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It's not saying much to say that different signals are easier or harder to fake.

req2on Reversed Stupidity Is Not Intelligence

Rachel Maddow mentions Dana Milbank's quote, explaining how it is not what Obama said and how it came to be misattributed to him. She talks about other stuff, someone else talks about other stuff, and Pat Buchanan comes in reading Dana Milbank's quote and commenting on it as though they were Obama's words, despite the refutation of the quote in the media at large and the refutation given by one of the participants only several minutes earlier.

I only posted the video to illustrate that he can say 'A' only seconds after someone has explained, indeed, 'not A'. Whether or not you accept the explanation of 'not A', reasoned discourse requires addressing, rather than ignoring, such a statement.

req2on Reversed Stupidity Is Not Intelligence

It may be because Pat Buchanan has such fine examples of articulation and argumentation as this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7_byv2uQHEI

Failure to update in light of evidence is most definitely an indicator against brilliance.

req2on [dead]

Signals don't need to be accurate, e.g., spoofed browser agents.

req2on The Lost Oaks of California Ave

Private owners that don't conserve their resources quickly find themselves without resources to conserve; governments that don't conserve their resources get another chance.

Many things get in the way of this simple statement being true.

req2on [dead]

On 49: http://yudkowsky.net/singularity/simplified

req2on Teacher certification a painful farce

Robin Hanson has some citations in this post: http://www.overcomingbias.com/2009/05/econ-neglects-licensin...

req2on [dead]

Thanks to simple statistics (and the biological immortality old age endows), any given world's oldest person has an expected incumbency of about two years.

req2on Humans evolving 100 times faster than historical levels.

http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1200/is_n4_v148/ai_17...

req2on Humans evolving 100 times faster than historical levels.

Cancer may simply have been an example of kind, rather than specific to the case at hand; however, I wouldn't disregard it as quickly as you do.

The grandmother hypothesis [http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/10/05/evolutions-secret-w...] supports cancer resistance as an evolutionarily beneficial gene. You also miss the obvious unstated point that cancer resistance itself may just be a side effect of another characteristic, such as more efficient mitochondria.

Your third paragraph fails to support any of its assertions; cancer resistance takes many forms, and most mutations are negative in nature: some math would likely be necessary to support a (carefully worded) argument in either direction.

req2on Google introduces "Fast Flip"

What was your last magazine purchasing experience like? You might just not be part of the target demographic if you aren't one to flip through a magazine or a newspaper.

req2on Opster: Pythonic option parsing

This would've been a much better initial post, though it still fails to address the merits of the system - more DRY, less required human toil, and (apparently) errors on incorrect command lines.

req2on The Data Liberation Front - Getting Your data from google services

"A fanatic is one who can't change his mind and won't change the subject."

req2on Opster: Pythonic option parsing

Do you care to address any of his points so as to be relevant to the article ostensibly being discussed here? He makes a fair argument to use his options, rather than Lamson's.

req2on Infinite Super Mario AI Source Code

The N game has similar creations, but none approach this level of artistry.

Mario seems like a good target for 'variant' games. http://kotaku.com/5161778/japanese-gamers-invent-new-way-to-... has been a favorite of mine.

req2on Opster: Pythonic option parsing

Lamson's argument parsing is directly addressed at the top of this article.

req2on @BrandonWatson Is Listening

My memory may have soured the process, but I'll mention the experience I had when I tried Visual C# Express.

I opted for local documentation, but everything returned 'resource not found'. In program online documentation, as I recall, led to a lot of 404s or redirects. I tried starting a demo project using SQLite, and spent more time finding the right tab with the right synonym for 'dependency' to add the SQLite plugin's directory. Trial and error wasn't terribly informative when doing that.

I decide to give the website another chance, and download some sample program packs; this involved navigating past the incorrect pages Express initially pointed me to, and then downloading a zip containing files Express didn't want to open without converting. It wasn't a fun process, and the projects I opened were written by monkeys, or interns, or interning monkeys, because the method names were inconsistently named and inconsistently spelled.

I went back to the less effortful Django and Rails tutorials, which introduce everything you need, and tell you enough to know where to look when you want to try a plugin.

req2on Early Risers Crash Faster Than People Who Stay Up Late

Pointing out that there are but 31 people in the study could be considered helpful, but a basic familiarity with qualitative studies of anything that isn't a drug informs us that small sample sizes are pretty standard.

