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[silverspawn]

I don't think that's comparable. Khal Drogo dies of an intentionally self-inflicted wound. He obtains it after trying to change the Dothraki's ways and being challenged for it. The way he deals with the challenge can be seen as reverting back to the old Dothraki ways, and ultimately he cannot escape them.

There is also an implication that he was from the beginning poisoned by the witch, as Daenerys convinces Drogo to accept medicine from her, and she later makes sure the child doesn't live. Furthermore, Khal Drogo's death serves a purpose for Daenerys' character arc. Among other things, it teaches her that you cannot peacefully change things for the better, a lesson repeated again later that ultimately leads to her "fire and blood" approach.

Yeah, on second thought you're right.

My impression of that scene is colored by the books, where it's explicit that the witch was telling Drogo 'you have to do this and this painful annoying thing to keep the wound from getting worse' and he didn't do it consistently. But I actually don't think that this should be relevant; the show can be different. Maybe the implication that she poisoned him was given on purpose. It would make sense.

There is also an implication that he was from the beginning poisoned by the witch, as Daenerys convinces Drogo to accept medicine from her, and she later makes sure the child doesn't live. Furthermore, Khal Drogo's death serves a purpose for Daenerys' character arc. Among other things, it teaches her that you cannot peacefully change things for the better, a lesson repeated again later that ultimately leads to her "fire and blood" approach.

Woah I never drew that connection. Very cool.

That said, I still question whether Rob stark dying from a common disease would make a bad story. It doesn't have to feel anti-climactic; there can be an arc where he's getting sick, and everyone expects him to get better, and then he dies, and that can be another shocking thing

It's also an issue of internal consistency. GoT has made it clear early on that people will be killed off in difficult situations. That makes it all the harder to excuse plot armor later on. If you're watching a show like Dr Who, then plot armor takes you out of the immersion way less because that's kind of what you signed up for.

Yeah, that's also a really good point

[silverspawn]

It looks like we all going to be fucked

[silverspawn]

Republicans favored to win the house, the senate, and the presidency in four years

[silverspawn]

The future is likely to turn out good or bad depending on what we do with AGI. But this makes me wonder what would happen in the counterfactual world where this wasn't so and we would instead just extrapolate current trends into the future. What are the odds that the USA still has anything resembling a democracy in 40 years? I think I would bet against it.

[silverspawn]

Probably everyone who reads this is going to agree with me on this but

my sister who is ridiculously smart and talented and could have probably succeeded in just about any profession now thinks that

- the world is ruled by some kind of social elite
- most big events like covid are coordinated
- - vaccines are a way to control the public and maybe reduce the size of the population

This theory is so completely and utterly trashed by the existence of Donald Trump. The political elite in the USA are too incompetent to prevent this guy who probably literally has < 100 IQ and no strategic bone in his body from winning in 2024 even though they had/have four years to do it. This so infinitely far away from the power they are supposed to have under this world view

[silverspawn]

oh how I wish that the world really was ruled by a social elite. Then we wouldn't have Trump and I can only assume we wouldn't have to worry about most existential risks

[silverspawn]

Maybe I can make this into some kind of coherent and polite argument and send it to her. She also has yet to reply to my 40 min long video response to the anti vax video she's sent me. The thing is that whenever we actually do talk, she shows a level of coherence and ability to assess evidence that keeps me thinking that there should be a way to do something here or at least it's worth trying.

Her husband is utterly incapable of understanding logic and he's probably the primary reason she has her world view. She somehow believes that he's really smart which is just the most mind-boggling thing. At some point during our last discussion she even said outright that a big piece of evidence for her world view is that he believes it. But I can't really do anything about it except talk to her directly.

[silverspawn]

Last time we met I brought up this and she found the intended solution after like 15 seconds

A young boy enters a barber shop and the barber whispers to his customer, “This is the dumbest kid in the world. Watch while I prove it to you.”

The barber puts a dollar bill in one hand and two quarters in the other, then calls the boy over and asks, “Which do you want, son?”

The boy takes the quarters and leaves.

“What did I tell you?” said the barber. “That kid never learns!”


You have ten seconds to get it

[faust]

Probably everyone who reads this is going to agree with me on this but

my sister who is ridiculously smart and talented and could have probably succeeded in just about any profession now thinks that

- the world is ruled by some kind of social elite
- most big events like covid are coordinated
- - vaccines are a way to control the public and maybe reduce the size of the population

This theory is so completely and utterly trashed by the existence of Donald Trump. The political elite in the USA are too incompetent to prevent this guy who probably literally has < 100 IQ and no strategic bone in his body from winning in 2024 even though they had/have four years to do it. This so infinitely far away from the power they are supposed to have under this world view

I feel like it isn't hard at all to incorporate that into the theory; the social elite is just fine with Donald Trump. That was their plan all along. You have some grounds to argue this, as Trump pushed through tax cuts for the wealthy and is generally opposed to any measure that would empower the disadvantaged.

