But one elder approached Jezuboad, and sought not the simple answer. And given his works in the philosophy of nature, none dared stop him. And he questioned Jezuboad once again "What did the angel speak to thou? Why can you not give us more details? These will be passed on to our children and their children onward. How do we combine heavenly ritual with nature and reason?" 16) And Jezuboad answered, “The angel told me that the Lord is the source of all understanding and that only by seeking Him out and asking for guidance can we truly understand. He said that the scriptures are like a puzzle, and only by piecing together the parts can we find the whole. He said that nature is a reflection of the Lord’s will, and that by studying it we can come to better understand the divine. He said that reason is a gift from the Lord, and that by combining it with faith we can discern truth from falsehood. He said that, ultimately, all of these elements must be combined to gain a true understanding of the Lord’s will.” 17) And the elder nodded, and said “Thank you, Jezuboad. You have enlightened us all.”
Wrote about the Sapient Paradox and Julian Jaynes's bicameral minds. I think his theory works if the date is pushed back. "Consciousness, taken seriously, would have extraordinary ramifications. We would see a phase change in creativity, planning, and searching for meaning."
Not quite sure -- asking for a friend. I don't think they're typically migraine levels, but they are still disruptive and painful and frequent. Definitely not cluster though (which I didn't know existed but sounds incredibly brutal).
Headaches this frequently will ahve a specific cause that needs to be addressed. Unless she's living a particularly unhealthy lifestyle, they aren't a thing that should be happening frequently.
Obviously it makes sense to see a doctor to try to investigate various potential causes and / or neurologist in particular.
Migraines are characterized not just by intensity, but by a number of other symptoms (e.g. aura - although not all migraine's include aura). In some cases, migraines can produce just moderate pain. It would probably make sense to see a neurologist if possible to help determine the nature of the headaches.
Most of the following will relate to migraine, with some discussion of other types of headaches.
If the issue is migraines, a game changing class of drugs called CGRP inhibitors recently came to the market for the prevention of migraines, starting with Aimovig in 2018.
Most (Aimovig, Ajovy, Emgality) are monthly injections, while Vyepti is administered every 3 months intravenously.
However, some (Nurtec, Qulipta) are taken as pills.
Many other drugs have been used to prevent migraine (e.g. Verapamil, Amitriptyline, Propranolol), but none of these were specifically designed for migraine.
In addition to use for the *prevention* of migraine, one CGRP drug (the aforementioned Nurtec pill) is also approved for the *treatment* of migraine.
Other older options for treating migraine include Triptans (e.g. Supatriptan), and Tylenol w/ Codeine.
As far as cluster headaches, Emgality is also approved for prevention of cluster headaches.
For prevention of migraine, some studies (e.g. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/15257686/) found that a high dose of 400 mg of Riboflavin (aka Vitamin B-2) decreased the frequency of migraine.
The evidence for migraine prevention seems stronger for another supplement – magnesium. On the basis of these studies 400 – 600 mg of magnesium (generally magnesium oxide, but studies have been done with other forms of magnesium, like magnesium glycinate) is often recommended (https://americanmigrainefoundation.org/resource-library/magnesium/).
Large doses of magnesium can cause an upset stomach diarrhea (some forms cause this more than others).
There is also evidence for 3 mg of melatonin preventing migraine (https://jnnp.bmj.com/content/87/10/1127.long). [Melatonin was also reported to be helpful in preventing “primary stabbing headache,” which is an intense headache lasting just several seconds.]
As far as other types of headache such as tension headaches, one drug that is used to prevent tension type headaches is Amitriptyline.
Common advice like staying hydrated is worth repeating, as dehydration does cause migraine.
It can also be useful to keep a food diary to try to track potential triggers. Caffeine can be one such trigger.
One thing to note is that a frequent cause of headaches is so-called Medication Overuse Headache - frequent use of even Tylenol (or any analgesic or triptan) can predispose to more headaches.
For infrequent headaches, a generic triptan (Maxalt/rizatriptan is best) plus an NSAID works well as a treatment for most.
The CGRPs are game changers, but expect insurance pushback.
To people who take ADHD meds: how do you track if they are working for you in any sort of objective or quantified manner?
I've been diagnosed a few months ago, been on Concerta, Ritalin and Vyvanse, can't figure out if there's a positive effect, nothing at all, or do they make things worse.
I certainly feel none of these "is this how it's like to be normal" feelings I get from ADHD subreddit memes, but I'd like to know if there's some obvious parameter I can track that the meds are supposed to help with. Then I'll see if the parameter changes when I go off meds.
(Yes, I know the irony in trying to track something regularly while on ADHD. I used to track money, weight and partners on Google sheets but dropped all of them)
Yes. This. I do the NYT Mini crossword daily, typically in AM, after coffee and Adzenys 3.1 (you're not supposed to feel it, says my doc, just feel better). With that regular routine, I get the puzzle in under a minute and if I've been exercising regularly over the previous few days, I can get it under 30 secs. However, on a lazy Sunday afternoon at 4 pm, (skipped my meds that day) lounging on a pool float with no alcohol in my system or in site, it took me over 4 mins. It's definitely a small sample but it absolutely demonstrates the difference, for me, with meds and without.
YouTube keeps suggesting me videos with pro-Russian propaganda, but the one today was especially dumb. A "radically independent news" channel interviewing a former American military expert a month ago. He keeps repeating that Ukraine is never going to capture Kherson, it's just a fantasy; Russians are not even trying to fight hard, because they are trying to save Russian lives, and yet they keep winning; and if Ukraine gives up, Russia will help them rebuilt and live in prosperity, but if they insist on fighting, they will be utterly destroyed as a nation and they deserve it... (Meanwhile, in the parallel universe where I live, Russians have already lost Kherson, and the number of their dead soldiers is approaching 100 000.)
If we had a prediction market, instead of complaining online I would be busy making my first million dollars placing easy bets against the author and half of his comment section.
(not going to make a hyperlink, but v=JCR-Phtgx0k)
Retracting my previous answer, because I have accepted your premise without checking it. Took me some time to remember the context of the nukes...
So, if my memory serves me well, the original Russian excuse for invasion was that Ukraine is ruled by Nazis. In the light of Zelensky being Jewish, Russians specified that by Nazis they actually meant the Azov Regiment.
Then Russians conquered Mariupol, and most members of Azov Regiment were either killed or captured there. On one hand this was a huge symbolic victory; on the other hand it kinda removed the pretext of further occupying Ukraine.
So the next move of Russian propaganda was "actually, Ukraine was developing biological weapons", and basically every time they bombed a pharmacy they posted "evidence" that some unholy research was probably going on there.
Then at some moment (I think it was when Ukraine was going to take back some major city, I do not remember which one), Russian propaganda started talking about Ukraine having a "dirty bomb", which they predicted is going to accidentally explode after the city is conquered by Ukraine. Zelensky cried that it means that the Russians are going to drop a nuke, and are already making excuses in advance. (Sounds possibly plausible to me. Or maybe that was just more empty talking on the side of Russia. Hard to say, given all kind of shit Russia says.)
Then NATO said "no nukes; if something explodes in Ukraine we are not going to listen to any bullshit, it is obvious it would be Russia, so we will bomb Moscow in turn". Russia started whining how that is unfair. Then China said "hey, we mostly ignore your petty squabbles, but our glorious leader Xi also says: no nukes". Then Russia finally shut up about nukes. Yes, Zelensky continued to milk this topic for a while.
Russia then decided that the war in Ukraine has actually always been a spiritual war between God-and-Putin-fearing Orthodox Christians on one side, and Satan-worshiping Catholics on the other side. (Ignoring the fact that most Ukrainians are also Orthodox. Ignoring the previous claim that the war is actually against NATO.) And about at that time I stopped paying attention to what Russia says, so I don't know what is the current explanation of the war.
So, back to your question...
I agree that Zelensky was talking about the nukes longer than it was necessary. But please remember that Russia started first. So we would have *two* failed predictions about nukes.
About the losses, I have zero military experience, so I have no idea what numbers are plausible for the conflict of this size. But I think it is safe to assume that each side is downplaying their own losses and exaggerating the enemy losses. So yes, I consider both number propaganda, probably multiplied by two, dunno.
Obviously that is Russian propaganda. But it should be noted that Ukrainian claimed casualty figures are similarly inaccurate. For example, even regarding their own casualties, which they ought to know with much greater certainty than Russian figures, Ukraine claimed they had 10,000 killed in early June, and only about 9,000 killed in late August.
Their claims about Russian casualties are similarly dubious. For example, in the first days after the most recent invasion, Ukraine claimed to have downed multiple Russian Ilyushin Il-76 planes, including one with paratroopers, but these supposed downed planes never materialized.
A US estimate from early November is 40,000 Russians killed.
EDIT: I misremembered the source in question - see comments below. The (US) source in question spoke of well over 100k Russian casualties, which would be consistent with 40k killed, but does not state that explicitly. It would not be consistent with Ukraine's claimed 90k.
As far as Russian soldiers, the US general cited said "well over 100k Russian casualties." If that is, e.g. 120k, and if the ratio of killed to wounded is 1:2, that would be 40k killed.
If the number of Russian casualties is 110k, and the ratio is 1:3, that would be <30k. [Note that these numbers are from November 9 - almost a month ago].
Either way, the number of Russian soldiers killed is most probably well below the Ukrainian claim of 90k.
For what its worth, earlier in the war, when NATO countries listed estimates of the number of Russian solders killed, they tended to be around half of what Ukraine was claiming. Ukraine was claiming 80k around the time that the US general gave his "well over 100k Russian casualties," which would be consistent with a 40k number.
Okay, but that's not actually a reference for 40K killed. Also, I'll point out your comment uses casualties and killed interchangeably and completely ignores the Russian claim of ~6K of their own killed which seems...equally improbable.
Both the Russians and the Ukrainians are releasing figures which are clearly intended for propaganda purposes, I don't think we've got any visibility on actual numbers beyond some pretty wild guesses (e.g. the one I linked). If you have a better source, I'm interested, if you simply wish to talk about the Ukrainian numbers being propaganda, I am not.
Yes. I am trying to be clear that I misread a source, and do not actually have an explicit source for the 40k number, although it is generally consistent with the US estimate, unlike the Ukrainian claim of 90k.
I have not used the term casualty to mean anything other than "killed and wounded." However, I used the total number of casualties to estimate the total number killed.
Of course, the true number is much higher than that, since they only happen to find references to the deaths of a fraction of all Russians killed.
I agree we don't have anything better than what you linked which is an estimate by a government that is neither Russia nor Ukraine. But it doesn't say that almost 100k Russian solders were killed - it says that that a total of over 100k were killed and wounded.
In a real sword fight, if two men hit their sword blades against each other multiple times, like in a Star Wars lightsaber battle, don't the blades get so deeply deformed and chipped that they have to be thrown away after the fight is over?
I had a sword in college, and did quite a bit of banging it edge to edge against other swords. So the edge got pretty banged up. It didn't look good, and probably wouldn't cut as well as it would have without the damage, but there was never any hint of it deforming or breaking and it remains something that you really wouldn't want to get hit by. And this thing was really crappy quality steel; it never managed to damage the *other* sword.
Years ago I read about an archeological study of dings and scratches on swords; the study found that sword-to-sword contact was edge-to-edge about half the time, and the rest was edge-to-flat (which sword manuals recommended in order to protect the edge).
Also, fictional swordfights tend to be unrealistically long; like John Schilling said, real fights had less sword-to-sword contact and more sword-to-flesh contact, compared to stage fighting.
It depends on what shapes the swords are, what kind of steels are used, and how hard/at what angle they are hit. But yes, generally hitting swords against each other like you are in movies is pretty bad for the edges. The cutting edge would certainly be very chipped and the blades would likely need to be bent back into shape. Hard steels might break or shatter.
In a real sword fight, there will be very little sword-chipping because almost certainly at least *one* of the combatants will realize that if instead of hitting his sword blade against the other guy's sword blade, he hits his sword blade against the other guy's *head*, the fight will be over very quickly and he will win.
Swinging a (fake, dull) cutting sword against another such blade is a fine thing to do if you're making a movie, because it looks cool on camera and is much less likely to accidentally kill or maim one of your fellow performers. Approximately nobody who had ever been in an actual sword fight, thought it was a good idea in that context. People with thrusting swords, whether a sharp rapier or a blunted fencing foil, will frequently use them to parry attacks, but that's pushing the opposing blade aside rather than swinging at it to hit the blade edge - and there's nothing to chip because those swords usually don't have edges.
If you find yourself facing an enemy with a cutting sword and you need to stop his blows from killing you, you either wear armor that will make you nigh-impervious to cutting swords (mail will do), or you use a *shield*. Which, yeah, you might have to throw away after the fight, but shields are cheap and expendable.
"The Dark Side of the Moon" is a cheesy science fiction movie released in 1990 but set in 2022. As silly as it was, the movie depicted many aspects of the present day accurately.
There isn't a railroad connecting the Lower 48 to Alaska. In fact, Canada's railroads don't even connect to Alaska's--the farthest north the trains in Canada go is about halfway up British Columbia.
Let's say Warren Buffett offers to fix this problem by paying for a new railroad that will link Alaska's railroads to British Columbia's, allowing trains to travel from the Lower 48 to Alaska.
1) Does the terrain even allow for such a railroad line to be built? Maybe it hasn't been built because the area is too rugged.
2) Would the railroad line be profitable? Would there be enough rail traffic on it to pay for its upkeep? Maybe very little moves in and out of Alaska.
There was discussion of doing that in WWII, when there were serious concerns that the Japanese would make the sea route non-viable. Instead, they decided to build the Alaska Highway, which provided a link for trucks. Didn't end up doing all that much, but it exists. Really doubt the economics make any sense today.
A great deal moves in and out of Alaska, particularly coal, oil, and minerals. But, as cheap as rail travel is, travel by sea is cheaper and always has been. Since most of the populated/productive regions of Alaska are coastal and the geography provides for numerous good natural harbors, and since most of the populated/productive parts of the interior are connected to those harbors by existing intrastate rail lines, and since there's another good natural harbor (with rail connections) right up at the northwest tip of the Lower 48, there doesn't seem much point in building what would be an anomalously expensive railroad across particularly rugged terrain to link the two.
Once upon a time, there would have been. Trains, while more expensive than ships per ton-km, are quite a bit faster. People and some perishable cargo care about that. Trains are more likely to be able to transport their cargo directly from its origin to its ultimate destination without having to unload, repack, and reload everything twice. So it's sometimes worth the extra price to run a train, even along a coast between good natural harbors. It just doesn't seem to have offered *enough* of an advantage to pay for such a project when it mattered.
Now, everyone and everything in any sort of a hurry, travels by air. So that advantage of rail is gone. And the invention of intermodal shipping containers (and specialized bulk-cargo capabilities with very efficient loading and unloading), means that mode-switching isn't nearly as much of an advantage as it used to be and it probably won't pay to build an Anchorage-to-Seattle rail line just to replace a bunch of cranes and crane operators at a container port.
Packing for an ambulance ride to a local hospital, I grabbed a new copy of ‘The Oppermanns’, Lion Feuchtwanger’s novel of Germany in 1933 (9781946022332) and threw it in my travel bag. I had just started it, and thought it might be good to have some reading along if I had the focus to read. I’ve had pancreatitis for seven years, and am a retired librarian and researcher who likes to read a good book each time he thinks he’s dying. My library has doubled.
‘The Oppermanns’ was originally published in Amsterdam, also in 1933, and was dictated — not written — by the German-Jewish screenwriter / playwright / novelist Feuchtwanger between April and October of that same year. Dictated a screenplay, I said, between April and October of 1933. In the twelve or so hours I huddled under a blanket in the emergency room lobby, I read the first three hundred pages. Morphine helped me focus. Feuchtwanger distracted me nearly as much from both the pain and the cosmic dysphoria and, possibly, death or its simulacrum closing in. Is ‘The Oppermans’ a film or a novel? Dystopia or fantasy? Is it about caste or politics?
It is. And it’s true.
The narrative seems clumsy and dense at first. If you start the book as a novel, Feuchtwanger doesn’t dance along like John Grisham, Anne Tyler, Doctorow, Erdrich, etc., but in time the dictated screenplay somehow emerges and steadies and clarifies itself, sort of gets down to business and hard data, and scene after dystopian scene unfolds in netherworld of caste hatred and terror. It’s easy to slip into a somnolent acceptance of the violence, and chide the speaker for rather overdoing it. (What is this? Quentin Tarantino fan fiction in a time shift to the 1930s?) If Hollywood should ever decide to stop pandering to vulgar ideologues, I recommend Feuchtwanger’s dictated script. Overpaid social engineering propagandists should jump out of the daisy chain and study it. Study it as if pop culture actually had a brain and at least some ashes of character left, instead of stoking the fire.
Although I don’t know if I ever saw or met Feuchtwanger, who settled in my home town of Pacific Palisades, I may have raced past his home on my red Schwinn with the other ten-year-old gangsters in the Black Knights, Buddy Holly blaring on my transistor radio.
Feuchtwanger passed in 1958, God bless him. He made it (actually, both God and Feuchtwanger did, although it was sketchy for a time). I can’t really explain the book, but would like to quote:
‘It was not the individual crimes that had so deeply disturbed him, it was the fact that they remained unpunished. He was a German to the core, he was a member of the Steel Helmet Association, but he was also a jurist to the core. That there were brutal people of poor judgment to be found in a nation comprising sixty-five million human beings, he could very easily understand. But the barbarism and criminality of the caveman should be proclaimed as the normal temper of the nation and should be written into the laws of the country, that was what made him ashamed to be a German. The cold-blooded pogroms that were undertaken against workers and [p. 260] Jews, the anthropological and zoological nonsense that now inspired legislation, the legalized sadism — it was all this that so incensed him.’ — pp. 259-60. I survived too.
I lived in Klamath Falls for five years in the early 1980s, and actually drove a bus to Portland, but I never made it to Mecca. My shame. But maybe it's better in my imagination. They usually come through with more esoteric stuff. Must have some good staff.
I was thinking about how to make the open threads better. And I thought maybe have several categories/ headings each week... The headings would change each week as some topics dropped off and others started up. And there would always be the topic/ heading of 'other', for new stuff or whatever didn't fit in one of this weeks categories. That would help organize the discussion.
Possibly have current events open threads and everything else open threads. I don't remember why the culture war permitted/no culture war distinction broke down. Current events is a little different than culture war, if that matters.
I worry about the performance of Substack's comments. I quickly skimmed the recent archives of a few other popular substacks, and didn't see anything that broke 1100 comments (TK News had one that broke 1000). Most were in the low hundreds. But we got up past 1600 a few weeks ago. Given two weeks, I expect we'd break 2000.
Hmm IDK, if there is some substack limit, take the open thread somewhere else... The most important thing about comments here is that Scott moderates them. If they get too big there is not enough Scott.!
Yeah that might be better too? (Or just one open thread...?) Some headings to post under or even a title for a thread, would help. I notice that I can collapse threads and then come back (the next day) to an open thread and find the same threads still collapsed... that helps.
Is anyone particularly well acquainted with mythology? I am looking to read a number of things, and so far I have gotten good suggestions from posters here when I've asked for things like this. I am looking for suggestions for translations/adaptions of the following:
The Matter of Britain - I have tried reading Mallory in Middle English and found it a little hard to enjoy. I know that Arthurian legend is very extensive, so it's hard to narrow down what is a good starting point
Irish mythology - I've seen very little discussion of good texts for this. I'm particularly interested in the Mythological and Ulster cycles.
Norse mythology - the poetic and prose Eddas mainly. I have been informed that starting with Neil Gaiman's book is an accessible way to get a baseline before reading the translations, would people agree with that?
Maybe not a terribly original suggestion, but I love Bullfinch's Mythology. It covers the Matters of Rome, Britain, and France, not only telling the stories in a compelling way but also integrating passages of poetry and literature that reference those stories so you can understand how their themes have been referenced and interpreted. It's definitely not the most scholarly work, but it's perfectly suited my desire just to read those stories for fun.
On Irish mythology, I've enjoyed Thomas Kinsella's translation of the Táin.
Britain: Maybe try to find a version of Mallory that modernizes the spelling and punctuation? There's one by Michael Senior, who did that but also trimmed out a lot of tournament blow-by-blows, and some side adventures, and some of the racy stuff, and got it down to about half-size. You can probably find a version like that which doesn't do any abridging at all, but if you're just starting out, half-size might be about right? Also, John Steinbeck left an unfinished version when he died: "The Acts of King Arthur and His Noble Knights". There's some wonderful stuff in there.
Norse: Yeah, I enjoyed Neil Gaiman's adaptaion. Also, there's a filk adaptation called "Sundown: Whispers of Ragnarok" composed by Ada Palmer, which I think does a good job of highlighting some of the recurring themes:
Get an edition of the Eddas with lots and lots of footnotes. They're very hard to understand without context.
It's not the mythology itself, but I really enjoyed Children of Ash by Neil Price, a history of the viking age that goes over a lot of really interesting recent archaeology, and gives a really good backdrop to the mythology; like, what did the people who used them think these stories were?
T H White's "The Once and Future King" is an adaptation of the Arthurian legend that does a great job of capturing the way the garbled overlay of different stories and tropes have half-blended in the popular consciousness. Partly aimed at children, but partly very much not.
I enjoyed Tennyson's Idyll's of the King, but they're very much inspired by the myths rather than conveying them.
Calloo callay, Tim O'Neill has a new post up! We've been discussing Catholicism, Mormonism, etc. a lot further down in the thread, and of course a lot of this involves discussion of history and primary sources and what we can and can't know about the past.
"For over seven years now I have used History for Atheists to debunk bad historical arguments, historical myths, pseudo history and fringe historical claims used by many of my fellow atheists. Long before I began this site and its attendant video channel and podcast, I have found myself debunking bad history and fringe claims used by ideologues of various stripes: Christians, Muslims, nationalists, fascists, socialists, New Agers and contrarians. After well over three decades of this (admittedly rather odd) pastime, I have come to understand that while a fixed ideology is often the reason these people argue for these bad ideas, the reason many of them come to accept these myths and nonsense in the first place is a fundamental misunderstanding of historiography. Essentially, they do not understand how history is done, so they cannot recognise bad historical claims.
