I've quit school again. Today, I bought a California SuperLotto Plus ticket.
01 21 40 42 45 Mega-15
I hereby declare that I will donate all winnings from this ticket in the various future Everett branches to SIAI, except in such branches that I hit the ($1.3*10^7) jackpot, in which case I'll only donate 90%. Of course it is irrational to waste a dollar like this, but I thought it was funny, and having messed up my life so much, I'm too emotionally trashed to care. Does anyone know the past tense of tsuyoku naritai?--don't answer that.
I'd like to call attention to steven's comment: how to create good discussions?
But it's a pretty difficult problem: people disagree in assessing the quality; conventions and personality play a role in ways that are hard to notice or describe, let alone replicate.
If you believe that the problem is getting the information to flow from the researchers to the patients, then a clinician could improve the lot of her patients, but that's not aiming high. If you want to make a difference, you have to affect other people's patients. Researchers have the advantage that they're supposed to affect a lot of people. But if problem is clinicians, a clinician has the advantage of understanding them, and maybe their trust.
But pure research probably isn't useful. I think I have a lower opinion of the quality of medical research than Richard, so I think there's room for a lot of improvement, but if the current system generates junk, why should a good researcher expect good research to win? It's a knowledge transmission problem either way.
I am an MD/PhD with very strong interests in both molecular biology and medicine
There already exists plenty of knowledge relevant to protecting human health, but the process by which the knowledge flows from the knowledgeable to the patient is extremely inefficient. Consequently, a competent rationalist is better placed to make a contribution to human health as a clinician than as a researcher. It seems though that the clinician's job is more frustrating and stressful than the researcher's job now that insurers no longer defers to the judgement of clinicians the way that they did 20 years ago.
I think smart people are spending way too little time thinking about how to create forums that allow for better discussion, relative to time spent actually discussing.
Nick, I think if you create your own forum, Caledonian is your own problem and it's up to you to decide what to do about him. It's a free country, etc. The direct answer to your question is that I have no problem with it.
I notice that when a post topic has a comment within the last 10, and thus is visible under "recent comments", knowledgeable readers more frequently notice that the topic is unresolved or has open questions requesting answers, and they frequently add a very informative comment, starting the process all over. However, if new posts, or even one hot one, are published, all evidence of the previous post discussion may be gone in as little as 15-30 minutes. For instance, today, David J. Balan obviously spent a good deal of time constructing a lengthy, and erudite, comment on "Good Medicine in Merry Olde England", and before it could be discussed, 2 new posts came out, comments were rapid, and there was nothing to indicate that his topic still required educated responses (at least, I, and I suspect he, would appreciate it if there were). Could someone who has followed this blog longer than I please comment on an acceptable remedy? I've seen posters put something like "hello" in a new comment just to get it back on the list, but that seems dorky (and probably not within the rules). Is that what is done?
Wow, look how low Biden was until the last minute. Some people must have made killings when his value went up and order of magnitude or two.
I see the Obama/McCain gap is holding steady at 60/40, despite a few news cycles of narrative that Obama is in "serious trouble" and that this race has "tightened up".
Also, I predict there's easy money to be made by betting Romney will be the VP nominee for McCain (his price seems strangely low for such a strong Veep frontrunner, and will probably climb to 90+ once his selection is announced). I may put my money where my mouth is and put a large bet on Romney.
FYI, I've gone through and deleted all or part of many Caledonian comments in which he explicitly, or by Gricean implication, had myself or others holding opinions we do not hold. I'm going to consider this deliberate trolling from now on, and since Richard Hollerith fell for it due to having not read one post, I'm assuming that this is in fact damaging new readers who may come in not knowing the actual positions that Caledonian misrepresents.
Things that sound sane enough to be someone else's comment will make it through. Classic Caledonianisms will get deleted. We'll see how much that leaves. Caledonian, feel free to start your own blog and link there, or post the original versions of your comments to ni.codem.us.
If you post a reply to Caledonian's comments and the original Caledonian comment is deleted, the moral is that you shouldn't respond to trolls.
I feel so retarded. I didn't know that stuff like this existed. Spent too much time restoring male sexual function. Overall, would you guess that technically savvy people are more likely to vote for Obama, and if so, would the fact that they knew about prediction markets explain the huge margin? If techies are not more likely to vote for Obama, then the actual margin is much higher, and makes a bet on him seem like a sure thing.
I've quit school again. Today, I bought a California SuperLotto Plus ticket.
