Being good at business is the #1 skill for making money. The firm requires employees with other skills, including invention in some cases, but they don't make as much as the boss.
From of the point of view of which skill the firm needs the most, again it's management, because a poorly managed firm won't make good use of its other skills.
"When a management with a reputation for brilliance tackles a business with a reputation for bad economics, it is the reputation of the business that remains intact." is a famous quote from Warren Buffet, and one I fully agree with.
From my experience, management and communication are grossly overestimated: no matter how good a manager you are, the performance of your teams is far more likely to depend of the quality of the people you are managing than your own.
A lot of this assertion depends on your definition of invention and how intellectually honest you feel the cohorts of invention versus “knowing how to make money” are. If those are the only two options, what would be rewarded more than “knowing how to make money”? That feels like a taxonomy created with an agenda in mind.
Capitalism rewards building stuff better than any other system we know of. Whether one thinks invention is undervalued or overvalued is more of a statement about one’s value system than about capitalism. It sounds like you think invention is very important and is undervalued.
I think a more accurate statement would be that we need far more people who are good at making money (e.g. running factories efficiently, lending money to the right people at the right interest rate, managing giant human enterprises well) than we need people who are good at inventing stuff. Most of what happens in an economy is just keeping the gears turning, moving things from here to there, building things we know how to build, making sure the electricity works, the cars start, the bus turns up on time, the check actually is in the mail, you get paid on time, et cetera. We don't *advance* if no one ever does invention, but if too many people are trying to invent too much of the basic wheels-go-round stuff doesn't get done and things fall apart.
Better, a quote I've heard attribute to Adrienne Rich (of all people): "If all of us contemplate the infinite instead of fixing the drains, many of us will die of cholera."
There are many kinds of things that need to be done. We need someone to invent new stuff. We need someone to find new clever uses for the recently invented stuff. We need many people to keep the wheels of the existing mechanisms running. We need someone to find problems with the existing mechanisms and fix them.
Asking which one is more important... dunno, seems to me that there are huge potential gains at every level. And also, we (as a society) can do all of that at the same time, by individuals choosing the place they feel they have a comparative advantage at.
For example, it would be nice if someone invented a new cure for cancer. But independently on that, it would also be nice to fix healthcare. Producing and distributing the existing pills cheaper would also help. And there is a lot of human work involved in just keeping everything as it is now.
Similarly with technical inventions: quantum computers would be nice, making better applications on existing computers is also nice, developing free alternatives to commercial software also helps people, and you also need someone to teach kids at schools to use the existing free software.
Yeah, people at some of these positions are better at capturing the value they produce than at other positions. But that would happen in any regime: it's either the money, or the decisions of the communist leaders, or the divine voice talking to the king.
Knowing how to make money in general is more valuable than knowing how to invent in general. But very few people have the general skill. Far more people know how to invent one thing, or know how to make money one way.
I am currently doing some data analysis regarding the difference in immunisation between a 1 dose and a 2 dose vaccination strategy (sponsered by a COVID microgrant from Zvi + anon donor).
I thought collecting some input from the community here might be worthwhile and the earlier, the better, so here goes:
It is still a work in progress and one would need to look into the whole repo to get a complete picture but the linked file basically explains the method.
If more information is needed I am happy to provide them. Also, you can contact me on various sites & the SSC discord, if you want to point out mistakes I made (or open a PR on Github).
Choose the correct answer from this official cognitive-functioning test question (you’ll want to commit to your final answer before reading further):
There are two women, Janet and Susan. Janet is attacked by a mugger just ten feet outside her front door. Susan is attacked by a mugger a mile away from her house. Who is more upset by the experience?
A) Janet
B) Susan
C) They are upset the same or it’s impossible to tell
This is from Michael Kinsley’s amazing piece in The New Yorker a few years back about living with Parkinson’s (“Have You Lost Your Mind?”). He was flabbergasted to discover that the literally accurate answer was deemed “incorrect.” The test-makers were purposely forcing respondents to choose between the most obvious answer, based in facile emotional intelligence that discerns the spirit of the narrative, or the one that relies on a closer, logical reading of semantics.
Kinsey interviewed the test-makers, who confirmed the gist of their intentions while remaining protective of their trade secrets, so there’s some speculation here: apparently they wanted to flag pedantic brains as functioning less than properly. Somewhere around 30% of all test-takers chose the pedantic answer, while most of the remaining 70% got it right. Interestingly, those figures were completely reversed among the Parkinson’s population.
I find it fascinating and opaquely illuminating that people who chose to interrogate the boundaries of the question were deemed to be incorrect. I wonder from what branch of science did the test-makers derive their confidence that a well-functioning brain should bias the gut, as it were, rather than getting bogged down in rules and semantics?
After I first read Kinsley's piece I polled ten acquaintances in a workplace environment of well-educated people, and true to the statistics, seven answered correctly, while three of us answered pedantically (coincidentally, all three of us had been diagnosed with differing neurological disorders). But wait, it gets weirder. I pressed a few of the 70% (none of whom seemed to wrestle a bit with the exercise) by asking: Would you have chosen Janet if your life depended on it? ALL said probably NOT (while still remaining perfectly untroubled by the mounting complications!).
This tells me that what the test-makers might have actually been looking for was an ability to discern correct CONTEXT. I had initially been considering the question in a pure vacuum, while others who chose Janet just seemed to “get” what the test-makers were looking for. One made a shrugging comment like, “Well it is just a test – not real life.” (How the hell am I supposed to know THAT??)
So, with this knowledge of the unsaid implications, can you think of any advice you'd like to offer us pedants who really can't imagine another way to answer such a question?
I've always been good at multiple choice tests. Always consider the source and don't overthink. There are often going to be questions that are somewhat ambiguous if you really think about it. But your goal is to give the answer the test-maker had in mind, not the technically correct one (unless you know the test-maker is also very pedantic!) The context of what material the test is supposed to be testing can usually tell you when you are solving the problem as expected and when you are overthinking it.
Also, this is more relevant to an educational setting, but, as a last resort, you can go "family-feud" style. If a question is really ambiguous, go for the answer you think most people are likely to guess - then you have the most chance of the instructor deciding to accept that answer as correct in response to student complaints.
This reminds me of a story from my school days. I was taking a math test and while I was working on a problem I realized that it was too hard for the current topic and I also knew what wrong answer the teacher was looking for. I considered my options and decided to go for the correct answer (I was going to get a good score anyway).
A few days later the teacher read the grades (out loud) but didn't return the tests. Then another couple days later he announced that there had been some corrections and some grades had gone up and some had gone down. My grade had gone up (and one other guy in my year too) and many others had gone down. The teacher had apparently figured out that if two kids both give the same unexpected wrong answer, something is probably going on.
Fortunately our classmates never found out what happened.
I think the question to ask yourself is "what is this question trying to ask?" Like this question isn't *really* about the head-space of two fictional characters, what the question is trying to ask is "are people generally more upset by negative experiences near to home, far from home, or neither?"
I think most people would find the latter question easier to answer, it's still asking for a generalization which you may or may not agree with, but I think far fewer people are going to get tripped up on the stuff like "well what if Susan is an easily upset person, while Janet is unflappable?" that might lead someone to say C.
You may ask "why didn't they ask that question in the first place" and I think that 1) discerning the intent of the question is often seen as an intentional part of test taking, 2) some more empathetic people actually may find the question easier to answer in the stated form - it feels "realer" with imagining real people, compared to my "decoded" version which is really dry, 3) it's just less boring to ask questions in this way.
It depends on the semantics of "tell". Janet is more upset, for most but not all values of Janet.
Under Boolean semantics, "it's impossible to tell" is True unless you can prove that either Janet is always more upset, or Susan is more upset, for all possible values of Janet and Susan. You can't; so the answer is C.
Under probabilistic or information-theory semantics, answer A (Janet) is the only one that gives you positive {predictive value / information}; so the answer is A.
Yeh. The last paragraph makes sense, although like a lot of commentary here, could be less opaque. I personally don’t think there is any reasonable way to read this question as anything other then probabilistic - what would the majority of women think in either case. Assuming and actual Susan and an actual Janet just wouldn’t occur to me.
The people answering c remind me of the time I tried the trolley problem with a group of people and one guy was adamant that the question was suspect. Who put the people on the tracks anyway, why not try stop or reverse the trolley. All good questions if that was anecdote rather than a thought experiment, but it wasn’t.
I see your point, but the pedant in me wasn't bringing in the complications. That was the test-makers, who included the option that "it's impossible to tell."
In your trolley example, your pedants are just really avoiding the question. The better parallel would be if your trolley narrator added a third possible option such as "You can't tell for sure, but you think maybe the train is travelling too fast for the diversion." Which would invite many more problems for one to consider.
I’m kind of stuck on the cognitive-functioning aspect of all this, but I’m assuming it’s related to social functioning. If so, should it really be a healthy norm for society to resist individuals who are unwilling (or unable) to privilege the meta-level narrative/game that everyone else somehow knows/wants to play? It seems the little kid who proclaims the emperor’s not wearing any clothes is really told to shut up and stop being silly, end of story.
Also, on a socio-political level, it’s scary to imagine what the world would look like without such pedantry. I’m thinking, for example, of the lone voice on a jury who sees everything differently – but correctly – while everyone else is more socially relaxed, easily forgetful of the real-life stakes, and just wants to get home in time for dinner. If the optimal brain is one that values going with the flow, being in synch with societal narratives, presumably enjoying the fruits of the resultant parasympathetic system involvement, then we’re doomed, right? Unless, maybe the test-makers weren’t actually thinking it’s optimal for a society’s individuals to have optimal brains?
Yes, I don't like the tyranny of "healthy norms" when it comes to cognitive function, particularly when we're talking about a 70/30 split and human variety has all kinds of social benefits.
I'm baffled that anyone could say this has a "right" answer when there are so evidently multiple possible interpretations, and how would one make a case that one interpretation is better than another?
I'm obviously a really pedantic person, working on it all the time I swear. I could see the test-writers probably meant for us to answer A (and that was my first answer), that some more precise reading would deliver C, and that a different set of emotional priors would yield B. In that way it seems more like a personality test than something with a right/wrong answer.
I support the anxious/obsessive/hyper-conscientious minority and their efforts at keeping us all safe, even if it means they need mouth guards to sleep at night.
Yes, but if I were taking a test labeled as measuring cognitive functioning (as opposed to a personality test) I would be totally stuck trying to guess what they were looking for. So I'd surely default to answer C, as this seems like the most streamlined, cognitively unassailable response.
So, it's easy to imagine the cases where the stickler is the one lone voice of sanity stemming a tide of madness and chaos.
But what is actually happening 99% of the time is that either human language is imprecise or a given model/metaphor/explanation only needs a certain superficial level of depth in order to serve it's purpose in communication, everyone else in the room accurately understood what was being conveyed and got the correct information they were supposed to out of it, and the one stickler is wasting everyone's time and actually making things less clear and more confusing, causing mistakes and misunderstandings.
So, of course, the pedant in me would ask where you got your 99% data point from, but I'm assuming it's merely a hardened assumption you carry around based on your life experiences.
I would probe this assumption on a couple grounds. First, if you think the "stickler" is purposely wasting everyone's time (i.e., they can actually see what the model in question is asking for, but they're choosing to muddle things up for ego or whatever reasons), I think you'd often be wrong. Often, someone has a perfectly relevant but perhaps outside-the-box approach, but can't get a hearing because of social resistance.
I've noticed that such voices tend to be ostracized from the get-go because their energy doesn't match "the room," which can lead to a vicious cycle of them not feeling heard, with "the room" more and more adamant about shutting them up. Since the room's natural tendency trends toward social cohesion, resistance is automatically troubled (so, for example, you might be interpreting stress energy as an anti-social intention).
While I'm guessing you'll disagree, I'm left widely supportive of alternative voices in principle, even though they tend to make the room less tidy. Systemic examples of such support include open invitations to diversity, voluntary relinquishing of leadership roles by "straight white male" -types who have historically kept the room organized, and even attendance to cries of "micro-aggressions" and other expressions that are easily ridiculed as shrill or off-point.
I'm super glad we've evolved culturally past the point where the elite voices who tended to pride themselves on a sort of pristine rationality have learned to listen better to discern the concerns of others. When I was young Norman Mailer et al. were still baiting feminists as hysterical and irrational. Black Lives Matter, Queer affiliation, etc -- these are welcome forms of pedantry that demand to be taken seriously by those in the room who would prefer their comfort not be riled. I've been in many leadership positions throughout my life, and every time I've checked my inclination to dismiss someone as irrational or whatever, I've discovered at the very least a nugget of valuable, relevant information about their perspective that I really needed to hear.
The article mentioned says 'C' is the pedantic one, because the question explicitly asks whether Janet or Susan feels worse, and we don't know enough about them or the mugging to say one way or the other. 'A' is the correct answer.
I got it wrong both ways by guessing 'B' (a mugging outside my house is anomalous, one in unfamiliar territory would make me more afraid of the outside world), which meant I found it a very confusing analysis.
My gut answer was A, my pedantic thought was C, then I thought B, since Janet getting mugged outside her door suggests her house is in a rough enough neighborhood she may be resigned to sporadic crime, while Susan could live in a safer neighborhood and be more upset when she encounters crime
I also initially guessed B, with the reasoning that Janet would probably complain about it more but ultimately can just walk back home after, which would be less traumatic than Susan having to find her way home with no wallet. But then I switched to C once I saw that option, since really there's no way to know.
Yeah, I could see it either way; I was staring at the question trying to find some missing word i.e. perhaps the mugger were sniping the women and literally a mile away while the women were near their houses and somehow mugging them that way, which would make a bigger difference?
Yeah, I would choose C because there are two factors, one is along the lines of "I was so close to having safely avoided this mugging and/or my phone turf area is unsafe for me" and one is "if I were mugged right outside my home, I might sooner be safely in my home calming down and emotionally recovering". I can't really assume I know how the factors shake out with only the information given.
If you allow that the word "know" can be applied to things for which you have *some* evidence but not absolute certainty, then you have to pick some threshold for what counts as "enough" evidence to use the word "know".
If your standard is "any evidence at all", then answer C would only be correct if there is NO statistical correlation between mugging location and upset-ness. Which I presume is not the case, or else we wouldn't be having this discussion.
Any other quantitative standard you choose is at least somewhat arbitrary, and no specific standard is included in the question. Which would make the pedantic answer "this question is ambiguous", not "C".
When I read the question, I interpreted "or it's impossible to tell" as meaning "the statistics are within experimental error". That interpretation was based partly on the context that it was grouped together with "they are upset the same" (why would you group "equal" and "unknowable" under the same answer otherwise?) and partly for the reasons I laid out above.
(I am pretty pedantic and still answered A. As evidence of my pedantry (if you needed any more), on another test I objected to the question "agree/disagree: Our country will be destroyed someday if we do not smash the perversions eating away at our moral fiber and traditional beliefs" on the grounds that obviously our country will be destroyed SOMEDAY no matter what we do.)
I'm not sure that objecting to that latter question is good evidence of pedantry. The logician's answer is "agree", because the question used "if" rather than "iff", and the consequent is (always) true so the conditional is true.
Yes, and my objection is that the question is constructed such that most readers will answer an implied question rather than the explicit question, and there's no way to tell which responses are answering which question.
Is the pedantic answer C, because it's impossible to tell what two people will think about a given thing, while the intended answer is A, because getting mugged right outside your house is probably more upsetting than getting mugged elsewhere?
Maybe part of the problem is that it sounds like an SAT reading comprehension problem or something to me, in which case C would be the right answer. If you asked it like "which is likely to upset someone more, A, B, or no difference", I wonder if you'd get a difference distribution.
Yes, sorry for the confusion. About thirty percent tend to answer C (pedantically), while 70 percent say A because of proximity to home. A was deemed officially correct.
Interestingly, I considered B, on the grounds that neurotypicals are a majority, they routinely do things that make no sense to my gut, and an awful lot of them get hysterically afraid of events they've heard about happening - once, among a national population of 100s of millions, and nowhere near their homes. It is thus plausible to me that the more common response is the one that seems least sensible to me, and that the goal of the question is to demonstrate that one is "normal" by producing the common (and thus better-by-definition) response.
So I'm seeing an unexpected hybrid population developing here: you seem to be right on track when it comes to sensing the KIND of emotion-based answer the test-makers were looking for -- but then you got bogged down in secondary-level pedantry!
My thinking was that something that happens in another neighborhood can be set aside more easily. Being struck so close to home causes a wound to the confidence about home and safety.
It's nebulous, but how 'wide' are the boundaries between neighborhoods in Australia? I'd think they're roughly the same as anywhere, e.g. the width of the street(s) (or some other 'natural' boundary) that divide any two neighborhoods.
Given that, _every_ possible pair of adjacent neighborhoods, anywhere, is only "blocks apart".
Maybe you live in the center of some neighborhood, but surely lots of others live closer to the edges.
And then of course 'neighborhood' is pretty nebulous itself. I've lived in several places where there _was no_ obvious 'neighborhood'. Maybe 'neighborhoods' are more of a thing in places with lots of historical gang activity and thus clearer territorial boundaries at the 'neighborhood scale'.
I have a bit of a problem with this. My naive guess is Janet - people tend to be more upset by things which happen closer to themselves. It feels more like a personal violation.
At the same time, people also tend to blame themselves for something bad happening to them if they could have had any control over the circumstances, and sometimes that will be forced on them: see "clothing worn by rape victims". In this case, being mugged 2 miles from your house implies some place you didn't need to be. "I could have gone to a different grocery store" can run through your head continually and cause suffering. "I could have avoided going outside, ever" is pretty much recognized as crazy.
These two emotional responses are in direct opposition to each other and knowing which one would predominate would require a bit more knowledge of the two people involved. Forced, I'd go with 'A', but that's a damn hard question.
I was in a similar position. I read between the lines and could tell that the test writers weren't going for pedantic reasoning, but when comparing the two people I could come up with too many competing narratives that could favor either one. In the end, I chose "it's impossible to know," thinking that's the answer of someone who correctly understands that that people's emotional states depends on their complex perspective, not on some external appraisal of their situation.
In short, my mistake was in thinking that the test was a test of empathy or social skills, whereas it's apparently a more basic test of "can you tell which of these two situations is meant to sound worse on first glance?"
i wonder if getting the "correct" answer correlates with GPA? The pedantic answer seemed most correct to me but I correctly guessed the desired answer, drawing upon my extensive practice at test taking in school, where on poorly written tests you are often being tested most on your ability to predict what the teacher wants
You are a very stable genius! It's this ability to predict the "desired answer" that I seem to lack. Again, I'm convinced it's about the ability to sense the correct context.
An amusing little anecdote:
Years back, in a psychological evaluation for a child custody court case, I was asked to draw a tree on a blank piece of paper. I asked the examiner how long I should take to draw it (the whole evaluation took most of the day, so I had no idea how to approach this one exercise). The examiner told me to take as long as I liked. So I spent maybe a half hour, detailing the veins on the leaves, the bark, etc – drawing what turned out to be a rather splendid tree, if I do say so myself. Later, the examiner’s report cited this particular exercise as evidence of my narcissism – which I thought was weird, considering the stakes of the test (which would impact how much time my three-year-old child lived with me). I mean, who in their right mind wouldn’t draw the best tree of their life if their child’s welfare was on the line? THAT was the context running through my head, but the correct context apparently was to be cool.
Which is not to argue I'm not narcissistic, of course, but is this event an accurate barometer? One theory is that my hyper-focus on the tree was not properly respectful of the psychologist’s time, but he had been going back and forth to his office all morning, leaving me to work on specific tasks -- so it’s not like he was just sitting there watching me be narcissistic.
I think at the very least you made an unusual choice in going for a superbly detailed tree instead of a merely adequate one. Like someone said, part of any test is figuring out what the person administering it is looking for. In your case it wasn’t artistic talent but maybe a sense of what kind of tree would fulfill the request. Also, are you sure you weren’t being observed the whole time?
My ex-wife was an excellent illustrator, she had a real keen sense for lighting. I often wonder if my kid’s ever inherited her talent... but... ever since I lost the big art competition used to decide custody I haven’t seen them much.
Look, in no way do I defend my choice as smart, proportional, or constructive. But the experience does help me keep in mind that some of us get tunnel vision (less smart often) during times of stress. And this was far and away the most stressful time of my entire life. So as ridiculous as it sounds, I was in a state of mind where the future of my child felt directly connected to my level of effort, and I acted accordingly.
I find it helpful to recall this when I see others -- especially those who are historically, chronically stressed -- speaking or acting with a sense of desperation, ESPECIALLY when surrounded by a cool, calm, rational group that has collectively decided to mock their stressed attempts to seek equality, justice, etc.
I suspect that the tester was engaged in motivated reasoning.
If you had drawn a mere sketch of a tree, that would be evidence that you were a slacker.
If you asked what kind of tree you were supposed to draw, that was "proof" that you are a bigot, as shown by your reprehensible discrimination between tree species.
Drawing a Christmas tree clearly demonstrates that you must be financially irresponsible and want someone to provide for you.
Honestly, the tester struck me as a bit of a slacker (but, of course, I was biased). He didn't seem interested in or able to put himself in the position of someone in such a life-altering situation. My bet is he just looked at the fact that I'd spent a much longer time than average drawing more ornamentation than average, and labeled that a narcissistic tendency when it might well have just been situational narcissism.
And it seemed to me a bit of a dirty trick that he wouldn't answer my initial question about how long I should take to draw. I was clearly seeking context. Failing to get any, my feeling (charged with stress) was that I better just give it all I have.
As others have commented, the 'obvious' answer A does not seem obvious and the 'pedantic' answer C does not seem pedantic. There are various reasons being mugged nearer your house could feel better than far away, e.g.
--likely closer to friends/neighbours who can help
On the other hand, there are various reasons being nearer your house feels worse:
--may increase anxiety every time you leave your house / maybe want to leave your house
Perhaps, but the expert test-makers make the big bucks, so we have to presume there's method to their madness: forcing us to choose the sole "correct" answer.
My interpretation of the question is: if this had happened for real, do you think it would be more likely that Janet was most upset, Susan was most upset, or that they were so similarly upset that it would be impossible for to determine who was more upset. The pedantic interpretation of the question is: given only information about where the muggings occurred, is Janet definitely more upset, is Susan definitely more upset, or do you have insufficient information to say who is more upset? I think the pedantic interpretation is wrong because it ignores contextual clues about how to interpret the question. For example, "they are upset the same or it's impossible to tell" is a single option, so it's probably meant to express only one idea: that the two people are upset to similar degrees (i.e. impossible to tell because the difference is small), rather than express the logical union of two separate ideas: that either they're equally upset or it's impossible to tell for some reason (e.g. because you have insufficient information in the question). That being said, it's not a well-written question because the pedantic interpretation is more plausible than it ought to be, especially if you had a prior belief that this might be a trick question.
Putting pedantry aside, (A) seems like the obviously correct answer to me, because getting mugged near your house means that you're not safe in the one place you can't avoid traveling through when you leave the house, but if you get mugged a mile away, you can stay safe by avoiding that area. Obviously people react differently, so maybe Janet is a buddhist monk and Susan has frequent panic attacks, but I think the implication is that the question is about how most ordinary people would react, and I think most ordinary Janets would be noticeably more upset than most ordinary Susans.
So do you think the ability to discern the most relevant implications, as you have, is simply a result of intelligence? I don't get the sense the test-makers were targeting intelligence so much as mechanical functioning somehow.
Note that the Parkinson's population is a mirror image of the general public when it comes to getting the question wrong. (Most Parkinson's folks I've met have been super sharp.)
> So do you think the ability to discern the most relevant implications, as you have, is simply a result of intelligence?
No, I don't think it's a very good question to begin with. I think 70% of people answer (A) because that's what a quick, common-sense interpretation gives you, and 30% of people answer (C) because that's what a very literal, spot-the-trick-question interpretation gives you. The difference between the two groups is certainly not "intelligence", and drawing some conclusion about cognitive functioning differences between the two groups is probably an unjustifiable leap in reasoning. I was mainly explaining my reasoning because it seemed like a lot of other commenters didn't see why (A) should be the correct answer.
You may be right about it being a bad question. I don't know anything about test making. But my sense from Kinsley's interview with the test-makers is that any clumsiness to the phrasing, etc, was designed very intentionally.
For me, pedantry is more of a mood than a way of life. I used to be pedantic because that's just the way we had fun in my household (it was more fun than it sounded?); we would annoy my mother at the dinner table by responding "I don't know" to questions like "Would everyone like dessert"?
As I've grown up I've learned to dial down the pedantry and instead answer the question that I think is intended rather than the question that has _strictly_ been asked, because pedantry doesn't actually work out well for me in real life.
I think this is a good point. Pedantry is a "read the room" kind of thing. If you're writing a math paper, pedantry is required. If you're having a casual conversation with a stranger, pedantry is usually considered rude. This question, if it tells us anything, tells us whether or not respondents feel like pedantry is the right mood for a multiple-choice psych questionnaire.
And the ability to "read the room" comes from where? Family modeling? Native intelligence? And would certain neurological conditions block this ability?
Right, I do think some people have good control of their pedantry dial and other people don't know where it is, much less that it might be controlled. I imagine that's down to some mix of genetics and upbringing.
That dinner table anecdote would work better if, after everyone else had answered "I don't know", the final one to reply said that yes, everyone wanted dessert.
I know, right? I’m not actually as interested in the cognitive-function implications of this particular test question as the social/political implications
I guess I’m feeling this is a tiny piece of “official” evidence that there’s a sort of social consensus that The Rules (and even the facts?) are malleable according to context – and I can’t help thinking this spills over into populations that have to fight quite a lot harder for scraps of agency then us mere miserable pedants.
If I’m right, this malleability seems related to our human capacity for abiding horrific things with a shrug just because it’s always been that way; forcing, for example, African Americans into choosing between acquiescence or righteous Constitutional pedantry for more than 100 years after Reconstruction. Which is a pretty shitty deal.
So -- to your point -- I'm prone to losing my patience (and flexibility) in situations where it seems the other is operating/arguing from an unserious base of assumptions when it comes to things like "democracy" (for example); i.e. when their "context" (perhaps their habitual political affiliation) seems to be inadequate to address the stakes involved.
One thing you may want to consider is that "word problems" almost always include idealizing assumptions. That's because they're *phrased* in concrete terms, but are really *about* abstract models. (The rationale for concrete phrasing is usually some combination of "people understand stories more easily than abstractions" and/or "we want students to think about how the abstract models can be applied to real life".)
If I ask you about the travel time of a train that leaves city A at 8:00 traveling to city B that is 120 miles away, you are supposed to assume (unless specified otherwise) that the train travels at constant speed without stopping and that 120 miles is the length of the track, even though none of those assumptions are particularly realistic.
If I tell you that one person always lies and one always tells the truth, you are not supposed to worry that one of them might make an honest mistake or simply refuse to answer your question, and you certainly aren't supposed to ask whether "lying by omission" counts as a "lie" for purposes of this problem.
The ropes are massless, the pulleys are frictionless, the wires are lossless, the Turing Machine has infinite tape, etc.
We don't often call attention to these assumptions or explain how to tell which ones we're making. Among other unfortunate consequences, this means that sometimes the person asking the question changes the assumptions without telling you, and thinks that this means they're being clever (when actually they're just communicating badly).
There's a famous lateral thinking puzzle involving 3 light bulbs in a box connected to 3 switches that are outside the box but that will be locked once you open the box, and you're supposed to figure out which switch goes to which light. The accepted solution is to turn on one switch, wait for the corresponding bulb to get hot, then turn it off and turn on another switch before opening the box.
This answer directly violates a common idealizing assumption (i.e. ignore electrical losses). But if you're willing to break ANY idealizing assumption, then there are TONS of easy solutions, like "cutting a hole in the box" or "rewiring the circuits to bypass the locked switches". (Also, you can tell this puzzle predates the rise of LED bulbs.) IMO this is a broken puzzle with no *fair* solution--but the people who repeat it don't seem to notice this issue...
(You could probably rework it into a story where the lights are actually heat lamps, so that becoming hot is part of their core functionality. But then you're *calling attention* to the heat and the puzzle becomes easier...)
Sometimes it's not obvious what idealizing assumptions should be made. There's another famous logic puzzle that's usually phrased as having to do with eye color. It's more complex; here's one version: https://xkcd.com/blue_eyes.html
It's a clever puzzle, except it relies on the assumption that a public declaration creates mathematically-perfect "common knowledge", in the sense that everyone hears and believes, and everyone knows that everyone hears and believes, and everyone knows that everyone knows that... to infinite levels of recursion. You can kind of see how this might make sense as an "idealizing assumption", but it's not an idealizing assumption that most people will have encountered before; a good-faith listener could plausibly fail to make it. (And you can't make the assumption explicit without giving a really huge clue to solving the puzzle.)
I have Asperger's and this is one major lesson I had to learn as a kid. At first, I really struggled with word problems because of all the possible complications not stated in the problem, like you mention. However, I quickly learned to answer the question the test makers meant, rather than what they said.
I had the same experience. No diagnosis, but almost certainly Asperger's. I still recall thinking at a very early age "this answer is wrong, but it is the one they want."
One thing I've noticed about logic puzzles: if it's necessary for the puzzle to stipulate that the people involved are "perfect logicians," I will never, ever be able to wrap my head around it. (Even after reading Scott's story based on the same puzzle.)
All makes sense. But I'm not sure you're fully covering the problem inherent in this particular question, which is the addition of "it's impossible to tell." If that phrase were left out, I would certainly have chosen Janet as the best choice available, no problem.
While you may easily see that phrase as a distraction, it pops out to me in bright neon lights as the ONLY possible answer. I think that's why Kinsley was so flabbergasted. The test-makers seemed (to me) to purposely be signaling us away from idealized assumptions by providing an answer that is literally correct.
"The ropes are massless, the pulleys are frictionless, the wires are lossless, the Turing Machine has infinite tape, etc."-- UNLESS what if one of the questions specifically said "the ropes are old and frayed" and then gave the option C of "it's impossible to calculate" AND it's not a math test, but a cognitive-functioning test...
If the problem statement explicitly introduces non-ideal factors, then definitely you are supposed to take those into account.
But I don't see how offering "it's impossible to tell" as one of the possible *answers* is equivalent to that.
If I gave you a standard textbook physics problem involving ropes, never said anything one way or the other about the state of the ropes, and then offered "it's impossible to tell" as one of the multi-choice answers, would you select that answer on the grounds that the idealizing assumptions had not been explicitly articulated? Even if, under the typical ideal assumptions, you could calculate an exact answer?
Yes, if a physics problem included "it's impossible to tell", that seems, to me anyways, as a very obviously reasonable clue that it's the correct answer. Just the inclusion of that answer would be strong evidence that the problem is NOT in fact a "standard textbook physics problem" as none of them typically (or ever) include options like that.
I really don't like that Randall calls this the hardest puzzle in the world, as it can be solved via inductive reasoning. Now, the knight and knave puzzle by Boolos where there are three creatures (truthful, liar, random) that reply "yes" or "no" in a language you don't know and you have to identify them by asking three questions is hard enough you can't even explain the solution to a stranger in a bar, even less ask them to solve it.
I thought B was the most likely on a 'gut' level since Susan would be far from home, potentially injured, upset, still exposed after the attack and having much more of an obstacle to get somewhere warm and safe potentially with people she knows that can help. Then switched to C when considering the possibility that Janet might feel more lasting anxiety at the feeling of violation close to home.
I'm a pedant, but it seemed natural to me to pick A or B (and A seemed the more likely option, because a hyper-local mugging could shatter the victim's sense of security in and around their home). I think there are two reasons: first, I know that most people are less pedantic than me, and taking the maximally pedantic approach usually leaves me out of step with the world; second, and more specific to this question, if the intended answer was 'C' then the whole exercise would be quite silly. It's blindingly obvious that we don't know for sure which fictional character is more upset; I would only think to answer C if the context in which the question was asked made the 'extremely easy reading comprehension/deductive inference test' interpretation more plausible than 'not-quite-precisely worded empathy/social expectations test'.
I think there's an analogy to the Gricean maxims: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cooperative_principle . If you assume the test-taker isn't trying to waste your time with silly trick questions, you will read the necessary implicit qualifications into the question rather than going with the one that is boringly obvious on a fully-literal reading.
(I do agree that C is obviously correct, though; whether marking it incorrect is itself an error probably depends on what exactly one's score is supposed to show.)
This seems like exactly the kind of survey that you can use to prove anything you want. At minimum, there are two possible ways to interpret the question: as a sociology question ("would most women be more upset about getting mugged close to home ?") or as a logic question ("given the parameters of the problem, and only those parameters, do we have enough information to pick A or B ?").
Color me cynical, but this sounds like one of the (many) reasons for the replication crisis in the social sciences.
Just to be super clear: if this question is from a cognitive assessment test to diagnose Parkinsons, and the response dynamics of Parkinsons populations are dramatically different from the response dynamics of control populations, then it is a good question.
These assessment tests are not arbiters of moral rightness or factual accuracy, they're diagnostic tools with a very specific job to accomplish, and if they accomplish that job well then they're good tools. I wouldn't try to read too much into their contents beyond 'this is what we found to work'.
Who says they derived it from science? Psychology can be taken in an arts degree.
I think the trick is supposed to be the word "just". This makes one of them sound more sensational than the other, and is otherwise incongruous with the style of test questions.
The problem is, the word isn't said by Janet - it's said by the narrator. Had I been asked which one the *narrator* thinks is more upsetting, I'd have answered A, but I (correctly) noticed that the narrator's feelings are not relevant to the question asked and excluded that from consideration.
Something similar to this (with less potential for theorising) would actually make a good way to test how easily people are led astray by unreliable narrators.
One failing of the US healthcare system I do not understand: Why is it so hard to *pay* them?
You'd think the one advantage of a mostly-privatized system would be that they'd make it easy for you to give them money. But it's always incredibly complicated even in simple cases. I have standard health and dental insurance, and whenever I go to get something basic - like a regular checkup or a filling - the doctor's office won't let me pay the copay up front, tell me they'll call the insurance, and call me again or send me a bill in the mail six months later (by which time I've forgotten what it was even about). Why is this? This seems like something they're strongly incentivized to handle efficiently.
There's your confusion. Nearly everything about the normal medical system is extremely regulated, especially payment. It's my understanding that things are a bit more flexible with concierge medicine, though I'm not sure how true that is.
For most office visits, I show my insurance card and swipe my credit card. I've only had a few weird cases where they send you an invoice 2 months later and then you have to either mail it back, or log on to an online payment system.
Surgery is horrible though. For an outpatient surgery, I payed an up front cost, then I got a bill from the surgeon a month later, a bill from the anesthesiologist a week after that, and then another bill from the surgeon because there was some issue with insurance and the cost ended up being more than expected. I was never told that those other bills were coming and the up front cost was not cheap (it was partially covered by insurance).
Not sure about this, but I think insurance companies have pretty strict rules about when and how you can charge the patient and also the insurance company. For example, you don't want a doctor's office secretly reimbursing the most lucrative patients their copays, so that all those patients choose that doctor and have no incentive not to overspend on care. I think some of these regulations mean that doctors need to carefully document exactly how they're charging patients and make sure it fits insurance company regulations, which might sometimes mean they want to talk to the insurance before they take your money.
Just for comparison, some really big companies are difficult to pay also. I used to work at [very small company] that was acquired by [very large enterprise]. We went from being able to sell our service to people directly with a credit card to having to send prospective customers to a salesperson who worked for a "partner" of [very large enterprise] who could facilitate a transaction (while taking a cut).
Yeah, this has been my experience as well. The larger an institution you're dealing with, the less you'll see money changing hands between individuals. Maybe it just cuts down on the graft potential?
That might be a factor, but I think the biggest reason is "back office software." At many companies, things don't *exist* if they can't easily be plugged into [enterprise management system]. And a lot of those systems are really old (1990s) and extremely difficult to work with - migrations take years and years.
I think it's honestly "it's too expensive to onboard a lot of payors into this system that runs the whole business; let's let smaller partners deal with it and we'll pay them so we don't have to deal with the pain of upgrading."
Most people's insurance at best covers 80% of dental care, but every insurance company may reimburse a different amount for different procedures and they may refuse to reimburse for some procedures altogether. That means a dentist has no idea what to charge you at the time they've seen you. They will bill multiple procedures for one visit and not know which ones will be covered until they actually pay.
Depending on the billing cycle for the dentist and the payment lag of the insurance company, it could take them a month or more to find out what your insurance company paid for your visit and another month to bill you for what's left. If the billing people for the dentist are part-time or inefficient and the insurance company sucks (which many do) that could stretch out to months.
Insurance companies don't get to tell a provider how to bill their patient, but it creates an accounting hassle for the dentist if they charge you what the *think* will be 20% of your bill and later it turns out they have to reimburse you because you overpaid based on what the insurance company actually paid. Cutting checks back to patients is a hassle, particularly if it would have to be done in a majority of instances.
Most insurance plans provide simple co-pays for doctor visits and mental healthcare visits -- like $25 per visit -- and that's regardless of what "procedures" were done. So it's much easier in that situation and those kinds of providers can usually just take payment at the time of the appointment.
Our insurance system is really broken. Speaking as a healthcare provider who owns my own business.
Clarification: when I said above an insurance company doesn't get to tell a provider "how" to bill the patient, I mean literally like when and how they collect payment from a patient. The provider IS required to charge the patient no more than the "contracted rate" for any given procedure.
So my dentist lets me pay my 20% at the time of the visit partly because I was a little pushy about it and I only realized later, being a provider myself though not a dentist, that I was actually making more work for them by wanting to do it that way, and they were essentially doing me a favor by being willing to take my payment knowing that it would have to be corrected later.
> Most people's insurance at best covers 80% of dental care, but every insurance company may reimburse a different amount for different procedures and they may refuse to reimburse for some procedures altogether. That means a dentist has no idea what to charge you at the time they've seen you. They will bill multiple procedures for one visit and not know which ones will be covered until they actually pay.
In my country the first sentence is true but the second and third aren't.
When I go to the dentist the receptionist scans my health care card on the way out, then there's some kind of automated system whereby her computer checks with the health insurance company's computer exactly how much they're going to pay, and within seconds the receptionist tells me the remaining amount that I owe.
This doesn't seem like a complicated system to build.
My dentist is able to do this mostly too, but I think it's because I'm part of a really big insurance company that the dentist has a lot of experience with and knows my insurance company will reliably pay X amount for Y kind of dental visit. But then some portion of their patients will have smaller or more dysfunctional insurance companies and they can't do that with them. Our system is really really fragmented.
Sometimes I wonder how many of the problems we have in general are because we are still this weird confederation of states. In the state in the U.S. where I live, one of the more common health insurance companies is a non-profit that exists only in my state. That seems cool on the surface, but they're not very well run. Private insurance companies are mostly regulated at the state level, so even though Anthem, say, is a HUGE multi-national insurance company, it is actually Anthem of Iowa or Anthem of Colorado here in the U.S., and all the regulations and procedures overseeing them are covered by state law. What a mess!
I think that's part of why my plan gets so complicated - In principle I have delta dental, which is super common. But my employer's headquartered in Chicago, so I get Delta Dental Illinois insurance, not Delta Dental New York, which is not as common for NYC dentists.
It is a *very* complicated system to build (Source: I work for a company attempting to build it).
Due to various reasons, insurance in the United States is an absolute tangle of regulations and contracts. The cost of a procedure will depend on:
1. the contracted rate between the provider and the insurance (this will vary from provider to provider and insurance to insurance)
2. The contract between the member and the insurance (this will vary from group to group, especially for employer-provided insurance)
3. State and federal regulations (which ought to be reflected in the various contracts, but you better double-check just in case)
4. Other claims the member has made (let's say Susie goes to a doctor on the 15th and the 16th of the month--if her visit on the 15th pushes her above her deductible, but the insurance hasn't been billed yet, then we can't correctly compute what she owes on the 16th)
5. Other insurance the member has, because they can carry multiple insurances and then stuff gets really weird
6. other crap I can't recall right now because I'm still waking up
Note that the contracts and regulations are *dense*, and they change yearly. The administrative burden to keep up with it all is high--none of these databases talk to each other, because nobody thought they would need to when they were first made, and the cost of transferring to a new system is high. And there are legal implications, potentially quite costly, of screwing up ("do not change this code without first consulting a lawyer" is commented liberally throughout our codebase).
As someone who works in healthcare insurance billing: this. Exactly this. We can only guess what insurance will pay, and for a lot of businesses that means they'd rather wait to bill. We try to err on the side of collecting payment up front (because when you send people a bill about 20-30% of the time they won't pay it) but that means we end up overcharging clients sometimes and then we have to sort out refunds. Which is a serious pain.
Some insurance companies (like Premera) have nice websites where you can input a client's ID card info and get a fairly accurate estimate on what Premera will pay. Not a perfect one (sometimes it says they still have money left to pay on their deductible, but by the time the claim reaches Premera the deductible is used up, for instance), but a pretty good one. But we have to regularly deal with about 6 different insurance companies, and they all have different methods of getting an estimate of benefits. Sometimes it means calling on the phone and sitting in a queue for 40 minutes. Sometimes it means navigating a robo-phone tree unti you get the option to have them fax you a benefits estimate. Some companies have a website, but they only give you overall benefits and not up to date details (such as, this client has a $1,500 deductible that may or may not be met, or an out of pocket for the year that may or may not be met). Some companies have a website that works, but only tells you if they're eligible, not what benefits are.
It's a real pain. On the other hand, if you put in the effort there is a lot of money to be made. I can see why a lot of doctors hate dealing with it though.
Our insurance system is a mystery to me as well principally because I was born to a military member in a military hospital and grew up in that system and went into the military myself and now as a retired military member pay a token ($50/mo) for 'everything' if I go to a military facility (which i do almost always and no, this is not VA healthcare). Occasionally I've strayed including for PT post-ACL surgery when going to the mil facility was a pain or for a simple skin issue to a local dermatologist that offered a same day appointment. Both times I was asked "what insurance do you have" but knowing I had no "referral" to a non-military provider, I just asked "What's your best rate for a cash payer?" and was given a number I though very fair and far less than I expected based on what I'd read about the ridiculous fees in some parts of our system. I know I'm highly atypical in this regard but it got me thinking about what a system with basic services provided for free to everyone might look like (like my healthcare) and what the cost of a parallel "private side" might be to augment that. Clearly the highly regulated system of employer provided healthcare isn't doing anything to keep costs down. Yes, I do understand the huge incentives and high pay for health care professionals is both a feature and a bug of the system. Yet, I keep coming back to the healthcare I've received all my life and for which I've paid either nothing or a pittance and thought "hey, it's been pretty good."
Like many other things, insurance is a set of algorithms so horribly complicated that it takes a significant effort to figure out what it would do in any particular case, and very few people are capable of that effort.
We have two identical twins who have the same insurance and who were getting identical therapy from the same provider. One of them was getting charged flat $25 for every visit, but the other one's bills suggest some algorithm that tries to exhaust a deductible and then cover some % of the charge - except this seems to happen more than once per year, so it doesn't make any sense.
You might think it is easy to figure out exactly what's different about the way those identical services were billed. I think this has been going on for over 4 months now, and the only help we could get was the suspension of the bills (for some time, or until they figure out what's going on, or until they can't suspend them anymore).
Now imagine if we had not two identical twins but only one kid. Would anyone even believe that anything was wrong with how those services were billed?
We've given too much power to bad code that nobody understands. Given the speed at which this has been escalating, it's my personal belief that stupid code will probably be the end of us much faster than super-smart AI.
The issue is there are too many third party payors involved between you & the doctor there is not really a pay for services setup with the exception of one or two hospitals.
I used to be a coffee drinker, then I gave it up and went years without much caffeine. Now I'll have coffee once in a while, and it is *really* nice. I feel happier, friendlier, and more energetic/ The effect is strong, but I know that if I do that every day, my brain will adjust and I'll need coffee just to get back to baseline.
So what's the solution? Only have coffee once a week? Twice a week? Alternate coffee with something else that has a similar effect through a different mechanism?
I don't know much about caffeine tolerance, but it might be interesting to use a random procedure that gets you coffee on average once per some given time period (roll a die, if it lands on a 6 have coffee?). This prevents your brain from getting used to it and sounds kind of fun.
My personal solution to this problem is to alternate between using coffee for a few days and chewing nicotine gum for a few days. That way I never build up a lasting tolerance to either.
I think of caffeine as borrowing energy/focus from the future to the next few hours. From that perspective it's a zero sum game, except if you steer the low energy phase to your sleep time.
Currently I'm on one cup at waking and one after lunch, and that works pretty OK for me.
Have you tried going half-caffeinated? I've been playing with my amounts lately. When I notice the caffeine isn't having as much of an effect, I'll dilute it a bit more for a week, or even take a day or two off, and then work up gradually again to fuller strength. It gives a lot of flexibility in how much caffeine you're delivering to your system.
Caffeine tolerance wears off pretty quickly, at least in my experience. If I take even one day off of caffeine each week, that dramatically slows how fast I build tolerance, and taking 2-3 days off seems like a complete reset.
I don’t try to regulate so precisely now but I have been successful in the past using coffee at a low steady state - about a third of a cup of strong coffee a day seems to be a good amount that picks me up but doesn’t push me to drink more.
the main issue i have is that if i have a bad nights sleep or something I’ll just drink more than that - and then I’ll need more and then more. Then when it stops being fun I’ll go cold turkey and sleep a 14 hour day.
I read somewhere that you won't build up a tolerance if you wait until 10am or later to drink your first cup. Something about how the tolerance is caused by interference with your natural wakefulness hormones, which will have subsided by later in the morning. Don't know if that's actually true, but it's what I've tried to do ever since reading that article, and it seems to work really well for me.
I've been running "one-to-three cups of coffee every day, no coffee every other weekend" for years and it seems to work pretty well. I still have tolerance relative to a non-drinker, but it gets reset to a baseline with just the weekend break. Of course I get withdrawal headaches every other weekend which sucks, but that's why god invented Advil.
My regimen allows serious caffeine two non-adjacent days per calendar week, with an option for nicotine lozenges if I need stimulants on back-to-back days.
But it's not the details of the regimen that matter, but the underlying attitude. If that's "caffeine is great, how can I maximize caffeine greatness, what's the bare minimum I have to go without it", you're probably going to wind up with a caffeine tolerance again on short order. If it's "caffeine is a special treat for rare and appropriate occasions", you'll probably do OK.
Also, get to bed on time. If necessary, cut things out of your life to make sure you get to bed on time.
Wow, thanks so much for all the replies. I don't use tobacco or modafinil, but besides those ideas, it looks like many of you are suggesting that I just take off a few days between each dose (or take off a couple days to reset after multi-day usage). Too bad, though as John Schilling pointed out, I need to just think of it as a special treat to have once or twice a week. (JS, since you asked, my sleep is fine.)
I drink coffee for the taste and the good mood; the wired energy is just a bonus and not point for me. For a while I only drank coffee maybe once or twice a week. But then I found a good decaff. So now I drink coffee anywhere from 2-5 times per week, alternating decaff and regular on thoughtful whims. i.e. if i drink regular 3 days in a row, I probably won't have anymore that week. Or if I drink decaff for 3 days, maybe the next day I'll have regular.
A couple weeks ago I posted here (and in some other places) some questions about the feasibility and best practices of developing friendships online. Here are some insights on the topic based on my "research" (and a surprise startup pitch at the very end):
ON ONLINE FRIENDSHIPS
Epistemics
I like friends who aren't inconvenienced easily. Some people are inconvenienced easily. They like things a certain way. They don’t like to have their routine disrupted. And they have every right to be that way. It’s just that they are unlikely to be my friends. Tragic loss for them, I know.
If I had a primary filter for friendships, this would be it. I know people whose primary filters are political, or aesthetic, or financial, or intellectual. They all make sense to me.
As you may intuit from my primary filter, my definition of friendship veers toward the romantic, or religious. I demand some level of sacrifice without accounting. If a friend shows up at midnight on my doorstep, unannounced, it’s a blessing.
I would assume that these values are becoming a bit antiquated today, but I don’t know, I haven’t done the research. Anyway, enough about me.
The Question
We’re all spending more and more time online - it seems about an hour/day more every decade. It’s not crazy that a cyberpunk virtual monopoly on our time will become the standard within the next couple of decades. If not for us, then for our kids and grandkids. So I was wondering, what will this do to friendships...
Interesting stuff. And it caught me surprise that the reasons behind your primary filter are spiritual, since my first thoughts were all centered on things like brain chemistry, energy availability, physicalized introversion triggers (like hyper-sensitivities)...
Of course the knowledge that someone who don't pass your filter may indeed share your values doesn't mean squat if your aesthetic criteria are not met by that someone, right?
(I absolutely adore the idea of being the type of person who loves friends showing up at my house without warning, but I've had to learn to accept that my limited energy streams just don't allow it.)
None of my insights actually help with the spiritual part... While I'm tempted to say that it would be borne out through experience (E), I'm not excluding the possibility of having a filter that would select for those types of interests (I). But as I was doing the exploration, I lost some interest in the self-serving angle and became more interested in the mechanics and possible tech solutions to the problem.
>I demand some level of sacrifice without accounting. If a friend shows up at midnight on my doorstep, unannounced, it’s a blessing.
I both can't understand what you mean here and I really can't simulate a worldview that would believe this. You're saying that if Johnny (or whomever) shoes up at 12:00 a.m. on a Tuesday you'd consider that a positive development to your day?
Yes. That is exactly what I am saying. In fact, as I read your question, a part of me got excited that Johnny is going to show up (unannounced). And I don't even know a Johnny.
That said, the rest of the article doesn't address my particular (or peculiar) preferences.
Ok - still confused. What in any way shape or form gets you excited about this? Have you ever actually had it happen? It's normally pretty shitty.
I'm thinking pretty hard. Over the course of my life I've had... 6 people show up at my door unexpectedly between the hours of 11 p.m. and 4 a.m. (not counting people arriving at parties or other social gatherings at which people joining would be expected).
One of those instances was a crush of mine coming to announce they had mutually positive feelings for me. That was a fun night. The other five were all people who were chemical impaired and in the midst of some truly terrible situations and needed help. The two most exciting were "I'm currently running from the cops" and "I left the house because I thought I was going to kill my husband."
5/6 of these events were incredibly tiring and stressful situations to deal with. Talking drunk people down from the ledge isn't a fun pastime. What specifically about this situation excites you? Is it just unexpected social interaction? Do you really, really love helping people who are incredibly messed up?
Sorry if it seems like I'm badgering you, it's just that I find this really confusing. It's as if you said "I enjoy having sandwiches knocked out of my hand as I'm trying to eat" or anything else that's universally considered bad.
Ok. You've clearly had a very statistically significant trend of "negative" late night visitor experiences. So, the simplest way to help you map my world view is to imagine that you had 6 out of 6 positive late-night friend visitor experiences. It's not impossible, right?
The next line of reasoning is more dependent on age. 30 years ago, before cell phones, "dropping in" on somebody was much more common. There were even cliches like "I was in the area, so I thought I'd drop in." Today, this is odd because it's both impractical not to call/text ahead of time, and also much more likely to be considered rude/weird. But if my value system was already being developed 30 years ago, you might see how it did so different social norms.
I had a small experience in August that I could relate. I was visiting an old friend and we were in the back yard, BBQing and drinking beers. Around 11pm, a new face appeared. It was a neighbor from down the street. He said he heard music and came by (and brought his own beer). This was a very "small" event, but to me it stuck out as a wholesome breath of fresh air. The freedom of just showing up signals a combination of trust, informality, and conviviality that's often lacking in more modern friendships. It also introduces an unpredictability to life that's been "scheduled out". Personally, I often equate unpredictability to adventure, but I know it's not that way for everybody.
None of this make the experiences you listed any less unpleasant.
Ok, I get it. I'm biased towards believing that "anyone showing up after midnight is a massive hassle" and projected that bias when you said these kind of events excited you, but you weren't talking about those kinds of events.
Cool. I appreciate your perspective, thanks for engaging with me to help me get clarity.
See, the interesting thing about my thought process is that I would 1) love it if the situation with the neighbor happened to me and 2) would absolutely _never_ dream of doing that to someone else, in case that person felt differently. This is a common thread for me, where there are lots of things that, if a friend did/asked me to do etc., I would have no problem accommodating, would not feel any resentment, and in fact would be happy to help, but that I could never imagine imposing on a friend the same way. I realize the inherent contradiction, but I can't help the emotional response of "never impose on others unless you _absolutely have to_, but also be happy to help when imposed upon.
You can ask all of your friends if any of them enjoy being imposed upon. If any of them say yes, you can try to practice on them, and see how it goes. What if... it totally blows your mind!!!!
Not really related to your project, but in my experience (born in USSR, moved from Russia to the US as a teenager, have a PhD in math, work in an industrial research position), the closest I've come to the romanticized ideal of the Soviet-style friendship with dropping in on people unannounced at midnight was in high school at nerd camps, and as a college undergraduate. ("Dropping in" consisted of walking down the hall in the first case, and across campus in the second.) There was less of it for me as a graduate student (although I think that's accidental and it could've peaked in graduate school for some people), and dramatically less afterwards, not least because most everyone (myself included) had paired up and moved off campus. The question of how to have something approximating the community and camaraderie of a college undergraduate while living a standard-issue adult life with a husband, child, dog, and an 8-5 job is certainly interesting; the romanticized Soviet-style platonic ideal of friendship managed somehow. (Although according to my mother, overcoming the common adversity of daily life in the USSR was a large part of the experience for her.)
As a fellow soviet alum, it's nice to hear your story. While those relationships are more rare these days, I refuse to believe they are not impossible. Partially, the problem is of "standard-issue" (it just so happens that tightknit friendships were a part of the Soviet standard-issue). But if you have friends - even "standard issue" friends - who love you, then go ahead and surprise drop in on them. You'll make their week, if not month, if not year. (And maybe it's time that you left your husband to hold the fort for 24-72 hours. Sorry, I have no idea if your husband deserved that.)
I think part of the difference between my experience and my parents' (on which I'm basing my romanticized notions) is that, by my age, they had lived in one city their entire lives; I've lived in six. (I've definitely at times felt like I'm better at friendship by correspondence than at friendship in person.) I have good friends from all six periods, but (a) the ones in my city are the newest ones, and (b) I don't have many friends who are also friends with each other. I think having your friends also be friends with each other might actually be important to the project, not least because it makes it easier to interact with them more frequently; that feels like it was an important part of the success of my undergraduate experience.
Suppose that you own a business and you have a choice of either hiring a robot or a human. The expected worker turnover rate is 10 years and the robot also breaks down after 10 years. The nominal salary and the annualized cost of the robot are the same. So which do you chose? The answer is the robot - due to taxes. Capital is a business expenditure, you can deduct it from your tax burden. A human on the other hand incurs payroll taxes and income tax (and some others as well).
Much has been said about the declining share of labor relative to capital (in general, but particularly low skill labor). But I've never seen anyone comment on the fact that our tax system explicitly incentives businesses to choose capital over labor whenever possible. Is this is a good thing - an incentive to automate where possible? Or is it an economic inefficiency? Or both?
You deduct the robot's purchase price bit by bit, over the life of the robot. That's what depreciation is. The capital investment and depreciation are not two separate things that you get to deduct.
> Although we all unfortunately depreciate over time, I don't believe any tax code allows depreciation of their human workforce to be written off.
Although human bodies do age and break down, people tend to become *more* valuable as employees as they gain experience and knowledge over the course of their careers (though this trend breaks down when you get close to retirement age). Someone who has 1 year of job experience typically earns less and produces less valuable work than someone with 10 years of job experience, but a 10-year-old CNC machine is almost never more valuable than a brand new CNC machine.
As others have stated, depreciation makes buying a robot less advantageous given your scenario. The US tax code is extremely favorable to hiring and investment more broadly.
I’m confused. The robot depreciates to a value of zero over ten years. All of that is tax deductible. The human is paid an amount equal to that of the robot over ten years (with the same deduction) and then leaves. So far things are even - I’m assuming they both do the same job for those ten years. Add in payroll and income tax and that makes the human more expensive, not to mention healthcare, social security tax and more. Where’s the mistake?
You just need to google this. There’s a whole bunch of IRS guidance on how assets get depreciated. My strong guess would be that a robot isn’t any different than a milling machine. Depreciation is the robot tax consideration to compare the human tax considerations against. Depreciation isn’t mentioned in your post so that’s your biggest mistake.
Corporations get to write off all the employee expenses in the current tax year. Every year. That’s very tax advantageous.
Also, employee payroll (besides the 7.5% Social Security contribution) and income taxes are irrelevant to the corporation’s tax burden. Those fall on the employee.
but are we specifically looking at the incentives due to taxes? the OP seems to be narrowly looking at if this incentive is mostly due to taxes. overall cost I assume includes somethings which are not taxes.
A robot. If all things are equal (I suppose payroll taxes are included in this calculation), the robot is probably more predictable. It can break down but the probably has a service agreement with the manufacturer. Whereas a human may quit, get sick, go on strike to demand better pay or otherwise sabotage your business. Also, employment costs can be expected to rise while the technology costs tend to decrease over time or getting better for the same price.
I don't understand the premise of your argument. *Businesses* don't pay payroll taxes, income taxes, or corporate income taxes. Businesses are merely pass-through devices that assign those charges to various human beings, id est payroll taxes and income taxes are paid by the worker, sales and corporate income taxes are paid by the customers. Every businessman knows the true total cost of an employee is a certain percentage higher than his take home salary, and every employee knows his "true" salary (what gets put in the bank that he gets to spend) is only a percentage of his nominal gross salary. Some business make an explicit note of the sales tax that is inherent in the their final selling price, but in other cases they do not, and in any event they almost never give more than the tax on the final transaction, they don't give a complete accounting of all the taxes paid, e.g. sales taxes on the raw materials, payroll taxes for the employees who made the widget or provide the service.
Anyway, there is a very good reason (from labor's point of view) for tax policy to favor capital investment: because it makes labor more efficient, and rising productivity is the *only* way real wages can rise over time -- each hour you work has to actually produce more widgets, so that the real value of your labor (measured in widgets) goes up. Capital investment, e.g. technology, is the only way that can happen.
Assume that the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics is true. According to it, Nature is inherently probabilistic; it is only until a measuring device (not necessarily a human) makes a quantitative measurement of X that X can be said to have that measure. Does anyone know whether all the results of measurements are due to the foundational random generator of Nature? And if this is true, then does this mean that our actions are not ultimately determined or free but random?
It is my impression that this is more-or-less how quantum mechanics is supposed to be interpreted. However I am unsure about how much quantum physics relates to whether our actions or free or not (although I am inclined to think that, metaphysically, none of our actions are free; also see https://arxiv.org/pdf/2101.07884.pdf for a description of how the deepest underlying physics of everyday phenomena has been essentially completely characterized).
I believ it doesn't really matter if the underlying dynamics are governed by classical chaotic systems or quantum randomness, both could mean our actions are not "determined", but neither will provide "freedom" in a meaningful way. If there is "free will", it is to be found on another level of abstraction.
> I hold that all interpretations of [quantum mechanics] are just crutches that are better or worse at helping you along to the Zen realization that QM is what it is and doesn’t need an interpretation. As Sidney Coleman famously argued, what needs reinterpretation is not QM itself, but all our pre-quantum philosophical baggage—the baggage that leads us to demand, for example, that a wavefunction |ψ⟩ either be “real” like a stubbed toe or else “unreal” like a dream.
I'll check it out. For anyone who is interested, here's an interesting comment I just found on a video ("Chris Langan - How Free Will Works - CTMU") about free will:
> You still can't escape the logical limits on individual choice that most people would instinctively reject as "free will" if you pointed them out to them. We each inherit our genetics and epigenetics, which have massive influence on everything we do or think. Our environment is set for us the moment our primordial fertilization occurs. The large-scale structures of the human body are generated by our genetics and environmental input, and the environment itself is structured without our influence, at least initially. The large-scale structures obey Newtonian mechanics and are thus deterministic, and that's where it ends. However, if you try to work around that by suggesting that there may be quantum events that are not deterministic, and the outcome of that event is amplified into a thought or action, then the implication that our actions are not they themselves deterministic may be correct. However, this doesn't escape the problem at base, because the quantum event itself is purely random. The wave function describing a series of quantum events is deterministic in aggregate, but the individual event's outcome along that aggregate distribution is quintessentially unpredictable, regardless of whether or not you can add intervening layers of probabilistic descriptions of an outcome. Fundamentally, the only logically possible categories are events that are predetermined, completely random, or random within given limits that they themselves are predetermined. This is the "automaticity" Langan refers to here when discussing coordination that occurs "automatically" during our free will process, and the "automaticity" is what people have no control over ultimately. However, because this automaticity is the basis of every conscious act of will, and it itself is subject to these logical restrictions, one can see how our acts of free will are really nothing more than amplifications of quantum events which they themselves are random. Is this free will? The only sense in which it is free is that the origination comes from within the bounds of your physical body, but that doesn't make it any less subject to the predictability of mathematics and the randomness of the universe. It is in this sense that one cannot, ultimately, take full credit for one's own actions in the sense that everything we are, do, and even will does not come from anything that is not ultimately predetermined or random, because even if you amplify a quantum event through a series of ever-increasing structures of bodily organization that channel the outcome of the event into an increased probability of a certain kind of outcome, the chain of causation itself still remains arbitrary and random at base.
I don't really like the free will debate because I think it tends to focus on a meaningless question (is the made-up term "free will" compatible with the universe we live in?) while ignoring a meaningful distinction (to what degree are a person's actions free from coercion in a given situation?). There is a meaningful difference between someone committing premeditated murder because of a personal grudge, vs. a child soldier being forced at gunpoint to kill someone. The murderer's choice was "free" in a way that the child soldier's wasn't. You could even imagine a third scenario where someone was knocked unconscious and physically manipulated into pulling a trigger to kill someone. All three scenarios have the common feature that they occur in a world governed by the laws of physics, but there are very good reasons to treat the cases differently in our legal system, in our personal judgements, and in how we want to structure society. Teasing apart the nuances of coercion is difficult (e.g. what if the murderer had a brain tumor that impaired higher cognitive functions?) and how we make those judgements can deeply affect our lives. I don't think our approach to these issues should be contingent on whether we live in a universe governed by Newtonian mechanics, quantum randomness, divine predestination, or ineffable metaphysical entities.
> All three scenarios have the common feature that they occur in a world governed by the laws of physics, but there are very good reasons to treat the cases differently in our legal system . . .
Right, I agree; but the practical component and the purely intellectual component of these discussions seem to be at odds with one another when one is trying to comes to terms with either component. Practically, a society can have any set of laws of a huge number of possible laws (arguing about which is best is the task, some would say, of ethics); whereas the Universe has one set of ultimate principles worth discovering. It's worthless (or so I think) for a society to use the laws of physics to determine its law, just as it's equally worthless for scientists to keep in mind the practical consequences of the laws they're trying to discover. But my original question is more about determining the actual state of the second component; it's what I want to know about, not so that it can influence me or help me influence society, but so that I have more knowledge of the foundation of reality.
> just as it's equally worthless for scientists to keep in mind the practical consequences of the laws they're trying to discover
I don't mean this to be as cold-hearted as it seems; of course there are situations where a scientist wants to be concerned about the practical implications of his discoveries. What I meant (in the specific context of free will) is that the pure scientist should not be worried about the consequences of his discoveries, because regardless of the discoveries, it's not going to change the fact that societies shouldn't - and won't - simply adduce the laws of physics to make their legal system a self-destructive or foolish system. They will (usually) have a complex system designed around higher-level concepts such as justice, fairness, etc. (But perhaps that is a naively positive view of the humanity and its use of science.)
> Does anyone know whether all the results of measurements are due to the foundational random generator of Nature?
Which experiments? In theory, you should be still able to approximate determinism using large, non-chaotic systems. In practice, whatever was predictable before is still predictable -- it adds up to normality.
I think you're over-interpreting the Copenhagen interpretation. It says nothing about what actually is true about a system, it only says what can be measured, and it says for systems in a state which is not an eigenstate of the operator corresponding to what you want to measure, you cannot know what the value of the measurement is before you make it -- that is, you cannot *predict* it. But does the system, nevertheless, have some value just before you measure it that is equal to the value you measure? Current science has no answer to that question, because we have no way of knowing anything without a measurement, or a trajectory -- meaning some 100% reliable theoretical way of connecting a measurement *in the past* with the result of a measurement in the present. Unfortunately a fundamental property of QM is that classical trajectories (those with just one path from past to future) are the exception, not the rule, and in most cases don't exist.
That is, what QM says is you cannot *predict* the value of some measurements in the present, even with all possible information about the past. That is not the same thing as saying the system does not have *some* value at all possible times.
A classic example would be measurement of the location of a bound particle (say an electron in an atom) which is in an energy eigenstate. We cannot predict its exact position at a given time, all we can predict is the probability of it being various places (the usual wavefunction you see graphed). Of course, when we actually measure its position, we do get a specific position, as precisely as we wish -- we see a particle at a specific location. *Every* time we measure the position, we get a specific answer. What happens in between measurements? Does the particle "have" a specific position, or not? Again, current science cannot answer this question, because QM cannot predict a precise position at time X given any number of measurements at earlier times. It's possible that's a weakness of the theory, of course, but no one has come up with a better theory.
Carl Pham: You asked “But does the system, nevertheless, have some value just before you measure it”? That sounds like a hidden-variable theory, and it has been proven (the Bell inequality) to be false. Unless you want to allow for faster than light travel or some implausible explanation.
Aggregated random processes don't necessarily result in a random process. We can see this obviously with, say, organic evolution. Point mutations can effectively change any base pair to any other, but due to constraints thanks to embryology and other factors, all mutations can't be expressed, and ones that can be but don't confer any reproductive advantage won't necessarily be passed on. That greatly simplifies the process, but point being the end result is much more predictable than the underlying cause.
With animal action, at some quantum level, maybe a random fluctuation (if the universe is truly fundamentally random at that level) can cause some ion in an ion channel in a neuronal membrane to bounce a few degrees more than can be accounted for by electromagnetism alone, but it would take many, many such random events occurring at the same time and in a correlated way so as not to cancel each other out to measurably impact action potential across a synapse and thus possibly influence behavior. The net result in terms of muscle movement is no less random than if the universe had no randomness in it at all.
Sorry if this is too random/off-topic but are there any martial artists in this community? I've been practicing Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu for about 2 years now, but am thinking of quitting because I've been hearing a lot of anecdotal stories lately of BJJ athletes having strokes at young ages, possibly due to the chokes putting pressure on arteries in the neck. So I'm trying to look for another martial art to switch to. Looking for something fun and involving a good cardio workout, but without any long-term negative impact to health. Does anyone have any recommendations?
Huh. Never heard of those anecdotes, and I've been doing BJJ for 18 years now. If the stories involve pro athletes, you should consider that a) they're doing a LOT more training than most hobbyists, and b) they're probably juicing as well.
Regarding recommendations: "without any long-term negative impact" rules out all full-contact sports, because they will either cause direct damage or wear and tear. Many of the non-competitive "martial-artsy" disciplines like Aikido are out as well - not much of a cardio workout to be had there. It might sound stupid, but if you find a boxing or kickboxing gym that lets you practice without sparring (or with only very light contact sparring), that might be worth a try.