...I have often found that this confusion about how the study of history works can stem from a fundamental misunderstanding of how history as a discipline differs from the hard sciences. After all many people (though certainly not all) come to an atheistic position from their study of science. Science seems very certain compared to history. You can make hypotheses and test them in science – or at least you can in the hard sciences. You can actually prove things, as far as anything is provable. Scientific propositions are, by definition, falsifiable. If I claim light travels in a vacuum at 299,792,458 metres per second, someone can potentially come along and show, empirically, that I’m wrong. Compared to this kind of science, history can seem like so much hand-waving, where anyone can pretty much argue anything they like and all claims are equally valid. So when some atheists say “you can’t PROVE Jesus existed” they often think this means the claim he didn’t exist is somehow equivalent to the claim he did and that there is no way to determine which is more likely than the other. In its more extreme naïve form, this misconception can lead to atheists who seem to think that no valid claims about the past can be made at all and that the whole enterprise of history is worthless and can simply be dismissed.
In fact, history is very much a rigorous academic discipline, which has its own rules and methodology much as the hard sciences do. This does not mean it IS a science. It is sometimes referred to as one, especially in Europe, but this is only in the broader sense of the word; as in “a systematic way of ordering and analysing knowledge”. But before looking at how the historical method works, it might be useful to look at how the sciences differ from it.
The hard sciences are founded on the principle of probabilistic induction. A scientist uses an inductive or “bottom up” approach to work from observing specific particulars (“mice injected with this drug put on less fat”) to general propositions (“the drug is reducing their appetite”). These propositions are falsifiable via empirical testing to rule out other explanations of the particulars (“the drug is increasing their metabolism” or “those mice are more stressed by being stuck with syringes”) and so can be tested.
This is all possible in the hard sciences because of some well-established laws of cause and effect that form a basis for this kind of induction. If something is affecting the mice in my examples above today, it will affect them in the same way tomorrow, all things being equal. Done properly, this allows a scientist to work from induction to make an assessment of probable causation via empirical assessment and do so with a high degree of confidence. And their assessment can be confirmed by others because the empirical measures are controlled and repeatable.
Unfortunately, none of this works for the study of the past. Events, large and small, occur and then are gone. A historian can only assess information about them from traces they may, if we are lucky, leave behind. But unlike a researcher from the hard sciences, a historian cannot run the fall of the Western Roman Empire through a series of controlled lab experiments. They cannot even observe the events, as a zoologist might observe the behaviour of a gorilla band, and draw conclusions. And there are no well-defined laws and principles at work (apart from in a very broad and subjective sense) that allow our historian to, say, accurately measure or even postulate the effects of the rise of the printing press or decide on the exact course of the downfall of Napoleon in the way a theoretical physicist can with the composition of a distant galaxy or the formation of a long dead star."
I agree in general - but there are "subplots" in history that very much are experimentally testable - there's a whole subfield of experimental archaeology, for example. For example, if you wonder whether a pre-modern American civilisation could have reached Polynesia by raft, or flown some kind of hot air balloon over the Nazca plain, you can try and build one and try it out - of course this doesn't prove whether they did or didn't, but it adds a lot to the discussion of whether they could have.
Hmm, I'm not sure getting history 'right' is going to make that much difference. We all are sorta looking for confirmation of what we already think. Stories that fit our own view of the world.
History (Archeology, history of life) is as much a science as astronomy. Just because the way you do 'experiments' is by looking at different places/ times... (double negatives get confusing).. anyway it's still a science, (there is good and bad science in every field of study.) It's weird you mention astronomy at the end, cause we can't run the universe over again, and see what happens, but have to figure things out by looking back in time, (at distant galaxies and such.)
For a start, if someone is going to confidently proclaim that "X is on the right side of history" or "Y is on the wrong side of history" (as we had in a recent thread), then it behooves them to know if history has sides in the first place, and if it makes any sense to talk of 'right' and 'wrong' sides.
There's a ton of bad history, fake history, and plain ignorance out there. People relying on third- and fourth-hand versions of events, which they then go on to quote as "the real facts". Pop culture versions (O'Neill has a go at the Columbus notion, for one) that aren't anything more than legends or media clickbait of their day, but get passed around as 'this is what really happened'. An instance from someone here about a cookery website claiming the Catholic Church banned forks, which turned out to be part of a much broader condemnation of what was perceived as excessive luxury on the part of a Byzantine noblewoman by a cleric writing after her death. That's just a silly little funny anecdote and doesn't much harm anyone, but take the claims about "9 million witches killed during the Burning Times!" You do get people who believe that as rock-solid truth, even though it's arrant nonsense.
It may be a trite saying, but there's a lot of mileage left in it: those who don't learn from history are doomed to repeat it.
OK and history is written by the victors. I guess I don't disagree with you, but I don't know how you get people to look deeply at their own beliefs. I've got a dear friend who home schools her kids because she thinks vaccines are too much of a risk. (We just don't talk about it.) There is then the manipulation of history... this goes on all the time, it's almost impossible to combat it. What is your view of history if you live in China today? But please don't stop tilting at the windmills, you have such beautiful style up there on your charger Rocinante. (I had to look up the horses name.)
I'm mischievously[1] reminded of the entire "Foundation" arc by Asimov, which of course was based on the intriguing proposition of "psychohistory," the idea that while people as individuals are inherently unpredictable (free will et cetera), people in very large masses *are* predictable, in a statistical sense. (Asimov had in mind something like the laws of thermodynamics, which are meaningless when applied to tiny systems but rigorous when applied to very large systems.)
That is, if you believed in psychohistory, you'd say the Fall of Rome was absolutely predictable, even if who succeeded Marcus Aurelius was not, and moreover it should be possible to design an intervention to be applied in AD 200 that would prevent it with a high degree of confidence.
Of course, Asimov skirted the issue of how you would prove the theorems of psychohistory even if you developed them. Seems like it would require a controlled and repeatable experimental history, alas...
Does anyone have a contrarian (i.e. conservative, anti-labor) take on the rail strike situation?
The story as I understand it (mostly from reading Twitter leftists) is that the "tentative agreement" reached before the midterms only grants workers 1 day of paid sick leave per year (this is what negotiators agreed to put on the table before the midterms, but I don't think anyone's agreed to it yet). From some cursory reading it seems that these workers aren't paid particularly well, even after a pay raise that's in this agreement, so I find their demands for better benefits reasonable.
Matt Yglesias, not exactly conservative anti-labor, but provides this explanation:
"Do you have take on the looming railroad strike and Biden calling on Congress to avert that by passing a bill to require the unions to accept the tentative contract?
I don’t have a super-hot take on this other than the observation that the unions themselves deprioritized sick leave over wages in their bargaining, which is one reason they ended up with a contract that doesn’t have sick leave. If you leave that context out, you’ll misunderstand the situation. When Vox workers unionized and bargained for their first contract, they chose to prioritize a generous parental leave program, which is how they ended up getting one. They probably could have gotten a slightly better deal in terms of health benefits if they’d been willing to accept less on parental leave, but what the union wanted was a strong parental leave program, so that’s what they got. The rail unions like the sick leave as a talking point, but did not prioritize it in practice in bargaining — they did get a 25 percent raise, though, which is not nothing."
But I don't have any insight to the actual negotiations to confirm that.
Pursuant to what I said previously about being careful about how the situation is portrayed versus what it is. It sound slike they on average currently get 5 weeks of vacation/holiday pay, + up to 26! weeks of 60% pay (the circumstances for which you can receive this are unclear but it does seem to be mostly about illness). It also mentions the union previously trading away "sick days" to get the 60% pay for 26 weeks benefit.
If they did have sick days before and traded them away for another benefit, that would certainly be very relevant to the situation. I'm assuming they aren't asking to trade back and drop the long term disability.
Are union members paid while off sick? I read one source that said they can currently use vacation and personal days when calling off. If so, that makes the request for *additional* days a very different scenario than the implied "they can't even take off work when sick" or that they have to take them unpaid.
How many days do they get off now? If it's 20+ days a year and they can use them while sick, that seems pretty reasonable from most people's perspectives. This link (chrome-extension://efaidnbmnnnibpcajpcglclefindmkaj/https://www.aar.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/AAR-Overview-Freight-Rail-Employee-Time-Off-Policies-Fact-Sheet.pdf) says they get an average of 25-29 days per year and that senior employees get almost 40. That sounds like a *lot* compared to most employers, and a separate request for additional days seems very unnecessary.
Conservatives aren't against paid leave or sick days (or unions negotiating for such things). We are against pro-labor union stances that demand more than is reasonable, but that's not a huge deal if the negotiations are considered fairly. We are very against the government putting their thumb on the scale in favor of union labor and increasing both the negotiating power of the unions and the cost of union labor (and often also requiring union labor for government contracts, which forces the rest of us to pay inflated rates even if private labor is ready and available).
A conservative position is not anti-labor. It just says novelty is usually dangerous. So it's "anti-labor" when the "pro-labor" position involves some kind of new social structure that is purported to carry most excellent future benefits through some long chain of theoretical reasoning.
I will say conservative at least somewhat means anti-organized-labor, because organized labor is a form of top-down social engineering by force, like government, and conservatism inherently distrusts top-down social engineering by force, arising from the same general distrust of clever theoretical solutions to complex real-world problems.
Organized labor generally wants union leadership to be able to decide contracts for *all* the workers the union represents, and it wants to represent *all* workers at least in a given shop, if not an entire industry, even if only a bare majority of the workers actually agree with that proposal. So in that case organized labor tends to want to act like a government of sorts. It wants the leaders of the union to sit around and decide what's best for the workers and then use force to get them (e.g. you can't work in this shop unless you give up your bargaining rights to union leadership). That's naturally going to rub conservatives the wrong way.
On the other hand, once a situation like that is up and running successfully, and appears to be working reasonably well, the conserative would be inclined to resist changing it in some strange novel way. For example, medical education operates like a guild or trade union, but it's been long established, and if a bunch of libertarian radicals were to suggest we should just give up licensing physicians and medical schools, having the various Colleges set boards and give out certifications, and just let the free market and insurance work it all out, it would not surprise me in the least to find conservatives forcefully opposed.
On the issue at hand, what's strange about your question is the underlying assumption that there is some level of wages and benefits which railroad workers "deserve" in some ethical sense, and one's attitude toward the potential strike should be informed by this.
To me that's strange. I have no objection to the railroad workers pressing whatever (legal) leverage they have -- like threatening to, or actually, striking -- to acquire the highest wages the market will bear. There's no ethical issue, because there's no morally good and right level of compensation for the job: the "moral' wage is whatever the people who want the service are willing to freely offer, and the people who are willing to provide the service will freely accept.
Of course, on the other hand, I have no objection to the railroads pressing whatever (legal) leverage *they* have -- like firing everybody and hiring scabs, or whipping up public disapprobation by reminding consumers Christmas is put at risk by these heartless railroad Scrooges, so fuck 'em -- to end up forking out the lowest wages the market will bear. Have at it, fellows, and may the best man win.
The fact that the Biden Administration and the railroad unions between them colluded to influence the election by delaying the labor dispute until after it is sleazy but predictable and not unusual political tactics.
- I was searching for more specific critiques, not just general conservative anti-union ideas; I know those well enough. Something in the genre of "being on-call is beneficial in ways not being reported" or "their overtime pay is very high" or "they have a great pension plan" something. Things conservatives would talk about and hear through their news channels, but which might not be highlighted by liberals.
- In general there is a range of wages workers would accept (and employers would be willing to give) for a given post, and I don't think it's incoherent to deem some of those wages better or worse than others from a societal perspective.
- I am more than a normal kibitzer in this labor dispute, because Congress evidently has the authority to resolve it unilaterally and Congress, at least in some sense, represents me.
No idea but the people I know who are railroad workers are very well paid for their education and appear to have great benefits because they barely ever work. Where I grew up they are seen as VERY desirable jobs for people who don’t want it go to college.
I would always watch the framing when dealing with union negotiations. I always think back to a local teachers union. That was making huge hay about “not getting any raises for 4 years” or whatever in their platform/PR. Except I knew teachers and they had built in years of services steps of over 5%/year for basically every year and a few specific COLA increases. Which is not absolutely not a feature of more normal jobs.
So average compensation had increased something like 17% over 3 years, but the public messaging was “we have received no raises”, which was strictly speaking true, but silly.
I understand that the current approach to taking days off when they are sick is to use another type of paid day off - vacation or personal days. I don't know how many of each they get, but it seems disingenuous to imply that when they get sick they go unpaid, rather than saying that they don't get a *particular kind* of paid day off, which apparently offers no new functionality. Lots of places don't allow you to use a vacation day to get paid when you call off from work, which would make a request for days you can use when you can't give advanced notice more reasonable.
I am not sure I don’t know much about this railroad dispute. But i do know some railroad workers, and they seemingly get a lot of paid days off. Like will just take a paid day off to stay out drinking a bit later some nights pretty frivolously, which is not behavior I associate with people who have few paid days off.
Not sure if those are sick days or what, and like I said above, in the past some teachers disputes I have been familiar with have been VERY disingenuous about the framing of the dispute compared to what goes on in the private sector.
Just as an example I worked at a nonprofit years ago where we originally had 10 or 11 paid holidays, I think up to two weeks paid sick time, and then a 2-3-4 week vacation ladder at 5-10 years.
At some point due to whining about people not wanting to celebrate this or that holiday, or whatever, we converted all the holidays and sick days into 3 weeks of paid vacation and people just had “PTO”.
So the vacation ladder became 5-6-7 weeks but there were no holidays or sick days.
We then had new employees who would complain vociferously about there not being paid sick time and no paid holidays and acted like it meant the job was a 19th century hellscape. This is despite them getting 5 weeks paid vacation as new hires. We would explain the situation to them, but they didn’t care. The 5 weeks vacation was just a feature of the job and rightfully theirs, while the lack of holidays or sick time was unjust!
Oh for sure. Much easier for everyone's staff at most businesses to be out on the same days, particularly if they are smaller and there are not redundancies. And much easier fo rthe business to just be closed (especially at a nonprofit) than have days where only half the staff isn't there and bunche sof stuff cannot get done.
Conservative yes, contrarian yes, anti-labor no. Sorry if this is very CW but I think that's genuinely what's being asked for.
This is your friendly reminder that, when times are good, Biden and the Dems will find hundreds of billions of dollars to give to liberal arts majors in student loan forgiveness but when times get hard they'll sell out the working class to big corporations, just like they've done for decades, just like they did to Bernie.
And while Trump is far, far from ideal, he stuck by the blue collar workers who put him in office by trying to protect American jobs and limit immigration. You may think those were good ideas or you might think they were wasteful but he didn't sell the working class out.
Workers specifically want a decent number of "unpaid" sick days per year, and a removal of the infamous "points" system for missed work. This is from rail union members from various sources, though I don't think from leadership itself?
Does a rail strike make a great difference, seeing as how I've been given to understand that rail is not a method of public transportation as such, once you get away from local commuter trains, but is mainly a method of goods transportation? If you want to travel long distances in America, you fly. If you're too poor for that, you take the bus. Or if you have a car, you drive.
So while people wanting to get from A to B may not be much affected (citation needed), will it mostly affect "my shipment of widgets is stuck in Tallahassee when I need them in Wichita"?
It would make a big economic difference. A lot of stuff moves by truck now, but there is still more than enough that moves by rail for a snarl to have a significant economic impact. But if they get their wage demands, that too will have an economic impact. Basically we're in for a solid goose to inflation either way.
Generally it only affects supply chain and logistics rather than human travel. Roughly 1.7billion tons a year across 140k miles of track. It would impact human travel since they are often on the same tracks but US human traffic is substantially lower per capita than other countries, presumably even more so that our industrial traffic.
A strike now or within a couple weeks could absolutely wreck Christmas deliveries.
How does that 1.7B tons compare to what is moved by truck?
I'd read some years ago that President Eisenhower had mandated the Interstate highway network during the Cold War (c. 1954) in part over fears that communists were controlling the rail workers' unions, and that a coordinated strike would paralyze the US.
If the goal is to demonstrate to the broader public that EA is a substantial improvement in charity, the thing to do is provide a breakdown of where the EA donations go, show that the causes funded are already-agreed-upon efforts that clearly do translate into QALYs more efficiently than traditional philanthropy. Of course, that won't impress the sort of progressives who use the phrase "systemic change" ... but really, they aren't the broader public, either, they are the leftmost slightly-less-than-10% of the political spectrum. But focusing on AI risk isn't so useful, either, as a large fraction of the public isn't convinced that it's a significant problem. Focusing on animal welfare is even worse, as likely a majority of the population thinks animal rights activism is actively harmful.
An unusual aspect of the EA movement is the interest in "existential risks". I can't tell from ACX how large a fraction of EA is wrapped up in these because e.g. donating to develop a good malaria vaccine isn't going to attract much controversy even if that is 50% of EA contributions.
But work on this sort of very long term existential risk seems to have some inherent problems when allocating one's charitable donations. As a risk becomes more distant and less like things we've dealt with before, the probability that we're "attacking the wrong problem", that we're misunderstanding how the threat will materialize, or that the solutions we devise will be negated by changed circumstances increases greatly.
There's also the increased possibility of mixed motives. If one identifies a new existential threat, it's not unreasonable to solicit money to pay one's self to study the new threat. After all, nobody else is looking at it! Less obviously, as has been said earlier in ACX, every movement is a status Ponzi scheme. Putting 10% of your income into developing a good malaria vaccine isn't going to buy you any status in the malaria-vaccine-development movement; that's been running for 50 years or more. One probably still can be one of the first few hundred people to study AI risk, or at least, one of the first few hundred publicly visible advocates of studying AI risk.
One thing that isn't clear in the post (and maybe that's because I don't get out enough) is what the actual context is. Certainly, we can examine things said and done in the EA movement relative to the foundations in a somewhat objective way. But the tenor of the post is that the writer feels personally attacked and cares enough to counterattack. I wonder whether it's a matter of "I live in a sea of progressives and there's a lot of status competition over the virtuousness of one's actions to improve the world, and progressives aren't impressed by the causes EA recommends, only by progressive political causes." But if you're guided by EA principles, there's no reason to give any weight to the opinions of people who don't subscribe to EA principles.
One distinctive feature of EA is that it sets an explicit goal of improving QALYs or something close to that. Another is that it explicitly sets all humans as equally valuable. Much philanthropy is driven by the attractiveness of particular goals to the donor, or even the donor's interest in a particular charitable organization. And much philanthropy is heavily biased toward Us relative to Them, in various senses of that distinction. So traditionally philanthropy is substantially driven by the *tastes* of the donors, while EA is (at least in principle) independent of the donor.
So assessing EA versus prosaic philanthropy is sufficiently apples-vs.-oranges that it cannot be done (quasi-)objectively. OTOH, given that EA has stated foundations, it's possible to examine particular bits of the EA movement and assess how well aligned they are with the foundations.
"Another is that it explicitly sets all humans as equally valuable."
True, when it comes to "The people who are far away are just as valuable as the people near to you, and you should donate to help them".
In practice, it can come across as "the people far away are *more* valuable than the people near to you, and only dimwits would donate to local causes". That the examples of "donating to local causes" are "giving to the local opera". I don't have a local opera, and if we had one, I wouldn't be the earning bracket that donates to the arts. So why lump me giving to the St. Vincent de Paul in with the prawn sandwich brigade? That is what is off-putting.
It gets even more off-putting when "the people far away" are now "humanity in a billion years time" or "whoever is in the local light cone". The what now, Trevor?
And it's equally possible that the tastes of individual donors will drive philanthropy in EA; let us not mention He Who Should Not Be Named, but tech billionaires in general probably have an inclination to giving towards Cool SF Type Causes like AI risk, which are more novel and interesting than "write a cheque for the local playschool or soup kitchen".
Thanks for the feedback! I'd like to slice your analysis even more finely:
It's interesting that 'That the examples of "donating to local causes" are "giving to the local opera".' as that would seem to be an obviously poor choice for a comparison (by EA principles). Support for the arts does raise the quality of life for people, but it's obviously less efficient at doing so than is preventing them from dying.
And as you point out, it gives the impression that the target audience of the message is people who are sufficiently well-off that they would commonly consider donating to the opera.
OTOH, "people who are far away are just as valuable as the people near to you" *is* the EA-correct way to look at it, but it has a bitter consequence: The efficiency of turning dollars into QALYs varies depending on the local scale of costs of the person targeted. So if you live in a high cost-of-living area (Boston and San Francisco come to mind, but really, all of the United States qualifies on a world scale), you should specifically route your money *away* from your area. (Hmmm, though this presupposes globalization -- that you can move money to any particular place in the world frictionlessly.)
Regarding "humanity in a billion years' time", one difficulty is that it's hard to tell what efforts now will have the best effects a long time hence. Consider that if one had been able to influence the development of the papacy in 600 CE, which actions would have maximized QALYs in 2000 CE?
Another aspect of long-term-ism that I haven't seen addressed is the discount rate. What increased value do we place on a benefit now compared to one a year from now? This has been a significant question when considering some climate change interventions -- If you could spend $1 trillion per year now to avert spending $100 trillion per year 100 years from now, it's not immediately clear that you want to do that.
In regard to rational philanthropy, let us look at He Who Used To Be The Richest Man In The World. IMHO he chose the EA poster children: wiping on malaria, tuberculosis, and HIV. I've seen assessments that about half the people who have ever lived have died of malaria, so the QALYs to be had there are enormous.
Something to keep in mind is that there's also an efficiency cost to spending money at distances. Some of it is wasted on trying to find or create the channels to implement the spending (which can also mean bribes). Some of it is lost to extra waste due to lower oversight. Some of it is lost to poor planning due to a lack of understanding about local conditions.
I've heard some people (not necessarily EA or only EA) that complain about local 1st World problems being very expensive but also being very unsure if more money would even fix the problem. SF homelessness being a prime example. I would ask a follow-up question - do we consider problems in 3rd world countries more solvable because they really are more solvable, or because we are at such a distance that we can't see the problems of implementation that might make us reconsider if we really understood the situation?
