site banner
PaperclipPerfector  7mo ago (text post)   2902 thread views

Friday Fun Thread for April 19, 2024

Be advised: this thread is not for serious in-depth discussion of weighty topics (we have a link for that), this thread is not for anything Culture War related. This thread is for Fun. You got jokes? Share 'em. You got silly questions? Ask 'em.

1
Top Bottom Old Controversial Comments
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

I would like to point out that once you throw the win condition of "you have to pick the best" out of the window, and instead try to optimize the EV of a real-valued score, strategies should change.

Basically, you want to still skip the first r suitors to get some information about the underlying distribution. Ones you have an idea about the distribution (possibly Pareto or normal), you want to compare the utility of the current suitor to the expected value you would get from the remainder of the queue (and keep updating your estimate of the distribution, naturally).

This means that you should pick the second-to-last suitor if they are above average utility. (Assuming that all suitors are positive utility as compared to not picking anyone, which is not the case in dating.)

It might also be better not have a hard cut at any given r, and instead have some penalty to early picking which represents "I forfeit the possibility of making a more informed choice".

If your sequence starts as -2, 5, 6e23, then there is some case to be made to marry Mr/Ms Avagadro without considering the rest of the queue. Of course, if the distribution you are sampling is a bimodal distribution which is 2/3 a boring normal distribution around zero with sigma=4 and 1/3 (1d12)^(1d100) (using roleplaying dice syntax), then you would be better served to keep sampling.

What is this place?

This website is a place for people who want to move past shady thinking and test their ideas in a court of people who don't all share the same biases. Our goal is to optimize for light, not heat; this is a group effort, and all commentators are asked to do their part.

The weekly Culture War threads host the most controversial topics and are the most visible aspect of The Motte. However, many other topics are appropriate here. We encourage people to post anything related to science, politics, or philosophy; if in doubt, post!

Check out The Vault for an archive of old quality posts. You are encouraged to crosspost these elsewhere.


Why are you called The Motte?

A motte is a stone keep on a raised earthwork common in early medieval fortifications. More pertinently, it's an element in a rhetorical move called a "Motte-and-Bailey", originally identified by philosopher Nicholas Shackel. It describes the tendency in discourse for people to move from a controversial but high value claim to a defensible but less exciting one upon any resistance to the former. He likens this to the medieval fortification, where a desirable land (the bailey) is abandoned when in danger for the more easily defended motte. In Shackel's words, "The Motte represents the defensible but undesired propositions to which one retreats when hard pressed."

On The Motte, always attempt to remain inside your defensible territory, even if you are not being pressed.


New post guidelines

If you're posting something that isn't related to the culture war, we encourage you to post a thread for it. A submission statement is highly appreciated, but isn't necessary for text posts or links to largely-text posts such as blogs or news articles; if we're unsure of the value of your post, we might remove it until you add a submission statement. A submission statement is required for non-text sources (videos, podcasts, images).

Culture war posts go in the culture war thread; all links must either include a submission statement or significant commentary. Bare links without those will be removed.

If in doubt, please post it!


Rules


Recommended Posts And Communities

Recommended Realtime Chats