Capoiera is a lot of fun (probably less of a “serious” martial art than Jiu Jitsu), and if you’re in a region with a significant Brazilian population you should be able to find a rhoda.
Thirding Capoeira being a lot of fun. It also has the benefit of having a lot less mysticism and authoritarian structures than eastern martial arts, although there is still hierarchy in it a lot of the structure of classes and actually playing Capoeira encourages mixing of ranks.
Totally! IMO it's one of the few disciplines where sparring between people of vastly different skills can be rewarding for both parties. I've seen super fun games between absolute masters and people who can only really ginga.
Many avid BJJ practitioners in the community. Have never heard the stories of young strokes. You should see if these are actually statistically significant before giving up a beloved hobby. Lots of people have strokes, athletes on gear especially.
And if the problem is regular application of chokes, either get better or tap sooner (or both).
Judo is a lot of fun, has a lot in common with Jujutsu, but focuses more on standing throws and techniques. It does also include ne waza, but applications of joint locks and chokes are rare in actual tournaments.
Basically every martial art is less chokey than BJJ, it's generally understood that choking someone out is extremely dangerous and unpredictable as to consequences in all of human society *except* BJJ practitioners, who insist it's perfectly safe. Switch to literally anything.
My personal suggerstion would be for Wudang/Practical Tai Chi Chuan, the TCC that caves your face in. It's obscure and so it's very likely there might not be a club where you are, but if there is, do that.
That's an interesting statement. Allow me to paraphrase: "This activity is considered dangerous by everyone except the people who do it every day and observe no negative effects. Obviously, these people are idiots, and you should not do it." Could there be other explanations, maybe?
No, not really. You're deliberately simplifying the issue by eliding the extensive actual information available on this topic from myriad sources (possibly due to BJJ-related brain damage? /s). I didn't write "all other martial artists, who are feebs by implication, and only speculating", I wrote *all of human society*, because that's what I meant. There is ample data to confirm the dangers of choking and the unpredictable but potentially grave effects of brain oxygen deprivation. This is like if there were a subculture of chicken-race enthusiasts who insisted that car crashes are "not observed harmful" and claimed that "we've never seen anything like that". Any sane person regards such testimony with skepticism, to put it mildly.
Okay, the last time I looked into the topic was a couple of years ago, when the consensus was that when a choke is done to a healthy individual, in a competent manner, and let go quickly, it is safe and leaves no lasting damage. That was supported by various studies and the experience from roughly a century of judo competion. I now found some stories from the last years that indicate that strokes may be triggered by chokes occasionally, so it would be at least be worthwhile to study this systematically, collect statistics, and be aware of the possibility. Still not a reason to freak out (compared to, say, the dozen or so people who die of brain injuries after boxing matches each year).
I've had to quit temporarily due to time pressures, but I can recommend HEMA. It's definitely heavy cardio if you make it and fun in a way a lot of other martial arts aren't (even if that's mostly because of the expensive toys you're playing with). Technically I'm not sure how to rate it on health impacts, obviously injuries have the potential to be much worse, but realistically the most common injury is heatstroke, followed by ankle injuries from poor form. It also has the added advantage of your increasing skill over the years being able to offset any losses from physicality that comes with aging. Longsword clubs are easy enough to find, especially in America, though I personally prefer singlesword systems.
I've read quite often the slogan "Freedom of speech does not mean freedom from consequences", but that seems poorly thought-out, because in a sense, that's what it should mean.
"You're free to say what you want, but if we don't like it, we will abduct you and your family and torture you to death. But hey, freedom of speech doesn't mean freedom from consequences, amirite?"
...doesn't quite work for me.
"You're free to say what we want, but if we don't like it, we will scream at you what a terrible person you are and that you should burn in hell, and we will pester your employer to fire you and your prospective employers to never give you a job ever again. But hey, freedom of speech doesn't mean freedom from consequences, amirite?"
...still seems wrong.
"You're free to say what you want, but you should consider how it reflects on us, your employer/ teammates/ friends, and if we find it completely inacceptable, we may have to cut you loose to preserve our own reputation. But hey, freedom of speech doesn't mean freedom from consequences, amirite?"
...seems kinda reasonable. But is it really? Where should you draw the line between 2 and 3? Should you draw it somewhere else? Should the fact that there's a mob of obviously loony fanatics raging on twitter influence the reaction of employers, coworkers, friends?
Should freedom of speech apply to general statements that may or may not hurt someones feelings? Should it also apply to personal attacks, bullying etc? Whose right, and whose duty, is it to "hold others accountable" for objectionable statements?
Freedom of speech as a legal concept only applies to the government.
Thus any non government agent can react in any way that isn't illegal for other reasons as a response to any speech.
"You're free to say what we want, but if we don't like it, we will scream at you what a terrible person you are and that you should burn in hell, and we will pester your employer to fire you and your prospective employers to never give you a job ever again. But hey, freedom of speech doesn't mean freedom from consequences, amirite?"
The government cannot prevent individuals from doing that, this response to peoples speech is protected by freedom of speech.
Do you think freedom of speech *should* be a guiding principle of a free society, no matter whether it is right now?
Also, states generally impose limits on the freedom of speech, and they draw the lines in different places. Screaming at someone that they should burn in hell may be legally protected free speech in the US, but it might be considered an illegal insult, or constitute illegal harrassment, in other countries.
I think governments are likely to fulfill that role badly.
The places i choose to be tends to be reasonably far in the free speech direction. While the speech norms are informal and a by product of the people there.
I think there's a big difference between 'make speech more free' as a guiding heuristic, and 'free speech is an absolute, inviolable right.'
Take two otherwise identical cultures, and the one where speech is 1% freer is likely better off. But that doesn't mean that the country with 100% free speech (defined in the most extreme and absolutist way possible) is better off than the country with 80% free speech, or 60% or w/e.
If free speech is recognized as a public good that we should value, then we can makes sensible trades with it against other values. If we treat it as an absolutist right, then we can only ever either enforce it or abandon it. Both of those choices have real bad consequences, and the arguments over when to do which create massive strife and elide actual productive discussion of the object-level issues.
I think you mean, the first amendment of the U.S. constitution constrains the federal government, and through an amendment (14th?) state and local governments. The liberal principle of free speech was the motivation for creating the 1st amendment, but is not identical to it.
Freedom of speech as a legal concept, though, is a small part of freedom of speech as an overall societal value. A society with legal freedom of speech but without the societal value of freedom of speech is barely better off than a society without freedom of speech at all; perhaps worse off.
I think there is enough disagreement about what exactly is contained in the societal value of freedom of speech that one needs to be careful with the concept to not create sloppy thinking.
The shared name with the legal concept is especially problematic in this regard.
"Freedom of speech" when used as a non legal concept seems to mean a some mixture of many societal values (that depend subtly on the person using it) and it is often useful to go down to those building blocks rather than discuss "freedom of speech"
Melvin, can you say more what freedom of speech looks like concretely to you beyond the legal meaning -- what actions would tell you that freedom of speech is being held up as an overall societal value?
I'd say that freedom of speech as a societal value isn't a binary that you either have or don't, it's a set of cultural habits that societies may have to greater or lesser degrees. The key question is: when people hear speech that they find disagreeable, how do they react?
It would take superhuman powers of tolerance to respond with a cheery wave and a Voltaire quote to every possible thing that someone might say, regardless of how offensive and in-your-face they may be about it. It's natural that once someone starts spouting opinions of the form "We should totally just kill all the..." that most of us are going to have second thoughts about inviting them to our next dinner party.
The trouble is that there's only a lot of different shades of grey between that point and the current point where you've got mobs who work by every possible means to destroy the livelihoods and careers of people who say things that may actually be the majority opinion.
So I don't know where the dividing line is between "good societal free-speech norms" and "cancel culture hellhole" actually lies, but I am fairly confident of which side of the line we're currently on.
Hmm, that's not true. The first amendment in the USA only applies to the government. Freedom of speech is a related, and much grander, concept, encompassing more than just government action, and is not just in the US of A.
"Freedom of speech does not mean freedom from consequences" has always been a pet peeve of mine, because I have no idea what "freedom" means if it doesn't mean "freedom from consequences".
When people say "freedom of religion", they really mean #3: your employer/teammates/friends should respect your religion and not hold it against you, even if the religion contains views that you find offensive. I've found it hard to come up with a reason "freedom of speech" should mean anything different.
I think the reality is that most people *don't* believe in freedom of speech in general, but rather than admitting it, they simply redefine "freedom" or "speech" so that it matches their beliefs. Freedom of government restrictions on speech is a popular view (i.e. redefining "freedom" to be government restrictions), and "freedom to express any thesis in a reasoned argument" seems popular in the gray tribe (i.e. redefining "speech" to be reasoned arguments).
I think it's perfectly consistent to say you believe in freedom of speech without thinking that you have to graciously accept everything that anyone says. If I break up with a boyfriend because he constantly tells me I'm a useless POS, I don't think that means I'm violating his right to free speech, legally or ethically.
And I don't think everyone means that freedom of religion means everyone has to respect your religion. It may be used that way in some cases, but often it's used purely in the legal sense, or in the sense that I'll respect your religion as long as it respects me.
Like any other freedom, freedom of speech isn't absolute: it doesn't overwrite your freedom whom to date, or to be free from harassment.
I would argue that freedom of religion *does* require social norms on respecting each others' choice of religion. Many of these norms are codified into US law, for example, employers cannot discriminate or discipline based on religion. Outside of law, I feel there are strong norms not to publicly shame people for their religion, or refuse to work with people based on their religion. I believe these are all essential elements to a society where free exercise of religion is practical, and that's why I believe in a broader definition of "freedom" than "freedom from government action".
Because freedom of speech and freedom of religion are legal concepts under the 1st amendment in the U.S., I find it's helpful to distinguish when we're talking about the 1st amendment and when we're talking about our preferences for present-day social norms.
Both freedom of religion and freedom of speech are using the word "freedom" to mean freedom from government oppression -- that's not a new redefinition; that was the original meaning codified in our country's rather oddly specific history. Those freedoms were obviously central to why we wound up over here as a country. At the time, the main concern WAS government interference and freedom from it, rather than freedom from your neighbor's non-criminal behavior.
There is no point at which freedom of religion meant your teammates/friends should not hold your religion against you. Your employer may be a different case because of employment law as it relates to protected groups. If having the respect of your friends and neighbors is your view of what freedom of religion is, you are paving new ground.
Freedom does mean freedom from consequences -- just the ones that the government might otherwise commit against us -- not all consequences everywhere. The line that "freedom of speech doesn't mean freedom from consequences" I think is a response to people getting really offended at being called racist or sexist or other mean names for things they might say. It sounds clever and snarky, but it's somewhat confusing.
Of course, it's been true forever that social shunning and shaming has gone on in response to people's stated views and has been aimed at different groups of people in different time periods. And it's always led some groups of people to feel threatened and frustrated about having to be vigilant about their behavior in order to not run afoul of current social norms and their consequences.
The fact that employers -- who have disparate power over their employees -- get to add to the consequences of social shaming and shunning by firing someone for their non-work behavior is also not new. Anyone who grew up in company towns knew they might lose their job merely for not going to church often enough or quietly voicing an idea unappealing to management. The solution to that problem in my mind is labor law reform, employment contracts, and stronger unions. I don't think that problem can be solved at the level of first amendment law.
Social media has made these mob trends more visible and speedy, but they aren't new. The fact that the public square is owned by several large corporations is also not entirely new, though I get that a lot of it feels quite new to a few generations of us who didn't grow up in company towns or who don't have the libertarian bent to remember that freedom from government interference was what was meant by freedom for most of our history.
I definitely agree it's helpful to be clear whether one is talking about 1st amendment rights, other legal protections, or "freedom" in the general sense of "unconstrained". To clarify my position, I argue that when someone says "freedom", it's referring to the general sense of "unconstrained", unless there's context implying otherwise (such as in legal discussions). I think using "freedom" to only mean "freedom from government action" is shortchanging "freedom" far too much. I'm certainly not the first to have the perspective: in J.S. Mill's writings on freedom of speech, he specifically called out "social tyranny" as a major obstacle.
As evidence for a broad interpretation, "freedom of speech" is often used in contexts where there are no legal issues at stake. When universities talk about "free speech on campus", they're not referring to 1st amendment rights or Civil Rights Act violations; they're referring to social norms around allowing others to express controversial opinions.
> If having the respect of your friends and neighbors is your view of what freedom of religion is, you are paving new ground.
I do argue that social norms around free choice of religion are an important part of "freedom of religion". Without social norms, freedom of religion is *de jure* and not *de facto*. These norms certainly exist in the US, with violators being accused of "bigotry". Indeed, some of these norms have been encoded into law through the Civil Rights Act, which makes religion a protected class (as you mentioned with respect to employers). If we removed these laws and norms yet kept the 1st amendment, I think it'd be fair to say freedom of religion has eroded.
As for the rest, I agree with what you write on shaming, employers, and social media.
>When people say "freedom of religion", they really mean #3: your employer/teammates/friends should respect your religion and not hold it against you, even if the religion contains views that you find offensive.
This just feels really ahistorical and culturally myopic to me... as if there haven't been official state religions, as if governments haven't outlawed religions, as if people haven't been tortured or genocided by their governments because of their religions.
It seems really clear to me that redefining 'freedom' to be 'freedom from social consequences' rather than 'legal protection' is a modern invention, only made possible by a government that is so friendly and non-oppressive that people can't even really imagine needing to be protected from it.
Sorry, to clarify, I meant that "freedom of religion" usually implies *all* of #1-3: both legal and social norms around free exercise of religion. My argument is that freedom of government restriction is only one aspect of freedom: the social norms are important too (and indeed in the case of religion, are legally enforced in many cases such as employment).
1 and 2 don’t rely on freedom of speech as a legal concept, but on the fact that there already are laws prohibiting kidnapping, torture, murder, and harassment. There are also some existing laws relevant to #3, that make no reference to free speech, but make a distinction between legitimate and illegitimate reasons for dismissing an employee.
Personally, I think an employer ought to be able to fire me for reasons that are as arbitrary as the reasons I can use for quitting - I.e. completely arbitrary. I realize this would require society to adjust, either by becoming less diverse, by becoming more tolerant, or just sorting us better. The fly in the ointment seems to be the ability of small but vocal groups that can make life difficult for employers. If the right wing ever gains parity in this area, we may all end up self-employed.
I think "freedom of speech, but not freedom from consequences" in the context of US politics really means that in the US, people resolve to fight the hobbesian "bellum omnium contra omnes" by not-literally-violent, but by economic ("your views suck, no job for you") and social ("your views suck, nobody associates with you") means.
A potential starting point might be "your speech doesn't give anyone NEW rights to harm you". [1]
The government can't punish your speech, because they aren't allowed to punish people arbitrarily.
I can't torture you to death for your speech, because I'm not allowed to torture people to death on a whim.
I *can* decide that your speech is a reason to stop being your friend, because I was *already* allowed to stop being your friend any time I wanted. (Though if my reason wasn't good, it might make me a jerk.)
I can scream at you to some extent, but not to the point where it becomes illegal harassment--the same way I can scream at you to a certain extent just because I'm an asshole, even if you never said anything.
Whether I should be able to fire you for your speech is at least partly a question about whether I have to justify my firings in the first place. In the US we seem to currently have mixed feelings about that, where the official answer is "you don't have to justify it, wait unless we think it was one of the reasons on this very bad list."
[1] Except for the exceptions, like threats, blackmail, libel, etc. that we accept are crimes even though they are also, strictly speaking, speech acts. Exactly how we determine that list of exceptions is, itself, another thorny question.
I do not care for the 'appeal to consequences'. It strikes me as an illegitimate two-step where someone tries to recast whatever they want to do to someone as a natural moral consequence of the universe and that people have no expectation to be 'protected' from the 'natural' outcomes of their actions.
It's also applied inconsistently. Nobody blithely says "Freedom of speech doesn't mean freedom from consequences!" when someone they like gets driven out of a job for doing something they consider righteous.
I'd at least prefer it if they'd own their desire to punish people.
My response to this is always, what about freedom of association and free markets?
Why do you have to associate with people you hate, why do you have to buy things from people and companies you hate?
Does freedom of speech trump those other freedoms, forcing you to associate with people you don't want to and buy from companies you don't want to if the reason you hate them is related to something they said?
This is why I think framing the debate in terms of 'freedoms' and 'rights' is a complete red herring, that leads to an intractable mess of conflicting freedoms.
If you taboo the word freedom, and talk in more direct empirical terms, you get to questions like 'when is it reasonable vs unreasonable to hate someone for something they've said?' and 'when is it reasonable or unreasonable to avoid/boycott a company based on the actions of their employees?' and so forth. I think those questions are much more answerable, and disagreements about them are much more understandable and much less fraught.
Freedom of speech historically means only that no one uses direct physical violence to constrain your speech. Since the principle of a government is that it holds a monopoly (except in rare circumstances) on violence directed at individuals, it's usually considered sufficient to say that government cannot use violence to curtail your speech (except under certain reasonably obvious exceptional circumstances).
But until the present I would say few people really imagined that meant *indirect* means of constraining your speech -- ostracism, social pressure, playing loud music over you, "deplatforming" you -- should or even could be regulated. Once you get outside the realm of direct physical force, which is pretty easy to identify and classify, it is almost impossible to draw any clear boundary acceptable to everyone (or even a majority) that says "this is indirect constraint" and "this is not" (as I think your examples demonstrate).
I think it's one of the ways in which modern society embarrasses itself, that we think it plausible to nevertheless try to make precise definitions of indirect constraints on speech, that do not manifest at any point as direct physical force, and codify these as law and regulation. I suspect the next century will look upon this effort with the same amused bemusement as we look upon medieval scholars struggling to pin down an objective definition of "piety."
Freedom of speech isn't just the law, it's a good idea.
The good idea is, we should strive to minimize the adverse consequences of sincere not-materially-disruptive speech no matter how much we disagree with the content, and in particular we should limit those consequences to speech-adjacent areas like having other people express their disagreement and/or stop listening to the speaker. We should not put the wrong-speaker in jail, whack him upside the head with a blunt object, run him out of town, interfere in his non-speech business, etc, and we should *particularly* not try to interfere with the speaker's continued attempts to speak to other people who still do want to listen to them. This maximizes the spread of good ideas, and it forces us to deal with bad ideas by offering better ideas.
The law is, most enlightened nations have recognized that this is a good idea and so put in place laws that protect free speech. But most enlightened nations have also realized that totalitarianism is a bad idea, that not every instance of "good idea" and "bad idea" should be enshrined in law, and so legal protections extend only to a subset of the generally good idea that is freedom of speech. These laws are very important. But the fact that a potential restriction or "consequence" of free speech is not explicitly addressed by law, does not mean that it isn't still a bad idea.
I'm drinking from the firehose that is the crypto economy and its community. It's so exciting, can prove personally profitable, and the space largely aligns with my libertarian priors. Are there any SSC/ACT readers here and/or LessWrongers that coalesce, discuss developments, pick apart projects? Maybe a Facebook group or Discord? If not, I could make one. I think the concentric circles of cryptoheads and rationalists would be too good not to exist. DM me if you're aware of something: https://twitter.com/maxefremov
Unrelated: I am overwhelmed with tasks and reminders that I create for myself, and lack a good organizational system that helps me tackle them systematically. Should I take a roam course of some kind? I enjoy the app but don't use it with anything like the agility or power that I infer some folks do when I see their roam screenshots. (Caveat that my problem may be less a lack of an organizational system and more a lack of clarity on goals. Any help on the latter would be appreciated, too :)
What kind of trouble have you had integrating GTD? I've found that it does need to be adapted, but the "basic intuitions" cover 99% of what any productivity/organizational system should.
I have worked in crypto for several years and am not aware of any groups or writers that target the intersection of crypto enthusiasts and rationalists. However, I would be happy to join any groups that you find or start.
It's also worth noting that Sam Bankman-Fried, currently one of the most influential individuals in crypto, is an effective altruist. I believe there are a number of other EA-aligned individuals working at the companies he is involved with.
I've also been looking for a group like that. Please post a reply to this thread if you find or create one. If you start one, I'd greatly prefer Discord or something else pseudonymous rather than Facebook.
Yeah, he seems to have an irrationally dim view of Silicon Valley in general, including SSC. It's a good illustration of how experts in one subject can be very wrong about others.
Yea I'm having trouble making it through any commentary of his without wincing. It's stylistically bombastic, motivated reasoning. Totally incurious and radiating with derision.
I don't have any answers, only questions. Does the crypto alignment with your "libertarian priors" have something to do with the desire to replace rent-seeking middlemen (like, say, real-estate brokers) with the blockchain? Just trying to get into the ballpark of your thinking here.
Thanks, fascinating. I'll start reading some of the links in this thread.
Fortunately I started buying crypto on a lark several years ago. But I've been very lazy about investigating any broader philosophical implications (except, of course, I feel guilty supporting all the energy used mining bitcoin). But I think I can start to imagine intrinsic value in the strength of block chains.
Let's talk about theories of everything. In the past year or so, both Stephen Wolfram and Eric Weinstein have made waves by publishing proposed ultimate theories of fundamental physics. Wolfram's is based on networks evolving according to specific rules (very in character for Wolfram), while Weinstein's is based on the analyzing a 14 dimensional space where 4 of the dimensions are just the regular 4 dimensions we're used to, while the other 10 dimensions come from the 10 degrees of freedom in the spacetime metric. Both Weinstein and Wolfram understand the edifice of physics they are proposing to overthrow, which is more than be said of most folks who come up with new fundamental theories.
So far, Wolfram has published a great deal of material about his theory, making it clear that he does not yet have a specific network update rule that will describe our universe. That search remains to be done. He does, however claim to have found rules that imitate general relativity and quantum mechanics. This is already very impressive if true, in particular I would have guessed imitation of quantum mechanics to be impossible with mere network update rules.
Weinstein seems to be keeping his cards much closer to his chest. Though it's clear that our universe must be a 4-dimensional surface living in his 14 dimensional space, it's not clear if this surface is a fundamental object of the theory, or arises from the metric structure, the same way that particles end up have 1 dimensional timelines thanks to out 1+3 metric, or maybe something even weirder is going on. So far, details have been light, though he says that he'll publish some more information on the theory soon. He also has some experimental predictions, including some new particles. He also predicts that the 3rd generation of quarks and leptons in the standard model are somehow "impostors" (whatever that means, perhaps that the particles are secretly composite particles or something).
I'm inclined to agree with Sabine Hossenfelder, who says that attempts to find unified theories that are motivated by aesthetics have been spectacularly unsuccessful for the last 50 years or so, and that new approaches should instead be motivated by actual contradictions in the current theories.
I'm not familiar with Weinstein's work, but Wolfram's smells of crackpottery to me. A genius crackpot to be sure, but still.
Yeah, I'd definitely agree that resolving contradictions and extending the domain over which the theory is predictive (in a way consistent with experimental data) is the way to go when coming up with new theories. Of course, W&W both claim to have a solution for resolving the contradiction between QM and gravity. So in that sense one could say that their theories actually are motivated by resolving contradictions. Wolfram's work does feel like those 19th century "everything is a fluid, atoms are just vortex knots" type theories. But I'd like to have some stronger reason to reject it than just a feeling.
I think that most implausible thing claimed by Wolfram is the notion that his network rules can simulate quantum mechanics, in a way that looks like it would be polynomial time. He should be able to explain either why his rule is actually using exponential computation, or he should be able to build a quantum computer in his classically simulate rule and factor RSA challenges with it. Of course that second one may be easier said than done. But resolving the apparent polynomial time algorithm for simulating QM is a question people should focus on more.
I disagree. If you look at the track record, as we have refined and improved our theories they have so far always become more beautiful and unified. Sure, it could be different this time, but the lack of evidence for string theory or SUSY cannot be taken as evidence against the beauty-oriented approach. No ugly theory has succeeded with anything either, and the beauty oriented approaches have yielded a lot of extremely interesting and useful physics and maths along the way. We are running up against the problem that nearly all the physics we can easily probe without gargantuan budgets has been understood. The problem is this: the cost of a collider increases polynomial with energy while the usefulness increases logarithmic with energy. Doubling the energy of a collider is not going to make the results twice as interesting - far from it. For that you would need at least a factor of 10. Unless we invent some radical now way of building accelerators this is a problem we would run into no matter want. At some point the next physics is going to be hard to reach, and we are now at this point.
Given the history of physics you should assign a high prior to the possibility that our next improved theory should be even more beautiful.
An example of value provided by string theory: AdS/CFT doesn't describe the kind of cosmological spacetime we live in, but it has taught us that seemingly ordinary quantum theories in flat space actually secretly can be encoding fully valid theories of quantum gravity. It has given us an example of a consistent ''quantum gravity in a box'', which provides an immensely useful playground for conceptual issues that we know have to arise in quantum gravity generally. Furthermore, it has given us a tool to study the real-time far from equilibrium dynamics of strongly coupled quantum field theory. This latter point is in itself an incredibly significant achievement.
I am curious what contradictions in our current theories are we talking about that people working on current mainstream HEP theories are ignoring? As far as we know the standard model + GR works more or less perfectly for all the physics that we have probed, except in a few scenarios like dark matter and neutrino masses. But it is not like people are not theorizing about that. In fact we have so many theories about dark matter at this point that it is kind of worthless theorizing much more until we have some data. There are many other puzzles in the standard model which people are trying to resolve, exactly by embedding the SM into a larger structure. Given the large space of possibilities and total lack of experimental data to guide us we need some principle to choose which of these larger structures to pursue to study. If somebody knows a principle that works better than beauty I am sure physicists would be all ears!
Wolfram seems grandiose and somewhat self-serving but basically sincere; I assume the mainstream dismissal of his work is probably correct, but it's not inconceivable he will one day prove them wrong, or at least produce something they eventually acknowledge as valuable.
Weinstein, on the other hand, when I heard him speak at length a while back, set off my charlatan alarm. He talks a huge game, but more through vague insinuations than concrete claims. I don't expect him to explain his theory in a way I can comprehend, but last I checked he didn't seem to have made any effort to explain it to the experts either, at least not in enough detail to enable them to evaluate or integrate any of his purportedly big ideas. His anti-establishment rhetoric seems suspiciously convenient for someone who positions himself as an outsider genius, but is as yet unwilling or unable to back that up with anything concrete.
I'm interested to hear about Weinstein's experimental predictions; cynically I expect that he's left himself a fair bit of wiggle room, either through vagueness or untestability-in-the-foreseeable-future. Or else that he's made predictions that stem equally from some mainstream theories as from his own groundbreaking ones. If you or someone else can confirm or refute this, I'd like to hear more.
Most physicists are not going to engage with their ideas unless they publish their ideas (and furthermore does so in significantly less than a thousand pages). If their theories are so revolutionary, why do they not write a paper and put it on the arXiv like everyone else? Eric Weinstein seems extremely reluctant to share his ideas, which should be a warning sign.
In fact, a mathematician and physicist actually recently did take his vague ideas presented in a youtube video seriously and spent a lot of effort decoding them. There appear to be many issues. It seems there is no consistent way to quantize Weinstein's theory due to lack of what is known as anomaly cancellation. Without anomaly cancellation the quantum theory will make no sense - predictions will be ambiguous and unitarity (preservation of probabilities) will be lost.
What's the point of asking "what people think ?" What people think is pretty much irrelevant. Is there a way to experimentally test whether Wolfram or Weinstein or neither are right ? If so, then the time to upend our entire understanding of physics will come when we gather up some evidence. If not, then we should probably proceed with business as usual for the time being.
AFAICT it is basically impossible to show experimentally whether *any* quantum gravity theory is correct. Also I think that some people think that Wolfram & Weinstein's theories are mathematically incoherent (I'm one of the former, because I fear that Wolfram's thing is so general that it doesn't have much predictive power if any; for an example of the latter, see https://timothynguyen.files.wordpress.com/2021/02/geometric_unity.pdf.)
I already commented on Wolfram so many times, I probably should just write an article and reference it. Because this topic will keep appearing over and over again probably for a few decades (with no progress, of course).
Essentially, Wolfram has repeated his old trick with showing us a universal machine and saying "this explains everything". The last time it was state automata. Now it is some graph transformations. Tomorrow, who knows.
The concept of a universal machine is not new at all. More than half of century ago, Turing invented the Turing machines. But there are many others. Like, almost any programming language is universal. Inventing yet another one is... kinda interesting, but there are already hundreds, and we already heard the concept.
Then Wolfram says "behold, on this system of mine, you could simulate the entire universe". Which is true, in the sense that it is true about all universal machines. That is like, literally, what "universal" means: it can simulate anything that can be simulated by a machine. So, true, but nothing new.
After this point, everything is powered by vague analogies. Anything moving at certain speed is "like the speed of light". Anything growing is "like the expanding universe". Anything connected with something else is "like the quantum entanglement". (Probably something intersects something else, and that's like Jesus dying on the cross for our sins.)
When you look at reactions, negative reactions are usually like "but this analogy with physics is completely wrong", and positive reactions are usually like "man, I don't really understand any of this, but it is completely mind-blowing, and the scientists are stupid for not paying more attention to it". When we'll have this debate again, one year later, none of this will change.
(I haven't paid any attention to Weinstein's theories, and I don't plan to, therefore no comment on that.)
I think this is 'not even wrong'. The reductio ad absurdum of your argument is that, because every mathematical theory is isomorphic to number theory, there's no point in developing any other mathematical theories. But that's backwards. Mathematicians don't invent new mathematical theories _because_ they're necessary in that sense – they do it because they're useful, e.g. it's easier for humans to reason about different things using different 'ontologies'.
I think of Wolfram's 'big project' as something like pushing for computational ontologies. And the point of those ontologies isn't anything like 'this universal machine is THE universal machine' – as you point out, that doesn't make any sense.
The charitable explanation for his "graph transformations" is that they're _better_ explanations for humans, not some special kind of 'universal' computation.
And even if his 'graph theories' do NOT offer any new predictions, they could be very useful for helping others discover new insights that might lead them to a (better) 'theory of everything'. That alone seems to justify his approach.
And you seem to have missed a big point of his "state automata" work – or at least you don't seem to have gotten the point that I did – lots of things _are_ (roughly) very simple computational systems. The ongoing discovery of the near-ubiquity of computational universality is strong evidence that this big point is pretty true.
I never understood him to be claiming that 'one particular cellular automata can _easily_ and _practically_ explain anything'. The closest claim that I interpreted to be making is more subtle:
1. Computation _can_ be very simple and universal computation can be very simple too.
2. There are _many_ simple computational systems, and a good proportion that are universal.
3. For many real-world systems, a simple computational system _can_ describe or explain the behavior and dynamics of those systems.
4. We _could_ 'explore' computational systems as a way to develop good (and possibly) practical theories for various phenomena.
I've been very interested in 'philosophical computer science' for a long time, but what really confirms my opinion that Wolfram is on to something that probably is 'important' (e.g. useful) is evidence from others, like my Real Analysis professor. The real numbers are [pardon my emphasis] _fucking crazy_ and the idea that the real world is anything like them is definitely NOT obvious. Gödel's incompleteness theorem and just the _idea_ of the axiom of choice also – to me – point in the direction of mathematics being a thing people invented for themselves and computation being a more 'natural' (and more general) category for understanding things.
Way over my head, but check out the 'not even wrong' blog by Peter Woit. (if you haven't already.) I half expect Eric W. to drop some sort of paper around April 1st. I often feel that the theorists are looking under the wrong rock. (Understanding particles.) And that there is something weird about gravity we don't understand. MOND, though kinda crazy, looks to have some predictive power. (See Triton Station blog)
I've always wondered if German state-forming history might have gone very differently if conflict between Prussia and Austria in the 19th century had been slightly more favorable for the Austrians. We might have gotten effectively a North Germany and South Germany (with Bavaria either being its own independent nation or in some type of union with post-Empire Austria). That would make for some very different politics in continental Europe, without the UK, France, and Russia realigning to oppose the German Empire.
What are some other plausible "might have been" nation-states? Burgundy if Charles the Bold hadn't screwed it up and gotten his crown after all? A still-separate South Vietnam?
Or an unstable Großdeutschland with Prussia and Austria fighting for hegemony.
But the domino effect here is what happens in southeastern/central Europe. A Habsburg Empire that remains committed to a south german sphere of influence throughout the 19th century is one that's not looking eastward so much, which changes the dynamic of the Austrians and Russians peeling land in the Balkans off the Ottoman Empire, as well as the later Hungarian and Slavic nationalist movements.
I once read an interesting alternative history in which Australia was ignored by the British but settled by the French, Portugese and Dutch instead, leading to the creation of three modern nations in the South Pacific; the French had the south-east plus New Zealand, the Dutch had the west, and the Portugese had the north.
The alternative history was quite detailed, but all I remember from it was that Napoleon wound up getting exiled to some remote South Pacific island and escaped to New Zealand, culminating in the Duke of Waterloo winning the Battle of Wellington.
What do people think of the pro-immigration arguments Bryan Caplan lays out in *Open Borders*? It seems like effective altruists have massively underrated the importance of this cause—https://80000hours.org/topic/causes/global-poverty/immigration-reform// shows just three signal boosts in last ~10 years—if Caplan's claims are even 10% as likely as he states.
For instance, if we can get 10 Republican senators on board an immigration reform bill, we'd have a filibuster proof majority to increase legal migration to the US. Increasing legal immigration by 50% would mean ~500,000 new immigrants a year. I can't even imagine how high the NPV of half a million new immigrants annually would be on the planet.
Heck, if we could get *one* *prominent* Republican senator to lead the charge, he or she might be able to convince 9 colleagues more easily. Maybe a senator just reelected, looking to preserve or increase their legacy with a mammoth, bipartisan bill.
"Let's ruin the nice countries of the world for the benefit of impoverished third-worlders" is exactly the sort of thing that makes me turn away from effective altruism or utilitarianism in general.
Presenting people with a choice between either ruining their own lives or explicitly saying "I choose to be selfish, fuck those third-worlders" will force them to declare themselves explicitly selfish, which is probably worse than the default mode where we all pretend to be moderately altruistic while actually being selfish. Once you've identified as "I am a selfish person" then you're inclined to start making your other decisions more consistent with that self-evaluation.
Of course, much of the disagreement here is actually about whether open borders (or more open borders, anyway) would be disastrous for the receiving country or not.
I think it's potentially disastrous for the sending country too. "Brain drain" has been pointed to as having crippled the economies of several countries, and it makes intuitive sense (with the disclaimer I've only barely read about this topic) that a country losing, if not its best and brightest, at least its most ambitious and wily, might suffer detrimental effects. Might the cartel situation be so bad in part because the people who would otherwise attempt to fight it are instead choosing to flee it? It's a complicated question, and it's also one of those questions where it feels just so pragmatically awful to think about it in those terms. I can't begrudge a single person fleeing the violence in Central America...but I do wonder if we have a "tragedy of the commons" situation, where the most rational choice for every individual is destructive to the larger society. And I have no idea what a "good" solution looks like.
The benefit would accrue globally, including the destination country. "A literature summary by economist Michael Clemens leads to an estimate that open borders would result in an increase of 67-147% in GWP (gross world product), with a median estimate of a doubling of world GDP.[10] One estimate placed the economic benefits at 78 trillion.[11]" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_border#Arguments_for_open_borders)
It's hardly selfless, insofar as it "is not from the benevolence of the butcher ... that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest."
I do appreciate the point about framing choices, although I don't think it need apply here.
Population growth and GDP are pretty highly correlated. My strong intuition is that any policy which increases the size of the workforce will pay for itself quickly.
Pragmatically, Republicans would need to believe there’s an immigrant cohort who will vote for them.
There recently was a scientific report commissioned by a Dutch populist party that found that a non-western migrant costs € 282,000 during their life, even when accounting for remigration and savings on education costs.
Now, I assume that the report is biased, but it has to be biased a very large amount to turn that deficit into a surplus. The response by leftists was to argue that the costs of migration should not be measured, which seems like an implicit admission that they expect the costs to be negative, because they would obviously demand a report by leftists if they expected to find a surplus (or even a small deficit).
It's also common sense that groups that produce a net surplus have to earn above average, due to progressive taxation. And The Netherlands has very progressive taxation. If you take a major migration group like the Polish, their average salary is less than half of the average Dutch person and below the threshold for paying income tax. So even if you account for them getting fewer subsidies and the like, it seems pretty much impossible for them to be net contributors.
> Should they be expelled from a country?
Just for this comment, you didn't actually deserve the effort I went through, above...
> Now, I assume that the report is biased, but it has to be biased a very large amount to turn that deficit into a surplus.
Biased in amount sure, but biased in methodology? Doesn't require much. It just has to ignore the economic benefits (if any, I'm not going to claim I know the answer) of being able to pay polish people half the wages of a Dutch person
The study only looked at the net costs/benefits to the state. The kind of benefits that you name are very hard to quantify, because you have to compare it to an alternative history where people make different choices because certain labor is more expensive.
Recall that it wasn't very long ago that the Senate passed a very comprehensive immigration reform bill with GOP support. But one single wine-sipping-turned-cannabis-entrepreneur John Boehner blocked it from ever getting a simple House vote.
Lindsey Graham et al. were aligned with its goals just fine until the political winds started shifting. So much continuing pain and suffering, thanks to the GOP.
Getting the effective altruism movement involved in politics would just turn it into yet another political movement and we have so many of them that all the low hanging fruit there has definitely already been picked.
Fundamentally ignores that state capacity, rule of law, criminal justice, and high trust societies are exceptional and fragile, rather than robust and contagious.
Separately but importantly I also think it ignores that there are non-linear benefits to global utility of the existence of really great/competent/smart/trusting places.
What would explain the United States capacity with respect to those metrics given its history of completely open borders up until about 1924, its 100% immigrant or immigrant-descended population? Are the US's indices so high *despite* its open borders and large immigrant population? Similarly, is Shenzhen, China's so-called Silicon Valley and fastest growing city for two decades, so successful despite its open borders (within China)?
I don't mean to discount the importance of your reservation, but I don't see closed borders as necessary or sufficient a condition for those capacities.
First: the simplest response to this common open borders argument is that it's ridiculous to compare open borders before a world with 7 billion people and cheap airfare to one with those things. If you trust Gallup polls, 158 million adults want to move to America. This would shoot the foreign-born population up from around 15 percent (already higher than most ) of the country up to 40 percent. This is drastically more and faster than any similar shift in the "open borders" era of the United States.
Second: United States is quite bad on a lot of those traits in comparison with a lot of first world countries. It's not clear the extent to which this is due to ethnic/cultural strife.
Third: Detroit used to be the fastest growing city too. Growth at a given moment in time does not mean prosperity or stability in the long term. I haven't read as much about Shenzhen as Detroit but even calling it China's Silicon Valley seems like a huge exaggeration.
But also: China is literally an authoritarian state with a near-totalitarian reach. Unlike with America, it cannot suffer from the strife and problems inherent in disagreements over policy within multi-ethnic and multicultural democratic societies.
Finally re: open borders (within China), well America also has internal open borders between all the poorest and richest parts, and it turns out that people don't just move from the poor parts to the rich parts and then become rich, which seems like it implies that the open borders argument is actually a lot weaker than its proponents would like to believe.
I haven't read Caplan's book, but from an EA point of view you can help far more people in poor countries through trade than could ever immigrate. All the rich countries' combined capacity to assimilate can't even come close to keeping up with the population growth in poor countries. Plus, excessive levels of immigration could destabilize the US in ways that would undermine its ability to benefit poor countries through trade. The first two things that come to mind are:
1. the probability of a person inventing things is exponentially related to IQ, but the IQ of offspring is linearly related to the parents. So mixing a higher IQ population with a lower IQ population reduces expected aggregate achievement by a lot, long-term.
2. US immigrants tend to vote for lower levels of economic freedom.
Almost all the international variance in GDP per capita can be explained by a combination of IQ, internal economic freedom, free trade, and oil. Two of those four could be undermined by high levels of immigration from the wrong places, given enough time. If the rich countries' economic growth declines or reverses, billions will stop being lifted out of poverty by trade. High immigration would potentially risk the lives of billions in order to help tens of millions. (to say nothing of degradation in quality of life of the natives in various rich destination countries that are suddenly overwhelmed by tens of millions of IQ80 fundamentalist muslims from africa and the middle east causing a crime wave and doing menial jobs for the last five years before they get automated).
Also, the whole point of spatial proximity is convenience. Now that Covid has made telecommuting go extremely mainstream, it should enable more people to work together at a distance without actually living in the same place and having the negative externalities on each other that might entail. The aforementioned muslim fundamentalists would probably much rather collect the same paycheck in their home country, where the culture isn't undermining their religious values. And everybody else would prefer to not live around them, so the separation is win-win.
The most cost efficient and effective way to shave is to get a safety razor that takes standardized blades, and then just buy the dirt cheap packs of commodity blades. I use a Merkur razor with Wilkinson Sword blades. I got a pack of 100 blades for $18 on Amazon, and that will likely last me many more years before I need more.
Yes I've gone back to a regular safety razor, I got fed up with the incredibly short life span of multi-blade razors. Plus as I only shave every few days they clog really badly. Had re-learn to use a safety again without slicing myself up though!
If you are used to an ordinary razor brand and want to reduce your total expenditure per month on blades, I have found that making sure to pat the razor head dry with a towel after each use is very quick and easy and at least doubles blade life. Apparently much of what causes razor blades to go dull so fast is rust rather than shaving-induced wear.
Are you sure you have this right? Harry's and Dorco have been and continue to be direct competitors. For those unfamiliar, Dollar Shave Club uses Dorco made razors.
After testing all of the options a couple years back I ended up selecting the 6 Blade Dorcos (I think they call them "Pace 6") to use going forward. They perform very well and the pricing is much better than it's closest competitors.
Scott, there's some cleanup work to be done on SlateStarCodex. Users visiting that domain should be made aware front and center that the new home for the blog is here.
1) Just surfing to slatestarcodex.com results in the NYT blog post. And there is scant mention of ACX on this page. Enough time has passed that now I think that surfing to the base domain should result in the ACX announcement, not the NTY blog post.
2) One can find the ACX announcement post via clicking the "Archives" button at the top of the page. However, the ACX post isn't visible if you click the "Older" link to surf backwards.
3) Furthermore, I propose that the "About / Top Posts" should also mention ACX, for good measure. Something along the lines of: "Posts from 2021 and onwards are found at ACX, but you can find some highlights of my previous work on this page."
Why are we not letting people in underdeveloped regions know about Library Genesis or SciHub? Many of them have smartphones and internet now even in villages where children can't have schoolbooks, or one book for 100 students. Instead of spending millions to send them books, why not show them this resource already infront of them?
From what I've seen most smart peoples biographies basically involve reading lots of books for 10 years. Maybe the next generation of Ramanujans would be enabled by being able to read literally any book they want for free, although I'm not entirely sure how widespread a lack of books is (even Ramanujan had access to math textbooks.) But I feel like it must help in some way, and it costs literally nothing because LibGen is already here.
And I might be fantasizing a little but there could even be recommended curricula for literature & history of various countries, languages, fields of science, or practical skills like mechanics or gardening.
Facebook hegemony? I’ve heard there are places in the underdeveloped world where Facebook has an agreement with connectivity providers, so many people think that internet = Facebook. Unless they see a direct link, the external world doesn’t exist. Still, you'd think that if they ever saw a link to a good site, they'd try to hang onto it.
Are *we* “ not letting people in underdeveloped regions know about Library Genesis or SciHub? ”
Does the average person in the US know about them, or feel confident they can use them without risking a punitive lawsuit?
Bandwidth issues? Probably not, they probably receive graphics and video that hog more bandwidth.
Because piracy=bad has some of the strongest consensus in the West among remotely controversial issues. Even dictatorships usually don't condone it outright, instead having selectively enforced prohibitions as per their usual approach. Officially, it's just Not The Way Things Are Done. If you want the Overton window to move on this you'd need an influential organization/movement willing to defy some of the most powerful interests, and third world access to more reading doesn't seem to be the sort of issue to catalyze such action.
I had a question on my mind recently: Is it rational to anti-rationalize?
Background: I was having a discussion and most people didn't agree with me. I was tempted to bring up my personal experience to support my argument, which I knew would definitely shut people up. But I recognized that this impulse originates from my /desire to be right/. I know that I have a tendency be obnoxiously argumentative and it's a trait that I want to clamp down on in favor of bringing out humility and thoughtfulness. Therefore, I decided /not/ to bring up the thing that would put me in the right.
I mentioned this to a friend and she said I was totally justified to bring in my personal experience, because it was relevant, it would bring a perspective to the discussion most people don't have, and it would explain my opinion on the matter. But I still wouldn't do it, because I felt like I could rationalize any number of reasons to argue about this until others acknowledge my point, and as a result, I don't trust any of those reasons. Even if they're objectively good reasons, I feel like I have to resist the temptation in order to be my best self. Hence, the anti-rationalizing: doing the opposite of what your (bad) impulses tell you, no matter how convincing they are.
Is this a good rule to adhere to? I'm sure there is a situation where your (bad) impulses tell you to do something that turns out to be the right thing, but I'm not sure I would make exceptions to the rule based on that and risk stunting my personal development.
Because that desire is not for the "arriving at a true belief through critical examination" kind of being right, but the "having everyone bow down to my superior viewpoint" kind of being right. If you could stop a discussion dead by mentioning a relevant personal experience that's so important that anyone questioning you afterwards would look like a huge asshole, would you do it? It's hard to resist such an opportunity to assert moral superiority, which is exactly why I feel like I /have/ to resist it, even though there are good reasons that /aren't/ asserting moral superiority to do so.
I'm having a hard time picturing a situation in which my own personal experience not related to the person I'm talking to makes that person look like a huge asshole at the point that I reveal this personal experience.
I mean, my own personal experience is just mine, right? It doesn't have super powers. The other person's asshole-ish-ness pertains to them, not me. My imagination may be limiting me here.
Yeah, I'm trying not to specify because it's uncomfortable for me to talk about but it's clearly not working, and I can't think of a better example that isn't worse than the actual one. So here goes.
The context of the discussion was what to do as a teacher about a (university) student who had lost both her parents a month earlier and planned to resume her studies. My view was that she should be allowed to do so without too much fuss because, while the situation is incredibly shitty, no one benefits from throwing a pity party. Other people's views were that she needed extra counseling and everyone should be extra thoughtful in considering whether she'd be okay going back to work.
I was tempted to bring up that, when I lost both my parents around the time I was a student, I was thoroughly sick of everyone's sympathies and "I'm here for you"s and so on by the time a month had passed, and I just wanted to retain a semblance of normalcy in studying. I didn't mention that, because although it would have made my case a lot stronger, the part of my mind that was telling me "they don't know who they're talking to, put them in their place," that part was almost gleeful of the prospect of a shocked silence and people unsure of how to respond to that. Because, seriously, who's going to tell me "But still, I think you're wrong" without looking astronomically insensitive?
So now I'm thinking, I had plenty of good reasons to take that opportunity, but it would give satisfaction to an ugly part of my psyche that I didn't want to encourage. And that leaves me to wonder, should I just never give in to that, no matter how good the reasons?
Work on the 'ugly part' of your psyche separately/in general; it's useful to acknowledge that we grieve/cope differently. It's helpful to be cognisant of other's experience, so cool if you can share your experience/point of view.
Thanks for sharing that. Funny coincidence, I only had one parent and after she died, I went back to grad school classes and teaching two weeks later. I was in my late 20s at the time and had moved back in to care for her. So this presents an interesting situation in that I can imagine that I identify with some of what you say, but I really can't know what your experience was. And certainly losing two loved ones at once can be a whole other level of awful.
I also just wanted to return to some normalcy because my life had been quite tipped upside-down already, and looking back after a bunch of years, it seems like a perfectly good choice I made at the time and it had no bearing on how much I loved my mom or how hard I grieved her death (a lot to both of those).
So about speaking up or not, I'm sharing this just in case it's interesting to hear how another person processes this question.
I would decide about whether to speak up on this largely based on how safe I felt with the group I was talking to. If I felt reasonably safe, I would speak up, but also because I would feel clear in my intention -- which would be to speak up for my feeling and experience that people do and say a lot of dumb and unhelpful things in the face of other people's loss and grief. That would be my agenda in sharing -- to sort of invite people to check their assumptions by adding my one example to the other person's one example that was under discussion. So I wouldn't feel like I was right about anything other than that it's an individual thing how people grieve and it's not for other people to say.
The part I'm missing, that you seem to feel, is that me speaking up about my experience would make anyone else look like an asshole. It's just my perspective based on my experience and doesn't in my mind have some special power of rightness to it. For every one of me or you or this other person, I imagine there are plenty of people out there in bereavement who could not conceive of going back to work that soon, who did need counseling in order to function in a school/work space, and so saying I wasn't one of those people doesn't in my mind make me right. If the question under discussion is "should people always take X amount of bereavement time and get counseling after a devastating loss?" and the group is saying, "Yes!" then I wouldn't be saying "No": I would just be saying "I don't think you can say for someone else."
Part of the reason this doesn't feel conflicted for me is that my mom died a long time ago now and I can speak about it without a lot of grief surfacing. And that allows me to talk about that time in a way that will come across to others also like it's not a big silencing thing I'm dropping into the conversation. It just doesn't feel raw like it did in the years right afterwards. I also feel pretty clear that if it feels to someone else like I've just dropped a bomb into the conversation because I basically said "me too" about an experience under discussion, then that's their own reaction to tend to, because it strikes me as a perfectly appropriate contribution to the conversation as you've described it. But it also feels just like that, a contribution, and not any kind of special trump card. If someone else reads it as a special trump card, then they would have misunderstood my intent in sharing it.
Yeah, I think you've hit the nail on the head there. Even if my intent is to genuinely contribute, I can't shake the feeling that bringing it up at all is like dropping a bomb. Maybe I do just need to emphasize "this is my experience and it might not be true for everyone else". Thanks for your thoughts.
To your last question about giving in or not to those impulses, I think about it a little differently maybe. I imagine in that situation feeling angry at other people's responses -- at their judgment and presumption about knowing what's "best" in a way that is not helpful for the person who is actually bereaved.
So I would notice that my fantasy about feeling glee at other people feeling ashamed is an anger response.
I do of course feel anger plenty. But I'd prefer there be a pause between the feeling of the anger and the decision about speaking or acting from that place. So the answer for me would be to refrain until I could tend to the anger I was feeling because I often don't feel good after acting out of anger.
If you were to "win" the argument with your experience (which I agree you may do), you would only feel good about that if you assumed this other student looked at life the same way you do. I doubt she does, at least in a relevant enough way to feel sure about your one response.
You may be able to couch your response by adding in "this may not be universal" language while relaying why you are making a certain point.
For instance - "She may react very differently, but this was my experience and why I felt that way..."
Ah, so this part: "It's hard to resist such an opportunity to assert moral superiority, which is exactly why I feel like I /have/ to resist it, even though there are good reasons that /aren't/ asserting moral superiority to do so." -- I hear you asking is it wrong to do an okay thing for bad reasons. Yes?
It depends on your view of morality. What's your view?
For me, if my intentions about doing X thing in relating to someone felt very muddy -- which is what I hear you describing -- my aim would be to refrain from acting until I could get clearer about my intentions and act from a place that felt less muddy. Because it's one of my beliefs that acting impulsively from a muddy place tends to create less healthy relationships and makes me feel less good inside.
Of course I do this imperfectly everywhere I go or I would never act on anything, so my goal isn't to wait for perfect clarity, but to at least refrain from acting long enough to disentangle as best I can the intentions I'm good with from the ones I don't want guiding me in my life.
My first instinct is that you should bring up your personal experience.
--It is likely that the other people have not even considered the possibility of whatever it is you experienced.
--I would try emphasise that your personal experience is only anecdotal. And maybe have little discussion on whether they think your experience is representative.
I do see your concern that there is a risk that you 'win' the argument via bad reasoning, but it is not your fault if they misuse genuinely helpful evidence. (Of course, all this depends on context. E.g. on national level, a politician is responsible for how the population can misuse good evidence)
If you're coming across as argumentative, you might want to work on how you say things? If you have some personal experience that's relevant, there's probably some way to bring it up that would sound helpful rather argumentative.
One approach is to say it's just another data point and other people's experiences may differ. A general strategy is trying not to come across as saying you *must* believe me, but rather giving people material so they draw their own conclusions.
On the other hand, a good reason to not bring it up would be to avoid changing the flow of conversation, if you're rather let other people talk or don't want the attention.
In person, but to be clear, I'm not asking for advice on personal conduct. I know how to keep myself in check. I'm just wondering about the general principle of how much to value keeping myself in check versus doing what's justified in the moment, since these are at odds with each other.
The thought that comes up for me is that what guides one to say or not say something in a particular conversation is maybe best clarified by what one's intention is in that conversation.
Conversations are essentially relationship-building actions, unless it's competitive academic debate which is more like sports where there are rules, and winners and losers.
So with this person right now in front of you, what's your intention in talking with them about this topic, whatever it is? Are you arguing just to pass the time and there's not a whole lot riding on it? Then maybe you just get to experiment with doing it one way or another and listen in and see how each way feels to you.
Is it a conversation with a loved one where it feels like there's a lot riding on this issue? Then maybe it's less about being right and more about understanding each other really well. In that effort, sharing your personal experience may illuminate for both of you some of why the conversation feels important to you.
Are you having the conversation with someone who is likely to listen to your personal experience with a measure of empathy and respect? In other words, does it feel worthwhile sharing your personal experience based on what you know about the other person's level of sophistication or self-awareness?
So to me, there's no objective "right" way to approach this and neither way is more or less rational or virtuous. There are costs and benefits to withholding personal information and to sharing it and those vary widely depending on the situation, and so the task is maybe more navigating than it is picking the right path.
"I'm not asking for advice on personal conduct." I think you are asking exactly this, not necessarily pertaining to your specific person, but it's still a discussion of personal conduct. If you were open to comments on personal conduct, you might see that there are infinite ways to integrate your knowledge into the conversation, versus a binary "do I integrate or don't I". The fact that you could have used your insights and not fallen into the trap you described points to a problem not of if, but of how.
Relevant personal experience is relevant, and as such it is rational to introduce it to a debate or discussion. The question is whether the experience is relevant.
To a first approximation, personal experience is relevant when disproving a broad or absolute statement, irrelevant when proving one. If the argument is "white men can't jump", your personal experience as a white man who jumps is relevant, even more so if you're doing it in the company of lots of other white men and nobody has ever called you out as freaks or weirdos for doing it. If the argument is "all black men can jump", your experience as a black man who jumps is not relevant.
To go beyond the first approximation, you'll need to think about the specifics.
Your experience sounds a lot like mine. I can more often win arguments if I choose to use all options, but it turns people off even if/after I win the argument. What I've been trying to teach myself is essentially to be more aware of and to follow social norms of the group I'm around. Also, to be more okay simply losing (or letting the argument go). Most arguments aren't worth the fight, as I've come to realize. You rarely change someone's mind, especially by browbeating them. They may give up talking to you and feign losing in order to get you to stop, but you haven't convinced them at all.
As for bringing up a personal experience, I guess it could potentially be a good idea if it's specifically relevant. But ask yourself this question - would you be convinced by a single anecdote in the opposite direction? If the answer is no, then you're asking the person you are talking with to accept an argument you yourself would reject. Personal experience can be a powerful tool in an argument, but mostly because you've now made it incredibly impolite to continue arguing the opposite point. Imagine this scenario, you are arguing against someone who is in favor of the war on drugs. Your opponent brings up that their dad was killed by a drug dealer. Did that help the conversation? Not really, the underlying trends are more than a single anecdote. Can you still argue that drugs should be legalized? Only if you're willing to be a jerk and ignore their personal experience. Their anecdote will not convince you at all, but they will appear to have won the argument because their opponents (if they are unwilling to act like a jerk) will have given up.
I saw some news snippet earlier today on the european union currently not donating any covid vaccines due to "high internal pressure". To me this sounds like a complete moral bankrupsy and I wondered if private donors could step in. What about feasibility, short-term availibility and cost-effectiveness? Can someone (ideally frome an effective altruism perspective) comment on this?
There's over 100 countries that haven't yet done any vaccinations. There are some international organizations that are trying to get vaccines to these countries, and they have some money, but have very few actual contracts with vaccine manufacturers because most of the capacity has already been bought up by the rich countries. I believe that Macron has been arguing that the rich countries should start by donating 5% of each shipment they receive to various poor countries, and then donating a larger fraction as the rich countries get closer to fully vaccinated. I don't believe any country has been doing this, though Russia and China have been donating very large amounts of vaccines.
Donation cannot increase the amount of vaccine available at a particular time. Is there a rationale for scattering existing vaccinations more widely? Maybe the most vulnerable should be vaccinated first, regardless of location? Or those most likely to spread the disease? Or those who lack the resources to cope with infection?
The obvious distribution argument is that there should be a priorization based on risk or potential benefits. As Kenny pointed out above, there _used_ to be a lot of public promises of not leaving poorer countries completely out of the distribution chain (mostly empty promises now).
Seems like it might depend on some other assumptions we make or the form of the goals we adopt. For instance, do the strategies “EU donation/nondonation” map cleanly onto the two outcomes you mention?
It would be ironic if allowing persons to simply bid for the vaccine had the result of making the pandemic worse, but it’s not obvious that EU donating or not would be decisive in avoiding this.
I think there's nothing clean about any thinking or reasoning about the complexities of a pandemic, as we've learned repeatedly over the past year.
But a simple model suggests that any individual dose of vaccine will make more difference to the total number of infections if it is given in a place where infection rate is high (so that it is likely to prevent someone from getting infected) and where the vaccinated rate is low (so that a hypothetical infection that had been prevented would have more likely spread to other individuals).
I *think* that means that generally, as a world, we'd be better off if doses are spread roughly equally among the places that haven't eliminated the virus through non-pharmaceutical interventions, rather than some parts of the world getting 70% vaccinated while large parts are 0% vaccinated. Of course, Europe and North America aren't anywhere near 70% vaccinated yet, but at the current rate, they will be in a few months.
Why would this be in scope for the EU, a trade and monetary union! Maybe some EU members are unable to pay for vaccine, and other members might want to help out because of unrestricted travel between member countries?
Donating vaccines to poor countries is presumable anti-effective, since those countries have worse healthcare, so more vaccine is wasted, more is given to low-risk groups, etc. Then there is the issue that poorer countries are impact less in their actual lives, since they tend to lock down a lot less. So vaccinating in richer countries has more mental health benefits.
Furthermore, the more that is donated, the less support there is for increasing the production ability at the cost of EU taxpayers.
I expect that the EU will start donating once they have vaccinated most people who really want a vaccine.
This is a weird argument because it puts second-order effects (mental health) above first-order effects (lives saved). From an effective altruism standpoint, vaccinating people somewhere where the pandemic is at its worst (Brazil) would save more lives. It's the same reason why vaccines are tested in such places.
A more likely argument is that leaders of the EU have a duty to help members of the EU. This is similar to nationalism, but it's hard to argue against when we are talking about political leaders.
Brazilians already seem to have decided that they far more often prefer to not pay those mental costs, at the expense of more deaths. I'm not sure why that means that they have more right to help.
Also, you completely ignore that I made a bunch of other arguments, like my claim that the vaccines would probably be wasted far more often and would go to low risk groups more often.
On second thought, I don't think I understand your arguments because you've described them very briefly; I just made a guess about what you're referring to. Sorry about that!
I don't think it's about valuing the mental costs more highly, but the physical costs being bigger *and* valuing deaths less highly (WEIRDs are super, super risk-averse).
It is outside the institutional scope of the EU, and though it might be nice for the EU to expand scope in a helpful way, it's not clear that is the way to go. If we attack it as a global problem, the organization in charge has to have global scope. If we decentralize, that implies a different strategy.
Then, if the virus goes wild in South America, the probability is high that it will breed a mutant which makes the vaccines completely worthless. The P1 variant is already halfway there.
I'm wondering why they don't build their own vaccine factory. And even if they produce that Finnish open-source nasal-spray vaccine. Is that really so difficult?
If we let the virus go wild in South America and if it does breed a mutant, then the mutant virus will A: be in South America and B: be to some extent optimized for the South American environment. If we let the virus go wild in *North* America, then any mutant will be on the ground in North America and adapted to North American conditions. Ditto Europe.
If there's enough vaccine to suppress spread in two continents right but not three or four or five, and if the decision on how to allocate the vaccine is being made by less than perfectly altruistic North Americans and Europeans, then "but maybe a mutant strain will emerge in South America, better vaccinate them first!" is not going to be a winning argument.
If the theory is that a bunch of evil North Americans and Europeans actually have enough vaccine for the entire world and are hoarding it for some reason, then no. We are capacity-limited in vaccine production; the vaccine distribution plan that reduces the risk of a mutant strain cropping up in one place, increases the risk of a mutant strain cropping up in other places.
Given that certain demographics face risks orders of magnitude greater than others, there's a good argument that does should be exported after a country gets its over-60 population vaccinated so other countries can get their over-70 populations vaccinated.
This is not really my argument -- I think that countries that built good vaccine development should be rewarded. But I have to recognize that it will soon get to the case where we need hundreds of doses in a first-world country to match the effectiveness of a single-dose in another country.
Sure, although most 2nd world countries that have a halfway decent medical system seem to be getting some supplies of the vaccine that they can use on the elderly. Even Brazil, whose president seemed to go out of his way to buy as little as possible.
In The Netherlands, we've just started vaccinating the 75-79 age group with the initial dose, so we are nowhere close to having vaccinated the high-risk group twice.
You guys should honestly be glad that you had Trump in charge, because the EU did and is doing all kinds of absurd things like focusing on cheap vaccines, when the cost of the COVID crisis is so high that spending 20 euros more per shot to get them a month earlier is completely cost effective.
I don't get this argument. If I'm a government elected by a set of people who represent their interests and my group of people aren't fully vaccinated, isn't my obligation to look after my constituency?
I'd understand this argument if the EU or US had achieved something like, 99% vaccine rate and now they were wasting time and money chasing diminishing returns, but we're clearly not there yet.
Wikipedia sounds... lets say better than the impression I had yesterday and it at least doesn't look hopelessly underfunded right now... still, can someone with more detailed knowledge or who did an actual cost-benefit analysis weigh in?
First time I'm mentioned in a SSC/ACT post ever! I'll pour a nice brandy to celebrate!
I first thought I rambled too much and was not really clear in what I wrote, but later replies started to come and even Scott has read and apparently enjoyed it!
In my usual social circles I'm the intellectual one so in most subjects when I make a comment it's a good one. Here the standards are so high that the subject needs to be one I have unfair advantage in (being from a specific country). Thus, I feel this community is pulling me up, happy to have discovered here. Cheers to all!
Astral Codex readers, Scottheads and old Slate Star Codex readers may be interested to know that I now have a free Substack under the name "Philospoher Bear".
I previously blogged under the name "de Pony Sum". My main claim to relevance around here is that I invented the terms mistake and conflict theory*, but I've been kicking around these parts for years.
*With the caveat that conflict theory is obviously repurposed from the same term in sociology with the same meaning but a slightly different emphasis/use case.
Interests include: philosophy, psychology, politics, political economy and poetry. I didn't plan for all my interests to start with a P, it just ended up that way.
I recently joined 'The Turing Way' and they are very successful on the inclusivity and diversity front (despite being predominantly about creating an online book on data science). I wrote a post listing the reasons I think they succeed: https://lovkush.substack.com/p/an-example-of-inclusivity-and-diversity.
Four main points are:
--having inclusivity and diversity as a top priority
--valuing the people/community more than the actual content. This is closely related to Scott's idea of understanding communities via rallying flags. A founder of the Turing Way said "The book is in my opinion not the most interesting part. The book is the thing we all gather around, but it is the community that is the most exciting aspect. My ultimate goal for success is that people feel that they are empowered to contribute into an open ecosystem."
I mostly associate the term "bropenscience" with Lee Jussim's critique of it, but it doesn't seem like there's a good example of that easily available to link to.
Women that participate in open source coding projects seem to often gravitate towards other jobs than coding, like translating, documenting, making rules, etc.
So my strong impression that The Turing Way attracts a lot of women because they aren't actually making software, but because it focuses on exactly the kinds of things that attracts women. Yet they seem to do it in a way that appears to be extremely inefficient.
The result of the project is well, extremely unimpressive. There are very few pages, with very little content on it. The guidelines for the project are about the same size as the actual book. This seems like something that a single writer plus a single illustrator could knock out pretty easily on their own in a few weeks. However, they list 253 collaborators and seem to have been at it for over a year!
But they do have a README in Dutch, French, German, Indonesian, Italian, Korean, Portuguese and Spanish, which I guess is very 'inclusive,' even though the book is not translated in any of these languages, so I'm not sure how that is actually helpful.
To me, this seems to just be a 'participation trophy' project. A sort book or knitting club, but with pretenses, yet without actually making good on those pretenses.
I guess that if your only measure for success is 'inclusivity and diversity,' then you can call it a success, but isn't the idea that women and minorities actually participate equally, rather than do some hobbying that has little output or impact?
"Yet they seem to do it in a way that appears to be extremely inefficient".
One of the people at Turing Way said that they are slow on purpose, and that they encourage accessibility over perfection/polished-ness. What you (and I) would consider inefficient, they might consider a feature of the project.
"A sort book or knitting club, but with pretenses, yet without actually making good on those pretenses." I am new, so I do not know the history, but I do think The Turing Way has helped spread good practice in open science, so it is unfair to say they are not making good on the pretenses.
"even though the book is not translated in any of these languages, so I'm not sure how that is actually helpful." You have to start somewhere. It at least sends a strong signal that it is something they care about and are working towards.
"To me, this seems to just be a 'participation trophy' project". "I guess that if your only measure for success is 'inclusivity and diversity,' then you can call it a success, but isn't the idea that women and minorities actually participate equally, rather than do some hobbying that has little output or impact?"
The founder of project said "My ultimate goal for success is that people feel that they are empowered to contribute into an open ecosystem.", so again, what you (and I) may consider a bug, they might consider a feature.
My impression is that big part of project is helping people make the first steps towards making an impact. Sure, many people's contributions are small or could have been done by a single person, but I think there is value in getting more people taking those early steps.
Thinking out loud, I can imagine some analogue for rationalists community. A super-friendly 'rationalist knitting club', where people who are less confident and less familiar with rationality can take some baby steps, without any expectation to be as polished or insightful as more experienced/more visible rationalists.
> I do think The Turing Way has helped spread good practice in open science
Can you give an example of a real impact that it had?
I just see a rather messy website that veers far away from it's ostensible goal, by having fairly little material that actually generalizes to reproducible data science research, let alone all research, but a lot of odd parts like a short manual on git. A lot of it is not about research, but about programming.
> The founder of project said "My ultimate goal for success is that people feel that they are empowered to contribute into an open ecosystem."
Feeling empowered can happen by giving someone the tools to contribute at the required level, but also by putting them into a sandbox where they are given applause for things that would not pass muster in a serious environment.
The latter can be very useful as a learning tool, but if people are deceived into thinking that the sandbox is reality, this can really hurt their ego's if they go out in the real world.
Aside from that issue, a poor sandbox can hold people back by not challenging them enough, or worse, it can teach them bad habits.
> I think there is value in getting more people taking those early steps.
Teaching people how to walk 10 steps and then telling them they are ready to run a marathon may end up poorly...
