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Yeah I understand not wanting to go the masters route. However, I find it very difficult to imagine that you'd get into a top program without plenty of research experience. For example, I've been working in labs for over 5 years now (though this is probably on the high end of what you might need). It seems as if you might need to hold of on graduating and working in a lab as an undergrad (possibly as a volunteer) or looking for work as a research tech for a year (which might be tough, because they usually like people with some experience as well).

Even if following a religion was like Stockholm syndrome, why would that be a "defense" of it? Usually we think of stockholm syndrome as a psychological illness that needs to be overcome with therapy, etc.

I just took the general one (that was enough to get into a Phd program in biology) and I studied for a little over a month. Though I was working at the time and didn't study particularly hard. Taking an extra year can't hurt, but I'm sort of confused about your game plan. When are you planning on applying (and in what field to answer your physics question... though I'm surprised that physics wasn't a requirement for your neuroscience major. I had to take it for biochem and that's probably even less relevant).

Perhaps you can get your friend to write down his predictions in advanced as an informal Bayesian test. It seems that errors in reasoning of the above kind often arrive because people are more interested in defending their priors (estimation of probability before making an observation) than updating them based on that information. The basic concept here is that expected evidence must be conserved To continue your example, your friend is convinced that Obama is not a good president and points to a cherry picked list to prove that point. Having to make predictions prevents that kind of cherry picking because it forces you to test your model based on observable evidence. According to our informal bayesian test we have to ask ourselves two different questions: what's the probability we expect to see evidence x given hypothesis y is true AND what's the probability that hypothesis y is consistent with evidence x? So ask, as an example, what's your estimated probability (confidence) that Barack Obama will raise taxes on the rich if he is a bad president AND what's your probability estimation that Obama is a bad president if we observe him raising taxes on the rich? If we don't observe Obama raising taxes on the rich, your friend (if he's honest with himself) has to lower his confidence that Obama is a bad president and update his model about the Obama administration. The other useful part of this test is that updates in priors shift wildly only when your prediction is wrong or when you're not very confident about your beliefs. If I am very confident in my belief that Barack Obama is a terrible president then observing him doing something I consider terrible isn't going to change my opinion much. But if I see him doing something that I consider very good, than I know that my original confidence about his 'badness' was much too high and I should adjust accordingly. A liberal uncle of mine pointed out the Rand Paul's comments about the civil rights amendment as fantastic proof of what he knew all along: that republicans are racist. I pointed out (though I was probably ignored) that if you already believe that republicans are racist and you expect to observe evidence of republicans demonstrating their racism, then Rand Paul's comments are expected and therefore not very strong evidence. This observation shouldn't really be raising your confidence by all that much, therefore. (It is telling that many examples of republicans not being racist was ignored, however. This is because he did not make the following prediction: Out of a sample of 1000 republican speeches, how many of those will contain racist content based on the hypothesis that republicans are racist)

There's a whole group of these related biases: from http://lesswrong.com/lw/he/knowing_about_biases_can_hurt_people/

You could always try doing it both ways and comparing the samples side by side

Shouldn't we want our top general to question policy when they don't agree with it? If our top military administrator thinks Obama is doing something wrong in terms of his armed combat policy, I sure as hell would want him to express that to whoever he could.

The book I'm reading (Probability and the Logic of Science by Jaynes) has an example in it that I'm just not following. [math] If [/math] [math] \bar{A}=AD[/math] [math] then[/math] [math] A\bar{B}=\bar{B}[/math] Which I get, but then continues to: [math] and[/math] [math] B\bar{A} = \bar{A}[/math] which I don't get, considering the boolean identities he provides. Anyone know how to do this?

If we abolish our Justice system because nobody is responsible for their actions, that too would be predetermined. If you're running a computer simulation, the things in your simulation can't decide to stop following the rules of the program (if they appeared to, then it was part of the program to begin with). Therefore, I really don't see what the issue is.

moved to General philosophy. Just fits better here. Merged post follows: Consecutive posts mergedMaybe everything is predetermined, but does it matter? We cannot even come close to modeling the outcomes of individual behavior (we can't even make good simulations). If you can't predict what a person will do in a given environment, how can we debate on the finer points of free will? And this idea of determinism flies in the face of stochastic, random process we believe occur on the quantum level. So even if you could model every atom in the universe, you would still have non-deterministic processes at work, so you couldn't predict how *our* universe will behave (perhaps just a hypothetical one)

Yeah its true... When I got a speeding ticket I noted that it said something to the effect of: "By paying the fine, you're admitting your guilt to the charge." People are too lazy to go to court if they think they're in the right. They'd rather pay the fine and bitch.

