I apologize for the language, but I felt it needed to be said & I don’t know a nicer way.
I’ve expanded on this in the current survey thread.
jdgalt
Karma: 56
Bosh. I don’t care how smart Omega thinks he is; if he claims to be a perfect predictor, I challenge him to some poker. ’Cause there can be no such animal.
Did that.
Re. relationships: The only people I’ve heard use “polyamorous” are referring to committed, marriage-like relationships involving more than two adults. There ought to be a category for those of us who don’t want exclusivity with any number.
I’ve left most of the probability questions blank, because I don’t think it is meaningfully possible to assign numbers to events I have little or no quantitative information about. For instance, I’ll try P(Aliens) when we’ve looked at several thousand planets closely enough to be reasonably sure of answers about them.
In addition, I don’t think some of the questions can have meaningful answers. For example, the “Many Worlds” interpretation of quantum mechanics, if true, would have no testable (falsifiable) effect on the observable universe, and therefore I consider the question to be objectively meaningless. The same goes for P(Simulation), and probably P(God).
P(religion) also suffers from vagueness: what conditions would satisfy it? Not only are some religions vaguely defined, but there are many belief systems that are arguably relgions or not religions. Buddhism? Communism? Atheism?
The singularity is vague, too. (And as I usually hear it described, I would see it as a catastrophe if it happened. The SF story “With Folded Hands” explains why.)
Extra credit items:
Great Stagnation—I believe that the rich world’s economy IS in a great stagnation that has lasted for most of a century, but NOT for the reasons Cowen and Thiel suggest. The stagnation is because of “progressive” politics, especially both the welfare state and overregulation/nanny-statism, which destroy most people’s opportunities to innovate and profit by it. This is not a trivial matter, but a problem quite comparable to those listed in the “catastrophe” section, and one which may very well prevent a solution to a real catastrophe if we become headed for one. (Both parties’ constant practice of campaigning-by-inventing-a-new-phony-emergency-every-month makes the problem worse, too: most rational people now dismiss any cry of alarm as the boy who cried wolf. Certainly the environmental movement, including its best known “scientists”, have discredited themselves this way.) This is why the struggle for liberty is so critical.
It seems to me that some of LW’s attempts to avoid “a priori” reasoning have tripped up right at their initial premises, by assuming as premises propositions of the form “The probability of possible-fact X is y%.” (LW’s annual survey repeatedly insists that readers make this mistake, too.)
I may have a guess about whether X is true; I may even be willing to give or accept odds on one or both sides of the question; but that is not the same thing as being able to assign a probability. For that you need conditions (such as where X is the outcome of a die roll or coin toss) where there’s a basis for assigning the number. Otherwise the right answer to most questions of “How likely is X?” (where we don’t know for certain whether X is true) will be some vague expression (“It could be true, but I doubt it”) or simply “I don’t know.”
The same holds true for all regulations that increase the cost of employing people. European countries, which combine rules such as France’s 32-hour work week and Germany’s 6 weeks of paid vacation per year with rules that make it very difficult and time-consuming to get rid of an employee (whether for cause or because your industry is in a slump), have made labor there so expensive that those countries have much higher “structural” unemployment rates than the US. (“Structural” being political economist speak for an “irreducible minimum”, at least so long as the policy makers are unwilling to consider changing the laws that caused it.) European pundits are starting to call these laws what they are—old people voting themselves job security at the expense of their children.
The US is in the depression it is precisely because those regulatory and tax burdens are growing faster here than they have in 40 years—mostly behind closed doors, though Obamacare is playing its part. I largely blame the green movement, because they (or some of them) are the only people besides Middle East terrorists who will actually admit they want us no longer to be a wealthy country. Still, they seem to command a huge legion of dupes, who I hope can be awakened to the fact that this causation exists and do something to stop it.
This seems like another “angels dancing on the head of a pin” question. I am not willing to assign numerical probabilities to any statement whose truth value is unknown, unless there is a compelling reason to choose that specific number (such as, the question is about a predictable process such as the result of a die roll). It seems to me that people who do so assign, are much more likely to get basic problems of probability theory (such as the Monty Hall problem) wrong than those who resist the urge.
I believe it is silly to even try to assign a numerical probability to any event unless you can rigorously derive that number from antecedent circumstances or events (for instance, it can make sense if you are talking about scenarios involving the results of dice rolls). Thus I find the questions in LW’s annual survey which demand such numbers annoying and pointless.
As for the errors in predictions of the time or money it will take to build some promised project, there’s no mystery; the individuals making those predictions stand to gain substantial money or prestige if the predictions are believed, so they lie (or at least make the rosiest predictions they expect to get away with making). This especially goes for politicians, who have all the more incentive to lie because the law gives them absolute immunity (from, for example, being sued for fraud) for anything they say during legislative debate.
The way to get reliable data about these things is to create incentives that make it in someone’s best interest to gather and share that reliable data. For most projects, the simplest and easiest way to do this is to have those who want the project built commission it using their own money, rather than do it through the political system.
I stopped reading at point two, which is not only obvious hogwash but has been used over and over again to rationalize (after the fact) stupid decisions throughout history.
There are in fact some possible good reasons to make irrational decisions (for instance, see Hofstadter’s discussion of the Prisoner’s Dilemma in Metamagical Themas). But the mere fact that an irrational decision in the past produced a good actual outcome does not change the fact that it was irrational, and therefore presumably stupid. One can only decide using the information available at the time. There is no alternative; not to decide is to decide on a default.
Whether the many-worlds hypothesis is true, false, or meaningless (and I believe it’s meaningless precisely because all branches you’re not on are forever inaccessible/unobservable), the concept of a universe being observable has more potential states than true and false.
