There is a hypocrisy in libertarianism à la Mises. When you read his hyper-logical texts (wich should be appealing to the HN crowd btw), he claims that we should remove any sort of ideology from our political and economical systems. Reason and logic only should govern our lives, and it is the duty of economics to aim at this goal.
Sure, sounds attractive !
But there is a big assumption here, and it is that libertarianism is special and different, it's not an ideology like marxism or catholicism. It's THE way. It is the only path to reason and logic and science, because when we reduce the role of the state, we reduce the part of ideology in society. Therefore it must be the less ideological system of all, the most logical, and thus the the right one.
Of course, liberatarians turn out to be just like any other political sensibility. They agree on broad things that makes them look like unite only because they are a tiny minority in the political landscape. But like any other sensibility, you reach a point in the debate where their own camp is split up in two and they will fight each other, etc. It wouldn't be the case if it wasn't an ideology, and they would all agree on core issues like the private/public fire stations, or even health wich should be considered like any other good for some, but not for some others (I can tell because I have some libertarians friends). The above comments about the protection from plagues are very interesting. It leads to the very interesting history of sewers.
Mises is the reflect of his century when we were too optimistic about science, we believed it would soon answer all the questions even in fields that looked like non-scientific, like human organization. It turned out science is indeed good for changing our lives in an indirect way, but unfortunatly not so good outside real scientific fields. It doesn't answer philosophical questions (if such a science existed, then it would be the right one to follow for organizing human societies).
You cite a single author as a representation of a vast political ideology and quickly drop in some fluff that guides the rest of your comment:
But there is a big assumption here, and it is that libertarianism is special and different...
Libertarianism is a slightly more detailed political idea than convervatism. It represents the desire for smaller government that only acts when necessary. Another core tenet is that you're free to do as you please until your actions infringe upon the rights of others.
>Another core tenet is that you're free to do as you please until your actions infringe upon the rights of others.
That's totally vacuous without defining those rights. A major one for most libertarians is property, but the distribution of property is based on historic things like taking lands from native populations. Who decides who owns what? How far back do we have to unwind things? Why should heredity determine what property you "start out" with? How does a Lockean ideal of "mixing your labor with the soil" to create "property" somehow mean that because some bean farmer on plot of land X farmed beans for 10 years there, him and his descendants now own all the oil under that land that was only discovered later, and not by them?
This is the reason I'm buying the less possible games from Steam, because I know Valve could be bought buy Google or EA some day, and you have no control over it . You have absolutely no guarantee that the service you are using will be the same tommorow, and I definitly don't want all my eggs in the same basket. Same goes for a lot of online services.
I'm willing to bet $5 that the probability (according to the current statistical science corpus) is still 2/3 (even if you're right that announcing the child doesn't alter the sex of the other). See my comment in the main thread.
Ok this thread is confusing. Actually, your second algorithm wasn't the point of my argument. You're right that according to your second formulation, the probability is 1/2, of course.
My point is that there is nothing wrong with Jeff's question, and I believed that you made a distinction with the Monty Hall version. But your second algorithm isn't the same as Jeff's question, my mistake.
It is very clear that my argument specifically adresses the question the way Jeff has formulated it, so you can even forget the part about "your second formulation", what I meant was the question of Jeff and why there is nothing wrong with it.
In statistics, it is commonly accepted that we don't know what we don't state (for an obvious practical purpose). Therefore, when we say : "One of them is a girl", it is implied that we don't know wich one because we didn't specify it.
Therefore there is nothing wrong with Jeff's question (and the probability is 2/3), at least for anyone familiar with basic statistics and probabilities conventions (and I suspect you are), anything else is just quibble. I assumed your argument wasn't about nitpicking this kind of convention, but it turns out I was wrong. I guess nobody wins this one :)
This hinges on whether we decided ahead of time that we would only consider cases in which there is a girl, something which I didn't see earlier. :)
As mentioned in another thread started by Eliezer, it's the difference between "What is the sex of one of your children?" and "Is (at least) one of your children a girl?". For the second question, the results skew to 1/3 and 2/3 because we're discarding the cases where the answer is 'no'.
