process? I don’t see what’s wrong with that. Or that there are several low-level mechanisms for that process, I still don’t see anything wrong with that. Also, by “low-level”, I mean “as low-level as I can get while still efficiently understanding and applying everything”, so probably no neurology.
This is the case I meant to (at least one that would be very close to what someone would use in real life). The point is to choose your own criteria for the example situation to determine whether that person is a real magician.
I know, but in real life, left-handers can be a subject of stereotyping and discrimination. So I wanted to omit factors like those, like everyone does in such questions. I could have said that some have gene A and others have gene B and only you can identify people and nobody else cares about it, because it has no effect on anything, but handedness seemed more intuitive to me, for this already quite abstract question.
The problem only uses classes that have ten or more right-handers. I have edited this in the description.
I have clarified that. I don’t know why did I include this item, because it sort of duplicates a).
I have edited it to “randomly picked a left-handed person, out of all the left-handers who were there”.
Why not? The original was with IQ and concentration, but someone took it literally, so I decided to rename it. As far as I know, they + conscientiousness are all correlated with academic success, but not correlated with each other. Also, intelligence and social abilities are both correlated with social success.
What do you mean? There are no taxes in either case.
I think it’s fine this way and I can’t think of another way to word it. English isn’t my first language.