Complaining about a small sample size screams of ignorance; there's nothing wrong with shameless extroversion, thespianism, or small sample sizes. If you want to point it out and be meaningful, comment on the sample size in relation to the effect size in a way that includes statistical power. Say something. Don't just echo things you've heard other people say.

req2on Early Risers Crash Faster Than People Who Stay Up Late

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sample_size

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Statistical_power

Please educate yourself, and return if and when you have something useful to say.

req2on The trouble with non-profits

Somewhat related, on charity: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=800663

req2on The trouble with non-profits

There's http://www.charitynavigator.org/, and the arguments against: http://tacticalphilanthropy.com/2007/11/charity-navigator%E2...

req2on More things that don't make sense

Supporting evidence: Homeopathy in 2005's list

http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg18524911.600-13-things...

req2on Why AI is a dangerous dream - interview with Noel Sharkey

http://lesswrong.com/lw/15a/a_note_on_hypotheticals/

req2on Want an Unpaid Internship So You Can Get Valuable Experience ? – Screw You

In Illinois, you need a license to charge money to suggest where throw pillows should be placed; interior design is a licensed profession. A system of licensing is the most efficient way of verifying licenses.

Licensing helps, but it can be abused. Unlicensed anything isn't necessarily a bad thing, and, legal and mental affairs notwithstanding, buyers should be able to choose between multiple options.

req2on College, all you can learn, $99/month

Have you seen algebra?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banach_algebra

req2on Lost Charity

Look at that sentence. It says he tried to do good, not that he tried to look good. This is in direct contradiction to your claim.

It's pretty stunning to me that you would think any motives are beyond reproach. Your reverence for men who do nominally good things is the very thing Hanson is trying to limit in preference of actually good things.

req2on Lost Charity

Shame on you, edw519. Where does he infer that Mr. Grass had such intent? Your inference that Hanson would prefer to denigrate rather than elucidate is speculative and insulting. Better you should forsake your sacred horse of generous people are beyond reproach and 'STFU'.

Hanson mentions "folks like Alex trying to 'do good'", and that his proposed alternative of funding innovation "wouldn't have looked so good for Mr. Grass". He notes that Mr. Grass "[showed] loyalty to his clan", but parents also show unfortunate baby dribbling, whether they like to or not. Even the quoted line fails to show whether Mr. Grass is of the former or latter group. Hanson laments the social structures that promote and reward "looking good" in lieu of "doing good", implying that someone with the goal of "doing good" may accidentally "look good" instead.

req2on Lost Charity

First, you shouldn't expect such an unnecessarily verbose explanation of 'pissing money away' when anyone willing to follow the argument productively would happily understand that he didn't mean polio vaccinations aren't helpful. (http://www.overcomingbias.com/2008/06/against-disclai.html)

Secondly, he does say the same exact things you want him to. He says that most people "do good" in ways that actually "[piss] money away", explaining that we have too much of things we don't need, and saying that more good could be achieved by other means.

edit to address your first point: He directly addresses the 'correlation' of financial success to 'doing good': "When we look back on people in the past and what they did that we are thankful for, creating innovative products, processes, and organizations should come out near the top; that is mainly what made us rich." (emphasis mine)

req2on Lost Charity

I don't think he's saying that hospitals and academics are worthless, but that their current marginal worth is well below their cost. The charity didn't create hospitals in needed areas, it simply expanded an existing hospital. An extra building on a sufficiently large campus isn't going to improve academics by any appreciable amount.

edit to respond to your own edit:

You're still being needlessly sensationalistic yourself. The phrase "pissing money away" features once, in "But when folks like Alex spend their later years trying to “do good” with the millions they were paid for actually doing good, they usually end up pissing it away." Note that this is qualified with 'usually', and doesn't say hospitals and academics are "pissing money away". He does note that extra wings and additional lecture halls are unnecessary, but this is neither saying that hospitals are worthless, nor saying that charitable spending on hospitals, universities, or (the nowhere mentioned) libraries is worthless. Be careful with language.

req2on A 5 Minute Intelligence Test for Kids

That's not at all how correlation is measured.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Correlation