TGM

Karma: 163

TGM 29 Sep 2013 18:08 UTC
3 points
in reply to: Giles’s comment on: The Bias You Didn’t Expect
That people buy more, less healthy food when they are hungry is pretty well backed up, I understand. (Googling gives this right away)

Your suggestion has a possible “remembering just how good my favourite unhealthy food tastes” counter-effect.

My experience is that how food tastes changes massively depending on my hunger, so you need to bear in mind that “how good my favourite food tastes” will likely be “not very” when you’ve just eaten.

For example, I play sport for about 3 hours on Sundays, and immediately after (before leaving the pitches) I drink a litre of milk, mixed with milk powder (to make double strength milk), mixed with chocolate Ovaltine powder. It tastes great to me at that point in time. I tried it before a practise once, and it was just awful.

TGM 18 Aug 2013 22:42 UTC
7 points
0
in reply to: AndHisHorse’s comment on: Humans are utility monsters

All agents are considered equal,

If I contract a neurodegenerative illness, which will gradually reduce my cognitive function, until I end up in a vegetative state, do I retain agent-ness throughout, or at some point lose equal footing with healthy me in one go? Neither seems a good description of my slow slide from fully human to vegetable.

with their individual utility units converted to some social standard. For example, Agent Alpha receives 100 Alpha-Utils from the average day, where Agent Beta receives 200 Beta-Utils from the average day. Both of these are converted into Society-Utils—let’s say 10 Society-Utils—making an exchange rate of 10 Alpha:Society and 20 Beta:Society.

What is an “average day”? My average day probably has greater utility than that of a captive of a sadistic gang...

TGM 18 Aug 2013 22:29 UTC
1 point
in reply to: Jiro’s comment on: Humans are utility monsters
I want to criticise either the idea that diminishing returns is important, or, at least, that dollar values make sense for talking about them.

Suppose we have a monster who likes to eat. Each serving of food is just as tasty as the previous, but he still gets diminishing returns on the dollar, because the marginal cost of the servings goes up.

We also have nematodes, who like to eat, but not as much. They never get a look in, because as the monster eats, they also suffer diminished utilons per dollar.

So the monster is serving the ‘purpose’ of the utility monster, but still has diminishing returns on the dollar. If we redefine diminishing returns to be on something else, I’m not sure it could be well justified or immune to this issue.

And, although humans are not an example of this sort of monster, the human race certainly is.

TGM 5 May 2013 23:05 UTC
2 points
in reply to: RomeoStevens’s comment on: Health/Longevity Link List
Do you have a more original source. I’ve heard about this, and would be interested to know if/how a causal link was established between flossing and heart disease

TGM 18 Feb 2013 20:38 UTC
13 points
0
on: Imitation is the Sincerest Form of Argument
A concern regarding this kind of test when applied to groups (Christians vs Atheists, for instance) rather than individuals is that one umbrella term may take more views than another, making the guessing game more/less tricky.

Nevertheless, this is a neat idea, particularly for particular people rather than groups as a whole.

TGM 13 Sep 2012 22:35 UTC
2 points
in reply to: gwern’s comment on: Random LW-parodying Statement Generator
At the time of writing, it had more upvotes than the OP… surely that’s not right?

TGM 13 Sep 2012 22:32 UTC
6 points
on: Random LW-parodying Statement Generator
The affective death spiral is isomorphic to this thread.

TGM 13 Sep 2012 22:30 UTC
5 points
on: Random LW-parodying Statement Generator

The map is the mind-killer

Seems Legit

TGM 8 Sep 2012 14:51 UTC
3 points
in reply to: [deleted]’s comment on: How to deal with someone in a LessWrong meeting being creepy
Mindkiller Alert!

The yield of a tax at 0% is 0. The yield of tax at 100% is also close to zero, as nobody will do anything to earn money that will be taxed at 100% (i.e. ensure all earnings dodge that tax). Therefore the set of policies that give maximum tax yield do not have a tax rate of 100%, and increasing tax rates beyond that reduce tax yield.

This analysis is subject to some caveats, and where the optimal rate is is a very complicated and politically charged question, of course, and this is already completely off topic.

TGM 8 Sep 2012 14:32 UTC
7 points
on: Jews and Nazis: a version of dust specks vs torture
I suspect what you mean by desire utilitarianism is what wikipedia calls preference utilitarianism, which I believe is the standard term.