The light went on for me when Paul pointed out in his update that getting a random answer for "What is the sex of one of your children?" eliminates (an unknown) one of BG and GB.
Basically you're right, and Paul is right too. This is just a matter of convention, it depends on what you want to hear in the question. If Jeff said "one of the children is a girl", but added "but we don't know wich one of the two is", this post would have never existed and we wouldn't have argued so much over nothing.
In the world of mathematical conventions you learn in school, the question is understood and you're right. In the "normal" world where you can quibble with language because there is no specific agreement, Paul is right and the question should be more precise. In both cases the conclusion remains the same : what a waste of time.
You are right about the question ("Announcing the gender of one child does not magically alter the gender of the other child"), but wrong about the statistics, even in your second formulation the probability is 2/3, not 1/2. This problem, the way Jeff has formulated it, has nothing to do with the Monty Hall problem. But still, the end probability is the same : 2/3 (that's the only common point). Tell me if there is a mistake :
The question is : What are the odds that the person has a boy and a girl, if we already know that one of the child is a girl ? (If we agree on the question, then we must agree on the following probabilities).
Possibilities are :
1/ boy / boy
2/ boy / girl
3/ girl / boy
4/ girl / girl
Since one of them is a girl, we must remove possibility number 1. That leaves us with 3 possiblities, and 2 of them have a boy. Probability : 2/3
(edited for correction, we search the probability of having a boy, not a girl :p)
This is precisely the first subtility you encounter when you learn probabilities : they are not identical. Paul is right that the formulation of the question doesn't refer to the Monty Hall problem at all, this isn't the same algorithm. But in this case, the probability turns out to be the same. That's the real confusion in Jeff's article.
I mean, it's not even my own deduction, it's what you are taught when you learn probabilities. It's a basic and core paradigm, and I'll digg it up from Wikipedia if somebody still doubts it :)
Again, ordering is irrelevant in this problem. We want to know only the probability that there will be a boy/girl pair, not the probability that the boy/girl pair was born in a particular order.
But the same result can be obtained when taking ordering into account -- the key observation is that if you subdivide options 2 and 3 to account for sibling ordering, then you also must subdivide options 1 and 4 to account for sibling order, resulting in 6 total possibilities, of which 2 are M/F sibling pairs, 2 are M/M pairs, and 2 are F/F pairs:
1) M/m
2) m/M
3) M/F
4) F/M
5) F/f
6) f/F
Given the knowledge that one sibling is female, you then exclude 2 of the 6 possibilities (the m/M and M/m pairs), to obtain 2/4 = 50% probability that the pair of siblings is of mixed sex.
The mistake you're making is that you're including ordering on the mixed-sex pairs, but not including ordering on the same-sex pairs.
Don't be silly -- do you think I invented a couple of new sexes by adding lower-case letters? You're just getting thrown by the notation. I could have written the options as:
1) M/M
2) M/M
3) M/F
4) F/M
5) F/F
6) F/F
but I thought that was confusing, so I introduced a symbol to more clearly illustrate the differences between the ordering of the same-sex options.
"Somebody is wrong on the internet". I'm wasting my time and this is my last answer. If you haven't noticed, I only use strict mathematical arguments and I invite you to do the same if you intend to answer. Pure and clear maths please, no litteral arguments about the sexes or god knows, this is the only field where we can verify it.
Lacking elementary probabilities knowledge isn't as dramatic as refusing to learn it, please teach yourself now since nobody will look at this thread again.
Here is my last point, and you can ask any teacher of formal logic, probabilities or maths to verify it :
For universe [M,F], the table of possibilities is :
MM
MF
FM
FF
And that's it. I'm sorry but the table you just made up doesn't exist at all, please go ask one of your teacher about it. If you still believe you are right, and you can prove it, you just discovered a new field in mathematics and probabilities, congratulations.
Rather than insulting me, take a moment to think about the consequences of what you're saying: you're arguing that by announcing the sex of one child in a pair, the probability of the other child's sex being a particular value changes to 2/3. Does that make sense to you? Really?