Consider our own universe as it’s most widely understood to be. Each person can only observe (past) or affect (future) events within his light cone. All others are forever out of reach. (I know, it may turn out that QM makes this not true, but I’m not going there right now.) Thus you might say that no two people inhabit exactly the same universe, but each his own, though with a lot of overlap.
Time travel, depending on how it works (if it does), may or may not alter this picture much. Robert Forward’s Timemaster gives an example of one possible way that does not require a many-worlds model, but in which time “loops” have the effect of changing the laws of statistics. I especially like this because it provides a way to determine by experiment whether or not the universe does work that way, even though in some uses of the words it abolishes cause and effect.
Boredom is far from the only bad reason that some journals refuse some submissions. Every person in the chain of publication, and that of peer review, must be assumed at least biased and potentially dishonest. Therefore “science” can never be defined by just one database or journal, or even a fixed set of either. Excluded people must always be free to start their own, and their results judged on the processes that produced them. Otherwise whoever is doing the excluding is not to be trusted as an editor.
I hasten to add that this kind of bias exists among all sides and parties.
I predict that in 2012:
The Republicans will nominate someone for President whose voting record has been to increase spending (that is, someone other than Ron Paul and Gary Johnson). As a result, the “Tea Party” vote will split itself between the Republican and Libertarian nominees, and President Obama will be reelected.
Congress will remain split close to 50-50 -- close enough that neither party will have a veto- or filibuster-proof majority in both houses. However, the most extreme members of both parties will be successfully defeated by targeted campaigns, thus toning down some of the rhetoric if not the feelings that underlie it.
The Euro will fall apart, but the EU as a whole will not.
Banks in both Europe and America will continue to successfully resist demands that their balance sheets reflect the worthlessness of large parts of their asset totals (mortgages here, government bonds in EU countries), because that would force governments to shut them down as insolvent and pay out huge amounts in insurance claims.
As a corollary, foreclosure activity will continue to be very slow, and government will continue to grant various kinds of relief to homeowners trying to forestall it. Result: there will be few or no housing starts in the US, and in fact, we will probably see a new federal program to buy up and demolish many of the “surplus” houses the banks are now holding.
The Supreme Court will uphold ObamaCare. Meanwhile, Congress will pass a half-baked “repeal” bill which leaves intact enough of the unsustainable parts of ObamaCare (especially the requirement that insurers accept anyone, regardless of pre-existing conditions) that the private health-insurance industry will be entirely or mostly destroyed.
There will be a major war, starting in the Middle East. Israel will lose (75%). China will probably join in on the radical-Muslim side. Iran will try to use its nukes but they will be duds. Israel will not use theirs. The US will send aid but will not directly engage Israel’s enemies. Japan will join in on Israel’s side after the radicals sink oil tankers on the way to Japan. The Russians will sit this one out. Turkey may or may not take part, but if they do it will be against Israel.
I’ll bite: how am I supposed to judge (or predict) the usefulness of facts when I first see them, in time to avoid storing the useless ones?
I think the closest we get to this is that every time we remember something, we also edit that memory, thus (if we are rational enough) tossing out the useless or unreliable parts or at least flagging them as such. If this faculty worked better I might find it a convincing argument for “intelligent design,” but the real thing, like so much else in human beings, is so haphazard that it reinforces my lack of belief in that idea.
There’s also the subjectivism of taste, sometimes known as consumer sovereignty (the idea, from David Friedman’s The Machinery of Freedom, that a person’s own good is defined as whatever he says it is). Not believing in that leads to outbreaks of senseless and counterproductive nannyism, whether carried out alone or with the help of authorities.
Isn’t pure mathematics a counterexample?
Or at least, that at some point, if you want to improve your lot, you need to leave off thinking long enough to build, buy, or improve some gadget or agreement that will actually help. Labor-saving tech really does equal progress.
I don’t know what you mean by “science can’t think of anything better”.
I’m simply using the standard that a statement is objectively meaningful if it states some alleged objective fact.
I reject the notion of hidden variables (except possibly the core of oneself, the existence of the ego) as un-Bayesian. With that one potential exception, all objective facts are testable, at least in principle (though some may be impractical to test).
I fail to see how one can be rational and not believe that. I’m not saying this to insult, but to get an explanation of what you think I’ve overlooked.
I can’t make sense of your reply. The first “sentence” isn’t a sentence or even coherent.
But perhaps I myself could have been clearer by saying: The instant there’s a split, all branches except the one you’re in effectively cease to exist, forever. Does that help?
It seems to me that even a completely unprejudiced person in Bob’s shoes may very well rationally decide that it’s not worth the trouble to try to understand Alice’s problem. Indeed, I’ve yet to be convinced that empathy is worth the effort required to achieve it in more than a handful of cases.
When this sort of thing has happened to me, I’ve said more or less “I’ll be here if you decide you want my help with whatever it is,” and then turned my back. It seemed to me, then and now, that any other response would have been a complete waste of time and effort.
I gave a low probability, not because I don’t think that reviving people is possible, or discoverable soon, but because I see some political trends today that I think are very likely to result in mobs destroying the facilities before we can be revived. (And even if that doesn’t happen, sooner or later some country is going to use nanotech in military ways, which—if the human race survives—may well result in the entire field being either banned or classified and staying that way.)
But I’m signed up, because it’s a bet I can’t lose.
If it were a case like you describe (two competing products in a store), I would have to guess, and thus would have to try to think of some “upstream” questions and guess those, too. Not impossible, but unlikely to unearth worthwhile information. For questions as remote as P(aliens), I don’t see a reason to bother.
Have you seen David Friedman’s discussion of rational voter ignorance in The Machinery of Freedom?