All conspiracy theorists should be required to learn about Normal Accident theory and familiarize themselves with the hindsight bias. Merged post follows: Consecutive posts merged Agreed, but since there has never before been a case where this specific safety acoustic shutoff thing has ever been required or used to prevent a spill, it's a lot easier, in hindsight, to claim that it was foreseeably necessarily. Merged post follows: Consecutive posts merged Agreed, but since there has never before been a case where this specific safety acoustic shutoff thing has ever been required or used to prevent a spill, it's a lot easier, in hindsight, to claim that it was foreseeably necessarily.

He won the primary in an election? This seems more likely in a general election than a primary. During a general election, party identification rules outcomes. In a primary, people have to care enough to actually join the party and turn out to vote. You'd think they'd at least recognize candidates names from billboards and ads.

yeah, because if there's one thing that liberal elite loves to do is protect multinational corporations from unflattering forum posts. They also love it when government tries to take a secondary role in environmental affairs.

So willfull ignorance shouldn't be punished? Sounds like a thin line to cross.

I should say, that I don't think this has been tested in higher courts yet.

The reason why the "world is on fire" (gross exaggeration, btw) is because most people ignore trifles like evidence. When they see evidence they proclaim that it supports their prior viewpoint. If, by some unlucky accident, they happen to see evidence that doesn't support it, they'll usually ignore it. If you always seem to run into evidence that confirms your ideas and opinions, you may want to read into this subject before concluding that you are fully informed and right about everything.

Can't some professors also hold just a Masters degree depending on the college and field?

Numerology doesn't make predictions, because its not testable.

Why trade with China when mercury-laden toys could get in? As a practical matter, our children are already overburdened -- why make worse if we don't have to? I think its a kind of a cop-out to avoid certain topics just because you assume they are politically infeasible. What I mean is that, if you are in a position of power or government, how do you know something is actually infeasible if you don't try to push for it? How many ideas would actually gain acceptance, but by the assumption of infeasibility, the idea is not followed through to our detriment. Merged post follows: Consecutive posts merged I'm not sure if by quality, you just mean not letting terrorists and convicted criminals in. If so, then I agree. However, I think it would be a mistake to decide to let doctors and scientists in but not, say, construction workers and fry cooks.

Cultural preservation is not a right, as far as I'm aware. What I mean is: there is no law saying that immigration should be stopped if the WASPs feel overwhelmed by the influx of Mexican immigrants. What many on the right feel is that they should be allowed to use the federal government purposefully engineer the make-up of society to preserve their cultural legacy. Now, is possible that some immigrant groups feel the same way. But, at least for now, these are the political minority. I see no evidence that the vast majority of immigrants don't want to integrate into American society just as every other large immigrant group has done in the past. So yes, the way of life needs to change for current residents and immigrants. To stop it from not changing would be as fruitless as stopping the trade of goods and services. These things make us better off, not worse. No matter how scared the protectionists seem to be.

My assumption is not that Israelis (military) are more likely to be honest, but that (at least some) the activists on the boat probably did something to provoke the soldiers into going into attack mode. It's possible that Israelis are covering something up, but it seems likely that they are waiting for further analysis to release the video. The longer this takes, the less likely I will consider this to be likely. That's true enough, but who originally made this claim, if your intending to say that the IDF is making the smear, it's important to establish the source.

If this gains wider acceptance, this would be completely outrageous! http://gizmodo.com/5553765/are-cameras-the-new-guns I understand why a police officer would have a legitimate concern: he wouldn't want to have misleading video that could damage his/her reputation simply because he's enforced an unpopular law or if edited video misrepresents the severity or violence of his actions. However, outrightly banning filming in public spaces is not only unconstitutional (as it seems to me) it's unenforceable. It will be enforced, most likely, when cops don't want to look bad when they do something stupid. Thoughts?

This demonstrates the importance of priors when considering evidence. Padren's and Louis Wu's different analysis of the same evidence. The question, is if they'll admit to changing their minds when/if the evidence comes out?

It may increase, but there's no reason to think it would increase at a greater rate than the population increase. There's nothing fundamentally different about immigrants as people. I think their poverty could be greatly improved if they were here legally, and being forced to pay federal taxes could help build infrastructure, these tends to be negatively correlated with conventional crime. Merged post follows: Consecutive posts merged I'm aware these ideas wouldn't work in modern politics. Doesn't mean I shouldn't lobby for them, however. Right, but illegal immigration is proof that demand to move to this country outstrips the supply that legal channels can handle (both through infrastructure and legal limits). If we lower the barrier to entry, we can increase the number of background checks on immigrants and improve security. The bad guys, the people with something to hide can still immigrate illegally, but they'd stick out more with everyone else cooperating. Do countries with more closed borders have fewer security concerns? In this day and age, I would doubt it. You can see this outcome in markets all the time. You make drugs illegal, and it produces a violent black market (extreme example, because of the addictive nature of drugs). You see what I'm talking about though? you make drugs illegal, and people have to sneak over the border to deliver drugs, increasing the risk of delivery and usage. You make immigration illegal, you increase the risk of working, which harms the nation's productivity and makes immigration dangerous, but hasn't reduced the demand for it.