It seems extremely likely to me that corrupt local leaders in African countries, to name an example, probably take up a lot more of charitable contributions than EA or charities consider. If 50% (made up number, don't consider the specific an argument but my real feeling is that it's in that neighborhood and can be higher or lower without changing the argument) of the money gets stolen by a local warlord or corrupt politician, that changes the math on efficiency significantly.
So, trying to open a can of worms: It strikes me as plausible that there are all sorts of possible AI risks. And it's really hard to figure out which of them will materialize and which will not. Did anyone make decent predictions what the development of the horseless carriage would do to society? (I am sure that somebody predicted that it was an existential threat.)
But there is one one AI risk that is certain, namely automation of the work output of "Educated people [who] think that the only kind of smarts worth having is the kind they possess -- superior powers of articulation combined with deep stores of knowledge." That is, people like you and me and blog writers. I propose that the remarkable attention provided to AI risk in blogs is due to this factor.
For instance, one blogger protested that while we know how autos work, we don't know how AIs work, and that makes them dangerous. Of course, we don't know how autos work, in the sense that we can't predict from their mechanical structure their influence on society. But more to the point, "we" don't know things like that. Perhaps some highly-educated types know the internal operations of XYZ but the vast majority of humans do not. And in reality, we don't assess the safety or danger of XYZ by analyzing its internal operation; we watch what happens with XYZ in the real world.
Maybe in the end the biggest risk of AI will be "competing AI". By everyone (and bots) reacting ever more rapidly to a multitude of AI conclusions, longer-term slow deliberations will become ever harder to sustain, and the temperature, so to speak, of public discourse and affairs will be raised, and complications multiply, until nobody knows whether they are coming or going!
This would be similar to people sitting at a vast complicated control panel, of a nuclear power station for example or an airliner, when warning lights start flashing and alarms sounding all over the place. Everyone runs around like headless chickens, pressing buttons here and there, most likely making the situation worse!
It is somewhat analogous to Twitter and the like: Most sensible people don't bother engaging with the wretched thing at all. But a tiny minority of vociferous activists post incessant whinges and complaints. This would be fine if everyone else largely ignored them, but the media, ever on the lookout for dissent and controversy, magnify the effect, and politicians take a ridiculously disproportionate amount of notice and react slavishly from day to day as if Twitter is a perfect gauge of public opinion. Imagine that a hundred times worse, and there you have what I call competitive AI!
Let us not forget that Gallus gallus and Bos taurus have done extremely well over the past few millennia via their alliance with Homo sapiens, who have dilligently rerouted much of the Earth's photosynthetic output to feeding them. All they've had to do is give the majority of their offspring to Homo sapiens to *eat*. But Uncle Chuck (evolution by natural selection) doesn't care how you die.
If you're the sort who might become the director of a think tank, AI is a tremendous threat, and over the short term. But as the old saying goes, we'll automate the lawyers out of work long before we automate the janitors out of work.
I have three free subscriptions to Razib Khan's Unsupervised Learning to give away. This open thread is 2 days old with lots of existing comments, so I can't really expect many responses, but if you do want it reply with an email address to send the subscription to.
I think AI research has a huge problem with training materials. Just about the only sets large enough to use are infested with garbage data, and there's no real convenient way to separate the garbage from the good. Essentially they download a piece of the internet and train on it. As with the fanfiction writing in the other post, lots of if it garbage (poor writing, improbable/impossible solutions, etc.) that would never be good enough for the AI to produce legible and useful outcomes.
We could write prompts that are clean for an AI to review, but we end up paying humans to write millions of prompts to train an AI, which seems to me what we are trying to avoid with having the AI train on "real life" materials instead of curated.
Part of me is concerned that our attempts to use the internet for training is laziness (or cost) rather than some coherent plan that using that data is somehow optimal.
OTOH, look at the bright side. The first AI to try to Take Over the World in the name of Maximum Paperclips, will use a plot worthy of a knockoff Bond villain with the clever improvement of "when capturing debonair British secret agents, kill them immediately rather than monologuing and putting them in an easily-escapable deathtrap". All the training data said that was *sure* to work.
Yep. I'm actually pretty happy that the current course of AI training is loading it up with tons of junk. It means that the AI routinely messes up stupid and obvious things, so the researchers just sit back and scratch their heads and never feel confident they can go ahead and hook these things up to the nuclear arsenal.
To me, the alternative is that the researchers explicitly program the AI with one or two-dimensional scripted training materials and end up far less versatile but far more competent at what they are designed to do, and then someone feels like they can go ahead and give the AI control over something important.
What kinds of reasonably priced things are on your holiday wishlist? I have a birthday near Christmas so my family/partner are bugging me to make a list, but I really can't think of anything I want/need. Any book recommendations are also welcome.
Do you drink tea? Slightly fancy loose leaf tea can be nice.
Is there fancier food you don't usually indulge in but would enjoy -- chocolate, cheese, olive oil, mustard, jams, saffron, etc?
Do you have good knives, whether to cut bread, chop veggies, or for everyday use like a pocket knife? (if you even remotely like to cook, there is a lot more in this direction -- a well made lightweight cast iron pan, for instance)
LL Bean has a whole different style of wool socks, the old-timey kind made with fat yarn, & coming in a limited range of solid colors -- red, navy, gray. Those are nice too, and I like their fatness and slight looseness, especially to wear at home with slippers. They don't work as well under boots for me, though.
An apparent glitch in the PC interface resulted in my thread and resulting comments being spread across separate threads.
So here's the basic point. I make the case for what I'm calling "More Effective Altruism." It funds initiatives that, per dollar or hour invested, make the biggest difference in increasing the world's people's efficacy and happiness--what I term "Gross World Flourishing."
That, while of value in itself, is of even greater value in the long term, because it enables people to increase not just current but future Gross World Flourishing.
Here's just one example of such an initiative: Match.com-like software would match low-income kids of high intellectual ability, drive, and ethics with mentors, either paid or volunteer humans (screened and trained online. Or the "mentor" can be a mentoring/counseling app, adapted from extant ones or developed custom.
The pool of low-income gifted kids have great potential that, unlike with rich kids, is unlikely to be fully realized. Mentoring, even virtual, would help these kids get over practical and emotional roadblocks, increase motivation and, in turn, be more likely to develop preventives and cures for diseases, become wise leaders, even develop more effective and altruistic iPhones.
The focus probably should be on kids from developed nations because there are fewer external barriers to maximizing their efficacy in the world.
I benchmark this against typical EA recommendations---augmenting the health of a non-selected population in developing nations and I believe it's clear that "More Effective Altruism" would more increase Gross World Flourishing, which is what I believe is the most valuable outcome variable.
Hi Marty. The glitch is with the UI when you reply from an Email notification.
When you click "View Comment" in the email, it takes you to a page with a big "Write a Comment..." box, followed by the text of the comment you're replying to. But that is actually the box from the top of the comments section!
As a workaround, you can instead click the small grey "Reply" button in the bottom left of the page, which brings up a second "Write a Comment" box below the message.
I took some screenshots to hopefully explain better.
This was pretty much how Grammar Schools worked in Great Britain. Bright kids from poor homes were selected at age 11 for a more academically rigorous education.
They were extremely effective at getting disadvantaged children into university and the professional classes.
They were largely destroyed by a left-wing government in the 1960's and very few now remain. Those that are left are essentially besieged by parents trying to get their offspring into them.
This is a proven model that could be reproduced at a city, county, state, and finally national level.
Grammar schools did not select from poor homes in the sense of excluding rich ones. They selected on the basis of test ing, and kids from wealthier homes tended to do better in the tests. The very wealthy opted for private education, so the grammar schools ended up mostly middle class.
>>This was pretty much how Grammar Schools worked in Great Britain. Bright kids from poor homes were selected at age 11 for a more academically rigorous education.
Mostly, kids from rich homes were selected for a more academically rigorous education, and kids from poor homes mostly went to "Comprehensive" schools where - because there weren't very many bright kids - the quality of education was pretty poor.
But it's certainly true that a few poor bright kids got to go to grammar schools too, and often did well out it.
The basic problem any such scheme runs into is that pretty much any test of academic ability or attainment in children anyone has devised produces results that correlate strongly with socioeconomic status of parents. There are (at least) two debates around why that is (nature vs nurture; to what extent that correlation lies in test-taking vs in whatever the test "ought" to be measuring), but those are kind of beside the point - there isn't any disagreement that that pretty much always happens.
And because peer group effects are really strong, if you cream out a large group of disproportionately studious, middle-class (in the UK sense), academically able kids then the effect on those who get selected is very positive, but the effect on those who don't - especially on those who narrowly miss selection - is very negative. Is that worth it? You may feel that the small number of bright working class kids who get selected and do better than they would have otherwise outweigh the larger number who don't and suffer, but the story is much, much less clear-cut than you're making it out to be, and I think the balance probably weighs the other way/; I think out-of-school extension classes are probably a better way of achieving something similar.
Also an ex grammar school kid, and I agree. I failed the selection exam on my first practice paper, and my parents paid for a summer's worth of tutoring, after which I passed the real exam with full marks.
Whilst I am pretty confident I genuinely did meet the bar for grammar school (80th percentile by IQ if I remember rightly), I would undoubtedly have failed to get in if my parents had been less informed or less engaged.
I think ability-grouped education has a lot going for it, and being in a mixed ability class can be very frustrating both for high and low performers, but it's hard to come up with a selection process that can't be gamed by those with the resources to do so.
Gifted kids from poor families are the victims of the "IQ is a myth" mindset. If you ban schools for gifted kids, rich parents will find a way (careful school choice, private tutoring,...).
Agree with all the people who have pointed out the OP's defensiveness and credential waving, but even more fundamentally, do you have any evidence that mentoring or this sort produces good outcomes? Not even better than GiveDirectly or AMF, but good at all? My understanding of programs meant to encourage economically and culturally diverse populations to develop their talents in majority-culture-approved ways (go on to produce better iPhones, get into the "best" schools) is that they fair poorly by the standards of both the mentors and the mentees. I'm thinking of programs like Big Brothers Big Sisters and Head Start as well as all kinds of programs aimed at identifying and nurturing low income talent at, for example, state run universities like the one from which I recently retired.
I think there are actually some pretty good mentoring programs out there, although I agree that most end up not doing very well, and thus the burden of proof is IMO on the program to show that it actually does work.
I was very excited by the results of RCTs on the 'Becoming a Man' program to teach cognitive behavioral skills to poor American high school students, but I haven't followed up to see if later studies have been as optimistic.
I also freely admit that I want 'Becoming a Man' to work because learning cognitive behavioral skills and introspection was such a level up for me personally. Still would be interested to hear about later studies on it, regardless of their outcomes!
I'm actually aware of a local mentoring program in my school district that works pretty well. They start working with kids from disadvantaged backgrounds in middle school, keep them on track with tutoring and mentoring and information sessions and campus visits. When it comes time to apply, they've been spending their summers on campus for years, feel a part of that community without losing connection with their communities of origin. I occasionally see kids who have come up through this program among the finalists for a prestigious award given at graduation (I'm on the committee). This is a very different program from the one Marty is suggesting, and I think it succeeds precisely because it takes context into account. To be fair, I've no idea what the failure rate is, i.e. how many kids start the program and never graduate or even attend the university they've partnered with.
"even develop more effective and altruistic iPhones"
You had me going "Well, maybe" up until this. So we take a poor but bright kid, give him or her that educational push, help them get a qualification - and then they can work on making expensive toys for the First World that won't do a damn thing for their peasant village where the alternation of floods and droughts make life hobble along at the subsistence level.
The only benefit might be that having a good job making rich people toys means they can send money back home to support their family, so does that count as Gross World Flourishing?
I think it sounds like a great idea, and I wish you well in doing it.
But by putting the "More Effective Altruism" label on it, you're basically just picking a fight with an adjacent movement right out of the gate. Do you actually want to do good, or do you just want to argue on the internet about the best theoretical way to do good?
Please rethink the branding, and then go out and do some actual good with your ideas.
(Although parenthetically, I don't think the "software" part adds much to the mentors-for-poor-smart-kids idea.)
Your issue is that while this will probably have some impact, you need someone to both pay for this and to organize it. Presumably you don't have the money or contacts to do it yourself or you wouldn't need to post the idea here.
Lots of people have ideas, the market is oversaturated. Very few people have money or contacts or top tier organizational skill.
Do you have a more detailed explanation of the ROI on this (ideally with numbers and citations)? The proposal seems like it could work, but I feel like people under-estimate how difficult it is in practice to beat GiveDirectly/AMF/other GiveWell top charities.
First, it is critical to critique the apriori analysis. Is it not crystal clear that it holds far greater promise---replacing random recipients from developing nations to people with far greater unmet but realizable potential? It is a BIG mistake to ask for such granularity at this stage as you are doing here. That is a formula for ensured stasis and feeble incrementalism, a rationalization for the status quo being optimal. BAD.
> Is it not crystal clear that it holds far greater promise---replacing random recipients from developing nations to people with far greater unmet but realizable potential?
I really doubt that. Please notice that "random recipients" also include the gifted kids! If you save lives of 50 randomly selected kids, statistically, you have on average saved a life of one Mensa-level child. And sometimes, saving lives of 50 randomly selected kids is much cheaper than providing education for one. And for that one child, death is a greater obstacle to flourishing than the lack of mentors.
Therefore: a good idea? yes. more effective than saving lives of random people? no.
Furthermore, providing mentors to kids is not really a new idea. So what exactly is the thing you are going to do right that everyone else so far was doing wrong? You seem to suggest that it is just a question of creating the right matching website or an app. I would guess that the actual problem is lack of mentors (who can provide time and attention consistently for a long time period), and bad actors (e.g. pedophiles) volunteering as mentors. Don't trust me; ask the people who are already doing this.
So, what I would expect after creating and promoting the matching website, is 100 kids and only 10 mentors, and a few months later a scandal because one of the mentors was mostly interested in sexually grooming the kids. And it would cost about $100K.
This reply does not give me faith that you personally will be able to achieve success in a new initiative. Maybe you're not ready to provide the granular details, but that's no reason to go off on the people who want to see the details.
Honestly, I just was trying to get you to engage with the real world. I don't expect this to work because most stuff doesn't.
I'm pointing at the 'most interventions fail, and almost all are worse than GiveWell top charities' rock, and asking why you are smarter than the rock.
Your goal is to "get me to engage with the real world?" And the basis for your objecting to my model for More Effective Altruism and an exemplar is that "most interventions fail?" Puhleeze. I've given--to use your metaphor--a rock-solid set of a priori arguments for a superior foundational model for Effective Altruism. Beware of clinging to the status quo, even in the face of, yes, rock-solid reasoning. And remember, such reasoning must be prerequisite to demands for data, let alone expensive, time-consuming data. Since you seem to venerate the source from where an idea comes (in your case, the EA establishment), I might mention that I have a Ph.D. from Berkeley specializing in the evaluation of innovation and my doctoral advisor was arguably the world's leading expert in that field, Michael Scriven, and since graduation, he and I have remained close friends and respected colleagues. And with that, I wish you well and rigorous thinking.
Yes. Most interventions fail. And often in the process of failing do harm either directly or by drawing attention away from interventions that have proven track records, which is exactly what you are attempting to do here. This is a tough audience, but if an idea shows promise, they will admit it and help you see how to make it better.
Low income folks with bright kids have seen plenty of folks with PhD's from Berkeley and its cousins come stomping into their lives promising the next best thing, bossing them around, dissing their culture and families. Show us, prove to us, that your idea is better than that. I am far from convinced.
Okay, whenever somebody has to pull out "In fact, I am a DOCTOR of mumble-mumble", they've lost the argument.
I am not averse to the idea of the appeal to authority, because I don't think it's necessarily wrong to trust domain expertise, but generally yeah, when it comes to picking holes in an argument and the other person doesn't address the flaws but flourishes their parchment - it means they don't have the answer.
The more you write, the less confidence I have in your ability to execute your idea. You exhibit every red flag there is. The inability to come up with details. Disrespect of critics. Boasting of your credentials and academic pedigree, without accomplishments to match. This is not the way to sell your idea; it's the way to sound like the crackpot emails that flood every academic's mailbox.
To critique your idea on its merits, it is extremely hard to identify people of "high intellectual ability, drive, and ethics". After identifying them, it is hard to find mentors that will improve their potential far more than the existing mentors in their lives: their parents, teachers, counselors, Boy Scout leaders, priests, etc. Even the perfect mentor is not going to automatically overcome the material constraints of poverty, like the fact that someone needs a job to support his family instead of founding a high risk startup that's as likely as not to fail. Finally, there are already many, many educational programs aimed at helping low income kids. Is creating one more going to help? On the margins, probably a tiny bit; but it isn't going to revolutionize the world.
I describe "More Effective Altruism" in more detail in this essay linked to at the bottom of this comment. That essay should address concerns. It doesn't mention that here on Astral Codex, I appropriately responded to a commenter's demand for extensive data by replying that prematurely requiring such data is inherently too conservative, militating against generating bold ideas. The time for data is later. A few commenters lambasted me for mentioning my credentials. I did so in in response to commenters' ill-founded assertions including that if I had accomplished anything, I wouldn't be on Astral Codex?! (If you're curious about me, feel free, of course, to Google me.) In any event, here is the link to the essay: https://medium.com/@mnemko/more-effective-altruism-d05feba47ce3. And here is the link to the YouTube in which I read it aloud: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ndpa7BxkKNI.
Perimutuel is a terrible format for prediction markets because there's little incentive to arb incorrect probabilities early. If I bet on youngkin 0.5% now I have no idea what my actual payout will be. Could be anywhere between 200-1 and 5-1. My payout odds would be determined by people who bet after me with more information than me, so the best move is not to play. The early better subsidy can never be big enough to make me want to bet that even if the odds are off by an order of magnitude.
Question for the Canadians: what’s actually going on with Medical Assistance in Dying (MAID)? I’ve seen some scare stories recently (1) but I’ve also learned not to trust most media reports, on any side. But a quick perusal of the relevant stats (2) shows that MAID is now 3.3% of all deaths in Canada and has been growing by ~33%/year. That’s….kinda spooky, although the relevant years are the 20/21 Covid years, so those stats could easily be abnormal.
This feels like on of those things that will be popping up as CW over the next 5-10 years and I’d appreciate any Canadians with actual insight into the program so I can get this set straight in my own mind before CW eats all reasonable discussion.
Ånecdote; Ây mother chose MAID this past winter. She was 92 and had a host of medical issues, including chronic pain from a back injury, gall stones, gout, a form of blood cancer and god knows what else. After her admittance to a hospital in January it became clear that she was not going to be able to return home and live as she had, independently.
No one encouraged her to make this decision, including her GP. She was fed up and wanted out. Sick of all the pain, she said. Once she requested it, things moved quickly. She died cheerfully at Sunnybrook Hospital listening to Artie Shaw and wondering why no one had thought to bring her a Bloody Caesar.
I'm glad your mother lived to be so old and that she was able to end her life as she wanted. Hopefully you too will be able to live a long life, and succeed at doing those things that will facilitate it (cf. https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/open-thread-251/comment/10616525).
I'm having trouble finding statistics on percent of deaths by suicide in Canada for recent years, but as of the late 2010s about 1.5% of deaths in Canada were by suicide (which about matches the US 1.4% and appears to be fairly typical for developed country). I'm not sure how that's developed post MAID (has MAID largely replaced suicides or is it mostly an addition?).
Either way the rate of death by suicide has more then doubled as a percentage of total deaths post MAID (and likely more like tripled). That is interesting and possibly alarming. The question in my mind is what happened to those 3.3% of people before MAID? Committing suicide is not particularly difficult and everyone dying via MAID is presumably of sound mind and most likely (barring some edge cases) physically capable. So why weren't these people killing themselves before? What is different about MAID that leads to 3x death by suicide?
I can think of a lot of possibilities, some more alarming and some less so, I have no idea how true any of them are:
- Maybe many of them were previously committing suicide but it wasn't recorded as such (possibly even with Dr. assistance in some cases through 'aggressive' palliative care). If someone dies with stage 4 cancer not sure anyone's going to be really checking if the actual proximate cause of death was 'accidentally' overdosing on the pain pills or something like that.
- Maybe they just didn't think of it and now that MAID exists and Dr. talk about it they are prompted to think of it and consider it as an option (consider contagiousness of suicide, at least in teens)
- Maybe some degree of social pressure to do so from Dr.'s / Nurses / Families / larger social milieu
- Maybe they didn't know how to reliably/painlessly/quickly kill themselves and the trivial inconvenience of researching it (or possibility of said research being found out and stopped/miss-leading/incorrect) blocked them.
- Maybe the risk that something would go wrong and they would be unsuccessful and the possibility of being left in a worse state
- Perhaps MAID is categorized in people's minds/society differently in some ways (e.g. Suicide is shameful/sinful/selfish/illegal, MAID is honorable/altruistic/legal)
- Being easier for family to attend and say goodbye (not witnessing a crime, not feeling morally obligated to do something)
Meanwhile here in Upside-Down Canada (aka Australia) all states have over the past few years recently passed euthanasia laws of some form or another, while attracting very little attention. Euthanasia was hugely controversial back in the 1990s when the Northern Territory first tried to pass euthanasia legislation, but for one reason or another it seems the culture war in Australia is so moribund that nobody can be bothered getting worked up about it any more.
I went looking for numbers but the most recent ones I could find are nearly two years old. In the first eighteen months of euthansia being legal in the state of Victoria, there were 581 assessments made, 465 permit applications, 405 permits granted, and 224 actual deaths-by-euthanasia. 77% had cancer, 62% of the remainder had a neurodegenerative disease.
Given the population of Victoria you'd expect about 100,000 people to die in an 18-month period, so we're talking more like 0.2% of deaths, nothing like the 3.3% in Canada.
I'm much more comfortable with the lower numbers, which suggests this is something that people have to actively seek out for themselves, rather than something which hospitals are starting to push onto patients.
I find most of the comments on this post to be very polarized; let me try to forge a middle path...
On one hand, it's absolutely ridiculous that someone calling a medical help line for help with PTSD would be recommended euthanasia. That is horrible and something ought to happen to fix that.
