dbaupp

• dbauppNov 10, 2012, 10:50 PM

  4 points

  on: De­tect­ing Web baloney with your nose?

  There are a few other “crackpot indices” around. John Baez has a famous one, and Scott Aaronson has one in that vein (mostly specific to mathematics papers though).

• dbauppNov 8, 2012, 2:22 PM

  0 points

  in reply to: William_Quixote’s comment on: A place for ca­sual, non-karmic dis­cus­sion for less­wrongers?

  I agree with wedrifid, and would prefer that this doesn’t happen.

  One problem is comments are “non-local”, as long as they are above the bad-comment threshold, they appear in the recent comments. Allowing people to have stupid discussions freely will pollute the recent comments section (and this was actually one of the reasons for the recent implementation of the karma threshold).

  If LW supported marking some threads as “comments don’t appear in recent comments”, then it wouldn’t be such a problem, although there is also the risk that the low-quality will start overflowing into the rest of LW (maybe?).

• dbauppNov 8, 2012, 12:20 PM

  6 points

  in reply to: [deleted]’s comment on: Open Thread, Novem­ber 1-15, 2012

  What’s Stanton’s scale? Google only turned up references to measuring scales.

• dbauppNov 7, 2012, 10:11 PM

  9 points

  in reply to: gwern’s comment on: Open Thread, Novem­ber 1-15, 2012

  Their website suggests just a $5 monthly fee.

• dbauppNov 7, 2012, 10:11 PM

  2 points

  in reply to: palladias’s comment on: Open Thread, Novem­ber 1-15, 2012

  I’m unlikely to be betting against gambling addicts,

  Betting against US gambling addicts. There are gambling addicts all over the world.

• dbauppNov 6, 2012, 11:37 PM

  4 points

  in reply to: FAWS’s comment on: 2012 Less Wrong Cen­sus/​Survey

  And the anchoring effect of the random number changes.

• dbauppNov 6, 2012, 11:31 PM

  2 points

  in reply to: MixedNuts’s comment on: 2012 Less Wrong Cen­sus/​Survey

  That’s not such a rigorous answer:

  Imagine you have a random sample with n observations x_1, …, x_n, independently and identically distributed according to some distribution with mean mu and variance s^2.

  The sample mean is sum(x_i)/n (the expected value is mu as one would hope). Doing some manipulations we find that this has variance s^2/n, i.e. a large n means a small variance, so larger samples are more tightly clustered around mu.

• dbauppNov 6, 2012, 11:20 PM

  0 points

  in reply to: Kawoomba’s comment on: 2012 Less Wrong Cen­sus/​Survey

  I think using a random number gives samples with low- and high-anchoring, and statistical trickery allows them to distinguish, especially since the sample size will be relatively large. (One way would be: group the samples based on random number (e.g. 0-333, 333-666, 666-999), then do a standard ANOVA with those groups as the factors.)

• dbauppNov 5, 2012, 9:30 AM

  0 points

  in reply to: woodside’s comment on: Vot­ing is like donat­ing thou­sands of dol­lars to charity

  What evidence is there that voluntary voting doesn’t just add noise to the selection process?

  That’s a serious question: voluntary voting means that a higher percentage of the voters are in a blue-vs-green mindset (since they are more likely to vote than someone who has weak preferences), while compulsory voting gives a more accurate picture of the feelings of the entire population, even if that involves people who donkey-vote etc.

  (That’s not to say your point isn’t valid, just that the sword cuts both ways.)

  What links here?

  • wedrifid's comment on Vot­ing is like donat­ing thou­sands of dol­lars to charity by Academian (Nov 5, 2012, 12:51 PM; 0 points)

• dbauppNov 2, 2012, 5:29 PM

  2 points

  in reply to: DaFranker’s comment on: Teach­ing English in Shanghai

  Given the (apparent) desire for Shanghaiese to keep it secret, wouldn’t an at-home method of learning English (e.g. over Skype) be perfect?

• dbauppNov 2, 2012, 5:25 PM

  0 points

  in reply to: FiftyTwo’s comment on: Novem­ber 2012 Me­dia Thread

  (You’ve got the last link backwards.)

• dbauppOct 21, 2012, 10:22 AM

  4 points

  in reply to: NancyLebovitz’s comment on: 2012 Less Wrong Cen­sus Sur­vey: Call For Cri­tiques/​Questions

  For unusual characters, googling some sort of vague description and then copy-pasting from one of the first 5 results often works, e.g. ‘e accent’ or (as a purely contrived example) an eth (ð).

  Or you can use a site like this which allows you to draw the character and then copy paste.

• dbauppOct 19, 2012, 6:43 PM

  5 points

  in reply to: VincenzoLingley’s comment on: 2012 Less Wrong Cen­sus Sur­vey: Call For Cri­tiques/​Questions

  A third solution would be to ask everyone to round to the nearest 5, 10, 50 (etc.) when answering.

• dbauppOct 19, 2012, 4:26 PM

  4 points

  in reply to: thomblake’s comment on: 2012 Less Wrong Cen­sus Sur­vey: Call For Cri­tiques/​Questions

  Why bother having Asian (East Asian) instead of just East Asian etc? (Especially since the ethnic groups you list aren’t globally considered “Asian”, e.g. I don’t think pacific islanders describe themselves as part of Asia.)

• dbauppOct 12, 2012, 8:00 AM

  20 points

  on: LessWrong, can you help me find an ar­ti­cle I read a few months ago, I think here?

  Just a heads up, this sort of question is better suited to an open thread. :)

• dbauppOct 9, 2012, 10:06 PM

  2 points

  on: com­ment to dude

  (Is this in the wrong place?)

• dbauppOct 9, 2012, 8:38 AM

  0 points

  in reply to: Kawoomba’s comment on: Open Thread, Oc­to­ber 1-15, 2012

  Just for reference: this has been pointed out at least once before, and I believe there was a (temporary) fix implemented (but I can’t find any reference to it at the moment).

  But that was almost a year ago now, so it’s good to bring it up again.

• dbauppSep 24, 2012, 2:34 PM

  22 points

  on: Is xkcd “Think Log­i­cally” talk­ing about this site?

  LW isn’t the only group of people who talk about being “rational” and avoiding biases. It would be a little arrogant to think that LW was being specifically targeted.

  (And anyway, I would hope that LW-style rationalism would understand the reason why chess’s rules are like that. The “rationality” displayed in the comic is a straw-vulcan.)

• dbauppSep 20, 2012, 7:16 AM

  7 points

  in reply to: Vaniver’s comment on: Open Thread, Septem­ber 15-30, 2012

  Woah, woah, woah!

  Polls! And even with graphs! Tricycle is awesome!

• dbauppSep 17, 2012, 5:53 PM

  0 points

  in reply to: yli’s comment on: Call for Anony­mous Nar­ra­tives by LW Women and Ques­tion Pro­pos­als (AMA)

  If you add .votes to that selector, then you also hide the points on comments and posts. I.e.

  @-moz-document domain("lesswrong.com″) {
    span.label, span.score, span.monthly-score, .votes {
      display:none !important;
    }
  }