MasterGrape

Karma: 10

MasterGrape 21 Sep 2010 7:36 UTC
0 points
in reply to: Emile’s comment on: Where are we?
I live near Carcassonne

MasterGrape 6 Apr 2009 14:00 UTC
2 points
in reply to: infotropism’s comment on: Off-Topic Discussion Thread: April 2009
We want you to feel comfortable. Maybe we’ll start yet another thread for off-topic Creepy chatting. All the subjects you dare not discuss outside the halls of Miskatonic University.

.. I think you chat about anything. That’s what makes it chat. Here’s something I found interesting, the new PS3 firmware update is going to revolutionize the PS3 by including text chat. . . . a technology that has been readily available on computers since the 1990′s. http://blog.us.playstation.com/2009/04/01/ps3-firmware-v270-update/

This is supposed to be a next gen system. It costs lots of money. And it is just incorporating chat… and that chat is textual? In case you want to plug in a keyboard and pretend it’s the nineties. They even used a video to explain the update. ugh.

MasterGrape 6 Apr 2009 13:53 UTC
2 points
in reply to: pwno’s comment on: Off-Topic Discussion Thread: April 2009
Interesting. Is there a pejorative connotation to being cynical that rationalists know of? Does that just mean they’re really critical? Does it mean I’m hyper-critical?! I may be.

It’s definitely true that the wine world is swamped with people that excessively favor tradition. It can impede progress or any kind of logical discourse at times.

MasterGrape 5 Apr 2009 19:36 UTC
3 points
on: Off-Topic Discussion Thread: April 2009
I live in France where I make wine. I travel a lot to talk about and sell the wine. I have a blog where I write about wine. … It’s nice to come here and think about things that have nothing to do with wine.

I also come here to detox after having frustrating conversations with wine idiots and whatnot. My most recent detox was after a series of comments on my aforementioned blog which the masochists amongst you can read at http://mastergrape.com/blog/?p=270

MasterGrape 4 Apr 2009 8:57 UTC
2 points
on: Aumann voting; or, How to vote when you’re ignorant
Is your advocacy to vote in order to cancel out mindless voters? Or does the heuristic promote voting to cancel out the mindless in general?

I ask because I don’t think you can generally distinguish between voting idiots and non-voting idiots in a secret ballot system.

Imagine a less publicized election with low turnout. If the pro biotechnology group votes more rigorously, they might actually have more mindlessly pro-science voters because a large number of anti-science voters stayed home.

If the heuristic dictates voting against idiots in general, then it falls to the aforementioned “reversed stupidity is not intelligence”. If the heuristic dictates voting against voting idiots, then you need to have good assumptions about which idiots vote and which idiots stay home. And that’s virtually unattainable knowledge.

MasterGrape 4 Apr 2009 8:22 UTC
4 points
in reply to: thomblake’s comment on: Aumann voting; or, How to vote when you’re ignorant
Is the problem here our inclination to interpret the number of points or karma as a rating in and of itself? As I understand it, that is just a tally of the upvotes and downvotes.

A 20 isn’t four times as correct as a 5. It isn’t even necessarily perceived as correct by four times as many people since the total number of votes might be larger for the 5 than for the 20.

So if we see a comment rated 20 and think it’s more like a 5, we need to correct our thinking. Because this rating is not a ²⁰⁄₂₀ or some other percentage. The difference between 5 and 20 isn’t necessarily qualitative. Does that make sense?

MasterGrape 9 Mar 2009 10:05 UTC
3 points
in reply to: Yasser_Elassal’s comment on: Lies and Secrets
I’m glad I took the time to read all the way to the bottom because this is exactly what I wanted to point out.

If the Carpenter must act to misinform, then the Carpenter is busy. If the Carpenter can withhold information effortlessly, then he is free to do something else. The opportunity cost of lying might account for some of the pro-omission rationalization.

Then again, we’re not surrounded by so many opportunities in the real world, are we?

But we might consider that this is specifically a conversation about revealing painful truths. Like in a world where the walrus really would be hurt if he found out pigs had wings. Let’s say a person can only tell so many painful truths before they lose the ability to affect an individual (or any individual in the same network). If you go around explaining to all your friends how each of them is less than perfect, they might end your friendship (or at least ignore you). So the Carpenter might realize he wants to save his painful truth for a more important truth where the revelation will be important enough to him to offset the change in their relationship.