TGM 30 Aug 2012 8:48 UTC
4 points
in reply to: Eliezer Yudkowsky’s comment on: Rationality Quotes August 2012
Aren’t you using different measures of what ‘saving a life’ is, anyway? The starving-child-save gives you about 60 years of extra life, whereas the FAI save gives something rather more.

TGM 28 Aug 2012 11:59 UTC
13 points
on: The noncentral fallacy—the worst argument in the world?
Apple uses the WAITW when commenting on the Apple vs Samsung case:

“In a statement the firm [apple] thanked the jury for sending ‘a loud and clear message that stealing isn’t right’ ”

Source: http://www.economist.com/blogs/schumpeter/2012/08/apple-versus-samsung?spc=scode&spv=xm&ah=9d7f7ab945510a56fa6d37c30b6f1709

TGM 28 Aug 2012 7:26 UTC
4 points
in reply to: Vladimir_M’s comment on: LessWrong could grow a lot, but we’re doing it wrong.
Have you adjusted for the likely event that you have become more rational, and what you have actually observed may have been LW becoming at a lower level relative to you, whilst staying relatively flat or even improving?

TGM 27 Aug 2012 22:04 UTC
3 points
in reply to: SisterY’s comment on: The noncentral fallacy—the worst argument in the world?
I think the salient point here is whether we are talking about a theft close to the archetype, such as mugging or burglary, or one further from it, such as Robin Hood enacting his redistribution scheme, or the government taxing.

So when we have “X is the mindkiller”, that’s okay if “X” happens to be party politics, or factions disagreeing in a fricticious boardroom meeting. A fringe example of mind-killing might be a recurring disagreement between spouses over whether to buy skinned or unskinned milk (you can still have entrenched positions, but it doesn’t really reach the same level).

Not sure I’m being too clear. What I’m saying is that words refer to a cluster of things, with varying strength, and we use the WAITW when we talk about things on the fringe of that cluster as if they were in fact slap bang in the middle.

TGM 27 Aug 2012 21:47 UTC
24 points
in reply to: Scott Alexander’s comment on: The noncentral fallacy—the worst argument in the world?

If you can think of left-wing WAITWs that are as well-known and catchy as “abortion is murder!”, I will happily edit the post to include them

“Property is theft”

Is an example of the left using the WAITW.

TGM 27 Aug 2012 21:10 UTC
0 points
in reply to: drethelin’s comment on: Religion’s Claim to be Non-Disprovable
I agree. Perhaps I should have put this as a reply to the grandparent instead?

TGM 27 Aug 2012 21:01 UTC
1 point
in reply to: drethelin’s comment on: Religion’s Claim to be Non-Disprovable
Why do you (and the author of the grandparent) think ancient people were just as skeptical as us? I’m not even sure that different cultures today are equally skeptical.

Perhaps if you do the radiator experiment where you have turned the metal plate round, you will find that in different cultures (or even situations) people will be more or less likely to be skeptical of the situation in front of them.

TGM 27 Aug 2012 20:51 UTC
3 points
in reply to: TheOtherDave’s comment on: The noncentral fallacy—the worst argument in the world?
I don’t find it surprising it is that “conservative” comes to mean different things. It’s always struck me as an odd term: someone who hadn’t heard the term before would think a “conservative” party would just be a “status quo bias” party.

If you have two different countries, with different political histories, you would expect labels to mean different things. We currently view libertarians as closer to conservatives than to liberals, yet libertarians regularly seem closely aligned to 19th century writers such as Bastiat, who were described as Liberal. One could imagine an alternative history where the 19th Century Liberal tradition moved towards a typical conservative position (e.g. as a response to a Labour party).

(I can’t say whether this is what happened in Australia, because I don’t know the necessary history)

TGM 27 Aug 2012 20:41 UTC
10 points
in reply to: SisterY’s comment on: The noncentral fallacy—the worst argument in the world?
If I wanted to do that, I would phrase things differently, to avoid the connotation issues (of, for example, Taxation is Theft!):

“We think burglary is bad, but tax is good, yet they have some similarities. Are we right to judge them differently?” or even “I think the things that make burglary bad are X Y and Z, but X is shared by taxation, and Y is partly shared by taxation. I conclude that taxation is not as bad as burglary, but still a bit bad”

TGM 27 Aug 2012 18:59 UTC
7 points
in reply to: Shmi’s comment on: The noncentral fallacy—the worst argument in the world?
“Denying euthanasia is Torture!”

Given the majority of legislators are male, for abortion: “Forced pregnancy is mysogyny!” though that may be too tenuous.