Again, this has nothing to do with symbols or notation. There are two sexes, two symbols: M, F. The undergrad probability 101 mistake you're making is that options:
MF, FM
take order into account, while options:
MM, FF
do not. This is incorrect. If you take order into account for the mixed-sex case, you must take order into account for the same-sex cases. MM and FF encompass four options with ordering, not two.
I'm sorry if I sounded offensive, and I indeed was, I was tired when I wrote my last comment
and my words didn't reflect my tought. I'd like to elucidate this problem once and for all, I really
do believe we can both agree on a conclusion.
I'd like you to notice that your new table of probabilities imply that I have a chance of 1/6 to guess the gender setup of a
family of 2 children. I don't think that makes sense either to you.
Let's make the experiment a bit clearer :
- We gather a number of families who have 2 childs.
- For each family, we announce the gender of one of the child, but we don't know wich one.
- We are then asked to guess the sex of the other child.
At this point, you believe that the probability to guess right is 1/2, and that the 2/3
probability doesn't make any sense. My claim is that you fall in the Monty Hall problem trap,
wich is very counter-intuitive and doesn't seem to make sense at first.
But here is some clarification of the problem :
- What we are really asked is to guess the _gender_ setup of the family. So we need to establish
the universe of possible family setups before answering. What are they ?
Even if we don't care about the order, we must acknowledge that there are 2 childs in
the family, so there must be a first child, and a second child.
Setup 1 : both childs are boys : M/M
Setup 2 : both childs are girls : F/F
Setup 3 : the first child is a boy, and second child is a girl. M/F
Setup 4 : the first child is a girl, and the second child is a boy. F/M.
Why order matters in setup 3 and 4 ? Because M does not equal F, while M=M and F=F. We investigate not the individual itself, but the property of the
individual (in this case, the gender). Therefore, M/F is not equal to F/M, and in the real
world there must be a first and a second child.
If you are asked to write down all the possible setups of a family of two in the real world, you would write the same
table. You'd say that :
Some families have 2 boys = 1 setup
Some families have 2 girls = 1 setup
Some families have one girl and one boy = 2 possible setups (1st one is a girl OR a boy).
Your argument of F/M = M/F implies that all families have _either_ one of the 2 setups, every first child is a boy,
or a girl. But it doesn't work like this in real life. That is why order matters.
Conclusion : if we agree that there are 4 possible setups in a family of 2 childs, then we have a probability of
1/4 to guess the correct setup of the family given NO information. But if we are informed of the gender of
one of the child, then one solution of the setup is removed (F/F or M/M), and we have a chance of 2/3 to guess right IF we chose the opposite gender (see Monty Hall problem).
And if we are informed of the gender of one specific child (1st one or 2nd one), then it leaves us with only 2 solutions ! And here, the probability
becomes 1/2.
I'm French and I know Todd, the title sounds correct to me. Todd predicted the collapse of USSR (when it was a minority position among intellectuals), and it has been several years he is "predicting" the collapse of the U.S (way before the current crisis). His main prediction is the collapse of the U.S dollar.
A very important thing to note is that he believes the U.S is gone as the sole superpower. What he really means by collapse is about the same fate that endured the British Empire.
Is anybody actually predicting the US will remain the sole superpower for... crud, I can't even come up with a decent time specification for this question... 100 years?
Even assuming the US doesn't have anything called a "collapse", it's obvious to anybody with eyes that there are a number of countries that will inevitably grow to superpower status over time. This is normal, and arguably good, since the alternative ("everybody stays poor") is probably bad. Singulatarians would argue that tech is moving such that people, or at least small collections of people (on the order of tens of people), may become "superpowers" by modern standards.
Even the most optimistic predictions of continued US success don't have it coming at the expense of other success, and the economic phenomenon that less developed countries have much more low-hanging fruit, allowing them to grow to modern standards much faster than the leaders, will not stop anytime soon.
