
Short Studies On Excuses - rms
http://lesswrong.com/lw/24o/eight_short_studies_on_excuses/
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swombat
I don't think removing the "8" from the title in this case was warranted. This
is not a list post, and the items are not quickly read, content-empty mini-
articles, but short essays that all fit together.

Calling it "Eight Short Studies on Excuses" is as reasonable as calling this
Mozart set of studies (<http://www.classiccat.net/mozart_wa/265.htm>) "Twelve
variations".

On the topic - interesting and well written. What are the advantages of the
normal mode of excuse-evaluation compared to this?

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gojomo
...but then every article with an excuse will want its leading number back!

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MikeCapone
Sorry, I down-voted this but meant to up-vote it. These arrows are a bit
small..

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lotharbot
1) When evaluating excuses (or other "low-probability" events), it's important
not merely to evaluate the likelihood of this exact pattern, but of all
patterns that are of the same level of impressiveness or more impressive. For
example, if you're evaluating whether to accept "my cousin died", you really
have to evaluate the whole class of excuses "my relative who is at least as
close as a cousin had a significant occurence". This is one of the best
observations in this essay.

2) Taking a game-theoretic approach to excuses, rather than merely accepting
"true" or "believeable" excuses, has the advantage of allowing you to reject
excuses without calling into question anyone's character. Nobody wants to be
the jerk who said "I don't believe your grandmother really died" to the kid
whose grandma actually DID just die; it's much easier to be the guy with the
"late work is not accepted even if your grandma dies" policy.

3) The excuse evaluator can add a cost to making excuses. A teacher might
require an essay explaining the excuse in detail, thereby wiping out the added
utility the student derives from procrastinating, but not wiping out the
utility the student derives from attending his grandmother's funeral. This
creates a threshold that prevents people with no real excuse from gaming the
system.

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SlyShy
In reality, most teachers accept late work from students they like. Still, I
suppose the example was specifically for economics professors. ;)

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vtail
Because grading a work by student you like gives you positive utility :).

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zck
Yes; generally, quality of work and how much a professor likes a student are
positively correlated. So, if a professor likes grading good papers, ey will
accept papers from late students ey likes.

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dfreidin
Excellent use of Spivak pronouns

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recurser
Reminds me of a great talk i attended by Karl Kruszelnicki analyzing the
increasing number of 'my grandmother died' excuses he sees each year at exam
time. He ended up with an exponential-looking graph for the last few years
which showed that in 10 or 20 years the average student will have 3 dead
grandmothers each.

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aero142
I'll give you an upvote if you give me an upvote and reply to this post.

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shawndumas
but you're at 1 now...

retreat, retreat!

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aero142
Crap, now we need 3rd party review.

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pingou
"Alternatively, you could try writing awful science fiction novels and hiring
a ton of lawyers. I hear that also works these days."

Off-topic but I disagree : Battlefield Earth was a good book. And terrible
movie.

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gwern
No. It was just as terrible a book.