Well of course non-falsifiability is a key feature of conspiracy theories.

oh how I wish that the world really was ruled by a social elite.

This statement is all kinds of terrifying.

[silverspawn]

Agree that could work but doesn't in her case bc she really likes Trump and thinks he's pushing into the right direction by being a nationalist

[faust]

Agree that could work but doesn't in her case bc she really likes Trump and thinks he's pushing into the right direction by being a nationalist

Well if she likes Trump then the argument that he's stupid probably won't convince her either.

[silverspawn]

Yeah I was not going to include that part. I think 90% of the argument remains if you think Trump is smart, which she definitely does. A group of people powerful enough to rule all major governments ought to be able to stop the campaign of one person even if he's not an utter idiot

[MiX]

Yeah I was not going to include that part. I think 90% of the argument remains if you think Trump is smart, which she definitely does. A group of people powerful enough to rule all major governments ought to be able to stop the campaign of one person even if he's not an utter idiot

What if it doesn't actually matter who's the president?

[faust]

What are the odds that the USA still has anything resembling a democracy in 40 years?

It's debatable whether the US has anything resembling democracy today. 

[silverspawn]

Yeah I was not going to include that part. I think 90% of the argument remains if you think Trump is smart, which she definitely does. A group of people powerful enough to rule all major governments ought to be able to stop the campaign of one person even if he's not an utter idiot

What if it doesn't actually matter who's the president?

So clearly not true that it hasn't occurred to me, but fwiw she hasn't been arguing that the last time we've talked about this

[silverspawn]

Here is an interesting thought.

Say democracy does get definitely lost, by a mechanism like 'most states report results such that their team wins regardless of what really happened', so that the US democracy effectively becomes a system in which only a few hundred people get a vote.

How bad would that really be? I don't know a lot of history, but I imagine a lot of people have had relatively normal lives in dictatorships (although there are certainly exceptions). In any case, given how likely this seems, "what would live be like if it happened" sounds like a question worth considering. (Also very possible that I want to immigrate to the US someday.)

[silverspawn]

EY on Twitter:

Suppose you think you're 80% likely to have left your laptop power adapter somewhere inside a case with 4 otherwise-identical compartments.  You check 3 compartments without finding your adapter.  What's the probability that the adapter is inside the remaining compartment?


People are unfathomably bad at probabilities oh my god. I should have known this of course (some ironny here I know) but I really didn't, I genuinely was like "ok well definitely the replies will immediately have the right answers" but you see like people confidently proclaiming things that are just wrong wrong wrong wrong

[silverspawn]

faust please tell me you can solve this

Anyway the answer is 0.5

Best way to calculate it:

Initial Odds of Laptop-in-Compartment vs not (4:1)

Relative odds of failing to find it when it's there vs when it's not there (25% : 100%) = (1:4)

Posterior odds of Laptop-in-Compartment after failing to find it (4:1) * (1:4) = (4:4) = 0.5

You can also Write down the regular form of Bayes formula and get it a short calculation (~4 lines)

"Intuitive solution": "Not there" is like a fifth compartment; 100% probability mass always distributed equally across all compartments; "two" compartments left at the end hence 50%

Here's the poll for the question

[silverspawn]

80% - checking the compartments doesn’t change the fact that you have the initial likelihood of having left it in one of the compartments to begin with..

[silverspawn]

Expand it to a thousand compartments. You open up 999 compartments and one remains, with what odds would you bet that there’s a charger in that last pocket

Thank you

[Jimmmmm]

It's basically Monty Hall.

[silverspawn]

It's basically Monty Hall.

Right, it's a "fair" version of monty hall. Monty hall is "unfair" in that it mixes in the additional difficulty that the solution depends on how the opened door was chosen which makes it extra confusing. This one doesn't have that extra wrinkel, it's only about how to update properly

[silverspawn]

Why do I keep reading replies that's masochistic I'll stop now

[Jimmmmm]

Somehow I got muddled up between this and Monty Hall, and how they were different. If I picked 3 empty compartments and told you it wasn't there, then it'd be 0.8 to be in the other one. That's Monty Hall (the fifth "compartment" is equivalent to the chosen door, ineligible to be removed). These are kind of opposite problems - in one all options are equal and in the other they're not, and common intuition leads you to think the opposite.

[silverspawn]

Yeah I wasn't thinking about the details when I said it's like Monty Hall, but what you said is exactly right. It's Monty Hall where the moderator chooses a door at random, which is not the common version; it's opposite of Monty Hall if the moderator deliberately chooses a Goat door (which is the common version)

If you taught this in a probability course, you should start with this problem and then do Monty Hall next.