Where are the technical contributions? Is this really an open source project or just extending the term “open source” to an online community?
The community looks like a subreddit with a wiki to me. Which is totally fine but is only slightly tangential to what a technical open source project is.
You are correct. However, there is some non-trivial overlap with technical projects, e.g., needing to use GitHub. I think there is something to be said to get non-programmers to overcome such a steep learning curve.
It seems like the most important goal in science is to get the right answers--to learn the truth. There's a problem with that in a lot of the social sciences (probably a bunch of other places, too).
This article is a great discussion about inclusiveness and diversity and not offending people and making room for everyone, but it sure seems like they ought to spend more time worrying about the problem that the replication crisis has exposed--lots and lots of claimed research results, including stuff taught to every student in psych 1 classes, and stuff that people have based expensive policies on, turns out to just be wrong. Huge piles of money have been given out in research grants to produce studies that don't actually discover anything.
I don't see how those problems are worsened by "bros." I also don't see how they're helped by advice on being a good ally, including marginalized voices, etc. I mean, a lot of that's probably worthwhile, but worrying about too many bros making mean comments during the replication crisis has the feel of an angry argument about how to rearrange the deck chairs on the titanic.
The entire attack on 'bros' also exposes that the project is not about maximizing inclusivity, because apparently, 'bros' are not welcome. Of course, they justify this in the typical far-left way by dehumanizing these people, claiming that they are trolls.
Their entire project seems to be about being nicer to each other, which is not compatible with solving the replication crisis, which requires being not-so-nice, by pointing out each other's flaws. Which is the very basis behind proper science anyway, but one that has already been largely forgotten in favor of being nice.
Just generally, you (and others here) seem to keep defaulting to a tonal emphasis that conflates inclusiveness with "being nicer" to marginalized people, "not offending" their notorious sensitivities, etc.
I would hope you'd spend quite a bit more time and heart interrogating how the inclusion of those voices actively benefits the whole project. Too often it's expressed as if everyone with more privilege is doing them a big favor by allowing them a seat at the table, because such "generosity" sacrifices "efficiencies," "truth," and, supposedly, places all your hard-won achievements at risk.
We should feel grateful, not burdened, by more and more diverse voices willing to participate in all aspects of public life.
That is only remotely true if the voices are adversarial in nature. A million different protected classes explaining why "you can't say that", which is what this boils down to in real life is not useful.
Regular science is already tripping over itself to satisfy the criteria you're talking about. Why can't open science just be about getting right answers?
If you have noy already, I recommend listening to 80k interview of Ezra Klein. In particular, Ezra has some useful critiques of EA/rationality (which he strongly caveated by saying he does really like the community and what it is doing):
- If a person does not communicate in a 'rational style' (e.g. they are highly emotional in their communication), then there is tendency to disregard their opinion, rather than trying to understand their opinion and learn from them.
- Many people who study rationality / cognitive biases can actually become less rational than more rational, as they believe being aware of the biases makes them less biased.
Highly emotional statements are typically not rational. Emotions can be very specific to a person and thus are not a very strong evidence.
You assert that people need to learn from highly emotional statements, but make no argument why this should be the case.
> Many people who study rationality / cognitive biases can actually become less rational than more rational, as they believe being aware of the biases makes them less biased.
If they are actually less biased, then believing that they are less biased doesn't make them less rational, so your statement is incorrect. Or at least, it seems to assume that rationality or studying cognitive biases can't make you less biased.
Also, this criticism by Ezra is the kind of low effort criticism that he is known for. Rationalists are well aware that you can falsely believe that you don't have a certain bias. That's why their main web site is called 'LessWrong,' rather than AlwaysRight.
There is definitely a phenomena where some people learn more about biases and then become less accurate because they think that knowing the biases mean that they *never* commit them. I can think of some people that I've known who insist that they are correct about everything because they've thought about mental fallacies while the people around them haven't, which is pretty clearly a fallacious behavior. That definitely doesn't happen to everyone, and I certainly hope that on net learning about human rationality makes people more rational, but I'm open to believing that it doesn't, or at least not immediately.
In a lot of fields, people learning the subject go through a phase where they first know nothing (and are thus low confidence), but then learn a bit and are very high confidence since they think they know everything and they haven't experienced being wrong. Then as they learn even more about the subject, actually becoming an expert, their confidence goes down to an accurate amount since they have become able to calibrate themselves.
I think some people can wind up stuck on that peak of certainty, and it's extra difficult with a subject like rationality since being overly confident will mean that you are overconfident in your overconfidence.
But isn't that a fully generalizable argument about the dangers of (or even against) educating people on any subject?
Klein doesn't actually make such an argument that he applies equally, where he also argues that many people who get taught a little about, say, racism are often overconfident about their beliefs. Arguing such a thing would raise uncomfortable questions about his own political side of the spectrum.
No, Klein only applies it to beliefs that he disagrees with, as way to defend his own beliefs.
It's also fairly dishonest criticism since Klein himself founded a site, Vox, that routinely claims false consensus, thereby misleading the readers into thinking that claims are far more objective than they are:
John Roberts presumably studied the Voting Rights Act pretty thoroughly before concluding that it was basically no longer needed, and then effectively ripping it to shreds. For all his presumed intellectual curiosity, his reasoning amounted to little more than an assumption that society had sufficiently outgrown overt racism -- an assumption that was probably reinforced primarily by his social circles. (Essentially, he was arguing that because laws against robbing banks had done a good job of reducing the number of bank robberies, it was time to get rid of the laws!)
Now that we've experienced the resultant history, and are currently witnessing the GOP's deplorable sole political objective of restricting voting, I like to imagine Roberts humbly proclaiming he was wrong and reversing course.
But I'm re-reminded that this is just a silly fantasy every time I see his cozy, smug bearing signaling he's just not the type of guy to consider reversing course once his priors are comfortably set in stone.
It's at least partly a cultural problem, addressed best by putting fewer smug, white males in veto-proof positions of authority. That's why Uncle Joe's aggressive attention to diversity is so refreshing after the moral disaster of the last administration.
You're conflating 'arguments made using emotional statements' and 'Emotional statements used as arguments.'
Many people are emotional about things they are expert in, either because their emotional reaction to those things is what caused them to spend a lot of time investigating and working on that topic, or because their direct experience or time spent on that topic provoked an emotional reaction in them.
If you ignore people who have emotions about a topic, you will be eliminating most of the people who are best-educated and most-knowledgable about that topic, and selecting for hobbyists and armchair analysts with little actual connection to the topic.
I didn't argue that people should be ignored for being highly emotional, but that being very emotional often results in poor arguments.
It seems common for these people to then conflate being dismissed for poor arguments that they make due to emotion with them being ignored merely for being emotional.
> If you ignore people who have emotions about a topic, you will be eliminating most of the people who are best-educated and most-knowledgable
They may also be extremely biased, which in turn might mean that their knowledge is extremely one-sided.
Just as Trumpists so enjoy "owning the libs," to the point that they excuse never-ending torrents of lies and undemocratic behavior so long as they get a good laugh at liberals' exploding heads, the most righteous arguments often come from those with the most at stake -- which means everyone else should place a high value on discerning what they are attempting to convey, even if and while they are in a highly adrenal state.
Man, just think about all the white people in the 100 years after Reconstruction who casually dismissed the adrenal fury and despair of African Americans with a shrug because they weren't willing to really listen.
Anyone arguing that they'd "be open" to someone's claims if only they were expressed more rationally is really just defending a comfortable status quo. (Similar to libertarians who insist they'd be perfectly willing to help reduce poverty IF ONLY all the proposed solutions weren't so stupid; their inherent bias against imperfect action is profound.)
@Aapje. In the spirit of honesty, I feel frustrated by your reponse. It seems like you have (intentionally or unintentionally) misconstrued the statements and are making strawman arguments. E.g. "many people who study rationality can actually become less biased" in no way "assumes rationality can't make you less biased".
I get the impression you have a certain model of how Ezra thinks, and are interpreting the statements I wrote to match what you think Ezra thinks by these statements. I really do recommend having a listen to the interview to get a better understanding of how Ezra thinks. Ezra does not equal Vox; even if Ezra co-founded Vox. Like I said in the OP, Ezra says he is big fan of EA/rationalists (but he does disagree in various places, but not for willy-nilly reasons), so the defensive reaction is unwarranted.
What does the EU common agricultural policy actually subsidise?
As I understand it, they pay out a lot of money per hectare of more or less cultivatable land. This sounds like it would be a great incentive to make new arable land ex-nihilo, were such a thing possible (without the help of a great, huge, large... prodigious, prepoſterous horſe).
Moreover, the subsidy seems to go to the landowner, who isn't necessarily the farmer that this policy is intended to help.
I understand that countries have an interest in subsidising agriculture for defence reasons, but it strikes me that this would be better achieved by looking at fertiliser supplies and agricultural machinery than the area of some dirt.
What do people think: am I mistaken about how CAP works, is there some subtle price-theory reason why this is a good idea, does the EU just hate Henry George for no reason?
"The Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) protects family farm incomes, supports the rural economy, ensures the production of high-quality safe food for consumers and protects rural landscapes and the environment.
The CAP consists of a Two Pillar Structure:
Pillar 1 Income Support (The main schemes include the Basic Payment Scheme and Greening)
Pillar 2 Infrastructure, Environment and Development Support (The main schemes include GLAS, EIP-AGRI and TAMS)"
Very, very roughly: when new countries were coming into the EEC/EU, not all of them were on a level playing field. Some countries had highly-developed agribusiness, some were still small family farms with a lot of manual labour. How to make sure everyone got a fair go and it didn't end up with a few huge agribusinesses forming a monopoly? How to support the small farmers, encourage modernisation, and avoid the milk, wine and butter lakes and mountains that happened as a result of former policies? But as well, there are other aims - how to prevent or ameliorate rural depopulation, how to support small communities, biodiversity and protection of threatened species of flora and fauna, etc.
Of course, in practice, people have worked out ways to game the system. But what they are intending to do is laid out as below:
"Origins of the CAP
In 1957 the Treaty of Rome created the European Economic Community. Agriculture has always had a special place in Europe’s economic and social structure. Arising out of the Treaty of Rome, the CAP was established in 1962. At that time Europe was still recovering from World War II and food scarcity was a major issue. The CAP was established on the basis that it would provide food at affordable prices and ensure a fair standard of living for farmers.
Goals of the CAP
• To increase agricultural productivity by promoting technical progress and ensuring the optimum use of the factors of production, in particular labour;
• To ensure a fair standard of living for farmers;
• To stabilise markets;
To ensure the availability of supplies;
• To ensure reasonable prices for consumers.
What are the Benefits of the CAP for the EU?
• Maintaining 10.8 million family farms within the EU;
• Job creation and economic growth, especially in rural areas;
• Managing some 40% of the land area of the EU (175 million hectares);
• Ensuring that the EU is self-sufficient in food production and is a major exporter;
• Ensuring the EU is a world leader in sustainable agriculture;
• Delivering the highest standards of food safety along with animal health & welfare; and
• All of this is delivered for 0.4% of the EU’s total GDP.
CAP Expenditure in the Total EU Expenditure
EU farmers received €58.82bn in support from the overall EU budget of €160.11bn in 2018. This level of support for EU farmers from the overall EU budget reflects the many variables involved in ensuring continued access to high quality sustainably produced food. This includes income support to farmers, climate change action, and supporting vibrant rural communities.
Nine CAP objectives
The CAP post 2020 proposals are based on nine objectives setting out what the policy is intended to achieve for farmers, citizens and climate.
Key Points of the CAP Post 2020 proposals
CAP Strategic Plans —The proposals outline that Member States are obliged to prepare a CAP strategic plan covering all expenditure under Pillar 1 and Pillar 2 with a focus on outputs achieved and targets met. This is a new requirement for Member States.
Greater focus on environmental aspects — The proposals outline that CAP Strategic Plans must commit to a higher environmental ambition than the current CAP supported schemes. This increased environmental ambition is mandatory for Member States and voluntary for farmers to participate in. This proposal suggests that 40% of Pillar 1 funding will target climate change measures and 30% of Pillar 2 funding will target additional voluntary agri- environmental measures.
Changes to Direct Payments — The proposals outline that Member States must reduce the amount of Direct Payments to be granted to a farmer exceeding €60,000. The proposals also outline that Member States must apply a gradual reduction to the Direct Payments made to farmers between €60,000 and €100,000.
Genuine Farmer — The proposals outline that supports will only apply to the “genuine” farmer. This definition will need to be decided at Member State level. This is to ensure that support is not provided to those whose agricultural activity forms only an insignificant part of their overall economic activities or whose principal business activity is not agricultural.
Risk Management — The proposals include the mandatory requirement for Member States to introduce risk management measures."
I really don't understand how food policy in Europe and the United States works, or what effects it directly has. But it's definitely immediately obvious, that if you go to any random town in continental Europe, and stop by any random cafe, and get a salad or a panini, it's clear that the ingredients are higher quality than anything you'd get in the United States outside of a restaurant that specifically advertises itself as "farm-to-table". I have no idea if this is due to subsidies of farms, or markets, or what. I've sometimes wondered if it's related to the fact that it's often harder to get non-European ethnic cuisines in smaller towns in Europe (I don't know if this is still true, but I've imagined that there's a good supply chain for local things for local cuisines, but no large-scale refrigerated trucking for homogenized global cuisines).
Just a heads up that the journal where Kolipsis and Bromley published is widely regarded as pretty bad. Further I have never heard of the authors. Of course this may very well be true but in economics if someone was taking down an important paper it would be well known, and likely in a better journal with replies and counter-replies. The fact that this ends up at this Journal and that the authors are otherwise u known (and contested by follow up work) makes me caution readers into not giving it great weight
An event happened earlier this week relevant to two recent ACX posts (on polarization and on Turkish politics): the general election in the Netherlands.
The Netherlands has a massively multi-party system, with 17 entirely separate parties winning seats in the Tweede Kamer (the lower house of the legislature, which is the one that matters). With 150 seats in the Kamer, any hypothetical majority coalition which wants to install a Prime Minister needs to be composed of 4 separate parties. However, this time around the task should be significantly easier than normal, because polarization on the Netherlands is massively on the decline. While the Netherlands has a rich history of rule by Christian-democratic or social-democratic parties*, in 2021 the parties that placed first and second are very similar "liberal" parties (fiscally conservative, socially liberal by American standards): the right-liberal VVD (which is mostly concerned with keeping taxes down and such) and the left-liberal D66 (which is concerned with drug legalization and euthanasia, and is also more than a little woke). These historically weak parties have become way stronger over the past decade, and given their similarities they should have no problems working together. The news of neoliberalism being discredited does not seem to have reached Amsterdam yet (though the right-populist PVV and left-populist SP both rose over the course of the 2000-2015 period, support for them has since declined).
Whatever forces are afflicting the United States with polarization, they don't seem to be working in the Netherlands *at all*. Very similar parties are getting very strong results in the country.
How does this tie in to the post about Turkey, you ask? Well, in a system with 17 parties some of the small ones that make it in are *very* wacky. Besides the animal rights party, and the Calvinist theocratic party (...watch this space, given birth-rate differentials it should be very important sooner than we are expecting, but it is still quite small), there is a sufficiently large number of recent Turkish immigrants in the Netherlands that there is a *Turkish nationalist party* represented in the Tweede Kamer! (It is called Denk, which means "think" in Dutch but "equality" in Turkish). They are basically openly Turkish fifth columnists and many of their leading members are also members of the AKP. Their politics comes down to "whatever Erdogan wants". Right-populists criticize them a lot, as you might expect.
(To spotlight another tiny Dutch party, because I've fallen down a hole of reading about them this week: Denk originally tried to portray itself as a woke outfit and convinced a bunch of people to join them, before all of those people were bitterly disappointed by its heresies, including anti-Kurdish racism. Thus, the party BIJ1 (or bijeen, which means "together" in Dutch but "glory" in Kurdish) broke off of Denk, though their chief source of support is Surinamese immigrants and woke white Dutch people rather than Kurds, and also made it in.)
Would be interested in reading ACX-informed takes on Dutch politics here.
*I won't summarize the history of pillarization here, but the Netherlands used to be an uncommonly politically polarized society, even by 20th-century European standards!
Seems pretty important to mention the 'wrongthink' he's being prosecuted for is leading a pro-pedophilia club where members shared tips on how to groom children.
That's fine but if you write a post about how someone can't say X, and link to a blog where that person says he's being censored, but NOWHERE *what* is being censored is mentioned (legalizing having sex with kids) you're digging your own grave. You could have literally said 'NL isn't a democracy and there's no free speech because you can't argue for pedophilia' but for some reason you just left that out, opening yourself up to a post like this.
If you think that's not important there's no reason not to mention it.
Re: Calvinist party growth via breeding new Calvinists
Are they actually growing at anything like the speed looking at the birth rate would suggest?
I don't have citations, but I've heard that kids born into kooky religious sects mostly leave the sect, at least in the "developed" world. As such, the sects have essentially flat membership, despite breeding at much higher rates than the general population.
You may have a point here (they are merely keeping up with total population growth so far), because the SGP has gotten almost exactly the same result (either 2 or 3 seats in the Tweede Kamer) in every election since 1925 (!), which is some amazing consistency. However, the Tweede Kamer used to be smaller (before 1956, there were only 100 seats rather than 150), so the SGP might've reached its peak in the the 1929/1933 elections, when it won 3/100 seats.
However, given the general decline in Western birthrates after the 2008 recession and the tightening of immigration policies in many parts of the EU post-2015, I kind of do expect the SGP to grow over time relative to other parties. (Their youth wing, the SGP Jongeren, has been the biggest in the Netherlands since they allowed women to become members in 2006, and exit polls show they have a fairly young electorate. Denk has the youngest, imo unfortunately.) They have tied their best-ever modern result -- 3/150 seats -- at the past three elections consecutively, but this is a result they've been getting, off-and-on, since 1956 (when they also won 3/150).
In theory maybe, but I'd be surprised if genetic selection had a significant impact before the social context changes radically enough to render it moot.
In the early days of the pandemic, the Dutch health minister fainted from overwork, during a house of legislature debate. For the next three months, he was replaced by a member of an opposition party, because the crisis required an experienced minister, quickly.
Not that the rest of our pandemic response has been stellar, but at least we looked across party lines for a solution.
I have to disagree with some of this. While the right-populist PVV declined, this is pretty clearly due to fragmentation among the populist right. There are now three populist parties, who together, went from 13% of the vote in 2017, to 18% in 2021. So populism is still growing.
Having both (woke) neo-liberalism and populism grow, at the expense of more traditional leftism, seems quite consistent with the changes that happen in the US.
> These historically weak parties have become way stronger over the past decade.
I think that you are being deceived by the fragmentation in politics. From 1972-2010, the VVD had between 14% and 25% of the vote. Their current 22% is at the high end, but during many elections of the past, such a percentage would have seen them end in 2nd or 3rd.
The high combined total of the liberal VVD and D66 is not unprecedented, as the two parties had almost the same combined percentage in 1994. Interestingly, this election led to the first real neoliberal coalition, which then resulted in the first populist backlash.
What is peculiar is that D66 didn't lose votes even though they participated in the coalition. They tend to be punished very hard for governing, because their voters tend to be very disappointed if they do govern. However, there are a lot of arguments for seeing this result as a bit of an outlier. I am willing to give good odds on D66 losing a lot of votes in 2025 (or before).
> However, this time around the task should be significantly easier than normal, because polarization on the Netherlands is massively on the decline.
The predictable outcome is that the populists will keep getting sidelined and that this will result in more and more anger/disillusionment.
Traditionally, Dutch politics had a center party that would switch out coalition parties, thereby giving every major party a regular shot at governing. That this system has broken down is itself a sign of polarization.
> Traditionally, Dutch politics had a center party that would switch out coalition parties, thereby giving every major party a regular shot at governing. That this system has broken down is itself a sign of polarization.
Eh, the CDA (the center party in question) was in 6 out of the last 7 coalitions and they're probably going to be in the next one. I'd be ok with them getting sidelined a bit more.
> The predictable outcome is that the populists will keep getting sidelined
Also don't know about this. Where almost certainly getting VVD, D66, CDA and one other party.
That last slot is probably going to be one of the left parties, but it seems there's at least a decent chance that JA21 (the most recent addition to the Dutch populist line up) gets it.
> Eh, the CDA (the center party in question) was in 6 out of the last 7 coalitions and they're probably going to be in the next one.
The logical consequence of a cordon sanitaire is that the non-excluded parties have a better chance to govern, even if they get beaten by an excluded party.
It's pretty clear by the statements of various politicians that the PVV and FvD have pretty much no chance to govern.
> but it seems there's at least a decent chance that JA21 (the most recent addition to the Dutch populist line up) gets it.
They are attractive due to the seats in the Senate that they can deliver, but D66 is really not going to want them.
Since nobody will work with the large populist parties there seems to be de facto reduced polarization when it comes to governing, even if popular opponion is polarized
One thing I found strange about this election season is how quiet it felt. Maybe it's just my social circle has been following the news less due to COVID, but it feels like I could have easily missed that an election was happening at all until like the week of the election.
Voter turnout was 82%, basically the same as four years ago (though granted, the election was spread out over three days this time due to COVID), so it's not just that people are less interested in politics.
I've heard that the general consensus in the Netherlands is much more skeptical of immigration any of the top 4 parties in the US, and that it's been that way since around the time Pim Fortuyn got assassinated. The martyr effect plus the Denk party openly operating as an Erdogan-worshipping fifth column may have helped with that. It sounds like the top two parties are basically standard neoliberals except they don't worship immigration the way US parties do. I could get behind that. A lot of the polarization in the US has to do with strawmanning opposition to immigration as wishing harm on immigrants, and strawmanning support for immigration as wishing harm on natives. Without the immigration issue the US would have far less polarization. Seems the Netherlands is kinda like the US minus the constant fighting over immigration and plus a more generous welfare state over a much less diverse population (which makes the welfare state easier for the voters to support and easier for the taxpayers to afford). It's kind of like a miniature of what the US would be if the last 60 years of US politicians had just decided to keep immigration levels lower.
Not if you look beyond the first generation. Also that 13.4% includes a lot of Europeans. The Netherlands is still 79.3% white. Canada is 72.9% (and most of the immigrants there are high IQ asians who are much less likely to cause problems than lower IQ immigrants). Australia is 76% (ditto about the source of the immigrants) The US is only 62.8% and the pool of immigrants there is lower IQ than the immigrants in Canada, Australia, and the Netherlands.
High levels of low IQ immigration have a lot of downsides and the first two that come to mind are:
High levels of low IQ immigration increase crime. First generation legal immigrants are screened for the absence of criminality, but their offspring regress towards the ethnic mean. Second generation hispanics in the US are much more criminal than whites. But it's easy to make a study that "proves" immigration doesn't increase crime by looking only at the first generation.
Also, high levels of low IQ immigration increase the supply of unskilled labor, making it harder for native unskilled labor to find jobs, and reduces their pay. Unskilled laborers would be better off if all the other factors of production were more abundant relative to unskilled labor.
Anyway, these obvious downsides create a backlash, and the backlash gets strawmanned as wishing harm on foreigners, and so on.
A complication is that the EU makes open borders within the EU mandatory and that all traditional parties are pro-EU, which means that they are implicitly pro-migration. However, those parties often refuse to debate actual EU-mandates, preferring to instead debate the EU membership as a whole (and defending it in very abstract ways, usually by pointing to the alleged income benefits). The result is a bit of a political vacuum.
Of course, the parties further to the right don't necessarily mind this, as equating migrants with Muslim asylum seekers is to their benefit.
The Netherlands seems like a pretty sensible country to me as an outsider. They've got this startup visa program which seems like it could be a good way to immigrate if you're entrepreneurial
To tie together recent themes, I always felt that the multitude of parties brings some built in antifragility to the Dutch political system.
Let's say an external event requires concerted action, eg. the sun is expected to become unstable in twenty years. I'd be able to start a party called "ASSnow" that's devoted to Abandon the Solar System. I'd do so by gathering a group of people with the knowledge required for a highly focused and actionable escape plan. No other party would have the infrastructure to make such an effort work.
In more general terms, being able to test a political hypothesis quickly is a good thing, especially in a volatile environment.
I'm confused about what exactly polarization even means in a many-party system. Wouldn't running negative ads in such an environment be completely useless? So there isn't even an incentive for demonization, let alone polarization.
Are people who exhibit plumber's butt aware that they are exhibiting it? I take note of its presence from time to time and sometimes wonder about the level of awareness in the practitioner. It would not be my chosen style.
However, yesterday while gardening in the front yard I was troubled by a sinister voice in my head bringing up the possibility that I've been an exhibitor in the past without even knowing it! Most troubling, to say the least. I'd have thought one would at least feel a cool light breeze?
Haha, honestly I have no idea but it reminds me of the guy who got banned from MTG tournaments for wandering around and collecting photo documentation of how common it was at the tournaments.
My partner's brothers, father, grandfather, male cousins, etc. have all inherited a body type that promotes this. They are aware of the tendency, but not every specific instance.
Thanks for such a clear, concise answer! And now I feel bad for laughing at the magic pictures. I actually hadn't thought through the possibility that this might be something quite difficult to control, but it makes sense. Are suspenders the only answer?
I think most people look in their closets and think, "these pants fit well, look nice, and are comfortable - I'll wear them first." But as the end of the laundry cycle approaches, the available choices are less appealing: "these tend to fall down, but all I have to do today is garden..."
So I think the answer is to ruthlessly purge your wardrobe of things that are sub-standard. But I'm one of those "get rid of all the socks you don't like" evangelists (https://m.xkcd.com/1982/), so I'm biased.
Suspenders and overalls are important answers. Getting very long shirts and tucking them in is another answer, but for various reasons these solutions are not used by some people. Finding long enough shirts for that to work is actually not easy at all. There's a physical configuration that can be called "long-waisted" so most commercially available pants don't go far enough up to take advantage of the indentation created by the waist, so even wearing a belt doesn't help, everything slides down eventually. I think it's the source of the clown character with the pants practically up to their neck. Having any kind of belly overhang just encourages the slide.
Having a tailor may be another answer, but that's not common anymore!
"...but for various reasons these solutions are not used by some people."
This statement is intriguing. Of the "various reasons," do some involve a conscious desire to exhibit one's backside? I.e., is it a statement for some? Or perhaps just a conscious decision not to fret over the matter?
Well, exhibitionism may play a part in it. There may be some amount of pride - a "yes, I am one of those people" type of pride. Or, there's a limited clothes budget, and they try something and it doesn't work and then they start to hate the process and refuse to deal with it anymore. Suspenders are not always findable in long enough sizes and they have this weird clip-on mechanism which doesn't seem as effective as it should be. Getting a shirt that is about a foot longer than average but not otherwise a tent, shouldn't be difficult but it is. I'm not sure it's "I don't care" or "I choose not to worry about this," it's more like "damn all these rules, I will never fit into this box so I disavow this." By the time they're adults there have been multiple tries to fix it and therefore multiple failures. If it's comfort versus social propriety, those who value comfort go ahead and crack, while those who value propriety wear overalls everywhere.
I think men's dress shirts are one of the few types of shirt that can be bought very long, so a person who would "crack" but is in a white-collar occupation will be able to afford the type of shirt that won't show butt and then they wear it all the time. If you know someone who seems to always be wearing a collared shirt even when not at work, that might be why. People in lower income brackets or who do not typically wear dress shirts are therefore separated from the solution.
My 7 year old has this problem, due to just not having hips or a butt for the pants to hang onto, like trying to dress a pvc pipe. We found underwear that is basically biking shorts that go up to her navel, and that solves the problem well.
For a moment I thought you were talking the butt of SSC commenter @Plumber, who I think goes by a different handle here. Conjured up quite a worrying mental image.
An an older adult male of the type who occasionally crouches under the sink: Usually aware, but sometimes not. So I try to be considerate of others in all cases of possible plumber's butt. I wonder to what extent it can be thought of as a "Do Not Disturb" sign, like red and yellow stripes on a snake but more "Quiet! Genius at work!" than "Venomous if disturbed." Like, I've never gone over to a dude with plumber's butt and asked him, "How's it going? That campfire/sink/toilet/car just about finished yet?"
I'm liking this theory quite a bit. It would help explain the magic participants, who were stumping me because I would have thought they would be more socially conscientious at important gatherings. But if they were prioritizing their need to concentrate on their work, their Do Not Disturb signals (conscious or not) make perfect sense!
Thanks Tom. We may well be on the verge of solving this important puzzle!
I haven't had any data on gamers in about thirty years, but the old data indicated that enough gamers (D&D) really did not care about their appearance, ever. Maybe in those circles, making an effort to cover your crack would be more alienating than cracking.
I am willing to pay (in crypto) for the consulting services of a religion scholar who can help me identify the currently existing faith tradition which is most compatible with my ethical and metaphysical intuitions. If interested, email SumElse@protonmail.com
In case no religion scholar picks up your offer, you should take a look at the perennialists, who hold that all the major religious traditions are in fact expressing the same truths (as the parable of the blind men and the elephant analogically explains), any differences being the result of these truths being tailored to a specific people at a specific time.
As to where to start with them, I wouldn't know what to say. I got the core perennialist intuition from the Bhagavad Gita (*hint hint*), before even knowing of them. Rene Guenon, Frithjof Schuon, and Ananda Coomaraswamy are the main perennialists. This essay titled Self-Naughting, by Coomaraswamy can give a glimpse of perennialist thinking:
I don't really have a comment, other than that your comment reminded me of a G. K. Chesterton quote I enjoy:
"There is a phrase of facile liberality uttered again and again at ethical societies and parliaments of religion: "the religions of the earth differ in rites and forms, but they are the same in what they teach." It is false; it is the opposite of the fact. The religions of the earth do not greatly differ in rites and forms; they do greatly differ in what they teach. It is as if a man were to say, "Do not be misled by the fact that the CHURCH TIMES and the FREETHINKER look utterly different, that one is painted on vellum and the other carved on marble, that one is triangular and the other hectagonal; read them and you will see that they say the same thing." The truth is, of course, that they are alike in everything except in the fact that they don't say the same thing...So the truth is that the difficulty of all the creeds of the earth is not as alleged in this cheap maxim: that they agree in meaning, but differ in machinery. It is exactly the opposite. They agree in machinery; almost every great religion on earth works with the same external methods, with priests, scriptures, altars, sworn brotherhoods, special feasts. They agree in the mode of teaching; what they differ about is the thing to be taught."
Chesterton there is more attacking a secular position which concludes the real core of all religions is ethics, that they all have the same ethics, and that therefore you can just have the ethics and toss out the rest, making the fruit of religion accessible to secularists. The perennialists are instead asserting that religions (the major ones at least) are of a supra-human and supra-rational nature: they are not the product of human cognition in other words, but of something higher than man. Which yes, can be quite the claim, depending on one's metaphysical commitments.
I am also seeking a spiritual tradition which is compatible with my intuitions (as well as one which has the most evidence behind it), but I can't pay anyone because I'm poor.
This week I tested positive Covid 19. The only symptoms are that last Sunday I had a mild fever and a fair amount of fatigue that started on Saturday. On Tuesday or Wednesday I noticed I had lost my sense of taste and finally got tested Friday. I am isolating until Wednesday -- the nurse told me I have to isolate 10 days from onset of symptoms -- but otherwise am working.
It's about how you know what you know. Reliability of sources, choosing who to believe, and so on. In cases of extreme skepticism, whether your senses can be trusted.
I should have specified but, yes, I did figure out long ago that epistemic status is used to mean confidence level. When epistemic is *not* followed by status though I'm still lost, I just blank the word and move on (and seem to lose nothing from doing this).
It’s just the subject of knowledge and how to go about getting said knowledge. It’s generally contrasted to “practical” domains concerning action. Really though, when you read it you can just think to yourself “knowledge”, and you’re not missing much.
"Epistemic" is the adjective form of "epistemology". Epistemology is the branch of philosophy focused on how you know if something is true or not. Are mathematical proofs better or worse (or just different) than empirical evidence? Should your religious beliefs be determined more by the Bible or tradition or reason or personal spiritual experiences? These are the sorts are questions that would fall under epistemology.
The LessWrong community is mostly committed to Bayesian empiricism as their epistemology. "Epistemic status" is not used to denote what kind of epistemology is being used. It is instead used to denote a confidence level.
"Epistemic" -- Having to do with our state of knowledge.
For me, that on it's own feels too airy and esoteric to actually remember. It makes me feel like, alright but what's a real-life example of "epistemics?" How am I going to use that in my thinking or conversations?
The solution, for me, is to remind myself to contrast Epistemology with Ontology -- the field having to do with existence, or how things are.
So remember that there are two contrasting fields: Epistemics (what we know) and Ontology (what/how things are). That helps me make each of them more contrete.
I appreciate the structure of this answer the most, however I'm still not understanding.
How is it that what we know and how things are are two different things? Surely they have perfect overlap because we don't know what we don't know. Or is it that epistemics are the known knowns while ontology is the known knowns plus the known unknowns?
(By the way I'm much more conversant in Rumsfeldian nomenclature than Greek nomenclature.)
Not sure I understand your question, but you can try looking on your knowledge "from outside" and ask yourself things like: "Yeah, I believe X, but why exactly is it so? Is that because people told me? Or have I actually observed it? Suppose I am actually wrong about X, how could I verify this?"
And then you can admit (state your epistemic status) as: "I vaguely remember this from school, or from a newspaper I once read, but I never actually thought about this deeply" or "I was told so by a friend, and it seems to make sense, but I never tried to get a second opinion, nor did I even look up the topic in Wikipedia" or "I actually know 3 examples of it, and my friends believe that too, but who knows, it is possible that exceptions exist, and maybe there are actually many exceptions outside my social bubble".
How is map (what we know) different from the territory (how things are)? For example, our beliefs can be probabilistic. Like, you may flip a coin, and I will think "50% chance it landed this side up, and 50% chance it landed that side up", although I am pretty sure that the actual coin landed either fully one side up or fully the other side up, no 50% of this and 50% of that; it's just that I don't know which one of these options it was, and I have no reason to prefer either.
More advanced version of this is the Bayesianism, which is an attempt to give a mathematically correct answer to: if my initial belief has strength X, and then I get an imperfect evidence with strength Y, how strong should be my resulting belief? That is, not your beliefs are not of the "yes/no" or even "yes/no/no idea" type, but they are real number; so you can say that being 90% sure about something is greater confidence than merely being 70% sure about something.
A world without life would have ontology but not epistemology. Things exist, but nothing is known.
I think that the best way to understand the difference is to look at examples.*
Rumsfeld assumes that your beliefs should correspond to what actually exists. This is the correspondence theory of truth and is by far the most common epistemology.
Most other epistemologies are elaborations on the correspondence theory of truth. Empiricism is the epistemology that says that you should choose your beliefs based on what you observe to exist, so epistemology is determined by ontology. Platonism is the belief that ideas are more real than experience, so ontology is determined by epistemology.
You could also have an epistemology connected to ethics instead of ontology. Maybe "giving $5 to Against Malaria will save a child's life" is empirically false**, but if you believe it, you will donate more money to Against Malaria. Is it more important for your beliefs to be empirically correct or for you to prevent more children from dying from malaria?
The most common epistemology here is Bayesian empiricism. Beliefs should be approached probabilistically, even if the underlying ontology is not probabilistic, so you can treat all additional evidence using a simple statistical rule. Ontologically, there is a difference between a coin that hasn't been flipped yet and a coin on the ground that you haven't looked at yet. Epistemologically, they both have 1:1 odds.
Within philosophy, this issue of the connection between ontology and epistemology is an important question.
"Realists" say that ontology is about how the world is, regardless of whether or not we do know about it or can know about it. "Anti-realists" say that no sense can be made in talking about reality independent of what we know about it, and so we should say that what there is just is what we can know there is.
Realists point out that we recognize all the time about other people (and about our past selves) that what these people know and what is true are two different things. Anti-realists insist that although for any *individual* person, what is true and what is known might come apart, it can't *systematically* be the case for *everyone*.
This manifests as a difference in logic. Realists endorse the law of excluded middle - every sentence is either true or false - while anti-realists do not. Consider the sentence, "there will never be a city with over 1 billion residents". Realists say that this sentence is either true or false, even if we don't (yet) know which. Anti-realists don't want to *deny* that this sentence is either true or false (perhaps some day we will know that it is true or know that it is false), but they specifically won't endorse the claim. This leads to what logicians call "intuitionist logic".
In addition to just insisting that logic is classical, and insisting that the world can be how it is whether we can know it or not, realists sometimes point to Fitch's paradox - this is a formal logical argument showing that if every truth *can* be known, then in fact every truth *is* known by someone or other. (The argument is that if there were some truth p that weren't known, then (p&~Kp) would be true, so (p&~Kp) must be knowable - but if it were known, then p would be true, so it would be false, which is a contradiction.)
Some philosophers are willing to endorse realism about the physical world, but anti-realism about mathematics. Many philosophers are willing to endorse anti-realism about fiction (e.g., if it is impossible for any actual human to know the answer to some question about the Harry Potter universe, like whether Snape had a cup of coffee or a cup of tea on the morning of July 28, 1990, then there is no true answer to that question).
Here's a bunch of Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy entries on these topics, if any of them pique your interest:
I come at my realism from a somewhat different source. I accept Hume's dictum that you can't infer an "is" from an "ought" or an "ought" from an "is". Ontology is the study of "is"es. But epistemology is a study about "ought"s - given my evidence and my limitations, what ought I to believe, or be confident about, or doubt? A useful way to think about much of epistemology is as the "ethics of belief".
Oh gosh, Rumsfeld may open a door here. The Rumsfeldian exercise of categorizing the status of what are known and unknown about that which is known and unknown is an eptistemic undertaking. It's casting an eye at our knowledge and wondering, how do we know that? Putting our facts under a heat lamp and interrogating them. It's recursive like that.
Here are some times examples of when I try to think epistemologically, which may or may not help: I used to coach reporters to try to find out not only what your source knows but how they know what they know. Likewise, when I read a study abstract, I want to get a sense not just of the results but of the study design and what it is capable and not capable of showing.
I can get the Moderna vaccine on Wedneday. Do people think there's any reason to wait and to instead try to get the Johnson and Johnson one at some unspecified point in the future? I'm just worried about potential long-term side effects of taking an mRNA vaccine, which is a really new and relatively untested technology. Is this completely irrational? I just feel like who knows if there will be long-term side effects - it's so novel!
I know everyone in every medium is saying "it's completely safe, no need to worry!", but honestly, how do they know if there may be long-term effects? They don't, do they? This is exacerbated by the fact that there seems to be a culture-war element to it, and people who are pro-mRNA vaccine seem to think that people who have any reservations about it at all are dangerous to larger society.
On the other hand, the J&J vaccine doesn't seem completely effective, so I'd be worried about possibly suffering long-term side effects from actually getting covid on it.
There isn't an obvious mechanism by which there would be long term effects, but it's not impossible. If, say, 10 years down the line we learned there was a downside to the mRNA vaccine that took a long time to express, I would be fairly surprised. I would expect this discovery to only happen if there were novel mechanisms, which would surprise me.
It's based on this lack of mechanisms for long term side effects that I decided it was worth going for an mRNA vaccine, which was available to me before J&J was. I figured, based on the risk of waiting another month and potentially getting covid, which can potentially have long term symptoms, this was the move for me.
The reason you're seeing a full-court press on promoting mRNA is that it is in fact low risk and there are in fact not mechanisms by which it would have long term negative impacts. Given the general vaccine skepticism in USA, vaccine discourse by informed people in public areas is focused on increasing vaccine adoption.
My understanding is that the J&J vaccine is extremely effective at preventing deaths, hospitalizations and severe covid, as all vaccines are: it will be fine if that's what you have access to.
Is there any more reason to think the mRNA vaccine will have long-term bad effects than the adenovirus-based vaccine? In both cases, you could have some kind of contaminant, though they're pretty careful about avoiding that kind of thing. Or you could have some weird cross-reaction where you end up with CTLs that want to attack some important healthy cells in your body or something, but that doesn't seem more likely with an mRNA vaccine than with an adenovirus one.
Let me set your mind at ease by saying there's no such thing as a vaccine that's "completely effective" and no medical treatment ever devised which is "without side effects."
It's always a percentage game. I'm generally speaking low-risk for vaccines, so it's a fairly easy decision to go with whatever vaccine comes along first.
I do Not regard this as especially "Virtuous," motivated as I am purely by self interest.
This may not be the answer that you're looking for, but the J&J vaccine isn't notably less novel. The ModeRNA and Pfizer/BioNTech vaccines both work by copying the virus's mRNA that codes for the spike protein, and using a nanoparticle to sneak this mRNA into the body of your cell, which then makes the spikes and trains your immune system. The J&J and Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccines both make *DNA* that codes for this mRNA, insert it into the genome of an adenovirus that doesn't usually infect humans, and use this adenovirus to sneak the DNA into the nucleus of your cell, which then thinks this DNA is its own, makes mRNA out of it (the same mRNA as from the other vaccines), and then makes the spikes and trains your immune system.
I believe there was one adenovirus vaccine that had just been approved for the prevention of ebola in 2019, also made by Johnson & Johnson, but this is the only previous adenovirus vaccine that had been tested and approved, and it obviously hasn't been used widely yet: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ebola_vaccine#Ad26.ZEBOV/MVA-BN-Filo
The advantages of the adenovirus vector are that the virus knows how to protect DNA at regular temperatures, so no special liquid nitrogen storage is needed, in addition to the advantage of having at least been worked out once before the current pandemic. The disadvantages are that it's possible to develop immunity to the adenovirus itself so that you never actually end up with the covid DNA and mRNA and spike, and I suppose there's theoretically a set of worries around getting viral DNA into some of your cells rather than just mRNA (though I believe plenty of viruses you have been infected with in your life so far have done this also). Both of these novel methodologies have the advantage over traditional vaccines (made with either tiny doses of live virus, or larger doses of killed viruses) that the only parts of the coronavirus itself that are ever in your body is the code for the spike and the spike itself, and not the parts that actually make people sick, as well as the advantage that if they discover a new mutation of the spike they want to protect against, they can just insert the new sequence into their DNA/mRNA printer (which just takes a couple weeks to get into injections) instead of trying to culture large amounts of virus itself (which often takes a year or two).
So my recommendation would be to just take the first one you are offered, unless you are both very concerned about long-term side effects and very confident that you can ensure that you won't be infected with the coronavirus itself if you avoid vaccination.
I didn't hesitate to take the Pfizer vaccine, second dose six weeks ago, no side effects. Of course I couldn't say with certainty what completely unexpected side effects might arise from any vaccine in ten years, but on the other hand we already know a good bit about what rotten effects can occur from the virus itself, even (to a limited extent) among people who are lucky enough to come down with a mostly asymptomatic case. The trade-off is unusually obvious to me this time, and I'm not someone who is rigorous about taking every vaccination offered to me every year. I'm nearly 65. I stay current on tetanus vaccination. I sometimes take the flu vaccine and sometimes don't. The shingles vaccine makes good trade-off sense to me. I got my Pfizer dose the first moment I could manage it.
I laughed, and then I though: is there an official list of the name of everyone in the US somewhere that is publicly accessible? Or did you just Google it?
On one hand, I believe that the greatest good for the greatest number is probably a very nice thing overall. On the other hand, I am entirely of the belief that this is a terrible way of actually choosing what to do, because we flabby mortals are terrible at predicting the consequences of our actions.
I don't believe that a "Just give it your best shot and it'll all probably be fine on average" approach to predicting the consequences of your actions is any good either; I think if everyone did this then we'd have a helluva lot more murders because a sizeable fraction of the population probably thinks that assassinating their least-favourite politician or similar is likely to produce positive utils.
I think that trolley problems are a terrible guide to moral thinking, because they obscure the massive uncertainty about consequences that is characteristic of real-world decisions. A more useful trolley problem says "It's foggy, you're near a railway switch, you're pretty sure there's more people down one track than down the other but you're not really sure, and also you're not really sure which way the switch is adjusted right now, do you flip it?" Or for a more concrete example, "It's 2003, you are President Bush, do you invade Iraq?"
Given the impossibility of using utilitarianism to make or even guide choices on a case-by-case basis, I think the only reasonable thing you can possibly do is to come up with a workable set of moral heuristics that you can commit to in advance. Things like "Thou shalt not kill" and "Don't go messing around with railroad switches unless you know what you're doing". These heuristics don't give the optimal answer in every case, and each of them is open to debate and modification, but if we can all come to some sort of agreement on a reasonable-ish consensus set of heuristics to govern our behaviour then we're a lot better off than we would be in a world where everyone makes ad hoc decisions based on their personal guesstimates of how many utils are likely to be gained.
From your description, I think that if you were given undeniable proof that changing one of your rules would create better outcomes for everyone, you would change it. Right?
If so, I believe this makes you a rule utilitarian, not a deontologist.
Most of the religious ones? Although I guess they just have a different standard of what constitutes "undeniable proof", a strong enough divine revelation would probably count.
That's an interesting question. If a Deontologist believed in following a set of rules, could they be a Deontologist if they were willing to update those rules? I would think yes, depending on the reason for the change. What seems obvious to me is that someone following a religious text could find a previously unknown (to them) passage of text and therefore change their rule. The underlying rule of "I follow God's rules" would still be correct.
You're using arguments about outcomes to argue for deontologist perspectives. "We'd be better off, all things considered, if we stopped focusing on what would make us better off all things considered!"
Can you be a deontologist, except a utilitarian just for meta-ethics? Maybe... You can similarly believe the inverse, "People must always serve the greatest good for the greatest number, because there is a natural law or command that compels us to seek such outcomes!" (Well, I suspect that meta-ethics and ethics might collapse if we poke too much... but let's not go there.)
I must tangent though that... there's a bit of fighting against "abstraction itself" in your take on the trolley problem. I admit that problem is pretty annoying. But... I want to briefly make a case for the value of moral abstraction in general though (even if the trolley problem itself is not generally helpful).
Consider other domains that involve uncertainty, and rejecting abstraction becomes more clearly problematic.
A basic study of vectors and momentum and even fluid dynamics are all still going to be generally impractical for predicting exactly where a falling leaf will land as you walk down the street. But we still say, ok, these tools let you bound your uncertainty. You can make probabilistic estimates of the range of likely possibilities, and calculate your range of errors. We don't jump to, "but leaves fall, therefore physics is useless."
Now... the trolley problem is admittedly an excruciating example of the power of moral abstraction, because it is designed intentionally to be confusing. But it's really just a bad ambassador.
You could take simpler examples, in order to get a purer measure of the value of moral abstraction itself:
“Imagine someone wakes up late for an appointment. Is it morally permissible to kill them?"
You would probably not respond, "well, I don't know all the details... so I'm reluctant to say whether or not there is any general fact of the matter on the rightfulness or wrongfulness of killing the tardy."
We have a good ability to judge which moral rules are absurd. We just, most of the time, talk exclusively about very hard cases, because those are the most interesting ones, so it tricks us into think all morality is extremely hard.
You might still be right that giving people simple rules covers most situations even better than walking them through case studies, or just leaving it up to them to figure it out. Probably true. But these situations, in practice, are generally meta-ethical tools - actually used to test for unexpected outcomes coming from different perspectives, to judge the flaws in any system.
More helpfully, if you're out shopping for novel options in meta-ethics, you should definitely review the SEP's article on Moral Anti-Realism, just to see if any of the several varieties there strikes your fancy:
I am going to disagree with the other commenters. I'd say you are a deontologist, because things like "Thou shalt not kill" is what you believe in and what comes first and most important in your considerations, whereas influencing future comes way behind the basic moral considerations and, although you're ready to give it thought and be convinced on some things, it is something you don't viscerally believe in.
Disclaimer here: I grew up among deontologists and am biased against consequentialism.
The rationalist community has a pretty good reputation for finding convenient, memorable shorthands for complex mental rules and heuristics (“Victorian Sufi Buddha Lite”, "One-"/"Two-boxing", etc.). I've developed a small mental practice that I need help naming.
The practice is useful when I'm trying to tease out some kind of idea about a certain story, which is being re-told through multiple non-impartial outlets that give mutually exclusive information. A good example is a classic #metoo accusation scandal - he says everything was consensual and she was manipulative and vindictive, she says he was a horrific abuser and raped her several times with prejudice, conservative/anti-cancel-culture media support his side of the story, progressive/cancel-culture media support her side of the story.
What I tend to do in such cases is assume that whatever each side says about themselves (the rhetorical "defense") to be dismissible lies, and whatever they say about their opponent (the "offense") to be true. This creates a pretty bleak and cynical view of the world, but... sometimes I find it delivering kind of useful results. What's a nice name for this sort of practice?
(It's also not particularly a deep idea, so it's entirely possible that a lot of people have come up with something like this before. If they did, what did they call it?)
This seems very susceptible to being led astray by the strategy of just claiming the worst thing you can think of about the person you're trying to cancel or attack or whatever. Since that's actually a tactic that some folks employ, particularly in cancellation attempts, this seems like a problem.
Or at least, that's what my enemy would say. You know, the guy who puts on Klan robes to molest disabled orphans while continually stomping on a bible, a koran, and a US flag, and while also dining on filet of endangered animal which was killed with maximum cruelty.
That's a decent point! For some reason, so far I haven't seen egregious implausible claims like what you're showing here - at least, not to the extent that would make me go "This sounds weird and totally off, but hey, policy says whatever is offensive is true, so... "
Maybe cancellers still want to maintain a modicum of "believable" when accusing someone, and conveniently they only overblow the truth by the amount no more egregious than would be prudent to believe anyway?
I.e. Alice is saying her ex, Bob, violently beat her, owned a gun, regularly threatened her into having sex, sometimes at gunpoint. In reality, Bob did beat her, did own a gun and did regularly threaten her into having sex (but never at gunpoint). But given all those points that are real, assuming or at least suspecting that last point (which isn't) wouldn't be unreasonable, even if you had never heard Alice.
Then again, this sounds like a very generous assumption towards myself. Also, I have never had a chance to test this technique against very high-stakes cancellations, as those are rarely both he-said-she-said AND end up with observable results which allow for verification - mostly very niche scandals in small communities.
In any case, this doesn't invalidate your point - in principle, you are totally correct.
Maybe one way to remediate this would be to also put in place a retroactive policy of "believe nothing of someone who is stated to be lying"? Anyone countering a "worst thing I can think of" attack will probably respond with "this is a flat out lie". Which then would lead me to believe "This person is a total liar (plus whatever they were also accused of), about that person I just know nothing because their opponent are entirely untrustworthy". From there on, the worst place this can go to is the other person countering with the same ("They're flat out lying about me flat out lying!") - at which point I go "Both sides are not trustworthy enough to assume anything, I know nothing" - which is probably not a very bad position to be. It could theoretically degrade my opinion about every single public argument into a state of cartesian doubt - but this seems, again, to not be prevalent enough for total degradation to be a risk.
"What I tend to do in such cases is assume that whatever each side says about themselves to be dismissible lies, and whatever they say about their opponent to be true. "
That's not a good assumption. Most people in most societies are at least somewhat uncomfortable with lying. When they say something not-true about themselves, they have firsthand knowledge that the thing they are saying is not true, and they are limited in the degree of exaggeration or whitewashing they can do without feeling like they are lying. When they say something not-true about others, there is no such check and indeed the possibility of reinforcement by having one's knowledge about the other coming from having heard similarly not-true statements from people like themselves. They can easily convince themselves, and even more easily be convinced, that the other is Worse Than Hitler and not feel the least bit uncomfortable about saying so no matter how not-true that actually is.
I use something similar. For example in politics, I assume that when people criticize other people's proposals, they are likely to be right, but when they propose their own solution, they are likely to be wrong. I listen to Marx when he criticizes capitalism, and I listen to Solzhenitsyn when he criticizes socialism. To learn about how a religious group functions, I consider former members more trustworthy than current members. I would trust Chomsky's description of American media more than I would trust his description of the Khmer Rouge.
That said, I don't assume the critics are 100% right. They are also fallible humans with their own biases, they may hold a grudge, etc. Some of them criticize X merely because it competes with their favorite Y. (That is, if your heuristic is trusting "anti" narratives and suspecting "pro" narratives, this can be exploited by a "pro-Y" narrative disguised as an "anti-X" narrative. Any political movement whose name starts with "anti" is automatically suspect of this.) It is better, if possible, to listen to multiple independent critics.
One reason for this is that I am already pessimistic, and I believe that things are complicated and it's hard to get them right. So a narrative about things going wrong sounds plausible to me; a narrative about getting everything right sounds implausible. A description "this group contains both good and bad people" sounds more trustworthy than a description "all members of this group have pure hearts and pure intensions". Also, multiple positive descriptions are likely to originate in the same PR department. (The same is possible for multiple negative descriptions, so I suspect them if they sound too similar.)
Ultimately, no heuristic is 100% reliable, more facts are always welcome. But I trust criticism more than praise. (But then of course, I also adjust for my general dark view, and admit that a flawed thing may still be the best option, simply because the alternatives are even worse.)
"For example in politics, I assume that when people criticize other people's proposals, they are likely to be right, but when they propose their own solution, they are likely to be wrong."
This method runs into trouble when there's someone like Marx who is correct about both problems and solutions.
(Reposting since this was right before the new OT)
Question for people who are or were in the past employed in law enforcement and/or criminal justice (e.g., police officer, detective, defense attorney, criminal etc.) If you've got a minute I'm really, curious how you'd rate the following procedurals (from 1-10) along the following dimensions:
1) How much you personally enjoy the show
2) How accurately the show captures some or all of your lived experience in criminal justice
Dragnet
Adam-12
The Untouchables
Police Story
Kojak
NYPD Blue
Hill Street Blues
Cagney & Lacey
Miami Vice
21 Jump Street
Law & Order franchise (feel free to call out any particular series for praise/condemnation)
Homicide: Life on the Street
CSI franchise (if you think it's relevant I guess?)
The Shield
NCIS franchise (same)
The Wire
Brooklyn Nine Nine
So you could say for example, *Brooklyn Nine Nine* Enjoy: 7 | Accurate: 2 (or whatevs) and by all means add in additional color if you are so moved.
If you haven't seen a show feel free to skip and if I missed your favorite by all means add it in. If I get a good sample size I'll graph it for the next OT. Thanks!
An example: Alice writes a blog post excoriating Bob’s opinion on tax reforming, calling him a “total idiot” who “should be laughed out of the room”. Bob feels so offended that he tries to turn everyone against Alice, pointing out every bad thing she’s ever done to anyone who will listen. Carol considers this a “sexist harassment campaign” and sends a dossier of all of Bob’s messages to his boss, trying to get him fired. Dan decides this proves Carol is anti-free speech, and tells the listeners of his radio show to “give Carol a piece of their mind”, leading to her getting hundreds of harassing and threatening email messages. Eric snitches on Dan to the police. How many of these people are in the wrong?
My verdict:
>Alice is in the wrong initially, but not in a way that merits serious concrete retaliation, except maybe throwing a few insults back at her.
>Bob is very much in the wrong, by going through every bad thing Alice has ever done and turning people against her, he has greatly transgressed a moral line. He gets a tiny bit of exculpation because Alice was rude, but only a tiny bit.
>Now Carol retaliates on Alice's behalf. Carol claim that Bob's actions are sexist is a little tendentious just from the information provided, but given that Bob has tried to destroy Alice's life life, I would generally consider what Carol has done reasonable retaliation. Trying to turn all of someone's friends against them and trying to turn their boss against them are about on the same level, so it's a legitimate tit for tat. I would be open to the possibility that Carol's acts are slightly wrongful, but only slightly.
>Dan is unequivocally wrong.
>Eric's act in getting the police involved is probably wrong, but to make a definite determination on this I would need more information, e.g. based on the radio show etc. etc. is it likely that Dan put Carol in mortal danger? Is Carol a public figure.
What would it, from a political philosophy perspective, make someone, if they say "Everyone is correct here. They are just trying to do what humans do, which is to hurt people who disagree with them and promote their agenda by any means necessary. The world would probably be a better place if none of them did any of this, just like it would be if all resources were magically not scarce, but since this is not a realistic proposal none of them are to be blamed."?
That seems like something you could say, but that would not provide any benefit to the observer. If you dismiss any actions that you can explain, and can explain every action after the fact, then there's no basis for moral review. All actions become equally permissible, and there's no basis by which to try to correct. Even if you dismiss any kind of pure morality, taking on such an approach neuters any improvement. All actions are equally good/bad/neutral, therefore do whatever you want - as long as it isn't arbitrary!
Does this view make everything anyone does count as "correct"? Or would someone be "incorrect" if they were to try to de-escalate or turn the other cheek or something?
All five are behaving badly. It makes me think about how constantly in pretty much any facebook back and forth that I participate in, or (thankfully more often) just watch, people are always jumping from making points about the actual subject matter to making personal attacks on the other person's character (sometimes only peripherally related). It happens in in-person discussions too, though only in the smaller portion of cases with a pathological participant.
>Trying to turn all of someone's friends against them
I think you're misinterpreting here, the people Bob is trying to turn against Alice are his own friends (or, at most, social media followers), there's no indication of him sending unsolicited messages to strangers, like Carol did. (Otherwise, the "everyone" would include e.g. Carol's boss and the police, making the entire thought exercise moot.)
There's a clear pattern of escalation intended here, and, ironically, I think Carol to Dan is the closest to breaking it. Having your inbox filled with spam, no matter how awful, is just not comparable to suddenly (even if temporarily) losing your means of subsistence. (Though realistically we should assume some of Dan's followers would also find Carol's boss's email address.)
"the company’s lax—which is to say, nearly nonexistent—content moderation policies have also come under fire. Transphobes like Graham Linehan, who have been kicked off other platforms, have found a home at Substack. Others have used their newsletters to launch harassment campaigns against other journalists. Substack’s response has been defensive and disingenuous."
"I think of myself as having decent critical faculties, but somehow I got suckered again by a bog-standard publishing venture masquerading as a useful communications tool. I’m referring, of course, to the Substack debacle -- and my inadvertent role in it."
Bonus - author of that last one used to work for Gawker.
Yeah. Without knowing any details, my default translation of "transphobes who have been kicked off other platforms" is "reasonable people who have fallen prey to cancel campaigns".
So, are you saying, by default you assume anyone labeled a transphobe is really a reasonable person? That seems odd.
Do you have the same reaction to, say, the wife-beater label? Certainly there are plenty of people labeled as such unfairly -- but is that enough for you to assume by default that they are innocents?
Or is this more to do with your questioning whether transphobia itself is an unreasonable perspective to project upon a public space? If so, what about racism?
Presumably, FluffyBuffalo's definition of transphobia is such that the vast majority of people cancelled for transphobia don't meet it. This means that being cancelled for transphobia is only weak evidence of being transphobic (in his definition) and as such most people in that category are still reasonable by null hypothesis (rare disease problem).
However, being cancelled for transphobia is 100% evidence of being cancelled. Ergo, if all you know about someone is that they were cancelled for transphobia, the most probable underlying reality is "cancelled unfairly" - at least, by his definition.
I imagine there is, at the very least, better inter-rater agreement on what actions are and are not wife-beating than there is for transphobia, so while there can still be materially-false accusations the test is quite a bit more accurate.
OK, thanks both of you for the rational explanations. I don't know where you live, Fluffy, but I would venture you've met plenty of trans people without ever knowing it. I've spent time around naïve conservatives whose experience is limited to Caitlyn Jenner and perhaps a handful of others whose transgenderism seems easy to spot. As a result they are quite biased into thinking of trans people the same way they think of crossdressers -- rather than actual men and women.
Many of these conservatives are not overtly hateful (but I tend to wear my queer stripes on my sleeve, so they may be dialing back their habitual reactions) -- but they project bewilderment, and think it's silly (or dangerous) to allow crossdressers in the wrong bathrooms, etc.
Allowing for all this, the relevant question, it seems to me, is how to deal with generalized ignorance that is known to generally cause damage to a generally oppressed population (with sky-high suicide rates, violent attacks, etc). The word "cancelled" is dramatic but not specific enough for the question.
So, even if you don't agree with all of my characterizations here, you could educate me better about your rational perspective if you substituted another form of harmful ignorance for the instances of "cancelling" that you consider unfair "by default." For example, what would be your position on similar "cancellations" of people who express sincere beliefs that either directly or indirectly state that black people are inherently less intelligent than whites? Do you object to all cultural resistance against such free speech? Or does the ignorance have to rise to a hateful level before you'd be more open to resistance by default? How would you define hateful?
I am, broadly speaking, in favor of letting people say what they want to say. If someone is indeed a hateful bigot, I'd prefer to have that on paper, rather than trying to interpret "dogwhistles" and shibboleths. Regarding your example of people who believe in inherent intelligence differences between races - I follow Steven Pinker's interpretation of non-racism, which basically says you should treat people as individuals, with respect and dignity, no matter how a given question about group differences turns out, so I would not suffer moral dissonance if these people turned out to be correct. As long as they don't advocate for race-based discrimination or something along these lines, and adhere to the standards of civil discourse, yes, I would object to cancelling them.
magic9mushroom pretty much nailed it. I should mention that I don't know a single trans person in real life (as far as I know) - not because I avoided them, just because I never met one; and I have no informed opinion on what the transphobes they encounter IRL are like. The following is all from online interactions I observed (which is, after all, the context here), and there, I don't remember anyone who was accused of transphobia actually making any gross, hateful or belittling comments (in my judgment). Usually, their sin was pointing out that there are differences between biological men and women, or that letting trans women compete in women's sports is unfair, or that giving teenagers hormone treatment without a thorough evaluation of the underlying problem is irresponsible. At any rate, they were usually much more reasonable than their accusers.
Regarding the comparison with wife-beaters: since most partnership violence takes place behind closed doors, accusations are usually based on claims that may or may not be true, and whose veracity only the accuser and the accused can be sure of. Online accusations of transphobia are usually based on evidence that everyone can judge for themselves - articles, tweets etc.
Without getting into boring object-level discussion about transsexuals, the framing is bizarre: Allowing both sides of the argument is not neutral, because the other side is invalid.
If Substack is offering signing bonuses to a different set of people than the ones who are likely to maximize their revenue and visibility, then they're doing it wrong. That's certainly possible, but to put it mildly, I'm a bit skeptical that the critics know Substack's interests better than Substack does.
Here's a model that IMO makes a lot more sense: The range of ideas, opinions, topics, and facts acceptable in most prestige publications has massively narrowed over the last few years, due to internal dynamics in newsrooms, Twitter as a conformity-enforcement tool, and ongoing financial decline in the industry. Ten years ago, Singal, Weiss, Sullivan, Yglesias, Taibbi, etc., could fit in those publications, and could write interesting stories and ask interesting questions. Now, they can't.
But there's still a big audience who would like to hear from the Singal/Weiss/Sullivan/Yglesias/Taibbi/etc. crowd. Purity contests and domination games in the prestige publications means that they're not welcome at the places they used to write. That created a wonderful opening for a successful business, connecting those writers with readers who want to read what they write. And Substack stepped into that.
Right now, I expect Substack is absorbing a large amount of the money that might otherwise have gone to more traditional publications. I bet a lot of people have or will cancel subscriptions, or just never start new ones, for magazines and newspapers that seem to be competing for how ideologically pure they can be rather than how interesting or good they can be. And Substack and their future competitors (including some traditional publications that get hit hard enough by the financial cluestick to realize they're leaving money on the table until they get wise) will eat their lunch.
I wouldn't say that buying into SJ is unwise financially, for a mainstream outlet.
Simple fact of the matter is that SJ has a lot of people, and is exceptionally good at mobilising them against anyone it considers to be "enemy". Moreover, it considers "neutral" to be "in favour of the status quo, which is terrible".
There is no way to avoid losing customers because of SJ. You will either lose everyone anti-SJ because you bought into SJ, or you will lose everyone pro-SJ because you didn't buy into it hard enough.
The choice is whether you think you have the chops to compete in the SJ-coded market. If you do, that's the one with more people (all the SJers, plus all the neutrals who are scared of the giant death laser if they're found looking at anything SJ doesn't like, plus all the neutrals whose friends are mostly SJers and won't hear about anything SJ doesn't like, vs. just the anti-SJers). If you don't, then the non-SJ (and thus anti-SJ) market is far less competitive.
The pattern you'd expect here is established, prestigious sources going all-in on SJ and writing off anti-SJ as losses, while startups like Substack exploit the niche of anti-SJ. And the article's not wrong; there's absolutely no doubt in my mind that Substack explicitly chose to write off SJ as a loss when it decided to remain neutral.
Pro-SJ groups are trying to create a binary, but I don't think it exists now. There are lots of people who may be casually supportive of SJ themes, but not enough to make it their driving force on, for instance, which writers to read. Those people could read writers from either "side" currently.
Additionally, Substack may have a much better model for appealing to both pro and anti SJ audiences. There isn't a single newsroom, editor, or other controlling force. Therefore Substack could have extremely pro-SJ authors and anti-SJ authors on the same platform. They don't really interact.
It appears that many of the newsroom-centric issues have been younger/woker employees pressuring management to get rid of employees. That mechanism is weak, if it exists at all, in a platform like Substack.
Regarding your first paragraph: I'd call them "neutrals" - and yes, true neutrals exist that you'll get either way, but obviously that's not super-relevant to the calculus on what position to take.
Regarding your second/third: doesn't work, as the article starting this comment thread shows.
1) if you allow anti-SJ, that's going to be a big chunk of your brand; you'll take a much bigger slice of the anti-SJ pie than you will of anything else, precisely because most of the big places don't allow it.
2) Sure, there's no editorial control, but SJ is not known for accepting that as an excuse. You refuse to deplatform and these sorts of hit pieces start popping up everywhere - and even people who actually do their fact-checking will notice that hey, a lot of your content really is anti-SJ (because of point 1), so the tar sticks.
Yes, I am assuming that. Getting Paypal et al to shut out an explicitly white supremacist site is workable; getting them to shut down a popular pretty mainstream site with hundreds of thousands of paying subscribers is probably much harder.
Paypal is much more active than that. The laundry list of Patreon purges (among other things, banning all fiction with rape scenes or with underage sex) was driven by Paypal, and they pulled the plug on SubscribeStar when it refused to fall in line.
Anyone who makes this argument is pulling a fast one. The list of people whom Substack has paid (i.e. offered an advance or signing bonus in exchange for a greater share of subscription revenue) is not public information, and the ones we happen to know about like Scott and Matt Y are obviously not randomly selected.
Should cigarette companies be able to publish ads saying their products have no negative health consequences, because 'it's neutral to allow both sides of the argument'?
There are specific laws and court cases there, but you personally can absolutely publish stuff proclaiming the health benefits of smoking, eating week-old sushi, unprotected anal sex with lots of strangers, polishing off a fifth of vodka every few days, eating nothing but big macs, etc. You are allowed to be wrong, and to say dumb things.
"Allowing both sides of the argument is not neutral, because the other side is invalid."
Okay, so which side is the "other side" which is the invalid side? If the assumption there is "well obviously the transgender side is the correct one", then we're already acting as if no objections have merit and everything is settled.
I had to look that person up and now I am biting my tongue *hard* to refrain from being uncharitable. Least offensive take I can phrase is that they are someone who is queer, trans and progressive along those lines; writes queer trans progressive SF that got nominated for a Hugo (or their podcast did?); while this gets a lot of stroking from critics and the people who cleansed the Hugo from the evil scourges of Puppies Sad and Rabid, there's not a lot of money in it; they left Gawker because they were being asked to edit two publications and that was too much (?) and went somewhere else, where I don't know if they're still working there.