BUT... 3.3% of deaths being MAID is, as a number, not actually concerning at all? Imagine if every patient who has terminal cancer died using MAID ~1-2 weeks before their counterfactual death due to cancer. Using US numbers (because they popped up first in google) that would be 17.8% of deaths using MAID. To my mind, that would be a totally acceptable usage of euthanasia. It would save (in the US) >11,000 person-years of some of the worst suffering.
Yeah, besides the general vibe of CW already having eaten this, the thing that's surprised me is how many people do not consider 3.3% a significant amount. Which was not my prior, my expectation for random news articles is for a few cases in a giant population to be held up as examples of a society wide-phenomenon.
This feels...dependent on how worried you are concerning assisted suicide, both in the abstract and in actual policies that are/were implemented. Like, per my lazy DDG, Canada gets roughly ~700 murders/year (1). Which is a lot less than MAID but also a lot worse and justifiably gets more attention.
I'm kind of trending towards @gph's focus on non-terminal cases. I could easily see the US, or specific states, pushing for this kind of policy and looking at non-terminal cases seems a lot more important than overall stats.
...in which a very successful man who'd planned a much longer life is diagnosed with a terminal brain tumor at age 53, and recounts the way he planned out and spent the 100 days he got between diagnosis and death. He used every possible minute.
I would be extremely reluctant to generally dismiss "1-2 weeks" of life -- in particular the very last 1-2 weeks of life -- as devoid of the potential for meaning, or even lacking sufficient potential for meaning to compensate for whatever suffering is entailed.
Indeed, I've sometimes heard people speak passionately of reducing the suffering near death, and wondered whether they are actually talking about the suffering of the person dying, or about their own suffering -- whether the actual goal is sparing *themselves* the spiritual suffering associated with bearing witness to something deeply frightening, and with confronting in the most brutally undeniable terms their own finiteness. Much nicer to have the dying just kind of slip away, go to sleep, walk off stage with a jaunty wave, and not ask us (the survivors), explicitly or by demonstration, any tricky and difficult questions we don't really want to think about.
My dad had a massive heart attack in the middle of the night. My mum died slowly of Alzheimer's. I am definitely hoping for the massive heart attack. (I've got an anti-white pill plan, which is to stop taking some drug keeping me alive, when I want to go.)
The last 1-2 weeks could be very meaningful, or it could be full of pain and discomfort and not much else at all. It probably varies tremendously. And if it does, there doesn't seem to be much of a reason not to give people the choice.
Yeah no shit. But that also means you can't make categorical statements like "if every patient who has terminal cancer died using MAID ~1-2 weeks before their counterfactual death due to cancer....It would save (in the US) >11,000 person-years." Because what it might actually do is save 1000 person-years of suffering and cancel 10,000 person-years of the most meaningful possible experience.
If you want to give people choice near the end of life, I'm 100% for that. If you want to make broad statements about what that choice should be, or what people will want to do, I'm 100% opposed. The key word is "choice" and the key question is what does that mean?
Consider the question of "choice" in whether a woman stays with an abusive husband. Plenty of people will say, hey, this situation sucks, but you always have the choice to divorce and leave, so why would should society do things like...build women's shelters, have restraining orders, temporary support orders, or extend the statute of limitations on filing assault or rape charges, et cetera? We don't need all this armamentarium to protect you, because you've always got a choice unless you're physically locked up, right?
But many other people say geez that's pretty damn naive, and "the ability to choose" is a way less black 'n' white than the 18-year-old naif thinks when he first discovers it. That's why the issues of consent and choice are fraught in all kinds of places.
So we can't dismiss the question of understanding the nature of "free choice" in this situation by saying free choice is just a simple and obvious thing -- our anguished #metoo debate clearly prohibits that naive viewpoint -- and we can't dismiss the question because even if they choose to die in a way that turns out not to be so free after all, it's no biggie, because they're just always cutting short meaningless suffering.
Which means the question of what "choice" means is very important, and it's very important to know whether the 3.3% of Canadians who are "choosing" to die are "choosing" in a way that is qualitatively entirely different from a woman "choosing" to say with an abusive husband.
For that there's palliative care and also palliative sedation (look it up).
Given that modern medicine is really good at keeping people unconscious or even in coma, something like that seems like a much easier solution to such situations.
That report breaks down the numbers pretty well. I'd say the most concerning part would be this:
>In 2021, 2.2% of the total number of MAID provisions (219 individuals), were individuals whose natural deaths were not reasonably foreseeable (non-RFND) (in Quebec since 2019 and the rest of Canada after the passage of the new legislation on March 17, 2021). The most commonly cited underlying medical condition for this population was neurological (45.7%), followed by other condition (37.9%), and multiple comorbidities (21.0%). The average age of individuals receiving MAID who were non-RFND was 70.1.
Only 219, but if that numbers starts climbing and we hear more reports of people who otherwise weren't going to die being pressured into suicide I'd say there is quite a bit of room for concern with how the law is being applied outside the debate of 'personal freedom' everyone in the comment thread below decided to generate a bunch of noise about.
I would assume what is going on is Canada is becoming a better place to live, where people aren’t forced to live out their final misery because everyone is so hopped up on medical vitalism!
"A disabled veteran in Canada has slammed her government for offering to euthanize her when she grew frustrated at delays in having a wheelchair lift installed in her home.
Retired Army Corporal Christine Gauthier, a former Paralympian, testified in Parliament on Thursday that a Veterans Affairs Canada (VAC) caseworker made the assisted suicide offer.
After years of frustrating delays in getting the home lift, Gauthier says the caseworker told her: 'Madam, if you are really so desperate, we can give you medical assistance in dying now.'
The worker who made the offer hasn't been named, but they are feared to have offered three other veterans who contacted VAC with problems the same 'solution', Global News reported.
The scandal emerged a week after Canada's veterans affairs minister confirmed that at least four other veterans were similarly offered access to Canada's Medical Assistance in Dying (MAID) law in response to their troubles, a situation Prime Minister Justin Trudeau called 'absolutely unacceptable'."
Canada - we're certainly not hopped up on medical vitalism! In fact, even if you *want* to live, we'll still recommend medical assistance in suicide for you!
I mean if that is really what happened it sounds like that caseworker was terrible at their job and should be fired. I do wonder a little bit about the exact context and tone.
I have been around declining hospital patients (my own grandparents for instance, but also some other seniors) who constantly whine and joke about “not wanting it to go on”, and “I have had enough and I am not taking another shower or whatever”. I can see a pretty regular circumstance where some half joke/reminder than euthanasia is an option is perfectly acceptable/appropriate.
That said it doesn’t seem like a good/appropriate response to someone complaining about delays related to a lift installation. But even there it would for me depend on the contract and what the preceding comments were (like is this a patient constantly brining up the option or threatening suicide or saying they want to die). Or are they being super super unreasonable and crass about what are reasonable delays.
Honestly it sounds like Canada is moving t a healthier place. I maintain that the best situation for everyone is going to be when the old/indigent feel subtle societal pressure and support to just shuffle off the mortal coil.
Most people spending their last 6, 12, 18 months in a hospital bed having strangers wipe them and shower them is not a dignified way to end lives lot a good use of societies resources.
Everyone dies, you don’t need to hold on that tight.
"I maintain that the best situation for everyone is going to be when the old/indigent feel subtle societal pressure and support to just shuffle off the mortal coil.
Most people spending their last 6, 12, 18 months in a hospital bed having strangers wipe them and shower them is not a dignified way to end lives lot a good use of societies resources."
I had missed that bit of your comment. Yes indeed, now we've moved on from "will nobody have pity on the suffering who are in horrible physical/mental agony and just want to die peacefully" to "kill the poor". Those 'useless eaters' gobbling up public resources.
I believe the Germans - being a philosophical people - have, or at least had, a term for those kinds of people:
"On July 14, 1933, the German government instituted the “Law for the Prevention of Progeny with Hereditary Diseases.” This law called for the sterilization of all persons who suffered from diseases considered hereditary, including mental illness, learning disabilities, physical deformity, epilepsy, blindness, deafness, and severe alcoholism. With the law’s passage the Third Reich also stepped up its propaganda against the disabled, regularly labeling them “life unworthy of life” or “useless eaters” and highlighting their burden upon society."
" I do wonder a little bit about the exact context and tone."
Oh come on Martin, now you are sounding like that copypasta:
"Do you have a source on that?
Source?
A source. I need a source.
Sorry, I mean I need a source that explicitly states your argument. This is just tangential to the discussion.
No, you can't make inferences and observations from the sources you've gathered. Any additional comments from you MUST be a subset of the information from the sources you've gathered.
You can't make normative statements from empirical evidence.
Do you have a degree in that field?
A college degree? In that field?
Then your arguments are invalid.
No, it doesn't matter how close those data points are correlated. Correlation does not equal causation.
Correlation does not equal causation.
CORRELATION. DOES. NOT. EQUAL. CAUSATION.
You still haven't provided me a valid source yet.
Nope, still haven't.
I just looked through all 308 pages of your user history, figures I'm debating a glormpf supporter. A moron."
So people express concerns about what is going on with the MAID act in Canada, and the pro-euthanasia people on here say it's all overblown. Fair enough.
Then a case comes along that even Justin Freakin' Trudeau issues a statement about "Er no, we never intended this sort of thing" so yeah this is a good probability it really did happen like that and it still gets "Well now what is the exact precise context here, can we be sure this happened, it probably didn't but if it did that's a good thing, and anyway everyone dies and WE CAN'T BE FORCED TO LIVE IF WE DON'T WANT TO".
This is *not* a case about "suffering and in horrible pain person wants to die a little bit earlier than a natural death", this is "disabled woman asks for accommodations that are legal and intended to help the disabled live independently in their own homes instead of having to move into nursing homes or state care, gets offered to 'we can off you' instead".
Even if it was Just That One Case Worker, where do you think the attitude comes from? The tone of the office? The implementation of the protocol? The attitude that "now there is official help to do away with yourself, useless disabled person sucking up public resources, why aren't you availing of it?". This is the way the Liverpool Care Pathway got abused; start off with good intentions, a few potential Mengeles get carried away - and it gets defended by the euthanasia crowd because "well if we admit this point to our opponents, it will set the cause back by a lot, and what are a few dead elderly people to The Cause?"
Flannery O'Connor sounds more and more right, the more I hear of these examples: sentimentality leads to cruelty. Good intentions are the road to Hell.
"In this popular pity, we mark our gain in sensibility and our loss in vision. If other ages felt less, they saw more, even though they saw with the blind, prophetical, unsentimental eye of acceptance, which is to say, of faith. In the absence of this faith now, we govern by tenderness. It is a tenderness which, long since cut off from the person of Christ, is wrapped in theory. When tenderness is detached from the source of tenderness, its logical outcome is terror. It ends in force-labor camps and in the fumes of the gas chamber."
"Honestly it sounds like Canada is moving to a healthier place."
Yes, a place where "if you get old and sick, kill yourself, the government will help!"
Yes, this is absolutely a real story, and the courts + current government have only taken a few short years to go from allowing euthanasia in highly sympathetic, defensible edge cases (and making fun of skeptics' slippery slope arguments) to a kind of ongoing frictionless tumble off a cliff where there's no obvious stopping point in who can get euthanized. Public discussion is entirely about individual entitlements and autonomy without any kind of balancing against effects on the medical profession or wider society. The actual deaths might still be *mostly* those sympathetic edge cases, but it's common enough that normal people are aware of real people being euthanized.
Opinions about euthanasia in the very elderly, terminally ill, and acutely suffering edge cases we were talking about a decade ago are barely relevant to the present situation, except as props in a motte-and-bailey about euthanizing mildly depressed children.
Watching this unfold (and similar in some European countries) has convinced me that, individual moral questions aside, the best policy is always not to euthanize anyone, at least with the explicit support of the state, because it's likely going to get out of hand, and has.
> Opinions about euthanasia in the very elderly, terminally ill, and acutely suffering edge cases we were talking about a decade ago are barely relevant to the present situation, except as props in a motte-and-bailey about euthanizing mildly depressed children.
What is this hyperbole? Minors can't be euthanized in Canada. And no one has yet been euthanized for mental illnesses.
There's a huge gulf between someone thinking Canada will eventually euthanize mildly depressed children and Canada actually euthanizing mildly depressed children. The latter is not happening and is not going to happen but the comment seems to imply it is.
I couldn't follow your comment. Where did kidnapping come in? In what sense is ChestertonsTopiary parasitic, and what is he parasitic on? What part of his argument depends upon assuming he owns people?
Is your claim that midly depressed children aren't being euthanized, or that failing to euthanize mildly depressed children is tantamount to ... parasitic ... kidnapping?
I think this guy is talking about imprisoning people convicted on drug offences? Selling drugs to people for the purpose of committing suicide by overdose?
Not gonna weep salt tears over that, Andaro. The consequences are perfectly clear: break the law, know you are breaking the law, get caught, and go to jail. Don't want to go to jail? Don't break the law.
The idea seems to be that personal autonomy is an absolute sacred value. Most humans don't quite share that. I'm sympathetic to the concerns of MAiD advocates who want to alleviate suffering, and also to deontological libertarians who don't want to give an inch on personal autonomy, but those can conceivably balance against other important values. Per my username, we should at least stop and ask some questions now and then during rapid social-cultural-moral-political shifts like this one.
This seems to be a fully complete argument against having criminal laws. Is your argument that we should be against laws banning euthanasia because we should be against all laws ever (including ones against kidnapping?) or is there anything specific to ChestertonsTopiary's comment that attracted your ire?
Why is it spooky? Shouldn't the default be that people die at the time and in the manner of their choosing? Even 3.3% of deaths from MAID indicates that the default is still very much the opposite. [That's not to say that individual cases of it may not be problematic.]
Thank you for linking that. I don't find it too compelling, though. The potential cost of letting someone kill themselves who would have otherwise been able to be happy had they not killed themselves, is the inexistence of the hypothetically happy person. Scott argues that there are many such cases.
The cost of not letting someone who wants to end their life end their life, is a very real suffering person. This seems like a much bigger issue than the inexistence of a theoretical happy person. There are infinitely many happy people who don't exist and that does not seem like a huge issue.
Furthermore, the argument that suicide is often a bad decision that should therefore be prevented would seem to apply to many decisions. E.g. I suspect that the majority choices to consume alcohol are bad choices. Furthermore, drunk people often cause direct harm to others, which dead people don't. Additionally, people who consume alcohol can suffer the consequences of their actions, which people who commit suicide cannot.
While there are potentially some useful uses of alcohol consumption, there are probably even fewer instances of useful tobacco consumption. There too, the line of reasoning would be to ban it.
But the operative question in all these cases is not just whether the decision made is a good one, but whether the government should ban the individual making the choice.
Furthermore, it seems likely that the percentage of people making the "wrong" choice to end their lives would decrease as that choice became normalized. If the choice is highly taboo, then only the most extreme cases, who are perhaps likelier to be disturbed, would make the choice.
If the choice were more freely available, it seems conceivable that a higher percentage of people making the choice would be making the "right choice," whatever exactly that means.
[Incidentally, either Scott is not perfect with his Ideological Turing test, or I am just atypical, as when he said "And I know what the response will be," he wrote something that I did not consider and was not any of my listed objections.]
Thanks again for linking the article!
However, that article did shift my priors towards thinking that there is more merit in requiring some sort of counseling before doctors are allowed to facilitate patient suicides.
Because it is *better*, The default used to be that children died in childhood, and only a (large) minority would grow up to be adults. The default is now that children almost always grow up to be adults and only a very small minority die in childhood.
This, I assert, is simply better.
Your "this has never been true in the history of all life on Earth" argument, would have argued against the introduction of vaccines and antibiotics for childhood diseases. And, no doubt, backed by Malthusian horror stories of the terrible consequences of letting most children make it through childhood alive.
An individual should have authority over their life, including the right to terminate it. This can be an axiom for those who value individual liberties. Of course, like any axiom, one either accepts it a priori or rejects it a priori.
Because something like MAID has the potential for a lot of abuse and big cultural impacts. Sometimes these things pop up and they're tiny, for example, if MAID was only being done to 100 people/year, that's a minimal impact from a utilitarian perspective and no cultural impact unless it gets CW traction; it's basically right-wing clickbait. If over the next 5-10 years we see hundreds of thousands of Canadians using MAID, it's already at 10k/yr, that's a real thing worth more investigation.
This is, honestly, less me trying to figure out if it's good or bad and more...is this grossly exaggerated clickbait?
To my eye 3.3% is still a pretty tiny fraction. It does seem to have grown quite rapidly in proportional terms, but quite slowly in absolute ones, which makes it hard to guess what point it will plateau at.
In terms of "is it clickbait", I find it significant that skimreading google hits for "Canada euthanasia scandal" finds a bunch of people saying either "euthanasia is bad in general" or being outraged at the prospect having been breached in a discussion but not (within the very cursory amount of work I've put in - I'm sure you'll find something if you dig deep enough) any headlines about people who were actually pressured to kill themselves.
So I think my answer is "not exactly - euthanasia in Canada really is growing - but the stuff about "... and it may lead to..." mostly is".
Again, if a substantial percentage of the population would like to determine the time and manner of their deaths, then a sharp rise in that is what you would expect as people have greater access to that option.
I'm sure that there are instances of malpractice; e.g. pressuring costly patients to elect to end their lives, but since the percentage of people who use MAID is still so low, it seems like the much bigger problem is probably people suffering needlessly and not controlling the manner of their death.
As far as what constitutes click-bait, I think that mostly depends on what constitutes proper news, with clickbait = 1-proper news.
Are edge cases of hospitals pressuring people to elect to end their lives, minors, people with various forms of mental illness newsworthy? That is a subjective question?
How many instances are required for it to be newsworthy (and not just click-bait)? 1? 10? 1000?
Hey man, the vibe I'm getting is you want to have an argument over whether assisted suicide is ok. If so, good luck, but that's explicitly not what I'm asking for or what I want.
Dude, he specifically asked why I thought it was spooky. Sometimes that's a good faith thing of trying to understand what the other person is looking for and what details would interest them; sometimes it's people looking for online debate.
> The constituent elements of our personalities can’t be fully enumerated, but I would name honesty, creativity, gentleness, courage, perceptiveness, equanimity, extroversion, intelligence, kindness, and a sense of humor as essential parts.
I guess because I feel deficient in creativity, courage, extroversion and sense of humor. I don't think I've ever made something my 'thing' to cope for that, in the way described in that article, but I've never done well with people, so this makes me think I've to try harder, which makes me think on why X didn't like me, and how do I get Y to like me, and that's a bad headspace to be in (is it?).
Do normies regularly think deliberately on how to make someone like them, or is their social interaction as fluid and unconscious as it looks?
> Do normies regularly think deliberately on how to make someone like them, or is their social interaction as fluid and unconscious as it looks?
Yes? You can think about trying to do something better, while still doing it mostly automatically.
When you drive a car or chop and onion or play a video game, you're probably not thinking all that hard about what you're doing, but you're conscious of it. You're aware of the dangers, you're noticing your mistakes and enjoying the moments that go perfectly, and you're thinking about how you can do it better. You don't (once you're no longer a beginner) consciously think about the question of what button to press or how to hold the knife.
So it is with social interactions. Competent people don't need to think "okay now smile with your eybrows up six millimetres", but they do think "this guy would probably enjoy my anecdote about the bus full of nuns..."
> Do normies regularly think deliberately on how to make someone like them, or is their social interaction as fluid and unconscious as it looks?
My experience is that normies will think on it for "high-stakes" situations and also "first impressions"
Putting on the charm with your boss or your church pastor or the cop who's pulled you over for speeding, even if that just means pulling in the sharper edges of an otherwise acerberic personality. This is normal and everyone does it.
A lot of the "fluid and unconscious" look is actually practiced "muscle memory" of social interactions. If you interact with normal people enough, they often have about 3 to 8 "good stories to tell" that you'll tend to overhear on repeat when they're meeting new people or winding down with a late night beer.
If you want be better at interacting with people, consider sketching out on paper some sort of prepared stories that put you in a decent light. In the real world stuff comes up and you have to improvise, but having a couple practiced interactions you can fall back on can be helpful. Personally, I don't practice it exactly line by line, but my natural social skills happen to have decent improvisation so I instead have sorts of bullet points to be able to work with.
Like whenever someone asks me "how are you?" or "what's up?", instead of just replying with a boring 'fine' or whatever, I usually end up reporting if I've had or skipped breakfast or lunch. In a work context someone knowing that you've missed a meal both implies dedication, and acts as a pre-emptive excuse for any of my habitual briskness.
Ask people about themselves. People love to talk about themselves. Especially if you actually listen and ask good follow-ups. They will find themselves unconsciously liking you for the attention.
Absolutely this. I think those of us who are socially awkward spend a lot of time thinking about what we are going to SAY and how we are going to be interesting, but no one is more interesting to someone meeting them for the first time than the person who appears to be interested in them. Asking questions and listening to the answers and then asking follow up questions (and if you can't think of any, my go to is, "I'd like to hear a little bit more about what you just said about X"). And after a time, you will find that your anxiety is reduced because you actually are interested in what the person is saying and maybe you have a similar story or a little piece of advice and it will appear "fluid and unconscious" even if it's not.
Wouldn't you say, though, that this "first impressions," and "pulling in sharper edges," is just to avoid unpleasantness. Things click with some people and it's effortless and rewarding. I think, if it wasn't that way, I might prefer being an introvert.
I'd say socializing is mostly unconscious, but in the way a martial art is unconscious - it's something that I developed through experience and practice, and when you try to put it into words it often comes out as some sort of vague platitude like "don't think, feel" or "just be yourself." Sadly, I don't know a way to get good at socializing beyond just talking to enough people that you start to get a feel for it.
One piece of concrete advice I do think is helpful for introverts is: Try to get people to talk about themselves. People like to talk about themselves, and a good story can fill a lot of conversation. "Small talk" questions like "Where do you work?" or "where are you from?" aren't just meaningless "handshake" questions, they're invitations for the other person to share something interesting which can be the start of a longer conversation.
