Zachary_Kurtz

Casey An­thony—an­a­lyz­ing ev­i­dence us­ing Bayes

• Zachary_KurtzMar 29, 2011, 4:36 PM

  0 points

  in reply to: Raemon’s comment on: LessWrong search traf­fic doubles

  And Yudkowski.net is result #6

• Zachary_KurtzMar 24, 2011, 3:50 PM

  6 points

  in reply to: loup-vaillant’s comment on: death-is-bad-ism go­ing a lit­tle bit more main­stream?

  Agree with the absurdity bias. For most (even smart) people their exposure to cryonics is things like Woody Allen’s Sleeper and Futurama. I almost can’t blame them for only seeing the absurd… I’m still trying to come around to it myself.

• Zachary_KurtzMar 24, 2011, 3:43 PM

  2 points

  in reply to: Cyan’s comment on: Bayesian Meth­ods Read­ing List

  AWesome, thanks!

• Zachary_KurtzMar 23, 2011, 9:06 PM

  2 points

  in reply to: Cyan’s comment on: Bayesian Meth­ods Read­ing List

  Not completely defined at the moment since I’m a 1st year PhD student at NYU, and currently doing rotations. It’ll be something like comparative genomics/​regulatory networks to study evolution of bacteria or perhaps communities of bacteria.

• Zachary_KurtzMar 23, 2011, 6:24 PM

  2 points

  on: Trip from Ot­tawa, Canada to NYC on week­end of April 2

  You’ll get more response from the NY group (we don’t all check LW and discussion board regularly) by making a post to the google group/​listserve:

  http://​​groups.google.com/​​group/​​overcomingbiasnyc/​​topics?start=

• Zachary_KurtzMar 23, 2011, 6:20 PM

  2 points

  on: Bayesian Meth­ods Read­ing List

  Thanks… this should come in handy in my computational research in systems biology

• Zachary_KurtzMar 23, 2011, 6:18 PM

  0 points

  on: Folk the­o­ries can be use­ful even when they’re en­tirely wrong

  A broken clock is right twice per day. If value theory is incidentally correct, it doesn’t make folk theories valuable on the margins—unless of course, if people who hold folk theories do consistently better than rationalists, but then I’d question the rationalist label.

• Zachary_KurtzMar 22, 2011, 6:25 PM

  3 points

  on: Ra­tion­al­ity Boot Camp

  I wish I could take that much time to do this

• Zachary_KurtzMar 17, 2011, 7:26 PM

  2 points

  in reply to: David_Gerard’s comment on: Ra­tion­al­ity Outreach: A Parable

  Is that because if you treat probabilities of (God or not God) as maximum entropy without prior information you’d get 50/​50?

• Zachary_KurtzMar 17, 2011, 7:24 PM

  2 points

  in reply to: JoshuaZ’s comment on: Ra­tion­al­ity Outreach: A Parable

  Good on them! In my experience, whenever I sneak bayesian updating into the conversation, it’s well received by skeptics. When I try to introduce Bayes more formally or start supporting anti-mainstream ideas, such as cryonics, AI, etc, there’s much more resistance.

• Zachary_KurtzMar 17, 2011, 3:52 PM

  2 points

  in reply to: MartinB’s comment on: Ra­tion­al­ity Outreach: A Parable

  I know a lot of skeptics like this and I try to share with them EY’s post on “undiscriminating skepticism.” This post ‘saved’ me from a similar fate when I found myself going down this path.

• Zachary_KurtzMar 17, 2011, 3:40 PM

  6 points

  on: Ra­tion­al­ity Outreach: A Parable

  Again, I like your characters but I think you’re missing one. The person who thinks that belief in [a] God is the result of rational and reasonable thought.

• Zachary_KurtzMar 3, 2011, 2:17 AM

  1 point

  on: Eliezer Yud­kowsky and Michael Vas­sar at NYU, Thurs­day March 3rd

  I’ll be there

• Zachary_KurtzFeb 23, 2011, 3:10 AM

  5 points

  on: Re­search methods

  could you write the program in your spare time and run the program while you’re there, while making it seem like you’re working?

• Zachary_KurtzFeb 15, 2011, 8:24 PM

  1 point

  in reply to: Dreaded_Anomaly’s comment on: IBM’s “Wat­son” pro­gram to com­pete against “Jeop­ardy” cham­pi­ons tonight

  this about maps with the issues I noticed. Looking forward to the next 2 days of this.

• Zachary_KurtzFeb 15, 2011, 8:21 PM

  2 points

  in reply to: blogospheroid’s comment on: Ap­plied Ra­tion­al­ity: Group Prob­lem Solv­ing Session

  the archive password is listed before each external link in every example I’ve seen. Usually the password is either ebooksclub.org or library.nu

• Zachary_KurtzFeb 9, 2011, 2:28 AM

  4 points

  in reply to: lukeprog’s comment on: Ap­plied Ra­tion­al­ity: Group Prob­lem Solv­ing Session

  instead of buying textbooks check out library.nu

  Largest collection of [illegal, mostly] free textbooks I’ve seen on the net.

• Zachary_KurtzJan 24, 2011, 12:59 AM

  0 points

  in reply to: lsparrish’s comment on: Steve Jobs’ med­i­cal leave, riches and longevity

  My woo-dar is tingling a bit regarding this proposal. Can you refer me to this research?

• Zachary_KurtzJan 21, 2011, 6:08 PM

  10 points

  on: Steve Jobs’ med­i­cal leave, riches and longevity

  From the perspective of a biomedical scientist-in-training here. I think you may be underestimating the role that other types of biology research, that’s not specifically labeled “longevity” will play in attaining ‘immortality.’

  For example, it may be necessary to cure cancer before we can safely switch off the cellular aging process. The fact that cancer has such an impact on society makes cancer one of the best funded areas of research, but I don’t think you can accurately say that this comes at the opportunity cost of longevity knowledge, because they are really compliments. Most of our knowledge of human cell biology comes from studying cell lines isolated from cancer.

  Meanwhile, specialized research increases our general knowledge that, purposeful or not, is leading to longevity if not immortality outright.