And then they came to Substack, ostensibly because it was a convenient way to replace mass emailing (that bit didn't make sense to me but what do I know, I'm not a techie) and because of three people they mentioned who made it big on Substack (I didn't recognise any of the names but since I functionally live under a rock when it comes to social matters, that doesn't mean these people aren't Big Names online). I also get the impression, unstated though it might be, that this person was also hoping to monetise their Substack and become a Big Name themselves, after all, they used to work for Gawker publications!
Then someone told them that certain people were pulling in big bucks off Substack, in fact Substack was paying them, and this was the last straw. The article is couched in terms of outrage over the breach of responsible journalistic standards and ethics this represents (those of us who remember the NYT thing that caused the creation of Astral Codex Ten can pause here for a hearty chortle) but I am more than half-convinced that the outrage is "why are they getting paid by invitation and I'm not? Am I not A Big (former) Gawker Name?" and also "the wrong thinkers are getting money!" so they then quit in a fit of pique and have gone elsewhere.
My own conclusions? Substack invited and paid certain writers because they had a canny suspicion that these people were either bringing along an audience with them who would be willing to pay for content, or would quickly build such an audience. That writing about trendy queer progressive appeal stories wouldn't do the same (there's so much of it about, it can be done for free). That people such as Graham Linehan (whom I dislike but more of that later) are quoted as one of the Names Of The Damned bolsters that, I think; he has a following from his "Father Ted" days, has controversy over his opinions on transgender matters, and is a name people will have heard of.
I didn't have to look up Graham Linehan, I did have to look up the author of that piece. See the difference?
(I don't like Graham Linehan from past reasons; "Father Ted" was funny, but Linehan was getting praised and cossetted for his anti-Catholic views when this passed for progressive thought, particularly in Ireland. Also his sort of "Dublin journalist" attitude got up my nose. Progressivism has moved even further left and he has been left behind, like Andrew Sullivan and others, who were once on the cutting-edge of being 'right on' and are now centrists or even worse by the standards of today, even if their views haven't altered all that much).
> Substack invited and paid certain writers because they had a canny suspicion that these people were either bringing along an audience with them who would be willing to pay for content, or would quickly build such an audience.
This jibes with my take - which is that Substack is not trying to be evil, they're trying to make money, and if making money includes being evil then that's collateral damage (just like the big social media corps). AKA capitalism and the free market.
Quasi-related question: Does substack offer a kind of spotify-esque subscription where I can just get access to everyone and let the algorithm worry about figuring out who gets how much?
I realize that this is a failure mode in how I handle financial transactions, I absolutely despise reocurring payments and try to keep as few of them going as possible. If I like, say, Singal/Weiss/Sullivan/Yglesias/Taibbi/Scott equally - odds are I'm going to end up spending money on nothing because I'd find having that many reoccurring transactions too stressful to manage and I'd feel undue pressure to divide my time equally amongst all of them.
If, on the other hand, I could just buy the "substack Plus" or whatever package, I could know that I'm spending money that would eventually get to the writers I like without having to specifically commit to signing up with them. I would likely pay a couple % premium on top for the convenience of not having to manage multiple individual reoccurring payments.
@aftagley I have often wished for a very similar thing which could include content-generators generally, automatically compensating my preferred bloggers/ video makers/ artists / etc based on my activities. On the other hand, it's hard to measure the value I put on different content-creators based on frequency of visitation or time spent. As it is, I just adjust my patreon subscriptions every couple of months to keep up with my changing preferences / valuations.
Half baked, random thought about the predictive processing model: jokes are the opposite of songs.
We like jokes because they pack a lot of surprise into a small amount of information, allowing us to adjust our mental models. We like songs because they pack a lot of information into a small amount of surprise (think about how much data is encoded in lyrics, melody, etc., and songs are largely designed by/for memetic evolution so that they are very easy to remember or catchy).
A common pattern in poems (including those set to music) is that you expect the next line to be one thing, but they surprise you by making it something else, and somehow, both the line that's there and the one you expected are in a kind of superposition in your head as you read or hear it.
I don't know much about poetry, but it seems to me that music is generally quite predictable and intentionally repetitive. Lines like "I might take off on you peons and go away to Venus \ I'm a star so I put a neutron on my pinkie" from Kodak Black's Codeine Dreaming which do what think you're getting at seem pretty uncommon.
I don't see the "like" button anymore, but I've gotten a few email notifications that people have liked my comments. Comments I made today, on this thread. I'm a subscriber.
Apparently Substack implemented death-to-likes by just hiding it in the UI but the functionality is still there underneath. And there's a browser extension some people use that unhides it.
PS: Personally, I like likes but am not bothering with the browser extension cuz the like feature only makes sense if everyone has it.
To be honest that might actually be the best of both worlds.
You can heart a comment to show the poster you appreciate it, but without a way to sort by number of hearts and with seeing the hearts being (very) opt-in it seems unlikely to hurt the quality of discussion.
1. It'd be nice to get the feedback of, like, "ah, thanks" even when the level of gratitude isn't overflowing to the point of typing that out in words.
2. For things like the "would people be into X" question I asked in the last hidden open thread, likes would be a handy metric for interest level.
3. It's handy to crowdsource what to read if I'm only realistically going to read a couple comments. (My other trick for that is to grep "Scott A" to see what Scott replied to (and because I'm such an over-the-top fanboy I want to read every word he writes about anything).)
5. Click on the ♥. See the second picture in that imgur alburm.
6. There's . . . sorry, there's no UI feedback that the like worked. :( Until you reload the page. I need to fix that. But if you reload, it should say "1♥"
It seems from the various (excellent) comments on how dictators rise to power that a common thread is that things were bad, and the dictator provided a path to things getting better. And things were sufficiently bad that people were willing to support the dictator anyway, because often he delivered on the specific issues.
This reminds me a lot of Paul Collier's book, The Bottom Billion, which revealed, among other things, that wealth was a very good reverse predictor of instability -- that is, if people have very little wealth, they are more likely to be willing to fight, because they have little to lose. If they are more likely to be willing to fight, it's easier to have a civil war.
Maybe making everyone richer is a good way to keep away dictators.
Incidentally, I think this is also why rich countries had a lot more appetite for strict anti-virus policies while poor countries did not. (And within rich countries, why richer people had a lot more appetite for strict anti-virus while poorer people did not.)
Focusses more on useful parts of statistics and builds thing up in logical order (as opposed to most resources which ask you to calculate probability of picking red and blue balls out of a bag). But it does require mathematical proficiency.
Whatever you decide to do, I would be happy to provide tuition. I am by no means an expert on statistics, but I presumably could help (I used to teach maths and continue to do private tuition on the side). At the least, I could be a 'study buddy'.
I can highly recommend Andrew Gelman. See the blog at https://statmodeling.stat.columbia.edu/ and Youtube for talks. If you want to learn about regression modeling, the textbook "regression and other stories" is a pretty good start (I learned statistics modelling mostly with the first version).
If you care about modelling and into programming, learning R is definitely the way to go. The language, RStudio as an IDE and a lot of online resources are all free. If you're looking for something specific, write a short comment and I can see what I can find.
If you like programming and think that simulating your way to intuition sounds like a good time, I recommend Allen Downey's https://greenteapress.com/wp/think-bayes/ .
Like others have said, it depends a little on your background and interests, and people provided very good recommendations worth following up on(+1 for Andrew Gelman).
I would only add that if what you care about is causation (questions like 'do spinach cause cancer'), rather than prediction and classical machine learning, you might find Robbins and Hernan's introduction to Causal inference very interesting. It is freely available here: https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/miguel-hernan/causal-inference-book/
I am interested in spending a little money to advertise my blog which I mentioned in another comment because I may one day monetize it. If you have ideas on the most effective ways to advertise (currently free) blog, feel free to suggest them or pitch them to me.
If Oral Roberts University wins the NCAA tournament, would that adjust your Bayesian likelihood that the Pentecostal Faith is correct? Or that Oral Roberts truthfully said "he has raised people from the dead" https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1987-06-28-mn-237-story.html
> would that adjust your Bayesian likelihood that the Pentecostal Faith is correct?
I think the appropriate question isn't whether it would, but by how much and in which direction. I have no idea who Oral Roberts is and had to google what the NCAA is, but the chance that that a bit of information has literally zero impact is extremely small.
So far for the pedantic answer, the actual answer is of course that the priors for people being raised from the dead are so ridiculously small that you'd have to get an absurd amount of evidence to have a meaningful update towards this guy actually having resurrected a child during one of his sermons.
correction for #4: SimonM's roundups are nice, but i believe they're just pulling the top 5 most upvoted comments on metaculus that week. saying "best of prediction market news" is overly generous (upvotes on metaculus don't always go to the most insightful comments, usually they're just jokes or informal polls).
if you want "the latest in prediction markets news", i would just go to metaculus and filter by "open" questions, and sort by activity.
I recently started taking Vyvanse, and it has destroyed my appetite. I basically only eat because I know rationally I'm supposed to, otherwise a baloney sandwich per day fills me up.
I've also been trying to lose weight, so this seems like a positive development, but I've heard that just starving yourself into weightloss isn't a good idea because reasons.
I've never payed much attention to diet science before, but suddenly I have an opportunity to build a purely rational diet. Any advice on where I should look for reliable information? I know there's a lot of nonsense out there, and the results I'm getting from google leave a lot to be desired. Is there an expert concensus out there of the form "literally just eat this every day forever and you'll lose weight but won't die"?
I think they are trying to keep your weight constant.
But then again, weight is a result of food + exercise, so try eating Soylent and exercising.
Or maybe, for a limited time, eat e.g. 80% of recommended daily dose od Soylent + 20% of recommended daily dose of some protein supplement + exercise. Later switch to 100% Soylent.
That 80%+20% thing is exactly the kind of back-of-the-envelope math that I can't tell if it makes sense. Is there a science to this? Or like a starter pack for practical, uncontroversial nutrition info?
Notice you implied that protein is better for losing weight than soylent? I didn't know that, I'm a complete ignoramus. The key isn't just working out the diet, I want a theoretical backing cause I've never even thought about this shit.
I don't think we have that yet. My impression is that we keep running into things that No Normal Diet Could Be Deficient In wait we're providing people with an artificial diet and they're not OK, what did we miss? I think this may have originally showed up in formula for babies, and I think there was also a case with people who were unable to eat for medical reasons and being provided nutrients via an IV. (All this is from memory, so take with appropriate salt.) Unfortunately, my "well, what DO we know" data is mostly at 1980s levels, and I haven't been able to find any really good books on nutrition myself, but my basic policy is "Find nutrient-dense vegetables* you like; eat a significant amount of one or two a day, plus maybe some (ideally nutrient-dense) fruit; eat Things With Protein/Iron (meat/beans, mostly) and Things With Calcium (milk/cheese, mostly, for me); mix it up a bit and you'll be fine." But I really like starches, so if there was some nutrient in them I really needed I would never notice, since I'm eating them for non-nutrition-related reasons - which I think is part of why artificial nutrition (like Soylent) is so hard. IME, as long as you're getting nutrients you can cut calories significantly without problems, just try to check in regularly on whether you're feeling shaky/low-energy/etc. (different people manifest this in different ways?) and if you are, calories probably need to be either higher or more frequent than they are (that is to say, I can cut calories significantly without serious problems, or not eat for 10 hours and I'll be hungry but perfectly functional, but this seems to vary a whole lot by person - some people get shaky and indecisive, or short-tempered, or whatever, if they haven't eaten recently enough - and your activity level will also affect it - and with your appetite suppressed you may have trouble telling if you're too low, so be very careful of warning signs you *can* observe?).
Also, some people will get cravings when low on nutrients - for example, intensely wanting spinach tart, particularly when you don't even like spinach. I don't know if suppressing appetite also suppresses those; if so, that makes it a bit riskier trying to adjust your diet, since your body's feedback mechanisms are turned off. If not, watch out for those and they should help. My impression is they're common for *severe* deficiency but people vary a lot on when they get them.
... anyway, not saying don't do it, just maybe offering some things to look out for? And I wouldn't do 100% Soylent, given my impression of how much we truly do not know about nutrition - they're unlikely to have found *everything*, I'm not sure *we* have! And then there are all the weird absorption effects - but I also haven't specifically made a study of it, so take with requisite salt.
Oh yeah, and don't assume you need 2000 calories. You might need more or less, I think it depends on size and activity level and probably also metabolism and probably something else I don't understand, but all the calculations take that as a base and it's worth considering your needs may be different. Mine are. If you're feeling experimental, note that you can probably figure this out by writing down everything you eat very carefully and logging your weight against it over a specific period - knowing how many calories are steady-state can be useful if you want to lose weight but keep it inside a reasonable range.
When, some years ago, I asked for nutrition advice on SSC, I got a link to a website that broke down every nutrient by "what does it do, what affects absorption," and so on. Unfortunately I have since lost the link, and my trick for searching SSC open threads with Google does not seem to be working right now, but would something like that be helpful? I don't know how much time you're planning to put in.
*Not all vegetables are nutrient-dense; compare broccoli and bell peppers to, say, cucumbers and onions. Spending a bit of time with a table of nutritional values is probably the most useful thing I ever did for my nutritional choices.
A (pretty benign) mad scientist is running a prestigious summer camp for teenagers. Secretly, the scientist screens prospective attendees for extroversion, and selects them as to form two groups: one clustered around 0.2 std below the Big Five Extroversion mean, and one clustered at 0.2 std above the Extroversion mean. Once the kids get to camp, they are told that they have been randomly assigned into one of two teams, the "Carps" (below the mean) and the "Condors" (above the mean).
As a part of the camp, the teens can form clubs, organize outings and events, vote on rules for the camp etc. People start noticing that members of the Condors are over-represented in leading these initiatives. Soon norms form whereas leadership is seen as a "Condor thing": Condors start pursuing leadership positions even more to assert their identity, while Carps avoid leadership positions since they don't want people to question their status as "true Carps". At the end of the camp, almost all leadership positions are held by members of the Condors.
So in this story, as small difference in "innate" ability caused a shift in social norms which created a large difference in outcome. I personally think this effect, combined with how small differences in mean can cause large difference in the tail, is responsible for many of the hotly debated differences between groups we see today. I don't know if I think it's a bad thing or not. In the story, a Carp and a Condor with the exact same level of extroversion might pursue widely different activities based on the socially constructed norms about group identity. That seems unfair and arbitrary. But people want to belong to groups, and they do things to signal group identity, and we can't really stop that. If the groups would have been completely random, they would probably have found some real or imagined differentiator to focus on anyway? It seems problematic to have one group dominate leadership, but as long as no observable oppression is going on it's fine? Is the ideal that there's no groups and everyone just does things according to their innate ability? That sounds dystopian to me: somewhat arbitrary constructed social groups are an important part in being human IMO.
I haven't seen this idea around a lot: much of the discussion about innate differences seem to skip this dividing social feedback loop which I think is very important. Or am I re-inventing the wheel? Thoughts and ideas?
Kevin Mitchell talks about these social feedback loops as important part of 'nature/nurture debate'. His talk on youtube is excellent (clear, wellorganised, easy to follow narrative, nuanced, etc.): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SkJqkGX0ThQ
Interesting talk, but I don't really see the connection. He seems to be talking about how small differences in genes can cause big effect as the brain grows. I'm talking about how small differences in individuals innate ability can cause big effect as norms and culture develop. I guess the small-difference, big-effect thing is something inherent in many non-linear systems? I think my main insight is applying this to stereotypes: human social behavior might inherently have the kind of non-linearity that creates big differences between groups from small initial differences.
Sorry, should have been clearer. It is the final few minutes of the talk that seemed related to what you're describing, from about 38 minutes onwards. https://youtu.be/SkJqkGX0ThQ?t=2326. In those minutes, he describes how social factors can often amplify biological differences.
Also, I re-read your initial post, and I now see that you are focussing more on group level effects, rather than individual level effects. If it is worth anything, the distinction you described is new to me!
Minor note: I easily lose track of all the nuance when it comes to these variants of positive feedback loops. An example of this is discussing at what level evolution is operating on: is it on individual genes, or individual organisms, or immediate families, or on societies, or on whole species, or on ecosystems, or ... .
Judith Harris talks about this in The Nurture Assumption, I think, pretty explicitly. I've definitely heard the idea before. I think a lot of people don't like it as an explanation of the hotly debated differences, because it's assuming there is a difference in innate ability to start; a lot of people feel very strongly about this, specifically that it must be false, or must not be believed to be true, I've seen both forms of the argument. So... you're reinventing the wheel because someone outlawed it?
(You can do it without innate differences as starting positions form social norms which then perpetuate themselves. For example, medical students are unusually highly represented on the swim team one year due to random chance - maybe a popular student does both, and recruits lots of friends to his hobby. This causes new medical students to conclude that swim team is "their kind of" activity, and try out for it more often, causing medical students to be more highly represented on the swim team - this is obviously an artificial example, but I think you could occasionally get that kind of pattern. That explanation, assuming current hotly debated differences are based purely on historical accident and not innate ability, is just a more sophisticated version of the current orthodoxy - though I actually haven't seen it spelled out that way, it seems as if it's got to be part of the theory behind "tell girls they can do math too" (because otherwise they'll see all the math teachers are guys and decide that's Not A Thing Girls Do). So... I think that version of the idea may be around but not usually spelled out?)
Good comment. I like your non-innate example with the swim team. I would say that the current orthodoxy is more like "people are forced into stereotypes by society" than my "people actively seek out and chose stereotypes to express themselves" but the difference isn't that big.
The analogy with the swim team is good. I guess my question is if this pattern is problematic. As long as everyone is nice about it (e.g. no bullying of non-med swimmers), I guess it's fine? But if we can design our institutions and/or shape our culture so that we get more or less of these kind of arbitrary group norms, I think many people would want to move towards less arbitrary group norms and more individualism. Personally I would feel like something is lost when we lose these norms even if they are arbitrary. And won't humans just find new ways to divide themselves into groups, and are we sure that these new norms are better than the ones we give up even if they are possibly less arbitrary?
It occurred to me that many people trying to lose weight fail because they overeat at home due to giving in to temptations. Would it be feasible to create such a food environment that you only have 1600 calories at home? Or at least no quickly preparable foods?
Has anybody here ever tried dieting by strictly restricting access to food so as to minimize temptations?
Isn't that just "not having snacks in house"? Which is good advice, but it's also very, very common advice.
If you're not talking about snacks, I would expect the inconvenience threshold for preparing tomorrows meal today to be high enough that most people can avoid the temptation of doing that.
This is unlikely to work, because you will jsut feel hungry all the time. It is not sustainable as long-term diet.
Alternative strategy is to find low-calorie-dense foods (eg popcorn) that you enjoy and that provide satiation. A body builder Greg Doucette has YouTube channel and that is one of his big messages. See e.g.:
"This is unlikely to work, because you will jut feel hungry all the time. It is not sustainable as long-term diet."
I have, roughly speaking, no food in my house that can be eaten without at least 3-4 minutes of prep time. This does not result in my "feeling hungry all the time"; it does *occasionally* result in my feeling hungry for 3-4 minutes. And yet I eat less than I would if there were an open bag of Doritos next to my workspace, or a cookie jar atop the refrigerator or whatnot.
If I went full "only 1600 calories in the house", that *still* wouldn't result in my feeling hungry for more than 3-4 minutes, because that's about how long it takes to get to the nearest grocery store or fast-food restaurant. But since the nearest fast-food restaurant is a McDonald's, this might tempt me to suboptimal nutritional behavior and I'll stick to the policy of only buying foods that require preparation.
I'm pretty sure you could make something like this work, except that you would do it by actually having tons of food in the home, fully capable of meeting all nutritional requirements for an extended time, but all of it tasting like crap
My temptations are spuds, bread, biscuits and chocolate. You may not think plain boiled spuds are much of a temptation, but oh boy. So I'd have to fill the kitchen with something like raw broccoli, and then I'd probably end up living on sandwiches anyway (see bread: carbs, full of) and that wouldn't help.
If somebody can invent a pill to give "instant willpower giant boost", that's the only way it'll work for me (or someone standing over me with a whip 24/7).
For example, switch to Soylent and get rid of all other food in your home. (If I were single without kids, I would do exactly this, because this is a zero-willpower solution.)
Keeping a minimal amount of food at home seems especially troublesome during a pandemic, when it's unwise to go shopping daily. You could get delivery, I suppose, but the shipping costs would be prohibitive-- and also it would be hard on the already overworked delivery people.
Maybe a better approach would be putting everything in the freezer, so you have to wait for it to thaw before consumption. Similar to your "nothing quickly preparable" idea.
We had a conversation about this at the old blog, and I could swear John Schilling said he had no prepared food in his house, and it all had to be cooked, and at the very minimum he would have to make toast.
But I couldn't find it with those search terms, so either my memory or my search sucks.
Just addressed this above, but yeah, that's me. Technically, there's prepared-food in the "emergency supplies" and "hiking supplies" cabinets, but those aren't mentally classified as "household-consumable food" and I've never been tempted to e.g. tear open an MRE to satisfy a craving.
This contradicts my experience. You could easily consume 3000+ calories a day during basic training and there was clearly standing orders to the drill sergeants to not interrupt eating recruits - we were literally allowed to stay in the chow hall as long as we wanted as long as we were continuously eating (although no one ever needed more time than was allotted).
I mean, sure, I lost 15 pounds during initial military training, but that's because you're basically working out 9 hours a day and under heavy stress, not because we were being starved.
Well, maybe not basic then. I never enlisted, unfortunately, and went straight in as an officer. Ranger School was definitely like this. They starved the hell out of us and everyone lost weight. Though "starve the hell out of us" just means the amount of food we got in relation to how many calories we were actually using everyday was not enough, not that the calories were low in some sense relative to normal human activity levels.
Disclaimer: I listened to this book in audio form about a year ago.
Since reading it, my beliefs on weightloss are more or less what The Hungry Brain[0] says. There are various small tips that he states do show statistically significant improvements:
* Get enough sleep.
* Try to find an alternative you can do instead of boredom eating or stress eating (eg plan the alternative ahead of time so you can do it when it is needed)
* Meditate
* Increase the work it takes to eat excess calories.
* Ensure the easiest calories to eat are the types of foods that are on diet (eg if you make it so you have to cook a meal to consume healthy foods, but you leave Uber Eats on your phone you'll probably order a bunch of UE).
* Avoid having off-diet foods in your home.
* Avoid isles in the grocery store that have off-diet foods.
There are probably a few others I have forgotten. But yes, adding barriers to temptation is an effective booster. It can make you more likely to stick to the diet.
However, this cannot be the diet by itself. Causing weight loss is fundamentally about changing your foods.
I recently did a survey on Reddit about peoples predictions regarding the next Stormlight Archive book and I figured I could report back here how it went (this comment will have no spoilers, don't worry if you're not up to speed with the series).
The survey asked people to grade the likelihood of various things happening (some characters dying or surviving, a bad guy being permanently defeated, a number of fan theories coming true, etc).
Some lessons learned:
1. **The results were much closer to my own predictions than I would have anticipated for what amounts to mass wild guessing.** I did post my own predictions on Reddit prior to making the survey (the survey was suggested by a comment on those predictions), which obviously may have influenced some votes, but I still hadn't expected this to be so close.
2. **People are either much more inclined to take surveys or much less likely to upvote a post in Reddit than I thought.** The post that linked to the survey got about 11 upvotes, plus or minus some vote fuzzying, and two comments from people that weren't me, but the survey got 94 responses. Given the several orders of magnitude differences in effort between upvoting a post and taking a survey (and not a short survey either), I didn't expect this and I don't quite understand it. I guess the takeaway is that many, many more people read stuff than actually upvote/comment/interact with things online?
3. **The difference in upvotes between the three posts I made on the topic was much bigger than I would have anticipated.** The original post containing my predictions ended up with 0 upvotes (so at least one downvote, as you auto-upvote your own stuff in Reddit), the actual survey got 11 and the survey results got 508 plus a bunch of Reddit gold and award nonsense-thingies.
4. **People are better at reading questions/probabilities than I gave them credit for.** There were two questions where the answers were more or less mutually exclusive, so the answers should add up to about 100%. I gave a hint to that extend in the question, but I was still expecting basically no one to actually have their probabilities within a reasonable range. It turns out that almost half the responses summed up to less than 140% (which is reasonable given that each answer needed to be rounded to the nearest 10% and the lowest available answer was 5%).
5. **I should have included a reading comprehension/lizardman bait question in the survey.** I would have liked to see how high the lizardman constant was for this type of thing. I did end up accidentally sort of including a question like this. One of the characters for which I asked whether they would survive the book had already made an appearance in another book that is set at a later time than the book I asked about. 4% of the answers gave him a <50% chance of surviving, which would be pretty close to the standard lizardman constant. It seems all of them either just gave <5% on all but one or two questions or never scored anything above 40% (which implies they got tricked by the google forms UI and just didn't realize you could scroll sideways in the questions).
6. **This was a ton of fun!** I enjoyed this process basically every step of the way, even the boring data compiling bits, and reading about the wild predictions people gave in the freeform questions was awesome.
I'm probably going to be doing something like this again for future Cosmere books. If you're doubting about whether to do a survey about something you like I can highly recommend giving it a go even if it looks like nobody is interested (you might be wrong about this, see bullets 2 and 3).
I didn't want to post this in the article comments in question, because that would verge on bulverism and/or ad hominem. I honestly believe it's just a hilarious coincidence and no inferences should be drawn from it. But it is hilarious, so I kind of feel compelled to share.
The main villains (though not by any stretch the most *evil* villains) of the classic space opera videogame Star Control II: the Ur-Quan Masters are the eponymous Ur-Quan Kzer-Za, an alien race that were brutally enslaved for millennia by horrifying sadists. After finally breaking free, they had become so paranoid that they started conquering all *other* sentient life in the galaxy in order to protect themselves from anything similar ever happening again. They are referred to as "the Ur-Quan Masters" because the canonical ending of Star Control I was the Ur-Quan conquering Earth and its allies with an unstoppable superweapon called the Sa-Matra.
Scott has, infamously, been somewhat critical of the social justice movement. One of the themes frequently revisited is that of the "conceptual superweapon", a heuristic or set of heuristics about a group, built up over time via strategically-chosen examples of members of that group doing bad things, that can then be used to victimise innocent members by association, regardless of the facts of the matter.
There was a comment a few days ago, on the Erdogan post, which criticised Scott rather harshly for his old post "You Are Still Crying Wolf". As far as I can see, the basic thesis of the comment was "Trump is bad, so posting about him not being bad in a specific way was improper whether or not it was factually correct" (that said, I may be misinterpreting; I'd suggest reading the comment and followup for yourself). The comment ended with these words:
"Because I want you to understand: you don't have a future as a political blogger outside of the circle of people that care about substack, you won't make it as a commentator unless you can understand that YASCW was a failure."
All that depends on - does Scott want to be a political blogger? Who are the people who care about Substack? Why should we or Scott care about Sa Matra's opinion? I do get the feeling that a conflux is about to happen, that the NYT article has steered some people here who have the wrong initial opinion of what this is all about, or maybe we old hands are the ones who need to update our opinions, plus (as in that post I linked elsewhere) The Usual Persons are getting their knickers in a twist that Substack allows witches to come along and be present and post their ugly repugnant witch opinions and that this Must Be Stopped. Worse, they're even paying witches and not the virtuous Usual People!
I’m a long-time reader, sometimes commenter, and occasional meet-up go-er. I’ve got an announcement about a project I’m developing that may be of interest to your average SSC/ACX reader.
It’s an online platform for creating and organizing campaigns for collective action, but using some clever techniques to solve game-theoretic coordination problems, especially under conditions of preference falsification - in other words, a tool for organizers to safely find allies and band together when
#1, a coordinated group effort might be effective where an individual effort would fail
#2, a coordinated group effort breaks a bad status quo equilibrium where no single individual has an incentive to act, but many would be willing to act if joined by enough others.
I hope to prove a method of lowering the courage requirements for taking action (from heroic to average), by reducing the personal risks (from potentially catastrophic to marginal) and increasing the expected value for organizing around actual preferences in the face of adversity.
Many years ago, I majored in behavioral economics, so I’ve always been interested in these types of problems. The germ of this idea preceded my first reading of “Meditations on Moloch'', but the impact of that essay definitely galvanized me into attempting something more concrete - one day...The pandemic and an evolving work-life balance created the opportunity to get it started.
The app I'm building has some shared DNA with Kickstarter, The Point, (before it pivoted to become Groupon), GoFundMe, and Change.org, but configured to enable the anonymous accumulation of support followed by simultaneous de-anonymizing at a predetermined tipping point. Crudely, think of the last scene of V for Vendetta where everyone takes their mask off at the same time.
My hope is that the riskiest parts of starting and building a group project/campaign under adversarial conditions can be mitigated, which will better enable mutual support and solidarity, protect against targeted retaliation, and leverage the power of collective action.
The use cases for this can vary widely and are ideologically agnostic by design. That said, some subjects and objectives would be out-of-bounds for obvious legal reasons. Here are some hypothetical examples of campaigns:
Unionizing Veggies R Us Distribution Center Workers.
Presenting an alternative DEI training curriculum at Hopscotch inc.
Uncovering sexual harassment in the Marketing Department at Frazzle.io
Concerned parents of Cedar Country Day School against changes to the curriculum.
Faculty of University X in support of our unfairly persecuted colleague Y
Whistleblowers at Enbition Energy Inc exposing accounting malfeasance.
Those yet to be named by Robespierre, against Robespierre.
On a personal level, why am I doing this?
I believe social norms enforced by unquestionable orthodoxies are probably wrong and deserve scrutiny and challenge.
I don’t like bullies, no matter where they’re from or how they justify themselves.
Mafia-style intimidation, and making “examples” out of people through disproportionate punishment are illiberal, disgraceful but unfortunately effective tactics that create a fraudulent public discourse, which is anathema to the ideals of a liberal society.
I think a social climate where people are honest rather than dishonest, and where problems are confronted rather than repressed, is preferable.
I believe that organized collective action and bargaining is one of the only levers ordinary people have against self-perpetuating institutional power. Pitting atomized individuals armed with personal consumer choice and performative self-expression against powerful organizations is an unfair fight; I want to try evening the odds.
I suspect there are all kinds of dormant preference cascades waiting to be triggered by the right conditions.
This project is still in development - but feel free to DM me if you want to be kept informed on progress or want to participate in testing the prototype.
How many people do you think could be simultaneously made into scary enough examples to intimidate everyone else?? The whole point of accumulating collective support is to pass the threshold where making an example of someone to chill others is no longer an easy option. That's the point of collective action and solidarity. You're assuming real supporters would be overwhelmed by fake ones. But since everybody asks this question, #1, we're not in Mao's China #2, There are anti-spam/anti-troll technical procedures to mitigate the risk of hacking and spoofing. It would be very hard to astroturf.
You're afraid of a sting operation kind of sabotage. I don't think this will be as big a problem as you think. It's likely such a tactic would backfire via Streisand effect, even if it was successfully executed.
taking a stand against opposition that uses retaliation to keep people in line will always entail some risk. the whole point of this mechanism is to make it much more costly for antagonists, whether it be bosses, institutional administrators or internet mobs, to isolate and make examples out of individuals. Once you even have a few people in solidarity, ordinary intimidation tactics lose effectiveness fast without extreme escalation - again unlikely.
But If you're looking for a fool-proof way to avoid entrapment scenarios, there are none. This concept is designed to lower that risk, but it can't be eliminated.
It's possible that when Robespierre solicits criticism, he's actually fishing for enemies to send to the guillotine. It's also possible that once all those enemies realize they're on the list, they recognize they're numerous enough to turn the tables on Robbie.
I'm not thinking of the cases where it would pass anyway - you're right that in those cases it's pointless. I'm thinking of the cases where it *wouldn't*, and they're vulnerable to reprisals if exposed.
Though, on second thought, that's basically just a specific form of "what if you get hacked".
Yes, if the system can be hacked and people's PII exposed prematurely, it would be useless. Which is why PII isn't stored by the system at all, but rather encrypted pointers to PII which are unlocked only when certain criteria are met.
This can lead to a failure mode of, for example, a campaign with a target of 25 participants recruiting 5 genuine supporters and 20 antagonist fake supporters. When the threshold is reached, it becomes clear who is who and the 5 are outnumbered by the 20, undermining the campaign and putting the 5 at risk. This is a very bad outcome, but it's less bad if the ratio was 10 real supporters to 15 antagonists. 10 are harder to punish than 5, the playing field is more level - and so on. So this is definitely a problem, but one that diminishes quickly even if the campaign is only partially effective.
In most use cases for this, resistance is a given. The key question is, can people coordinate more safely, or even at all, to meet that resistance at lower individual risk to each person?
Good point. They can pretend to be part of hivemind, but hivemind has countermeasures. Is there a filter hivemind would refuse to pass through? “I pinkie promise I am not part of the hivemind?”
Hivemind and anti-Moloch have to recruit from the same groups, those cognizant of or impacted by the problem. Both must do so secretly, anti-Moloch because they are in peril, hivemind because they can’t admit there is an issue or that they are taking action to squelch it. What is the unfakeable signal that people can reveal to each other that proves I am part of the affected group and I truly support anti-Moloch, but without revealing my identity?
Sounds like a great idea. I have thought about this idea lot, specifically in regards to unionizing, but never really thought about a technical implementation (more like "I promise I won't share this list until we get x people to sign, and I'll randomize the order in which people signed it). My question is: how does one publicize a campaign like this anonymously? The best I can come up with is "leave anonymous notes around my workplace." Sounds risky.
it's an interesting challenge! initial recommendations would be to encourage people to make anonymous profiles on twitter, reddit or Instagram, share/post links and spread awareness that way. There could also be a signal or telegram group chat that's invite-only. In-person awareness spreading is trickier, but anonymous leaflets left in highly trafficked areas or bulletin boards is not a bad idea.
Do you know how this is going to be implemented technically? If the information of users is just stored on the site's server, that's bad... I would only want to participate in this knowing that even if you were told to hand over my name at gunpoint, you couldn't.
Ok, so my main thought is: cool idea, I like and want this. My feedback is that it would be much better if there were more options. Such as:
- after threshold (a) is reached, reveal my anonymous contact info (e.g. anonymous email) to the others. This could be in addition to a 'after threshold (b) is reached, reveal my non-anonymous identity to the others'. You could allow members to set personal thresholds for lower levels than the group threshold, since some people at bolder / less at risk and thus might be able to comfortably reveal early.
- There are many things a person could contribute to a campaign. Identity and a statement of support is one. Another might simply be, like kickstarter, a certain amount of money set aside to be given to the cause after a certain level of support is reached. Another might be support in the form of time & effort, commitment to carry out a certain task (potentially anonymously or openly), at a certain level of community support. For example, willingness to participate in picking up trash at a certain beach if enough other people agreed to also help.
- I feel like there are other ways of committing support that I haven't thought of yet, and that you should try to come up with some of your own. I think there's no harm in offering multiple options to interested parties.
It's probably time for another Naval Gazing update/links post. The biggest thing I've been up to lately is a look at the history of the submarine-launched ballistic missile. This is going to take a while, but the first few posts are up, starting with early Soviet efforts and moving on to an in-depth look at the American Polaris program:
Polaris Parts 4 and 5 will be up Wednesday and Sunday respectively.
I've also written up one of the great tragedies of the ironclad era. When the turret was first invented in the 1860s, how best to mount it on ships was controversial, and politics was allowed to override sensible naval architecture. The result? A capsized ship, and several hundred men dead:
I was recently vaccinated with first dose of Oxford-AstraZeneca. Does anyone here have a good idea where it will be relatively safe to smoke some cannabis so as not to suppress the immune response? I have only found rather unconclusive data [1,2] suggesting small, but measurable negative effect on immunity, but the quantities used in studies are often absurd (I want to smoke a single joint two-three weeks after vaccination, not four just before the injection!).
This is an interesting question! I've heard advice that taking ibuprofen immediately before or after an immunization can be a bad idea, but I've found very little in the way of estimates of effect size (just CDC advice, of the same sort as CDC advice to never drink more than two alcoholic beverages, and French health department advice to never take ibuprofen at all). I hadn't heard this concern about cannabis, but it does seem like potentially relevant.
That said, two to three weeks after vaccination is later than the date at which they indicate that immunity has started to build up.
Apparently it's the same story with everything: paracetamol may [1] or may not [2] blunt immune response to vaccines (and perhaps it's something I should worry rather than cannabis, since I took quite a lot of it when my post-vaccination fever hit 39.7°C/103.5°F). Is there anything certain in this world?
Is there enough consensus on the genetics and evolutionary environment of first humans to differentiate between the following two possibilities?
1. A single individual with the human genome; everyone else human is related to that single individual (we can call the individual "Adam" or "Eve" depending on gender);
2. An interbreeding population where multiple human mutations are being selected for simultaneously, and (most likely) multiple individuals acquire the "human" gene combination in parallel; there's probably still a single common ancestor shared by all of them, because I'm assuming this to be a single interbreeding population, but the common ancestor is not themselves Homo Sapiens.
(Maybe there's something else I'm missing, like several breeding populations independently coming up with the Homo Sapiens genome.)
To clarify, I realize this is entirely silly as a way to draw the line between Homo Sapiens and not. It's really a question about the environment in which Homo Sapiens was evolving, and whether the mutations were getting fixed in one at a time, or there were multiple of them recombining simultaneously.
(Back story: this was a conversation with a friend where I said "I don't have any cousins" and then corrected with "well, I probably have some a few times removed, I should have some relatives in my generation," to which they said "well, duh", and then we went into "how do you define generation anyway", and then we wanted to know whether we can just take shortest paths back to the start of Homo Sapiens, and that's how we got to hypothesizing about what the start of Homo Sapiens looked like.)
I think the standard biological model is that for sexual species, case (1) is essentially *never* true, and it's basically *always* case (2). Speciation nearly always occurs when two sub-populations of an existing species get separated enough that their gene pools become separate, and gradually drift (or even get selected) in different ways. Unless one of these populations goes through an extreme bottleneck, it will not make sense to say that there is an individual that is the origin of the new species.
But I think your question also works from a false presupposition that there is such a thing as "the" human genome. A species is defined as a breeding population, and not defined by a genome - there are likely a decent number of spots on the human genome that are now universally of one sort, but used to be universally another way at some point in the past hundred thousand years or so, even though there has been no new speciation event in that time.
The fact that someone was the most recent common ancestor doesn't mean that other lines died out. For instance, the most common ancestor of me and my second cousin was two of my great-grandparents, but we still have another fourteen great-grandparents between us.
If you drew the human family tree then eventually you'd find one person whom all nodes below were descended from, but they'd have a lot of contemporaries who were also ancestors of an awful lot of people.
By the way, that article seems like a terrible piece of work. It's an example of what you can get to by applying a spherical-cow type mathematical model while ignoring important facts that we know about the real world. In their mathematical model, the migration-rate parameters that they put in wound up predicting that everyone on Earth had a universal common ancestor as recently as a thousand years ago, but in the real world we know that the Australian Aborigines wound up isolated from the rest of the species for tens of thousands of years until very recently.
I didn't even read the article. I knew about this postulated last common ancestor from some other source (no idea what it was at this point) and just posted the first link I found from searching for this.
As far as I remembered it, the last common ancestor was supposed to be someone who lived around 15,000 years ago in central Asia. That does not match whatever this article came up with, so apparently many people have tried to figure this out with varying results, but in any case, it isn't the first human.
While I agree that the particular answer is implausible, it's interesting to know that the order of magnitude is only ~10,000 years rather than much more than that. Re: your comment about your other grandparents having living relatives, I think that's what the article is getting at when it talks about every person being either everyone's or nobody's ancestor -- some lines died out, and others have percolated through the entire population. Again, it's interesting that the time scale on that turns out to be on the order of ~10,000 years rather than much longer.
Last common ancestor is more recent than the point of identical ancestors, which is itself more recent than the point of racial divergence (probably ~70,000 years ago for non-Africans), which is itself more recent than Mitochondrial Eve (last common matrilineal common ancestor, ~150,000 years ago), which is itself more recent than Y-chromosomal Adam (last patrilineal common ancestor, apparently 200,000-300,000 years ago, essentially contemporaneous with the emergence of H. sapiens itself).
Getting confused between these can tie you in knots.
I don't think the Australian Aborigines were isolated enough to limit LCA to 50,000 years. Polynesian traders are known to have stopped off in Australia at least as far back as 6,000 BC (that's when they introduced dogs, which went feral and became the dingo); that's long enough that any bastard children could have mixed with the rest of the Aboriginal population. There are also the Torres Strait Islanders. A single drop of Old Worlder is enough to transmit LCA; it's a very different thing to genetic uniformity.
Tasmanian Aborigines were isolated enough that they didn't have that one drop, *but* there are no longer any full-blooded Tasmanian Aborigines, so they don't limit LCA if you're counting LCA to a date after 1905.
I haven't seen the journal article that that press release refers to, but the press release seems to indicate that the article writers considered these sorts of issues (which they damned well better have to be taken seriously when estimating LCA - the answer basically comes down to (maximum years totally cut off from Old Worlder of any group that still has full-blooded members) + (estimated generations for the Old World to have a single common ancestor, at the level of mobility of that time period)).
I believe the Polynesian origin for the dingo has been disproved - genetics don't quite work. The wiki currently states that the human population that brought them is unknown.
One theory is that the dingo arrived from South Asia;
I just finished reading "Who we are and how we got here" by David Reich. Very interesting read on how DNA testing is shinning like on our past history. Most of it concerns how we changed after moving "out of Africa", And I don't think there is an answer to your question in the book. But you still might like it.
There is an activity my son enjoys: jumping on the trampoline with me.
This is great for my son, because he typically avoids physical activity, but something about the trampoline makes it fun. It's kind of fun for me, too (my family? With Asperger's? Un-possible!) and gets me my aerobic exercise.
So, great for him, but I'm in my 40s. I know that we've discussed on the old SSC what young-people exercises cause great damage later in life. I'm not sure where trampolining fits on that. I looked it up on the web and most of the concerns are about *short-term* injuries, like trying a stunt and landing wrong. Trust me, I'm not doing that. I can handle the short-term risks.
I also see sources that say it is "low-impact" and great for seniors, but that seems to be with very small "rebounders" and I am trying to get some good height going.
So what's the end result? Is this something I should definitely not do, or do in some special/different way?
Intuitively, landing on soft elastic surfaces should be just about the least damaging thing you can do to your body. It's sudden stops you need to worry about (e.g. running on hard surfaces).
I dislocated my shoulder when jumping on a trampoline. I didn’t land weird or anything, I was just jumping high and landed with my hands above my head and the force of it just made it come out.
The follows people said they see tons of patients getting injured from the trampoline park I was at:
Paramedics, ER nurse, ER doc, orthopedic surgeon, and physical therapist. Every healthcare worker I encountered. They said that trampolines keep them in business.
For home trampolines they tend to say to only have one person on it at a time. With multiple people accidents can happen and it’s especially bad when there is a size difference and the bigger person falls on the smaller one.
It’s worth checking out statistics. Even if you are careful it’s not hard to twist your ankle or tweak your back.
This article won the effortpost contest over at DSL for the month of February and had a lot of interesting points about what poverty looks like from the perspective of someone who is currently struggling with it.
Wolfram appears to be just discovering subjectivity, as described in all of cognitive psychology and metaphysics and anything in the Sequences about "reductionism" or "how language works".
That's interesting. Another aspect that I found fascinating was that Wolfram describes consciousness as a a feature of our bounded capacity for calculation in a universe with unbounded calculation. He describes it as an attempt to construct a single narrative, a single thread of experience, in universe that is fundamentally chaotic and doesn't truly lend itself to single narratives.
Put recommendations for lefty but rationalist-tolerable youtube channels here.
Because I've watched a lot of Robin Hanson and some Jordan Peterson, the youtube algorithm has decided I'm more right wing than I actually am.
Yes I know about philosophy tube and contrapoints. Philosophy tube I never liked (maybe one video), contrapoints has a tone I don't like any more (I can't listen to Eric Weinstein for the same reason).
Possibly youtube/recommendation algs make for a crap medium, but I don't think telling me this will change anything. By all means judge me and say what you think about the thinkers I've just named, but please put your alternative recommendation in the first sentence.
Lindsay Ellis? She's movie/media focused, but touches on a lot of the industry's issues with a progressive lens. A progressive lens I relate a lot more to than twitter or w/e, for whatever that's worth.
Does it need to be theory of everything sociology types? I have no idea if they're lefty or righty, but if you mean "rationalist" in the sense of trying to behave in some manner that will optimally produce a desired outcome, I'd argue watching channels like Athlean X, Omar Yusuf, and L1 Techs has had a more positive impact on my life than anything produced by an academic trying to solve the problem of how to optimally coordinate all human activity.
Although I don't think YouTube and video is an ideal transmission medium for this information, either, and actually consuming the published content of Stronger by Science and the L1 Tech forum is better still. They won't get you anywhere if you're trying to figure out the one weird trick to solve government, but you can get leaner, stronger, happier, and build out home networking and automation that doesn't rely on corporate adware.
To me, working on goals you can actually achieve is rational.
So probably the rationalist community already has thought this up, but it just occurred to me today: oppression heuristics. (I've been trying to get a name on it for years though). I think it's very human to come up with ways to predict what other people are going to do. In terms of sociopolitical oppression, "marginalized" basically means, a member of this group needs to use identity characteristics in their personal danger heuristic. This is shown by, for example, someone who decides that as female there is unacceptable risk of walking at night, but thinks that if they didn't have the identity characteristic female then the risk of being attacked would be lower. Danger heuristics are culturally influenced and begin forming in childhood; an "oppression heuristic" would be for analyzing the presence of risks and dangers related to an identity.
People seem to disagree whether oppression heuristics are legitimate (based on statistics or not). Additionally, they disagree based on whether it should even exist, and they also disagree as to whether certain experiences even exist, and, if an oppression heuristic is appropriate in general, whether a certain thing should be accounted for in it.
Part of the problem of "woke" seems to me to be an attempt by a group to adopt wholesale the oppression heuristic of another group (without themselves being subject to the risks it is designed to predict and without the knowledge at the level of detail needed to employ it intuitively). It is not the same as recognizing that a cultural group may have a culturally transmitted oppression heuristic that is different from one's own. I've seen people read a very fine level of detail into actions that might seem innocent on the surface, but according to the (not shared) heuristic, funnels into a dangerous action later on. I've seen that be right some of the time.
Has anybody read (preferably a professional scientist) read <a href="https://graymirror.substack.com/p/the-restoration-of-science">this Moldbug post</a>? Is it any good? The teaser is so intriguing I'm considering subscribing to his Substack just for that one post -- would it be worth it?
General questions about men's upper middle class fashion: I'd like to dress in such a way that signals that I'm an approachable, capable, egalitarian-minded upper middle class intellectual. What brands/clothing strategies meet this bill?
The proximate impetus: I've recently started lifting weights consistently, and my jeans don't fit anymore. I listened to a lot punk music in my teens and was into the DIY music scene in my teens/20s, so I've defaulted into wearing jeans, and dark colors. (My shirts are all entirely without logo, e.g. well fitting, unbranded american eagle t-shirts. Shirts with logos on them are the height of poor taste, as far as my class sensibilities register.)
Because of the bulking problem, I bought some bright red "joggers" recently, and holy shit, these are so much more comfortable than jeans. Also, wearing them around is giving class/social signaling that I don't entirely understand - people respond to me differently; it feels like a different subset of the population is being nice to me. I haven't been out and about enough to do any hypothesis building on which slice of the populace this is.
I like jeans because they're durable and not flashy. I now would prefer not to wear jeans because it turns out they're incredibly uncomfortable.
I could start wearing men's tank tops and workout pants, but when I see that in the wild, it strikes me as men signaling for sexual availability/desirability, and I'm not really going for that.
Maybe I also have a broader question about taxonomy of fashion as it applies to social class, and if somebody wants to do an effort post on that, you'll have at least an audience of one. But mostly I wanna figure out how to dress good without jeans and without peacocking.
I don't have an answer, but fwiw I was very interested in any answers this question got, so +1 to reposting it in another open thread if you were on the fence about it. Posting it sooner after the OT goes up might get it more traction? Or maybe nobody else is interested, who knows.
Sidenote, it's really cool to watch language/thinking evolve within a community. A question like this would've been super normal in the past in an ACX/SSC OT, but I bet it wouldn't have been framed in terms of class. But with class being a topic of focus recently, this question suddenly (and probably rightfully) is specified in terms of class.
I think we should cool down Death Valley, but am not sure how to do it. Death Valley is the hottest place on Earth because it is surrounded by tall mountains and gets a lot of direct sunlight. During the day, the sunlight strikes the ground in the Valley, heating it up, which in turn heats up the air above it. The hot air rises from the ground, cools a little bit, but can't get above the mountaintops to blow away, so it sinks back down towards the Valley floor. In effect, a bubble of hot air gets trapped there.
The concentration of high temperatures leads me to think there must be a way to harness it to generate energy. I also think doing that would be good for the environment since cooling Death Valley down would make it habitable for more plants and animals. However, I don't know what machines and structures we'd need to build to do this.
My first thought is that we should build a tube that stretches from the floor of Death Valley to the peak of the Amarcosa Range, which is the mountain range hemming in the Valley on its east end. I recommend looking at this topographic drawing to visualize the rest of my proposal:
The tube would be two meters in diameter, and both of its ends would be open. The tube would run up diagonally, and would be buried three meters under the surface of the Amarcosa Range's west slope. Inside the tube, there would be a series of small wind turbines.
My theory is that the difference in air temperature and pressure at both ends of the tube would move the hot air from the base of Death Valley through it. Since the tube would be buried, the surrounding soil would act as an insulator, preventing the "hot air bubble" effect that naturally keeps the Valley so hot. As the hot air passed through the tube, it would make the turbines spin, generating electricity.
Would my idea work? Are there alternative ways to cool down Death Valley?
I think this would generate energy but would not cool Death Valley significantly (because there's much more air in Death Valley than can fit in the two-meter tube). I think a much better way would be to demolish a mountain* and put a wind turbine in its place; this would be a large enough hole for a significant proportion of the hot air bubble to escape.
*Of course, assuming that this is feasible, which it doesn't seem to be on its face. Then again people routinely clear hills and demolish tall buildings, so maybe it's much easier than I think.
None as far as I can tell. Also Death Valley and some of the surrounding mountains are federally protected areas, which makes me worried that this plan would both bring about the ire of park rangers and cause environmental damage.
You're right, come to think of it, Death Valley is just begging to be cooled down. But, not by moving air. Death Valley is conveniently below sea level, so if we just cut a channel (or run a pipe) from the Pacific Ocean into it, water will happily flow downhill. And being much more dense than air, there's lots of energy to be generated that way!
What to name it though... The valley is already named for death, and it'd become an inland sea. How about: The Dead Sea. Bonus points for the fact that as a well heated basin with no outlet, it'd rapidly become very salty.
Can we get on this in a hurry? I have some friends camping in Death Valley right now who are really into surfing and would probably appreciate the bonus activity.
Death Valley is 200 miles from the Pacific Ocean and there are mountains between them, so your plan would be extremely expensive. My plan would only involve installing a tube that was 1 or 2 miles long, going up a mountainside.
Interested on opinions about the "confederation solution" for Israel-Palestine, as an alternative to one state / two state. (The idea is: one confederation of two states, with freedom of movement; e.g. Israeli citizens can live and travel in Palestine, and Palestinian citizens can live and travel in Israel; some issues like national security are governed jointly at the federal level. E.g. https://foreignpolicy.com/2018/06/29/an-israeli-palestinian-confederation-can-work/)
It's not as well known; the movement advocating it is small; and lack of trust on both sides is an obstacle to it happening (e.g. Israelis who just think of Palestinians as terrorists). But it at least somewhat deals with the thorniest issues (Jerusalem, refugees, settlers, army):
- Jerusalem - both Israel and Palestine would rather have all of Jerusalem as their capitol, not half of a divided Jerusalem. With confederation, the whole city can just be a capitol to both states.
- Refugees. Some amount of the Palestinian refugees can live in Israel, as permanent residents, but with Palestinian citizenship. They get to go home, and Israel gets to stay Jewish. I doubt all of the refugees would be able to (there are 10x as many now as fled in the first place!), but it could be a big symbolic victory for both sides.
- West Bank Settlers. Instead of having to leave their (currently illegal) homes in Palestine, they'd just become permanent residents of Palestine with Israeli citizenship.
- Army. Palestinians want a state with an army, but Israel's too powerful and scared and will never let them have their own. But with a (successful) confederation, 1. one army would defend both states with both states' participation; and 2. Palestine's biggest threat, the threat from Israel, would be lessened, since it's less likely that the confederation would air strike itself.
One concern Palestinians would have is that Israel would in practice probably still be more dominant, so e.g. if Israel wants to attack Egypt, now Palestine's getting dragged into it too. (But maybe Arab-Israeli normalization lessens that risk?) Lack of trust is a concern in general. On the plus side, Palestinians think it could be economically good.
RAND corporation interviewed some focus groups in Israel and Palestine about alternative ways forward, and it wasn't anybody's favourite (https://www.rand.org/pubs/research_reports/RRA725-1.html). But the favourites were ones that will never get consensus (e.g. Israelis preferred the status quo, which is crushing to Palestinians; Israelis are fine with two state if there's no Palestinian army, but Palestinians want two state with an army); and the confederation option also was less well-known. I think maybe if it became better known, it would get more popular, especially if both sides saw the other side also taking it seriously.
I've been vaccinated for COVID-19. I'm pleased to be protected from death and hospitalization, but I'm concerned that there's still a significant chance that I could get a mild infection that turns into a debilitating "long COVID" that would have a serious negative impact on my long-term quality of life. Does anyone know where to get data on (1) what percent of people with mild infections wind up with any long-term symptoms, and/or (2) what percent of people who have any long-term symptoms are seriously affected (e.g., difficulty walking, brain fog) rather than mildly affected (e.g., partial loss of sense of smell)?
Extra question: (How much) does the vaccine protect against long covid? Seems plausible to me that it could be anywhere from "no better than it protects against mild covid" to "as well as it protects against deadly covid", probably depending on what long covid even is.
I recently came up with an idea for a Quantified Self-type self-experiment: Since Google offers the user to toggle ad personalization in their settings, I thought I would try to spend some time with personalized ads and then spend some time w/o personalized ads, then compare my user-experience satisfaction with each. (I think personalized ads might be better anyways because they'd show me stuff I might actually buy rather than merely being generic annoyances; as Yudkowsky once tweeted, "It's disconcerting how much online advertising seems to be centered around an absolute denial of agency to the viewers." - c.f. https://twitter.com/ESYudkowsky/status/1329896859431624704) Any comments on this idea?
I just reread your post on Ages of Discord and found this
But the most important thing about this book is that Turchin claims to be able to predict the future. The book (written just before Trump was elected in 2016) ends by saying that “we live in times of intensifying structural-demographic pressures for instability”. The next bigenerational burst of violence is scheduled for about 2020 (realistically +/- a few years). It’s at a low point in the grand cycle, so it should be a doozy.
So , how bad are the BLM unrests right now ? And does this fit his prediction ?
That's easy to answer : globalism is the current elitism. By definition, elitism is centrist (since it's defined from the viewpoint of elites, while the viewpoint of the people is illegible), and extremists are by definition their enemies.
Note that above I'm using a 1D Overton Window model, not an economics first left-right model where nazis end up centrist, liberals right-wing, and Trump to the left of the Democrats. Nazis (& Trump ?) still end up opposing centrists, because Nazis (& Trump ?) are at the TOP-center if you include a 2nd axis :
Being good at business is the #1 skill for making money. The firm requires employees with other skills, including invention in some cases, but they don't make as much as the boss.
From of the point of view of which skill the firm needs the most, again it's management, because a poorly managed firm won't make good use of its other skills.
"When a management with a reputation for brilliance tackles a business with a reputation for bad economics, it is the reputation of the business that remains intact." is a famous quote from Warren Buffet, and one I fully agree with.
From my experience, management and communication are grossly overestimated: no matter how good a manager you are, the performance of your teams is far more likely to depend of the quality of the people you are managing than your own.
A lot of this assertion depends on your definition of invention and how intellectually honest you feel the cohorts of invention versus “knowing how to make money” are. If those are the only two options, what would be rewarded more than “knowing how to make money”? That feels like a taxonomy created with an agenda in mind.
Capitalism rewards building stuff better than any other system we know of. Whether one thinks invention is undervalued or overvalued is more of a statement about one’s value system than about capitalism. It sounds like you think invention is very important and is undervalued.
The distinction between being able to invent and to make money is a false dilemma.
I think a more accurate statement would be that we need far more people who are good at making money (e.g. running factories efficiently, lending money to the right people at the right interest rate, managing giant human enterprises well) than we need people who are good at inventing stuff. Most of what happens in an economy is just keeping the gears turning, moving things from here to there, building things we know how to build, making sure the electricity works, the cars start, the bus turns up on time, the check actually is in the mail, you get paid on time, et cetera. We don't *advance* if no one ever does invention, but if too many people are trying to invent too much of the basic wheels-go-round stuff doesn't get done and things fall apart.
Better, a quote I've heard attribute to Adrienne Rich (of all people): "If all of us contemplate the infinite instead of fixing the drains, many of us will die of cholera."
There are many kinds of things that need to be done. We need someone to invent new stuff. We need someone to find new clever uses for the recently invented stuff. We need many people to keep the wheels of the existing mechanisms running. We need someone to find problems with the existing mechanisms and fix them.
Asking which one is more important... dunno, seems to me that there are huge potential gains at every level. And also, we (as a society) can do all of that at the same time, by individuals choosing the place they feel they have a comparative advantage at.
For example, it would be nice if someone invented a new cure for cancer. But independently on that, it would also be nice to fix healthcare. Producing and distributing the existing pills cheaper would also help. And there is a lot of human work involved in just keeping everything as it is now.
Similarly with technical inventions: quantum computers would be nice, making better applications on existing computers is also nice, developing free alternatives to commercial software also helps people, and you also need someone to teach kids at schools to use the existing free software.
Yeah, people at some of these positions are better at capturing the value they produce than at other positions. But that would happen in any regime: it's either the money, or the decisions of the communist leaders, or the divine voice talking to the king.
Knowing how to make money in general is more valuable than knowing how to invent in general. But very few people have the general skill. Far more people know how to invent one thing, or know how to make money one way.
I am currently doing some data analysis regarding the difference in immunisation between a 1 dose and a 2 dose vaccination strategy (sponsered by a COVID microgrant from Zvi + anon donor).
I thought collecting some input from the community here might be worthwhile and the earlier, the better, so here goes:
https://github.com/oerpli/FirstDosesFirst/blob/master/writeup/analysis.md
It is still a work in progress and one would need to look into the whole repo to get a complete picture but the linked file basically explains the method.
The calculations are done here:
https://github.com/oerpli/FirstDosesFirst/blob/master/FDF.py
If more information is needed I am happy to provide them. Also, you can contact me on various sites & the SSC discord, if you want to point out mistakes I made (or open a PR on Github).
Contact infos & the likes can be found here: oerpli.github.io/
Here’s something that’s been on my mind lately.
Choose the correct answer from this official cognitive-functioning test question (you’ll want to commit to your final answer before reading further):
There are two women, Janet and Susan. Janet is attacked by a mugger just ten feet outside her front door. Susan is attacked by a mugger a mile away from her house. Who is more upset by the experience?
A) Janet
B) Susan
C) They are upset the same or it’s impossible to tell
This is from Michael Kinsley’s amazing piece in The New Yorker a few years back about living with Parkinson’s (“Have You Lost Your Mind?”). He was flabbergasted to discover that the literally accurate answer was deemed “incorrect.” The test-makers were purposely forcing respondents to choose between the most obvious answer, based in facile emotional intelligence that discerns the spirit of the narrative, or the one that relies on a closer, logical reading of semantics.
Kinsey interviewed the test-makers, who confirmed the gist of their intentions while remaining protective of their trade secrets, so there’s some speculation here: apparently they wanted to flag pedantic brains as functioning less than properly. Somewhere around 30% of all test-takers chose the pedantic answer, while most of the remaining 70% got it right. Interestingly, those figures were completely reversed among the Parkinson’s population.
I find it fascinating and opaquely illuminating that people who chose to interrogate the boundaries of the question were deemed to be incorrect. I wonder from what branch of science did the test-makers derive their confidence that a well-functioning brain should bias the gut, as it were, rather than getting bogged down in rules and semantics?
After I first read Kinsley's piece I polled ten acquaintances in a workplace environment of well-educated people, and true to the statistics, seven answered correctly, while three of us answered pedantically (coincidentally, all three of us had been diagnosed with differing neurological disorders). But wait, it gets weirder. I pressed a few of the 70% (none of whom seemed to wrestle a bit with the exercise) by asking: Would you have chosen Janet if your life depended on it? ALL said probably NOT (while still remaining perfectly untroubled by the mounting complications!).
This tells me that what the test-makers might have actually been looking for was an ability to discern correct CONTEXT. I had initially been considering the question in a pure vacuum, while others who chose Janet just seemed to “get” what the test-makers were looking for. One made a shrugging comment like, “Well it is just a test – not real life.” (How the hell am I supposed to know THAT??)
The question has an implied "all else being equal". Pedants figure that since it's not actually stated, they can't assume it.
So, with this knowledge of the unsaid implications, can you think of any advice you'd like to offer us pedants who really can't imagine another way to answer such a question?
I've always been good at multiple choice tests. Always consider the source and don't overthink. There are often going to be questions that are somewhat ambiguous if you really think about it. But your goal is to give the answer the test-maker had in mind, not the technically correct one (unless you know the test-maker is also very pedantic!) The context of what material the test is supposed to be testing can usually tell you when you are solving the problem as expected and when you are overthinking it.
The SSC survey is basically the pedantic test, isn’t it? You find yourself scanning for instances of “the the”.
Also, this is more relevant to an educational setting, but, as a last resort, you can go "family-feud" style. If a question is really ambiguous, go for the answer you think most people are likely to guess - then you have the most chance of the instructor deciding to accept that answer as correct in response to student complaints.
This reminds me of a story from my school days. I was taking a math test and while I was working on a problem I realized that it was too hard for the current topic and I also knew what wrong answer the teacher was looking for. I considered my options and decided to go for the correct answer (I was going to get a good score anyway).
A few days later the teacher read the grades (out loud) but didn't return the tests. Then another couple days later he announced that there had been some corrections and some grades had gone up and some had gone down. My grade had gone up (and one other guy in my year too) and many others had gone down. The teacher had apparently figured out that if two kids both give the same unexpected wrong answer, something is probably going on.
Fortunately our classmates never found out what happened.
I think the question to ask yourself is "what is this question trying to ask?" Like this question isn't *really* about the head-space of two fictional characters, what the question is trying to ask is "are people generally more upset by negative experiences near to home, far from home, or neither?"
I think most people would find the latter question easier to answer, it's still asking for a generalization which you may or may not agree with, but I think far fewer people are going to get tripped up on the stuff like "well what if Susan is an easily upset person, while Janet is unflappable?" that might lead someone to say C.
You may ask "why didn't they ask that question in the first place" and I think that 1) discerning the intent of the question is often seen as an intentional part of test taking, 2) some more empathetic people actually may find the question easier to answer in the stated form - it feels "realer" with imagining real people, compared to my "decoded" version which is really dry, 3) it's just less boring to ask questions in this way.
There is also an implied "most likely outcome".
You haven’t told us what the correct answer is. I assume Janet.
It depends on the semantics of "tell". Janet is more upset, for most but not all values of Janet.
Under Boolean semantics, "it's impossible to tell" is True unless you can prove that either Janet is always more upset, or Susan is more upset, for all possible values of Janet and Susan. You can't; so the answer is C.
Under probabilistic or information-theory semantics, answer A (Janet) is the only one that gives you positive {predictive value / information}; so the answer is A.
Yeh. The last paragraph makes sense, although like a lot of commentary here, could be less opaque. I personally don’t think there is any reasonable way to read this question as anything other then probabilistic - what would the majority of women think in either case. Assuming and actual Susan and an actual Janet just wouldn’t occur to me.
The people answering c remind me of the time I tried the trolley problem with a group of people and one guy was adamant that the question was suspect. Who put the people on the tracks anyway, why not try stop or reverse the trolley. All good questions if that was anecdote rather than a thought experiment, but it wasn’t.
I see your point, but the pedant in me wasn't bringing in the complications. That was the test-makers, who included the option that "it's impossible to tell."
In your trolley example, your pedants are just really avoiding the question. The better parallel would be if your trolley narrator added a third possible option such as "You can't tell for sure, but you think maybe the train is travelling too fast for the diversion." Which would invite many more problems for one to consider.
Yes, please say which answer gets 70% and which 30%.
I assume A- 70%, C- 30%. But I'm not at all sure.
I guessed Janet only because the mugger could steal her keys and then proceed to steal everything inside her house.
I’m kind of stuck on the cognitive-functioning aspect of all this, but I’m assuming it’s related to social functioning. If so, should it really be a healthy norm for society to resist individuals who are unwilling (or unable) to privilege the meta-level narrative/game that everyone else somehow knows/wants to play? It seems the little kid who proclaims the emperor’s not wearing any clothes is really told to shut up and stop being silly, end of story.
Also, on a socio-political level, it’s scary to imagine what the world would look like without such pedantry. I’m thinking, for example, of the lone voice on a jury who sees everything differently – but correctly – while everyone else is more socially relaxed, easily forgetful of the real-life stakes, and just wants to get home in time for dinner. If the optimal brain is one that values going with the flow, being in synch with societal narratives, presumably enjoying the fruits of the resultant parasympathetic system involvement, then we’re doomed, right? Unless, maybe the test-makers weren’t actually thinking it’s optimal for a society’s individuals to have optimal brains?
Yes, I don't like the tyranny of "healthy norms" when it comes to cognitive function, particularly when we're talking about a 70/30 split and human variety has all kinds of social benefits.
I'm baffled that anyone could say this has a "right" answer when there are so evidently multiple possible interpretations, and how would one make a case that one interpretation is better than another?
I'm obviously a really pedantic person, working on it all the time I swear. I could see the test-writers probably meant for us to answer A (and that was my first answer), that some more precise reading would deliver C, and that a different set of emotional priors would yield B. In that way it seems more like a personality test than something with a right/wrong answer.
I support the anxious/obsessive/hyper-conscientious minority and their efforts at keeping us all safe, even if it means they need mouth guards to sleep at night.
Yes, but if I were taking a test labeled as measuring cognitive functioning (as opposed to a personality test) I would be totally stuck trying to guess what they were looking for. So I'd surely default to answer C, as this seems like the most streamlined, cognitively unassailable response.
Agreed on this. If I knew what kind of test it was, my answer would likely have changed.
So, it's easy to imagine the cases where the stickler is the one lone voice of sanity stemming a tide of madness and chaos.
But what is actually happening 99% of the time is that either human language is imprecise or a given model/metaphor/explanation only needs a certain superficial level of depth in order to serve it's purpose in communication, everyone else in the room accurately understood what was being conveyed and got the correct information they were supposed to out of it, and the one stickler is wasting everyone's time and actually making things less clear and more confusing, causing mistakes and misunderstandings.