Seems to me the question of whether the US will "collapse" is distinct from the question of whether it will be the "sole superpower" across any timespan past 10 or 20 years. (Slightly later edit: And the collapse of the US won't make China a superpower, it will mean there simply isn't one for a while. Superpower is ill-defined, but it definitely has something to do with being able to project force around the world, and China can't do that yet, except with nukes, and if that makes a superpower, than they are already there, along with numerous others.)
Regardless of whether the title is factually correct on its own, it is not a good description of the article -- which mentions Panarin exclusively as the US-collapse predictor and Todd exclusively as the USSR-collapse predictor.
I don't know why you're being downvoted. It's cool for the guy, but I found the speeches of Obama completely dull as well. Maybe the talent resides in writing speeches that will offend absoluetly nobody while masking the fact that they tell nothing at all, just like anything that aims to gain universal consensus. I, for one, was definitly not sensible to this tone.
I might be downmodded to hell with this message, but whatever... I feel about the same.
Do you have some sort of nobility in your ancestorship (or in the army) ? I noted that this feeling would be more frequent among descendants of aristocrats. During the Aristocraty paradigm, work was despised more than anything else. We are now living in a bourgeois world, where work is sanctified as the alpha and omega.
I don't like work. The one thing I dislike more than work, are the people who try to make me feel guilty for it. Usually, these are the same people who do not know how to enjoy life outside their work. They are hypocrites, because work is their escape route from boredom rather than a burden, and the truth is that if you allowed them to quit, they wouldn't. Or not for long. Because the true burden to them is exactly doing nothing special. They don't understand people can be different and actually enjoys spending time doing nothing special. As your nickname suggests it, we have a word in french for the vertuous laziness : flanerie. While these people find it intolerable when they don't work, we are pretty much the opposite. The zeitgeist is certainly on their side for now.
I have a true respect for hard work, but no admiration. I am deeply unimpressed by success stories and rich people who worked hard to climb to the top of the ladder. This kind of satisfation is foreign to me. I don't ask for your admiration, only for the respect of who I am whatever might be my activity and my aspirations. I doubt I'll buy all your products, but I won't harm your family or ask for your money, and I despise the nanny state as much as you probably are.
I'm French and I enjoyed the article. This Loic LeMeur guy has always been a self-proclaimed ambassador of whatever he wants, but he's just blow hard. He needs the bad press so he'll disappear sooner (I hope so).
And you're right about the gratuitious French bashing, it's a cultural thing and it takes part on both sides of the Channel, there's nothing to be offended about, it's funny if you take the right stance.
Hey! easy there fella.... we had screaming wifi and internet at www.techcrunch50.com !!! (for 2.5 out of three days that is!).
Note: I've figured out how to get wifi to work at a conference.... run ethernet cables to everyone's seat.
Seriously, that's how we've solved the problem. I've told the tech people every year that wifi sucks for large groups, it doesn't handle 1-3k connections in a 30,000 square foot room and that ethernet cables are rock solid.
every time the techs fight me, every time I force them to run ethernet and every time i'm right.
very frustrating... i will NEVER use wifi as anything other than a backup at a conference. Run ethernet cables people... it's really that simple. also, get three different connections and run three separate networks for each 1/3rd of the conference. then if things go down at least 2/3rd of the people are up.
Judging from the one instance of this type I've observed up close, it doesn't much matter if your startup is failing badly. You simply switch to "teaching" other people how to do startups.
One thing that characters like this have in common with upper managers in large corporations is a remarkable ability to frame failures as successes, at least in terms of promoting themselves personally... which is what they really care about.
Looking this over, I want to clarify: when I said "characters like this", I meant, "characters of the type we're talking about". I'm not making any point about the individual named in the thread, whom I don't know and haven't observed, and for all I know may be unfairly put in this category.
I can't imagine that would make anyone feel better. I enjoyed following his videos when I was first starting up, and his energy is certainly infectious. Since his layoffs I've had a bit of a more dour opinion of him, as it seemed opportunistic, and he does tend to jetset quite often.
