Comments on: Subduction Phrases http://www.overcomingbias.com/2007/02/subduction_phra.html Overcoming Bias is economist Robin Hanson’s blog, on honesty, signaling, disagreement, forecasting, and the far future. Sat, 11 Feb 2012 23:23:58 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.1.3 By: Chris Yi http://www.overcomingbias.com/2007/02/subduction_phra.html#comment-422243 Chris Yi Wed, 07 Feb 2007 23:48:49 +0000 http://prod.ob.trike.com.au/2007/02/subduction-phrases.html#comment-422243 The first criterion there reminds me of Norbert Weiner's humble suggestion(1) that the amount of information carried by a message can be evaluated by finding the probability of that message's occurring in the space of all possible messages (pretty loosely defined), and then taking the negative logarithm of that quantity, which reminds me in the vaguest sense to the log-barrier function from ...econometrics? (I might really be stretching that reference there). (1) http://open-site.org/Science/Mathematics/Applied/Cybernetics/K1_and_K2_-_General_Cybernetics/Information_Theory/ The first criterion there reminds me of Norbert Weiner’s humble suggestion(1) that the amount of information carried by a message can be evaluated by finding the probability of that message’s occurring in the space of all possible messages (pretty loosely defined), and then taking the negative logarithm of that quantity, which reminds me in the vaguest sense to the log-barrier function from …econometrics? (I might really be stretching that reference there).

(1)
http://open-site.org/Science/Mathematics/Applied/Cybernetics/K1_and_K2_-_General_Cybernetics/Information_Theory/

]]> By: Robin Hanson http://www.overcomingbias.com/2007/02/subduction_phra.html#comment-422242 Robin Hanson Mon, 05 Feb 2007 15:34:04 +0000 http://prod.ob.trike.com.au/2007/02/subduction-phrases.html#comment-422242 Stuart, those do seem like promising tests. Stuart, those do seem like promising tests.

]]> By: Stuart Armstrong http://www.overcomingbias.com/2007/02/subduction_phra.html#comment-422241 Stuart Armstrong Mon, 05 Feb 2007 13:16:24 +0000 http://prod.ob.trike.com.au/2007/02/subduction-phrases.html#comment-422241 "The unexamined life is not worth living" is another beautiful one, alluring and painful to deconstruct. A few slogan tests: can you see the slogan being chanted as a mantra? Can you see it being used as an answer to many different questions? Do you see it as a literally true statement rather than a simplification of vast amounts of complex ideas? And, very importantly: do you get angry or contrary if people attack the slogan itself? “The unexamined life is not worth living” is another beautiful one, alluring and painful to deconstruct.

A few slogan tests: can you see the slogan being chanted as a mantra? Can you see it being used as an answer to many different questions? Do you see it as a literally true statement rather than a simplification of vast amounts of complex ideas? And, very importantly: do you get angry or contrary if people attack the slogan itself?

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