so i'm in the security line at airport. this guy was repeatedly announcing to the whole line that you can't have liquids or gels except in tiny containers in ziplock bags. i have some shampoo but i don't have a bag so i go up to ask where to get one. he ignores me, i say "excuse me" a few times, and finally he turns to me, so i ask. he says i interrupted his conversation with the line and now he won't tell me where bags are.

so i just put my shampoo through without a bag, and they don't notice it. they do notice my bottle of water. it's just so strange to ban water that it slipped my mind (i'm no chemist. maybe it's a justified security measure. but it is strange to live in a world where water is a security issue). i asked if they could pour it out and give me the bottle back, but the guy just walked off without a word. i waited a while and fortunately he came back with my bottle. he put it through the scanner, empty. i guess you can never be too careful with clear plastic bottles. he didn't say anything so i asked if i could go now, and i could.

for the flight back i brought a ziplock bag. unfortunately that meant they noticed my shampoo, and then threw it away for being too large (6 oz bottle not 3.4 oz.). it was only half full.

gameshow w/ 3 doors. 2 have goats. one has prize. u pick one. host opens a door u didn't pick to reveal a goat. then u can switch doors or not. what to do?

this is a well known problem. and the answer is:

**************** (answer below) ******************

the answer is switch, which gives u 2/3 odds. staying has 1/3.

why is it interesting? b/c a lot of ppl get it wrong. and *still* get it wrong after being told the answer. you can show them a chart with every possible initial setup and every choice you can make, and the results come out just as I said the answer is. but still some people think it's 50/50. including many mathematicians. according to my book on Erdos, this problem first got popular when the correct answer was given in a column, and 90% of the mail said she'd gotten it wrong, including from professional statisticians and such. a lot of the mail was angry. even Erdos (famous, brilliant mathematician) had trouble with it.

this is all very strange. the problem seems, to me, quite simple. lots of explanations have been given. here is mine that I think may get at the heart of why people are confused:

they think: there are 2 doors left it could be in, so it's 50/50. but lets look more closely at the part where the host reveals a door to you. what he's saying is IF your initial guess was wrong (which we know is 2/3 likely) THEN you should not pick this door here, b/c it has a goat. so he's telling you which one to pick (if your first guess was wrong). if your first guess was wrong, you now have a 100% chance when you switch doors, b/c you know which of the two has it. so you should switch banking on the fact your first guess is probably (2/3 likely) wrong, since you made it blindly from from 3 doors.

i got a book on Paul Erdos who devoted his life to math and wrote > 1000 papers (most ever i think) including with 485 different co-authors.

he put off an operation for cataracts for years because the week of recovery time would prevent him doing math.

erdos put out rewards on math problems he failed to solve. he put out rewards on over a hundred problems for more money (in total) than he had.

the reason he had no money is he gave it all away. he didn't even have a home. he just travelled around and stayed with mathematicians, solved a problem with them, and moved on.

since it was before the time of email, he sent 1500 letters a year.

here is the part that is strikingly similar to some plot from House:

his friend once thought he was addicted to drugs. he took amphetamines (stimulants) all the time. they bet $500 about him going without for a month. he did it. then he said: without the stimulants i had no good ideas. you've set math back a month. and he started taking them heavily again and being productive again.

sometimes people strongly want drugs, take them a lot, and strongly protest any reductions ... and are not addicted, their *reason* tells them to do this.

even if House is physically addicted (ie he'd get withdrawal symptoms) that doesn't mean he's mentally addicted (*irrational* need for the drugs). and just b/c he resists quitting his pain killers, or taking any less, does not make him an addict. as he says, he's in pain, and the drugs help him do his job.

I uploaded my Warcraft III map, an RPG, here:

http://hiveworkshop.com/resources_new/maps/4288

Public library policy: no drinks. Period. Not even in your bag.

Barnes and Noble's policy: sure, drink a smoothie, no one will say anything.

The book store faces competition which gives it an incentive to find the right policies. Further, it highly prioritizes letting customers do whatever they want so that they will be happy. To continue to exist a book store must sell a lot of books to satisfied customers.

The government libraries have a different incentive structure. They don't need to make a profit, or be run efficiently. To continue to exist a library ultimately must answer to voters (and only indirectly via electing politicians who have different library policies), not its actual users.