That said, I hope he does well. I can't see the value in what he does, but then I'm not likely his target market (though I certainly tried Seesmic, and tried to like it). And I haven't a clue as to where the revenue stream was supposed to materialize (product placement? Brand communication channel?) But as an entrepreneur, I would hate to see him fail badly, as you put it - his family is here, he's put a lot of effort, etc.
Although I suppose you didn't explicitly state that you take pleasure in watching another who's risked quite a bit fail spectacularly, I thought I might just drop my two cents.
Loic is actually a really great guy who works very hard. I wouldn't pass judgement on him without getting to know him. All entrepreneurs share the common struggle, and it's very easy to attack people you don't know in forums, blogs and on twitter.
Truth is he is a serial entrepreneur who's had great success, who works hard and makes a ton of mistakes like all of us do. No one is perfect, and trust me layoffs SUCK for everyone including the person who has to do them. I've had to do layoffs at two of my four startups and those days were the worst days of my professional life.
give the man a break... he created an event for startups to come together and the wifi didn't work.... and it was cold.... and maybe it was a little boring. however, i'm sure the parties and networking were great... and it's Paris.
i mean, come on... it's paris! (note: i canceled my trip because i've got project A launching on Monday and i needed to be focused. )
The other commenters reflect my thoughts. While I don't enjoy watching startups fail, it really rubs me wrong when people are too busy going to conferences/twittering/emailing/whatever instead of working on their startup. If you can't do, teach.
Yes it makes for some great laughs. I am a fan of "Yes Prime Minister":
Humphrey: "If the French have the bomb, we must have the bomb"
PM: "But isn't the Russians we are worried about"?
Humphrey: "well yes, right now, but what about the last 1000 years?"
A <=> B (quality of sperm depends on your intelligence), B <=> A (and vice versa, intelligence depends on your quality of sperm)
<=> is a connector wich means "A is true if and only if B is true". Therefore, you have a good sperm if and only if you are intelligent, wich is the logical twin of "you are intelligent if and only if you have a good sperm". It is a tautology because the 2 expressions are equivalent and the meaning of the first is included in the second.
Even if it sounds superfluous, this kind of exercice actually helps you to spot the weakness of this study, because it logically excludes any other parameter than intelligence to determine successfuly the quality of sperm (depends can be translated to "is a function of"). <=> is a very strong connector. In their study, men with low intelligence and a good quality of sperm don't exist, neither do highly intelligent men wich poor sperm, then they draw conclusions. Wich is convenient, but dumb.
I was just laughing at how much different some parts of the world are than mine, not at the boy's misfortune. I probably should have clarified.
My worst fishing experience involved snagging my brother in the cheek when he walked behind me. (Well actually it was his worst fishing experience, I thought it was awesome at the time.)
That kid was suggested to have been attacked by a fucking hippo, which means its common enough there that when someone walks into a hospital without an arm, people consider that the most likely reason.
Sure, sounds attractive !
But there is a big assumption here, and it is that libertarianism is special and different, it's not an ideology like marxism or catholicism. It's THE way. It is the only path to reason and logic and science, because when we reduce the role of the state, we reduce the part of ideology in society. Therefore it must be the less ideological system of all, the most logical, and thus the the right one.
Of course, liberatarians turn out to be just like any other political sensibility. They agree on broad things that makes them look like unite only because they are a tiny minority in the political landscape. But like any other sensibility, you reach a point in the debate where their own camp is split up in two and they will fight each other, etc. It wouldn't be the case if it wasn't an ideology, and they would all agree on core issues like the private/public fire stations, or even health wich should be considered like any other good for some, but not for some others (I can tell because I have some libertarians friends). The above comments about the protection from plagues are very interesting. It leads to the very interesting history of sewers.
Mises is the reflect of his century when we were too optimistic about science, we believed it would soon answer all the questions even in fields that looked like non-scientific, like human organization. It turned out science is indeed good for changing our lives in an indirect way, but unfortunatly not so good outside real scientific fields. It doesn't answer philosophical questions (if such a science existed, then it would be the right one to follow for organizing human societies).