In general, if you read western wambish* far leftists and you're a nerdy STEM type they're going to make you feel bad. A core part of their political ideology is what you contribute to society is overvalued while what they contribute is undervalued. That can be a valuable corrective if you're an arrogant tech bro. But you don't seem like it.
What you're describing sounds like routine if intense anxiety. Pretty much everyone feels anxiety in social interactions. But the intensity of the anxiety and the joy at social interaction varies. People who are extremely pro-social, in my experience, feel roughly the same amount of anxiety. But it's less intense and they feel much more joy at the social experience. For example, if someone looks them up and down they feel a slight twinge of anxiety about their looks instead of going into their own head for hours. And when they get the compliment that's a much bigger deal to them.
(Also, don't underestimate how much of this is just social prestige. The cool kids get a lot of reinforcement that social interaction is good and the outcasts get a lot of the opposite. It's not necessarily that they did anything right or the other side did anything wrong.)
If you don't like it about yourself you can, with effort, change it. At least somewhat. But if you are living a happy life without them then that's fine too. I'd say getting help with the anxiety is probably a full positive. But that doesn't necessarily mean becoming an extroverted funny guy party animal.
Wow, thanks for that article. Yeah, it's true that I've internalized, for many reasons, that wambishness is the lodestar, and I guess it triggered me to see Freddie enunciate that so clearly. As to living a happy life, I guess I'm happy, but I do want to have children and I'm basically crippled, romantically speaking, so this is something I need to work on, somehow.
Yeah, it's a definite blindspot in his thinking. Though certainly not unusual for his genre.
Anxiety's an issue for dating. Especially for men in the US. If you're unhappy with some part of yourself there's nothing wrong with working to change it. There's a bunch of work out there on anxiety reduction and you can get therapy for it. Dating itself is harder. A lot of it is unfortunately experience. But the easiest hack is just to get in shape and learn basic fashion. People are pretty shallow about this kind of thing. And if you can become reasonably conventionally attractive you'll get a lot more positive reinforcement. Both are activities you can do without triggering too much social anxiety as well.
At least for me, as someone who has all the traditional markers of nerd-dom (Physics degree, avid WoW player, hobby programmer, very happy just spending time by myself, etc etc) but also has no difficulty with social interaction: little bit of column a, little bit of column b. It generally requires very little thought for me to talk to people/engage them in a friendly manner. But of course there are times when I make a conscious choice to do something like prompt a friend or stranger to talk more about something they're clearly passionate about, or make a choice to spend my time helping a friend work on their house - you get the picture.
I don't think that there's necessarily anything wrong with the latter process, but if it forms the vast majority of your social interactions, I'd maybe stop to think about *why* you want these people to like you so badly. I certainly wouldn't judge you if the answer were simply "they are the only people available" - we all have needs - but if interaction is always comes at such a price, it may simply be that you're compatible with far fewer people than the average normie.
I get bored with implementation so no. But right, Match.com is the right metaphor. And per another comment I made, even the base version of the mentoring could be an app, for example, the already existing AI-driven counseling apps.
Thanks, Villam. A couple points obfuscated by the glitch in the linking to comments:
1. Identifying low-income US Gifted kids could be as easy as one email to the mailing list of the school counselors association. Perfect no, excellent in increasing Gross World Flourishing compared with EA charities such as mosquito nets., absolutely.
2. For easy scalability, use AI-assisted mentoring, a variation on or even using the already existing AI-based counseling apps. That could be the baseline intervention with human mentors provided at least in the pilot test to see which lead to better outcomes.
My best guess at what they are doing is, replying using email (meaning writing a reply email), as opposed to clicking a "reply" button that appears in the email text. I don't know why the former even posts a comment for you, but there's nothing in Substack's email notifications saying that this method of replying will end up in the child thread. It would be better if it did, but as it stands it's more like misusing the product than the product being broken. That's all as far as I can tell.
I want to see this movie. I have no idea who any of the actors are, I've seen nothing by the director before, and it looks like they're throwing everything plus the kitchen sink into it, but it seems like it will be fun. And it involves Hanuman, my favourite monkey-god.
It looks fantastic! But I'll have to make sure it is what I think it is before I watch it. Long ago, I watched a movie called Ashoka, which I thought was going to be an action movie. Turned out to be ten minutes of action, then four hours of romance and singing, then ten more minutes of action.
You have to expect the dancing and singing in an Indian movie that is trying to appeal to a mainstream audience. The moviegoers expect a proper experience for their ticket, and that means long enough to have a proper interval and to include all the elements that appeal to everyone.
I'd be very disappointed if this movie didn't have at least one dance number! There surely has to be one when the hero and the love-interest are flirting!
The dance numbers can be brilliant. I haven't seen the full movie, but this take on Romeo and Juliet which is called Ram Leela has this over the top dance number which really makes me think the director watched the Baz Luhrman movie and thought "Yeah, great concept, but a bit too restrained":
And I love this scene where the hero beats the crap out of the baddies set to the Hanuman Chalisa; it's not a dance number as such, but hey, it's set to music!
I haven't watched more than 2-3 Bollywood films since I left China in 1992--for some reason the CCP found them unobjectionable. Love all kinds of dance. How to watch this kind of thing online. Do I need a specific streaming service?
You are assuming a level of technical sophistication in my viewing habits which is unwarranted 😁
Generally I try looking for stuff on Youtube, or maybe Apple Movie Store (which is not as good as it used to be). I don't subscribe to any streaming services (I really am still in the Stone Ages when it comes to music, TV, movies, etc.) and as I said, only watched "Rings of Power" on Amazon Prime because they were *begging* me to try it with free trials before paying for subscription.
There's a movie I like from 2004; it's originally a Telugu-language movie that was dubbed into Hindi (and the difference in editing between the two movies is also fascinating; the Telugu version has some slightly 'saucy' dance numbers with the love-interest that are edited out in the Hindi version). It's a fun watch *except* for a very graphic double murder early in the movie which is not representative of the rest of the film.
It's also fascinating as a look into the type of corruption that apparently is taken for granted; a local mobster/village head can get away with literal murder because he has pull with politicians in the big city, and the town policeman is incapable, does not even dream of trying to stand up to him, and instead shakes down the small business owners for 'licence fees' and the likes. So to get justice, you need divine intervention when the monkey god comes down to protect and encourage his devotee. In the modern era, because it's set in present-day (or present-day 2004).
I like the movie because it's fantasy, and it has my Hanuman starring in it, and is clearly based on elements of the Ramayana (the mobster is Ravanna, his elder brother is Kumbhakarna and so on):
For anyone who might be interested, I'm offering a $1000 cash prize to the first person who can produce a plausible, comprehensive alternate explanation for the origin of the Book of Mormon, other than the one officially espoused by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. I'm especially interested in feedback from those who may not have much background on this topic, but who are open minded and serious. Anyone is welcome to check this out and give me feedback.
For the vast majority of people the plausible explanation of the Book of Mormon is that Joseph Smith composed it. If you don't think that is plausible, it is hard to understand what kind of argument would convince you that it is. I'm not going to answer all your questions, but just address a few of them.
Why did Joseph Smith write a book? Well, maybe he wanted to write a book, or found it to be in him to write a book. A lot of people are inspired to write. As for why did he need a book to start a new religious movement, the answer is that the stories of Judaism, Christianity (especially Protestant Christianity) and Islam are all centered on a religious text, so in his cultural sphere, the existence of a religion is almost dependent on the existence of a Scripture.
A false religious leader (as I believe Smith to have been) is not necessarily either just sincere or completely insightful about his deceptive practices. Presumably such people at least feel a genuine need to pursue their aims, or have a sense of being special. Ron Hubbard, the guy who developed Scientology, was probably at least somewhat sincere about Dianetics/Scientology being a way of overcoming psychological problems or human weaknesses.
The point of being a conman like this is not to avoid work, but to gain influence over people. Even more conventional conmen can put a lot of work in their deceptions.
You imply several times that we should expect something different from a hoax, or expect something different from Smith's motivations. How can we have such expectations? Joseph Smith was successful in convincing many people he was at least a Christ like figure. In his culture, that was the highest status a person could ever have.
The style of the Book of Mormon is more or less what one would expect from someone of Joseph Smith's background (clever, creative, with a lot of contact with the Bible but not a lot of education otherwise).
There may be details that are correct in the Book of Mormon about the Hebrew or Egyptian culture, or geography, but there are many anachronisms or incorrect details about e.g. the Americas at the time. In such a long book, one would expect there to be some correct details, if only by coincidence.
There is a lecture on Youtube called Authorship of the Book of Mormon from a place called Centre Place in Canada (I don't know what Centre Place is exactly, it seems to be a very liberal religious institution, maybe with Mormon roots). It is interesting in that the lecturer is sympathetic to the Book of Mormon (much more than people here are likely to be) and seems to feel it has value, but accepts that Smith composed it himself. The lecture addresses some of the questions you raise, so you might be interested in it. Unfortunately it is 1,5 h long.
Wow, thanks for this thorough reply to me. I appreciate that! I'll try to respond in kind:
* Saying that "maybe" Smith wrote a book because "he wanted to write a book" might not be a low effort answer, but if someone did want to give a quick, breezy dismissal to the subject without expending much thought on it, isn't that the kind of thing someone would say? It's practically a tautology--"he wrote a book because he wanted to write a book" may not be the most penetrating hypothesis.
* As for wanting influence, I point out in my challenge that he already *had* a lot of influence, from prior revelations and visions. The role of the Book of Mormon in converting that first generation of believers was nowhere near as important as it is today, and the "bump" in followers that he got from it could hardly justify the extensive efforts to create it (even if such a thing were possible, which it really wasn't).
* You say that Smith convinced people that he was "a Christ like figure." This makes me suspect that you're maybe not quite as conversant with LDS belief as you might think you are--prophets aren't any type of deity. Perhaps you're imagining some charismatic cultic figure???
* Likewise, your characterization of the Book of Mormon's style as a folksy mishmash of his environment and inherent narrative skill is wildly obsolete. Close readings reveal it to be a profoundly complex work, structurally and linguistically, with roots in grammars far removed from the King James Bible or upstate New York of the early 19th century at all. See, for example, here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f-WHZWiECsY
* Alleged anachronism exist because of our own limited understanding of the times and places involved--how many such claims over the last 200 years have fallen apart as we've learned more about the ancient Western hemisphere, which LIDAR tech, among other things, is still teaching us was far more developed and advanced than we ever assumed. Besides, the existence of some problematic details hardly explains the many dozens of genuinely insightful nuances that simply couldn't exist in a hoax. Claiming "coincidence" for all of them is a cop out. Care to calculate the odds of everything in my challenge being the result of blind chance?
* I'm not familiar with the video you mentioned, but I'll check it out. However, I *am* familiar with many such presentations, and I have to say that they all fall far short of actually explaining the origin of the text as a hoax. You may have noticed that that's actually one of the items on my list--after nearly 200 years of relentless criticism, nobody has yet produced a coherent theory of how exactly the Book of Mormon could have been produced as a fraud. The dates, places, materials, collaborators, and research involved--none of it is accounted for even theoretically, much less documented, and the few passing swipes that people have taken at it all fall apart when we scratch just a bit below the surface. The existing responses to it are enough for those inclined to assume that it's unworthy of consideration, but the full, real situation--the one outlined in my challenge--presents a massive obstacle to any serious mind open to an honest investigation.
At any rate, thanks again for sharing your thoughts. Regardless of what you do or don't believe, I wish the very best of all things in life to you and yours!
Ah, I see now. Perhaps you're not fully appreciating what we have here. The Book of Mormon isn't like the other great books you might have in mind. The Book of Mormon gives us a wholly unique and ideal scenario--a long, complex text that suddenly appears in an unlikely place in the modern world, and which claims to be a translation of an ancient epic. That gives us a TON of material to investigate and determine whether or not that claim is true. If it is, the nature of the text's production lends immense credibility to (indeed, literally proves) the LDS church's claim that God lives and was behind the Book of Mormon, since there's no other reasonable possibility for its appearance. Give the questions in my challenge a look, if you're interested, and let me know what you think.
Theory 1: that Joseph Smith was given golden plates by an angel with a foreign text inscribed onto them, that he then translated that text into English “by the gift and power of God,” and that the narrative contained in that text is a literal record from an ancient group of people who actually existed
Theory 2: that Joseph Smith was given golden plates by a squidlike alien with a foreign text inscribed onto them, that he then translated that text into English by the gift and power of alien technology, and that the narrative contained in that text is not a literal record from an ancient group of people who actually existed.
I'm not going to address all fifty questions right now, but at a quick skim I don't think any of those would distinguish between the two theories since most of them are about whether Smith was sincere or not, and in my theory he was. If you want a plausible motivation for aliens to do this, then let's assume it was a psychology experiment to see if a new religion could easily be created among humans.
Oh wait, I just read the bit that explicitly says "theories that rely on things like aliens or time travel, etc. will be automatically disqualified". It seems a bit unfair to allow theories with angels but not theories with aliens, doesn't it?
Thanks for taking a look. I'd be very interested in seeing a complete theory that assumes Smith's sincerity, since most don't. Can most of my questions be answered in a framework of an unconscious falsehood? The "high power" that sponsored the modern translation notwithstanding, if the narrative in the text represents an actual record by actual people in the ancient world, we have quite the phenomenon on our hands here!
I'm just trying to think strategically here. My assumption is that you are for one reason or another very unlikely to be convinced of the plausibility of the sort of mundane "Joseph Smith made it up" theory that 99.9% of the population would accept and which is almost certainly true.
But if I present you with an alternative theory that's even more outlandish than the Mormonism-is-true one, I suspect you might be able to accept that it's at least plausible without having your faith shaken. So this seems to be the best shot for winning the thousand dollars.
I'm happy to leave the hard work to actually win the $1000 to someone who needs it more than I do (or at least, gains a greater marginal utility from it) though.
* "the sort of mundane 'Joseph Smith made it up' theory that 99.9% of the population would accept and which is almost certainly true." Well, most of the world isn't familiar with this book in any meaningful way, and even if they were, the prevailing attitude isn't one of studious rejection; it's passive indifference. The jury of history has not yet returned the verdict you anticipate.
* "But if I present you with an alternative theory that's even more outlandish than the Mormonism-is-true one, I suspect you might be able to accept that it's at least plausible without having your faith shaken. So this seems to be the best shot for winning the thousand dollars." Yes, absolutely :)
The initial questions involving psychology are too vague to be answered. I'm not really comparing Smith to Charles Manson, but what would we say to a Manson believer who wanted to know why he never recanted even in prison? Beats me what the answer, but he didn't, and also he was a fraud. I don't know how anyone could adequately answer the same question about Smith.
Are you suggesting a mental illness explanation for the creation of the Book of Mormon? Such theories have been posited before, but I'm not aware of any that can come anywhere close to accounting for the evidences listed in my questions...
"My goal is to raise awareness of the Book of Mormon’s quality and to help more people study it seriously. I also want to demonstrate the strength of its claim to authenticity."
I'm sorry to say that won't work for me. I absolutely do not take it seriously or as having any kind of religious validity. I don't even credit it as apocrypha https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apocrypha
but as an invention by Smith to back up his claims. And I do this from the angle of being a Christian believer, so it's not even "I'm an atheist, I don't believe in any gods, convince me".
We can argue over how sincere Smith was, did he really believe he was receiving messages from God, etc. but there again - there are a lot of people who claim this, and I don't believe them (e.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnificat_Meal_Movement).
"If you're so sure it's fake, why don't you enter for the $1,000?"
Because it's fruitless to do so. I don't doubt your sincerity, but the best efforts of all sorts of atheist evangelists haven't shifted my belief. So I don't expect any efforts to shift your belief in Mormonism, because there is always the appeal to the Holy Ghost: by the burning in my bosom, I am convinced of its truth.
And to be frank, and perhaps a little unkind, I have tried reading the Book of Mormon but the prose style is so awful, I can't get through it. Smith may have tried to emulate the King James Bible, but he was not on a par with the six committees that worked on it. Or, indeed, Cranmer and the Book of Common Prayer:
"But in order to understand all that was involved, it is necessary to say a word about the Anglican Prayer-Book itself. The Book of Common Prayer is the masterpiece of Protestantism. It is more so than the work of Milton. It is the one positive possession and attraction; the one magnet and talisman for people even outside the Anglican Church, as are the great Gothic cathedrals for people outside the Catholic Church. I can speak, I think, for many other converts, when I say that the only thing that can produce any sort of nostalgia or romantic regret, any shadow of homesickness in one who has in truth come home, is the rhythm of Cranmer’s prose. All the other supposed superiorities of any sort of Protestantism are quite fictitious. Tell a Catholic convert that he has lost his liberty, and he will laugh. A distinguished literary lady wrote recently that I had entered the most restricted of all Christian communions, and I was monstrously amused. A Catholic has fifty times more feeling of being free than a man caught in the net of the nervous compromises of Anglicanism; just as a man considering all England feels more free than a man obeying the Whips of one particular party. He has the range of two thousand years full of twelve-hundred thousand controversies, thrashed out by thinker against thinker, school against school, guild against guild, nation against nation, with no limit except the fundamental logical fact that the things were worth arguing, because they could be ultimately solved and settled. As for Reason, our monopoly is practically admitted in the modern world. Except for one or two dingy old atheists in Fleet Street (for whom I have great sympathy), nothing except Rome now defends the reliability of Reason. Much stronger is the appeal of unreason; or of that beauty which perhaps is beyond reason. The English Litany, the music and the magic of the great sixteenth-century style — that does call a man backwards like the song of the sirens; as Virgil and the poets might have called to a Pagan who had entered the Early Church. Only, being a Romanist and therefore a Rationalist, he does not go back; he naturally does not forget everything else, because his opponents four hundred years ago had a stylistic knack which they have now entirely lost. For the Anglicans cannot do the trick now, any more than anybody else. Modern prayers, and theirs perhaps more than any, seem to be perfectly incapable of avoiding journalese. And the Prayer-Book prose seems to follow them like a derisive echo. Lambeth or Convocation will publish a prayer saying something like, “Guide us, O Lord, to the solution of our social problems”; and the great organ of old will groan in the background ... “All who are desolate and oppressed.” The first Anglicans asked for peace and happiness, truth and justice; but nothing can stop the latest Anglicans, and many others, from the horrid habit of asking for improvement in international relations."
Thanks for this honest reply. I'll take it that you're passing on my challenge, then! LOL it's all good, friend. No harm, no foul. Best wishes to you and yours, and may God bless you today and always!
This is an excessively long list of questions, and as I don't want your money I won't respond to each individually. A few points:
* Since time immemorial, storytellers have appealed to muses. Differences between "divine revelation" or "divine inspiration" or "human creativity" are, to me, a distinction without importance.
* There are a lot of historical details (metal-working in pre-Columbian America) that all evidence indicates are false. The existence of evidence for a few of those claims proves nothing; if you make enough bold claims a few will be true by chance alone. That goes double for weak evidence regarding vague claims.
* Joseph Smith certainly read both the Old and New Testaments; similarities in style and direct quotes are because he read them and nothing more.
* The straw-man "Smith wasn't completely immoral" claims also prove very little; clearly his efforts were successful, and his approach to being a spiritual leader (which is what he was, regardless of the nature of the text) was better than the suggested alternatives. It just proves that you (or your straw-man) would be a bad leader. There is also the anthropic principle; if what he did didn't work (or he cashed out early) nobody would have heard of him.
Thanks for this reply--I appreciate your time!--and thanks for looking at my challenge, though it seems that you've only given it the superficial glance that most have given the Book of Mormon itself, which is what prompts any of us to say things like, "Joseph Smith certainly read both the Old and New Testaments; similarities in style and direct quotes are because he read them and nothing more." I'm sorry, but this evinces a rather shallow familiarity with the relevant texts. The Book of Mormon's intertextuality and exegesis are far more sophisticated than you (or most people!) give it credit for. If you're interested in a friendly, readable primer on that topic, I'd suggest Grant Hardy's excellent Understanding the Book of Mormon.
If God wrote the Book of Mormon, what is the benefit of a primer? Why wouldn't God have made the Book self-explanatory, so that no LDS member could ever feel the need to recommend any additional reading material?
I'm sorry, but I can't quite seem to understand what you're getting at here. This appears to be an objection. Could you please try explaining it again? To what "primer" or "additional reading material" do you refer? Doctrine-wise, the Book of Mormon truly *is* self explanatory, impressively so. On every page, the work labors to make its points as clearly and as simply as possible, using repetition only to emphasize key ideas. There is no mysticism, no loopholes, no bluster through which a con man would hide his ignorance or to which he could appeal later in an effort to backpedal. The voices in the Book of Mormon desperately seek full comprehension of its key themes from the reader. The ubiquitous earnestness of the text is one of my favorite features!
> The Book of Mormon's intertextuality and exegesis are far more sophisticated than you (or most people!) give it credit for. If you're interested in a friendly, readable primer on that topic, I'd suggest Grant Hardy's excellent Understanding the Book of Mormon.
> Doctrine-wise, the Book of Mormon truly *is* self explanatory, impressively so.
My question is why the Book of Mormon isn't easily understood in all ways, not just doctrine, so that no believer could conceive the need to write and recommend any commentaries on any aspect of it. Saying that a work has sophisticated exegesis and intertextuality, best elucidated in a commentary, is another way of saying that the common reader could easily miss important things. But why would God write a book where anything would go over the head of a common reader?
Compare with a cooking recipe: the common person understands every line. What is God's motivation for writing something more complex than a recipe?
This is funny, because the usual criticism of the Book of Mormon is that it's too simple, too homely, too plain. Over the last 200 years, even many believers have viewed its style as just a notch above "folk art," if that. Only in fairly recent years has enough scholarly attention been paid to it to reveal any layers of artistry beneath the surface.
But that's artistry, not meaning. What I said about the text's obviousness "doctrine wise" is true: the important gospel information is *all* on the surface, explained as directly as possible, like an elementary school workbook. Consider chapter 31 in the book of Second Nephi, one of the text's most important sections in terms of defining basic beliefs. In just 21 short verses, it lays out the "covenant path" so clearly that a child could understand it (indeed, the Book of Mormon is written at about a 6th grade reading level). https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/scriptures/bofm/2-ne/31?lang=eng
So the Book of Mormon passes your test with flying colors. It very much *does* want to be understood and applied as universally as possible!