So, of course, the pedant in me would ask where you got your 99% data point from, but I'm assuming it's merely a hardened assumption you carry around based on your life experiences.
I would probe this assumption on a couple grounds. First, if you think the "stickler" is purposely wasting everyone's time (i.e., they can actually see what the model in question is asking for, but they're choosing to muddle things up for ego or whatever reasons), I think you'd often be wrong. Often, someone has a perfectly relevant but perhaps outside-the-box approach, but can't get a hearing because of social resistance.
I've noticed that such voices tend to be ostracized from the get-go because their energy doesn't match "the room," which can lead to a vicious cycle of them not feeling heard, with "the room" more and more adamant about shutting them up. Since the room's natural tendency trends toward social cohesion, resistance is automatically troubled (so, for example, you might be interpreting stress energy as an anti-social intention).
While I'm guessing you'll disagree, I'm left widely supportive of alternative voices in principle, even though they tend to make the room less tidy. Systemic examples of such support include open invitations to diversity, voluntary relinquishing of leadership roles by "straight white male" -types who have historically kept the room organized, and even attendance to cries of "micro-aggressions" and other expressions that are easily ridiculed as shrill or off-point.
I'm super glad we've evolved culturally past the point where the elite voices who tended to pride themselves on a sort of pristine rationality have learned to listen better to discern the concerns of others. When I was young Norman Mailer et al. were still baiting feminists as hysterical and irrational. Black Lives Matter, Queer affiliation, etc -- these are welcome forms of pedantry that demand to be taken seriously by those in the room who would prefer their comfort not be riled. I've been in many leadership positions throughout my life, and every time I've checked my inclination to dismiss someone as irrational or whatever, I've discovered at the very least a nugget of valuable, relevant information about their perspective that I really needed to hear.
I'm a bit confused, what's supposed to be the correct answer? And what's supposed to be the pedantic answer?
The article mentioned says 'C' is the pedantic one, because the question explicitly asks whether Janet or Susan feels worse, and we don't know enough about them or the mugging to say one way or the other. 'A' is the correct answer.
I got it wrong both ways by guessing 'B' (a mugging outside my house is anomalous, one in unfamiliar territory would make me more afraid of the outside world), which meant I found it a very confusing analysis.
Ha, you're such a rare bird you don't even seem to show up in the stats!
My gut answer was A, my pedantic thought was C, then I thought B, since Janet getting mugged outside her door suggests her house is in a rough enough neighborhood she may be resigned to sporadic crime, while Susan could live in a safer neighborhood and be more upset when she encounters crime
I also initially guessed B, with the reasoning that Janet would probably complain about it more but ultimately can just walk back home after, which would be less traumatic than Susan having to find her way home with no wallet. But then I switched to C once I saw that option, since really there's no way to know.
Yeah, I could see it either way; I was staring at the question trying to find some missing word i.e. perhaps the mugger were sniping the women and literally a mile away while the women were near their houses and somehow mugging them that way, which would make a bigger difference?
Yeah, I would choose C because there are two factors, one is along the lines of "I was so close to having safely avoided this mugging and/or my phone turf area is unsafe for me" and one is "if I were mugged right outside my home, I might sooner be safely in my home calming down and emotionally recovering". I can't really assume I know how the factors shake out with only the information given.
I thought "A" immediately, can't imagine another answer.
That seems like it's riding entirely on ambiguity in the word "know". (Well, the word "tell", in the original phrasing.)
If you define "knowing" something as having a posterior probability of 1, then no one can ever know anything because 0 and 1 are not probabilities https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/QGkYCwyC7wTDyt3yT/0-and-1-are-not-probabilities
That's obviously silly.
If you allow that the word "know" can be applied to things for which you have *some* evidence but not absolute certainty, then you have to pick some threshold for what counts as "enough" evidence to use the word "know".
If your standard is "any evidence at all", then answer C would only be correct if there is NO statistical correlation between mugging location and upset-ness. Which I presume is not the case, or else we wouldn't be having this discussion.
Any other quantitative standard you choose is at least somewhat arbitrary, and no specific standard is included in the question. Which would make the pedantic answer "this question is ambiguous", not "C".
When I read the question, I interpreted "or it's impossible to tell" as meaning "the statistics are within experimental error". That interpretation was based partly on the context that it was grouped together with "they are upset the same" (why would you group "equal" and "unknowable" under the same answer otherwise?) and partly for the reasons I laid out above.
(I am pretty pedantic and still answered A. As evidence of my pedantry (if you needed any more), on another test I objected to the question "agree/disagree: Our country will be destroyed someday if we do not smash the perversions eating away at our moral fiber and traditional beliefs" on the grounds that obviously our country will be destroyed SOMEDAY no matter what we do.)
I'm not sure that objecting to that latter question is good evidence of pedantry. The logician's answer is "agree", because the question used "if" rather than "iff", and the consequent is (always) true so the conditional is true.
Yes, and my objection is that the question is constructed such that most readers will answer an implied question rather than the explicit question, and there's no way to tell which responses are answering which question.
Is the pedantic answer C, because it's impossible to tell what two people will think about a given thing, while the intended answer is A, because getting mugged right outside your house is probably more upsetting than getting mugged elsewhere?
Maybe part of the problem is that it sounds like an SAT reading comprehension problem or something to me, in which case C would be the right answer. If you asked it like "which is likely to upset someone more, A, B, or no difference", I wonder if you'd get a difference distribution.
Yes, sorry for the confusion. About thirty percent tend to answer C (pedantically), while 70 percent say A because of proximity to home. A was deemed officially correct.
Interestingly, I considered B, on the grounds that neurotypicals are a majority, they routinely do things that make no sense to my gut, and an awful lot of them get hysterically afraid of events they've heard about happening - once, among a national population of 100s of millions, and nowhere near their homes. It is thus plausible to me that the more common response is the one that seems least sensible to me, and that the goal of the question is to demonstrate that one is "normal" by producing the common (and thus better-by-definition) response.
So I'm seeing an unexpected hybrid population developing here: you seem to be right on track when it comes to sensing the KIND of emotion-based answer the test-makers were looking for -- but then you got bogged down in secondary-level pedantry!
My thinking was that something that happens in another neighborhood can be set aside more easily. Being struck so close to home causes a wound to the confidence about home and safety.
I got stuck on this because here in Australia, being one mile from home isn't really "another neighbourhood" at all.
Then I remembered that in big US cities it's quite common for good and bad neighbourhoods to be just blocks apart.
It's nebulous, but how 'wide' are the boundaries between neighborhoods in Australia? I'd think they're roughly the same as anywhere, e.g. the width of the street(s) (or some other 'natural' boundary) that divide any two neighborhoods.
Given that, _every_ possible pair of adjacent neighborhoods, anywhere, is only "blocks apart".
Maybe you live in the center of some neighborhood, but surely lots of others live closer to the edges.
And then of course 'neighborhood' is pretty nebulous itself. I've lived in several places where there _was no_ obvious 'neighborhood'. Maybe 'neighborhoods' are more of a thing in places with lots of historical gang activity and thus clearer territorial boundaries at the 'neighborhood scale'.
I have a bit of a problem with this. My naive guess is Janet - people tend to be more upset by things which happen closer to themselves. It feels more like a personal violation.
At the same time, people also tend to blame themselves for something bad happening to them if they could have had any control over the circumstances, and sometimes that will be forced on them: see "clothing worn by rape victims". In this case, being mugged 2 miles from your house implies some place you didn't need to be. "I could have gone to a different grocery store" can run through your head continually and cause suffering. "I could have avoided going outside, ever" is pretty much recognized as crazy.
These two emotional responses are in direct opposition to each other and knowing which one would predominate would require a bit more knowledge of the two people involved. Forced, I'd go with 'A', but that's a damn hard question.
Well, as long as you chose A in the end your brain is functioning just fine!
I was in a similar position. I read between the lines and could tell that the test writers weren't going for pedantic reasoning, but when comparing the two people I could come up with too many competing narratives that could favor either one. In the end, I chose "it's impossible to know," thinking that's the answer of someone who correctly understands that that people's emotional states depends on their complex perspective, not on some external appraisal of their situation.
In short, my mistake was in thinking that the test was a test of empathy or social skills, whereas it's apparently a more basic test of "can you tell which of these two situations is meant to sound worse on first glance?"
i wonder if getting the "correct" answer correlates with GPA? The pedantic answer seemed most correct to me but I correctly guessed the desired answer, drawing upon my extensive practice at test taking in school, where on poorly written tests you are often being tested most on your ability to predict what the teacher wants
You are a very stable genius! It's this ability to predict the "desired answer" that I seem to lack. Again, I'm convinced it's about the ability to sense the correct context.
An amusing little anecdote:
Years back, in a psychological evaluation for a child custody court case, I was asked to draw a tree on a blank piece of paper. I asked the examiner how long I should take to draw it (the whole evaluation took most of the day, so I had no idea how to approach this one exercise). The examiner told me to take as long as I liked. So I spent maybe a half hour, detailing the veins on the leaves, the bark, etc – drawing what turned out to be a rather splendid tree, if I do say so myself. Later, the examiner’s report cited this particular exercise as evidence of my narcissism – which I thought was weird, considering the stakes of the test (which would impact how much time my three-year-old child lived with me). I mean, who in their right mind wouldn’t draw the best tree of their life if their child’s welfare was on the line? THAT was the context running through my head, but the correct context apparently was to be cool.
Which is not to argue I'm not narcissistic, of course, but is this event an accurate barometer? One theory is that my hyper-focus on the tree was not properly respectful of the psychologist’s time, but he had been going back and forth to his office all morning, leaving me to work on specific tasks -- so it’s not like he was just sitting there watching me be narcissistic.
I think at the very least you made an unusual choice in going for a superbly detailed tree instead of a merely adequate one. Like someone said, part of any test is figuring out what the person administering it is looking for. In your case it wasn’t artistic talent but maybe a sense of what kind of tree would fulfill the request. Also, are you sure you weren’t being observed the whole time?
It seems alarming that narcissism could be gleaned from such a task....sounds like you're a talented tree artist.
My ex-wife was an excellent illustrator, she had a real keen sense for lighting. I often wonder if my kid’s ever inherited her talent... but... ever since I lost the big art competition used to decide custody I haven’t seen them much.
Look, in no way do I defend my choice as smart, proportional, or constructive. But the experience does help me keep in mind that some of us get tunnel vision (less smart often) during times of stress. And this was far and away the most stressful time of my entire life. So as ridiculous as it sounds, I was in a state of mind where the future of my child felt directly connected to my level of effort, and I acted accordingly.
I find it helpful to recall this when I see others -- especially those who are historically, chronically stressed -- speaking or acting with a sense of desperation, ESPECIALLY when surrounded by a cool, calm, rational group that has collectively decided to mock their stressed attempts to seek equality, justice, etc.
I suspect that the tester was engaged in motivated reasoning.
If you had drawn a mere sketch of a tree, that would be evidence that you were a slacker.
If you asked what kind of tree you were supposed to draw, that was "proof" that you are a bigot, as shown by your reprehensible discrimination between tree species.
Drawing a Christmas tree clearly demonstrates that you must be financially irresponsible and want someone to provide for you.
Etc., etc..
Honestly, the tester struck me as a bit of a slacker (but, of course, I was biased). He didn't seem interested in or able to put himself in the position of someone in such a life-altering situation. My bet is he just looked at the fact that I'd spent a much longer time than average drawing more ornamentation than average, and labeled that a narcissistic tendency when it might well have just been situational narcissism.
And it seemed to me a bit of a dirty trick that he wouldn't answer my initial question about how long I should take to draw. I was clearly seeking context. Failing to get any, my feeling (charged with stress) was that I better just give it all I have.
You were there and I wasn't.
Perhaps I've seen too many "gotchas" in such situations.
every so often the teacher would intentionally go for a 'gotcha' question though
As others have commented, the 'obvious' answer A does not seem obvious and the 'pedantic' answer C does not seem pedantic. There are various reasons being mugged nearer your house could feel better than far away, e.g.
--likely closer to friends/neighbours who can help
On the other hand, there are various reasons being nearer your house feels worse:
--may increase anxiety every time you leave your house / maybe want to leave your house
They all seem to me bad answers, compared to "Probably but not necessarily Janet".
Perhaps, but the expert test-makers make the big bucks, so we have to presume there's method to their madness: forcing us to choose the sole "correct" answer.
My interpretation of the question is: if this had happened for real, do you think it would be more likely that Janet was most upset, Susan was most upset, or that they were so similarly upset that it would be impossible for to determine who was more upset. The pedantic interpretation of the question is: given only information about where the muggings occurred, is Janet definitely more upset, is Susan definitely more upset, or do you have insufficient information to say who is more upset? I think the pedantic interpretation is wrong because it ignores contextual clues about how to interpret the question. For example, "they are upset the same or it's impossible to tell" is a single option, so it's probably meant to express only one idea: that the two people are upset to similar degrees (i.e. impossible to tell because the difference is small), rather than express the logical union of two separate ideas: that either they're equally upset or it's impossible to tell for some reason (e.g. because you have insufficient information in the question). That being said, it's not a well-written question because the pedantic interpretation is more plausible than it ought to be, especially if you had a prior belief that this might be a trick question.
Putting pedantry aside, (A) seems like the obviously correct answer to me, because getting mugged near your house means that you're not safe in the one place you can't avoid traveling through when you leave the house, but if you get mugged a mile away, you can stay safe by avoiding that area. Obviously people react differently, so maybe Janet is a buddhist monk and Susan has frequent panic attacks, but I think the implication is that the question is about how most ordinary people would react, and I think most ordinary Janets would be noticeably more upset than most ordinary Susans.
So do you think the ability to discern the most relevant implications, as you have, is simply a result of intelligence? I don't get the sense the test-makers were targeting intelligence so much as mechanical functioning somehow.
Note that the Parkinson's population is a mirror image of the general public when it comes to getting the question wrong. (Most Parkinson's folks I've met have been super sharp.)
> So do you think the ability to discern the most relevant implications, as you have, is simply a result of intelligence?
No, I don't think it's a very good question to begin with. I think 70% of people answer (A) because that's what a quick, common-sense interpretation gives you, and 30% of people answer (C) because that's what a very literal, spot-the-trick-question interpretation gives you. The difference between the two groups is certainly not "intelligence", and drawing some conclusion about cognitive functioning differences between the two groups is probably an unjustifiable leap in reasoning. I was mainly explaining my reasoning because it seemed like a lot of other commenters didn't see why (A) should be the correct answer.
You may be right about it being a bad question. I don't know anything about test making. But my sense from Kinsley's interview with the test-makers is that any clumsiness to the phrasing, etc, was designed very intentionally.
For me, pedantry is more of a mood than a way of life. I used to be pedantic because that's just the way we had fun in my household (it was more fun than it sounded?); we would annoy my mother at the dinner table by responding "I don't know" to questions like "Would everyone like dessert"?
As I've grown up I've learned to dial down the pedantry and instead answer the question that I think is intended rather than the question that has _strictly_ been asked, because pedantry doesn't actually work out well for me in real life.
I think this is a good point. Pedantry is a "read the room" kind of thing. If you're writing a math paper, pedantry is required. If you're having a casual conversation with a stranger, pedantry is usually considered rude. This question, if it tells us anything, tells us whether or not respondents feel like pedantry is the right mood for a multiple-choice psych questionnaire.
And the ability to "read the room" comes from where? Family modeling? Native intelligence? And would certain neurological conditions block this ability?
Right, I do think some people have good control of their pedantry dial and other people don't know where it is, much less that it might be controlled. I imagine that's down to some mix of genetics and upbringing.
That dinner table anecdote would work better if, after everyone else had answered "I don't know", the final one to reply said that yes, everyone wanted dessert.
I think something like this may partly explain the 13 comment deep disagreements on seemingly simple statements of fact that occur on this site.
I know, right? I’m not actually as interested in the cognitive-function implications of this particular test question as the social/political implications
I guess I’m feeling this is a tiny piece of “official” evidence that there’s a sort of social consensus that The Rules (and even the facts?) are malleable according to context – and I can’t help thinking this spills over into populations that have to fight quite a lot harder for scraps of agency then us mere miserable pedants.
If I’m right, this malleability seems related to our human capacity for abiding horrific things with a shrug just because it’s always been that way; forcing, for example, African Americans into choosing between acquiescence or righteous Constitutional pedantry for more than 100 years after Reconstruction. Which is a pretty shitty deal.
So -- to your point -- I'm prone to losing my patience (and flexibility) in situations where it seems the other is operating/arguing from an unserious base of assumptions when it comes to things like "democracy" (for example); i.e. when their "context" (perhaps their habitual political affiliation) seems to be inadequate to address the stakes involved.
This is one example of why I'm skeptical of the meaningfulness of IQ tests at scores above the median score of the committee that made the IQ test.
One thing you may want to consider is that "word problems" almost always include idealizing assumptions. That's because they're *phrased* in concrete terms, but are really *about* abstract models. (The rationale for concrete phrasing is usually some combination of "people understand stories more easily than abstractions" and/or "we want students to think about how the abstract models can be applied to real life".)
If I ask you about the travel time of a train that leaves city A at 8:00 traveling to city B that is 120 miles away, you are supposed to assume (unless specified otherwise) that the train travels at constant speed without stopping and that 120 miles is the length of the track, even though none of those assumptions are particularly realistic.
If I tell you that one person always lies and one always tells the truth, you are not supposed to worry that one of them might make an honest mistake or simply refuse to answer your question, and you certainly aren't supposed to ask whether "lying by omission" counts as a "lie" for purposes of this problem.
The ropes are massless, the pulleys are frictionless, the wires are lossless, the Turing Machine has infinite tape, etc.
We don't often call attention to these assumptions or explain how to tell which ones we're making. Among other unfortunate consequences, this means that sometimes the person asking the question changes the assumptions without telling you, and thinks that this means they're being clever (when actually they're just communicating badly).
There's a famous lateral thinking puzzle involving 3 light bulbs in a box connected to 3 switches that are outside the box but that will be locked once you open the box, and you're supposed to figure out which switch goes to which light. The accepted solution is to turn on one switch, wait for the corresponding bulb to get hot, then turn it off and turn on another switch before opening the box.
This answer directly violates a common idealizing assumption (i.e. ignore electrical losses). But if you're willing to break ANY idealizing assumption, then there are TONS of easy solutions, like "cutting a hole in the box" or "rewiring the circuits to bypass the locked switches". (Also, you can tell this puzzle predates the rise of LED bulbs.) IMO this is a broken puzzle with no *fair* solution--but the people who repeat it don't seem to notice this issue...
(You could probably rework it into a story where the lights are actually heat lamps, so that becoming hot is part of their core functionality. But then you're *calling attention* to the heat and the puzzle becomes easier...)
Sometimes it's not obvious what idealizing assumptions should be made. There's another famous logic puzzle that's usually phrased as having to do with eye color. It's more complex; here's one version: https://xkcd.com/blue_eyes.html
It's a clever puzzle, except it relies on the assumption that a public declaration creates mathematically-perfect "common knowledge", in the sense that everyone hears and believes, and everyone knows that everyone hears and believes, and everyone knows that everyone knows that... to infinite levels of recursion. You can kind of see how this might make sense as an "idealizing assumption", but it's not an idealizing assumption that most people will have encountered before; a good-faith listener could plausibly fail to make it. (And you can't make the assumption explicit without giving a really huge clue to solving the puzzle.)
I have Asperger's and this is one major lesson I had to learn as a kid. At first, I really struggled with word problems because of all the possible complications not stated in the problem, like you mention. However, I quickly learned to answer the question the test makers meant, rather than what they said.
There's a scene in Cryptonomocon that basically follows this same logic, leading the Navy to decide that a mathematical genius character is a moron.
I had the same experience. No diagnosis, but almost certainly Asperger's. I still recall thinking at a very early age "this answer is wrong, but it is the one they want."
One thing I've noticed about logic puzzles: if it's necessary for the puzzle to stipulate that the people involved are "perfect logicians," I will never, ever be able to wrap my head around it. (Even after reading Scott's story based on the same puzzle.)
All makes sense. But I'm not sure you're fully covering the problem inherent in this particular question, which is the addition of "it's impossible to tell." If that phrase were left out, I would certainly have chosen Janet as the best choice available, no problem.
While you may easily see that phrase as a distraction, it pops out to me in bright neon lights as the ONLY possible answer. I think that's why Kinsley was so flabbergasted. The test-makers seemed (to me) to purposely be signaling us away from idealized assumptions by providing an answer that is literally correct.
"The ropes are massless, the pulleys are frictionless, the wires are lossless, the Turing Machine has infinite tape, etc."-- UNLESS what if one of the questions specifically said "the ropes are old and frayed" and then gave the option C of "it's impossible to calculate" AND it's not a math test, but a cognitive-functioning test...
If the problem statement explicitly introduces non-ideal factors, then definitely you are supposed to take those into account.
But I don't see how offering "it's impossible to tell" as one of the possible *answers* is equivalent to that.
If I gave you a standard textbook physics problem involving ropes, never said anything one way or the other about the state of the ropes, and then offered "it's impossible to tell" as one of the multi-choice answers, would you select that answer on the grounds that the idealizing assumptions had not been explicitly articulated? Even if, under the typical ideal assumptions, you could calculate an exact answer?
Yes, if a physics problem included "it's impossible to tell", that seems, to me anyways, as a very obviously reasonable clue that it's the correct answer. Just the inclusion of that answer would be strong evidence that the problem is NOT in fact a "standard textbook physics problem" as none of them typically (or ever) include options like that.
This comment really makes me miss an 'upvote' function.
I really don't like that Randall calls this the hardest puzzle in the world, as it can be solved via inductive reasoning. Now, the knight and knave puzzle by Boolos where there are three creatures (truthful, liar, random) that reply "yes" or "no" in a language you don't know and you have to identify them by asking three questions is hard enough you can't even explain the solution to a stranger in a bar, even less ask them to solve it.
I thought B was the most likely on a 'gut' level since Susan would be far from home, potentially injured, upset, still exposed after the attack and having much more of an obstacle to get somewhere warm and safe potentially with people she knows that can help. Then switched to C when considering the possibility that Janet might feel more lasting anxiety at the feeling of violation close to home.
I'm a pedant, but it seemed natural to me to pick A or B (and A seemed the more likely option, because a hyper-local mugging could shatter the victim's sense of security in and around their home). I think there are two reasons: first, I know that most people are less pedantic than me, and taking the maximally pedantic approach usually leaves me out of step with the world; second, and more specific to this question, if the intended answer was 'C' then the whole exercise would be quite silly. It's blindingly obvious that we don't know for sure which fictional character is more upset; I would only think to answer C if the context in which the question was asked made the 'extremely easy reading comprehension/deductive inference test' interpretation more plausible than 'not-quite-precisely worded empathy/social expectations test'.
I think there's an analogy to the Gricean maxims: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cooperative_principle . If you assume the test-taker isn't trying to waste your time with silly trick questions, you will read the necessary implicit qualifications into the question rather than going with the one that is boringly obvious on a fully-literal reading.
(I do agree that C is obviously correct, though; whether marking it incorrect is itself an error probably depends on what exactly one's score is supposed to show.)
This seems like exactly the kind of survey that you can use to prove anything you want. At minimum, there are two possible ways to interpret the question: as a sociology question ("would most women be more upset about getting mugged close to home ?") or as a logic question ("given the parameters of the problem, and only those parameters, do we have enough information to pick A or B ?").
Color me cynical, but this sounds like one of the (many) reasons for the replication crisis in the social sciences.
Just to be super clear: if this question is from a cognitive assessment test to diagnose Parkinsons, and the response dynamics of Parkinsons populations are dramatically different from the response dynamics of control populations, then it is a good question.
These assessment tests are not arbiters of moral rightness or factual accuracy, they're diagnostic tools with a very specific job to accomplish, and if they accomplish that job well then they're good tools. I wouldn't try to read too much into their contents beyond 'this is what we found to work'.
Who says they derived it from science? Psychology can be taken in an arts degree.
I think the trick is supposed to be the word "just". This makes one of them sound more sensational than the other, and is otherwise incongruous with the style of test questions.
The problem is, the word isn't said by Janet - it's said by the narrator. Had I been asked which one the *narrator* thinks is more upsetting, I'd have answered A, but I (correctly) noticed that the narrator's feelings are not relevant to the question asked and excluded that from consideration.
Something similar to this (with less potential for theorising) would actually make a good way to test how easily people are led astray by unreliable narrators.
One failing of the US healthcare system I do not understand: Why is it so hard to *pay* them?
You'd think the one advantage of a mostly-privatized system would be that they'd make it easy for you to give them money. But it's always incredibly complicated even in simple cases. I have standard health and dental insurance, and whenever I go to get something basic - like a regular checkup or a filling - the doctor's office won't let me pay the copay up front, tell me they'll call the insurance, and call me again or send me a bill in the mail six months later (by which time I've forgotten what it was even about). Why is this? This seems like something they're strongly incentivized to handle efficiently.
> mostly-privatized system
There's your confusion. Nearly everything about the normal medical system is extremely regulated, especially payment. It's my understanding that things are a bit more flexible with concierge medicine, though I'm not sure how true that is.
For most office visits, I show my insurance card and swipe my credit card. I've only had a few weird cases where they send you an invoice 2 months later and then you have to either mail it back, or log on to an online payment system.
Surgery is horrible though. For an outpatient surgery, I payed an up front cost, then I got a bill from the surgeon a month later, a bill from the anesthesiologist a week after that, and then another bill from the surgeon because there was some issue with insurance and the cost ended up being more than expected. I was never told that those other bills were coming and the up front cost was not cheap (it was partially covered by insurance).
If you don't mind answering, what insurance network are you on? I'm curious if this varies between insurers
Cigna
It's absolutely the same with Blue Cross.
Aetna here - and also the same process
Not sure about this, but I think insurance companies have pretty strict rules about when and how you can charge the patient and also the insurance company. For example, you don't want a doctor's office secretly reimbursing the most lucrative patients their copays, so that all those patients choose that doctor and have no incentive not to overspend on care. I think some of these regulations mean that doctors need to carefully document exactly how they're charging patients and make sure it fits insurance company regulations, which might sometimes mean they want to talk to the insurance before they take your money.
Just for comparison, some really big companies are difficult to pay also. I used to work at [very small company] that was acquired by [very large enterprise]. We went from being able to sell our service to people directly with a credit card to having to send prospective customers to a salesperson who worked for a "partner" of [very large enterprise] who could facilitate a transaction (while taking a cut).
Yeah, this has been my experience as well. The larger an institution you're dealing with, the less you'll see money changing hands between individuals. Maybe it just cuts down on the graft potential?
That might be a factor, but I think the biggest reason is "back office software." At many companies, things don't *exist* if they can't easily be plugged into [enterprise management system]. And a lot of those systems are really old (1990s) and extremely difficult to work with - migrations take years and years.
I think it's honestly "it's too expensive to onboard a lot of payors into this system that runs the whole business; let's let smaller partners deal with it and we'll pay them so we don't have to deal with the pain of upgrading."
Most people's insurance at best covers 80% of dental care, but every insurance company may reimburse a different amount for different procedures and they may refuse to reimburse for some procedures altogether. That means a dentist has no idea what to charge you at the time they've seen you. They will bill multiple procedures for one visit and not know which ones will be covered until they actually pay.
Depending on the billing cycle for the dentist and the payment lag of the insurance company, it could take them a month or more to find out what your insurance company paid for your visit and another month to bill you for what's left. If the billing people for the dentist are part-time or inefficient and the insurance company sucks (which many do) that could stretch out to months.
Insurance companies don't get to tell a provider how to bill their patient, but it creates an accounting hassle for the dentist if they charge you what the *think* will be 20% of your bill and later it turns out they have to reimburse you because you overpaid based on what the insurance company actually paid. Cutting checks back to patients is a hassle, particularly if it would have to be done in a majority of instances.
Most insurance plans provide simple co-pays for doctor visits and mental healthcare visits -- like $25 per visit -- and that's regardless of what "procedures" were done. So it's much easier in that situation and those kinds of providers can usually just take payment at the time of the appointment.
Our insurance system is really broken. Speaking as a healthcare provider who owns my own business.
Clarification: when I said above an insurance company doesn't get to tell a provider "how" to bill the patient, I mean literally like when and how they collect payment from a patient. The provider IS required to charge the patient no more than the "contracted rate" for any given procedure.
So my dentist lets me pay my 20% at the time of the visit partly because I was a little pushy about it and I only realized later, being a provider myself though not a dentist, that I was actually making more work for them by wanting to do it that way, and they were essentially doing me a favor by being willing to take my payment knowing that it would have to be corrected later.
> Most people's insurance at best covers 80% of dental care, but every insurance company may reimburse a different amount for different procedures and they may refuse to reimburse for some procedures altogether. That means a dentist has no idea what to charge you at the time they've seen you. They will bill multiple procedures for one visit and not know which ones will be covered until they actually pay.
In my country the first sentence is true but the second and third aren't.
When I go to the dentist the receptionist scans my health care card on the way out, then there's some kind of automated system whereby her computer checks with the health insurance company's computer exactly how much they're going to pay, and within seconds the receptionist tells me the remaining amount that I owe.
This doesn't seem like a complicated system to build.
I'm with you! Yes, seems like should be possible.
My dentist is able to do this mostly too, but I think it's because I'm part of a really big insurance company that the dentist has a lot of experience with and knows my insurance company will reliably pay X amount for Y kind of dental visit. But then some portion of their patients will have smaller or more dysfunctional insurance companies and they can't do that with them. Our system is really really fragmented.
Sometimes I wonder how many of the problems we have in general are because we are still this weird confederation of states. In the state in the U.S. where I live, one of the more common health insurance companies is a non-profit that exists only in my state. That seems cool on the surface, but they're not very well run. Private insurance companies are mostly regulated at the state level, so even though Anthem, say, is a HUGE multi-national insurance company, it is actually Anthem of Iowa or Anthem of Colorado here in the U.S., and all the regulations and procedures overseeing them are covered by state law. What a mess!
I think that's part of why my plan gets so complicated - In principle I have delta dental, which is super common. But my employer's headquartered in Chicago, so I get Delta Dental Illinois insurance, not Delta Dental New York, which is not as common for NYC dentists.
It is a *very* complicated system to build (Source: I work for a company attempting to build it).
Due to various reasons, insurance in the United States is an absolute tangle of regulations and contracts. The cost of a procedure will depend on:
1. the contracted rate between the provider and the insurance (this will vary from provider to provider and insurance to insurance)
2. The contract between the member and the insurance (this will vary from group to group, especially for employer-provided insurance)
3. State and federal regulations (which ought to be reflected in the various contracts, but you better double-check just in case)
4. Other claims the member has made (let's say Susie goes to a doctor on the 15th and the 16th of the month--if her visit on the 15th pushes her above her deductible, but the insurance hasn't been billed yet, then we can't correctly compute what she owes on the 16th)
5. Other insurance the member has, because they can carry multiple insurances and then stuff gets really weird
6. other crap I can't recall right now because I'm still waking up
Note that the contracts and regulations are *dense*, and they change yearly. The administrative burden to keep up with it all is high--none of these databases talk to each other, because nobody thought they would need to when they were first made, and the cost of transferring to a new system is high. And there are legal implications, potentially quite costly, of screwing up ("do not change this code without first consulting a lawyer" is commented liberally throughout our codebase).
As someone who works in healthcare insurance billing: this. Exactly this. We can only guess what insurance will pay, and for a lot of businesses that means they'd rather wait to bill. We try to err on the side of collecting payment up front (because when you send people a bill about 20-30% of the time they won't pay it) but that means we end up overcharging clients sometimes and then we have to sort out refunds. Which is a serious pain.
Some insurance companies (like Premera) have nice websites where you can input a client's ID card info and get a fairly accurate estimate on what Premera will pay. Not a perfect one (sometimes it says they still have money left to pay on their deductible, but by the time the claim reaches Premera the deductible is used up, for instance), but a pretty good one. But we have to regularly deal with about 6 different insurance companies, and they all have different methods of getting an estimate of benefits. Sometimes it means calling on the phone and sitting in a queue for 40 minutes. Sometimes it means navigating a robo-phone tree unti you get the option to have them fax you a benefits estimate. Some companies have a website, but they only give you overall benefits and not up to date details (such as, this client has a $1,500 deductible that may or may not be met, or an out of pocket for the year that may or may not be met). Some companies have a website that works, but only tells you if they're eligible, not what benefits are.
It's a real pain. On the other hand, if you put in the effort there is a lot of money to be made. I can see why a lot of doctors hate dealing with it though.
Our insurance system is a mystery to me as well principally because I was born to a military member in a military hospital and grew up in that system and went into the military myself and now as a retired military member pay a token ($50/mo) for 'everything' if I go to a military facility (which i do almost always and no, this is not VA healthcare). Occasionally I've strayed including for PT post-ACL surgery when going to the mil facility was a pain or for a simple skin issue to a local dermatologist that offered a same day appointment. Both times I was asked "what insurance do you have" but knowing I had no "referral" to a non-military provider, I just asked "What's your best rate for a cash payer?" and was given a number I though very fair and far less than I expected based on what I'd read about the ridiculous fees in some parts of our system. I know I'm highly atypical in this regard but it got me thinking about what a system with basic services provided for free to everyone might look like (like my healthcare) and what the cost of a parallel "private side" might be to augment that. Clearly the highly regulated system of employer provided healthcare isn't doing anything to keep costs down. Yes, I do understand the huge incentives and high pay for health care professionals is both a feature and a bug of the system. Yet, I keep coming back to the healthcare I've received all my life and for which I've paid either nothing or a pittance and thought "hey, it's been pretty good."
Like many other things, insurance is a set of algorithms so horribly complicated that it takes a significant effort to figure out what it would do in any particular case, and very few people are capable of that effort.
We have two identical twins who have the same insurance and who were getting identical therapy from the same provider. One of them was getting charged flat $25 for every visit, but the other one's bills suggest some algorithm that tries to exhaust a deductible and then cover some % of the charge - except this seems to happen more than once per year, so it doesn't make any sense.
You might think it is easy to figure out exactly what's different about the way those identical services were billed. I think this has been going on for over 4 months now, and the only help we could get was the suspension of the bills (for some time, or until they figure out what's going on, or until they can't suspend them anymore).
Now imagine if we had not two identical twins but only one kid. Would anyone even believe that anything was wrong with how those services were billed?
We've given too much power to bad code that nobody understands. Given the speed at which this has been escalating, it's my personal belief that stupid code will probably be the end of us much faster than super-smart AI.
The issue is there are too many third party payors involved between you & the doctor there is not really a pay for services setup with the exception of one or two hospitals.
Any advice on avoiding caffeine tolerance?
I used to be a coffee drinker, then I gave it up and went years without much caffeine. Now I'll have coffee once in a while, and it is *really* nice. I feel happier, friendlier, and more energetic/ The effect is strong, but I know that if I do that every day, my brain will adjust and I'll need coffee just to get back to baseline.
So what's the solution? Only have coffee once a week? Twice a week? Alternate coffee with something else that has a similar effect through a different mechanism?
I don't know much about caffeine tolerance, but it might be interesting to use a random procedure that gets you coffee on average once per some given time period (roll a die, if it lands on a 6 have coffee?). This prevents your brain from getting used to it and sounds kind of fun.
My personal solution to this problem is to alternate between using coffee for a few days and chewing nicotine gum for a few days. That way I never build up a lasting tolerance to either.
I've been having success alternating coffee and Modafinil, I'd love to have variety to break it up further though (that isn't nicotine 😅)
I think of caffeine as borrowing energy/focus from the future to the next few hours. From that perspective it's a zero sum game, except if you steer the low energy phase to your sleep time.
Currently I'm on one cup at waking and one after lunch, and that works pretty OK for me.
Have you tried going half-caffeinated? I've been playing with my amounts lately. When I notice the caffeine isn't having as much of an effect, I'll dilute it a bit more for a week, or even take a day or two off, and then work up gradually again to fuller strength. It gives a lot of flexibility in how much caffeine you're delivering to your system.
Caffeine tolerance wears off pretty quickly, at least in my experience. If I take even one day off of caffeine each week, that dramatically slows how fast I build tolerance, and taking 2-3 days off seems like a complete reset.
I don’t try to regulate so precisely now but I have been successful in the past using coffee at a low steady state - about a third of a cup of strong coffee a day seems to be a good amount that picks me up but doesn’t push me to drink more.
the main issue i have is that if i have a bad nights sleep or something I’ll just drink more than that - and then I’ll need more and then more. Then when it stops being fun I’ll go cold turkey and sleep a 14 hour day.
I agree with you . My approach is to only have coffee a few times a week, with at least 2 or 3 days in between.
I read somewhere that you won't build up a tolerance if you wait until 10am or later to drink your first cup. Something about how the tolerance is caused by interference with your natural wakefulness hormones, which will have subsided by later in the morning. Don't know if that's actually true, but it's what I've tried to do ever since reading that article, and it seems to work really well for me.
https://www.gwern.net/Nootropics#caffeine may be useful
I've been running "one-to-three cups of coffee every day, no coffee every other weekend" for years and it seems to work pretty well. I still have tolerance relative to a non-drinker, but it gets reset to a baseline with just the weekend break. Of course I get withdrawal headaches every other weekend which sucks, but that's why god invented Advil.
My regimen allows serious caffeine two non-adjacent days per calendar week, with an option for nicotine lozenges if I need stimulants on back-to-back days.
But it's not the details of the regimen that matter, but the underlying attitude. If that's "caffeine is great, how can I maximize caffeine greatness, what's the bare minimum I have to go without it", you're probably going to wind up with a caffeine tolerance again on short order. If it's "caffeine is a special treat for rare and appropriate occasions", you'll probably do OK.
Also, get to bed on time. If necessary, cut things out of your life to make sure you get to bed on time.
Wow, thanks so much for all the replies. I don't use tobacco or modafinil, but besides those ideas, it looks like many of you are suggesting that I just take off a few days between each dose (or take off a couple days to reset after multi-day usage). Too bad, though as John Schilling pointed out, I need to just think of it as a special treat to have once or twice a week. (JS, since you asked, my sleep is fine.)
I drink coffee for the taste and the good mood; the wired energy is just a bonus and not point for me. For a while I only drank coffee maybe once or twice a week. But then I found a good decaff. So now I drink coffee anywhere from 2-5 times per week, alternating decaff and regular on thoughtful whims. i.e. if i drink regular 3 days in a row, I probably won't have anymore that week. Or if I drink decaff for 3 days, maybe the next day I'll have regular.
A couple weeks ago I posted here (and in some other places) some questions about the feasibility and best practices of developing friendships online. Here are some insights on the topic based on my "research" (and a surprise startup pitch at the very end):
ON ONLINE FRIENDSHIPS
Epistemics
I like friends who aren't inconvenienced easily. Some people are inconvenienced easily. They like things a certain way. They don’t like to have their routine disrupted. And they have every right to be that way. It’s just that they are unlikely to be my friends. Tragic loss for them, I know.
If I had a primary filter for friendships, this would be it. I know people whose primary filters are political, or aesthetic, or financial, or intellectual. They all make sense to me.
As you may intuit from my primary filter, my definition of friendship veers toward the romantic, or religious. I demand some level of sacrifice without accounting. If a friend shows up at midnight on my doorstep, unannounced, it’s a blessing.
I would assume that these values are becoming a bit antiquated today, but I don’t know, I haven’t done the research. Anyway, enough about me.
The Question
We’re all spending more and more time online - it seems about an hour/day more every decade. It’s not crazy that a cyberpunk virtual monopoly on our time will become the standard within the next couple of decades. If not for us, then for our kids and grandkids. So I was wondering, what will this do to friendships...
Continued at https://www.protopiac.com/post/on-on-line-friendships
Interesting stuff. And it caught me surprise that the reasons behind your primary filter are spiritual, since my first thoughts were all centered on things like brain chemistry, energy availability, physicalized introversion triggers (like hyper-sensitivities)...
Of course the knowledge that someone who don't pass your filter may indeed share your values doesn't mean squat if your aesthetic criteria are not met by that someone, right?
(I absolutely adore the idea of being the type of person who loves friends showing up at my house without warning, but I've had to learn to accept that my limited energy streams just don't allow it.)
None of my insights actually help with the spiritual part... While I'm tempted to say that it would be borne out through experience (E), I'm not excluding the possibility of having a filter that would select for those types of interests (I). But as I was doing the exploration, I lost some interest in the self-serving angle and became more interested in the mechanics and possible tech solutions to the problem.
>I demand some level of sacrifice without accounting. If a friend shows up at midnight on my doorstep, unannounced, it’s a blessing.
I both can't understand what you mean here and I really can't simulate a worldview that would believe this. You're saying that if Johnny (or whomever) shoes up at 12:00 a.m. on a Tuesday you'd consider that a positive development to your day?
Yes. That is exactly what I am saying. In fact, as I read your question, a part of me got excited that Johnny is going to show up (unannounced). And I don't even know a Johnny.
That said, the rest of the article doesn't address my particular (or peculiar) preferences.
Ok - still confused. What in any way shape or form gets you excited about this? Have you ever actually had it happen? It's normally pretty shitty.
I'm thinking pretty hard. Over the course of my life I've had... 6 people show up at my door unexpectedly between the hours of 11 p.m. and 4 a.m. (not counting people arriving at parties or other social gatherings at which people joining would be expected).
One of those instances was a crush of mine coming to announce they had mutually positive feelings for me. That was a fun night. The other five were all people who were chemical impaired and in the midst of some truly terrible situations and needed help. The two most exciting were "I'm currently running from the cops" and "I left the house because I thought I was going to kill my husband."
5/6 of these events were incredibly tiring and stressful situations to deal with. Talking drunk people down from the ledge isn't a fun pastime. What specifically about this situation excites you? Is it just unexpected social interaction? Do you really, really love helping people who are incredibly messed up?
Sorry if it seems like I'm badgering you, it's just that I find this really confusing. It's as if you said "I enjoy having sandwiches knocked out of my hand as I'm trying to eat" or anything else that's universally considered bad.
Ok. You've clearly had a very statistically significant trend of "negative" late night visitor experiences. So, the simplest way to help you map my world view is to imagine that you had 6 out of 6 positive late-night friend visitor experiences. It's not impossible, right?
The next line of reasoning is more dependent on age. 30 years ago, before cell phones, "dropping in" on somebody was much more common. There were even cliches like "I was in the area, so I thought I'd drop in." Today, this is odd because it's both impractical not to call/text ahead of time, and also much more likely to be considered rude/weird. But if my value system was already being developed 30 years ago, you might see how it did so different social norms.
I had a small experience in August that I could relate. I was visiting an old friend and we were in the back yard, BBQing and drinking beers. Around 11pm, a new face appeared. It was a neighbor from down the street. He said he heard music and came by (and brought his own beer). This was a very "small" event, but to me it stuck out as a wholesome breath of fresh air. The freedom of just showing up signals a combination of trust, informality, and conviviality that's often lacking in more modern friendships. It also introduces an unpredictability to life that's been "scheduled out". Personally, I often equate unpredictability to adventure, but I know it's not that way for everybody.
None of this make the experiences you listed any less unpleasant.
Ok, I get it. I'm biased towards believing that "anyone showing up after midnight is a massive hassle" and projected that bias when you said these kind of events excited you, but you weren't talking about those kinds of events.
Cool. I appreciate your perspective, thanks for engaging with me to help me get clarity.
See, the interesting thing about my thought process is that I would 1) love it if the situation with the neighbor happened to me and 2) would absolutely _never_ dream of doing that to someone else, in case that person felt differently. This is a common thread for me, where there are lots of things that, if a friend did/asked me to do etc., I would have no problem accommodating, would not feel any resentment, and in fact would be happy to help, but that I could never imagine imposing on a friend the same way. I realize the inherent contradiction, but I can't help the emotional response of "never impose on others unless you _absolutely have to_, but also be happy to help when imposed upon.
You can ask all of your friends if any of them enjoy being imposed upon. If any of them say yes, you can try to practice on them, and see how it goes. What if... it totally blows your mind!!!!
Not really related to your project, but in my experience (born in USSR, moved from Russia to the US as a teenager, have a PhD in math, work in an industrial research position), the closest I've come to the romanticized ideal of the Soviet-style friendship with dropping in on people unannounced at midnight was in high school at nerd camps, and as a college undergraduate. ("Dropping in" consisted of walking down the hall in the first case, and across campus in the second.) There was less of it for me as a graduate student (although I think that's accidental and it could've peaked in graduate school for some people), and dramatically less afterwards, not least because most everyone (myself included) had paired up and moved off campus. The question of how to have something approximating the community and camaraderie of a college undergraduate while living a standard-issue adult life with a husband, child, dog, and an 8-5 job is certainly interesting; the romanticized Soviet-style platonic ideal of friendship managed somehow. (Although according to my mother, overcoming the common adversity of daily life in the USSR was a large part of the experience for her.)
As a fellow soviet alum, it's nice to hear your story. While those relationships are more rare these days, I refuse to believe they are not impossible. Partially, the problem is of "standard-issue" (it just so happens that tightknit friendships were a part of the Soviet standard-issue). But if you have friends - even "standard issue" friends - who love you, then go ahead and surprise drop in on them. You'll make their week, if not month, if not year. (And maybe it's time that you left your husband to hold the fort for 24-72 hours. Sorry, I have no idea if your husband deserved that.)
not impossible = not possible
I think part of the difference between my experience and my parents' (on which I'm basing my romanticized notions) is that, by my age, they had lived in one city their entire lives; I've lived in six. (I've definitely at times felt like I'm better at friendship by correspondence than at friendship in person.) I have good friends from all six periods, but (a) the ones in my city are the newest ones, and (b) I don't have many friends who are also friends with each other. I think having your friends also be friends with each other might actually be important to the project, not least because it makes it easier to interact with them more frequently; that feels like it was an important part of the success of my undergraduate experience.
Suppose that you own a business and you have a choice of either hiring a robot or a human. The expected worker turnover rate is 10 years and the robot also breaks down after 10 years. The nominal salary and the annualized cost of the robot are the same. So which do you chose? The answer is the robot - due to taxes. Capital is a business expenditure, you can deduct it from your tax burden. A human on the other hand incurs payroll taxes and income tax (and some others as well).
Much has been said about the declining share of labor relative to capital (in general, but particularly low skill labor). But I've never seen anyone comment on the fact that our tax system explicitly incentives businesses to choose capital over labor whenever possible. Is this is a good thing - an incentive to automate where possible? Or is it an economic inefficiency? Or both?
You deduct the robot's purchase price bit by bit, over the life of the robot. That's what depreciation is. The capital investment and depreciation are not two separate things that you get to deduct.
> Although we all unfortunately depreciate over time, I don't believe any tax code allows depreciation of their human workforce to be written off.
Although human bodies do age and break down, people tend to become *more* valuable as employees as they gain experience and knowledge over the course of their careers (though this trend breaks down when you get close to retirement age). Someone who has 1 year of job experience typically earns less and produces less valuable work than someone with 10 years of job experience, but a 10-year-old CNC machine is almost never more valuable than a brand new CNC machine.
I've seen people say this - it's one argument I've seen brought up against both income taxes and the employer-sponsored healthcare system
The worker's wages are also deductible. Basically any money that you spend in order to make money is deductible.
The overall cost of the worker is still more. The incentive to chose the robot remains.
As others have stated, depreciation makes buying a robot less advantageous given your scenario. The US tax code is extremely favorable to hiring and investment more broadly.
I’m confused. The robot depreciates to a value of zero over ten years. All of that is tax deductible. The human is paid an amount equal to that of the robot over ten years (with the same deduction) and then leaves. So far things are even - I’m assuming they both do the same job for those ten years. Add in payroll and income tax and that makes the human more expensive, not to mention healthcare, social security tax and more. Where’s the mistake?
You just need to google this. There’s a whole bunch of IRS guidance on how assets get depreciated. My strong guess would be that a robot isn’t any different than a milling machine. Depreciation is the robot tax consideration to compare the human tax considerations against. Depreciation isn’t mentioned in your post so that’s your biggest mistake.
Corporations get to write off all the employee expenses in the current tax year. Every year. That’s very tax advantageous.
Also, employee payroll (besides the 7.5% Social Security contribution) and income taxes are irrelevant to the corporation’s tax burden. Those fall on the employee.
Seta did mention depreciation, indirectly. "Capital is a business expenditure, you can deduct it from your tax burden."
but are we specifically looking at the incentives due to taxes? the OP seems to be narrowly looking at if this incentive is mostly due to taxes. overall cost I assume includes somethings which are not taxes.
A robot. If all things are equal (I suppose payroll taxes are included in this calculation), the robot is probably more predictable. It can break down but the probably has a service agreement with the manufacturer. Whereas a human may quit, get sick, go on strike to demand better pay or otherwise sabotage your business. Also, employment costs can be expected to rise while the technology costs tend to decrease over time or getting better for the same price.
I don't understand the premise of your argument. *Businesses* don't pay payroll taxes, income taxes, or corporate income taxes. Businesses are merely pass-through devices that assign those charges to various human beings, id est payroll taxes and income taxes are paid by the worker, sales and corporate income taxes are paid by the customers. Every businessman knows the true total cost of an employee is a certain percentage higher than his take home salary, and every employee knows his "true" salary (what gets put in the bank that he gets to spend) is only a percentage of his nominal gross salary. Some business make an explicit note of the sales tax that is inherent in the their final selling price, but in other cases they do not, and in any event they almost never give more than the tax on the final transaction, they don't give a complete accounting of all the taxes paid, e.g. sales taxes on the raw materials, payroll taxes for the employees who made the widget or provide the service.
Anyway, there is a very good reason (from labor's point of view) for tax policy to favor capital investment: because it makes labor more efficient, and rising productivity is the *only* way real wages can rise over time -- each hour you work has to actually produce more widgets, so that the real value of your labor (measured in widgets) goes up. Capital investment, e.g. technology, is the only way that can happen.
What business are you in where worker turn over (for the same task) is 10 years?
Obviously it's a spherical and frictionless business that sells widgets at the optimal point along the supply-demand curve :)
Assume that the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics is true. According to it, Nature is inherently probabilistic; it is only until a measuring device (not necessarily a human) makes a quantitative measurement of X that X can be said to have that measure. Does anyone know whether all the results of measurements are due to the foundational random generator of Nature? And if this is true, then does this mean that our actions are not ultimately determined or free but random?
It is my impression that this is more-or-less how quantum mechanics is supposed to be interpreted. However I am unsure about how much quantum physics relates to whether our actions or free or not (although I am inclined to think that, metaphysically, none of our actions are free; also see https://arxiv.org/pdf/2101.07884.pdf for a description of how the deepest underlying physics of everyday phenomena has been essentially completely characterized).
I believ it doesn't really matter if the underlying dynamics are governed by classical chaotic systems or quantum randomness, both could mean our actions are not "determined", but neither will provide "freedom" in a meaningful way. If there is "free will", it is to be found on another level of abstraction.
Thanks for the link. I watched a similar lecture by Sean years ago and have forgotten most of what he said.
> Assume that the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics is true.
I think you should check out this recent blog post by Scott Aaronson, "The Zen Anti-Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics": https://www.scottaaronson.com/blog/?p=5359
His position (which I agree with) is:
> I hold that all interpretations of [quantum mechanics] are just crutches that are better or worse at helping you along to the Zen realization that QM is what it is and doesn’t need an interpretation. As Sidney Coleman famously argued, what needs reinterpretation is not QM itself, but all our pre-quantum philosophical baggage—the baggage that leads us to demand, for example, that a wavefunction |ψ⟩ either be “real” like a stubbed toe or else “unreal” like a dream.
Thanks for the pointer; I'd missed this post of Aaronson's. Bonus: he links to an apparent debunking of the claim that RSA is broken:
https://twitter.com/inf_0_/status/1367376526300172288
I'll check it out. For anyone who is interested, here's an interesting comment I just found on a video ("Chris Langan - How Free Will Works - CTMU") about free will:
> You still can't escape the logical limits on individual choice that most people would instinctively reject as "free will" if you pointed them out to them. We each inherit our genetics and epigenetics, which have massive influence on everything we do or think. Our environment is set for us the moment our primordial fertilization occurs. The large-scale structures of the human body are generated by our genetics and environmental input, and the environment itself is structured without our influence, at least initially. The large-scale structures obey Newtonian mechanics and are thus deterministic, and that's where it ends. However, if you try to work around that by suggesting that there may be quantum events that are not deterministic, and the outcome of that event is amplified into a thought or action, then the implication that our actions are not they themselves deterministic may be correct. However, this doesn't escape the problem at base, because the quantum event itself is purely random. The wave function describing a series of quantum events is deterministic in aggregate, but the individual event's outcome along that aggregate distribution is quintessentially unpredictable, regardless of whether or not you can add intervening layers of probabilistic descriptions of an outcome. Fundamentally, the only logically possible categories are events that are predetermined, completely random, or random within given limits that they themselves are predetermined. This is the "automaticity" Langan refers to here when discussing coordination that occurs "automatically" during our free will process, and the "automaticity" is what people have no control over ultimately. However, because this automaticity is the basis of every conscious act of will, and it itself is subject to these logical restrictions, one can see how our acts of free will are really nothing more than amplifications of quantum events which they themselves are random. Is this free will? The only sense in which it is free is that the origination comes from within the bounds of your physical body, but that doesn't make it any less subject to the predictability of mathematics and the randomness of the universe. It is in this sense that one cannot, ultimately, take full credit for one's own actions in the sense that everything we are, do, and even will does not come from anything that is not ultimately predetermined or random, because even if you amplify a quantum event through a series of ever-increasing structures of bodily organization that channel the outcome of the event into an increased probability of a certain kind of outcome, the chain of causation itself still remains arbitrary and random at base.
I don't really like the free will debate because I think it tends to focus on a meaningless question (is the made-up term "free will" compatible with the universe we live in?) while ignoring a meaningful distinction (to what degree are a person's actions free from coercion in a given situation?). There is a meaningful difference between someone committing premeditated murder because of a personal grudge, vs. a child soldier being forced at gunpoint to kill someone. The murderer's choice was "free" in a way that the child soldier's wasn't. You could even imagine a third scenario where someone was knocked unconscious and physically manipulated into pulling a trigger to kill someone. All three scenarios have the common feature that they occur in a world governed by the laws of physics, but there are very good reasons to treat the cases differently in our legal system, in our personal judgements, and in how we want to structure society. Teasing apart the nuances of coercion is difficult (e.g. what if the murderer had a brain tumor that impaired higher cognitive functions?) and how we make those judgements can deeply affect our lives. I don't think our approach to these issues should be contingent on whether we live in a universe governed by Newtonian mechanics, quantum randomness, divine predestination, or ineffable metaphysical entities.
> All three scenarios have the common feature that they occur in a world governed by the laws of physics, but there are very good reasons to treat the cases differently in our legal system . . .
Right, I agree; but the practical component and the purely intellectual component of these discussions seem to be at odds with one another when one is trying to comes to terms with either component. Practically, a society can have any set of laws of a huge number of possible laws (arguing about which is best is the task, some would say, of ethics); whereas the Universe has one set of ultimate principles worth discovering. It's worthless (or so I think) for a society to use the laws of physics to determine its law, just as it's equally worthless for scientists to keep in mind the practical consequences of the laws they're trying to discover. But my original question is more about determining the actual state of the second component; it's what I want to know about, not so that it can influence me or help me influence society, but so that I have more knowledge of the foundation of reality.
> just as it's equally worthless for scientists to keep in mind the practical consequences of the laws they're trying to discover
I don't mean this to be as cold-hearted as it seems; of course there are situations where a scientist wants to be concerned about the practical implications of his discoveries. What I meant (in the specific context of free will) is that the pure scientist should not be worried about the consequences of his discoveries, because regardless of the discoveries, it's not going to change the fact that societies shouldn't - and won't - simply adduce the laws of physics to make their legal system a self-destructive or foolish system. They will (usually) have a complex system designed around higher-level concepts such as justice, fairness, etc. (But perhaps that is a naively positive view of the humanity and its use of science.)
> Does anyone know whether all the results of measurements are due to the foundational random generator of Nature?
Which experiments? In theory, you should be still able to approximate determinism using large, non-chaotic systems. In practice, whatever was predictable before is still predictable -- it adds up to normality.
I think you're over-interpreting the Copenhagen interpretation. It says nothing about what actually is true about a system, it only says what can be measured, and it says for systems in a state which is not an eigenstate of the operator corresponding to what you want to measure, you cannot know what the value of the measurement is before you make it -- that is, you cannot *predict* it. But does the system, nevertheless, have some value just before you measure it that is equal to the value you measure? Current science has no answer to that question, because we have no way of knowing anything without a measurement, or a trajectory -- meaning some 100% reliable theoretical way of connecting a measurement *in the past* with the result of a measurement in the present. Unfortunately a fundamental property of QM is that classical trajectories (those with just one path from past to future) are the exception, not the rule, and in most cases don't exist.
That is, what QM says is you cannot *predict* the value of some measurements in the present, even with all possible information about the past. That is not the same thing as saying the system does not have *some* value at all possible times.
A classic example would be measurement of the location of a bound particle (say an electron in an atom) which is in an energy eigenstate. We cannot predict its exact position at a given time, all we can predict is the probability of it being various places (the usual wavefunction you see graphed). Of course, when we actually measure its position, we do get a specific position, as precisely as we wish -- we see a particle at a specific location. *Every* time we measure the position, we get a specific answer. What happens in between measurements? Does the particle "have" a specific position, or not? Again, current science cannot answer this question, because QM cannot predict a precise position at time X given any number of measurements at earlier times. It's possible that's a weakness of the theory, of course, but no one has come up with a better theory.
Carl Pham: You asked “But does the system, nevertheless, have some value just before you measure it”? That sounds like a hidden-variable theory, and it has been proven (the Bell inequality) to be false. Unless you want to allow for faster than light travel or some implausible explanation.
Aggregated random processes don't necessarily result in a random process. We can see this obviously with, say, organic evolution. Point mutations can effectively change any base pair to any other, but due to constraints thanks to embryology and other factors, all mutations can't be expressed, and ones that can be but don't confer any reproductive advantage won't necessarily be passed on. That greatly simplifies the process, but point being the end result is much more predictable than the underlying cause.
With animal action, at some quantum level, maybe a random fluctuation (if the universe is truly fundamentally random at that level) can cause some ion in an ion channel in a neuronal membrane to bounce a few degrees more than can be accounted for by electromagnetism alone, but it would take many, many such random events occurring at the same time and in a correlated way so as not to cancel each other out to measurably impact action potential across a synapse and thus possibly influence behavior. The net result in terms of muscle movement is no less random than if the universe had no randomness in it at all.
Sorry if this is too random/off-topic but are there any martial artists in this community? I've been practicing Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu for about 2 years now, but am thinking of quitting because I've been hearing a lot of anecdotal stories lately of BJJ athletes having strokes at young ages, possibly due to the chokes putting pressure on arteries in the neck. So I'm trying to look for another martial art to switch to. Looking for something fun and involving a good cardio workout, but without any long-term negative impact to health. Does anyone have any recommendations?
Huh. Never heard of those anecdotes, and I've been doing BJJ for 18 years now. If the stories involve pro athletes, you should consider that a) they're doing a LOT more training than most hobbyists, and b) they're probably juicing as well.
Regarding recommendations: "without any long-term negative impact" rules out all full-contact sports, because they will either cause direct damage or wear and tear. Many of the non-competitive "martial-artsy" disciplines like Aikido are out as well - not much of a cardio workout to be had there. It might sound stupid, but if you find a boxing or kickboxing gym that lets you practice without sparring (or with only very light contact sparring), that might be worth a try.
Capoiera is a lot of fun (probably less of a “serious” martial art than Jiu Jitsu), and if you’re in a region with a significant Brazilian population you should be able to find a rhoda.
Came here to post this. Capoeira is tons of fun, on the spectrum of being more low-impact and arguably even better cardio than BJJ.
Thirding Capoeira being a lot of fun. It also has the benefit of having a lot less mysticism and authoritarian structures than eastern martial arts, although there is still hierarchy in it a lot of the structure of classes and actually playing Capoeira encourages mixing of ranks.
Totally! IMO it's one of the few disciplines where sparring between people of vastly different skills can be rewarding for both parties. I've seen super fun games between absolute masters and people who can only really ginga.
Capoeira is great, but be sure to take good care of you joints!
Many avid BJJ practitioners in the community. Have never heard the stories of young strokes. You should see if these are actually statistically significant before giving up a beloved hobby. Lots of people have strokes, athletes on gear especially.
And if the problem is regular application of chokes, either get better or tap sooner (or both).
Judo is a lot of fun, has a lot in common with Jujutsu, but focuses more on standing throws and techniques. It does also include ne waza, but applications of joint locks and chokes are rare in actual tournaments.
The criteria of Good workout + lifetime sport is tough to find in contact sports. Maybe kickboxing/muah Thai/karate but without hard sparring?
Cynically I think competitive BJJ players are having strokes because there’s a culture of being juuuuuuiccccy and the sauce isn’t good for your heart.
Basically every martial art is less chokey than BJJ, it's generally understood that choking someone out is extremely dangerous and unpredictable as to consequences in all of human society *except* BJJ practitioners, who insist it's perfectly safe. Switch to literally anything.
My personal suggerstion would be for Wudang/Practical Tai Chi Chuan, the TCC that caves your face in. It's obscure and so it's very likely there might not be a club where you are, but if there is, do that.
That's an interesting statement. Allow me to paraphrase: "This activity is considered dangerous by everyone except the people who do it every day and observe no negative effects. Obviously, these people are idiots, and you should not do it." Could there be other explanations, maybe?
No, not really. You're deliberately simplifying the issue by eliding the extensive actual information available on this topic from myriad sources (possibly due to BJJ-related brain damage? /s). I didn't write "all other martial artists, who are feebs by implication, and only speculating", I wrote *all of human society*, because that's what I meant. There is ample data to confirm the dangers of choking and the unpredictable but potentially grave effects of brain oxygen deprivation. This is like if there were a subculture of chicken-race enthusiasts who insisted that car crashes are "not observed harmful" and claimed that "we've never seen anything like that". Any sane person regards such testimony with skepticism, to put it mildly.
Okay, the last time I looked into the topic was a couple of years ago, when the consensus was that when a choke is done to a healthy individual, in a competent manner, and let go quickly, it is safe and leaves no lasting damage. That was supported by various studies and the experience from roughly a century of judo competion. I now found some stories from the last years that indicate that strokes may be triggered by chokes occasionally, so it would be at least be worthwhile to study this systematically, collect statistics, and be aware of the possibility. Still not a reason to freak out (compared to, say, the dozen or so people who die of brain injuries after boxing matches each year).
I've had to quit temporarily due to time pressures, but I can recommend HEMA. It's definitely heavy cardio if you make it and fun in a way a lot of other martial arts aren't (even if that's mostly because of the expensive toys you're playing with). Technically I'm not sure how to rate it on health impacts, obviously injuries have the potential to be much worse, but realistically the most common injury is heatstroke, followed by ankle injuries from poor form. It also has the added advantage of your increasing skill over the years being able to offset any losses from physicality that comes with aging. Longsword clubs are easy enough to find, especially in America, though I personally prefer singlesword systems.
Freedom of speech - what does it mean?
I've read quite often the slogan "Freedom of speech does not mean freedom from consequences", but that seems poorly thought-out, because in a sense, that's what it should mean.
"You're free to say what you want, but if we don't like it, we will abduct you and your family and torture you to death. But hey, freedom of speech doesn't mean freedom from consequences, amirite?"
...doesn't quite work for me.
"You're free to say what we want, but if we don't like it, we will scream at you what a terrible person you are and that you should burn in hell, and we will pester your employer to fire you and your prospective employers to never give you a job ever again. But hey, freedom of speech doesn't mean freedom from consequences, amirite?"
...still seems wrong.
"You're free to say what you want, but you should consider how it reflects on us, your employer/ teammates/ friends, and if we find it completely inacceptable, we may have to cut you loose to preserve our own reputation. But hey, freedom of speech doesn't mean freedom from consequences, amirite?"
...seems kinda reasonable. But is it really? Where should you draw the line between 2 and 3? Should you draw it somewhere else? Should the fact that there's a mob of obviously loony fanatics raging on twitter influence the reaction of employers, coworkers, friends?
Should freedom of speech apply to general statements that may or may not hurt someones feelings? Should it also apply to personal attacks, bullying etc? Whose right, and whose duty, is it to "hold others accountable" for objectionable statements?
I've explained my position on this at https://slatestarcodex.com/2017/08/01/is-it-possible-to-have-coherent-principles-around-free-speech-norms/
That's quite helpful, thanks!
Is it helpful? He admits "I don’t know if this position is coherent" in the piece itself.
Freedom of speech as a legal concept only applies to the government.
Thus any non government agent can react in any way that isn't illegal for other reasons as a response to any speech.
"You're free to say what we want, but if we don't like it, we will scream at you what a terrible person you are and that you should burn in hell, and we will pester your employer to fire you and your prospective employers to never give you a job ever again. But hey, freedom of speech doesn't mean freedom from consequences, amirite?"
The government cannot prevent individuals from doing that, this response to peoples speech is protected by freedom of speech.
Do you think freedom of speech *should* be a guiding principle of a free society, no matter whether it is right now?
Also, states generally impose limits on the freedom of speech, and they draw the lines in different places. Screaming at someone that they should burn in hell may be legally protected free speech in the US, but it might be considered an illegal insult, or constitute illegal harrassment, in other countries.
I think governments are likely to fulfill that role badly.
The places i choose to be tends to be reasonably far in the free speech direction. While the speech norms are informal and a by product of the people there.
I think there's a big difference between 'make speech more free' as a guiding heuristic, and 'free speech is an absolute, inviolable right.'
Take two otherwise identical cultures, and the one where speech is 1% freer is likely better off. But that doesn't mean that the country with 100% free speech (defined in the most extreme and absolutist way possible) is better off than the country with 80% free speech, or 60% or w/e.
If free speech is recognized as a public good that we should value, then we can makes sensible trades with it against other values. If we treat it as an absolutist right, then we can only ever either enforce it or abandon it. Both of those choices have real bad consequences, and the arguments over when to do which create massive strife and elide actual productive discussion of the object-level issues.
I think you mean, the first amendment of the U.S. constitution constrains the federal government, and through an amendment (14th?) state and local governments. The liberal principle of free speech was the motivation for creating the 1st amendment, but is not identical to it.
yes i mean the legal concept of freedom of speech, not the philosophical freedom of speech.
Freedom of speech as a legal concept, though, is a small part of freedom of speech as an overall societal value. A society with legal freedom of speech but without the societal value of freedom of speech is barely better off than a society without freedom of speech at all; perhaps worse off.
I think there is enough disagreement about what exactly is contained in the societal value of freedom of speech that one needs to be careful with the concept to not create sloppy thinking.
The shared name with the legal concept is especially problematic in this regard.
"Freedom of speech" when used as a non legal concept seems to mean a some mixture of many societal values (that depend subtly on the person using it) and it is often useful to go down to those building blocks rather than discuss "freedom of speech"
Melvin, can you say more what freedom of speech looks like concretely to you beyond the legal meaning -- what actions would tell you that freedom of speech is being held up as an overall societal value?
