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XFrequentiston Google is releasing 20M bacteria-infected mosquitoes in Fresno

I'm pretty sure wolbachia prevents viral replication, not reproduction of the mosquito.

The article confuses this too, talking about elimination of the mosquito from the area (or I'm just missing something).

XFrequentiston Visiting Chinese Megacities

Wonderful video, thanks!

meredydd's specifically voicing concern with decision markets, not prediction markets. Hanson's Futarchy paper outlines the difference (alas, wikipedia unhelpfully treats them as synonyms).

Hanson's "Adventure 1" is quite a bit more specific than "improving our prediction making ability" (which of course could unlock tremendous value).

XFrequentiston When People Ate People, a Strange Disease Emerged

I wasn't objecting to the teleological language (as you say, it's a convenient shorthand for an unconscious process). Rather, the idea that "species survival" is a relevant variable for selection to target is thoroughly confused (or, nature cares deeply for the gene, but knows not of your "species").

XFrequentiston When People Ate People, a Strange Disease Emerged

Sure: http://www.nature.com/news/2011/110130/full/news.2011.59.htm...

XFrequentiston When People Ate People, a Strange Disease Emerged

Nature cares not a whit about "species".

XFrequentiston Ask HN: What do you use to align your daily todos with your long term goals?

https://complice.co

Complice is aimed at exactly this problem. Integrates a bunch of other productivity hacks as well, I love it.

The founder was interviewed on indie hackers recently: https://www.indiehackers.com/businesses/complice

XFrequentiston Ask HN: What is the biggest untapped opportunity for startups?

That's not a fair summary of the comment.

XFrequentiston Superintelligence: The Idea That Eats Smart People

He was awarded the doctorate for one of the papers (the photovoltaic one, if memory serves), after extending it one sentence to meet the minimum length requirement.

XFrequentiston Why a federal high-tech start-up is a money loser

Alternate title: Government agency produces many times more value than its miniscule 32 million USD cost.

XFrequentiston Rwanda is becoming a hub for expanding tech companies

For an utterly different take on Nkunda,see here:http://exiledonline.com/nkunda-is-nkool/all/1

XFrequentiston How Bayes’ Rule Emerged Triumphant from Two Centuries of Controversy

More generally, this is why there's (still) a mild obsession with "conjugate" prior/likelihood distribution pairs - i.e. combinations of prior and likelihood that give analytically tractable posteriors[1] - despite the ability to get easily get results with MCMC.

[1] Yes, everyone wants a nice posterior. You're very clever.

XFrequentiston Boosting Sales with Machine Learning

GP certainly did, but "logic regression" is a real thing:

http://kooperberg.fhcrc.org/logic/

XFrequentiston Let's Kill All the Mosquitoes

Just about, yeah.

XFrequentiston Let's Kill All the Mosquitoes

>You're comparing individual species with an entire family.

The GP may well have done so, but most extreme proposals are to eliminate parts of the genuses Aedes, Anopholes, and Culex - together about 2% of the genetic diversity of the family Culicidae.

>Countless animals rely on mosquitoes as a valuable food source.

I'd be interested in seeing some concrete evidence that this is true; I've looked unsuccessfully. Seems to me that there are a few hyperspecialized predators, but generally mosquito population dynamics are too unpredictable for this to arise.

XFrequentiston Let's Kill All the Mosquitoes

Agree completely with your first point.

To your second point: eliminating all blood-feeding mosquitoes is the most radical proposal I've ever encountered, and this is a small subset of all mosquitoes (itself a small subset of Culicidae). I've never seen it compellingly demonstrated that these mosquitoes have an irreplacable role in any ecosystem, but there's much we don't grasp that an incremental and cautious approach seems wise.

XFrequentiston Let's Kill All the Mosquitoes

Aedes mosquitoes are indeed "invasive" in much (arguably, most) of the world.

XFrequentiston Ask HN: Is the Thiel Fellowship worth it?

"Anti-woman"? On what is that based?

(Agree that the other antis listed are indeed self-evident, btw.)

XFrequentiston The Artificial Intelligence Revolution: A Special Report, Pt. 1

The more precise version of "friendliness" is value alignment - Stuart Russell describes the problem well here[1], if you're interested.

1: http://edge.org/conversation/the-myth-of-ai#26015

XFrequentiston As Zika virus spreads, El Salvador asks women not to get pregnant until 2018

>Mosquitoes fill an important niche in a great many ecologies.

I think people just repeat this dogmatically, it doesn't appear to be true.

XFrequentiston As Zika virus spreads, El Salvador asks women not to get pregnant until 2018

>Important food source for fish and birds for quite a few species.

This is not true, and it's irresponsible to repeat it as fact.

XFrequentiston The alarming threat of Zika virus

The definition of microcephaly is actually head circumference less than 32cm (not 42cm - that's like the 99th percentile). Brazil changed their definition from 33cm during this event, so their case count includes some borderline babies.

XFrequentiston Bayes's Theorem: What's the Big Deal?

Whoops, seems you are correct. I'd misunderstood this, my apologies.

XFrequentiston Bayes's Theorem: What's the Big Deal?

I think your premises are mistaken on several fronts, I'm annoyed by your (mis)characterizations of LW and Eliezer, and I disagree strongly with your conclusion...

but your comment helped me actually understand this position for the first time, so thank you for articulating it.

XFrequentiston Bayes's Theorem: What's the Big Deal?

No - the precondition is that agents share common knowledge of each others' priors (not that they have the same priors).

XFrequentiston Bayes's Theorem: What's the Big Deal?

This made me chuckle.

XFrequentiston Bayes's Theorem: What's the Big Deal?

Huh? You mean the Kolmogorov axioms? In what sense are these 'frequentist'?

XFrequentiston Bayes's Theorem: What's the Big Deal?

Yes and yes and yes!

ETA - caveat to the 2nd question: ... unless you've restricted your prior to exclude the truth.

XFrequentiston Bayes's Theorem: What's the Big Deal?

Yes - Laplace originally proposed this, it's a good approach (and incidentally the basis for Bayesian meta-analysis). Google "skeptical prior" for more.

XFrequentiston Bayes's Theorem: What's the Big Deal?

FWIW, it seems to me that a major benefit of the Bayesian approach is to make bad reasoning (in the form of, say, an unreasonable prior) transparent and obvious. I've never heard it claimed that the Bayesian approach was robust to sophisticated idiocy (neither on LessWrong nor mainstream writing on Bayesian methods), except in the narrow techical sense that the posterior asymptotically approximates the likelihood given infinite data (provably true under some assumptions but irrelevant to the objections in the OP).