The majority of your questions are variations on "wouldn't there be an easier or more efficient way to run a cult?" E.g. "Shouldn't Joseph Smith have just deified himself directly instead of setting himself up as a prophet and only reaping indirect benefits?" or "Shouldn't he have written something less boring or less heretical to attract more members?" But all that proves is that Mormonism is not an *optimal* cult. And being suboptimal is not proof of divinity! Lots of humans are suboptimal!
For an obvious example, a lot of cults have ended in the death or suicide of their members. You could equally well ask "Why would the Heaven's Gate cult commit mass suicide if there wasn't really a UFO coming to take them away?" The founder had a perfectly good thing going, he had lots of loyal followers and he'd just convinced them to pay a lot of money for a nice mansion, why would he throw that all away? Why not just say "the UFOs are coming 50 years from now, in the meantime continue to give me your money so we can be ready"?
Also, as I haven't started any cults of my own, I have no idea if the "more efficient" way to run a cult actually works in practice. Maybe cults work better with a soft sell, pitch yourself as a humble servant of God instead of obviously trying to take people's money. Maybe cults are like those poorly-spelled Nigerian scam emails, where the bad writing is actually a way to filter out the people who won't fall for it. Maybe it was a side effect of the "spontaneous revelation" thing - maybe Smith would have *liked* to compile it into a neatly edited version with all the cruft taken out, but doing so would have spoiled the illusion that it was divinely inspired. There are lots of possible explanations.
A lot of the other questions are variations on "Isn't it impossible for someone to spontaneously dictate a massive, complicated book with no revisions?" To which I can only reply "Have you ever heard of National Novel Writing Month?" It's absolutely possible to spit out 250,000 words of coherent story without backtracking or revising, and people do it for fun. Sure, it'll be a first draft, not the most compelling story, but you've already admitted that the Book of Mormon has some boring parts.
Thanks--I appreciate your reply--though this response seems to be giving rather short shrift to the series of astonishing "achievements" and "coincidences" that defy logic, as outlined in my challenge. It's orders of magnitude deeper than just another NaNoWriMo project. If you're interested, dig in!
>all that proves is that Mormonism is not an *optimal* cult.
I mean, if we're accepting (for the sake of argument) the axiom the religions are just "a very successful subset of cults", can you even say it *isn't* an optimal strategy? Basically all of the most successful Abrahamic religions were formed around the words of a *prophet* rather than a deity (Moses, the prophet of Islam, Smith) with only one notable exception (Jesus) who was still very prophet-like.
Yeah, that's what I was getting at when I said I don't know if the "more efficient" way actually works any better. Sure, it might sound logical that Smith could have gotten the same results with less effort, but we don't actually know that. I don't know which parts of a religion are necessary to produce tangible results for the prophet, and I doubt Joseph Smith knew either.
"it might sound logical that Smith could have gotten the same results with less effort, but we don't actually know that." Sure we do--he already had plenty of followers from his reports of visions and revelations, which would be infinitely easier to fake than a giant work of narrative and dialogic innovation. This is well documented: I recommend Bushman's biography Rough Stone Rolling on this point.
A lot of your questions hinge around providing really detailed explanations for things that don’t really require it. So, for example: the questions about why the Book of Mormon often seems to ‘predict’ the location of historical sites beg the question. Does it seem to predict that? Most people would say no: it’s fairly trivial for a text without illustrations to give vague guidance about the nature of a location and for some location within the thousands of square miles plausibly indicated to meet the necessary criteria. That’s not astonishing, it’s what one would expect.
Likewise, we do not know and cannot really know why Smith stuck his face in a hat, but frankly it’s really suspicious: it provides him an opportunity to be partially unseen, which suggests the kind of diversions employed by stage magic. You beg the question by assuming it could have nothing to do with dictating the text, but there are a hundred possible ways it could have and we don’t know enough about the circumstances (having no direct evidence, only witness accounts) to say what or why. It shouldn’t be incumbent on skeptics to explain this practice without the benefit of any externally gathered evidence; it’s like having an impressed and adulatory audience member explain a Copperfield performance and then asking the skeptics to show how it was done—a nearly impossible task.
(Note that I am in fact a theist so I don’t actually dismiss the Book of Mormon on grounds that it’s religion. My primary reason for dismissing the Book of Mormon is that it’s not theologically compatible with what we can be absolutely certain is the message of Christ, and that means it really can’t be true.)
Anyway, because you demand rigorous explanations for things that should be able to be dismissed as extraordinary claims without extraordinary evidence, I don’t see you getting a lot of takers.
Thanks for taking the time to explain your take on this. Best wishes on your walk with Christ, my friend!
However, let's imagine a scenario where someone wanted to simply brush aside the inconvenience of the Book of Mormon. Wouldn't that person say essentially the same things that you've said here? Instead of addressing the questions in my challenge head on, simply deny that the premises are valid at all?
No offense, though--I get it. If you ever change your mind and want to look into this, please let me know. May our Heavenly Father bless you and yours!
Sure, an intellectually dishonest person might dismiss those questions without examination. And someone who is genuinely intellectually honest about believing that the questions contain insufficiently substantiated premises might also dismiss them. The mere fact of a person dismissing the questions as loaded doesn't say much about the integrity of that person.
What tackling those questions, as posed, would prove is that somebody has a simply enormous amount of time on their hands plus a deep interest already in the Book of Mormon. Speaking as someone who is deeply interested in Christianity, it would still be hard to go through such a list and answer comprehensively (I've got kids!): I'd have to value my time at a pretty low hourly wage to justify even a thousand-dollar payout, and I can't be sure you would consider my answers legitimate and written in good faith.
An example: there's a question about chiasm, that demands detailing of when, how, why, etc. Joseph Smith would have learned it. My answer would be: frankly, 'literally anywhere!' It's a literary technique of little rarity that's present throughout Scripture in more or less every translation (and Shakespeare! and the Greeks! and many many other sources which any literate person of the time would have had considerable exposure to on background!), and supposing that it requires special expertise or training to employ is, no offense, absurd. I have a hard time believing that you'd take easily to me dismissing your premise like that, but it's the only answer I could give.
>what we can be absolutely certain is the message of Christ
Could you elaborate on this? Because there seems to be a whole lot of disagreement as to what His message is even among His adherents.
If you just mean "it contradicts the holy book known as the Bible", it wouldn't be the first time that the Lord deemed it necessary to update the Abrahamic holy texts.
Sure. If you want the very broad overview of the essential tenets of Christianity, see the Nicene Creed formulated in 325. While the very many different sects disagree on many details, there is broad and continuing agreement that if you deny, disparage, or cannot affirm the beliefs espoused by the Nicene Creed that you are not in fact a Christian, no matter what you call yourself.
If you want the reasoning why the Nicene Creed should be held to be definitive, that is an argument larger than this margin safely contain! That said, if you want a heuristic as to why you should trust Nicene Christianity over a variant, think about this the way you might think about the moon landing: there is an overwhelming consensus of both experts and laymen that the evidence is obvious and clear. That doesn't mean I'm right, but it means you should consider strongly that I might be right.
Mormonism unfortunately fails the test against the Nicene Creed on a number of points (this list is not exhaustive): Mormons cannot affirm that Christ was the "only-begotten son of God," cannot affirm that Christ was "begotten, not made," and cannot affirm that Christ was begotten of the Father "before all worlds/before the ages." As a result Mormonism is regretfully not considered Christian.
My main problem with this answer is that the Nicene Creed is far more about the *divinity of Christ* than *the teachings of Christ*, and as such, this answer implies that's all his message is.
I'll accept that the label "Christian" applies to those who follow him properly as a divine entity, but that part always felt like one of the less important parts of Christ's "message". If we claim that Christ's message was only about the fact that he was the Son of God, that's kind of... underwhelming, as a distinguishing factor? Kind of lackluster, when the things he says in the scriptures, what I would naturally call his "message", encompass so much more.
(I also want to take issue with it being ten generations removed from Christ himself, but I have to respect your reasoning in the second paragraph there. I *do* still think the actual scriptures have more weight, though.)
There is a very big difference between 'the goal of this article is to define a bicycle' and 'the goal of this lesson is to teach you to ride a bike.' The creed definitely does not purport to be the message (the gospel), nor can the gospel be fairly contained entirely in the creed.
That said, the creed contains some handy summaries of essential points of the gospel, and those are some very important points where Mormonism contradicts Christ's message. Of course, I agree that the actual Scripture has more weight than the creed, but I'm not claiming the creed as replacement for the Scripture—in this case we are using the creed as shorthand to gesture at the Scripture itself, and if you wish you can go to the Scriptural references that undergird the creed and see how those contradict Mormon theology directly.
It would be a mistake to say that Christ's divinity, or his plan for salvation, or the facts of his life, are not part of the gospel, but something accessory to it, or less important than the rest. That's the sort of problematic approach where you end up with something like the Jefferson Bible, a pale and (if you'll forgive me) even more underwhelming Jesus, who is a really compelling public speaker with fascinating things to say about loving people, and that's it.
What are your standards for plausible? There is criticism of the historical texts advanced by Smith to back up his claims, but if you're not conversant with Egyptology, you are just taking the word of the experts on faith and naturally the Mormons can argue back about that.
I'm assuming you aren't interested in the theology, which is not standard Christian theology (to be the most polite I can be about it). After all, why valorise one set of claims about a non-existent deity over another set of claims?
I'm not sure how to answer this one. All I can do for now is to address the initial question--"plausible" should mean that reasonable, average, objective observers would be persuaded that these answers are serious and sensible. I hope this helps. Feel free to correct me if I misunderstood your intent here.
Well, you have your Bayesian priors messed up. If you hear the theory that someone claims he was "given golden plates by an angel with a foreign text inscribed onto them, that he then translated that text into English by the gift and power of God, and that the narrative contained in that text is a literal record from an ancient group of people who actually existed." you should assume he made that up.
Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, and the fact that some details are not trivially easy to explain is not an extraordinary evidence.
Thanks for replying to me, but simply saying that "some details are not trivially easy to explain" is a humungous understatement of the situation. There is a veritable mountain of evidence that strongly suggests the authenticity of the Book of Mormon as an ancient text--my challenge presents an introduction to the "extraordinary evidence" you seek. You may or may not actually want to explore that evidence, but there's hardly intellectual integrity in ignoring the substance of this challenge and then claiming that such evidence must not be sufficient. Whether or not you or anyone else is inclined to look into this, though, I thank you again for your engagement here, and wish you and yours the very best in life.
I mean, scientologists say the same thing. As do Yehova witnesess. I wonder, have you personally looked into the doctrine of every cult under the sun in order the check whether their ridiculously sounding claims are not, by any chance, divine revelation?
This is a common query, but it fundamentally misunderstands the situation here. The Book of Mormon gives us a wholly unique and ideal scenario--a long, complex text that suddenly appears in an unlikely place in the modern world, and which claims to be a translation of an ancient epic. That gives us a TON of material to investigate and determine whether or not that claim is true. If it is, the nature of the text's production lends immense credibility to (indeed, literally proves) the LDS church's claim that God lives and was behind the Book of Mormon, since there's no other reasonable possibility for its appearance. Give the questions in my challenge a look, if you're interested, and let me know what you think.
This is a solid, well written thought, but it fundamentally misunderstands the situation here. The Book of Mormon gives us a wholly unique and ideal scenario--a long, complex text that suddenly appears in an unlikely place in the modern world, and which claims to be a translation of an ancient epic. That gives us a TON of material to investigate and determine whether or not that claim is true. If it is, the nature of the text's production lends immense credibility to (indeed, literally proves) the LDS church's claim that God lives and was behind the Book of Mormon, since there's no other reasonable possibility for its appearance. Give the questions in my challenge a look, if you're interested, and let me know what you think.
Wow, thanks for these awesome thoughts. I'll keep my response concise: if the purpose of God revealing messages is to communicate facts and motivation to people with a wide variety of mental and spiritual abilities, shouldn't we expect it to be conveyed in the simpler ergots of the age?
I've read and really enjoyed the Qur'an, but its situation isn't like the Book of Mormon's at all: nobody doubts the ancient origin of the Qur'an, not that the supernatural aspects of its ideas depend on that origin, anyway. The Book of Mormon gives us a very recent text claiming to be ancient, and it's easy to investigate that possibility, and if it truly is of ancient origin, then the supernatural claims made by the text are authenticated, due to the nature of the book's modern production.
The claim that the Book of Mormon (or any holy text, for that matter) merely reflects the ideas of the time and place in which it was produced tends to fail on closer examination. The Book of Mormon, for example, has plenty of truly original, innovative theology that stunned the original audience and still causes ripples of revolution wherever it goes.
In the semiglutinde discussion, there were people who said they had ways for everyone to lose weight or everyone could enjoy exercise, and were resistant to claims that in fact, these things are not true of everyone.
To put it mildly, this is not Bayesian. It's not adjusting beliefs in accordance with evidence.
I'm not even sure why people would stick to strong generalizations about everyone when it's clear that people vary quite a bit, and especially why people with that mental habit would show up in a rationalist venue. Are you not weird in some way or other?
There's a bit in Stirner's _The Ego and It's Own_ about how making grand abstractions about the world gives a feeling of power, and I think he was right. Yes, even if that's a generalization about people. I don't think he got to the idea that making those generalizations can be a way of getting real power.
There are examples of this sort of thing in many areas in addition to weight loss and exercise, and I invite more examples.
"Everyone's really polyamorous". "No one can make polyamory work."
One that I've always found a bit triggering: "having trouble getting up early is laziness."
The truth is, people's biological clocks vary, and fighting it is futile.
I'm a night owl, and I've been unable to change that fact despite trying everything that's usually recommended for sleep hygiene*. I kept a regular, early schedule for many years at work, but I never adjusted to it. My body just doesn't wake up until around noon, regardless of when I get out of bed. When I struggle to keep my eyes open at morning meetings, it's not laziness, it's my high level of discipline that I'm there at all!
Sometimes I wish we could switch to a 6pm-2am work schedule, I'll be wide awake and can accuse all the others of being lazy when they find it hard to maintain :P
(*I imagine that more extreme measures could work, such as using powerful light boxes at home to simulate sunlight, as I know from my biological clock is somehow driven by sunlight. But I'd need to make big changes to my living situation for that.)
If this is in reference to my comment, I think it's a bit of a mischaracterization. It's true that some people are incapable of exercising and that some of these barriers can't be solved with policy, but there's a motte and bailey here where 'no policy change can be 100% effective' or even 'policy changes are largely ineffective' is used to imply 'individuals aren't responsible for improving their lives'. I am almost positive that there are people in that comment section that could exercise and whose lives would be significantly improved in the long term by regular exercise.
This is a fundamentally different thing than your examples because gay people/athiests/polyamorous/not polyamorous people leading worse lives are particulars of a given culture and society but less fit people leading worse lives is a fact of nature. If I'm being maximally charitable, I could call it a particular of human biology or a particular of all pre-transhumanist-utopia societies, but all of these lead to the same ethical prescriptions. I am in favor of human flourishing; in some cases this means changing society (advocating for less discrimination against gay people) and in others it means advocating people to change as individuals (encouraging people to go to the gym).
My bigger problem is that your argument generalizes to any ethical or social prescription. You're criticizing some comments for not being Bayesian, or rational, or updating according to new evidence, but couldn't I just as easily argue that you advocating for more Bayesian reasoning is also making a generalization? Just like there are people who can't go to the gym, there are people who aren't capable of engaging in this reasoning. To advocate for reason is just as much of a grand abstraction as advocating for fitness.
It was in reference to your comments in addition to some others.
There are people who are harmed by exercise-- people with CFS, probably people with long covid, plausibly people in the middle of mono, no doubt others. There are probably people who just don't benefit from exercise even if they aren't hurt by it.
There are also people who can benefit from exercise, but would need to make a careful start.
I don't know what you mean by policy. It begins to sound like forcing people. You say "encourage", but I don't know what you have in mind.
If you were just saying many people can learn to enjoy exercise, I wouldn't be objecting, but you talk about all people.
Sometimes they die. This happened with some of the early rice fasts.
If you think the most important thing is for fat people to not be fat, you can end up ignoring what you're doing to actual people because you're only focused on the outcome you're imagining.
I think the idea Nancy wishes you'd update isnt that caloric deficits lead to weight loss. It's this sort of thing:
This seems an extremely weakminded and degenerate statement to make. Hunger is a natural and healthy state we evolved to cope with. Certainly you SHOULD abide hunger if you are an unhealthy weight
And you think the reason that so many extremely bright people on this forum are reporting failure at weight control is that this simple idea never occurred to them?
"I'm not even sure why people would stick to strong generalizations about everyone when it's clear that people vary quite a bit, and especially why people with that mental habit would show up in a rationalist venue."
I'd say a big part of it is narcissism. Some people just do not quite fully get it that everybody else is, just like them, a sensate being with a complicated inner life and a unique set of abilities, disabilities, loves and hates. One consequence of this is that if the person finds something easy, they think everyone else should too. They imagine that everyone was dealt the same hand they got, but that the people who have trouble doing things they do easily just are not playing it well.
If you stop eating, you will stop being hungry after around the 3rd day, and then you can just not eat until you reach your ideal weight. For me that was 10 days. Extremely easy if boring. Unlike exercise or diets which require significant willpower. I don't know if this is true for all people but has been the most effective long term solution for me / my friends who were willing to try.
It being safe for vast majority of people: studies of doctor monitored water fasts
It not requiring much if any willpower after the 3rd day: understanding of hormones involved and personal reports from blogs and r/fasting
It not being followed by rapid weight gain as is common after other weight loss methods: mostly personal experience and small sample size from others I know who have tried it
If you reached your ideal weight after ten days' fasting, then you only had a very little weight to lose.
Could you "just not eat" for six months? Because that is the level of overweight we are talking about, not "hmm, belt is a bit tight, better cut back on the dinner and just eat a salad for lunch" level of weight.
Yeah you can just not eat for six months. I think the record is a guy who lost 280 pounds after not eating for a year. I don't know at what length of a fast you'd want doctor supervision. Basically you need to supplement with minerals, drink plenty of water, and not tear your muscles with intense exercise. You don't need a doctor for that, but that's an extremely irresponsible sentence to write on the internet so I'm not really sure how to share that belief.
I agree with the direction of skepticism (as a very rough approximation, if we take 7000 calories/kg of fat, then a very obese man's idle BMR of 3500 calories/day gives us a loss of 5kg in those ten days) but six months, even for someone with massive reserves, is just dicing with death.
It is easy to lose weight. Stop eating, one bite of food earlier than you would otherwise. You won't lose a lot of weight. Nonetheless, it works for everyone and is very little impact on your quality of life. In fact, it has so little impact that it is easy to carry on indefinitely.
Absolutely. I am 6'2" and weighed around 190 at the time. I lost around 8 pounds over the course of 9 months to a year with no other intentional behavior changes. It is worth noting that just thinking about what you eat has unintended benefits as you at least occasionally make different eating decisions because it is more, "on your mind."
The other behavior that I did which also resulted in a fair bit of weight loss and was easy to do was to intentionally eat something healthy prior to eating something unhealthy. In other words, if I wanted some chips, I ate an apple first. The net result being that you can still enjoy high calorie snacks but are more sated when you start eating and tend to eat less.
Thanks. I'm glad it worked for you. This is still not a demonstration that it would work for everyone. I would file it under probably a safe thing to try.
I may not be effective for everyone. I would say that it will work for everyone who is capable of eating one bite less greater than 0% of the time, so long as the attempt does not also cause them to eat more. It might not work for someone who was catatonic....
(1) Recognizing the exact point you would stop with each of several foods on your plate -- what, after 87% of the peas?
(2) Remembering to stop one bite short of that magic point. You are trying to override a habit you have followed your whole life: eating each item until you feel ready to stop.
(3) Stopping one bite short of the magic point when you do not want to do that, at the end of a day when you are already tired and kind of used up from doing several difficult things you did not want to do: Getting up at 4 to take somebody to the airport before you go to work. Doing the work day on 4.5 hours of sleep. In the course of the work day, pushing through your anxiety about giving a difficult presentation and doing a good job of it. Stopping at the grocery store on the way home with your wife because you know that will put her in a good mood and you two having being gettng along that well for a while.
(5) Following the stop-one-bite-early plan with after dinner stress-snacking, which is often the main source of weight gain. When somebody is doing after dinner stress-snacking, they are probably also doing something to entertain themselves at the same time -- like maybe watching TV -- so they cannot be alert for the next-bite-is-last-one-I-want feeling. And anyhow, when somebody is stress-eating something highly palatable and not very filling like ice cream, THERE NEVER COMES A POINT WHEN THEY TAKE A BITE AND REALIZE THEY ARE SATISFIED AND READY TO STOP EATING.
Except for the above, the stop-one-bite-early plan is great.
Are you just being intentionally obtuse? Do you think that attempting to stop a bite early is going to make you eat more? Do you think that you will fail to eat less on even one of the meals where you think about this? It seems very clear to us rationalists that eating less once and eating more never equals weight loss.
"Stop one bite early" depends on portion size. If I have the recommended plate size (or whatever metrics they are using today) of healthy veggies and few carbs etc. and I stop with *exactly* one bite of food left, then perhaps over time I will lose some weight.
If I have a double helping of all the wrong foods, stopping with *just* one last bite left won't do anything much.
What you seem to be recommending is the old advice: "stop while you are still hungry/feel you could eat more". That's more than just "one bite fewer".
And if you are still hungry after a meal, then yes, you may be more inclined to snack to 'fill in the gaps'.
No, I'm not being intentionally obtuse. In fact, I'm not being obtuse at all. But you sure are being rude as fuck.
I have no trouble at all grasping that if some of the time you stop one bite early and the rest of the time you just stop at the usual time, that your total intake will be less. None of the objections I made hinged on the failing to comprehend this very simple math. Here they are again, expressed more briefly, plus one additional:
Original points:
(1) I realize I'm eating my last bite while I am chewing that bite. There's a feeling of, "OK, no more, I'm satisfied." And I think I'm probably typical. At that point it's too late to stop one bite short. And there is no next-to-the-last-bite feeling.