I'd say that freedom of speech as a societal value isn't a binary that you either have or don't, it's a set of cultural habits that societies may have to greater or lesser degrees. The key question is: when people hear speech that they find disagreeable, how do they react?
It would take superhuman powers of tolerance to respond with a cheery wave and a Voltaire quote to every possible thing that someone might say, regardless of how offensive and in-your-face they may be about it. It's natural that once someone starts spouting opinions of the form "We should totally just kill all the..." that most of us are going to have second thoughts about inviting them to our next dinner party.
The trouble is that there's only a lot of different shades of grey between that point and the current point where you've got mobs who work by every possible means to destroy the livelihoods and careers of people who say things that may actually be the majority opinion.
So I don't know where the dividing line is between "good societal free-speech norms" and "cancel culture hellhole" actually lies, but I am fairly confident of which side of the line we're currently on.
Hmm, that's not true. The first amendment in the USA only applies to the government. Freedom of speech is a related, and much grander, concept, encompassing more than just government action, and is not just in the US of A.
"Freedom of speech does not mean freedom from consequences" has always been a pet peeve of mine, because I have no idea what "freedom" means if it doesn't mean "freedom from consequences".
When people say "freedom of religion", they really mean #3: your employer/teammates/friends should respect your religion and not hold it against you, even if the religion contains views that you find offensive. I've found it hard to come up with a reason "freedom of speech" should mean anything different.
I think the reality is that most people *don't* believe in freedom of speech in general, but rather than admitting it, they simply redefine "freedom" or "speech" so that it matches their beliefs. Freedom of government restrictions on speech is a popular view (i.e. redefining "freedom" to be government restrictions), and "freedom to express any thesis in a reasoned argument" seems popular in the gray tribe (i.e. redefining "speech" to be reasoned arguments).
I think it's perfectly consistent to say you believe in freedom of speech without thinking that you have to graciously accept everything that anyone says. If I break up with a boyfriend because he constantly tells me I'm a useless POS, I don't think that means I'm violating his right to free speech, legally or ethically.
And I don't think everyone means that freedom of religion means everyone has to respect your religion. It may be used that way in some cases, but often it's used purely in the legal sense, or in the sense that I'll respect your religion as long as it respects me.
Like any other freedom, freedom of speech isn't absolute: it doesn't overwrite your freedom whom to date, or to be free from harassment.
I would argue that freedom of religion *does* require social norms on respecting each others' choice of religion. Many of these norms are codified into US law, for example, employers cannot discriminate or discipline based on religion. Outside of law, I feel there are strong norms not to publicly shame people for their religion, or refuse to work with people based on their religion. I believe these are all essential elements to a society where free exercise of religion is practical, and that's why I believe in a broader definition of "freedom" than "freedom from government action".
Because freedom of speech and freedom of religion are legal concepts under the 1st amendment in the U.S., I find it's helpful to distinguish when we're talking about the 1st amendment and when we're talking about our preferences for present-day social norms.
Both freedom of religion and freedom of speech are using the word "freedom" to mean freedom from government oppression -- that's not a new redefinition; that was the original meaning codified in our country's rather oddly specific history. Those freedoms were obviously central to why we wound up over here as a country. At the time, the main concern WAS government interference and freedom from it, rather than freedom from your neighbor's non-criminal behavior.
There is no point at which freedom of religion meant your teammates/friends should not hold your religion against you. Your employer may be a different case because of employment law as it relates to protected groups. If having the respect of your friends and neighbors is your view of what freedom of religion is, you are paving new ground.
Freedom does mean freedom from consequences -- just the ones that the government might otherwise commit against us -- not all consequences everywhere. The line that "freedom of speech doesn't mean freedom from consequences" I think is a response to people getting really offended at being called racist or sexist or other mean names for things they might say. It sounds clever and snarky, but it's somewhat confusing.
Of course, it's been true forever that social shunning and shaming has gone on in response to people's stated views and has been aimed at different groups of people in different time periods. And it's always led some groups of people to feel threatened and frustrated about having to be vigilant about their behavior in order to not run afoul of current social norms and their consequences.
The fact that employers -- who have disparate power over their employees -- get to add to the consequences of social shaming and shunning by firing someone for their non-work behavior is also not new. Anyone who grew up in company towns knew they might lose their job merely for not going to church often enough or quietly voicing an idea unappealing to management. The solution to that problem in my mind is labor law reform, employment contracts, and stronger unions. I don't think that problem can be solved at the level of first amendment law.
Social media has made these mob trends more visible and speedy, but they aren't new. The fact that the public square is owned by several large corporations is also not entirely new, though I get that a lot of it feels quite new to a few generations of us who didn't grow up in company towns or who don't have the libertarian bent to remember that freedom from government interference was what was meant by freedom for most of our history.
I definitely agree it's helpful to be clear whether one is talking about 1st amendment rights, other legal protections, or "freedom" in the general sense of "unconstrained". To clarify my position, I argue that when someone says "freedom", it's referring to the general sense of "unconstrained", unless there's context implying otherwise (such as in legal discussions). I think using "freedom" to only mean "freedom from government action" is shortchanging "freedom" far too much. I'm certainly not the first to have the perspective: in J.S. Mill's writings on freedom of speech, he specifically called out "social tyranny" as a major obstacle.
As evidence for a broad interpretation, "freedom of speech" is often used in contexts where there are no legal issues at stake. When universities talk about "free speech on campus", they're not referring to 1st amendment rights or Civil Rights Act violations; they're referring to social norms around allowing others to express controversial opinions.
> If having the respect of your friends and neighbors is your view of what freedom of religion is, you are paving new ground.
I do argue that social norms around free choice of religion are an important part of "freedom of religion". Without social norms, freedom of religion is *de jure* and not *de facto*. These norms certainly exist in the US, with violators being accused of "bigotry". Indeed, some of these norms have been encoded into law through the Civil Rights Act, which makes religion a protected class (as you mentioned with respect to employers). If we removed these laws and norms yet kept the 1st amendment, I think it'd be fair to say freedom of religion has eroded.
As for the rest, I agree with what you write on shaming, employers, and social media.
Luke G, this is all really well said, thank you for taking the time to say it.
> I have no idea what "freedom" means if it doesn't mean "freedom from consequences".
You can have freedom from official repurcusions, even if you can't have freedom from unofficial censure, or the laws of physics.
>When people say "freedom of religion", they really mean #3: your employer/teammates/friends should respect your religion and not hold it against you, even if the religion contains views that you find offensive.
This just feels really ahistorical and culturally myopic to me... as if there haven't been official state religions, as if governments haven't outlawed religions, as if people haven't been tortured or genocided by their governments because of their religions.
It seems really clear to me that redefining 'freedom' to be 'freedom from social consequences' rather than 'legal protection' is a modern invention, only made possible by a government that is so friendly and non-oppressive that people can't even really imagine needing to be protected from it.
Sorry, to clarify, I meant that "freedom of religion" usually implies *all* of #1-3: both legal and social norms around free exercise of religion. My argument is that freedom of government restriction is only one aspect of freedom: the social norms are important too (and indeed in the case of religion, are legally enforced in many cases such as employment).
1 and 2 don’t rely on freedom of speech as a legal concept, but on the fact that there already are laws prohibiting kidnapping, torture, murder, and harassment. There are also some existing laws relevant to #3, that make no reference to free speech, but make a distinction between legitimate and illegitimate reasons for dismissing an employee.
Personally, I think an employer ought to be able to fire me for reasons that are as arbitrary as the reasons I can use for quitting - I.e. completely arbitrary. I realize this would require society to adjust, either by becoming less diverse, by becoming more tolerant, or just sorting us better. The fly in the ointment seems to be the ability of small but vocal groups that can make life difficult for employers. If the right wing ever gains parity in this area, we may all end up self-employed.
I think "freedom of speech, but not freedom from consequences" in the context of US politics really means that in the US, people resolve to fight the hobbesian "bellum omnium contra omnes" by not-literally-violent, but by economic ("your views suck, no job for you") and social ("your views suck, nobody associates with you") means.
Or even more simply, that being sexist won't get you jailed, but it won't prevent you from getting banned from whatever forum you happen to be on.
A potential starting point might be "your speech doesn't give anyone NEW rights to harm you". [1]
The government can't punish your speech, because they aren't allowed to punish people arbitrarily.
I can't torture you to death for your speech, because I'm not allowed to torture people to death on a whim.
I *can* decide that your speech is a reason to stop being your friend, because I was *already* allowed to stop being your friend any time I wanted. (Though if my reason wasn't good, it might make me a jerk.)
I can scream at you to some extent, but not to the point where it becomes illegal harassment--the same way I can scream at you to a certain extent just because I'm an asshole, even if you never said anything.
Whether I should be able to fire you for your speech is at least partly a question about whether I have to justify my firings in the first place. In the US we seem to currently have mixed feelings about that, where the official answer is "you don't have to justify it, wait unless we think it was one of the reasons on this very bad list."
[1] Except for the exceptions, like threats, blackmail, libel, etc. that we accept are crimes even though they are also, strictly speaking, speech acts. Exactly how we determine that list of exceptions is, itself, another thorny question.
I do not care for the 'appeal to consequences'. It strikes me as an illegitimate two-step where someone tries to recast whatever they want to do to someone as a natural moral consequence of the universe and that people have no expectation to be 'protected' from the 'natural' outcomes of their actions.
It's also applied inconsistently. Nobody blithely says "Freedom of speech doesn't mean freedom from consequences!" when someone they like gets driven out of a job for doing something they consider righteous.
I'd at least prefer it if they'd own their desire to punish people.
My response to this is always, what about freedom of association and free markets?
Why do you have to associate with people you hate, why do you have to buy things from people and companies you hate?
Does freedom of speech trump those other freedoms, forcing you to associate with people you don't want to and buy from companies you don't want to if the reason you hate them is related to something they said?
This is why I think framing the debate in terms of 'freedoms' and 'rights' is a complete red herring, that leads to an intractable mess of conflicting freedoms.
If you taboo the word freedom, and talk in more direct empirical terms, you get to questions like 'when is it reasonable vs unreasonable to hate someone for something they've said?' and 'when is it reasonable or unreasonable to avoid/boycott a company based on the actions of their employees?' and so forth. I think those questions are much more answerable, and disagreements about them are much more understandable and much less fraught.
Freedom of speech historically means only that no one uses direct physical violence to constrain your speech. Since the principle of a government is that it holds a monopoly (except in rare circumstances) on violence directed at individuals, it's usually considered sufficient to say that government cannot use violence to curtail your speech (except under certain reasonably obvious exceptional circumstances).
But until the present I would say few people really imagined that meant *indirect* means of constraining your speech -- ostracism, social pressure, playing loud music over you, "deplatforming" you -- should or even could be regulated. Once you get outside the realm of direct physical force, which is pretty easy to identify and classify, it is almost impossible to draw any clear boundary acceptable to everyone (or even a majority) that says "this is indirect constraint" and "this is not" (as I think your examples demonstrate).
I think it's one of the ways in which modern society embarrasses itself, that we think it plausible to nevertheless try to make precise definitions of indirect constraints on speech, that do not manifest at any point as direct physical force, and codify these as law and regulation. I suspect the next century will look upon this effort with the same amused bemusement as we look upon medieval scholars struggling to pin down an objective definition of "piety."
Freedom of speech isn't just the law, it's a good idea.
The good idea is, we should strive to minimize the adverse consequences of sincere not-materially-disruptive speech no matter how much we disagree with the content, and in particular we should limit those consequences to speech-adjacent areas like having other people express their disagreement and/or stop listening to the speaker. We should not put the wrong-speaker in jail, whack him upside the head with a blunt object, run him out of town, interfere in his non-speech business, etc, and we should *particularly* not try to interfere with the speaker's continued attempts to speak to other people who still do want to listen to them. This maximizes the spread of good ideas, and it forces us to deal with bad ideas by offering better ideas.
The law is, most enlightened nations have recognized that this is a good idea and so put in place laws that protect free speech. But most enlightened nations have also realized that totalitarianism is a bad idea, that not every instance of "good idea" and "bad idea" should be enshrined in law, and so legal protections extend only to a subset of the generally good idea that is freedom of speech. These laws are very important. But the fact that a potential restriction or "consequence" of free speech is not explicitly addressed by law, does not mean that it isn't still a bad idea.
I'm drinking from the firehose that is the crypto economy and its community. It's so exciting, can prove personally profitable, and the space largely aligns with my libertarian priors. Are there any SSC/ACT readers here and/or LessWrongers that coalesce, discuss developments, pick apart projects? Maybe a Facebook group or Discord? If not, I could make one. I think the concentric circles of cryptoheads and rationalists would be too good not to exist. DM me if you're aware of something: https://twitter.com/maxefremov
Unrelated: I am overwhelmed with tasks and reminders that I create for myself, and lack a good organizational system that helps me tackle them systematically. Should I take a roam course of some kind? I enjoy the app but don't use it with anything like the agility or power that I infer some folks do when I see their roam screenshots. (Caveat that my problem may be less a lack of an organizational system and more a lack of clarity on goals. Any help on the latter would be appreciated, too :)
Getting Things Done by David Allen?
Read it. I think I've downloaded the basic intuitions, but have trouble integrating it into workflow. But might be a good search: GTD and Roam
What kind of trouble have you had integrating GTD? I've found that it does need to be adapted, but the "basic intuitions" cover 99% of what any productivity/organizational system should.
I have worked in crypto for several years and am not aware of any groups or writers that target the intersection of crypto enthusiasts and rationalists. However, I would be happy to join any groups that you find or start.
It's also worth noting that Sam Bankman-Fried, currently one of the most influential individuals in crypto, is an effective altruist. I believe there are a number of other EA-aligned individuals working at the companies he is involved with.
There was just a Vox article on him!
https://www.vox.com/recode/2021/3/20/22335209/sam-bankman-fried-joe-biden-ftx-cryptocurrency-effective-altruism
Also, what an extraordinary case of nominative determinism.
This Twitter thread from SBF is how I became informed of his effective altruism efforts: https://twitter.com/SBF_Alameda/status/1337250686870831107
I had to google nom dem but now that I know it, lol
In some alternate timeline there must be an Objectivist superhero comic called "Bankman" where you summon him by making the sign of the dollar.
I put together a Discord, "Crypto Rats": https://discord.gg/8Y7zDQuw
I've also been looking for a group like that. Please post a reply to this thread if you find or create one. If you start one, I'd greatly prefer Discord or something else pseudonymous rather than Facebook.
I made a Discord, Crypto Rats: https://discord.gg/8Y7zDQuw
If you're interested in crypto, David Gerard's blog seems like a good place to start.
But maybe don't mention you came from here..
Yeah, he seems to have an irrationally dim view of Silicon Valley in general, including SSC. It's a good illustration of how experts in one subject can be very wrong about others.
I absolutely would not trust david gerard's opinion on literally any topic.
Yea I'm having trouble making it through any commentary of his without wincing. It's stylistically bombastic, motivated reasoning. Totally incurious and radiating with derision.
I don't have any answers, only questions. Does the crypto alignment with your "libertarian priors" have something to do with the desire to replace rent-seeking middlemen (like, say, real-estate brokers) with the blockchain? Just trying to get into the ballpark of your thinking here.
That's one of many areas of alignment! Good example.
I also am keen to see what sorts of innovations develop from outside the mantle of the current regulatory regime. Another promising development might be the potential for a hard money upon which a system of free banking could be fostered: https://oll.libertyfund.org/title/white-the-theory-of-free-banking-money-supply-under-competitive-note-issue
Thanks, fascinating. I'll start reading some of the links in this thread.
Fortunately I started buying crypto on a lark several years ago. But I've been very lazy about investigating any broader philosophical implications (except, of course, I feel guilty supporting all the energy used mining bitcoin). But I think I can start to imagine intrinsic value in the strength of block chains.
Let's talk about theories of everything. In the past year or so, both Stephen Wolfram and Eric Weinstein have made waves by publishing proposed ultimate theories of fundamental physics. Wolfram's is based on networks evolving according to specific rules (very in character for Wolfram), while Weinstein's is based on the analyzing a 14 dimensional space where 4 of the dimensions are just the regular 4 dimensions we're used to, while the other 10 dimensions come from the 10 degrees of freedom in the spacetime metric. Both Weinstein and Wolfram understand the edifice of physics they are proposing to overthrow, which is more than be said of most folks who come up with new fundamental theories.
So far, Wolfram has published a great deal of material about his theory, making it clear that he does not yet have a specific network update rule that will describe our universe. That search remains to be done. He does, however claim to have found rules that imitate general relativity and quantum mechanics. This is already very impressive if true, in particular I would have guessed imitation of quantum mechanics to be impossible with mere network update rules.
Weinstein seems to be keeping his cards much closer to his chest. Though it's clear that our universe must be a 4-dimensional surface living in his 14 dimensional space, it's not clear if this surface is a fundamental object of the theory, or arises from the metric structure, the same way that particles end up have 1 dimensional timelines thanks to out 1+3 metric, or maybe something even weirder is going on. So far, details have been light, though he says that he'll publish some more information on the theory soon. He also has some experimental predictions, including some new particles. He also predicts that the 3rd generation of quarks and leptons in the standard model are somehow "impostors" (whatever that means, perhaps that the particles are secretly composite particles or something).
So, what do people think?
There's a good old discussion of Wolfram on the subreddit at https://www.reddit.com/r/slatestarcodex/comments/g1ce50/finally_we_may_have_a_path_to_the_fundamental/
I'm inclined to agree with Sabine Hossenfelder, who says that attempts to find unified theories that are motivated by aesthetics have been spectacularly unsuccessful for the last 50 years or so, and that new approaches should instead be motivated by actual contradictions in the current theories.
I'm not familiar with Weinstein's work, but Wolfram's smells of crackpottery to me. A genius crackpot to be sure, but still.
Yeah, I'd definitely agree that resolving contradictions and extending the domain over which the theory is predictive (in a way consistent with experimental data) is the way to go when coming up with new theories. Of course, W&W both claim to have a solution for resolving the contradiction between QM and gravity. So in that sense one could say that their theories actually are motivated by resolving contradictions. Wolfram's work does feel like those 19th century "everything is a fluid, atoms are just vortex knots" type theories. But I'd like to have some stronger reason to reject it than just a feeling.
I think that most implausible thing claimed by Wolfram is the notion that his network rules can simulate quantum mechanics, in a way that looks like it would be polynomial time. He should be able to explain either why his rule is actually using exponential computation, or he should be able to build a quantum computer in his classically simulate rule and factor RSA challenges with it. Of course that second one may be easier said than done. But resolving the apparent polynomial time algorithm for simulating QM is a question people should focus on more.
*classically simulate-able* Please come soon, edit button.
I disagree. If you look at the track record, as we have refined and improved our theories they have so far always become more beautiful and unified. Sure, it could be different this time, but the lack of evidence for string theory or SUSY cannot be taken as evidence against the beauty-oriented approach. No ugly theory has succeeded with anything either, and the beauty oriented approaches have yielded a lot of extremely interesting and useful physics and maths along the way. We are running up against the problem that nearly all the physics we can easily probe without gargantuan budgets has been understood. The problem is this: the cost of a collider increases polynomial with energy while the usefulness increases logarithmic with energy. Doubling the energy of a collider is not going to make the results twice as interesting - far from it. For that you would need at least a factor of 10. Unless we invent some radical now way of building accelerators this is a problem we would run into no matter want. At some point the next physics is going to be hard to reach, and we are now at this point.
Given the history of physics you should assign a high prior to the possibility that our next improved theory should be even more beautiful.
An example of value provided by string theory: AdS/CFT doesn't describe the kind of cosmological spacetime we live in, but it has taught us that seemingly ordinary quantum theories in flat space actually secretly can be encoding fully valid theories of quantum gravity. It has given us an example of a consistent ''quantum gravity in a box'', which provides an immensely useful playground for conceptual issues that we know have to arise in quantum gravity generally. Furthermore, it has given us a tool to study the real-time far from equilibrium dynamics of strongly coupled quantum field theory. This latter point is in itself an incredibly significant achievement.
I am curious what contradictions in our current theories are we talking about that people working on current mainstream HEP theories are ignoring? As far as we know the standard model + GR works more or less perfectly for all the physics that we have probed, except in a few scenarios like dark matter and neutrino masses. But it is not like people are not theorizing about that. In fact we have so many theories about dark matter at this point that it is kind of worthless theorizing much more until we have some data. There are many other puzzles in the standard model which people are trying to resolve, exactly by embedding the SM into a larger structure. Given the large space of possibilities and total lack of experimental data to guide us we need some principle to choose which of these larger structures to pursue to study. If somebody knows a principle that works better than beauty I am sure physicists would be all ears!
From a layman's perspective:
Wolfram seems grandiose and somewhat self-serving but basically sincere; I assume the mainstream dismissal of his work is probably correct, but it's not inconceivable he will one day prove them wrong, or at least produce something they eventually acknowledge as valuable.
Weinstein, on the other hand, when I heard him speak at length a while back, set off my charlatan alarm. He talks a huge game, but more through vague insinuations than concrete claims. I don't expect him to explain his theory in a way I can comprehend, but last I checked he didn't seem to have made any effort to explain it to the experts either, at least not in enough detail to enable them to evaluate or integrate any of his purportedly big ideas. His anti-establishment rhetoric seems suspiciously convenient for someone who positions himself as an outsider genius, but is as yet unwilling or unable to back that up with anything concrete.
I'm interested to hear about Weinstein's experimental predictions; cynically I expect that he's left himself a fair bit of wiggle room, either through vagueness or untestability-in-the-foreseeable-future. Or else that he's made predictions that stem equally from some mainstream theories as from his own groundbreaking ones. If you or someone else can confirm or refute this, I'd like to hear more.
Most physicists are not going to engage with their ideas unless they publish their ideas (and furthermore does so in significantly less than a thousand pages). If their theories are so revolutionary, why do they not write a paper and put it on the arXiv like everyone else? Eric Weinstein seems extremely reluctant to share his ideas, which should be a warning sign.
In fact, a mathematician and physicist actually recently did take his vague ideas presented in a youtube video seriously and spent a lot of effort decoding them. There appear to be many issues. It seems there is no consistent way to quantize Weinstein's theory due to lack of what is known as anomaly cancellation. Without anomaly cancellation the quantum theory will make no sense - predictions will be ambiguous and unitarity (preservation of probabilities) will be lost.
Check the paper here: https://twitter.com/IAmTimNguyen/status/1364352524942118913
Thanks for that link to that paper. Strongly updating against GU. Didn't think it was too likely to being with, but still.
What's the point of asking "what people think ?" What people think is pretty much irrelevant. Is there a way to experimentally test whether Wolfram or Weinstein or neither are right ? If so, then the time to upend our entire understanding of physics will come when we gather up some evidence. If not, then we should probably proceed with business as usual for the time being.
AFAICT it is basically impossible to show experimentally whether *any* quantum gravity theory is correct. Also I think that some people think that Wolfram & Weinstein's theories are mathematically incoherent (I'm one of the former, because I fear that Wolfram's thing is so general that it doesn't have much predictive power if any; for an example of the latter, see https://timothynguyen.files.wordpress.com/2021/02/geometric_unity.pdf.)
I already commented on Wolfram so many times, I probably should just write an article and reference it. Because this topic will keep appearing over and over again probably for a few decades (with no progress, of course).
Essentially, Wolfram has repeated his old trick with showing us a universal machine and saying "this explains everything". The last time it was state automata. Now it is some graph transformations. Tomorrow, who knows.
The concept of a universal machine is not new at all. More than half of century ago, Turing invented the Turing machines. But there are many others. Like, almost any programming language is universal. Inventing yet another one is... kinda interesting, but there are already hundreds, and we already heard the concept.
Then Wolfram says "behold, on this system of mine, you could simulate the entire universe". Which is true, in the sense that it is true about all universal machines. That is like, literally, what "universal" means: it can simulate anything that can be simulated by a machine. So, true, but nothing new.
After this point, everything is powered by vague analogies. Anything moving at certain speed is "like the speed of light". Anything growing is "like the expanding universe". Anything connected with something else is "like the quantum entanglement". (Probably something intersects something else, and that's like Jesus dying on the cross for our sins.)
When you look at reactions, negative reactions are usually like "but this analogy with physics is completely wrong", and positive reactions are usually like "man, I don't really understand any of this, but it is completely mind-blowing, and the scientists are stupid for not paying more attention to it". When we'll have this debate again, one year later, none of this will change.
(I haven't paid any attention to Weinstein's theories, and I don't plan to, therefore no comment on that.)
I think this is 'not even wrong'. The reductio ad absurdum of your argument is that, because every mathematical theory is isomorphic to number theory, there's no point in developing any other mathematical theories. But that's backwards. Mathematicians don't invent new mathematical theories _because_ they're necessary in that sense – they do it because they're useful, e.g. it's easier for humans to reason about different things using different 'ontologies'.
I think of Wolfram's 'big project' as something like pushing for computational ontologies. And the point of those ontologies isn't anything like 'this universal machine is THE universal machine' – as you point out, that doesn't make any sense.
The charitable explanation for his "graph transformations" is that they're _better_ explanations for humans, not some special kind of 'universal' computation.
And even if his 'graph theories' do NOT offer any new predictions, they could be very useful for helping others discover new insights that might lead them to a (better) 'theory of everything'. That alone seems to justify his approach.
And you seem to have missed a big point of his "state automata" work – or at least you don't seem to have gotten the point that I did – lots of things _are_ (roughly) very simple computational systems. The ongoing discovery of the near-ubiquity of computational universality is strong evidence that this big point is pretty true.
I never understood him to be claiming that 'one particular cellular automata can _easily_ and _practically_ explain anything'. The closest claim that I interpreted to be making is more subtle:
1. Computation _can_ be very simple and universal computation can be very simple too.
2. There are _many_ simple computational systems, and a good proportion that are universal.
3. For many real-world systems, a simple computational system _can_ describe or explain the behavior and dynamics of those systems.
4. We _could_ 'explore' computational systems as a way to develop good (and possibly) practical theories for various phenomena.
I've been very interested in 'philosophical computer science' for a long time, but what really confirms my opinion that Wolfram is on to something that probably is 'important' (e.g. useful) is evidence from others, like my Real Analysis professor. The real numbers are [pardon my emphasis] _fucking crazy_ and the idea that the real world is anything like them is definitely NOT obvious. Gödel's incompleteness theorem and just the _idea_ of the axiom of choice also – to me – point in the direction of mathematics being a thing people invented for themselves and computation being a more 'natural' (and more general) category for understanding things.
Way over my head, but check out the 'not even wrong' blog by Peter Woit. (if you haven't already.) I half expect Eric W. to drop some sort of paper around April 1st. I often feel that the theorists are looking under the wrong rock. (Understanding particles.) And that there is something weird about gravity we don't understand. MOND, though kinda crazy, looks to have some predictive power. (See Triton Station blog)
I've always wondered if German state-forming history might have gone very differently if conflict between Prussia and Austria in the 19th century had been slightly more favorable for the Austrians. We might have gotten effectively a North Germany and South Germany (with Bavaria either being its own independent nation or in some type of union with post-Empire Austria). That would make for some very different politics in continental Europe, without the UK, France, and Russia realigning to oppose the German Empire.
What are some other plausible "might have been" nation-states? Burgundy if Charles the Bold hadn't screwed it up and gotten his crown after all? A still-separate South Vietnam?
Or an unstable Großdeutschland with Prussia and Austria fighting for hegemony.
But the domino effect here is what happens in southeastern/central Europe. A Habsburg Empire that remains committed to a south german sphere of influence throughout the 19th century is one that's not looking eastward so much, which changes the dynamic of the Austrians and Russians peeling land in the Balkans off the Ottoman Empire, as well as the later Hungarian and Slavic nationalist movements.
I once read an interesting alternative history in which Australia was ignored by the British but settled by the French, Portugese and Dutch instead, leading to the creation of three modern nations in the South Pacific; the French had the south-east plus New Zealand, the Dutch had the west, and the Portugese had the north.
The alternative history was quite detailed, but all I remember from it was that Napoleon wound up getting exiled to some remote South Pacific island and escaped to New Zealand, culminating in the Duke of Waterloo winning the Battle of Wellington.
This book sounds 1) great and 2) like it was largely written to justify the pun
What do people think of the pro-immigration arguments Bryan Caplan lays out in *Open Borders*? It seems like effective altruists have massively underrated the importance of this cause—https://80000hours.org/topic/causes/global-poverty/immigration-reform// shows just three signal boosts in last ~10 years—if Caplan's claims are even 10% as likely as he states.
For instance, if we can get 10 Republican senators on board an immigration reform bill, we'd have a filibuster proof majority to increase legal migration to the US. Increasing legal immigration by 50% would mean ~500,000 new immigrants a year. I can't even imagine how high the NPV of half a million new immigrants annually would be on the planet.
Heck, if we could get *one* *prominent* Republican senator to lead the charge, he or she might be able to convince 9 colleagues more easily. Maybe a senator just reelected, looking to preserve or increase their legacy with a mammoth, bipartisan bill.
Seems like a very high leverage activity.
"Let's ruin the nice countries of the world for the benefit of impoverished third-worlders" is exactly the sort of thing that makes me turn away from effective altruism or utilitarianism in general.
Presenting people with a choice between either ruining their own lives or explicitly saying "I choose to be selfish, fuck those third-worlders" will force them to declare themselves explicitly selfish, which is probably worse than the default mode where we all pretend to be moderately altruistic while actually being selfish. Once you've identified as "I am a selfish person" then you're inclined to start making your other decisions more consistent with that self-evaluation.
Of course, much of the disagreement here is actually about whether open borders (or more open borders, anyway) would be disastrous for the receiving country or not.
I think it's potentially disastrous for the sending country too. "Brain drain" has been pointed to as having crippled the economies of several countries, and it makes intuitive sense (with the disclaimer I've only barely read about this topic) that a country losing, if not its best and brightest, at least its most ambitious and wily, might suffer detrimental effects. Might the cartel situation be so bad in part because the people who would otherwise attempt to fight it are instead choosing to flee it? It's a complicated question, and it's also one of those questions where it feels just so pragmatically awful to think about it in those terms. I can't begrudge a single person fleeing the violence in Central America...but I do wonder if we have a "tragedy of the commons" situation, where the most rational choice for every individual is destructive to the larger society. And I have no idea what a "good" solution looks like.
Which countries have been crippled by brain drain? Many studies find that the exchange is a net positive for both the sending and receiving country.
If you think that's the argument the book makes, you should probably read it.
The benefit would accrue globally, including the destination country. "A literature summary by economist Michael Clemens leads to an estimate that open borders would result in an increase of 67-147% in GWP (gross world product), with a median estimate of a doubling of world GDP.[10] One estimate placed the economic benefits at 78 trillion.[11]" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_border#Arguments_for_open_borders)
It's hardly selfless, insofar as it "is not from the benevolence of the butcher ... that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest."
I do appreciate the point about framing choices, although I don't think it need apply here.
Population growth and GDP are pretty highly correlated. My strong intuition is that any policy which increases the size of the workforce will pay for itself quickly.
Pragmatically, Republicans would need to believe there’s an immigrant cohort who will vote for them.
Migrants can cost way more than they contribute, especially if the welfare state is generous and the migrants do jobs that provide little value.
Any proof or just conjecture? Many natives can cost more than they contribute by this same logic. Should they be expelled from a country?
There recently was a scientific report commissioned by a Dutch populist party that found that a non-western migrant costs € 282,000 during their life, even when accounting for remigration and savings on education costs.
Now, I assume that the report is biased, but it has to be biased a very large amount to turn that deficit into a surplus. The response by leftists was to argue that the costs of migration should not be measured, which seems like an implicit admission that they expect the costs to be negative, because they would obviously demand a report by leftists if they expected to find a surplus (or even a small deficit).
It's also common sense that groups that produce a net surplus have to earn above average, due to progressive taxation. And The Netherlands has very progressive taxation. If you take a major migration group like the Polish, their average salary is less than half of the average Dutch person and below the threshold for paying income tax. So even if you account for them getting fewer subsidies and the like, it seems pretty much impossible for them to be net contributors.
> Should they be expelled from a country?
Just for this comment, you didn't actually deserve the effort I went through, above...
> Now, I assume that the report is biased, but it has to be biased a very large amount to turn that deficit into a surplus.
Biased in amount sure, but biased in methodology? Doesn't require much. It just has to ignore the economic benefits (if any, I'm not going to claim I know the answer) of being able to pay polish people half the wages of a Dutch person
Does it discern between migrant and refugee?
The study only looked at the net costs/benefits to the state. The kind of benefits that you name are very hard to quantify, because you have to compare it to an alternative history where people make different choices because certain labor is more expensive.
Recall that it wasn't very long ago that the Senate passed a very comprehensive immigration reform bill with GOP support. But one single wine-sipping-turned-cannabis-entrepreneur John Boehner blocked it from ever getting a simple House vote.
Lindsey Graham et al. were aligned with its goals just fine until the political winds started shifting. So much continuing pain and suffering, thanks to the GOP.
I'm kind of with [Scott](https://slatestarcodex.com/2015/09/22/beware-systemic-change/) on this.
Getting the effective altruism movement involved in politics would just turn it into yet another political movement and we have so many of them that all the low hanging fruit there has definitely already been picked.
Minor reminder: Markdown doesn't work in Substack commenting even though Scott Alexander can write custom links in the main posts. Otherwise I agree.
Fundamentally ignores that state capacity, rule of law, criminal justice, and high trust societies are exceptional and fragile, rather than robust and contagious.
Separately but importantly I also think it ignores that there are non-linear benefits to global utility of the existence of really great/competent/smart/trusting places.
Does it ignore that? Have you read the book?
Seems like the arguments are pretty persuasive that populations inclined to migrate are *more* law abiding than existing domestic populations.
What would explain the United States capacity with respect to those metrics given its history of completely open borders up until about 1924, its 100% immigrant or immigrant-descended population? Are the US's indices so high *despite* its open borders and large immigrant population? Similarly, is Shenzhen, China's so-called Silicon Valley and fastest growing city for two decades, so successful despite its open borders (within China)?
I don't mean to discount the importance of your reservation, but I don't see closed borders as necessary or sufficient a condition for those capacities.
First: the simplest response to this common open borders argument is that it's ridiculous to compare open borders before a world with 7 billion people and cheap airfare to one with those things. If you trust Gallup polls, 158 million adults want to move to America. This would shoot the foreign-born population up from around 15 percent (already higher than most ) of the country up to 40 percent. This is drastically more and faster than any similar shift in the "open borders" era of the United States.
Second: United States is quite bad on a lot of those traits in comparison with a lot of first world countries. It's not clear the extent to which this is due to ethnic/cultural strife.
Third: Detroit used to be the fastest growing city too. Growth at a given moment in time does not mean prosperity or stability in the long term. I haven't read as much about Shenzhen as Detroit but even calling it China's Silicon Valley seems like a huge exaggeration.
But also: China is literally an authoritarian state with a near-totalitarian reach. Unlike with America, it cannot suffer from the strife and problems inherent in disagreements over policy within multi-ethnic and multicultural democratic societies.
Finally re: open borders (within China), well America also has internal open borders between all the poorest and richest parts, and it turns out that people don't just move from the poor parts to the rich parts and then become rich, which seems like it implies that the open borders argument is actually a lot weaker than its proponents would like to believe.
I haven't read Caplan's book, but from an EA point of view you can help far more people in poor countries through trade than could ever immigrate. All the rich countries' combined capacity to assimilate can't even come close to keeping up with the population growth in poor countries. Plus, excessive levels of immigration could destabilize the US in ways that would undermine its ability to benefit poor countries through trade. The first two things that come to mind are:
1. the probability of a person inventing things is exponentially related to IQ, but the IQ of offspring is linearly related to the parents. So mixing a higher IQ population with a lower IQ population reduces expected aggregate achievement by a lot, long-term.
2. US immigrants tend to vote for lower levels of economic freedom.
Almost all the international variance in GDP per capita can be explained by a combination of IQ, internal economic freedom, free trade, and oil. Two of those four could be undermined by high levels of immigration from the wrong places, given enough time. If the rich countries' economic growth declines or reverses, billions will stop being lifted out of poverty by trade. High immigration would potentially risk the lives of billions in order to help tens of millions. (to say nothing of degradation in quality of life of the natives in various rich destination countries that are suddenly overwhelmed by tens of millions of IQ80 fundamentalist muslims from africa and the middle east causing a crime wave and doing menial jobs for the last five years before they get automated).
Also, the whole point of spatial proximity is convenience. Now that Covid has made telecommuting go extremely mainstream, it should enable more people to work together at a distance without actually living in the same place and having the negative externalities on each other that might entail. The aforementioned muslim fundamentalists would probably much rather collect the same paycheck in their home country, where the culture isn't undermining their religious values. And everybody else would prefer to not live around them, so the separation is win-win.
A few years ago I bought Harry's razors on recommendation from SSC.
Now it's called Dorco, there's been some corporate restructuring, and the Amazon reviews say quality is way down.
So does anyone know what is the good and non expensive shaving brand in 2021?
The most cost efficient and effective way to shave is to get a safety razor that takes standardized blades, and then just buy the dirt cheap packs of commodity blades. I use a Merkur razor with Wilkinson Sword blades. I got a pack of 100 blades for $18 on Amazon, and that will likely last me many more years before I need more.
Yes I've gone back to a regular safety razor, I got fed up with the incredibly short life span of multi-blade razors. Plus as I only shave every few days they clog really badly. Had re-learn to use a safety again without slicing myself up though!
Seconding this recommendation.
If you are used to an ordinary razor brand and want to reduce your total expenditure per month on blades, I have found that making sure to pat the razor head dry with a towel after each use is very quick and easy and at least doubles blade life. Apparently much of what causes razor blades to go dull so fast is rust rather than shaving-induced wear.
Are you sure you have this right? Harry's and Dorco have been and continue to be direct competitors. For those unfamiliar, Dollar Shave Club uses Dorco made razors.
After testing all of the options a couple years back I ended up selecting the 6 Blade Dorcos (I think they call them "Pace 6") to use going forward. They perform very well and the pricing is much better than it's closest competitors.
Scott, there's some cleanup work to be done on SlateStarCodex. Users visiting that domain should be made aware front and center that the new home for the blog is here.
I'm aware that you have made [this](https://slatestarcodex.com/2021/01/21/introducing-astral-codex-ten/) post, but some problems remain:
1) Just surfing to slatestarcodex.com results in the NYT blog post. And there is scant mention of ACX on this page. Enough time has passed that now I think that surfing to the base domain should result in the ACX announcement, not the NTY blog post.
2) One can find the ACX announcement post via clicking the "Archives" button at the top of the page. However, the ACX post isn't visible if you click the "Older" link to surf backwards.
3) Furthermore, I propose that the "About / Top Posts" should also mention ACX, for good measure. Something along the lines of: "Posts from 2021 and onwards are found at ACX, but you can find some highlights of my previous work on this page."
Thanks.
Why are we not letting people in underdeveloped regions know about Library Genesis or SciHub? Many of them have smartphones and internet now even in villages where children can't have schoolbooks, or one book for 100 students. Instead of spending millions to send them books, why not show them this resource already infront of them?
From what I've seen most smart peoples biographies basically involve reading lots of books for 10 years. Maybe the next generation of Ramanujans would be enabled by being able to read literally any book they want for free, although I'm not entirely sure how widespread a lack of books is (even Ramanujan had access to math textbooks.) But I feel like it must help in some way, and it costs literally nothing because LibGen is already here.
And I might be fantasizing a little but there could even be recommended curricula for literature & history of various countries, languages, fields of science, or practical skills like mechanics or gardening.
Facebook hegemony? I’ve heard there are places in the underdeveloped world where Facebook has an agreement with connectivity providers, so many people think that internet = Facebook. Unless they see a direct link, the external world doesn’t exist. Still, you'd think that if they ever saw a link to a good site, they'd try to hang onto it.
Are *we* “ not letting people in underdeveloped regions know about Library Genesis or SciHub? ”
Does the average person in the US know about them, or feel confident they can use them without risking a punitive lawsuit?
Bandwidth issues? Probably not, they probably receive graphics and video that hog more bandwidth.
Because piracy=bad has some of the strongest consensus in the West among remotely controversial issues. Even dictatorships usually don't condone it outright, instead having selectively enforced prohibitions as per their usual approach. Officially, it's just Not The Way Things Are Done. If you want the Overton window to move on this you'd need an influential organization/movement willing to defy some of the most powerful interests, and third world access to more reading doesn't seem to be the sort of issue to catalyze such action.
I had a question on my mind recently: Is it rational to anti-rationalize?
Background: I was having a discussion and most people didn't agree with me. I was tempted to bring up my personal experience to support my argument, which I knew would definitely shut people up. But I recognized that this impulse originates from my /desire to be right/. I know that I have a tendency be obnoxiously argumentative and it's a trait that I want to clamp down on in favor of bringing out humility and thoughtfulness. Therefore, I decided /not/ to bring up the thing that would put me in the right.
I mentioned this to a friend and she said I was totally justified to bring in my personal experience, because it was relevant, it would bring a perspective to the discussion most people don't have, and it would explain my opinion on the matter. But I still wouldn't do it, because I felt like I could rationalize any number of reasons to argue about this until others acknowledge my point, and as a result, I don't trust any of those reasons. Even if they're objectively good reasons, I feel like I have to resist the temptation in order to be my best self. Hence, the anti-rationalizing: doing the opposite of what your (bad) impulses tell you, no matter how convincing they are.
Is this a good rule to adhere to? I'm sure there is a situation where your (bad) impulses tell you to do something that turns out to be the right thing, but I'm not sure I would make exceptions to the rule based on that and risk stunting my personal development.
Because that desire is not for the "arriving at a true belief through critical examination" kind of being right, but the "having everyone bow down to my superior viewpoint" kind of being right. If you could stop a discussion dead by mentioning a relevant personal experience that's so important that anyone questioning you afterwards would look like a huge asshole, would you do it? It's hard to resist such an opportunity to assert moral superiority, which is exactly why I feel like I /have/ to resist it, even though there are good reasons that /aren't/ asserting moral superiority to do so.
I'm having a hard time picturing a situation in which my own personal experience not related to the person I'm talking to makes that person look like a huge asshole at the point that I reveal this personal experience.
I mean, my own personal experience is just mine, right? It doesn't have super powers. The other person's asshole-ish-ness pertains to them, not me. My imagination may be limiting me here.
Yeah, I'm trying not to specify because it's uncomfortable for me to talk about but it's clearly not working, and I can't think of a better example that isn't worse than the actual one. So here goes.
The context of the discussion was what to do as a teacher about a (university) student who had lost both her parents a month earlier and planned to resume her studies. My view was that she should be allowed to do so without too much fuss because, while the situation is incredibly shitty, no one benefits from throwing a pity party. Other people's views were that she needed extra counseling and everyone should be extra thoughtful in considering whether she'd be okay going back to work.
I was tempted to bring up that, when I lost both my parents around the time I was a student, I was thoroughly sick of everyone's sympathies and "I'm here for you"s and so on by the time a month had passed, and I just wanted to retain a semblance of normalcy in studying. I didn't mention that, because although it would have made my case a lot stronger, the part of my mind that was telling me "they don't know who they're talking to, put them in their place," that part was almost gleeful of the prospect of a shocked silence and people unsure of how to respond to that. Because, seriously, who's going to tell me "But still, I think you're wrong" without looking astronomically insensitive?
So now I'm thinking, I had plenty of good reasons to take that opportunity, but it would give satisfaction to an ugly part of my psyche that I didn't want to encourage. And that leaves me to wonder, should I just never give in to that, no matter how good the reasons?
Work on the 'ugly part' of your psyche separately/in general; it's useful to acknowledge that we grieve/cope differently. It's helpful to be cognisant of other's experience, so cool if you can share your experience/point of view.
Thanks for sharing that. Funny coincidence, I only had one parent and after she died, I went back to grad school classes and teaching two weeks later. I was in my late 20s at the time and had moved back in to care for her. So this presents an interesting situation in that I can imagine that I identify with some of what you say, but I really can't know what your experience was. And certainly losing two loved ones at once can be a whole other level of awful.
I also just wanted to return to some normalcy because my life had been quite tipped upside-down already, and looking back after a bunch of years, it seems like a perfectly good choice I made at the time and it had no bearing on how much I loved my mom or how hard I grieved her death (a lot to both of those).
So about speaking up or not, I'm sharing this just in case it's interesting to hear how another person processes this question.
I would decide about whether to speak up on this largely based on how safe I felt with the group I was talking to. If I felt reasonably safe, I would speak up, but also because I would feel clear in my intention -- which would be to speak up for my feeling and experience that people do and say a lot of dumb and unhelpful things in the face of other people's loss and grief. That would be my agenda in sharing -- to sort of invite people to check their assumptions by adding my one example to the other person's one example that was under discussion. So I wouldn't feel like I was right about anything other than that it's an individual thing how people grieve and it's not for other people to say.
The part I'm missing, that you seem to feel, is that me speaking up about my experience would make anyone else look like an asshole. It's just my perspective based on my experience and doesn't in my mind have some special power of rightness to it. For every one of me or you or this other person, I imagine there are plenty of people out there in bereavement who could not conceive of going back to work that soon, who did need counseling in order to function in a school/work space, and so saying I wasn't one of those people doesn't in my mind make me right. If the question under discussion is "should people always take X amount of bereavement time and get counseling after a devastating loss?" and the group is saying, "Yes!" then I wouldn't be saying "No": I would just be saying "I don't think you can say for someone else."
Part of the reason this doesn't feel conflicted for me is that my mom died a long time ago now and I can speak about it without a lot of grief surfacing. And that allows me to talk about that time in a way that will come across to others also like it's not a big silencing thing I'm dropping into the conversation. It just doesn't feel raw like it did in the years right afterwards. I also feel pretty clear that if it feels to someone else like I've just dropped a bomb into the conversation because I basically said "me too" about an experience under discussion, then that's their own reaction to tend to, because it strikes me as a perfectly appropriate contribution to the conversation as you've described it. But it also feels just like that, a contribution, and not any kind of special trump card. If someone else reads it as a special trump card, then they would have misunderstood my intent in sharing it.
Yeah, I think you've hit the nail on the head there. Even if my intent is to genuinely contribute, I can't shake the feeling that bringing it up at all is like dropping a bomb. Maybe I do just need to emphasize "this is my experience and it might not be true for everyone else". Thanks for your thoughts.
To your last question about giving in or not to those impulses, I think about it a little differently maybe. I imagine in that situation feeling angry at other people's responses -- at their judgment and presumption about knowing what's "best" in a way that is not helpful for the person who is actually bereaved.
So I would notice that my fantasy about feeling glee at other people feeling ashamed is an anger response.
I do of course feel anger plenty. But I'd prefer there be a pause between the feeling of the anger and the decision about speaking or acting from that place. So the answer for me would be to refrain until I could tend to the anger I was feeling because I often don't feel good after acting out of anger.
If you were to "win" the argument with your experience (which I agree you may do), you would only feel good about that if you assumed this other student looked at life the same way you do. I doubt she does, at least in a relevant enough way to feel sure about your one response.
You may be able to couch your response by adding in "this may not be universal" language while relaying why you are making a certain point.
For instance - "She may react very differently, but this was my experience and why I felt that way..."
Ah, so this part: "It's hard to resist such an opportunity to assert moral superiority, which is exactly why I feel like I /have/ to resist it, even though there are good reasons that /aren't/ asserting moral superiority to do so." -- I hear you asking is it wrong to do an okay thing for bad reasons. Yes?
It depends on your view of morality. What's your view?
For me, if my intentions about doing X thing in relating to someone felt very muddy -- which is what I hear you describing -- my aim would be to refrain from acting until I could get clearer about my intentions and act from a place that felt less muddy. Because it's one of my beliefs that acting impulsively from a muddy place tends to create less healthy relationships and makes me feel less good inside.
Of course I do this imperfectly everywhere I go or I would never act on anything, so my goal isn't to wait for perfect clarity, but to at least refrain from acting long enough to disentangle as best I can the intentions I'm good with from the ones I don't want guiding me in my life.
My first instinct is that you should bring up your personal experience.
--It is likely that the other people have not even considered the possibility of whatever it is you experienced.
--I would try emphasise that your personal experience is only anecdotal. And maybe have little discussion on whether they think your experience is representative.
I do see your concern that there is a risk that you 'win' the argument via bad reasoning, but it is not your fault if they misuse genuinely helpful evidence. (Of course, all this depends on context. E.g. on national level, a politician is responsible for how the population can misuse good evidence)
Is this online or in-person?
If you're coming across as argumentative, you might want to work on how you say things? If you have some personal experience that's relevant, there's probably some way to bring it up that would sound helpful rather argumentative.
One approach is to say it's just another data point and other people's experiences may differ. A general strategy is trying not to come across as saying you *must* believe me, but rather giving people material so they draw their own conclusions.
On the other hand, a good reason to not bring it up would be to avoid changing the flow of conversation, if you're rather let other people talk or don't want the attention.
In person, but to be clear, I'm not asking for advice on personal conduct. I know how to keep myself in check. I'm just wondering about the general principle of how much to value keeping myself in check versus doing what's justified in the moment, since these are at odds with each other.
The thought that comes up for me is that what guides one to say or not say something in a particular conversation is maybe best clarified by what one's intention is in that conversation.
Conversations are essentially relationship-building actions, unless it's competitive academic debate which is more like sports where there are rules, and winners and losers.
So with this person right now in front of you, what's your intention in talking with them about this topic, whatever it is? Are you arguing just to pass the time and there's not a whole lot riding on it? Then maybe you just get to experiment with doing it one way or another and listen in and see how each way feels to you.
Is it a conversation with a loved one where it feels like there's a lot riding on this issue? Then maybe it's less about being right and more about understanding each other really well. In that effort, sharing your personal experience may illuminate for both of you some of why the conversation feels important to you.
Are you having the conversation with someone who is likely to listen to your personal experience with a measure of empathy and respect? In other words, does it feel worthwhile sharing your personal experience based on what you know about the other person's level of sophistication or self-awareness?
So to me, there's no objective "right" way to approach this and neither way is more or less rational or virtuous. There are costs and benefits to withholding personal information and to sharing it and those vary widely depending on the situation, and so the task is maybe more navigating than it is picking the right path.
"I'm not asking for advice on personal conduct." I think you are asking exactly this, not necessarily pertaining to your specific person, but it's still a discussion of personal conduct. If you were open to comments on personal conduct, you might see that there are infinite ways to integrate your knowledge into the conversation, versus a binary "do I integrate or don't I". The fact that you could have used your insights and not fallen into the trap you described points to a problem not of if, but of how.
Relevant personal experience is relevant, and as such it is rational to introduce it to a debate or discussion. The question is whether the experience is relevant.
To a first approximation, personal experience is relevant when disproving a broad or absolute statement, irrelevant when proving one. If the argument is "white men can't jump", your personal experience as a white man who jumps is relevant, even more so if you're doing it in the company of lots of other white men and nobody has ever called you out as freaks or weirdos for doing it. If the argument is "all black men can jump", your experience as a black man who jumps is not relevant.
To go beyond the first approximation, you'll need to think about the specifics.
Your experience sounds a lot like mine. I can more often win arguments if I choose to use all options, but it turns people off even if/after I win the argument. What I've been trying to teach myself is essentially to be more aware of and to follow social norms of the group I'm around. Also, to be more okay simply losing (or letting the argument go). Most arguments aren't worth the fight, as I've come to realize. You rarely change someone's mind, especially by browbeating them. They may give up talking to you and feign losing in order to get you to stop, but you haven't convinced them at all.
As for bringing up a personal experience, I guess it could potentially be a good idea if it's specifically relevant. But ask yourself this question - would you be convinced by a single anecdote in the opposite direction? If the answer is no, then you're asking the person you are talking with to accept an argument you yourself would reject. Personal experience can be a powerful tool in an argument, but mostly because you've now made it incredibly impolite to continue arguing the opposite point. Imagine this scenario, you are arguing against someone who is in favor of the war on drugs. Your opponent brings up that their dad was killed by a drug dealer. Did that help the conversation? Not really, the underlying trends are more than a single anecdote. Can you still argue that drugs should be legalized? Only if you're willing to be a jerk and ignore their personal experience. Their anecdote will not convince you at all, but they will appear to have won the argument because their opponents (if they are unwilling to act like a jerk) will have given up.
I saw some news snippet earlier today on the european union currently not donating any covid vaccines due to "high internal pressure". To me this sounds like a complete moral bankrupsy and I wondered if private donors could step in. What about feasibility, short-term availibility and cost-effectiveness? Can someone (ideally frome an effective altruism perspective) comment on this?
Not donating to whom?
There's over 100 countries that haven't yet done any vaccinations. There are some international organizations that are trying to get vaccines to these countries, and they have some money, but have very few actual contracts with vaccine manufacturers because most of the capacity has already been bought up by the rich countries. I believe that Macron has been arguing that the rich countries should start by donating 5% of each shipment they receive to various poor countries, and then donating a larger fraction as the rich countries get closer to fully vaccinated. I don't believe any country has been doing this, though Russia and China have been donating very large amounts of vaccines.
Donation cannot increase the amount of vaccine available at a particular time. Is there a rationale for scattering existing vaccinations more widely? Maybe the most vulnerable should be vaccinated first, regardless of location? Or those most likely to spread the disease? Or those who lack the resources to cope with infection?
The obvious distribution argument is that there should be a priorization based on risk or potential benefits. As Kenny pointed out above, there _used_ to be a lot of public promises of not leaving poorer countries completely out of the distribution chain (mostly empty promises now).
From a public health perspective, it seems better to get R<1 in many places than to get R<<<1 in a few places.
Seems like it might depend on some other assumptions we make or the form of the goals we adopt. For instance, do the strategies “EU donation/nondonation” map cleanly onto the two outcomes you mention?
It would be ironic if allowing persons to simply bid for the vaccine had the result of making the pandemic worse, but it’s not obvious that EU donating or not would be decisive in avoiding this.
I think there's nothing clean about any thinking or reasoning about the complexities of a pandemic, as we've learned repeatedly over the past year.
But a simple model suggests that any individual dose of vaccine will make more difference to the total number of infections if it is given in a place where infection rate is high (so that it is likely to prevent someone from getting infected) and where the vaccinated rate is low (so that a hypothetical infection that had been prevented would have more likely spread to other individuals).
I *think* that means that generally, as a world, we'd be better off if doses are spread roughly equally among the places that haven't eliminated the virus through non-pharmaceutical interventions, rather than some parts of the world getting 70% vaccinated while large parts are 0% vaccinated. Of course, Europe and North America aren't anywhere near 70% vaccinated yet, but at the current rate, they will be in a few months.
Why would this be in scope for the EU, a trade and monetary union! Maybe some EU members are unable to pay for vaccine, and other members might want to help out because of unrestricted travel between member countries?
Donating vaccines to poor countries is presumable anti-effective, since those countries have worse healthcare, so more vaccine is wasted, more is given to low-risk groups, etc. Then there is the issue that poorer countries are impact less in their actual lives, since they tend to lock down a lot less. So vaccinating in richer countries has more mental health benefits.
Furthermore, the more that is donated, the less support there is for increasing the production ability at the cost of EU taxpayers.
I expect that the EU will start donating once they have vaccinated most people who really want a vaccine.
This is a weird argument because it puts second-order effects (mental health) above first-order effects (lives saved). From an effective altruism standpoint, vaccinating people somewhere where the pandemic is at its worst (Brazil) would save more lives. It's the same reason why vaccines are tested in such places.
A more likely argument is that leaders of the EU have a duty to help members of the EU. This is similar to nationalism, but it's hard to argue against when we are talking about political leaders.
Brazilians already seem to have decided that they far more often prefer to not pay those mental costs, at the expense of more deaths. I'm not sure why that means that they have more right to help.
Also, you completely ignore that I made a bunch of other arguments, like my claim that the vaccines would probably be wasted far more often and would go to low risk groups more often.
On second thought, I don't think I understand your arguments because you've described them very briefly; I just made a guess about what you're referring to. Sorry about that!
I don't think it's about valuing the mental costs more highly, but the physical costs being bigger *and* valuing deaths less highly (WEIRDs are super, super risk-averse).
So give out vaccine according to the risk persons face. Not clear why the EU should be singled out, instead of WHO, UN, etc.
It is outside the institutional scope of the EU, and though it might be nice for the EU to expand scope in a helpful way, it's not clear that is the way to go. If we attack it as a global problem, the organization in charge has to have global scope. If we decentralize, that implies a different strategy.
I agree with what you write.
Then, if the virus goes wild in South America, the probability is high that it will breed a mutant which makes the vaccines completely worthless. The P1 variant is already halfway there.
I'm wondering why they don't build their own vaccine factory. And even if they produce that Finnish open-source nasal-spray vaccine. Is that really so difficult?
It seems to be pretty difficult. Even AstraZeneca has great trouble.
These are fickle biological processes.
So do we want to save the most lives now, or prevent the appearance of a vaccine resistant strain?
If we let the virus go wild in South America and if it does breed a mutant, then the mutant virus will A: be in South America and B: be to some extent optimized for the South American environment. If we let the virus go wild in *North* America, then any mutant will be on the ground in North America and adapted to North American conditions. Ditto Europe.
If there's enough vaccine to suppress spread in two continents right but not three or four or five, and if the decision on how to allocate the vaccine is being made by less than perfectly altruistic North Americans and Europeans, then "but maybe a mutant strain will emerge in South America, better vaccinate them first!" is not going to be a winning argument.
If the theory is that a bunch of evil North Americans and Europeans actually have enough vaccine for the entire world and are hoarding it for some reason, then no. We are capacity-limited in vaccine production; the vaccine distribution plan that reduces the risk of a mutant strain cropping up in one place, increases the risk of a mutant strain cropping up in other places.
Given that certain demographics face risks orders of magnitude greater than others, there's a good argument that does should be exported after a country gets its over-60 population vaccinated so other countries can get their over-70 populations vaccinated.
This is not really my argument -- I think that countries that built good vaccine development should be rewarded. But I have to recognize that it will soon get to the case where we need hundreds of doses in a first-world country to match the effectiveness of a single-dose in another country.
Sure, although most 2nd world countries that have a halfway decent medical system seem to be getting some supplies of the vaccine that they can use on the elderly. Even Brazil, whose president seemed to go out of his way to buy as little as possible.
In The Netherlands, we've just started vaccinating the 75-79 age group with the initial dose, so we are nowhere close to having vaccinated the high-risk group twice.
Note that the strategy for the elderly is to single dose as many as possible first, so fairly few actually have had a second dose.
I probably shouldn't have used "first-world" in my comment.
In the steelman of "share the vaccines," if one of my country's allies is 2 orders of magnitude behind in getting the low-hanging fruit https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/covid-data/investigations-discovery/hospitalization-death-by-age.html then my country should look into helping them out.
It's hard from a public-choice theory, though.
You guys should honestly be glad that you had Trump in charge, because the EU did and is doing all kinds of absurd things like focusing on cheap vaccines, when the cost of the COVID crisis is so high that spending 20 euros more per shot to get them a month earlier is completely cost effective.
I don't get this argument. If I'm a government elected by a set of people who represent their interests and my group of people aren't fully vaccinated, isn't my obligation to look after my constituency?
I'd understand this argument if the EU or US had achieved something like, 99% vaccine rate and now they were wasting time and money chasing diminishing returns, but we're clearly not there yet.
Hey everyone, sorry for not including the obvious reference to the COVAX initiative I was referring to: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/COVAX
Wikipedia sounds... lets say better than the impression I had yesterday and it at least doesn't look hopelessly underfunded right now... still, can someone with more detailed knowledge or who did an actual cost-benefit analysis weigh in?
First time I'm mentioned in a SSC/ACT post ever! I'll pour a nice brandy to celebrate!
I first thought I rambled too much and was not really clear in what I wrote, but later replies started to come and even Scott has read and apparently enjoyed it!
In my usual social circles I'm the intellectual one so in most subjects when I make a comment it's a good one. Here the standards are so high that the subject needs to be one I have unfair advantage in (being from a specific country). Thus, I feel this community is pulling me up, happy to have discovered here. Cheers to all!
Sounds cool; I'm drinking brandy too. Cheers to you for posting!
Try not to forget the little folks!
Astral Codex readers, Scottheads and old Slate Star Codex readers may be interested to know that I now have a free Substack under the name "Philospoher Bear".
https://philosophybear.substack.com/p/the-best-things-ive-ever-written
I previously blogged under the name "de Pony Sum". My main claim to relevance around here is that I invented the terms mistake and conflict theory*, but I've been kicking around these parts for years.
*With the caveat that conflict theory is obviously repurposed from the same term in sociology with the same meaning but a slightly different emphasis/use case.
Interests include: philosophy, psychology, politics, political economy and poetry. I didn't plan for all my interests to start with a P, it just ended up that way.
What's the deal with the bear? :)
I love bears.
Yes I am suitably embarrassed that I, a professional philosopher, misspelled philosophy in a post about my own blog.
I recently joined 'The Turing Way' and they are very successful on the inclusivity and diversity front (despite being predominantly about creating an online book on data science). I wrote a post listing the reasons I think they succeed: https://lovkush.substack.com/p/an-example-of-inclusivity-and-diversity.
Four main points are:
--having inclusivity and diversity as a top priority
--valuing the people/community more than the actual content. This is closely related to Scott's idea of understanding communities via rallying flags. A founder of the Turing Way said "The book is in my opinion not the most interesting part. The book is the thing we all gather around, but it is the community that is the most exciting aspect. My ultimate goal for success is that people feel that they are empowered to contribute into an open ecosystem."
--thinking about what makes most open source projects less appealing to minorities. See this article on idea of 'bropen science': https://thepsychologist.bps.org.uk/volume-33/november-2020/bropenscience-broken-science
--having minorities in central positions in the community / leadership roles.
Scott has written about minorities being underrepresented in niche areas before:
https://slatestarcodex.com/2015/02/11/black-people-less-likely/
I mostly associate the term "bropenscience" with Lee Jussim's critique of it, but it doesn't seem like there's a good example of that easily available to link to.
@Lovkush Agarwal
Women that participate in open source coding projects seem to often gravitate towards other jobs than coding, like translating, documenting, making rules, etc.
So my strong impression that The Turing Way attracts a lot of women because they aren't actually making software, but because it focuses on exactly the kinds of things that attracts women. Yet they seem to do it in a way that appears to be extremely inefficient.
The result of the project is well, extremely unimpressive. There are very few pages, with very little content on it. The guidelines for the project are about the same size as the actual book. This seems like something that a single writer plus a single illustrator could knock out pretty easily on their own in a few weeks. However, they list 253 collaborators and seem to have been at it for over a year!
But they do have a README in Dutch, French, German, Indonesian, Italian, Korean, Portuguese and Spanish, which I guess is very 'inclusive,' even though the book is not translated in any of these languages, so I'm not sure how that is actually helpful.
To me, this seems to just be a 'participation trophy' project. A sort book or knitting club, but with pretenses, yet without actually making good on those pretenses.
I guess that if your only measure for success is 'inclusivity and diversity,' then you can call it a success, but isn't the idea that women and minorities actually participate equally, rather than do some hobbying that has little output or impact?
@Aapje. Thanks for your thoughts!
"Yet they seem to do it in a way that appears to be extremely inefficient".
One of the people at Turing Way said that they are slow on purpose, and that they encourage accessibility over perfection/polished-ness. What you (and I) would consider inefficient, they might consider a feature of the project.
"A sort book or knitting club, but with pretenses, yet without actually making good on those pretenses." I am new, so I do not know the history, but I do think The Turing Way has helped spread good practice in open science, so it is unfair to say they are not making good on the pretenses.
"even though the book is not translated in any of these languages, so I'm not sure how that is actually helpful." You have to start somewhere. It at least sends a strong signal that it is something they care about and are working towards.
"To me, this seems to just be a 'participation trophy' project". "I guess that if your only measure for success is 'inclusivity and diversity,' then you can call it a success, but isn't the idea that women and minorities actually participate equally, rather than do some hobbying that has little output or impact?"
The founder of project said "My ultimate goal for success is that people feel that they are empowered to contribute into an open ecosystem.", so again, what you (and I) may consider a bug, they might consider a feature.
My impression is that big part of project is helping people make the first steps towards making an impact. Sure, many people's contributions are small or could have been done by a single person, but I think there is value in getting more people taking those early steps.
Thinking out loud, I can imagine some analogue for rationalists community. A super-friendly 'rationalist knitting club', where people who are less confident and less familiar with rationality can take some baby steps, without any expectation to be as polished or insightful as more experienced/more visible rationalists.
> I do think The Turing Way has helped spread good practice in open science
Can you give an example of a real impact that it had?
I just see a rather messy website that veers far away from it's ostensible goal, by having fairly little material that actually generalizes to reproducible data science research, let alone all research, but a lot of odd parts like a short manual on git. A lot of it is not about research, but about programming.
> The founder of project said "My ultimate goal for success is that people feel that they are empowered to contribute into an open ecosystem."
Feeling empowered can happen by giving someone the tools to contribute at the required level, but also by putting them into a sandbox where they are given applause for things that would not pass muster in a serious environment.
The latter can be very useful as a learning tool, but if people are deceived into thinking that the sandbox is reality, this can really hurt their ego's if they go out in the real world.
Aside from that issue, a poor sandbox can hold people back by not challenging them enough, or worse, it can teach them bad habits.
> I think there is value in getting more people taking those early steps.
Teaching people how to walk 10 steps and then telling them they are ready to run a marathon may end up poorly...
Yes, efficiency is highly over-emphasized. The Nazis fell for that fetish.
https://github.com/alan-turing-institute/the-turing-way
Where are the technical contributions? Is this really an open source project or just extending the term “open source” to an online community?
The community looks like a subreddit with a wiki to me. Which is totally fine but is only slightly tangential to what a technical open source project is.
You are correct. However, there is some non-trivial overlap with technical projects, e.g., needing to use GitHub. I think there is something to be said to get non-programmers to overcome such a steep learning curve.
It seems like the most important goal in science is to get the right answers--to learn the truth. There's a problem with that in a lot of the social sciences (probably a bunch of other places, too).
This article is a great discussion about inclusiveness and diversity and not offending people and making room for everyone, but it sure seems like they ought to spend more time worrying about the problem that the replication crisis has exposed--lots and lots of claimed research results, including stuff taught to every student in psych 1 classes, and stuff that people have based expensive policies on, turns out to just be wrong. Huge piles of money have been given out in research grants to produce studies that don't actually discover anything.
I don't see how those problems are worsened by "bros." I also don't see how they're helped by advice on being a good ally, including marginalized voices, etc. I mean, a lot of that's probably worthwhile, but worrying about too many bros making mean comments during the replication crisis has the feel of an angry argument about how to rearrange the deck chairs on the titanic.
The entire attack on 'bros' also exposes that the project is not about maximizing inclusivity, because apparently, 'bros' are not welcome. Of course, they justify this in the typical far-left way by dehumanizing these people, claiming that they are trolls.
Their entire project seems to be about being nicer to each other, which is not compatible with solving the replication crisis, which requires being not-so-nice, by pointing out each other's flaws. Which is the very basis behind proper science anyway, but one that has already been largely forgotten in favor of being nice.
Just generally, you (and others here) seem to keep defaulting to a tonal emphasis that conflates inclusiveness with "being nicer" to marginalized people, "not offending" their notorious sensitivities, etc.
