Zachary_Kurtz

• Zachary_KurtzJan 18, 2011, 3:37 PM

  8 points

  on: Statis­ti­cal Pre­dic­tion Rules Out-Perform Ex­pert Hu­man Judgments

  Does SPR beat prediction markets?

• Zachary_KurtzJan 18, 2011, 2:15 AM

  −1 points

  in reply to: Matt_Simpson’s comment on: I want to learn economics

  I suppose that’s true, though it shouldn’t be.

• Zachary_KurtzJan 13, 2011, 11:25 PM

  −2 points

  on: I want to learn economics

  Starting with behavioral economics could be a good place, since the applications to daily life are obvious.

  some possible books include:

  Predictably irrational by Dan Ariely Why Smart people make Big Money Mistakes—Gary Belsky Nudge—Richard Thaler

• Zachary_KurtzJan 12, 2011, 9:56 PM

  4 points

  on: Link: NY Times cov­ers Bayesian statistics

  Success story: I posted this link on my facebook and was able to reference 1 friend to EY’s “Intuitive Intro to Bayes.” He’s taking a grad course this semester on Bayesian stats application to forensic psychology and I thought Intuitive Intro would probably prepare him well for the course.

  Thanks for sharing.

• Zachary_KurtzJan 12, 2011, 9:48 PM

  3 points

  on: NYC Ra­tion­al­ist Di­plo­macy Post-Game Discussion

  England reporting in. I mostly agree with Will/​Russia/​Cosmos about the game. While I don’t think I was as busy as him, my newbishness with the rules (especially convoy rules) really held me back. I got lucky that I was England, and land locked enough that, at the beginning, nobody could take advantage of my blunders.

  My favorite part was the diplomacy under anonymity, coordination being a real problem when you can really only use in-game incentives.

  My chat logs are also posted as well as the first turn game journal, which I couldn’t maintain.

  Special thanks to Zvi for the in-game analysis and for staying impartial (as possible) for the running analysis.

• Zachary_KurtzJan 12, 2011, 9:38 PM

  0 points

  in reply to: JoshuaZ’s comment on: Link: why train­ing a.i. isn’t like train­ing your pets

  its not clear to me, though this explanation seems plausible as well. Either way it’s not good.

• Zachary_KurtzJan 12, 2011, 7:16 PM

  4 points

  on: Link: why train­ing a.i. isn’t like train­ing your pets

  “imagined by the author as a combination of whatever a popular science site reported”

  I’ve heard this argument from non-singulatarians from time to time. It bothers me due to the problem conservation of expected evidence. What is the blogger’s priors of taking an argument seriously if it seems as if the discussed about topic reminds him of something he’s heard about in a pop sci piece?

  We all know that popular sci/​tech reporting isn’t the greatest, but if you low confidence about SIAI-type AI and hearing it reminds you of some second hand pop reporting then discounting it because of the medium that exposed you to it is not an argument! Especially if you priors about the likelihood of pop sci reporting being accurate/​useful is already low.

• Zachary_KurtzJan 12, 2011, 2:35 AM

  4 points

  in reply to: ewang’s comment on: Less Wrong fan­fic­tion suggestion

  I tend to pick my fruit from bonsai trees

• Zachary_KurtzJan 11, 2011, 4:01 PM

  4 points

  on: Less Wrong fan­fic­tion suggestion

  I’m seriously considering writing a rationalist Ender’s Game/​Shadow. It’s fairly low hanging fruit b/​c the Ender and (especially) Bean are obviously intelligent and have excellent priors.

• Zachary_KurtzJan 11, 2011, 3:55 PM

  0 points

  in reply to: olimay’s comment on: Spaced Rep­e­ti­tion Database for A Hu­man’s Guide to Words

  I just downloaded Mnemosyne yesterday, so its not too late to test both softwares.

• Zachary_KurtzJan 11, 2011, 5:18 AM

  0 points

  on: Spaced Rep­e­ti­tion Database for A Hu­man’s Guide to Words

  are the LW sequence decks available for Mnemosyne?

• Zachary_KurtzDec 14, 2010, 2:38 AM

  4 points

  in reply to: ugquestions’s comment on: A sense of logic

  http://​​en.wikipedia.org/​​wiki/​​Pascal’s_Wager

• Zachary_KurtzDec 11, 2010, 6:10 PM

  0 points

  in reply to: CronoDAS’s comment on: Ra­tional en­ter­tain­ment in­dus­try?

  Have ticket prices kept up with inflation?

• Zachary_KurtzDec 11, 2010, 5:28 AM

  0 points

  on: Why is our sex drive too strong?

  from what I remember from my human evolution classes, promiscuity allowances is very much related to resource availability. Google: Robin Hanson’s “forager vs farmer” this has some of these ideas.

• Zachary_KurtzDec 11, 2010, 5:26 AM

  0 points

  in reply to: HonoreDB’s comment on: Ra­tional en­ter­tain­ment in­dus­try?

  this post could use some update with tv tropes. Even formulaic stories were innovative at one point or another.

• Zachary_KurtzDec 11, 2010, 5:23 AM

  −1 points

  in reply to: HonoreDB’s comment on: The term ‘al­tru­ism’ in group selection

  is there a real case of (non-human) altruism among non-kin in the animal kingdom? I don’t think there is...

• Zachary_KurtzDec 2, 2010, 4:01 PM

  0 points

  on: Cheat codes

  Any data on how long in advanced for spaced repetition to be effective, say if you’re studying for an exam or something ?

• Zachary_KurtzDec 1, 2010, 4:43 AM

  1 point

  on: The Boundaries of Biases

  related idea: when could seeking to improve our maps could we lose instrumental rationality?

  I have an example of this. Was at a meeting at work last year, where a research group was proposing (to get money) for a study to provide genetic “counseling” to poor communities in Harlem. One person raised the objection: (paraphrasing) we can teach people as much as we can about real genetic risk factors for diseases, but without serious education, most people probably won’t get it.

  They’ll hear “genes, risk factor” and probably just overestimate their actual risk and lead to poor decision making based on misunderstanding information. In striving to improve epistemic rationality we could impair true instrumental “winning.”

  So in this case, being completely naive leads to better outcomes than having more, if incomplete knowledge.

  Not sure what the outcome of the actual study was.

• Zachary_KurtzJun 17, 2010, 7:32 PM

  0 points

  in reply to: Zachary_Kurtz’s comment on: Book Club Up­date and Chap­ter 1

  PS—in the free pdf it’s 1-8. In the book the problem seems to have been renumbered to 1.13

• Zachary_KurtzJun 17, 2010, 5:51 PM

  3 points

  in reply to: [deleted]’s comment on: Book Club Up­date and Chap­ter 1

  A different question about 1-8. I was able to figure out how he got A!B = !B (where ! is bar) but using the Boolean identities he provides, I couldn’t get to B!A = !A. Can anyone enlighten me on this?