Further, and this should be no surprise, the library policy is part of a general attitude by the government that it should make rules to force people to do what the rule-makers see is best. And, as is frequently the case, the government is doing a poor job with its rules. Private book stores function just fine without banning drinks.

I finished reading Caleb Williams by William Godwin today. It's a novel that came out about a year after Political Justice and was aimed more towards common people with both a much lower price and also a less intellectual style.

The main themes are how unfair the criminal justice system can be, and how the rich have power to hurt others. The main character and narrator, Caleb, is falsely accused of a crime by an angry gentleman, Mr Falkland (a murderer), and spends over 270 days in jail in awful conditions before his trial. During this time he is badly mistreated including having a manacle very painfully put on his swollen, twisted ankle and having the straw for his bedding taken away in case he might conceal something in it.

Caleb escapes from jail, but never escapes from Falkland's power. He's tracked down and everywhere he goes his reputation is ruined and the threat of prison looms over him. Later he is acquitted at his trial but Falkland continues to harass him. Falkland hires a man to track him down wherever he goes, and also to assault him if he tries to set sail for a foreign country. Being innocent does Caleb little good as he feels from place to place and the people he meets turn against him, often without even being willing to listen to his side of the story.

The kindest characters to Caleb are a band of thieves who have a sense of honor and expel one of their own for assaulting Caleb (this brutal former thief is the man Falkland later hires to track Caleb).

Show: Lizzie McGuire

Background: Lizzie is a pretty normal girl, about age 14. Larry Tudgman is a nerd her age and one episode he asks her out. She feels bad about rejecting him and decides to go on a date, but then he tells people at school that they are boyfriend and girlfriend. She breaks up with him and says they aren't compatible. She expects him to cry. The conversation continues as follows:

Tudgman: I guess you're right. We're living a lie. I need a girlfriend who's into astrophysics, amphibian skeletal systems, and rotisserie baseball.

Lizzie: Yeah. And I need a boyfriend who's into
...
(pause)
...
"stuff". (small laugh)

The show then cuts to Lizzie's thoughts, and she thinks:

"Maybe I should develop some interests."

But then she adds:

"And then I could join a club and meet a boy there."

Scott Aaronson writes:

Kurt then made some comment about the inadequacy of a materialistic worldview, and how, without God as the basis of morality, the whole planet would degenerate into what we saw at Virginia Tech. I replied that the prevention of suffering seemed like a pretty good basis for morality to me.

I'm an atheist and certainly in agreement with Scott Aaronson that God is not a valid basis for morality. But I don't agree that prevention of suffering is a good replacement. Here is my reason:

What counts as suffering? Is it a matter of subjectively feeling bad? If so, a rapist would be in the right if restraint would cause him to feel worse than his victim will feel.

That's perverse. To avoid that category of faults we'll have to consider only impartial ways of evaluating suffering. That way if a person gets really upset about not having his way that does not automatically make him morally right. There are many possible ways to measure suffering objectively, but they all share a common flaw.

To explain the flaw, I will establish two facts. First, because our way of measuring suffering is part of the explanation of how the basis of morality works, it is prior to morality. It cannot use morality as part of it's measurement: that would be circular. Second, in order to work, our way of measuring suffering must take into account people's preferences. Does Sue want to have sex with Bob, or not? Does Joe like apples, or not? If it ignores preferences like these, it will incorrectly judge the suffering involved in sexual encounters and apple shortages.

The flaw comes from considering preferences while simultaneously thinking prior to morality. There is no valid way to judge the morality of the preferences being considered; there's no way to judge if they are wrong to hold, or should be changed. The result must be to make incorrect judgments about situations in which the right thing is for someone to change his preference.

We might try to invent ways of considering whether preferences are right to hold, and when they should be changed. But what we'd be doing, in effect, is reinventing morality. (Morality deals with how to live including which preferences are best to have.) If any morality is part of a proposed basis for all of morality, then that basis is circular.

My take on morality is that there is a careful way of thinking about morality such that the basis is virtually irrelevant: the vast majority of morality remains the same regardless of the chosen basis. You can even use something very silly like maximizing the number of live squirrels. I believe the parts of morality that are the same for a wide variety of bases are what we really know about morality. If that sounds interesting, read my explanatory dialog.