I would hope you'd spend quite a bit more time and heart interrogating how the inclusion of those voices actively benefits the whole project. Too often it's expressed as if everyone with more privilege is doing them a big favor by allowing them a seat at the table, because such "generosity" sacrifices "efficiencies," "truth," and, supposedly, places all your hard-won achievements at risk.
We should feel grateful, not burdened, by more and more diverse voices willing to participate in all aspects of public life.
That is only remotely true if the voices are adversarial in nature. A million different protected classes explaining why "you can't say that", which is what this boils down to in real life is not useful.
Regular science is already tripping over itself to satisfy the criteria you're talking about. Why can't open science just be about getting right answers?
If you have noy already, I recommend listening to 80k interview of Ezra Klein. In particular, Ezra has some useful critiques of EA/rationality (which he strongly caveated by saying he does really like the community and what it is doing):
- If a person does not communicate in a 'rational style' (e.g. they are highly emotional in their communication), then there is tendency to disregard their opinion, rather than trying to understand their opinion and learn from them.
- Many people who study rationality / cognitive biases can actually become less rational than more rational, as they believe being aware of the biases makes them less biased.
Highly emotional statements are typically not rational. Emotions can be very specific to a person and thus are not a very strong evidence.
You assert that people need to learn from highly emotional statements, but make no argument why this should be the case.
> Many people who study rationality / cognitive biases can actually become less rational than more rational, as they believe being aware of the biases makes them less biased.
If they are actually less biased, then believing that they are less biased doesn't make them less rational, so your statement is incorrect. Or at least, it seems to assume that rationality or studying cognitive biases can't make you less biased.
Also, this criticism by Ezra is the kind of low effort criticism that he is known for. Rationalists are well aware that you can falsely believe that you don't have a certain bias. That's why their main web site is called 'LessWrong,' rather than AlwaysRight.
There is definitely a phenomena where some people learn more about biases and then become less accurate because they think that knowing the biases mean that they *never* commit them. I can think of some people that I've known who insist that they are correct about everything because they've thought about mental fallacies while the people around them haven't, which is pretty clearly a fallacious behavior. That definitely doesn't happen to everyone, and I certainly hope that on net learning about human rationality makes people more rational, but I'm open to believing that it doesn't, or at least not immediately.
In a lot of fields, people learning the subject go through a phase where they first know nothing (and are thus low confidence), but then learn a bit and are very high confidence since they think they know everything and they haven't experienced being wrong. Then as they learn even more about the subject, actually becoming an expert, their confidence goes down to an accurate amount since they have become able to calibrate themselves.
I think some people can wind up stuck on that peak of certainty, and it's extra difficult with a subject like rationality since being overly confident will mean that you are overconfident in your overconfidence.
But isn't that a fully generalizable argument about the dangers of (or even against) educating people on any subject?
Klein doesn't actually make such an argument that he applies equally, where he also argues that many people who get taught a little about, say, racism are often overconfident about their beliefs. Arguing such a thing would raise uncomfortable questions about his own political side of the spectrum.
No, Klein only applies it to beliefs that he disagrees with, as way to defend his own beliefs.
It's also fairly dishonest criticism since Klein himself founded a site, Vox, that routinely claims false consensus, thereby misleading the readers into thinking that claims are far more objective than they are:
https://fair.org/home/vox-and-the-false-consensus-of-most-economists-agree/
John Roberts presumably studied the Voting Rights Act pretty thoroughly before concluding that it was basically no longer needed, and then effectively ripping it to shreds. For all his presumed intellectual curiosity, his reasoning amounted to little more than an assumption that society had sufficiently outgrown overt racism -- an assumption that was probably reinforced primarily by his social circles. (Essentially, he was arguing that because laws against robbing banks had done a good job of reducing the number of bank robberies, it was time to get rid of the laws!)
Now that we've experienced the resultant history, and are currently witnessing the GOP's deplorable sole political objective of restricting voting, I like to imagine Roberts humbly proclaiming he was wrong and reversing course.
But I'm re-reminded that this is just a silly fantasy every time I see his cozy, smug bearing signaling he's just not the type of guy to consider reversing course once his priors are comfortably set in stone.
It's at least partly a cultural problem, addressed best by putting fewer smug, white males in veto-proof positions of authority. That's why Uncle Joe's aggressive attention to diversity is so refreshing after the moral disaster of the last administration.
You're conflating 'arguments made using emotional statements' and 'Emotional statements used as arguments.'
Many people are emotional about things they are expert in, either because their emotional reaction to those things is what caused them to spend a lot of time investigating and working on that topic, or because their direct experience or time spent on that topic provoked an emotional reaction in them.
If you ignore people who have emotions about a topic, you will be eliminating most of the people who are best-educated and most-knowledgable about that topic, and selecting for hobbyists and armchair analysts with little actual connection to the topic.
I didn't argue that people should be ignored for being highly emotional, but that being very emotional often results in poor arguments.
It seems common for these people to then conflate being dismissed for poor arguments that they make due to emotion with them being ignored merely for being emotional.
> If you ignore people who have emotions about a topic, you will be eliminating most of the people who are best-educated and most-knowledgable
They may also be extremely biased, which in turn might mean that their knowledge is extremely one-sided.
Just as Trumpists so enjoy "owning the libs," to the point that they excuse never-ending torrents of lies and undemocratic behavior so long as they get a good laugh at liberals' exploding heads, the most righteous arguments often come from those with the most at stake -- which means everyone else should place a high value on discerning what they are attempting to convey, even if and while they are in a highly adrenal state.
Man, just think about all the white people in the 100 years after Reconstruction who casually dismissed the adrenal fury and despair of African Americans with a shrug because they weren't willing to really listen.
Anyone arguing that they'd "be open" to someone's claims if only they were expressed more rationally is really just defending a comfortable status quo. (Similar to libertarians who insist they'd be perfectly willing to help reduce poverty IF ONLY all the proposed solutions weren't so stupid; their inherent bias against imperfect action is profound.)
@Aapje. In the spirit of honesty, I feel frustrated by your reponse. It seems like you have (intentionally or unintentionally) misconstrued the statements and are making strawman arguments. E.g. "many people who study rationality can actually become less biased" in no way "assumes rationality can't make you less biased".
I get the impression you have a certain model of how Ezra thinks, and are interpreting the statements I wrote to match what you think Ezra thinks by these statements. I really do recommend having a listen to the interview to get a better understanding of how Ezra thinks. Ezra does not equal Vox; even if Ezra co-founded Vox. Like I said in the OP, Ezra says he is big fan of EA/rationalists (but he does disagree in various places, but not for willy-nilly reasons), so the defensive reaction is unwarranted.
What does the EU common agricultural policy actually subsidise?
As I understand it, they pay out a lot of money per hectare of more or less cultivatable land. This sounds like it would be a great incentive to make new arable land ex-nihilo, were such a thing possible (without the help of a great, huge, large... prodigious, prepoſterous horſe).
Moreover, the subsidy seems to go to the landowner, who isn't necessarily the farmer that this policy is intended to help.
I understand that countries have an interest in subsidising agriculture for defence reasons, but it strikes me that this would be better achieved by looking at fertiliser supplies and agricultural machinery than the area of some dirt.
What do people think: am I mistaken about how CAP works, is there some subtle price-theory reason why this is a good idea, does the EU just hate Henry George for no reason?
Link (from the Irish government) as to what CAP is supposed to be about: https://www.gov.ie/en/publication/76026-common-agricultural-policy-cap-post-2020/#
"The Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) protects family farm incomes, supports the rural economy, ensures the production of high-quality safe food for consumers and protects rural landscapes and the environment.
The CAP consists of a Two Pillar Structure:
Pillar 1 Income Support (The main schemes include the Basic Payment Scheme and Greening)
Pillar 2 Infrastructure, Environment and Development Support (The main schemes include GLAS, EIP-AGRI and TAMS)"
Very, very roughly: when new countries were coming into the EEC/EU, not all of them were on a level playing field. Some countries had highly-developed agribusiness, some were still small family farms with a lot of manual labour. How to make sure everyone got a fair go and it didn't end up with a few huge agribusinesses forming a monopoly? How to support the small farmers, encourage modernisation, and avoid the milk, wine and butter lakes and mountains that happened as a result of former policies? But as well, there are other aims - how to prevent or ameliorate rural depopulation, how to support small communities, biodiversity and protection of threatened species of flora and fauna, etc.
Of course, in practice, people have worked out ways to game the system. But what they are intending to do is laid out as below:
"Origins of the CAP
In 1957 the Treaty of Rome created the European Economic Community. Agriculture has always had a special place in Europe’s economic and social structure. Arising out of the Treaty of Rome, the CAP was established in 1962. At that time Europe was still recovering from World War II and food scarcity was a major issue. The CAP was established on the basis that it would provide food at affordable prices and ensure a fair standard of living for farmers.
Goals of the CAP
• To increase agricultural productivity by promoting technical progress and ensuring the optimum use of the factors of production, in particular labour;
• To ensure a fair standard of living for farmers;
• To stabilise markets;
To ensure the availability of supplies;
• To ensure reasonable prices for consumers.
What are the Benefits of the CAP for the EU?
• Maintaining 10.8 million family farms within the EU;
• Job creation and economic growth, especially in rural areas;
• Managing some 40% of the land area of the EU (175 million hectares);
• Ensuring that the EU is self-sufficient in food production and is a major exporter;
• Ensuring the EU is a world leader in sustainable agriculture;
• Delivering the highest standards of food safety along with animal health & welfare; and
• All of this is delivered for 0.4% of the EU’s total GDP.
CAP Expenditure in the Total EU Expenditure
EU farmers received €58.82bn in support from the overall EU budget of €160.11bn in 2018. This level of support for EU farmers from the overall EU budget reflects the many variables involved in ensuring continued access to high quality sustainably produced food. This includes income support to farmers, climate change action, and supporting vibrant rural communities.
Nine CAP objectives
The CAP post 2020 proposals are based on nine objectives setting out what the policy is intended to achieve for farmers, citizens and climate.
Key Points of the CAP Post 2020 proposals
CAP Strategic Plans —The proposals outline that Member States are obliged to prepare a CAP strategic plan covering all expenditure under Pillar 1 and Pillar 2 with a focus on outputs achieved and targets met. This is a new requirement for Member States.
Greater focus on environmental aspects — The proposals outline that CAP Strategic Plans must commit to a higher environmental ambition than the current CAP supported schemes. This increased environmental ambition is mandatory for Member States and voluntary for farmers to participate in. This proposal suggests that 40% of Pillar 1 funding will target climate change measures and 30% of Pillar 2 funding will target additional voluntary agri- environmental measures.
Changes to Direct Payments — The proposals outline that Member States must reduce the amount of Direct Payments to be granted to a farmer exceeding €60,000. The proposals also outline that Member States must apply a gradual reduction to the Direct Payments made to farmers between €60,000 and €100,000.
Genuine Farmer — The proposals outline that supports will only apply to the “genuine” farmer. This definition will need to be decided at Member State level. This is to ensure that support is not provided to those whose agricultural activity forms only an insignificant part of their overall economic activities or whose principal business activity is not agricultural.
Risk Management — The proposals include the mandatory requirement for Member States to introduce risk management measures."
The Nine CAP Objectives post 2020:
1. Increase competitiveness
2. Ensure fair income
3. Rebalance power in food chain
4. Climate change action
5. Environmental care
6. Preserve landscapes and biodiversity
7. Support generational renewal
8. Vibrant rural areas
9. Protect food and health quality
I really don't understand how food policy in Europe and the United States works, or what effects it directly has. But it's definitely immediately obvious, that if you go to any random town in continental Europe, and stop by any random cafe, and get a salad or a panini, it's clear that the ingredients are higher quality than anything you'd get in the United States outside of a restaurant that specifically advertises itself as "farm-to-table". I have no idea if this is due to subsidies of farms, or markets, or what. I've sometimes wondered if it's related to the fact that it's often harder to get non-European ethnic cuisines in smaller towns in Europe (I don't know if this is still true, but I've imagined that there's a good supply chain for local things for local cuisines, but no large-scale refrigerated trucking for homogenized global cuisines).
Just a heads up that the journal where Kolipsis and Bromley published is widely regarded as pretty bad. Further I have never heard of the authors. Of course this may very well be true but in economics if someone was taking down an important paper it would be well known, and likely in a better journal with replies and counter-replies. The fact that this ends up at this Journal and that the authors are otherwise u known (and contested by follow up work) makes me caution readers into not giving it great weight
An event happened earlier this week relevant to two recent ACX posts (on polarization and on Turkish politics): the general election in the Netherlands.
The Netherlands has a massively multi-party system, with 17 entirely separate parties winning seats in the Tweede Kamer (the lower house of the legislature, which is the one that matters). With 150 seats in the Kamer, any hypothetical majority coalition which wants to install a Prime Minister needs to be composed of 4 separate parties. However, this time around the task should be significantly easier than normal, because polarization on the Netherlands is massively on the decline. While the Netherlands has a rich history of rule by Christian-democratic or social-democratic parties*, in 2021 the parties that placed first and second are very similar "liberal" parties (fiscally conservative, socially liberal by American standards): the right-liberal VVD (which is mostly concerned with keeping taxes down and such) and the left-liberal D66 (which is concerned with drug legalization and euthanasia, and is also more than a little woke). These historically weak parties have become way stronger over the past decade, and given their similarities they should have no problems working together. The news of neoliberalism being discredited does not seem to have reached Amsterdam yet (though the right-populist PVV and left-populist SP both rose over the course of the 2000-2015 period, support for them has since declined).
Whatever forces are afflicting the United States with polarization, they don't seem to be working in the Netherlands *at all*. Very similar parties are getting very strong results in the country.
How does this tie in to the post about Turkey, you ask? Well, in a system with 17 parties some of the small ones that make it in are *very* wacky. Besides the animal rights party, and the Calvinist theocratic party (...watch this space, given birth-rate differentials it should be very important sooner than we are expecting, but it is still quite small), there is a sufficiently large number of recent Turkish immigrants in the Netherlands that there is a *Turkish nationalist party* represented in the Tweede Kamer! (It is called Denk, which means "think" in Dutch but "equality" in Turkish). They are basically openly Turkish fifth columnists and many of their leading members are also members of the AKP. Their politics comes down to "whatever Erdogan wants". Right-populists criticize them a lot, as you might expect.
(To spotlight another tiny Dutch party, because I've fallen down a hole of reading about them this week: Denk originally tried to portray itself as a woke outfit and convinced a bunch of people to join them, before all of those people were bitterly disappointed by its heresies, including anti-Kurdish racism. Thus, the party BIJ1 (or bijeen, which means "together" in Dutch but "glory" in Kurdish) broke off of Denk, though their chief source of support is Surinamese immigrants and woke white Dutch people rather than Kurds, and also made it in.)
Would be interested in reading ACX-informed takes on Dutch politics here.
*I won't summarize the history of pillarization here, but the Netherlands used to be an uncommonly politically polarized society, even by 20th-century European standards!
Seems pretty important to mention the 'wrongthink' he's being prosecuted for is leading a pro-pedophilia club where members shared tips on how to groom children.
That's fine but if you write a post about how someone can't say X, and link to a blog where that person says he's being censored, but NOWHERE *what* is being censored is mentioned (legalizing having sex with kids) you're digging your own grave. You could have literally said 'NL isn't a democracy and there's no free speech because you can't argue for pedophilia' but for some reason you just left that out, opening yourself up to a post like this.
If you think that's not important there's no reason not to mention it.
Being "open" seems rather contrary to being a fifth column.
They are not open about it. It is just very obvious.
Re: Calvinist party growth via breeding new Calvinists
Are they actually growing at anything like the speed looking at the birth rate would suggest?
I don't have citations, but I've heard that kids born into kooky religious sects mostly leave the sect, at least in the "developed" world. As such, the sects have essentially flat membership, despite breeding at much higher rates than the general population.
You may have a point here (they are merely keeping up with total population growth so far), because the SGP has gotten almost exactly the same result (either 2 or 3 seats in the Tweede Kamer) in every election since 1925 (!), which is some amazing consistency. However, the Tweede Kamer used to be smaller (before 1956, there were only 100 seats rather than 150), so the SGP might've reached its peak in the the 1929/1933 elections, when it won 3/100 seats.
However, given the general decline in Western birthrates after the 2008 recession and the tightening of immigration policies in many parts of the EU post-2015, I kind of do expect the SGP to grow over time relative to other parties. (Their youth wing, the SGP Jongeren, has been the biggest in the Netherlands since they allowed women to become members in 2006, and exit polls show they have a fairly young electorate. Denk has the youngest, imo unfortunately.) They have tied their best-ever modern result -- 3/150 seats -- at the past three elections consecutively, but this is a result they've been getting, off-and-on, since 1956 (when they also won 3/150).
> Their youth wing, the SGP Jongeren, has been the biggest in the Netherlands since they allowed women to become members in 2006
2006 was 15 years ago. If having a large youth movement would translate into the party growing over time it would have already happened.
Retention rate should rise over time for genetic reasons, as the traits that lead to leaving the sect "boil off" out of the sect population.
In theory maybe, but I'd be surprised if genetic selection had a significant impact before the social context changes radically enough to render it moot.
Great summary, thanks.
In the early days of the pandemic, the Dutch health minister fainted from overwork, during a house of legislature debate. For the next three months, he was replaced by a member of an opposition party, because the crisis required an experienced minister, quickly.
Not that the rest of our pandemic response has been stellar, but at least we looked across party lines for a solution.
I have to disagree with some of this. While the right-populist PVV declined, this is pretty clearly due to fragmentation among the populist right. There are now three populist parties, who together, went from 13% of the vote in 2017, to 18% in 2021. So populism is still growing.
Having both (woke) neo-liberalism and populism grow, at the expense of more traditional leftism, seems quite consistent with the changes that happen in the US.
> These historically weak parties have become way stronger over the past decade.
I think that you are being deceived by the fragmentation in politics. From 1972-2010, the VVD had between 14% and 25% of the vote. Their current 22% is at the high end, but during many elections of the past, such a percentage would have seen them end in 2nd or 3rd.
The high combined total of the liberal VVD and D66 is not unprecedented, as the two parties had almost the same combined percentage in 1994. Interestingly, this election led to the first real neoliberal coalition, which then resulted in the first populist backlash.
What is peculiar is that D66 didn't lose votes even though they participated in the coalition. They tend to be punished very hard for governing, because their voters tend to be very disappointed if they do govern. However, there are a lot of arguments for seeing this result as a bit of an outlier. I am willing to give good odds on D66 losing a lot of votes in 2025 (or before).
> However, this time around the task should be significantly easier than normal, because polarization on the Netherlands is massively on the decline.
The predictable outcome is that the populists will keep getting sidelined and that this will result in more and more anger/disillusionment.
Traditionally, Dutch politics had a center party that would switch out coalition parties, thereby giving every major party a regular shot at governing. That this system has broken down is itself a sign of polarization.
> Traditionally, Dutch politics had a center party that would switch out coalition parties, thereby giving every major party a regular shot at governing. That this system has broken down is itself a sign of polarization.
Eh, the CDA (the center party in question) was in 6 out of the last 7 coalitions and they're probably going to be in the next one. I'd be ok with them getting sidelined a bit more.
> The predictable outcome is that the populists will keep getting sidelined
Also don't know about this. Where almost certainly getting VVD, D66, CDA and one other party.
That last slot is probably going to be one of the left parties, but it seems there's at least a decent chance that JA21 (the most recent addition to the Dutch populist line up) gets it.
> Eh, the CDA (the center party in question) was in 6 out of the last 7 coalitions and they're probably going to be in the next one.
The logical consequence of a cordon sanitaire is that the non-excluded parties have a better chance to govern, even if they get beaten by an excluded party.
It's pretty clear by the statements of various politicians that the PVV and FvD have pretty much no chance to govern.
> but it seems there's at least a decent chance that JA21 (the most recent addition to the Dutch populist line up) gets it.
They are attractive due to the seats in the Senate that they can deliver, but D66 is really not going to want them.
Since nobody will work with the large populist parties there seems to be de facto reduced polarization when it comes to governing, even if popular opponion is polarized
One thing I found strange about this election season is how quiet it felt. Maybe it's just my social circle has been following the news less due to COVID, but it feels like I could have easily missed that an election was happening at all until like the week of the election.
Voter turnout was 82%, basically the same as four years ago (though granted, the election was spread out over three days this time due to COVID), so it's not just that people are less interested in politics.
I've heard that the general consensus in the Netherlands is much more skeptical of immigration any of the top 4 parties in the US, and that it's been that way since around the time Pim Fortuyn got assassinated. The martyr effect plus the Denk party openly operating as an Erdogan-worshipping fifth column may have helped with that. It sounds like the top two parties are basically standard neoliberals except they don't worship immigration the way US parties do. I could get behind that. A lot of the polarization in the US has to do with strawmanning opposition to immigration as wishing harm on immigrants, and strawmanning support for immigration as wishing harm on natives. Without the immigration issue the US would have far less polarization. Seems the Netherlands is kinda like the US minus the constant fighting over immigration and plus a more generous welfare state over a much less diverse population (which makes the welfare state easier for the voters to support and easier for the taxpayers to afford). It's kind of like a miniature of what the US would be if the last 60 years of US politicians had just decided to keep immigration levels lower.
Not if you look beyond the first generation. Also that 13.4% includes a lot of Europeans. The Netherlands is still 79.3% white. Canada is 72.9% (and most of the immigrants there are high IQ asians who are much less likely to cause problems than lower IQ immigrants). Australia is 76% (ditto about the source of the immigrants) The US is only 62.8% and the pool of immigrants there is lower IQ than the immigrants in Canada, Australia, and the Netherlands.
High levels of low IQ immigration have a lot of downsides and the first two that come to mind are:
High levels of low IQ immigration increase crime. First generation legal immigrants are screened for the absence of criminality, but their offspring regress towards the ethnic mean. Second generation hispanics in the US are much more criminal than whites. But it's easy to make a study that "proves" immigration doesn't increase crime by looking only at the first generation.
Also, high levels of low IQ immigration increase the supply of unskilled labor, making it harder for native unskilled labor to find jobs, and reduces their pay. Unskilled laborers would be better off if all the other factors of production were more abundant relative to unskilled labor.
Anyway, these obvious downsides create a backlash, and the backlash gets strawmanned as wishing harm on foreigners, and so on.
A complication is that the EU makes open borders within the EU mandatory and that all traditional parties are pro-EU, which means that they are implicitly pro-migration. However, those parties often refuse to debate actual EU-mandates, preferring to instead debate the EU membership as a whole (and defending it in very abstract ways, usually by pointing to the alleged income benefits). The result is a bit of a political vacuum.
Of course, the parties further to the right don't necessarily mind this, as equating migrants with Muslim asylum seekers is to their benefit.
I wrote a short piece about the Dutch election before it happened, which includes a link to a quiz that lets you see what Dutch party you would have voted for (based on their stances). The blog also discusses some of the strangers parties participating in the election. Blog here: https://www.blogger.com/blog/posts/6881443347990689961, quiz here: https://tweedekamer2021.kieskompas.nl/nl/background-questions
The Netherlands seems like a pretty sensible country to me as an outsider. They've got this startup visa program which seems like it could be a good way to immigrate if you're entrepreneurial
https://business.gov.nl/coming-to-the-netherlands/permits-and-visa/startup-visa/
To tie together recent themes, I always felt that the multitude of parties brings some built in antifragility to the Dutch political system.
Let's say an external event requires concerted action, eg. the sun is expected to become unstable in twenty years. I'd be able to start a party called "ASSnow" that's devoted to Abandon the Solar System. I'd do so by gathering a group of people with the knowledge required for a highly focused and actionable escape plan. No other party would have the infrastructure to make such an effort work.
In more general terms, being able to test a political hypothesis quickly is a good thing, especially in a volatile environment.
I'm confused about what exactly polarization even means in a many-party system. Wouldn't running negative ads in such an environment be completely useless? So there isn't even an incentive for demonization, let alone polarization.
Are people who exhibit plumber's butt aware that they are exhibiting it? I take note of its presence from time to time and sometimes wonder about the level of awareness in the practitioner. It would not be my chosen style.
However, yesterday while gardening in the front yard I was troubled by a sinister voice in my head bringing up the possibility that I've been an exhibitor in the past without even knowing it! Most troubling, to say the least. I'd have thought one would at least feel a cool light breeze?
Haha, honestly I have no idea but it reminds me of the guy who got banned from MTG tournaments for wandering around and collecting photo documentation of how common it was at the tournaments.
That's hilarious. He's probably selling a splendid coffee-table book on the subject.
Why would it be common at MTG tournaments? I thought it happened because plumbers carry heavy tools on their belts.
Other risk factors include:
a) Being fat, and
b) Not being sufficiently self-aware to wear properly-fitting clothes
I've never been to a MTG tournament but I'm guessing that these risk factors may be rather prevalent in such an environment.
Harrumph, magic players get no respect
Reddit thread posted by the guy in question:
https://www.reddit.com/r/funny/comments/202wd3/i_participated_in_one_of_the_biggest_magic_the/
And from there, the winning comment in the sportsmanship category:
"You got me to look at 16 dude cracks. Well played."
My partner's brothers, father, grandfather, male cousins, etc. have all inherited a body type that promotes this. They are aware of the tendency, but not every specific instance.
Thanks for such a clear, concise answer! And now I feel bad for laughing at the magic pictures. I actually hadn't thought through the possibility that this might be something quite difficult to control, but it makes sense. Are suspenders the only answer?
I think most people look in their closets and think, "these pants fit well, look nice, and are comfortable - I'll wear them first." But as the end of the laundry cycle approaches, the available choices are less appealing: "these tend to fall down, but all I have to do today is garden..."
So I think the answer is to ruthlessly purge your wardrobe of things that are sub-standard. But I'm one of those "get rid of all the socks you don't like" evangelists (https://m.xkcd.com/1982/), so I'm biased.
Suspenders and overalls are important answers. Getting very long shirts and tucking them in is another answer, but for various reasons these solutions are not used by some people. Finding long enough shirts for that to work is actually not easy at all. There's a physical configuration that can be called "long-waisted" so most commercially available pants don't go far enough up to take advantage of the indentation created by the waist, so even wearing a belt doesn't help, everything slides down eventually. I think it's the source of the clown character with the pants practically up to their neck. Having any kind of belly overhang just encourages the slide.
Having a tailor may be another answer, but that's not common anymore!
"...but for various reasons these solutions are not used by some people."
This statement is intriguing. Of the "various reasons," do some involve a conscious desire to exhibit one's backside? I.e., is it a statement for some? Or perhaps just a conscious decision not to fret over the matter?
Well, exhibitionism may play a part in it. There may be some amount of pride - a "yes, I am one of those people" type of pride. Or, there's a limited clothes budget, and they try something and it doesn't work and then they start to hate the process and refuse to deal with it anymore. Suspenders are not always findable in long enough sizes and they have this weird clip-on mechanism which doesn't seem as effective as it should be. Getting a shirt that is about a foot longer than average but not otherwise a tent, shouldn't be difficult but it is. I'm not sure it's "I don't care" or "I choose not to worry about this," it's more like "damn all these rules, I will never fit into this box so I disavow this." By the time they're adults there have been multiple tries to fix it and therefore multiple failures. If it's comfort versus social propriety, those who value comfort go ahead and crack, while those who value propriety wear overalls everywhere.
I think men's dress shirts are one of the few types of shirt that can be bought very long, so a person who would "crack" but is in a white-collar occupation will be able to afford the type of shirt that won't show butt and then they wear it all the time. If you know someone who seems to always be wearing a collared shirt even when not at work, that might be why. People in lower income brackets or who do not typically wear dress shirts are therefore separated from the solution.
My 7 year old has this problem, due to just not having hips or a butt for the pants to hang onto, like trying to dress a pvc pipe. We found underwear that is basically biking shorts that go up to her navel, and that solves the problem well.
For a moment I thought you were talking the butt of SSC commenter @Plumber, who I think goes by a different handle here. Conjured up quite a worrying mental image.
An an older adult male of the type who occasionally crouches under the sink: Usually aware, but sometimes not. So I try to be considerate of others in all cases of possible plumber's butt. I wonder to what extent it can be thought of as a "Do Not Disturb" sign, like red and yellow stripes on a snake but more "Quiet! Genius at work!" than "Venomous if disturbed." Like, I've never gone over to a dude with plumber's butt and asked him, "How's it going? That campfire/sink/toilet/car just about finished yet?"
I'm liking this theory quite a bit. It would help explain the magic participants, who were stumping me because I would have thought they would be more socially conscientious at important gatherings. But if they were prioritizing their need to concentrate on their work, their Do Not Disturb signals (conscious or not) make perfect sense!
Thanks Tom. We may well be on the verge of solving this important puzzle!
I haven't had any data on gamers in about thirty years, but the old data indicated that enough gamers (D&D) really did not care about their appearance, ever. Maybe in those circles, making an effort to cover your crack would be more alienating than cracking.
I am willing to pay (in crypto) for the consulting services of a religion scholar who can help me identify the currently existing faith tradition which is most compatible with my ethical and metaphysical intuitions. If interested, email SumElse@protonmail.com
In case no religion scholar picks up your offer, you should take a look at the perennialists, who hold that all the major religious traditions are in fact expressing the same truths (as the parable of the blind men and the elephant analogically explains), any differences being the result of these truths being tailored to a specific people at a specific time.
As to where to start with them, I wouldn't know what to say. I got the core perennialist intuition from the Bhagavad Gita (*hint hint*), before even knowing of them. Rene Guenon, Frithjof Schuon, and Ananda Coomaraswamy are the main perennialists. This essay titled Self-Naughting, by Coomaraswamy can give a glimpse of perennialist thinking:
https://sufipathoflove.files.wordpress.com/2019/02/coomaraswamy-a.k.-metaphysics-bollingen-series-akimcana-self-naughting-no-ocr.pdf
I don't really have a comment, other than that your comment reminded me of a G. K. Chesterton quote I enjoy:
"There is a phrase of facile liberality uttered again and again at ethical societies and parliaments of religion: "the religions of the earth differ in rites and forms, but they are the same in what they teach." It is false; it is the opposite of the fact. The religions of the earth do not greatly differ in rites and forms; they do greatly differ in what they teach. It is as if a man were to say, "Do not be misled by the fact that the CHURCH TIMES and the FREETHINKER look utterly different, that one is painted on vellum and the other carved on marble, that one is triangular and the other hectagonal; read them and you will see that they say the same thing." The truth is, of course, that they are alike in everything except in the fact that they don't say the same thing...So the truth is that the difficulty of all the creeds of the earth is not as alleged in this cheap maxim: that they agree in meaning, but differ in machinery. It is exactly the opposite. They agree in machinery; almost every great religion on earth works with the same external methods, with priests, scriptures, altars, sworn brotherhoods, special feasts. They agree in the mode of teaching; what they differ about is the thing to be taught."
Chesterton there is more attacking a secular position which concludes the real core of all religions is ethics, that they all have the same ethics, and that therefore you can just have the ethics and toss out the rest, making the fruit of religion accessible to secularists. The perennialists are instead asserting that religions (the major ones at least) are of a supra-human and supra-rational nature: they are not the product of human cognition in other words, but of something higher than man. Which yes, can be quite the claim, depending on one's metaphysical commitments.
I am also seeking a spiritual tradition which is compatible with my intuitions (as well as one which has the most evidence behind it), but I can't pay anyone because I'm poor.
Good luck to you.
This week I tested positive Covid 19. The only symptoms are that last Sunday I had a mild fever and a fair amount of fatigue that started on Saturday. On Tuesday or Wednesday I noticed I had lost my sense of taste and finally got tested Friday. I am isolating until Wednesday -- the nurse told me I have to isolate 10 days from onset of symptoms -- but otherwise am working.
Great that you're still functioning and I hope you make a speedy, full recovery.
I have been reading this Codex blog for about 5 years now, but I feel like I'm no closer to understanding what the word "epistemic" means.
Would anyone care to explain it like I'm 35?
It's about how you know what you know. Reliability of sources, choosing who to believe, and so on. In cases of extreme skepticism, whether your senses can be trusted.
If you’re talking about “epistemic status” used in the blurb at the top of posts, it basically means “my level of confidence”
I should have specified but, yes, I did figure out long ago that epistemic status is used to mean confidence level. When epistemic is *not* followed by status though I'm still lost, I just blank the word and move on (and seem to lose nothing from doing this).
It’s just the subject of knowledge and how to go about getting said knowledge. It’s generally contrasted to “practical” domains concerning action. Really though, when you read it you can just think to yourself “knowledge”, and you’re not missing much.
I feel as though Urban Dictionary has kind of drifted from its true calling.
https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Epistemic%20Status
"Epistemic" is the adjective form of "epistemology". Epistemology is the branch of philosophy focused on how you know if something is true or not. Are mathematical proofs better or worse (or just different) than empirical evidence? Should your religious beliefs be determined more by the Bible or tradition or reason or personal spiritual experiences? These are the sorts are questions that would fall under epistemology.
The LessWrong community is mostly committed to Bayesian empiricism as their epistemology. "Epistemic status" is not used to denote what kind of epistemology is being used. It is instead used to denote a confidence level.
"Epistemic" -- Having to do with our state of knowledge.
For me, that on it's own feels too airy and esoteric to actually remember. It makes me feel like, alright but what's a real-life example of "epistemics?" How am I going to use that in my thinking or conversations?
The solution, for me, is to remind myself to contrast Epistemology with Ontology -- the field having to do with existence, or how things are.
So remember that there are two contrasting fields: Epistemics (what we know) and Ontology (what/how things are). That helps me make each of them more contrete.
I appreciate the structure of this answer the most, however I'm still not understanding.
How is it that what we know and how things are are two different things? Surely they have perfect overlap because we don't know what we don't know. Or is it that epistemics are the known knowns while ontology is the known knowns plus the known unknowns?
(By the way I'm much more conversant in Rumsfeldian nomenclature than Greek nomenclature.)
Not sure I understand your question, but you can try looking on your knowledge "from outside" and ask yourself things like: "Yeah, I believe X, but why exactly is it so? Is that because people told me? Or have I actually observed it? Suppose I am actually wrong about X, how could I verify this?"
And then you can admit (state your epistemic status) as: "I vaguely remember this from school, or from a newspaper I once read, but I never actually thought about this deeply" or "I was told so by a friend, and it seems to make sense, but I never tried to get a second opinion, nor did I even look up the topic in Wikipedia" or "I actually know 3 examples of it, and my friends believe that too, but who knows, it is possible that exceptions exist, and maybe there are actually many exceptions outside my social bubble".
How is map (what we know) different from the territory (how things are)? For example, our beliefs can be probabilistic. Like, you may flip a coin, and I will think "50% chance it landed this side up, and 50% chance it landed that side up", although I am pretty sure that the actual coin landed either fully one side up or fully the other side up, no 50% of this and 50% of that; it's just that I don't know which one of these options it was, and I have no reason to prefer either.
More advanced version of this is the Bayesianism, which is an attempt to give a mathematically correct answer to: if my initial belief has strength X, and then I get an imperfect evidence with strength Y, how strong should be my resulting belief? That is, not your beliefs are not of the "yes/no" or even "yes/no/no idea" type, but they are real number; so you can say that being 90% sure about something is greater confidence than merely being 70% sure about something.
A world without life would have ontology but not epistemology. Things exist, but nothing is known.
I think that the best way to understand the difference is to look at examples.*
Rumsfeld assumes that your beliefs should correspond to what actually exists. This is the correspondence theory of truth and is by far the most common epistemology.
Most other epistemologies are elaborations on the correspondence theory of truth. Empiricism is the epistemology that says that you should choose your beliefs based on what you observe to exist, so epistemology is determined by ontology. Platonism is the belief that ideas are more real than experience, so ontology is determined by epistemology.
You could also have an epistemology connected to ethics instead of ontology. Maybe "giving $5 to Against Malaria will save a child's life" is empirically false**, but if you believe it, you will donate more money to Against Malaria. Is it more important for your beliefs to be empirically correct or for you to prevent more children from dying from malaria?
The most common epistemology here is Bayesian empiricism. Beliefs should be approached probabilistically, even if the underlying ontology is not probabilistic, so you can treat all additional evidence using a simple statistical rule. Ontologically, there is a difference between a coin that hasn't been flipped yet and a coin on the ground that you haven't looked at yet. Epistemologically, they both have 1:1 odds.
* Note that this is an epistemological statement.
** That is actually the cost per mosquito net.
Within philosophy, this issue of the connection between ontology and epistemology is an important question.
"Realists" say that ontology is about how the world is, regardless of whether or not we do know about it or can know about it. "Anti-realists" say that no sense can be made in talking about reality independent of what we know about it, and so we should say that what there is just is what we can know there is.
Realists point out that we recognize all the time about other people (and about our past selves) that what these people know and what is true are two different things. Anti-realists insist that although for any *individual* person, what is true and what is known might come apart, it can't *systematically* be the case for *everyone*.
This manifests as a difference in logic. Realists endorse the law of excluded middle - every sentence is either true or false - while anti-realists do not. Consider the sentence, "there will never be a city with over 1 billion residents". Realists say that this sentence is either true or false, even if we don't (yet) know which. Anti-realists don't want to *deny* that this sentence is either true or false (perhaps some day we will know that it is true or know that it is false), but they specifically won't endorse the claim. This leads to what logicians call "intuitionist logic".
In addition to just insisting that logic is classical, and insisting that the world can be how it is whether we can know it or not, realists sometimes point to Fitch's paradox - this is a formal logical argument showing that if every truth *can* be known, then in fact every truth *is* known by someone or other. (The argument is that if there were some truth p that weren't known, then (p&~Kp) would be true, so (p&~Kp) must be knowable - but if it were known, then p would be true, so it would be false, which is a contradiction.)
Some philosophers are willing to endorse realism about the physical world, but anti-realism about mathematics. Many philosophers are willing to endorse anti-realism about fiction (e.g., if it is impossible for any actual human to know the answer to some question about the Harry Potter universe, like whether Snape had a cup of coffee or a cup of tea on the morning of July 28, 1990, then there is no true answer to that question).
Here's a bunch of Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy entries on these topics, if any of them pique your interest:
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/realism/
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/realism-sem-challenge/
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/intuitionism/
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/fitch-paradox/
I come at my realism from a somewhat different source. I accept Hume's dictum that you can't infer an "is" from an "ought" or an "ought" from an "is". Ontology is the study of "is"es. But epistemology is a study about "ought"s - given my evidence and my limitations, what ought I to believe, or be confident about, or doubt? A useful way to think about much of epistemology is as the "ethics of belief".
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/ethics-belief/
Oh gosh, Rumsfeld may open a door here. The Rumsfeldian exercise of categorizing the status of what are known and unknown about that which is known and unknown is an eptistemic undertaking. It's casting an eye at our knowledge and wondering, how do we know that? Putting our facts under a heat lamp and interrogating them. It's recursive like that.
Here are some times examples of when I try to think epistemologically, which may or may not help: I used to coach reporters to try to find out not only what your source knows but how they know what they know. Likewise, when I read a study abstract, I want to get a sense not just of the results but of the study design and what it is capable and not capable of showing.
Here is some bandura and accordion music: https://youtu.be/Qmr-hS_Z72E
I can get the Moderna vaccine on Wedneday. Do people think there's any reason to wait and to instead try to get the Johnson and Johnson one at some unspecified point in the future? I'm just worried about potential long-term side effects of taking an mRNA vaccine, which is a really new and relatively untested technology. Is this completely irrational? I just feel like who knows if there will be long-term side effects - it's so novel!
I know everyone in every medium is saying "it's completely safe, no need to worry!", but honestly, how do they know if there may be long-term effects? They don't, do they? This is exacerbated by the fact that there seems to be a culture-war element to it, and people who are pro-mRNA vaccine seem to think that people who have any reservations about it at all are dangerous to larger society.
On the other hand, the J&J vaccine doesn't seem completely effective, so I'd be worried about possibly suffering long-term side effects from actually getting covid on it.
There isn't an obvious mechanism by which there would be long term effects, but it's not impossible. If, say, 10 years down the line we learned there was a downside to the mRNA vaccine that took a long time to express, I would be fairly surprised. I would expect this discovery to only happen if there were novel mechanisms, which would surprise me.
It's based on this lack of mechanisms for long term side effects that I decided it was worth going for an mRNA vaccine, which was available to me before J&J was. I figured, based on the risk of waiting another month and potentially getting covid, which can potentially have long term symptoms, this was the move for me.
The reason you're seeing a full-court press on promoting mRNA is that it is in fact low risk and there are in fact not mechanisms by which it would have long term negative impacts. Given the general vaccine skepticism in USA, vaccine discourse by informed people in public areas is focused on increasing vaccine adoption.
My understanding is that the J&J vaccine is extremely effective at preventing deaths, hospitalizations and severe covid, as all vaccines are: it will be fine if that's what you have access to.
Is there any more reason to think the mRNA vaccine will have long-term bad effects than the adenovirus-based vaccine? In both cases, you could have some kind of contaminant, though they're pretty careful about avoiding that kind of thing. Or you could have some weird cross-reaction where you end up with CTLs that want to attack some important healthy cells in your body or something, but that doesn't seem more likely with an mRNA vaccine than with an adenovirus one.
Here is a discussion about why it unlikely that the mRNA vaccines have long term side effects which is not culture-war at all:
https://www.deplatformdisease.com/blog/does-sars-cov-2-have-a-reverse-transcriptase
Let me set your mind at ease by saying there's no such thing as a vaccine that's "completely effective" and no medical treatment ever devised which is "without side effects."
It's always a percentage game. I'm generally speaking low-risk for vaccines, so it's a fairly easy decision to go with whatever vaccine comes along first.
I do Not regard this as especially "Virtuous," motivated as I am purely by self interest.
Superpowers joke goes here.
This may not be the answer that you're looking for, but the J&J vaccine isn't notably less novel. The ModeRNA and Pfizer/BioNTech vaccines both work by copying the virus's mRNA that codes for the spike protein, and using a nanoparticle to sneak this mRNA into the body of your cell, which then makes the spikes and trains your immune system. The J&J and Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccines both make *DNA* that codes for this mRNA, insert it into the genome of an adenovirus that doesn't usually infect humans, and use this adenovirus to sneak the DNA into the nucleus of your cell, which then thinks this DNA is its own, makes mRNA out of it (the same mRNA as from the other vaccines), and then makes the spikes and trains your immune system.
I believe there was one adenovirus vaccine that had just been approved for the prevention of ebola in 2019, also made by Johnson & Johnson, but this is the only previous adenovirus vaccine that had been tested and approved, and it obviously hasn't been used widely yet: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ebola_vaccine#Ad26.ZEBOV/MVA-BN-Filo
The advantages of the adenovirus vector are that the virus knows how to protect DNA at regular temperatures, so no special liquid nitrogen storage is needed, in addition to the advantage of having at least been worked out once before the current pandemic. The disadvantages are that it's possible to develop immunity to the adenovirus itself so that you never actually end up with the covid DNA and mRNA and spike, and I suppose there's theoretically a set of worries around getting viral DNA into some of your cells rather than just mRNA (though I believe plenty of viruses you have been infected with in your life so far have done this also). Both of these novel methodologies have the advantage over traditional vaccines (made with either tiny doses of live virus, or larger doses of killed viruses) that the only parts of the coronavirus itself that are ever in your body is the code for the spike and the spike itself, and not the parts that actually make people sick, as well as the advantage that if they discover a new mutation of the spike they want to protect against, they can just insert the new sequence into their DNA/mRNA printer (which just takes a couple weeks to get into injections) instead of trying to culture large amounts of virus itself (which often takes a year or two).
So my recommendation would be to just take the first one you are offered, unless you are both very concerned about long-term side effects and very confident that you can ensure that you won't be infected with the coronavirus itself if you avoid vaccination.
I didn't hesitate to take the Pfizer vaccine, second dose six weeks ago, no side effects. Of course I couldn't say with certainty what completely unexpected side effects might arise from any vaccine in ten years, but on the other hand we already know a good bit about what rotten effects can occur from the virus itself, even (to a limited extent) among people who are lucky enough to come down with a mostly asymptomatic case. The trade-off is unusually obvious to me this time, and I'm not someone who is rigorous about taking every vaccination offered to me every year. I'm nearly 65. I stay current on tetanus vaccination. I sometimes take the flu vaccine and sometimes don't. The shingles vaccine makes good trade-off sense to me. I got my Pfizer dose the first moment I could manage it.
I looked it up today, and was disappointed to learn that there is no one in the US named Donald McRonald.
I laughed, and then I though: is there an official list of the name of everyone in the US somewhere that is publicly accessible? Or did you just Google it?
http://howmanyofme.com/
This site lets you look up the list. As I understand it "1 or fewer" means zero.
"1 or fewer" can mean 1 - that's what it gives for my wife's name.
Am I a deontologist, or a rule utilitarian?
On one hand, I believe that the greatest good for the greatest number is probably a very nice thing overall. On the other hand, I am entirely of the belief that this is a terrible way of actually choosing what to do, because we flabby mortals are terrible at predicting the consequences of our actions.
I don't believe that a "Just give it your best shot and it'll all probably be fine on average" approach to predicting the consequences of your actions is any good either; I think if everyone did this then we'd have a helluva lot more murders because a sizeable fraction of the population probably thinks that assassinating their least-favourite politician or similar is likely to produce positive utils.
I think that trolley problems are a terrible guide to moral thinking, because they obscure the massive uncertainty about consequences that is characteristic of real-world decisions. A more useful trolley problem says "It's foggy, you're near a railway switch, you're pretty sure there's more people down one track than down the other but you're not really sure, and also you're not really sure which way the switch is adjusted right now, do you flip it?" Or for a more concrete example, "It's 2003, you are President Bush, do you invade Iraq?"
Given the impossibility of using utilitarianism to make or even guide choices on a case-by-case basis, I think the only reasonable thing you can possibly do is to come up with a workable set of moral heuristics that you can commit to in advance. Things like "Thou shalt not kill" and "Don't go messing around with railroad switches unless you know what you're doing". These heuristics don't give the optimal answer in every case, and each of them is open to debate and modification, but if we can all come to some sort of agreement on a reasonable-ish consensus set of heuristics to govern our behaviour then we're a lot better off than we would be in a world where everyone makes ad hoc decisions based on their personal guesstimates of how many utils are likely to be gained.
Does this make me a deontologist?
From your description, I think that if you were given undeniable proof that changing one of your rules would create better outcomes for everyone, you would change it. Right?
If so, I believe this makes you a rule utilitarian, not a deontologist.
Fair enough, I'd be satisfied with that definition personally.
Though I'm not sure how many "true" deontologists it would leave.
Most of the religious ones? Although I guess they just have a different standard of what constitutes "undeniable proof", a strong enough divine revelation would probably count.
That's an interesting question. If a Deontologist believed in following a set of rules, could they be a Deontologist if they were willing to update those rules? I would think yes, depending on the reason for the change. What seems obvious to me is that someone following a religious text could find a previously unknown (to them) passage of text and therefore change their rule. The underlying rule of "I follow God's rules" would still be correct.
It's a fun puzzle.
You're using arguments about outcomes to argue for deontologist perspectives. "We'd be better off, all things considered, if we stopped focusing on what would make us better off all things considered!"
Can you be a deontologist, except a utilitarian just for meta-ethics? Maybe... You can similarly believe the inverse, "People must always serve the greatest good for the greatest number, because there is a natural law or command that compels us to seek such outcomes!" (Well, I suspect that meta-ethics and ethics might collapse if we poke too much... but let's not go there.)
I must tangent though that... there's a bit of fighting against "abstraction itself" in your take on the trolley problem. I admit that problem is pretty annoying. But... I want to briefly make a case for the value of moral abstraction in general though (even if the trolley problem itself is not generally helpful).
Consider other domains that involve uncertainty, and rejecting abstraction becomes more clearly problematic.
A basic study of vectors and momentum and even fluid dynamics are all still going to be generally impractical for predicting exactly where a falling leaf will land as you walk down the street. But we still say, ok, these tools let you bound your uncertainty. You can make probabilistic estimates of the range of likely possibilities, and calculate your range of errors. We don't jump to, "but leaves fall, therefore physics is useless."
Now... the trolley problem is admittedly an excruciating example of the power of moral abstraction, because it is designed intentionally to be confusing. But it's really just a bad ambassador.
You could take simpler examples, in order to get a purer measure of the value of moral abstraction itself:
“Imagine someone wakes up late for an appointment. Is it morally permissible to kill them?"
You would probably not respond, "well, I don't know all the details... so I'm reluctant to say whether or not there is any general fact of the matter on the rightfulness or wrongfulness of killing the tardy."
We have a good ability to judge which moral rules are absurd. We just, most of the time, talk exclusively about very hard cases, because those are the most interesting ones, so it tricks us into think all morality is extremely hard.
You might still be right that giving people simple rules covers most situations even better than walking them through case studies, or just leaving it up to them to figure it out. Probably true. But these situations, in practice, are generally meta-ethical tools - actually used to test for unexpected outcomes coming from different perspectives, to judge the flaws in any system.
More helpfully, if you're out shopping for novel options in meta-ethics, you should definitely review the SEP's article on Moral Anti-Realism, just to see if any of the several varieties there strikes your fancy:
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/moral-anti-realism/index.html
I am going to disagree with the other commenters. I'd say you are a deontologist, because things like "Thou shalt not kill" is what you believe in and what comes first and most important in your considerations, whereas influencing future comes way behind the basic moral considerations and, although you're ready to give it thought and be convinced on some things, it is something you don't viscerally believe in.
Disclaimer here: I grew up among deontologists and am biased against consequentialism.
The rationalist community has a pretty good reputation for finding convenient, memorable shorthands for complex mental rules and heuristics (“Victorian Sufi Buddha Lite”, "One-"/"Two-boxing", etc.). I've developed a small mental practice that I need help naming.
The practice is useful when I'm trying to tease out some kind of idea about a certain story, which is being re-told through multiple non-impartial outlets that give mutually exclusive information. A good example is a classic #metoo accusation scandal - he says everything was consensual and she was manipulative and vindictive, she says he was a horrific abuser and raped her several times with prejudice, conservative/anti-cancel-culture media support his side of the story, progressive/cancel-culture media support her side of the story.
What I tend to do in such cases is assume that whatever each side says about themselves (the rhetorical "defense") to be dismissible lies, and whatever they say about their opponent (the "offense") to be true. This creates a pretty bleak and cynical view of the world, but... sometimes I find it delivering kind of useful results. What's a nice name for this sort of practice?
(It's also not particularly a deep idea, so it's entirely possible that a lot of people have come up with something like this before. If they did, what did they call it?)
An assumption of asymmetric honesty?
I'm copying 'asymmetric justice'.
This seems very susceptible to being led astray by the strategy of just claiming the worst thing you can think of about the person you're trying to cancel or attack or whatever. Since that's actually a tactic that some folks employ, particularly in cancellation attempts, this seems like a problem.
Or at least, that's what my enemy would say. You know, the guy who puts on Klan robes to molest disabled orphans while continually stomping on a bible, a koran, and a US flag, and while also dining on filet of endangered animal which was killed with maximum cruelty.
That's a decent point! For some reason, so far I haven't seen egregious implausible claims like what you're showing here - at least, not to the extent that would make me go "This sounds weird and totally off, but hey, policy says whatever is offensive is true, so... "
Maybe cancellers still want to maintain a modicum of "believable" when accusing someone, and conveniently they only overblow the truth by the amount no more egregious than would be prudent to believe anyway?
I.e. Alice is saying her ex, Bob, violently beat her, owned a gun, regularly threatened her into having sex, sometimes at gunpoint. In reality, Bob did beat her, did own a gun and did regularly threaten her into having sex (but never at gunpoint). But given all those points that are real, assuming or at least suspecting that last point (which isn't) wouldn't be unreasonable, even if you had never heard Alice.
Then again, this sounds like a very generous assumption towards myself. Also, I have never had a chance to test this technique against very high-stakes cancellations, as those are rarely both he-said-she-said AND end up with observable results which allow for verification - mostly very niche scandals in small communities.
In any case, this doesn't invalidate your point - in principle, you are totally correct.
Maybe one way to remediate this would be to also put in place a retroactive policy of "believe nothing of someone who is stated to be lying"? Anyone countering a "worst thing I can think of" attack will probably respond with "this is a flat out lie". Which then would lead me to believe "This person is a total liar (plus whatever they were also accused of), about that person I just know nothing because their opponent are entirely untrustworthy". From there on, the worst place this can go to is the other person countering with the same ("They're flat out lying about me flat out lying!") - at which point I go "Both sides are not trustworthy enough to assume anything, I know nothing" - which is probably not a very bad position to be. It could theoretically degrade my opinion about every single public argument into a state of cartesian doubt - but this seems, again, to not be prevalent enough for total degradation to be a risk.
"What I tend to do in such cases is assume that whatever each side says about themselves to be dismissible lies, and whatever they say about their opponent to be true. "
That's not a good assumption. Most people in most societies are at least somewhat uncomfortable with lying. When they say something not-true about themselves, they have firsthand knowledge that the thing they are saying is not true, and they are limited in the degree of exaggeration or whitewashing they can do without feeling like they are lying. When they say something not-true about others, there is no such check and indeed the possibility of reinforcement by having one's knowledge about the other coming from having heard similarly not-true statements from people like themselves. They can easily convince themselves, and even more easily be convinced, that the other is Worse Than Hitler and not feel the least bit uncomfortable about saying so no matter how not-true that actually is.
I use something similar. For example in politics, I assume that when people criticize other people's proposals, they are likely to be right, but when they propose their own solution, they are likely to be wrong. I listen to Marx when he criticizes capitalism, and I listen to Solzhenitsyn when he criticizes socialism. To learn about how a religious group functions, I consider former members more trustworthy than current members. I would trust Chomsky's description of American media more than I would trust his description of the Khmer Rouge.
That said, I don't assume the critics are 100% right. They are also fallible humans with their own biases, they may hold a grudge, etc. Some of them criticize X merely because it competes with their favorite Y. (That is, if your heuristic is trusting "anti" narratives and suspecting "pro" narratives, this can be exploited by a "pro-Y" narrative disguised as an "anti-X" narrative. Any political movement whose name starts with "anti" is automatically suspect of this.) It is better, if possible, to listen to multiple independent critics.
One reason for this is that I am already pessimistic, and I believe that things are complicated and it's hard to get them right. So a narrative about things going wrong sounds plausible to me; a narrative about getting everything right sounds implausible. A description "this group contains both good and bad people" sounds more trustworthy than a description "all members of this group have pure hearts and pure intensions". Also, multiple positive descriptions are likely to originate in the same PR department. (The same is possible for multiple negative descriptions, so I suspect them if they sound too similar.)
Ultimately, no heuristic is 100% reliable, more facts are always welcome. But I trust criticism more than praise. (But then of course, I also adjust for my general dark view, and admit that a flawed thing may still be the best option, simply because the alternatives are even worse.)
"For example in politics, I assume that when people criticize other people's proposals, they are likely to be right, but when they propose their own solution, they are likely to be wrong."
This method runs into trouble when there's someone like Marx who is correct about both problems and solutions.
(Reposting since this was right before the new OT)
Question for people who are or were in the past employed in law enforcement and/or criminal justice (e.g., police officer, detective, defense attorney, criminal etc.) If you've got a minute I'm really, curious how you'd rate the following procedurals (from 1-10) along the following dimensions:
1) How much you personally enjoy the show
2) How accurately the show captures some or all of your lived experience in criminal justice
Dragnet
Adam-12
The Untouchables
Police Story
Kojak
NYPD Blue
Hill Street Blues
Cagney & Lacey
Miami Vice
21 Jump Street
Law & Order franchise (feel free to call out any particular series for praise/condemnation)
Homicide: Life on the Street
CSI franchise (if you think it's relevant I guess?)
The Shield
NCIS franchise (same)
The Wire
Brooklyn Nine Nine
So you could say for example, *Brooklyn Nine Nine* Enjoy: 7 | Accurate: 2 (or whatevs) and by all means add in additional color if you are so moved.
If you haven't seen a show feel free to skip and if I missed your favorite by all means add it in. If I get a good sample size I'll graph it for the next OT. Thanks!
I also wanted to add that this thread is inspired by a police officer who writes on Substack and comments here, it's pretty good!
https://grahamfactor.substack.com/
I hope that Dragnet (1987) accurately captures some or all of peoples' lived experience in criminal justice.
Alan Sepinwall just wrote on this exact topic in The Rolling Stone. I recommend you check it out.
Long ago Scott wrote:
An example: Alice writes a blog post excoriating Bob’s opinion on tax reforming, calling him a “total idiot” who “should be laughed out of the room”. Bob feels so offended that he tries to turn everyone against Alice, pointing out every bad thing she’s ever done to anyone who will listen. Carol considers this a “sexist harassment campaign” and sends a dossier of all of Bob’s messages to his boss, trying to get him fired. Dan decides this proves Carol is anti-free speech, and tells the listeners of his radio show to “give Carol a piece of their mind”, leading to her getting hundreds of harassing and threatening email messages. Eric snitches on Dan to the police. How many of these people are in the wrong?
My verdict:
>Alice is in the wrong initially, but not in a way that merits serious concrete retaliation, except maybe throwing a few insults back at her.
>Bob is very much in the wrong, by going through every bad thing Alice has ever done and turning people against her, he has greatly transgressed a moral line. He gets a tiny bit of exculpation because Alice was rude, but only a tiny bit.
>Now Carol retaliates on Alice's behalf. Carol claim that Bob's actions are sexist is a little tendentious just from the information provided, but given that Bob has tried to destroy Alice's life life, I would generally consider what Carol has done reasonable retaliation. Trying to turn all of someone's friends against them and trying to turn their boss against them are about on the same level, so it's a legitimate tit for tat. I would be open to the possibility that Carol's acts are slightly wrongful, but only slightly.
>Dan is unequivocally wrong.
>Eric's act in getting the police involved is probably wrong, but to make a definite determination on this I would need more information, e.g. based on the radio show etc. etc. is it likely that Dan put Carol in mortal danger? Is Carol a public figure.
I agree, except on Eric. At worse, he's wasting police time on something that isn't quite illegal. (I don't know whether Dan's action is illegal.)
What would it, from a political philosophy perspective, make someone, if they say "Everyone is correct here. They are just trying to do what humans do, which is to hurt people who disagree with them and promote their agenda by any means necessary. The world would probably be a better place if none of them did any of this, just like it would be if all resources were magically not scarce, but since this is not a realistic proposal none of them are to be blamed."?
Asking for a friend.
What you're talking about is most analogous to realism in international relations.
This. So true.
That seems like something you could say, but that would not provide any benefit to the observer. If you dismiss any actions that you can explain, and can explain every action after the fact, then there's no basis for moral review. All actions become equally permissible, and there's no basis by which to try to correct. Even if you dismiss any kind of pure morality, taking on such an approach neuters any improvement. All actions are equally good/bad/neutral, therefore do whatever you want - as long as it isn't arbitrary!
Does this view make everything anyone does count as "correct"? Or would someone be "incorrect" if they were to try to de-escalate or turn the other cheek or something?
Relevant, useful taxonomy by Julia Galef: https://juliagalef.com/2017/08/13/how-i-think-about-free-speech-four-categories/
All five are behaving badly. It makes me think about how constantly in pretty much any facebook back and forth that I participate in, or (thankfully more often) just watch, people are always jumping from making points about the actual subject matter to making personal attacks on the other person's character (sometimes only peripherally related). It happens in in-person discussions too, though only in the smaller portion of cases with a pathological participant.
>Trying to turn all of someone's friends against them
I think you're misinterpreting here, the people Bob is trying to turn against Alice are his own friends (or, at most, social media followers), there's no indication of him sending unsolicited messages to strangers, like Carol did. (Otherwise, the "everyone" would include e.g. Carol's boss and the police, making the entire thought exercise moot.)
There's a clear pattern of escalation intended here, and, ironically, I think Carol to Dan is the closest to breaking it. Having your inbox filled with spam, no matter how awful, is just not comparable to suddenly (even if temporarily) losing your means of subsistence. (Though realistically we should assume some of Dan's followers would also find Carol's boss's email address.)
A PSA to everyone who built up supplies at this time last year as the virus was incoming:
check all your stuff, eat what's still good, toss what must be tossed, replace what should be replaced.
Please don’t eat any toilet paper even if it is “still good”.
Great PSA however.
substack getting some flak -
https://newrepublic.com/article/161764/substack
"the company’s lax—which is to say, nearly nonexistent—content moderation policies have also come under fire. Transphobes like Graham Linehan, who have been kicked off other platforms, have found a home at Substack. Others have used their newsletters to launch harassment campaigns against other journalists. Substack’s response has been defensive and disingenuous."
https://gen.medium.com/substack-is-not-a-neutral-platform-8fc5bdf8e5f2
"I had watched as the platform morphed into a haven for online transphobia, and when I hit my limit, I hit it hard."
https://thehypothesis.substack.com/p/heres-why-substacks-scam-worked-so
"I think of myself as having decent critical faculties, but somehow I got suckered again by a bog-standard publishing venture masquerading as a useful communications tool. I’m referring, of course, to the Substack debacle -- and my inadvertent role in it."
Bonus - author of that last one used to work for Gawker.
This is the kind of "flak" that's an inadvertent endorsement.
Yeah. Without knowing any details, my default translation of "transphobes who have been kicked off other platforms" is "reasonable people who have fallen prey to cancel campaigns".
I sometimes wish I could be less cynical.
So, are you saying, by default you assume anyone labeled a transphobe is really a reasonable person? That seems odd.
Do you have the same reaction to, say, the wife-beater label? Certainly there are plenty of people labeled as such unfairly -- but is that enough for you to assume by default that they are innocents?
Or is this more to do with your questioning whether transphobia itself is an unreasonable perspective to project upon a public space? If so, what about racism?
Presumably, FluffyBuffalo's definition of transphobia is such that the vast majority of people cancelled for transphobia don't meet it. This means that being cancelled for transphobia is only weak evidence of being transphobic (in his definition) and as such most people in that category are still reasonable by null hypothesis (rare disease problem).
However, being cancelled for transphobia is 100% evidence of being cancelled. Ergo, if all you know about someone is that they were cancelled for transphobia, the most probable underlying reality is "cancelled unfairly" - at least, by his definition.
I imagine there is, at the very least, better inter-rater agreement on what actions are and are not wife-beating than there is for transphobia, so while there can still be materially-false accusations the test is quite a bit more accurate.
OK, thanks both of you for the rational explanations. I don't know where you live, Fluffy, but I would venture you've met plenty of trans people without ever knowing it. I've spent time around naïve conservatives whose experience is limited to Caitlyn Jenner and perhaps a handful of others whose transgenderism seems easy to spot. As a result they are quite biased into thinking of trans people the same way they think of crossdressers -- rather than actual men and women.
Many of these conservatives are not overtly hateful (but I tend to wear my queer stripes on my sleeve, so they may be dialing back their habitual reactions) -- but they project bewilderment, and think it's silly (or dangerous) to allow crossdressers in the wrong bathrooms, etc.
Allowing for all this, the relevant question, it seems to me, is how to deal with generalized ignorance that is known to generally cause damage to a generally oppressed population (with sky-high suicide rates, violent attacks, etc). The word "cancelled" is dramatic but not specific enough for the question.
So, even if you don't agree with all of my characterizations here, you could educate me better about your rational perspective if you substituted another form of harmful ignorance for the instances of "cancelling" that you consider unfair "by default." For example, what would be your position on similar "cancellations" of people who express sincere beliefs that either directly or indirectly state that black people are inherently less intelligent than whites? Do you object to all cultural resistance against such free speech? Or does the ignorance have to rise to a hateful level before you'd be more open to resistance by default? How would you define hateful?
I am, broadly speaking, in favor of letting people say what they want to say. If someone is indeed a hateful bigot, I'd prefer to have that on paper, rather than trying to interpret "dogwhistles" and shibboleths. Regarding your example of people who believe in inherent intelligence differences between races - I follow Steven Pinker's interpretation of non-racism, which basically says you should treat people as individuals, with respect and dignity, no matter how a given question about group differences turns out, so I would not suffer moral dissonance if these people turned out to be correct. As long as they don't advocate for race-based discrimination or something along these lines, and adhere to the standards of civil discourse, yes, I would object to cancelling them.
magic9mushroom pretty much nailed it. I should mention that I don't know a single trans person in real life (as far as I know) - not because I avoided them, just because I never met one; and I have no informed opinion on what the transphobes they encounter IRL are like. The following is all from online interactions I observed (which is, after all, the context here), and there, I don't remember anyone who was accused of transphobia actually making any gross, hateful or belittling comments (in my judgment). Usually, their sin was pointing out that there are differences between biological men and women, or that letting trans women compete in women's sports is unfair, or that giving teenagers hormone treatment without a thorough evaluation of the underlying problem is irresponsible. At any rate, they were usually much more reasonable than their accusers.
Regarding the comparison with wife-beaters: since most partnership violence takes place behind closed doors, accusations are usually based on claims that may or may not be true, and whose veracity only the accuser and the accused can be sure of. Online accusations of transphobia are usually based on evidence that everyone can judge for themselves - articles, tweets etc.
(Sorry, see my response to Magic)
Without getting into boring object-level discussion about transsexuals, the framing is bizarre: Allowing both sides of the argument is not neutral, because the other side is invalid.
The attackers are claiming Substack paid only people on the *wrong* side, and thus is not neutral.
If Substack is offering signing bonuses to a different set of people than the ones who are likely to maximize their revenue and visibility, then they're doing it wrong. That's certainly possible, but to put it mildly, I'm a bit skeptical that the critics know Substack's interests better than Substack does.
Here's a model that IMO makes a lot more sense: The range of ideas, opinions, topics, and facts acceptable in most prestige publications has massively narrowed over the last few years, due to internal dynamics in newsrooms, Twitter as a conformity-enforcement tool, and ongoing financial decline in the industry. Ten years ago, Singal, Weiss, Sullivan, Yglesias, Taibbi, etc., could fit in those publications, and could write interesting stories and ask interesting questions. Now, they can't.
But there's still a big audience who would like to hear from the Singal/Weiss/Sullivan/Yglesias/Taibbi/etc. crowd. Purity contests and domination games in the prestige publications means that they're not welcome at the places they used to write. That created a wonderful opening for a successful business, connecting those writers with readers who want to read what they write. And Substack stepped into that.
Right now, I expect Substack is absorbing a large amount of the money that might otherwise have gone to more traditional publications. I bet a lot of people have or will cancel subscriptions, or just never start new ones, for magazines and newspapers that seem to be competing for how ideologically pure they can be rather than how interesting or good they can be. And Substack and their future competitors (including some traditional publications that get hit hard enough by the financial cluestick to realize they're leaving money on the table until they get wise) will eat their lunch.
See also: Quillette
I wouldn't say that buying into SJ is unwise financially, for a mainstream outlet.
Simple fact of the matter is that SJ has a lot of people, and is exceptionally good at mobilising them against anyone it considers to be "enemy". Moreover, it considers "neutral" to be "in favour of the status quo, which is terrible".
There is no way to avoid losing customers because of SJ. You will either lose everyone anti-SJ because you bought into SJ, or you will lose everyone pro-SJ because you didn't buy into it hard enough.