(2) Difficult to remember to do something so different from usual habit.
(3) Difficult to do something you don't feel like doing at end of a hard day at a time you associate with relaxation and comfort and hunger satisfaction.
(4)Won't work for eating ice cream and such during tv-watching esnacking, because there's generally no feeling of a last bite with ice cream-eating under these circumstances. People just eat and eat til bed.
One additional: Even if none of the above applied, this approach would only work for someone whose weight is stable. Many overweight people have been gaining weight for years, and are continuing to. For them, your system would just get slowing of gain, or at best no further gain. It would not lead to weight loss.
Those generalizations are not all of the same type. There are ways for everyone to lose weight, e.g. being in an environment like prison where someone else controls one's food supply completely.
Someone who says "no one is really an atheist" probably means that atheism is impossible, and even one true atheist would invalidate that. But if someone says "everyone could enjoy exercise", what they probably mean is that the vast majority of non-exercising people could theoretically find some kind of exercise that they would enjoy. So it's a sloppy way of talking but it's not a claim that there is any particular evidence against.
I think part of this is differing ideas of "lose weight". People can lose weight in extreme circumstances.
What people would like is being able to lose enough weight to be respectable* while food that they're entitled to eat is extremely available and with out high costs in effort/pain/side effects.
I say respectable because I keep hearing about people who lose weight from being very ill and getting congratulated. And from people who find that no accomplishment gets as much praise as losing weight.
In that case, you can never disprove it. Someone can keep trying different kinds of exercise and hating all of them, and you could still keep telling them that there's some kind of exercise they would enjoy. There's no point at which that claim is falsified, which makes it meaningless.
It doesn't have to be falsifiable to be meaningful. In any case, I admitted that the claim is not absolute; there are people who can't exercise at all after all or for whom practically all exercise causes pain. And I didn't say that everyone can find a way of exercising that they like as a practical matter.
Just as a matter of common experience, people do quite often learn to enjoy things that they disliked at first. But no one can know that beforehand and of course it is often obnoxious to try to tell them that they will.
I think that analysis that this is in part about power is fair. But I think it is mostly about sloppy thinking, laziness, and wanting to stake out strong positions for rhetorical/negotiating purposes.
Just underlining that it's partly about power, but frequently about getting the *feeling* of power. Stirner was scathing about people who settle for the feeling.
Everyone will have heard of dark matter, the mysterious invisible non-interacting diffuse substance which among other things gives galaxies enough extra mass for their stars to orbit the galaxy without tangential sheer (luckily for us - or else all kinds of "interesting" cosmic objects would have passed the solar system dangerously close over time!)
The consensus of opinion among physicists is that dark matter is composed of a hypothetical particle called an axion, and several searches are currently underway to detect these. To my way of thinking, this has somewhat the feel of the phlogiston theory of heat; but whatever one's views, thorough searches are absolutely the right thing to perform.
Quite a popular, but less widely accepted, contending theory (MOND, short for Modified Newton Dynamics) is that over cosmic distances the behavior of gravity varies slightly from hitherto established laws, and accounts for the effect without the need to posit the presence of any extra kind of matter.
But to my knowledge, a third possibility has not been seriously considered, tachyons, i.e. particles traveling faster than light speed.
For most physicists, tachyons are the word that dare not speak its name. Mention these with a physicist standing behind one, and they will likely start smirking, rolling their eyes, and twirling their finger making a loony sign!
Not least this is because anything traveling faster then light speed is heading into the past, which plays havoc with causality and related calculations. But that very difficulty could be the reason why dark matter as tachyons don't interact with normal matter or light, so causality is preserved.
I very much doubt tachyons could be produced by any conventional interaction. But inside a black hole, who is to say? For all we know, black holes could be leaking a constant stream of tachyons, like steam from a pot of boiling water!
From an external observer's standpoint, this would not affect any of its measurable properties such as mass, because the event horizon is a frozen barrier to discern anything going on in the future inside. (I believe Hawking radiation is a surface phenomenon or, strictly speaking, occurring a whisker above the surface.)
One might even be able to extend this notion to explain dark energy: Normal matter particles ("bradyons") gain energy as they approach light speed. But, paradoxically, tachyons (if they exist) lose energy as their speed increases.
So if these tachyons can transfer energy somehow, in a non-localized form, to conventional fields and as a result accelerate ever faster, then the result will be a uniform background of them traveling arbitrarily fast from unlimited distances (far beyond the cosmic horizon), which could manifest itself as a uniform expansion of space. That said though, I'm not sure if the signs of the energy could be reconciled, because I gather dark energy is negative whereas presumably tachyons have positive energy.
There is a recent review at https://arxiv.org/abs/2209.04025 of a theory called the Relativistic Transactional Interpretation (RTI). It seems this combines MOND and entropic gravity
2022-09-08 "Gravity from Transactions: A Review of Recent Developments", by A Schlatter & R E Kastner
It's easy enough to click on the link, but for the reader's convenience I'll spoon feed you here with the abstract :-)
"This is a review of new developments in entropic gravity in light of the Relativistic Transactional Interpretation (RTI). A transactional approach to spacetime events can give rise in a natural way to entropic gravity (in the way originally proposed by Eric Verlinde) while also overcoming extant objections to that research program. The theory also naturally gives rise to a Cosmological Constant and to Modified Newtonian Dynamics (MOND) and thus provides a physical explanation for the phenomena historically attributed to "dark energy" and "dark matter".
As for MOND, unless I'm seriously misunderstanding it, it posits that the difference between being subjected to a total net force of epsilon newtons northwards and being subjected to a total net force of epsilon newtons southwards does not tend to zero as epsilon approaches zero, which feels way more absurd to me than the alternatives.
> The consensus of opinion among physicists is that dark matter is composed of a hypothetical particle called an axion
What? The most popular hypothesis, but still nowhere near popular enough to be called a consensus, is that it's made of weakly interacting massive particles (WIMPs), where originally the "W" was intended to mean the interaction mediated by W and Z bosons and the "M" to mean much heavier than a proton (and the most popular specific example was the lightest supersymmetric partner of a Standard Model neutral particle). Nowadays it's usually interpreted more generically, with the "W" meaning any interaction with small cross sections and the "M" meaning heavy enough to be non-relativistic when the CMB decoupled, but still not including axions.
Besides the things Thor Odinson said, in a quantum theory if there's a tachyonic field it means the "vacuum" state you are doing perturbations around is actually unstable, and the easier it is to produce tachyons the less stable it is. By the time we got enough tachyons to play the explanatory role of dark matter the unstable vacuum would long since have collapsed and turned into something else.
Possibly a dumb question, but does that actually count as evidence? I wouldn't expect anyone to observe the collapse in timelines where it happens, since (I'm guessing) everyone would be quite dead.
I expect if you believe in a form of quantum immortality or anthropic principle strong enough for this to not be an issue in a physical theory you will definitely run into other philosophical issues (simulations, Boltzmann brains, etc) to such a level that you'd have to question your ability to predict anything at all. Which is to say that even if it's not as absurdly strong evidence as a straightforward calculation of the probabilities from quantum theory would indicate, it's still pretty substantial.
Firstly while Axions are one of the leading contenders, there are quite a few other hypothesised particles, eg. heavy neutrinos (we need something to explain non-zero masses for the light neutrinos anyway). Axions' biggest advantage is that they're something that we both haven't yet ruled out and can search for without waiting a century for better tech. (Same reason Super Symmetry was super popular 20 years ago, but most of the 'nicest' models for SuSy have been ruled out by the LHC)
Secondly, basically a footnote, but MOND is totally shit. Dark matter explains about 5 different things at once and MOND at best manages 1 or 2 of them. Every piece of evidence we have lines up with Dark Matter being a new form of Matter, rather than an issue with our understanding of gravity.
Thirdly, what we know about dark matter distributions has it responding normally to gravity and moving quite slowly (it's "cold"), which seems to me to be incompatible with it being tachyonic, though it's been almost a decade since I took General Relativity in grad school.
I just want to push back on the idea that mond is without value. Mond is more a phenomenological theory. It describes what nature looks like and doesn't (yet) have any mechanisms to propose. (Dark matter proposes, some unseen mass.) With only one parameter mond does a tremendous job at fitting the galactical scale data. It doesn't work for fitting galaxy clusters, and it fails to predict the height of the third bump in the CMB data. (It did however predict the size of the second bump.. and did it better than Lamda/ CDM... the later had to adjust stuff to get the second bump right and this has lead to other problems for Lamda/CDM.)
With our failure to find any dark matter. (the search space is getting very small.) I became more interested in Mond. I started following https://tritonstation.com/ a blog by Stacy McGraugh on cosmology and mond. And started reading cosmology text books to get myself up to speed. Let me link to one of my favorite pieces of data. https://tritonstation.com/2021/06/28/the-rar-extended-by-weak-lensing/ This is just amazing the fit is over several orders of magnitude. I don't know what Mond is, but it feels like this is the biggest missed piece of data in describing how our world works, and I expect physics to eventually catch on... If some dark matter particle is discovered then mond dies in a day. Till then gravity at the weakest acceleration scales is weirder than most of us think.
I'm happy to provide links to other triton station posts, to expand on any of my claims.
Thanks Thor. I've never found MOND very convincing, and it doesn't explain situations such as the Bullet Cluster, in which the dark matter of a couple of colliding galaxies seems to have come adrift from the galaxies themselves, or is misaligned at least. It would be interesting to know where the super-massive black holes (assuming they exist) of these galaxies currently are in relation to the latter.
There's a problem with the UI when you reply from an Email notification.
When you click "View Comment" in the email, it takes you to a page with a big "Write a Comment..." box, followed by the text of the comment you're replying to. But that is actually the box from the top of the comments section!
You need to instead click the small grey "Reply" button in the bottom left of the page, which brings up a second "Write a Comment" box below the message.
I took some screenshots to hopefully explain better.
YES! I've been aware for a while that if you get notified of a comment by email, it does not work to reply to it within email (even though you are offered the chance to) -- you have to go back to the thread itself. If you don't your reply gets posted as a top level comment. But there are way more than unusual of these misplaced comments in this thread. I don't know whether it's because Substack's doing even less well than usual or because we've got more newbies than usual commenting here.
It's probably one person replying from the comment alert emails instead of going to the website to reply, which causes your reply to be unthreaded. I really wish substack would fix that--it doesn't usually get this bad but there are always at least a couple in an open thread.
It seems to be mostly replies from certain people that get posted wrong. My theory is that if you're posting from your phone it's easy to hit the wrong button. (I don't actually know what this site looks like on a phone, but on my browser it doesn't seem like an easy mistake to make.)
Thank you to everyone on the semaglutinide post who shared their struggles with weight loss. I would like to understand the *internal* experience of what people mean when they say the 'can't control themselves' (or equivalent).
I fully empathize with the comments saying 'get more willpower' are not helpful; I do not know where my willpower came from, so it would be unreasonable to ask someone else to get more.
My experience of weight loss is, I realise, not typical (I gained weight after two step changes in my metabolism, one after stopping swimming and another in my mid to late twenties, and in both cases lost the weight by deciding to eat less until my hunger levels stabilised at a lower baseline).
When people struggle with self control, is it like:
A) It feels like sleepwalking, where the actions happen on a non conscious level (eating too much, getting through the whole bag of crisps)
B) It feels like possession, where you're aware of what's happening but it feels like an outside force is controlling your limbs
C) It feels like an outside force is persuading you too do something you don't want to (like certain instances of schizophrenia)
D) You forget what your earlier wants were and are only aware of new wants which supplant them, like how in a dream you aren't aware that your actions seem strange/not in keeping with your awake self
Furthermore, I'm interested in how it's different between eating the junk in front of you absentmindedly vs driving to the store to get more, which just be premeditated to a certain degree (I find the latter much harder to understand; why make the decision harder for your future self? This is an honest question.)
I have experienced "B) It feels like possession, where you're aware of what's happening but it feels like an outside force is controlling your limbs" before. Internally I'm screaming "Don't walk to the kitchen. Don't touch the cookie jar. Don't take the cookie. Put it back. Throw it away. Don't eat it!" but I do it anyway, feeling like a passenger in my body.
But not very often! Now when I do experience it I spend the time contemplating Dan Dennett's multiple drafts model of consciousness.
Most of the time, I just crave chocolate. It's not hunger - I can eat a hearty meal, so full I can't possibly eat another bite, and I'll still find myself reaching for chocolate right afterwards. I have almost no willpower, and using willpower to fight cravings is a losing battle. I can use willpower to resist chocolate this minute, but next minute the chocolate is still there and I need to have the same internal battle again and again.
I don't live alone, so I can't just not have chocolate in the house. If I get desperate enough I'll eat the kid's chocolate, or the cooking chocolate, so I make sure I have supplies to cover my own cravings. And chocolate is available everywhere - it seems that there's a display of chocolates at the counter of every store (not just supermarkets & servos - stores dedicated to boardgames, office supplies, hardware, you name it).
This is an aside and is nothing to do with weight loss -- I'm interested in the specificity of chocolate as a craving. The people I've known who had a craving for chocolate with that kind of power (where it wasn't more generalized to carbs or fried foods, etc) were going through heartbreak, bereavement, or were depressed. Chocolate increases serotonin, so they say. It seems to me any compulsive behavior is an attempt to solve a real problem.
No bereavement, and I'd estimate no more depression than the average member of society. This is a lifelong thing and has persisted regardless of relationship status etc.
I just like the taste of chocolate and eating it is particularly pleasurable.
None of the above. All those things we cannot get ourselves to do we could do if there were a gun to our head. We could do them with far less external motivation than that. For instance, every year I have trouble getting myself to do my taxes -- I procrastinate madly. But if I had a talk with someone about it and they bet me I could not get myself to do them, and if somehow their confidence irritated me and I craved to prove the wrong -- then I could do my taxes that very day.
So the things we can't get ourselves to do -- it's rarely because the doing of them is hard. What's wrong is one level : We are failing to be good motivators of ourselves. We can't be the gun or the obnoxious better Why can't we? Well, because the motivator level of us, they level that says "do it" is not the same sort of entity as the guy with the gun or the obnoxious better. It's loyal to us. It *is* us. We can't convincingly tell ourselves we'll shoot ourselves if we don't start doing them right away. We can't convincingly be obnoxious to ourselves like the better. And there's something wrong 2 levels up. We aren't good at motivating ourselves to be good motivators. If you interview someone who has a big problem with procrastination and avoiding tasks, you'll fine there's not much going on on level 2. People aren't saying, how can I set up this weekend so that I can actually get myself to do the taxes. What would make me want to get them done? What would make me actually dread not doing them this weekend?
Procrastination is a flavor of emotional avoidance, isn't it? The problem about the taxes as you say isn't logistical (I have the same issue) -- it's facing the uncomfortable feelings raised by the taxes. Is over-eating not also a flavor of emotional avoidance -- such that stopping some part of it would be as hard as doing one's taxes for the tax procrastinator?
Motivation it seems to me is capacity/willingness to experience suffering in some arena. And if one is already suffering a fair amount, it's very very hard to squeeze more blood from that stone. So many people practice all kinds of emotional avoidance, but don't have to experience the social shame of it because their avoidance may be invisible to all but their closest people. I bet there are even a few who go to the gym regularly but who practice emotional avoidance in other areas of their life.
Yes, I agree, it's emotional avoidance, but there's some kind of trick rolled up in it. In some cases the sense that doing the task will be extremely unpleasant is an illusion. Take taxes. They used to scare me, because I was worried about what I'd owe, but the way I have things set up these days I've always overpaid for the year, so I'm not scared -- just curious about how much I'll get back. It feels like these days I avoid taxes just because it's going to be so many hours of tedious work, and I develop this delusion that I'm going to be so insanely low-energy, bored and annoyed that every single second of my hours of work will be very unpleasant, and I will be constantly fighting the urge to bail. And that *never* happens. Once I start doint the taxes I even sort of vaguely enjoy it. The longer I work, the closer I get to the reveal -- how much I'm getting back! Plus it's a much easier task than things I have to do at work. It's cut and dried, you know? After half an hour at most I'm engrossed enough in the task that I think I would actually mind being interrupted. Still, every year it's the same -- oh god, not this weekend, I can't face it. So I'm not sure what that's about.
Does it work this way?: Doing taxes is going to be mildly unpleasant in some ways, and will certainly interfere with me reading, doing hobbies, & crapping around online. So in order to spare myself the mild unpleasantness of the getting-started phase, I convince myself that the entire task, all 6 hours or so of it, is going to be tremendously unpleasant?
Maybe it's something about inertia? Once I'm in relaxed, do-what-I-feel-like mode, something in me wants to prolong the time I'm there. So that part convinces me that any actual practical task will be a visit to hell. . .
If your taxes distress you, then it makes sense you'd avoid them. But what's going on with me? And you probably have things that really aren't very unpleasant that you avoid too.
That 'level 2' element is what I was trying to get at with the final paragraph of the initial post (why not set up your life to have, on average, healthier food around - not grocery shopping when you're hungry, etc), and wasn't much discussed, albeit I think is effectively addressed in the high time discounting discussion and, indirectly, in the 'non-hunger-related cravings' part. Given these specific cravings are a relatively recent cultural phenomenon, if the issue just the environmental ubiquity (as Spikejester highlights, chocolate is *everywhere*, and would be much easier to resist if you had to go to the Chocolate Store a hundred kilometers away that will only sell you one bar of chocolate at at time).
None of these explanations feel right to me, so I'll give you my two cents.
My brain makes me more and more uncomfortable until I give in to the temptation.
The best metaphor I can think of is a very assertive person nagging at you constantly for something they want. First, they ask politely, and you tell them "no". Then, they start trying to convince you (they deserve it, they need it, etc.). Finally, if it gets this far, imagine the person tapping on your shoulder to ask for it again every 10-20 seconds until you either give in or go to sleep. If you choose the latter, they will ask you again right when you wake up.
This can be overcome. Eventually, the nagging for the thing you want will lessen. But it takes a significant concentration of will power to overcome the nagging that has to be maintained for weeks at least. Anyone who gives in to a nagging spouse or child should relate, except the nagging comes from within.
It's not like any of those. Suppose someone gave you an extremely good reason to hold a red-hot iron against your arm for five minutes, like if you did it then they'd donate $10 billion to a good charity. I think most people would find it extremely difficult, if not impossible, but none of the explanations you give describe the experience very well. It's more like the base/animal part of the brain simply overrides the higher cognition, and the higher cognition is helpless even when it knows it's being overriden.
I think the whole "willpower" thing is misleading. For me, willpower is what I would need to get myself to do something difficult at a certain point of time, or maybe not to do something, but the idea that I could exercise willpower all the time not to do something, day after day, is a bit silly. No one has that kind of willpower. To make that kind of change would require changing my attitudes or my beliefs or my environment or my lifestyle so that I could change my behavior without willpower. For dieting it is even trickier than just not doing something, because everyone has to eat something, so it's a question of eating differently, which is cognitively more complicated. (I don't personally have a problem with weight, I just talking in general about this subject.)
Also hyperbolic discounting. Each individual decision is rational on short/medium term - it's just when you add them up that you get the opposite of what you want.
Which makes the whole dilemma a lot more complicated. You don't have a single choice to make between "to eat" and "not to eat". You're having a intertemporal negotiation with a multitude of selves, each with its own interests, priorities and attention spans.
This seems to describe the experience of many of the people commenting here well, and also describes the behaviours. I suppose it could be easily rationalised in the moment that any given [junk food] is very unlikely to make the difference between [heart attack/sore knees/whatever] or not, whereas it is *very* likely to make a difference between the current hunger/craving or not.
The 'you get really hungry' commenters don't quite answer the question - I consider it plausible in principle that some people could feel hunger more intensely than others, but that doesn't answer the full query:
- A sensation (hunger) is not the same as action (eating) and I want to understand how people experience the conversion of the former into the latter (despite pre-existing commitments not to)
- It also does not explain why the hunger cannot be sated with healthier food, perhaps bought ahead of time in the weekly shop
Very high future discounting does address both. It also raises the question of whether this future discounting is cross-domain or not, so I did a bit of digging, and it looks like there is a somewhat generalised future-discounting factor (this is very much not a comprehensive literature review, so happy for someone who has looked into this in more depth to find counter-examples if they can).
"By utilizing the Rotter score that measures self-control capability, we find that obese individuals exhibit a lower degree of self-control than normal-weight individuals, and that this lack of self-control is associated with poor eating and exercise behaviors, as well as increased Body Mass Index and obesity risk."
"We found that the decision to contribute to a 401 (k) retirement plan predicted whether an individual acted to correct poor physical-health indicators revealed during an employer-sponsored health examination. [...] These findings are consistent with an underlying individual time-discounting trait that is both difficult to change and domain interdependent, and that predicts long-term individual behaviors in multiple dimensions."
How it feels from inside for me (cannot speak for others) is that at some moment I simply don't care anymore. More likely to happen in the evening, when I am tired. Willpower depletion... yes, I know that some people say it was debunked, but for some reason my brain fails to follow the latest science.
The correlation with general lower self-control does not explain the direction of causality. Maybe some people just naturally do not care about future, and as a consequence do many harmful things. Or maybe some people do stupid things when they are tired or under too much stress, and then both "not caring about future" and "obesity" are consequences of having more stress than they can handle.
For me it is much more simple than all that. When I sit back and dispassionately look at what I want to do with my consumption and weight, it is very clear what I need to do. But the mind is a VERY powerful rationalization engine. And so on the fly I find myself making exceptions and allowances and coming up with reasons why today isn’t a good day etc.
I am very good about not giving into these in many aspects of my life, but with food just not so much.
So even though 2 hours ago I promised myself I wouldn’t eat anything until 1pm, at 11 my children come home with a delicious donut they bought for me, and they are eating donuts, and I badly want to eat the donut, and in the grand scheme of things, and my weight, this particular donut is meaningless.
So I eat the donut. But life is that same decision again and again and again.
Like I said I am great at willpower in other ways. I have gotten up at 6AM to workout 2 days a week ~50 weeks a year for over a decade. But the difference there is regardless of how shitty I feel at the start, by the end I am happy.