01 21 40 42 45 Mega-15
I hereby declare that I will donate all winnings from this ticket in the various future Everett branches to SIAI, except in such branches that I hit the ($1.3*10^7) jackpot, in which case I'll only donate 90%. Of course it is irrational to waste a dollar like this, but I thought it was funny, and having messed up my life so much, I'm too emotionally trashed to care. Does anyone know the past tense of tsuyoku naritai?--don't answer that.
I'd like to call attention to steven's comment: how to create good discussions?
But it's a pretty difficult problem: people disagree in assessing the quality; conventions and personality play a role in ways that are hard to notice or describe, let alone replicate.
If you believe that the problem is getting the information to flow from the researchers to the patients, then a clinician could improve the lot of her patients, but that's not aiming high. If you want to make a difference, you have to affect other people's patients. Researchers have the advantage that they're supposed to affect a lot of people. But if problem is clinicians, a clinician has the advantage of understanding them, and maybe their trust.
But pure research probably isn't useful. I think I have a lower opinion of the quality of medical research than Richard, so I think there's room for a lot of improvement, but if the current system generates junk, why should a good researcher expect good research to win? It's a knowledge transmission problem either way.
I am an MD/PhD with very strong interests in both molecular biology and medicine
There already exists plenty of knowledge relevant to protecting human health, but the process by which the knowledge flows from the knowledgeable to the patient is extremely inefficient. Consequently, a competent rationalist is better placed to make a contribution to human health as a clinician than as a researcher. It seems though that the clinician's job is more frustrating and stressful than the researcher's job now that insurers no longer defers to the judgement of clinicians the way that they did 20 years ago.
I think smart people are spending way too little time thinking about how to create forums that allow for better discussion, relative to time spent actually discussing.
Nick, I think if you create your own forum, Caledonian is your own problem and it's up to you to decide what to do about him. It's a free country, etc. The direct answer to your question is that I have no problem with it.
Obama an overcomingbias.com reader?
http://andrewsullivan.theat...
Nick,If Eliezer said yes, you'd start censoring ni.codem.us?
Eliezer, would you rather I didn't provide Caledonian a forum, or do you think the audience is small enough that it's not a problem?
Urologist, the problem has been discussed here, and I share your frustration.
I notice that when a post topic has a comment within the last 10, and thus is visible under "recent comments", knowledgeable readers more frequently notice that the topic is unresolved or has open questions requesting answers, and they frequently add a very informative comment, starting the process all over. However, if new posts, or even one hot one, are published, all evidence of the previous post discussion may be gone in as little as 15-30 minutes. For instance, today, David J. Balan obviously spent a good deal of time constructing a lengthy, and erudite, comment on "Good Medicine in Merry Olde England", and before it could be discussed, 2 new posts came out, comments were rapid, and there was nothing to indicate that his topic still required educated responses (at least, I, and I suspect he, would appreciate it if there were). Could someone who has followed this blog longer than I please comment on an acceptable remedy? I've seen posters put something like "hello" in a new comment just to get it back on the list, but that seems dorky (and probably not within the rules). Is that what is done?
For the record: Caledonian is not a troll. He's one of the more thoughtful posters on this site.
Wow, look how low Biden was until the last minute. Some people must have made killings when his value went up and order of magnitude or two.
I see the Obama/McCain gap is holding steady at 60/40, despite a few news cycles of narrative that Obama is in "serious trouble" and that this race has "tightened up".
Also, I predict there's easy money to be made by betting Romney will be the VP nominee for McCain (his price seems strangely low for such a strong Veep frontrunner, and will probably climb to 90+ once his selection is announced). I may put my money where my mouth is and put a large bet on Romney.
http://www.intrade.com//?re...
FYI, I've gone through and deleted all or part of many Caledonian comments in which he explicitly, or by Gricean implication, had myself or others holding opinions we do not hold. I'm going to consider this deliberate trolling from now on, and since Richard Hollerith fell for it due to having not read one post, I'm assuming that this is in fact damaging new readers who may come in not knowing the actual positions that Caledonian misrepresents.
Things that sound sane enough to be someone else's comment will make it through. Classic Caledonianisms will get deleted. We'll see how much that leaves. Caledonian, feel free to start your own blog and link there, or post the original versions of your comments to ni.codem.us.
If you post a reply to Caledonian's comments and the original Caledonian comment is deleted, the moral is that you shouldn't respond to trolls.
HA,
I feel so retarded. I didn't know that stuff like this existed. Spent too much time restoring male sexual function. Overall, would you guess that technically savvy people are more likely to vote for Obama, and if so, would the fact that they knew about prediction markets explain the huge margin? If techies are not more likely to vote for Obama, then the actual margin is much higher, and makes a bet on him seem like a sure thing.
Wow, Obama is killing on the prediction markets:
http://www.intrade.com/