The choice is whether you think you have the chops to compete in the SJ-coded market. If you do, that's the one with more people (all the SJers, plus all the neutrals who are scared of the giant death laser if they're found looking at anything SJ doesn't like, plus all the neutrals whose friends are mostly SJers and won't hear about anything SJ doesn't like, vs. just the anti-SJers). If you don't, then the non-SJ (and thus anti-SJ) market is far less competitive.
The pattern you'd expect here is established, prestigious sources going all-in on SJ and writing off anti-SJ as losses, while startups like Substack exploit the niche of anti-SJ. And the article's not wrong; there's absolutely no doubt in my mind that Substack explicitly chose to write off SJ as a loss when it decided to remain neutral.
Pro-SJ groups are trying to create a binary, but I don't think it exists now. There are lots of people who may be casually supportive of SJ themes, but not enough to make it their driving force on, for instance, which writers to read. Those people could read writers from either "side" currently.
Additionally, Substack may have a much better model for appealing to both pro and anti SJ audiences. There isn't a single newsroom, editor, or other controlling force. Therefore Substack could have extremely pro-SJ authors and anti-SJ authors on the same platform. They don't really interact.
It appears that many of the newsroom-centric issues have been younger/woker employees pressuring management to get rid of employees. That mechanism is weak, if it exists at all, in a platform like Substack.
Regarding your first paragraph: I'd call them "neutrals" - and yes, true neutrals exist that you'll get either way, but obviously that's not super-relevant to the calculus on what position to take.
Regarding your second/third: doesn't work, as the article starting this comment thread shows.
1) if you allow anti-SJ, that's going to be a big chunk of your brand; you'll take a much bigger slice of the anti-SJ pie than you will of anything else, precisely because most of the big places don't allow it.
2) Sure, there's no editorial control, but SJ is not known for accepting that as an excuse. You refuse to deplatform and these sorts of hit pieces start popping up everywhere - and even people who actually do their fact-checking will notice that hey, a lot of your content really is anti-SJ (because of point 1), so the tar sticks.
> And Substack and their future competitors ... will eat their lunch.
Assuming they won't get cancelled by Paypal / Visa / Mastercard.
Yes, I am assuming that. Getting Paypal et al to shut out an explicitly white supremacist site is workable; getting them to shut down a popular pretty mainstream site with hundreds of thousands of paying subscribers is probably much harder.
Paypal is much more active than that. The laundry list of Patreon purges (among other things, banning all fiction with rape scenes or with underage sex) was driven by Paypal, and they pulled the plug on SubscribeStar when it refused to fall in line.
Anyone who makes this argument is pulling a fast one. The list of people whom Substack has paid (i.e. offered an advance or signing bonus in exchange for a greater share of subscription revenue) is not public information, and the ones we happen to know about like Scott and Matt Y are obviously not randomly selected.
Should cigarette companies be able to publish ads saying their products have no negative health consequences, because 'it's neutral to allow both sides of the argument'?
There is a US law that requires truth in advertising, that doesn't limit non-advertising speech.
So apparently the US law-makers didn't consider these things to be comparable.
Yes, and most Randian libertarians would like to abolish those laws (and most other regulations) -- leaving the mass public to fend for itself.
You are 0 of 3 in your responses to me, with regard to them being anywhere close to a good comment.
This one at least somewhat addresses what I said, but it is a weird attack on Randian libertarians that is rather inappropriate here.
Can you please do better, one way or the other?
Again, exactly.
Massive apologies for both counts, Aapje. Yes, I hereby pledge to strive to make any and all future comments more good.
There are specific laws and court cases there, but you personally can absolutely publish stuff proclaiming the health benefits of smoking, eating week-old sushi, unprotected anal sex with lots of strangers, polishing off a fifth of vodka every few days, eating nothing but big macs, etc. You are allowed to be wrong, and to say dumb things.
"Allowing both sides of the argument is not neutral, because the other side is invalid."
Okay, so which side is the "other side" which is the invalid side? If the assumption there is "well obviously the transgender side is the correct one", then we're already acting as if no objections have merit and everything is settled.
Exactly.
Where does Substack get off, allowing people who are *wrong* to be on the *internet*?
Paying advances to writers is a pretty credible signal that substack will ignore calls to deplatform them.
I had to look that person up and now I am biting my tongue *hard* to refrain from being uncharitable. Least offensive take I can phrase is that they are someone who is queer, trans and progressive along those lines; writes queer trans progressive SF that got nominated for a Hugo (or their podcast did?); while this gets a lot of stroking from critics and the people who cleansed the Hugo from the evil scourges of Puppies Sad and Rabid, there's not a lot of money in it; they left Gawker because they were being asked to edit two publications and that was too much (?) and went somewhere else, where I don't know if they're still working there.
And then they came to Substack, ostensibly because it was a convenient way to replace mass emailing (that bit didn't make sense to me but what do I know, I'm not a techie) and because of three people they mentioned who made it big on Substack (I didn't recognise any of the names but since I functionally live under a rock when it comes to social matters, that doesn't mean these people aren't Big Names online). I also get the impression, unstated though it might be, that this person was also hoping to monetise their Substack and become a Big Name themselves, after all, they used to work for Gawker publications!
Then someone told them that certain people were pulling in big bucks off Substack, in fact Substack was paying them, and this was the last straw. The article is couched in terms of outrage over the breach of responsible journalistic standards and ethics this represents (those of us who remember the NYT thing that caused the creation of Astral Codex Ten can pause here for a hearty chortle) but I am more than half-convinced that the outrage is "why are they getting paid by invitation and I'm not? Am I not A Big (former) Gawker Name?" and also "the wrong thinkers are getting money!" so they then quit in a fit of pique and have gone elsewhere.
My own conclusions? Substack invited and paid certain writers because they had a canny suspicion that these people were either bringing along an audience with them who would be willing to pay for content, or would quickly build such an audience. That writing about trendy queer progressive appeal stories wouldn't do the same (there's so much of it about, it can be done for free). That people such as Graham Linehan (whom I dislike but more of that later) are quoted as one of the Names Of The Damned bolsters that, I think; he has a following from his "Father Ted" days, has controversy over his opinions on transgender matters, and is a name people will have heard of.
I didn't have to look up Graham Linehan, I did have to look up the author of that piece. See the difference?
(I don't like Graham Linehan from past reasons; "Father Ted" was funny, but Linehan was getting praised and cossetted for his anti-Catholic views when this passed for progressive thought, particularly in Ireland. Also his sort of "Dublin journalist" attitude got up my nose. Progressivism has moved even further left and he has been left behind, like Andrew Sullivan and others, who were once on the cutting-edge of being 'right on' and are now centrists or even worse by the standards of today, even if their views haven't altered all that much).
> Substack invited and paid certain writers because they had a canny suspicion that these people were either bringing along an audience with them who would be willing to pay for content, or would quickly build such an audience.
This jibes with my take - which is that Substack is not trying to be evil, they're trying to make money, and if making money includes being evil then that's collateral damage (just like the big social media corps). AKA capitalism and the free market.
Quasi-related question: Does substack offer a kind of spotify-esque subscription where I can just get access to everyone and let the algorithm worry about figuring out who gets how much?
I realize that this is a failure mode in how I handle financial transactions, I absolutely despise reocurring payments and try to keep as few of them going as possible. If I like, say, Singal/Weiss/Sullivan/Yglesias/Taibbi/Scott equally - odds are I'm going to end up spending money on nothing because I'd find having that many reoccurring transactions too stressful to manage and I'd feel undue pressure to divide my time equally amongst all of them.
If, on the other hand, I could just buy the "substack Plus" or whatever package, I could know that I'm spending money that would eventually get to the writers I like without having to specifically commit to signing up with them. I would likely pay a couple % premium on top for the convenience of not having to manage multiple individual reoccurring payments.
@aftagley I have often wished for a very similar thing which could include content-generators generally, automatically compensating my preferred bloggers/ video makers/ artists / etc based on my activities. On the other hand, it's hard to measure the value I put on different content-creators based on frequency of visitation or time spent. As it is, I just adjust my patreon subscriptions every couple of months to keep up with my changing preferences / valuations.
Half baked, random thought about the predictive processing model: jokes are the opposite of songs.
We like jokes because they pack a lot of surprise into a small amount of information, allowing us to adjust our mental models. We like songs because they pack a lot of information into a small amount of surprise (think about how much data is encoded in lyrics, melody, etc., and songs are largely designed by/for memetic evolution so that they are very easy to remember or catchy).
A common pattern in poems (including those set to music) is that you expect the next line to be one thing, but they surprise you by making it something else, and somehow, both the line that's there and the one you expected are in a kind of superposition in your head as you read or hear it.
I don't know much about poetry, but it seems to me that music is generally quite predictable and intentionally repetitive. Lines like "I might take off on you peons and go away to Venus \ I'm a star so I put a neutron on my pinkie" from Kodak Black's Codeine Dreaming which do what think you're getting at seem pretty uncommon.
Hmm, I've seen this deviation-from-predictions model explain both classical music and jazz.
I don't see the "like" button anymore, but I've gotten a few email notifications that people have liked my comments. Comments I made today, on this thread. I'm a subscriber.
Apparently Substack implemented death-to-likes by just hiding it in the UI but the functionality is still there underneath. And there's a browser extension some people use that unhides it.
PS: Personally, I like likes but am not bothering with the browser extension cuz the like feature only makes sense if everyone has it.
Hah, I wish I had publically predicted this.
To be honest that might actually be the best of both worlds.
You can heart a comment to show the poster you appreciate it, but without a way to sort by number of hearts and with seeing the hearts being (very) opt-in it seems unlikely to hurt the quality of discussion.
Why I like likes:
1. It'd be nice to get the feedback of, like, "ah, thanks" even when the level of gratitude isn't overflowing to the point of typing that out in words.
2. For things like the "would people be into X" question I asked in the last hidden open thread, likes would be a handy metric for interest level.
3. It's handy to crowdsource what to read if I'm only realistically going to read a couple comments. (My other trick for that is to grep "Scott A" to see what Scott replied to (and because I'm such an over-the-top fanboy I want to read every word he writes about anything).)
PS: Here's my source on the claim about re-enabling the like button: https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/hidden-open-thread-1625#comment-1482426
And here's a link to that browser extension: https://github.com/EdwardScizorhands/ACX-simple
But I just tried it and no luck. :/
Sorry it didn't work. My usability isn't great but you need to click on the icon and select "show likes" and then reload the page.
What browser/OS were you on?
Thanks! I've done that and still no luck.
I'm Chrome on macOS (Catalina).
All right, here are the steps I just took to replicate on Big Sur on a Chrome profile. (Sorry there are so many steps here, but you an early adopter.)
1. Grab the src.zip from my github and unzip it.
2. In Chrome 89.0.4389.90, go to chrome://extensions, enable developer mode, and select the src directory. That gives me ACX 0.14.3.1.
3. Pin ACX-Simple to the toolbar, activate "Show Likes." https://imgur.com/a/A2puwHT first pic here
4. Go to https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/open-thread-164/comments <-- note the end of that URL
5. Click on the ♥. See the second picture in that imgur alburm.
6. There's . . . sorry, there's no UI feedback that the like worked. :( Until you reload the page. I need to fix that. But if you reload, it should say "1♥"
If you're still having problems, can you post the log from the console to a Github issue? Or, if you don't want to bother with Github, reply to one of my comments on https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/hidden-open-thread-1585 or https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/open-thread-158/comments (I use those old posts for testing comments since I figure no one else is reading them and won't get bothered by crap I post there.)
You can also like posts that you get sent to your email.
Aha! I was wondering if the "like" button that appears in e-mail notifications about replies to my comments worked!
It seems from the various (excellent) comments on how dictators rise to power that a common thread is that things were bad, and the dictator provided a path to things getting better. And things were sufficiently bad that people were willing to support the dictator anyway, because often he delivered on the specific issues.
This reminds me a lot of Paul Collier's book, The Bottom Billion, which revealed, among other things, that wealth was a very good reverse predictor of instability -- that is, if people have very little wealth, they are more likely to be willing to fight, because they have little to lose. If they are more likely to be willing to fight, it's easier to have a civil war.
Maybe making everyone richer is a good way to keep away dictators.
I recommend you check out CGP Grey's summary of 'Dictators Handbook'. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rStL7niR7gs
Has similar ideas, but I think qualitatively different.
Incidentally, I think this is also why rich countries had a lot more appetite for strict anti-virus policies while poor countries did not. (And within rich countries, why richer people had a lot more appetite for strict anti-virus while poorer people did not.)
I don't know nearly as much about statistics as I would like to.
Are there any recommended online resources to study?
Kahn Academy immediately comes to mind as helpful and free.
Depends on your background and your goals.
I am transitioning into data science right now and a UCL lecturer / lead data scientist at Shell recommended I read early chapters of 'All Statistics'. Available here: https://www.ic.unicamp.br/~wainer/cursos/1s2013/ml/livro.pdf
Focusses more on useful parts of statistics and builds thing up in logical order (as opposed to most resources which ask you to calculate probability of picking red and blue balls out of a bag). But it does require mathematical proficiency.
Whatever you decide to do, I would be happy to provide tuition. I am by no means an expert on statistics, but I presumably could help (I used to teach maths and continue to do private tuition on the side). At the least, I could be a 'study buddy'.
I can highly recommend Andrew Gelman. See the blog at https://statmodeling.stat.columbia.edu/ and Youtube for talks. If you want to learn about regression modeling, the textbook "regression and other stories" is a pretty good start (I learned statistics modelling mostly with the first version).
If you care about modelling and into programming, learning R is definitely the way to go. The language, RStudio as an IDE and a lot of online resources are all free. If you're looking for something specific, write a short comment and I can see what I can find.
also see here for a starting point: https://statmodeling.stat.columbia.edu/2009/05/24/handy_statistic/
If you like programming and think that simulating your way to intuition sounds like a good time, I recommend Allen Downey's https://greenteapress.com/wp/think-bayes/ .
Like others have said, it depends a little on your background and interests, and people provided very good recommendations worth following up on(+1 for Andrew Gelman).
I would only add that if what you care about is causation (questions like 'do spinach cause cancer'), rather than prediction and classical machine learning, you might find Robbins and Hernan's introduction to Causal inference very interesting. It is freely available here: https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/miguel-hernan/causal-inference-book/
I am interested in spending a little money to advertise my blog which I mentioned in another comment because I may one day monetize it. If you have ideas on the most effective ways to advertise (currently free) blog, feel free to suggest them or pitch them to me.
This does not directly answer your question, but contains useful tips on making connections online. https://guzey.com/how-to-make-friends-over-the-internet/
If Oral Roberts University wins the NCAA tournament, would that adjust your Bayesian likelihood that the Pentecostal Faith is correct? Or that Oral Roberts truthfully said "he has raised people from the dead" https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1987-06-28-mn-237-story.html
If a bunch of formerly deceased pros show up on ORU's roster, on the other hand....
if they lose, would you adjust it down?
> would that adjust your Bayesian likelihood that the Pentecostal Faith is correct?
I think the appropriate question isn't whether it would, but by how much and in which direction. I have no idea who Oral Roberts is and had to google what the NCAA is, but the chance that that a bit of information has literally zero impact is extremely small.
So far for the pedantic answer, the actual answer is of course that the priors for people being raised from the dead are so ridiculously small that you'd have to get an absurd amount of evidence to have a meaningful update towards this guy actually having resurrected a child during one of his sermons.
correction for #4: SimonM's roundups are nice, but i believe they're just pulling the top 5 most upvoted comments on metaculus that week. saying "best of prediction market news" is overly generous (upvotes on metaculus don't always go to the most insightful comments, usually they're just jokes or informal polls).
if you want "the latest in prediction markets news", i would just go to metaculus and filter by "open" questions, and sort by activity.
I recently started taking Vyvanse, and it has destroyed my appetite. I basically only eat because I know rationally I'm supposed to, otherwise a baloney sandwich per day fills me up.
I've also been trying to lose weight, so this seems like a positive development, but I've heard that just starving yourself into weightloss isn't a good idea because reasons.
I've never payed much attention to diet science before, but suddenly I have an opportunity to build a purely rational diet. Any advice on where I should look for reliable information? I know there's a lot of nonsense out there, and the results I'm getting from google leave a lot to be desired. Is there an expert concensus out there of the form "literally just eat this every day forever and you'll lose weight but won't die"?
> literally just eat this every day forever and you'll lose weight but won't die"?
Isn't that what products like Soylent, Huel and Mealsquares are claiming to be?
I think they are trying to keep your weight constant.
But then again, weight is a result of food + exercise, so try eating Soylent and exercising.
Or maybe, for a limited time, eat e.g. 80% of recommended daily dose od Soylent + 20% of recommended daily dose of some protein supplement + exercise. Later switch to 100% Soylent.
That 80%+20% thing is exactly the kind of back-of-the-envelope math that I can't tell if it makes sense. Is there a science to this? Or like a starter pack for practical, uncontroversial nutrition info?
Notice you implied that protein is better for losing weight than soylent? I didn't know that, I'm a complete ignoramus. The key isn't just working out the diet, I want a theoretical backing cause I've never even thought about this shit.
I don't think we have that yet. My impression is that we keep running into things that No Normal Diet Could Be Deficient In wait we're providing people with an artificial diet and they're not OK, what did we miss? I think this may have originally showed up in formula for babies, and I think there was also a case with people who were unable to eat for medical reasons and being provided nutrients via an IV. (All this is from memory, so take with appropriate salt.) Unfortunately, my "well, what DO we know" data is mostly at 1980s levels, and I haven't been able to find any really good books on nutrition myself, but my basic policy is "Find nutrient-dense vegetables* you like; eat a significant amount of one or two a day, plus maybe some (ideally nutrient-dense) fruit; eat Things With Protein/Iron (meat/beans, mostly) and Things With Calcium (milk/cheese, mostly, for me); mix it up a bit and you'll be fine." But I really like starches, so if there was some nutrient in them I really needed I would never notice, since I'm eating them for non-nutrition-related reasons - which I think is part of why artificial nutrition (like Soylent) is so hard. IME, as long as you're getting nutrients you can cut calories significantly without problems, just try to check in regularly on whether you're feeling shaky/low-energy/etc. (different people manifest this in different ways?) and if you are, calories probably need to be either higher or more frequent than they are (that is to say, I can cut calories significantly without serious problems, or not eat for 10 hours and I'll be hungry but perfectly functional, but this seems to vary a whole lot by person - some people get shaky and indecisive, or short-tempered, or whatever, if they haven't eaten recently enough - and your activity level will also affect it - and with your appetite suppressed you may have trouble telling if you're too low, so be very careful of warning signs you *can* observe?).
Also, some people will get cravings when low on nutrients - for example, intensely wanting spinach tart, particularly when you don't even like spinach. I don't know if suppressing appetite also suppresses those; if so, that makes it a bit riskier trying to adjust your diet, since your body's feedback mechanisms are turned off. If not, watch out for those and they should help. My impression is they're common for *severe* deficiency but people vary a lot on when they get them.
... anyway, not saying don't do it, just maybe offering some things to look out for? And I wouldn't do 100% Soylent, given my impression of how much we truly do not know about nutrition - they're unlikely to have found *everything*, I'm not sure *we* have! And then there are all the weird absorption effects - but I also haven't specifically made a study of it, so take with requisite salt.
Oh yeah, and don't assume you need 2000 calories. You might need more or less, I think it depends on size and activity level and probably also metabolism and probably something else I don't understand, but all the calculations take that as a base and it's worth considering your needs may be different. Mine are. If you're feeling experimental, note that you can probably figure this out by writing down everything you eat very carefully and logging your weight against it over a specific period - knowing how many calories are steady-state can be useful if you want to lose weight but keep it inside a reasonable range.
When, some years ago, I asked for nutrition advice on SSC, I got a link to a website that broke down every nutrient by "what does it do, what affects absorption," and so on. Unfortunately I have since lost the link, and my trick for searching SSC open threads with Google does not seem to be working right now, but would something like that be helpful? I don't know how much time you're planning to put in.
*Not all vegetables are nutrient-dense; compare broccoli and bell peppers to, say, cucumbers and onions. Spending a bit of time with a table of nutritional values is probably the most useful thing I ever did for my nutritional choices.
A (pretty benign) mad scientist is running a prestigious summer camp for teenagers. Secretly, the scientist screens prospective attendees for extroversion, and selects them as to form two groups: one clustered around 0.2 std below the Big Five Extroversion mean, and one clustered at 0.2 std above the Extroversion mean. Once the kids get to camp, they are told that they have been randomly assigned into one of two teams, the "Carps" (below the mean) and the "Condors" (above the mean).
As a part of the camp, the teens can form clubs, organize outings and events, vote on rules for the camp etc. People start noticing that members of the Condors are over-represented in leading these initiatives. Soon norms form whereas leadership is seen as a "Condor thing": Condors start pursuing leadership positions even more to assert their identity, while Carps avoid leadership positions since they don't want people to question their status as "true Carps". At the end of the camp, almost all leadership positions are held by members of the Condors.
So in this story, as small difference in "innate" ability caused a shift in social norms which created a large difference in outcome. I personally think this effect, combined with how small differences in mean can cause large difference in the tail, is responsible for many of the hotly debated differences between groups we see today. I don't know if I think it's a bad thing or not. In the story, a Carp and a Condor with the exact same level of extroversion might pursue widely different activities based on the socially constructed norms about group identity. That seems unfair and arbitrary. But people want to belong to groups, and they do things to signal group identity, and we can't really stop that. If the groups would have been completely random, they would probably have found some real or imagined differentiator to focus on anyway? It seems problematic to have one group dominate leadership, but as long as no observable oppression is going on it's fine? Is the ideal that there's no groups and everyone just does things according to their innate ability? That sounds dystopian to me: somewhat arbitrary constructed social groups are an important part in being human IMO.
I haven't seen this idea around a lot: much of the discussion about innate differences seem to skip this dividing social feedback loop which I think is very important. Or am I re-inventing the wheel? Thoughts and ideas?
Kevin Mitchell talks about these social feedback loops as important part of 'nature/nurture debate'. His talk on youtube is excellent (clear, wellorganised, easy to follow narrative, nuanced, etc.): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SkJqkGX0ThQ
Interesting talk, but I don't really see the connection. He seems to be talking about how small differences in genes can cause big effect as the brain grows. I'm talking about how small differences in individuals innate ability can cause big effect as norms and culture develop. I guess the small-difference, big-effect thing is something inherent in many non-linear systems? I think my main insight is applying this to stereotypes: human social behavior might inherently have the kind of non-linearity that creates big differences between groups from small initial differences.
Sorry, should have been clearer. It is the final few minutes of the talk that seemed related to what you're describing, from about 38 minutes onwards. https://youtu.be/SkJqkGX0ThQ?t=2326. In those minutes, he describes how social factors can often amplify biological differences.
Also, I re-read your initial post, and I now see that you are focussing more on group level effects, rather than individual level effects. If it is worth anything, the distinction you described is new to me!
Minor note: I easily lose track of all the nuance when it comes to these variants of positive feedback loops. An example of this is discussing at what level evolution is operating on: is it on individual genes, or individual organisms, or immediate families, or on societies, or on whole species, or on ecosystems, or ... .
Judith Harris talks about this in The Nurture Assumption, I think, pretty explicitly. I've definitely heard the idea before. I think a lot of people don't like it as an explanation of the hotly debated differences, because it's assuming there is a difference in innate ability to start; a lot of people feel very strongly about this, specifically that it must be false, or must not be believed to be true, I've seen both forms of the argument. So... you're reinventing the wheel because someone outlawed it?
(You can do it without innate differences as starting positions form social norms which then perpetuate themselves. For example, medical students are unusually highly represented on the swim team one year due to random chance - maybe a popular student does both, and recruits lots of friends to his hobby. This causes new medical students to conclude that swim team is "their kind of" activity, and try out for it more often, causing medical students to be more highly represented on the swim team - this is obviously an artificial example, but I think you could occasionally get that kind of pattern. That explanation, assuming current hotly debated differences are based purely on historical accident and not innate ability, is just a more sophisticated version of the current orthodoxy - though I actually haven't seen it spelled out that way, it seems as if it's got to be part of the theory behind "tell girls they can do math too" (because otherwise they'll see all the math teachers are guys and decide that's Not A Thing Girls Do). So... I think that version of the idea may be around but not usually spelled out?)
Good comment. I like your non-innate example with the swim team. I would say that the current orthodoxy is more like "people are forced into stereotypes by society" than my "people actively seek out and chose stereotypes to express themselves" but the difference isn't that big.
The analogy with the swim team is good. I guess my question is if this pattern is problematic. As long as everyone is nice about it (e.g. no bullying of non-med swimmers), I guess it's fine? But if we can design our institutions and/or shape our culture so that we get more or less of these kind of arbitrary group norms, I think many people would want to move towards less arbitrary group norms and more individualism. Personally I would feel like something is lost when we lose these norms even if they are arbitrary. And won't humans just find new ways to divide themselves into groups, and are we sure that these new norms are better than the ones we give up even if they are possibly less arbitrary?
It occurred to me that many people trying to lose weight fail because they overeat at home due to giving in to temptations. Would it be feasible to create such a food environment that you only have 1600 calories at home? Or at least no quickly preparable foods?
Has anybody here ever tried dieting by strictly restricting access to food so as to minimize temptations?
Isn't that just "not having snacks in house"? Which is good advice, but it's also very, very common advice.
If you're not talking about snacks, I would expect the inconvenience threshold for preparing tomorrows meal today to be high enough that most people can avoid the temptation of doing that.
This is unlikely to work, because you will jsut feel hungry all the time. It is not sustainable as long-term diet.
Alternative strategy is to find low-calorie-dense foods (eg popcorn) that you enjoy and that provide satiation. A body builder Greg Doucette has YouTube channel and that is one of his big messages. See e.g.:
Recommended fruits: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-pve4lPzGK0&
Recommended vegetables: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=__VjbU2e2fE
Seems to be a lot of anecdotal success with it. E.g.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AN6q5nuJnlc
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oGS6JxGlcb8
I do not know if it is backed by studies, but Greg's ideas intuitively make sense.
"This is unlikely to work, because you will jut feel hungry all the time. It is not sustainable as long-term diet."
I have, roughly speaking, no food in my house that can be eaten without at least 3-4 minutes of prep time. This does not result in my "feeling hungry all the time"; it does *occasionally* result in my feeling hungry for 3-4 minutes. And yet I eat less than I would if there were an open bag of Doritos next to my workspace, or a cookie jar atop the refrigerator or whatnot.
If I went full "only 1600 calories in the house", that *still* wouldn't result in my feeling hungry for more than 3-4 minutes, because that's about how long it takes to get to the nearest grocery store or fast-food restaurant. But since the nearest fast-food restaurant is a McDonald's, this might tempt me to suboptimal nutritional behavior and I'll stick to the policy of only buying foods that require preparation.
This is, in my experience, long-term sustainable.
I'm pretty sure you could make something like this work, except that you would do it by actually having tons of food in the home, fully capable of meeting all nutritional requirements for an extended time, but all of it tasting like crap
My temptations are spuds, bread, biscuits and chocolate. You may not think plain boiled spuds are much of a temptation, but oh boy. So I'd have to fill the kitchen with something like raw broccoli, and then I'd probably end up living on sandwiches anyway (see bread: carbs, full of) and that wouldn't help.
If somebody can invent a pill to give "instant willpower giant boost", that's the only way it'll work for me (or someone standing over me with a whip 24/7).
Get rid of the kitchen, of course. :D
For example, switch to Soylent and get rid of all other food in your home. (If I were single without kids, I would do exactly this, because this is a zero-willpower solution.)
Keeping a minimal amount of food at home seems especially troublesome during a pandemic, when it's unwise to go shopping daily. You could get delivery, I suppose, but the shipping costs would be prohibitive-- and also it would be hard on the already overworked delivery people.
Maybe a better approach would be putting everything in the freezer, so you have to wait for it to thaw before consumption. Similar to your "nothing quickly preparable" idea.
We had a conversation about this at the old blog, and I could swear John Schilling said he had no prepared food in his house, and it all had to be cooked, and at the very minimum he would have to make toast.
But I couldn't find it with those search terms, so either my memory or my search sucks.
Just addressed this above, but yeah, that's me. Technically, there's prepared-food in the "emergency supplies" and "hiking supplies" cabinets, but those aren't mentally classified as "household-consumable food" and I've never been tempted to e.g. tear open an MRE to satisfy a craving.
This is effectively what happens in initial military training. It does work. Fat recruits don't stay fat.
Obvious issue is there no practical way to restrict food availability for the rest of your life.
This contradicts my experience. You could easily consume 3000+ calories a day during basic training and there was clearly standing orders to the drill sergeants to not interrupt eating recruits - we were literally allowed to stay in the chow hall as long as we wanted as long as we were continuously eating (although no one ever needed more time than was allotted).
I mean, sure, I lost 15 pounds during initial military training, but that's because you're basically working out 9 hours a day and under heavy stress, not because we were being starved.
The only story I know about the military and food is someone who was forced onto double rations to gain weight.
Ha! Yep - this also happens. You're put under supervised eating if your BMI drops below a certain point.
Well, maybe not basic then. I never enlisted, unfortunately, and went straight in as an officer. Ranger School was definitely like this. They starved the hell out of us and everyone lost weight. Though "starve the hell out of us" just means the amount of food we got in relation to how many calories we were actually using everyday was not enough, not that the calories were low in some sense relative to normal human activity levels.
Disclaimer: I listened to this book in audio form about a year ago.
Since reading it, my beliefs on weightloss are more or less what The Hungry Brain[0] says. There are various small tips that he states do show statistically significant improvements:
* Get enough sleep.
* Try to find an alternative you can do instead of boredom eating or stress eating (eg plan the alternative ahead of time so you can do it when it is needed)
* Meditate
* Increase the work it takes to eat excess calories.
* Ensure the easiest calories to eat are the types of foods that are on diet (eg if you make it so you have to cook a meal to consume healthy foods, but you leave Uber Eats on your phone you'll probably order a bunch of UE).
* Avoid having off-diet foods in your home.
* Avoid isles in the grocery store that have off-diet foods.
There are probably a few others I have forgotten. But yes, adding barriers to temptation is an effective booster. It can make you more likely to stick to the diet.
However, this cannot be the diet by itself. Causing weight loss is fundamentally about changing your foods.
[0] https://www.amazon.ca/Hungry-Brain-Outsmarting-Instincts-Overeat/dp/B072JLBCCC/ref=sr_1_1
I recently did a survey on Reddit about peoples predictions regarding the next Stormlight Archive book and I figured I could report back here how it went (this comment will have no spoilers, don't worry if you're not up to speed with the series).
The survey asked people to grade the likelihood of various things happening (some characters dying or surviving, a bad guy being permanently defeated, a number of fan theories coming true, etc).
Some lessons learned:
1. **The results were much closer to my own predictions than I would have anticipated for what amounts to mass wild guessing.** I did post my own predictions on Reddit prior to making the survey (the survey was suggested by a comment on those predictions), which obviously may have influenced some votes, but I still hadn't expected this to be so close.
2. **People are either much more inclined to take surveys or much less likely to upvote a post in Reddit than I thought.** The post that linked to the survey got about 11 upvotes, plus or minus some vote fuzzying, and two comments from people that weren't me, but the survey got 94 responses. Given the several orders of magnitude differences in effort between upvoting a post and taking a survey (and not a short survey either), I didn't expect this and I don't quite understand it. I guess the takeaway is that many, many more people read stuff than actually upvote/comment/interact with things online?
3. **The difference in upvotes between the three posts I made on the topic was much bigger than I would have anticipated.** The original post containing my predictions ended up with 0 upvotes (so at least one downvote, as you auto-upvote your own stuff in Reddit), the actual survey got 11 and the survey results got 508 plus a bunch of Reddit gold and award nonsense-thingies.
4. **People are better at reading questions/probabilities than I gave them credit for.** There were two questions where the answers were more or less mutually exclusive, so the answers should add up to about 100%. I gave a hint to that extend in the question, but I was still expecting basically no one to actually have their probabilities within a reasonable range. It turns out that almost half the responses summed up to less than 140% (which is reasonable given that each answer needed to be rounded to the nearest 10% and the lowest available answer was 5%).
5. **I should have included a reading comprehension/lizardman bait question in the survey.** I would have liked to see how high the lizardman constant was for this type of thing. I did end up accidentally sort of including a question like this. One of the characters for which I asked whether they would survive the book had already made an appearance in another book that is set at a later time than the book I asked about. 4% of the answers gave him a <50% chance of surviving, which would be pretty close to the standard lizardman constant. It seems all of them either just gave <5% on all but one or two questions or never scored anything above 40% (which implies they got tricked by the google forms UI and just didn't realize you could scroll sideways in the questions).
6. **This was a ton of fun!** I enjoyed this process basically every step of the way, even the boring data compiling bits, and reading about the wild predictions people gave in the freeform questions was awesome.
I'm probably going to be doing something like this again for future Cosmere books. If you're doubting about whether to do a survey about something you like I can highly recommend giving it a go even if it looks like nobody is interested (you might be wrong about this, see bullets 2 and 3).
Huh, looks like markup bolding doesn't work even with the fancy plugin.
I didn't want to post this in the article comments in question, because that would verge on bulverism and/or ad hominem. I honestly believe it's just a hilarious coincidence and no inferences should be drawn from it. But it is hilarious, so I kind of feel compelled to share.
The main villains (though not by any stretch the most *evil* villains) of the classic space opera videogame Star Control II: the Ur-Quan Masters are the eponymous Ur-Quan Kzer-Za, an alien race that were brutally enslaved for millennia by horrifying sadists. After finally breaking free, they had become so paranoid that they started conquering all *other* sentient life in the galaxy in order to protect themselves from anything similar ever happening again. They are referred to as "the Ur-Quan Masters" because the canonical ending of Star Control I was the Ur-Quan conquering Earth and its allies with an unstoppable superweapon called the Sa-Matra.
Scott has, infamously, been somewhat critical of the social justice movement. One of the themes frequently revisited is that of the "conceptual superweapon", a heuristic or set of heuristics about a group, built up over time via strategically-chosen examples of members of that group doing bad things, that can then be used to victimise innocent members by association, regardless of the facts of the matter.
There was a comment a few days ago, on the Erdogan post, which criticised Scott rather harshly for his old post "You Are Still Crying Wolf". As far as I can see, the basic thesis of the comment was "Trump is bad, so posting about him not being bad in a specific way was improper whether or not it was factually correct" (that said, I may be misinterpreting; I'd suggest reading the comment and followup for yourself). The comment ended with these words:
"Because I want you to understand: you don't have a future as a political blogger outside of the circle of people that care about substack, you won't make it as a commentator unless you can understand that YASCW was a failure."
The commenter's username? Sa Matra.
All that depends on - does Scott want to be a political blogger? Who are the people who care about Substack? Why should we or Scott care about Sa Matra's opinion? I do get the feeling that a conflux is about to happen, that the NYT article has steered some people here who have the wrong initial opinion of what this is all about, or maybe we old hands are the ones who need to update our opinions, plus (as in that post I linked elsewhere) The Usual Persons are getting their knickers in a twist that Substack allows witches to come along and be present and post their ugly repugnant witch opinions and that this Must Be Stopped. Worse, they're even paying witches and not the virtuous Usual People!
Jokes on you, deiseach, everything is politics! He's been a political blogger all along!
My planet is defended by a "condescension detector" so the super-weapon had no effect.
Hi Everyone,
I’m a long-time reader, sometimes commenter, and occasional meet-up go-er. I’ve got an announcement about a project I’m developing that may be of interest to your average SSC/ACX reader.
It’s an online platform for creating and organizing campaigns for collective action, but using some clever techniques to solve game-theoretic coordination problems, especially under conditions of preference falsification - in other words, a tool for organizers to safely find allies and band together when
#1, a coordinated group effort might be effective where an individual effort would fail
#2, a coordinated group effort breaks a bad status quo equilibrium where no single individual has an incentive to act, but many would be willing to act if joined by enough others.
I hope to prove a method of lowering the courage requirements for taking action (from heroic to average), by reducing the personal risks (from potentially catastrophic to marginal) and increasing the expected value for organizing around actual preferences in the face of adversity.
Many years ago, I majored in behavioral economics, so I’ve always been interested in these types of problems. The germ of this idea preceded my first reading of “Meditations on Moloch'', but the impact of that essay definitely galvanized me into attempting something more concrete - one day...The pandemic and an evolving work-life balance created the opportunity to get it started.
The app I'm building has some shared DNA with Kickstarter, The Point, (before it pivoted to become Groupon), GoFundMe, and Change.org, but configured to enable the anonymous accumulation of support followed by simultaneous de-anonymizing at a predetermined tipping point. Crudely, think of the last scene of V for Vendetta where everyone takes their mask off at the same time.
My hope is that the riskiest parts of starting and building a group project/campaign under adversarial conditions can be mitigated, which will better enable mutual support and solidarity, protect against targeted retaliation, and leverage the power of collective action.
The use cases for this can vary widely and are ideologically agnostic by design. That said, some subjects and objectives would be out-of-bounds for obvious legal reasons. Here are some hypothetical examples of campaigns:
Unionizing Veggies R Us Distribution Center Workers.
Presenting an alternative DEI training curriculum at Hopscotch inc.
Uncovering sexual harassment in the Marketing Department at Frazzle.io
Concerned parents of Cedar Country Day School against changes to the curriculum.
Faculty of University X in support of our unfairly persecuted colleague Y
Whistleblowers at Enbition Energy Inc exposing accounting malfeasance.
Those yet to be named by Robespierre, against Robespierre.
On a personal level, why am I doing this?
I believe social norms enforced by unquestionable orthodoxies are probably wrong and deserve scrutiny and challenge.
I don’t like bullies, no matter where they’re from or how they justify themselves.
Mafia-style intimidation, and making “examples” out of people through disproportionate punishment are illiberal, disgraceful but unfortunately effective tactics that create a fraudulent public discourse, which is anathema to the ideals of a liberal society.
I think a social climate where people are honest rather than dishonest, and where problems are confronted rather than repressed, is preferable.
I believe that organized collective action and bargaining is one of the only levers ordinary people have against self-perpetuating institutional power. Pitting atomized individuals armed with personal consumer choice and performative self-expression against powerful organizations is an unfair fight; I want to try evening the odds.
I suspect there are all kinds of dormant preference cascades waiting to be triggered by the right conditions.
This project is still in development - but feel free to DM me if you want to be kept informed on progress or want to participate in testing the prototype.
My Twitter is: https://twitter.com/jbraunstein914
The Website is: https://spartacus.carrd.co/
What's your solution to "the hivemind finds your site and forcibly uncloaks everyone by pretending to support them, then makes Examples of them"?
How many people do you think could be simultaneously made into scary enough examples to intimidate everyone else?? The whole point of accumulating collective support is to pass the threshold where making an example of someone to chill others is no longer an easy option. That's the point of collective action and solidarity. You're assuming real supporters would be overwhelmed by fake ones. But since everybody asks this question, #1, we're not in Mao's China #2, There are anti-spam/anti-troll technical procedures to mitigate the risk of hacking and spoofing. It would be very hard to astroturf.
You're afraid of a sting operation kind of sabotage. I don't think this will be as big a problem as you think. It's likely such a tactic would backfire via Streisand effect, even if it was successfully executed.
taking a stand against opposition that uses retaliation to keep people in line will always entail some risk. the whole point of this mechanism is to make it much more costly for antagonists, whether it be bosses, institutional administrators or internet mobs, to isolate and make examples out of individuals. Once you even have a few people in solidarity, ordinary intimidation tactics lose effectiveness fast without extreme escalation - again unlikely.
But If you're looking for a fool-proof way to avoid entrapment scenarios, there are none. This concept is designed to lower that risk, but it can't be eliminated.
It's possible that when Robespierre solicits criticism, he's actually fishing for enemies to send to the guillotine. It's also possible that once all those enemies realize they're on the list, they recognize they're numerous enough to turn the tables on Robbie.
I'm not thinking of the cases where it would pass anyway - you're right that in those cases it's pointless. I'm thinking of the cases where it *wouldn't*, and they're vulnerable to reprisals if exposed.
Though, on second thought, that's basically just a specific form of "what if you get hacked".
Yes, if the system can be hacked and people's PII exposed prematurely, it would be useless. Which is why PII isn't stored by the system at all, but rather encrypted pointers to PII which are unlocked only when certain criteria are met.
This can lead to a failure mode of, for example, a campaign with a target of 25 participants recruiting 5 genuine supporters and 20 antagonist fake supporters. When the threshold is reached, it becomes clear who is who and the 5 are outnumbered by the 20, undermining the campaign and putting the 5 at risk. This is a very bad outcome, but it's less bad if the ratio was 10 real supporters to 15 antagonists. 10 are harder to punish than 5, the playing field is more level - and so on. So this is definitely a problem, but one that diminishes quickly even if the campaign is only partially effective.
In most use cases for this, resistance is a given. The key question is, can people coordinate more safely, or even at all, to meet that resistance at lower individual risk to each person?
Good point. They can pretend to be part of hivemind, but hivemind has countermeasures. Is there a filter hivemind would refuse to pass through? “I pinkie promise I am not part of the hivemind?”
Hivemind and anti-Moloch have to recruit from the same groups, those cognizant of or impacted by the problem. Both must do so secretly, anti-Moloch because they are in peril, hivemind because they can’t admit there is an issue or that they are taking action to squelch it. What is the unfakeable signal that people can reveal to each other that proves I am part of the affected group and I truly support anti-Moloch, but without revealing my identity?
Sounds like a great idea. I have thought about this idea lot, specifically in regards to unionizing, but never really thought about a technical implementation (more like "I promise I won't share this list until we get x people to sign, and I'll randomize the order in which people signed it). My question is: how does one publicize a campaign like this anonymously? The best I can come up with is "leave anonymous notes around my workplace." Sounds risky.
it's an interesting challenge! initial recommendations would be to encourage people to make anonymous profiles on twitter, reddit or Instagram, share/post links and spread awareness that way. There could also be a signal or telegram group chat that's invite-only. In-person awareness spreading is trickier, but anonymous leaflets left in highly trafficked areas or bulletin boards is not a bad idea.
Do you know how this is going to be implemented technically? If the information of users is just stored on the site's server, that's bad... I would only want to participate in this knowing that even if you were told to hand over my name at gunpoint, you couldn't.
PII would never be stored on the app servers. All pointers to ID verification would be hashed and encrypted in transit and at rest.
Ok, so my main thought is: cool idea, I like and want this. My feedback is that it would be much better if there were more options. Such as:
- after threshold (a) is reached, reveal my anonymous contact info (e.g. anonymous email) to the others. This could be in addition to a 'after threshold (b) is reached, reveal my non-anonymous identity to the others'. You could allow members to set personal thresholds for lower levels than the group threshold, since some people at bolder / less at risk and thus might be able to comfortably reveal early.
- There are many things a person could contribute to a campaign. Identity and a statement of support is one. Another might simply be, like kickstarter, a certain amount of money set aside to be given to the cause after a certain level of support is reached. Another might be support in the form of time & effort, commitment to carry out a certain task (potentially anonymously or openly), at a certain level of community support. For example, willingness to participate in picking up trash at a certain beach if enough other people agreed to also help.
- I feel like there are other ways of committing support that I haven't thought of yet, and that you should try to come up with some of your own. I think there's no harm in offering multiple options to interested parties.
Also, getting finances involved is a great way to support the costs of the platform, if you keep a little of the overhead as a management cost.
It's probably time for another Naval Gazing update/links post. The biggest thing I've been up to lately is a look at the history of the submarine-launched ballistic missile. This is going to take a while, but the first few posts are up, starting with early Soviet efforts and moving on to an in-depth look at the American Polaris program:
https://www.navalgazing.net/NWAS-Soviet-SLBMs-Part-1
https://www.navalgazing.net/NWAS-Polaris-Part-1
https://www.navalgazing.net/NWAS-Polaris-Part-2
https://www.navalgazing.net/NWAS-Polaris-Part-3
Polaris Parts 4 and 5 will be up Wednesday and Sunday respectively.
I've also written up one of the great tragedies of the ironclad era. When the turret was first invented in the 1860s, how best to mount it on ships was controversial, and politics was allowed to override sensible naval architecture. The result? A capsized ship, and several hundred men dead:
https://www.navalgazing.net/HMS-Captain-Part-1
https://www.navalgazing.net/HMS-Captain-Part-2
I'm delighted that you are continuing on with this, thanks bean!
I never stopped. I've just been bad about posting here.
I was recently vaccinated with first dose of Oxford-AstraZeneca. Does anyone here have a good idea where it will be relatively safe to smoke some cannabis so as not to suppress the immune response? I have only found rather unconclusive data [1,2] suggesting small, but measurable negative effect on immunity, but the quantities used in studies are often absurd (I want to smoke a single joint two-three weeks after vaccination, not four just before the injection!).
[1] review article: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK425755/
[2] effect on HBV vaccine: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5930049/
This is an interesting question! I've heard advice that taking ibuprofen immediately before or after an immunization can be a bad idea, but I've found very little in the way of estimates of effect size (just CDC advice, of the same sort as CDC advice to never drink more than two alcoholic beverages, and French health department advice to never take ibuprofen at all). I hadn't heard this concern about cannabis, but it does seem like potentially relevant.
That said, two to three weeks after vaccination is later than the date at which they indicate that immunity has started to build up.
Apparently it's the same story with everything: paracetamol may [1] or may not [2] blunt immune response to vaccines (and perhaps it's something I should worry rather than cannabis, since I took quite a lot of it when my post-vaccination fever hit 39.7°C/103.5°F). Is there anything certain in this world?
[1] https://sci-hub.se/https://doi.org/10.1016/S0140-6736(09)61208-3
[2] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/7496933/
Is there enough consensus on the genetics and evolutionary environment of first humans to differentiate between the following two possibilities?
1. A single individual with the human genome; everyone else human is related to that single individual (we can call the individual "Adam" or "Eve" depending on gender);
2. An interbreeding population where multiple human mutations are being selected for simultaneously, and (most likely) multiple individuals acquire the "human" gene combination in parallel; there's probably still a single common ancestor shared by all of them, because I'm assuming this to be a single interbreeding population, but the common ancestor is not themselves Homo Sapiens.
(Maybe there's something else I'm missing, like several breeding populations independently coming up with the Homo Sapiens genome.)
To clarify, I realize this is entirely silly as a way to draw the line between Homo Sapiens and not. It's really a question about the environment in which Homo Sapiens was evolving, and whether the mutations were getting fixed in one at a time, or there were multiple of them recombining simultaneously.
(Back story: this was a conversation with a friend where I said "I don't have any cousins" and then corrected with "well, I probably have some a few times removed, I should have some relatives in my generation," to which they said "well, duh", and then we went into "how do you define generation anyway", and then we wanted to know whether we can just take shortest paths back to the start of Homo Sapiens, and that's how we got to hypothesizing about what the start of Homo Sapiens looked like.)
I think the standard biological model is that for sexual species, case (1) is essentially *never* true, and it's basically *always* case (2). Speciation nearly always occurs when two sub-populations of an existing species get separated enough that their gene pools become separate, and gradually drift (or even get selected) in different ways. Unless one of these populations goes through an extreme bottleneck, it will not make sense to say that there is an individual that is the origin of the new species.
But I think your question also works from a false presupposition that there is such a thing as "the" human genome. A species is defined as a breeding population, and not defined by a genome - there are likely a decent number of spots on the human genome that are now universally of one sort, but used to be universally another way at some point in the past hundred thousand years or so, even though there has been no new speciation event in that time.
Models suggest the most recent common ancestor of all currently living humans, but he wasn't the first human. Other lines just died out. https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2004/09/040930122428.htm
The fact that someone was the most recent common ancestor doesn't mean that other lines died out. For instance, the most common ancestor of me and my second cousin was two of my great-grandparents, but we still have another fourteen great-grandparents between us.
If you drew the human family tree then eventually you'd find one person whom all nodes below were descended from, but they'd have a lot of contemporaries who were also ancestors of an awful lot of people.
By the way, that article seems like a terrible piece of work. It's an example of what you can get to by applying a spherical-cow type mathematical model while ignoring important facts that we know about the real world. In their mathematical model, the migration-rate parameters that they put in wound up predicting that everyone on Earth had a universal common ancestor as recently as a thousand years ago, but in the real world we know that the Australian Aborigines wound up isolated from the rest of the species for tens of thousands of years until very recently.
I didn't even read the article. I knew about this postulated last common ancestor from some other source (no idea what it was at this point) and just posted the first link I found from searching for this.
As far as I remembered it, the last common ancestor was supposed to be someone who lived around 15,000 years ago in central Asia. That does not match whatever this article came up with, so apparently many people have tried to figure this out with varying results, but in any case, it isn't the first human.
While I agree that the particular answer is implausible, it's interesting to know that the order of magnitude is only ~10,000 years rather than much more than that. Re: your comment about your other grandparents having living relatives, I think that's what the article is getting at when it talks about every person being either everyone's or nobody's ancestor -- some lines died out, and others have percolated through the entire population. Again, it's interesting that the time scale on that turns out to be on the order of ~10,000 years rather than much longer.
Last common ancestor is more recent than the point of identical ancestors, which is itself more recent than the point of racial divergence (probably ~70,000 years ago for non-Africans), which is itself more recent than Mitochondrial Eve (last common matrilineal common ancestor, ~150,000 years ago), which is itself more recent than Y-chromosomal Adam (last patrilineal common ancestor, apparently 200,000-300,000 years ago, essentially contemporaneous with the emergence of H. sapiens itself).
Getting confused between these can tie you in knots.
I don't think the Australian Aborigines were isolated enough to limit LCA to 50,000 years. Polynesian traders are known to have stopped off in Australia at least as far back as 6,000 BC (that's when they introduced dogs, which went feral and became the dingo); that's long enough that any bastard children could have mixed with the rest of the Aboriginal population. There are also the Torres Strait Islanders. A single drop of Old Worlder is enough to transmit LCA; it's a very different thing to genetic uniformity.
Tasmanian Aborigines were isolated enough that they didn't have that one drop, *but* there are no longer any full-blooded Tasmanian Aborigines, so they don't limit LCA if you're counting LCA to a date after 1905.
I haven't seen the journal article that that press release refers to, but the press release seems to indicate that the article writers considered these sorts of issues (which they damned well better have to be taken seriously when estimating LCA - the answer basically comes down to (maximum years totally cut off from Old Worlder of any group that still has full-blooded members) + (estimated generations for the Old World to have a single common ancestor, at the level of mobility of that time period)).
I believe the Polynesian origin for the dingo has been disproved - genetics don't quite work. The wiki currently states that the human population that brought them is unknown.
One theory is that the dingo arrived from South Asia;
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2013-01-15/research-shows-ancient-indian-migration-to-australia/4466382
I just finished reading "Who we are and how we got here" by David Reich. Very interesting read on how DNA testing is shinning like on our past history. Most of it concerns how we changed after moving "out of Africa", And I don't think there is an answer to your question in the book. But you still might like it.
Thank you for the recommendation!
Scott-worthy: https://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/ev
There is an activity my son enjoys: jumping on the trampoline with me.
This is great for my son, because he typically avoids physical activity, but something about the trampoline makes it fun. It's kind of fun for me, too (my family? With Asperger's? Un-possible!) and gets me my aerobic exercise.
So, great for him, but I'm in my 40s. I know that we've discussed on the old SSC what young-people exercises cause great damage later in life. I'm not sure where trampolining fits on that. I looked it up on the web and most of the concerns are about *short-term* injuries, like trying a stunt and landing wrong. Trust me, I'm not doing that. I can handle the short-term risks.
I also see sources that say it is "low-impact" and great for seniors, but that seems to be with very small "rebounders" and I am trying to get some good height going.
So what's the end result? Is this something I should definitely not do, or do in some special/different way?
Intuitively, landing on soft elastic surfaces should be just about the least damaging thing you can do to your body. It's sudden stops you need to worry about (e.g. running on hard surfaces).
I dislocated my shoulder when jumping on a trampoline. I didn’t land weird or anything, I was just jumping high and landed with my hands above my head and the force of it just made it come out.
The follows people said they see tons of patients getting injured from the trampoline park I was at:
Paramedics, ER nurse, ER doc, orthopedic surgeon, and physical therapist. Every healthcare worker I encountered. They said that trampolines keep them in business.
For home trampolines they tend to say to only have one person on it at a time. With multiple people accidents can happen and it’s especially bad when there is a size difference and the bigger person falls on the smaller one.
It’s worth checking out statistics. Even if you are careful it’s not hard to twist your ankle or tweak your back.
https://residentcontrarian.substack.com/p/on-the-experience-of-being-poor-ish
This article won the effortpost contest over at DSL for the month of February and had a lot of interesting points about what poverty looks like from the perspective of someone who is currently struggling with it.
It feels like Moloch is winning. What can we do to turn the situation around?
What do you mean by 'Moloch is winning'?
Welp, I think Scott's answer in the original Moldbug post is: invent benevolent AI.
Crap, no edit button. His original MOLOCH post ><
I would love to hear people's views on Stephen Wolfram's view of consciousness- https://writings.stephenwolfram.com/2021/03/what-is-consciousness-some-new-perspectives-from-our-physics-project/
Wolfram appears to be just discovering subjectivity, as described in all of cognitive psychology and metaphysics and anything in the Sequences about "reductionism" or "how language works".
That's interesting. Another aspect that I found fascinating was that Wolfram describes consciousness as a a feature of our bounded capacity for calculation in a universe with unbounded calculation. He describes it as an attempt to construct a single narrative, a single thread of experience, in universe that is fundamentally chaotic and doesn't truly lend itself to single narratives.
Put recommendations for lefty but rationalist-tolerable youtube channels here.
Because I've watched a lot of Robin Hanson and some Jordan Peterson, the youtube algorithm has decided I'm more right wing than I actually am.
Yes I know about philosophy tube and contrapoints. Philosophy tube I never liked (maybe one video), contrapoints has a tone I don't like any more (I can't listen to Eric Weinstein for the same reason).
Possibly youtube/recommendation algs make for a crap medium, but I don't think telling me this will change anything. By all means judge me and say what you think about the thinkers I've just named, but please put your alternative recommendation in the first sentence.
David Harvey's lectures on Marx's Capital are pretty useful
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gBazR59SZXk&
Lindsay Ellis? She's movie/media focused, but touches on a lot of the industry's issues with a progressive lens. A progressive lens I relate a lot more to than twitter or w/e, for whatever that's worth.
https://www.youtube.com/c/LindsayEllisVids
Does it need to be theory of everything sociology types? I have no idea if they're lefty or righty, but if you mean "rationalist" in the sense of trying to behave in some manner that will optimally produce a desired outcome, I'd argue watching channels like Athlean X, Omar Yusuf, and L1 Techs has had a more positive impact on my life than anything produced by an academic trying to solve the problem of how to optimally coordinate all human activity.
Although I don't think YouTube and video is an ideal transmission medium for this information, either, and actually consuming the published content of Stronger by Science and the L1 Tech forum is better still. They won't get you anywhere if you're trying to figure out the one weird trick to solve government, but you can get leaner, stronger, happier, and build out home networking and automation that doesn't rely on corporate adware.
To me, working on goals you can actually achieve is rational.
So probably the rationalist community already has thought this up, but it just occurred to me today: oppression heuristics. (I've been trying to get a name on it for years though). I think it's very human to come up with ways to predict what other people are going to do. In terms of sociopolitical oppression, "marginalized" basically means, a member of this group needs to use identity characteristics in their personal danger heuristic. This is shown by, for example, someone who decides that as female there is unacceptable risk of walking at night, but thinks that if they didn't have the identity characteristic female then the risk of being attacked would be lower. Danger heuristics are culturally influenced and begin forming in childhood; an "oppression heuristic" would be for analyzing the presence of risks and dangers related to an identity.
People seem to disagree whether oppression heuristics are legitimate (based on statistics or not). Additionally, they disagree based on whether it should even exist, and they also disagree as to whether certain experiences even exist, and, if an oppression heuristic is appropriate in general, whether a certain thing should be accounted for in it.
Part of the problem of "woke" seems to me to be an attempt by a group to adopt wholesale the oppression heuristic of another group (without themselves being subject to the risks it is designed to predict and without the knowledge at the level of detail needed to employ it intuitively). It is not the same as recognizing that a cultural group may have a culturally transmitted oppression heuristic that is different from one's own. I've seen people read a very fine level of detail into actions that might seem innocent on the surface, but according to the (not shared) heuristic, funnels into a dangerous action later on. I've seen that be right some of the time.
Is this an approach anyone else uses?
Has anybody read (preferably a professional scientist) read <a href="https://graymirror.substack.com/p/the-restoration-of-science">this Moldbug post</a>? Is it any good? The teaser is so intriguing I'm considering subscribing to his Substack just for that one post -- would it be worth it?
General questions about men's upper middle class fashion: I'd like to dress in such a way that signals that I'm an approachable, capable, egalitarian-minded upper middle class intellectual. What brands/clothing strategies meet this bill?
The proximate impetus: I've recently started lifting weights consistently, and my jeans don't fit anymore. I listened to a lot punk music in my teens and was into the DIY music scene in my teens/20s, so I've defaulted into wearing jeans, and dark colors. (My shirts are all entirely without logo, e.g. well fitting, unbranded american eagle t-shirts. Shirts with logos on them are the height of poor taste, as far as my class sensibilities register.)
Because of the bulking problem, I bought some bright red "joggers" recently, and holy shit, these are so much more comfortable than jeans. Also, wearing them around is giving class/social signaling that I don't entirely understand - people respond to me differently; it feels like a different subset of the population is being nice to me. I haven't been out and about enough to do any hypothesis building on which slice of the populace this is.
I like jeans because they're durable and not flashy. I now would prefer not to wear jeans because it turns out they're incredibly uncomfortable.
I could start wearing men's tank tops and workout pants, but when I see that in the wild, it strikes me as men signaling for sexual availability/desirability, and I'm not really going for that.
Maybe I also have a broader question about taxonomy of fashion as it applies to social class, and if somebody wants to do an effort post on that, you'll have at least an audience of one. But mostly I wanna figure out how to dress good without jeans and without peacocking.
I don't have an answer, but fwiw I was very interested in any answers this question got, so +1 to reposting it in another open thread if you were on the fence about it. Posting it sooner after the OT goes up might get it more traction? Or maybe nobody else is interested, who knows.
Sidenote, it's really cool to watch language/thinking evolve within a community. A question like this would've been super normal in the past in an ACX/SSC OT, but I bet it wouldn't have been framed in terms of class. But with class being a topic of focus recently, this question suddenly (and probably rightfully) is specified in terms of class.
Reddit malefashionadvice covers the basic stuff. E.g. https://www.reddit.com/r/malefashionadvice/comments/ems9z1/an_epic_basic_bastard_wardrobe/
Scott has recommended fake nice pants before. https://slatestarcodex.com/2015/12/03/product-recommendations-2015/ I just bite the bullet and wear chinos for work and social events, they are less comfortable then jeans but the tradeoff for good looks works for me.
I think we should cool down Death Valley, but am not sure how to do it. Death Valley is the hottest place on Earth because it is surrounded by tall mountains and gets a lot of direct sunlight. During the day, the sunlight strikes the ground in the Valley, heating it up, which in turn heats up the air above it. The hot air rises from the ground, cools a little bit, but can't get above the mountaintops to blow away, so it sinks back down towards the Valley floor. In effect, a bubble of hot air gets trapped there.
The concentration of high temperatures leads me to think there must be a way to harness it to generate energy. I also think doing that would be good for the environment since cooling Death Valley down would make it habitable for more plants and animals. However, I don't know what machines and structures we'd need to build to do this.
My first thought is that we should build a tube that stretches from the floor of Death Valley to the peak of the Amarcosa Range, which is the mountain range hemming in the Valley on its east end. I recommend looking at this topographic drawing to visualize the rest of my proposal:
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b7/DevaxsectSM.svg
The tube would be two meters in diameter, and both of its ends would be open. The tube would run up diagonally, and would be buried three meters under the surface of the Amarcosa Range's west slope. Inside the tube, there would be a series of small wind turbines.
My theory is that the difference in air temperature and pressure at both ends of the tube would move the hot air from the base of Death Valley through it. Since the tube would be buried, the surrounding soil would act as an insulator, preventing the "hot air bubble" effect that naturally keeps the Valley so hot. As the hot air passed through the tube, it would make the turbines spin, generating electricity.
Would my idea work? Are there alternative ways to cool down Death Valley?
I think this would generate energy but would not cool Death Valley significantly (because there's much more air in Death Valley than can fit in the two-meter tube). I think a much better way would be to demolish a mountain* and put a wind turbine in its place; this would be a large enough hole for a significant proportion of the hot air bubble to escape.
*Of course, assuming that this is feasible, which it doesn't seem to be on its face. Then again people routinely clear hills and demolish tall buildings, so maybe it's much easier than I think.
We could add more tubes as needed until the Valley's temperature went down to the desired level.
I think the mining industry does this all the time.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mountaintop_removal_mining
True, but they only do that because it's profitable thanks to the buried coal. Is there anything valuable in the mountains surrounding Death Valley?
None as far as I can tell. Also Death Valley and some of the surrounding mountains are federally protected areas, which makes me worried that this plan would both bring about the ire of park rangers and cause environmental damage.
You're right, come to think of it, Death Valley is just begging to be cooled down. But, not by moving air. Death Valley is conveniently below sea level, so if we just cut a channel (or run a pipe) from the Pacific Ocean into it, water will happily flow downhill. And being much more dense than air, there's lots of energy to be generated that way!
What to name it though... The valley is already named for death, and it'd become an inland sea. How about: The Dead Sea. Bonus points for the fact that as a well heated basin with no outlet, it'd rapidly become very salty.
Can we get on this in a hurry? I have some friends camping in Death Valley right now who are really into surfing and would probably appreciate the bonus activity.
Death Valley is 200 miles from the Pacific Ocean and there are mountains between them, so your plan would be extremely expensive. My plan would only involve installing a tube that was 1 or 2 miles long, going up a mountainside.
to be honest I thought you were joking and I was just riffing, if your plan is serious then yeah, it's way better than my plan
Joking? What else am I supposed to talk about here? Biden?
This plan would basically make Death Valley into another Salton Sea, which is too salty and gross for comfort (c.f. https://what-if.xkcd.com/152/).
Interested on opinions about the "confederation solution" for Israel-Palestine, as an alternative to one state / two state. (The idea is: one confederation of two states, with freedom of movement; e.g. Israeli citizens can live and travel in Palestine, and Palestinian citizens can live and travel in Israel; some issues like national security are governed jointly at the federal level. E.g. https://foreignpolicy.com/2018/06/29/an-israeli-palestinian-confederation-can-work/)
It's not as well known; the movement advocating it is small; and lack of trust on both sides is an obstacle to it happening (e.g. Israelis who just think of Palestinians as terrorists). But it at least somewhat deals with the thorniest issues (Jerusalem, refugees, settlers, army):
- Jerusalem - both Israel and Palestine would rather have all of Jerusalem as their capitol, not half of a divided Jerusalem. With confederation, the whole city can just be a capitol to both states.
- Refugees. Some amount of the Palestinian refugees can live in Israel, as permanent residents, but with Palestinian citizenship. They get to go home, and Israel gets to stay Jewish. I doubt all of the refugees would be able to (there are 10x as many now as fled in the first place!), but it could be a big symbolic victory for both sides.
- West Bank Settlers. Instead of having to leave their (currently illegal) homes in Palestine, they'd just become permanent residents of Palestine with Israeli citizenship.
- Army. Palestinians want a state with an army, but Israel's too powerful and scared and will never let them have their own. But with a (successful) confederation, 1. one army would defend both states with both states' participation; and 2. Palestine's biggest threat, the threat from Israel, would be lessened, since it's less likely that the confederation would air strike itself.
One concern Palestinians would have is that Israel would in practice probably still be more dominant, so e.g. if Israel wants to attack Egypt, now Palestine's getting dragged into it too. (But maybe Arab-Israeli normalization lessens that risk?) Lack of trust is a concern in general. On the plus side, Palestinians think it could be economically good.
RAND corporation interviewed some focus groups in Israel and Palestine about alternative ways forward, and it wasn't anybody's favourite (https://www.rand.org/pubs/research_reports/RRA725-1.html). But the favourites were ones that will never get consensus (e.g. Israelis preferred the status quo, which is crushing to Palestinians; Israelis are fine with two state if there's no Palestinian army, but Palestinians want two state with an army); and the confederation option also was less well-known. I think maybe if it became better known, it would get more popular, especially if both sides saw the other side also taking it seriously.
I've been vaccinated for COVID-19. I'm pleased to be protected from death and hospitalization, but I'm concerned that there's still a significant chance that I could get a mild infection that turns into a debilitating "long COVID" that would have a serious negative impact on my long-term quality of life. Does anyone know where to get data on (1) what percent of people with mild infections wind up with any long-term symptoms, and/or (2) what percent of people who have any long-term symptoms are seriously affected (e.g., difficulty walking, brain fog) rather than mildly affected (e.g., partial loss of sense of smell)?
Extra question: (How much) does the vaccine protect against long covid? Seems plausible to me that it could be anywhere from "no better than it protects against mild covid" to "as well as it protects against deadly covid", probably depending on what long covid even is.
I recently came up with an idea for a Quantified Self-type self-experiment: Since Google offers the user to toggle ad personalization in their settings, I thought I would try to spend some time with personalized ads and then spend some time w/o personalized ads, then compare my user-experience satisfaction with each. (I think personalized ads might be better anyways because they'd show me stuff I might actually buy rather than merely being generic annoyances; as Yudkowsky once tweeted, "It's disconcerting how much online advertising seems to be centered around an absolute denial of agency to the viewers." - c.f. https://twitter.com/ESYudkowsky/status/1329896859431624704) Any comments on this idea?
I just reread your post on Ages of Discord and found this
But the most important thing about this book is that Turchin claims to be able to predict the future. The book (written just before Trump was elected in 2016) ends by saying that “we live in times of intensifying structural-demographic pressures for instability”. The next bigenerational burst of violence is scheduled for about 2020 (realistically +/- a few years). It’s at a low point in the grand cycle, so it should be a doozy.
So , how bad are the BLM unrests right now ? And does this fit his prediction ?
Continuing the discussion about the term "globalist", from here :
https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/book-review-the-new-sultan#comment-1537886
Another example of the use of the term "globalist" from a blog that doesn't fit cleanly in the US left/right divide :
https://www.ecosophia.net/heating-up-the-political-climate/
(Search also for the mention of "globalist" in the comment section.)
To clarify: we're confused about why so many people hate "globalists", but few agree on what it means.
Who's "we" ?
Who disagrees about what "globalist" means, and how ?
clarifier: *why so many people from both ends of the political spectrum hate "globalists"
That's easy to answer : globalism is the current elitism. By definition, elitism is centrist (since it's defined from the viewpoint of elites, while the viewpoint of the people is illegible), and extremists are by definition their enemies.
Note that above I'm using a 1D Overton Window model, not an economics first left-right model where nazis end up centrist, liberals right-wing, and Trump to the left of the Democrats. Nazis (& Trump ?) still end up opposing centrists, because Nazis (& Trump ?) are at the TOP-center if you include a 2nd axis :
https://www.politicalcompass.org/analysis2
That makes a lot of sense, thanks.