LESSWRONG

Suppose I spin a Wheel of Fortune device as you watch, and it comes up pointing to 65.  Then I ask:  Do you think the percentage of African

Suppose you ask subjects to press one button if a string of letters forms a word, and another button if the string does not form a word.  (E

Some early experiments on anchoring and adjustment tested whether distracting the subjects—rendering subjects cognitively "busy" by asking t

One of the single greatest puzzles about the human brain is how the damn thing works at all when most neurons fire 10-20 times per second, o

Whenever someone exhorts you to "think outside the box", they usually, for your convenience, point out exactly where "outside the box" is lo

Followup to:  Cached Thoughts, The Virtue of Narrowness Since Robert Pirsig put this very well, I'll just copy down what he said.  I don't

Suppose I told you that I knew for a fact that the following statements were true: - If you paint yourself a certain exact color between b

When I try to introduce the subject of advanced AI, what's the first thing I hear, more than half the time? "Oh, you mean like the Termina

What is true of one apple may not be true of another apple; thus more can be said about a single apple than about all the apples in the worl

I recently attended a discussion group whose topic, at that session, was Death.  It brought out deep emotions.  I think that of all the Sili

"Over the past few years, we have discreetly approached colleagues faced with a choice between job offers, and asked them to estimate the pr

From pp. 55-56 of Robyn Dawes's Rational Choice in an Uncertain World.  Bolding added. Norman R. F. Maier noted that when a group faces a

In lists of logical fallacies, you will find included "the genetic fallacy"—the fallacy attacking a belief, based on someone's causes for be