With weight loss the feeling happy is many many months in the future.
The kind of thirsty where the craving for water constantly intrudes on your thoughts, where you long for it ceaselessly, where any attempt at distraction brings you right back to the thirst?
The kind of thirst where only water (or some equally satisfying fluid) makes the sensation of want go away?
Just imagine being that *thirsty*, except the thirst is for a favorite cheeseburger with fries and a milkshake, or Doritos, or pizza, or, or, or.
When a thirst/craving is especially strong, it can be so intrusive it is incredibly difficult to resist. Some people can't resist, some people can manage with coping strategies, and some just don't seem to have the capacity for great thirst/craving. I don't think it has anything to do with virute; I think it has to do with people's capacity for "thirst" / "craving."
I've been pretty darn thirsty. I once climbed a ~10,000' local mountain peak on an unfamiliar[1] loop trail that turned out to be ~25 miles. This particular area was far drier than where I usually hike, and it was in the middle of a very unusual dry spell, so it turned out the only two water sources were at the start of the trail and 5 miles before the end of it. I ran out of water about 3 hours in, and had to walk something like 15 hours and 17 miles over pretty rugged and almost entirely shade-less terrain without any water.
The cherry on top is that when I finally reached a creek with flowing water, my disinfection method was iodine[2] tablets, which work very slowly at the low temperatures of mountain water, and as I recall I had to wait an additional 15-30 min after collecting the water -- just kind of looking at it gurgling cheerfully away there, untouchable -- before I could drink any.
The strange thing, though, is that while it was definitely hard to wait that last 15-30 min to quench a thirst that had been building so long, it wasn't like a constant battle against temptation. I knew damn well why I wasn't drinking the stuff, and I knew when I could (to the second ha ha), and once I'd set my mind to it the temptation didn't really come pecking away like a woodpecker at my will, rat-a-tat-tat so I couldn't think any other thought. It was hard to do only in the sense that climbing the mountain was hard, there was soreness and tiredness, but at no point did I even consider cheating on the wait time[3], any more than I would have sat down halfway down the trail home and given up.
But that of course doesn't mean I'm *not* tempted by eating or drinking something I rather wish (later) I hadn't -- some bad snack, one too many Old Fashioneds, that kind of thing. What I find, however, is that if I'm doing something very simple with a mild existential challenge ("You need to reach the trailhead before it's dark or you will have a Bad Night") it's not a problem to put up with a surprising amount of physical discomfort. In the last 5 years I have taken to doing peak climbs without anything but an emergency PowerBar or two in the pack. It's much lighter, I'm covered if I get really stuck, and while one gets a bit hungry hiking ~10-12 hours without food, I actually don't notice it that much after a while, once I get over the learned habit of mindlessly snarfing trail mix every 30 min, and as a well-fed American I have at least a week or two of spare fuel anyway.
But God help me if I'm sitting in front of the computer with about 16 bullshit professional e-mails to write, which have to be worded diplomatically, or if I have some stupid problem with equipment or program I can't suss out, or if I have to sit through a tedious 3 hour meeting in which people say nothing in several different styles at great length. Under those circumstances I can easily get irreresistable munchies and eat or drink all kinds of cheap nasty snacks or sugary pop, and the temptation is just freaking impossible to resist, I would need a will of iron.
Why the difference, I don't know. I'm tempted to say there is something peculiar about the modern indoor fluorescent lit staring at a 16" screen all day day, with weird complex social stresses instead of the far more straightforward physical stresses of exertion, distance, rain, cold -- something different that twists up the signaling in our brains. But that's probably just sentimental Rousseaueian bullshit.
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[1] This is obviously dumb, and my excuse is that I was a lot younger.
[2] Which tells you how long ago this was and how much poorer I was. No Katadyn filter, no Steripen.
This is somewhat unrelated, but once I was camping at a larp event, and one day I was a bit tired, someone suggested to eat something, and I realized that I'd had my previous meal two days before. Since then I am quite firmly persuaded that a well-fed westerner is never really hungry, and has probably never experienced hunger in their life.
I agree; for me the feeling is probably much more mental than physical. Doesn't make it feel less real, unfortunately. :(
I could go long time without meal if I do not see any food, no one mentions food, and I am busy doing something that is not frustrating (so that my mind does not try to change the subject and stumble upon the topic of food).
But show me some food, and something in my mind switches and refuses to switch back. From that point on, not eating is suffering that feels physical.
I could imagine a perfect environment, adapted to my specific weakness. Kitchen hidden out of sight, so that I don't even see it unless I specifically decide to go there. A source of water outside the kitchen (maybe I could just bring a big bottle).
In reality, I have two kids I need to take care of, which includes planning the meals, buying food, cooking food, serving the meals, listening to complaints about why they cannot have their favorite meal every day instead of whatever I made today, checking whether it is the time for meal... shortly, I am reminded of the existence of food all day long.
I have actually never been that thirsty, and actually would be surprised to hear it's a common experience. It sounds like something I've read about in accounts of severe dehydration, like people who get lost in the desert or who are in prison or during a famine. Sometimes when travelling I forget to drink, and then I get a headache and I think, oh I must be dehydrated. But I've never had water constantly intrude on my thoughts.
Huh. Maybe thirst and hunger have a much wider subjective range of intensity than we generally imagine. (Obviously) I have experienced an all-consuming and intrusive thirst in my life - many times, in fact. I did most of my growing up in Phoenix and much of that was on a backyard ranchita with horses, which is dusty, thirsty work! Both the craving for water and the physical sensation of a dusty, parched mouth and throat were universally intrusive and demanding enough that *everyone* in the area would cheerfully drink hot hose water from a spigot 6 feet from a stall to alleviate thirst rather than wait another hour or two to get home.
(For what it's worth, horses seem to experience great thirst, too. Coming back from a long trail ride or even in from being worked in an arena, they would often go straight to their water dispenser or bucket and begin sucking down huge quantities and could not be distracted from that mission with treats.)
I've also been unable to sleep due to thirst. For me, the sensation of hunger might go away if I'm distracted enough for long enough, but thirst is unrelenting, even if I spend all my time in a climate controlled environment.
I mean, I have both the capacity for great thirst and great hunger, but the difference between thirst and what you’re describing is that there’s basically no wrong time to drink water. I never deny myself water if I want it because there is no harm in drinking water to satiation.
Whereas when I’m eating I very much do deny myself food, even if I am ‘hungry,’ because there are plenty of reasons I might psychologically desire food when I have no physiological need for any more food: taste, comfort, habit. Is it always easy to tell the difference from the feeling alone? No. But the feeling isn’t as important as rationally knowing that I do not actually require the calories. And if you ignore a desire like that long enough it does in fact go away and leave you wondering why you wanted the additional food to begin with.
I have a hard time believing that the internal perception of others is substantially different except that the feeling for them is more important than their reasoning.
"I have a hard time believing that the internal perception of others is substantially different except that the feeling for them is more important than their reasoning."
And that is the problem right there. "I am six foot five in height and I can easily reach the top shelves. I don't know what all these 'short' people are complaining about; just stretch out your arm like I do!"
Forgive me, but I think you missed the point of my using the sensation and urgency of "great thirst" as an an example of how some people experience craving and urgency for food they (arguably) should not eat.
Don't resist this idea because it conflicts with your internal experience. Instead, please just imagine you are abducted by aliens and they modify your brain so that the sensation of being hungry for Doritos (or whatever) feels exactly like great thirst.
That is what some people experience, including pregnant women to a degree that it's a universally acknowledged phenomenon. You do not, and good for you.
It might be hard to believe that other people are different from you, but you should try to believe it anyway.
I have willpower issues with procrastination, rather than food. To me, resisting temptation and exerting willpower feels like trying to lift a heavy weight - on a good day, perfectly doable, on a bad day, nigh impossible without another person helping.
Conversely, giving in makes time pass in a blur, so "5 more minutes" can easily turn into 3 hours. I imagine eating far too much is a similar phenomenon - a small snack simply never stops until it's become rather a large meal.
Procrastination, and breaking out of mental flows in general (e.g. putting away a book I'm enjoying because it's time to do something else) can be a challenge for me, too. It doesn't happen so often as to be damaging, but the experience is similar to what you describe: I'm perfectly aware I'm doing it, but the dominant mental track continues regardless, and the specific mental lever which will physically break the flow is out of reach.
Internal experiences are very different! I often don't feel hunger per se, I just notice if I go too long without food that I'm feeling weak and irritable and have learned from experience that that's a symptom of insufficient food (with some parts being a low blood sugar short term thing, and general weakness/tiredness if I haven't got enough calories on a medium term basis). As a rather direct result I often miss meals and have been slightly underweight most of my life despite a sedentary lifestyle (due to chronic health issues).
But how does that feeling of hunger convert into irresistible action? I've been very angry without punching people, or very hot without jumping into the nearest body of water, because I didn't want the consequences of those actions; what is it about hunger that makes people ignore the consequences?
I'm very sympathetic to Hanzi's argument here. I hadn't read this specific article, but the criticisms of 'The Dawn of Everything' really resonated, re: "there are actually stages of history that have distinct characteristics and that are useful to talk about". I think the speed of communication as noted below is the key factor, but I disagree with Martin that we haven't reached it yet. Instant networked communication en masse is a very young phenomenon, and I think it's fast enough to effect the type of social singularity via chaos that Hanzi proposes in the linked essay. The jump from circa 1950s "everyone has a telephone and can do fast 1:1 communication limited by region" to circa now "everyone has the ability to broadcast anything 1:many via any medium" is as big if not bigger than than the printing press or radio/tv, we're just now seeing the implications of it (just like how the printing press actually took a while to change everything).
Oh I absolutely think the speed of communication is going to change a lot. I just don’t think it will be a “singularity” per se, which I think of as a pretty specific type of phenomenon.
Well, the printing press accelerated human communication, as did radio and tv after it.
I propose that a social singularity (or even just a social waterfall) can definitely happen as people adapt to the increased transmission speed and shortened feedback loops of social media.
There are physical limits for sure, but the existence of limits is not the same as us currently being close to running into them as our technology increases.
(and some of the questions might just be because errors in the data. And I know that the modern states mostly didn't exist in 1000 CE, I'm just using the same "area of what now is the country" shorthand as the data.)
1. The population of southern Europe (e.g. Italy) looks pretty stable between 1 CE and 1500 CE. The population of northern Europe (e.g. Netherlands) grows a lot during the same time period. Why? Was there some technological innovation or climatic change that suddenly made northern Europe more livable? (And if so, why didn't it have any impact on southern Europe?)
2. Extreme example of previous question: WTF is going on in Finland? Between 1000 CE and 1500 CE, population grows by a factor of seven!? Why wasn’t Finland already this densely populated in 1000 CE if it had extra capacity to spare and everyone else was Malthusian? What prevented a 500 CE peasant from the area around Milan to escape the Malthusian conditions of Italy for apparently empty Finland?
3. The dataset only starts in 1 CE, but let’s move beyond that. Why is Greece so sparsely populated compared to Italy? Did Italy become densely populated with the Romans, if so why? If not, why do I don’t hear anything about the pre-roman populations of Italy? Why is the history of pre-bronze-age collapse so sparse on the western Mediterranean? (Weren’t they literate?) I'm getting the impression that most people lived in the eastern Mediterranean during the bronze age, then during antiquity the population of Italy and Spain exploded, then during medieval times people figured out that you could live in norther Europe as well.
4. Why did population grow so much even before the Industrial Revolution? How could e.g. the UK feed four million in 1500 (presumably under Malthusian conditions) and eight million 1700 (presumably also under Malthusian conditions)?
If anyone wants to recommend a book on medieval demographics instead I'd be happy to know!
Regarding the medieval agricultural revolution in northern Europe, the textbook answer usually involves the cluster of innovations around horse-based agriculture (horse collar, larger draft horses, moldboard plow, nailed horseshoes, three-field crop rotation) making intense agriculture viable in northern soils viable. Also, the medieval warm period helped push the frontier of intense agriculture northwards.
> 4. Why did population grow so much even before the Industrial Revolution? How could e.g. the UK feed four million in 1500 (presumably under Malthusian conditions) and eight million 1700 (presumably also under Malthusian conditions)?
The UK population didn't grow much in the 1500s, although I think prosperity (eventually) started growing following the dissolution of the monasteries in the 1530s, which "privatized" a lot of ecclesiastical wealth.
There was also presumably some "trickle down" from the gold which British privateers pinched from Spanish treasure fleets during the second half of the 1500s. The introduction of the first official Poor Laws in 1601 must also have helped.
I imagine the main growth was following the final epidemic of plague in the UK, in 1665. The year after that, most of London burnt to the ground and a law was introduced banning thatched roofs in towns, due to the obvious fire hazard. What nobody knew at the time was that the black rats, which had spread the plague, then had nowhere to nest and became much rarer. (The larger and less agile brown rat we mostly see today prefers to nest below ground, in drains and suchlike.)
Gold can't really explain it: wouldn't it just drive inflation? It was not as the UK population grew while some other population declined because UK merchants bought all their food. There seems to have been a genuine increase in food production in the UK during the era.
Besides the disappearing black rats, something else that could have raised the UK population rapidly towards the end of the 18th century was that most people had started drinking tea, imported from China and India, and coffee. Obviously sticking to hot drinks reduces the risk of contracting water-borne diseases such as cholera and dysentery.
In earlier times people had drunk ale and and cider and similar alcoholic drinks, often exclusively (instead of water). But I don't know if those are as effective at preventing disease, especially as the drinking vessels were likely rinsed in cold water between use.
(edit) Yet another reason for rapid population increase, especially in Ireland (which had been nominally part of the UK since the time of Henry II in the 1170s) was the potato, which is nourishing and simple to grow and thrives in a damp climate (until or unless it is infected by fungus). A lot of Irish people emigrated to England towards the end of the 18th century to gain employment digging the many canals being constructed at that time, and potatoes became popular throughout the UK.
It's a longstanding myth that people drank alcohol to avoid tainted water. Most people could only afford a few beers a day so they had to drink a lot of water too.
"Between 1000 CE and 1500 CE, population grows by a factor of seven!? Why wasn’t Finland already this densely populated in 1000 CE if it had extra capacity to spare and everyone else was Malthusian?" What prevented a 500 CE peasant from the area around Milan to escape the Malthusian conditions of Italy for apparently empty Finland?"
Cursory Googling about what happened in Finland: the Swedes invaded and established control in the western half of the country, while Russia (I am taking this *very* loosely) pushed its influence into the eastern half.
"During the 13th century, Finland was integrated into medieval European civilization. The Dominican order arrived in Finland around 1249 and came to exercise great influence there. In the early 14th century, the first records of Finnish students at the Sorbonne appear. In the southwestern part of the country, an urban settlement evolved in Turku. Turku was one of the biggest towns in the Kingdom of Sweden, and its population included German merchants and craftsmen. Otherwise the degree of urbanization was very low in medieval Finland. Southern Finland and the long coastal zone of the Gulf of Bothnia had a sparse farming settlements, organized as parishes and castellanies. In the other parts of the country a small population of Sami hunters, fishermen, and small-scale farmers lived. These were exploited by the Finnish and Karelian tax collectors. During the 12th and 13th centuries, great numbers of Swedish settlers moved to the southern and northwestern coasts of Finland, to the Åland Islands, and to the archipelago between Turku and the Åland Islands."
So your question is akin to "how come when European settlers arrived in America, there was all this empty land available, if the indigenous peoples were Malthusian like the rest of humanity?"
"What prevented a 500 CE peasant from the area around Milan to escape the Malthusian conditions of Italy for apparently empty Finland?"
What prevents you from establishing a habitat on the Moon? People have been there, there are missions to it, why can't you just hop on a rocket and homestead on Luna?
That's the level of difficulty you are asking of one individual to achieve. Had there been a mass, organised movement of Milanese peasants to Finland, that would be a different matter. But in the 5th century, your Milanese peasant had no incentive to leave Milan and head off for the hellhole of the frozen North. Also, they were slightly busy with being invaded by the Goths at that time:
"After the siege of the city by the Visigoths in 402, the imperial residence moved to Ravenna. An age of decline began which worsened when Attila, King of the Huns, sacked and devastated the city in 452 AD. In 539 the Ostrogoths conquered and destroyed Milan during the Gothic War against Byzantine Emperor Justinian I. In the summer of 569 the Lombards (from whom the name of the Italian region Lombardy derives), conquered Milan, overpowering the small Byzantine garrison left for its defence. Some Roman structures remained in use in Milan under Lombard rule."
You seem to be taking Malthus as some kind of infallible prophet. What is predicted in theory and what happens in practice are often quite different. You can construct a graph of what *should* happen under Malthusian principles if you keep it simple, as though populations of humans were rats in a cage in a laboratory, but when faced with what *did* happen, you have to account for various factors that are not a controlled environment.
>So your question is akin to "how come when European settlers arrived in America, there was all this empty land available, if the indigenous peoples were Malthusian like the rest of humanity?"
But the Europeans didn't know that the American existed (and the empty land was not empty before the indigenous population died of smallpox). Everyone in the Baltic area must have been aware that Finland existed, and that it was sparsely populated.
>That's the level of difficulty you are asking of one individual to achieve. Had there been a mass, organised movement of Milanese peasants to Finland, that would be a different matter. But in the 5th century, your Milanese peasant had no incentive to leave Milan and head off for the hellhole of the frozen North. Also, they were slightly busy with being invaded by the Goths at that time:
Good incentives to leave Milan: 1. There's not enough land and you are all living under Malthusian conditions, so only one or two of your children will reach adulthood and have children of their own. (2. You are being invaded by the Goths.)
Malthus is a (simple) model. When the simple model is wrong, I investigate to understand why. This thread has helped me understand the situation much better (but the Malthus model is still useful).
"Good incentives to leave Milan: 1. There's not enough land and you are all living under Malthusian conditions, so only one or two of your children will reach adulthood and have children of their own."
Even if they moved to Finland, figured out how to farm in a totally different climate, and had a kid every year, childhood mortality might still mean that they only had one or two children who reached adulthood. Malthus' model is *useful* but it's not The Only Way. Malthus, to simplify it, is "once every single scrap of land is being utilised to the maximum and there are more people than it can support trying to live on it, then the population will reduce due to starvation and disease". Milan was not at the point of "there is not one scrap more of land we can use" in the fifth century. Your argument presupposes that "only one or two children survive to adulthood" is down purely to "starving to death because too many people" and that's not necessarily so; disease, accident, violence, physical ailments that couldn't be treated then but can now like diabetes and yes periodic famines all account for high mortality levels.
This site says that up to the 1950s child mortality rates were high:
"And lastly, we find that a large number of independent studies for very different societies, locations, and times come to surprisingly similar assessments: all point to very high mortality rates for children. For societies that lived thousands of kilometers away from each other and were separated by thousands of years of history, mortality in childhood was terribly high in all of them. The researchers find that on average a quarter of infants died before their first birthday and half of all children died before they reached puberty."
Rates like that are not down to a simplistic "too many people, not enough land".
>Even if they moved to Finland, figured out how to farm in a totally different climate, and had a kid every year, childhood mortality might still mean that they only had one or two children who reached adulthood.
The people who made Finlands population grow x7 had more children reach adulthood. I understand that a 500 CE Milan peasant couldn't copy these guys, but I'm trying to understand what exactly that is hard to copy.
I understand that child mortality was high. I understand that people die for all kinds of reasons. But if there's fertile land available, it would be very strange for a population to shrink or remain constant for long, since people are generally incentivized to feed their children.
As far as Italy being more densely populated than Greece, they are very similar areas with the exception that Italy has a lot more super great farmland, I suspect that is your answer.
So has Italy always been more densely populated than Greece? Why haven't I heard anything about bronze age Italy compare about how much I hear of bronze age Greece?
As to why we hear more about Greece than Italy, for a very crude approximation: culture spreads from the east, from more advanced societies, via trade and waves of migration:
The article doesn't really say much. There were different cultures and settlements (dhu). There are some treasure caches (but nothing impressive like e.g. Mask of Agamemnon). It just doesn't seem to match Greece of the same era. Why wasn't there an advanced antique society in the Po Valley? It was one of the most densely populated places in Europe in 1300 CE as far as I can tell.
People are offering you answers and you are stuck on Malthus. You don't seem to have even an amateur interest in history or archaeology so I don't know what you want us to say: "oh yeah, Malthus totally right, secret magical instant explosion in population due to the pixies!" or what.
You seem to imagine that everything must be on a level of "if the land isn't filled to the brim with population one thousand years earlier, how can this be?" I honestly don't understand your queries. Are you claiming the later population records are wrong and there weren't those levels of people living there? That could be so, the source you linked to is doing estimations.
Are you claiming the land was full to the brim, but due to Malthus, all bow our heads at the sacred name, they all died off like good little experimental subjects and that the increase later recorded was due to the magical pixies?
You don't seem to accept that (1) we start off with any territory, as in a petri dish, with lots of room and resources (2) a population is introduced (3) due to having lots of room and resources, the population increases (4) now Malthus comes in: an expanding population in a confined area will reach the limits at which it now dies off because it has consumed all the resources.
So you want to know (a) why was Finland empty and not full of people in the 10th century, but it had a bigger population in the 15th century?
Answer: lag phase, log phase, stationary phase, death phase
The early Finnish population was in the lag phase of slow growth, and the population may well have been kept in check due to environmental causes. But nonetheless, it was growing, albeit slowly. Left alone over time, there is no reason it would not have eventually filled up Finland to the Malthusian level (if Malthus was infallible, which it is not).
Add in migration, advanced farming techniques and urbanisation meaning more land is put under cultivation, and the population goes into log phase - rapid, exponential growth.
"Exponential" is the key here because unlike the lag phase, it's not simple linear growth. This is where you get population 'explosions' and rapid increase so that "hey, how come Finland used to be mostly empty and now is not as empty?"
"Why wasn’t Finland already this densely populated in 1000 CE if it had extra capacity to spare and everyone else was Malthusian?"
Time. Even Malthus needs *time* to come into effect. Populations do not hit the death phase all at once; first they have to get into equilibrium, so that birth and death rates balance out, and then resources decrease. There is nothing to say the resources of Finland had been depleted to a level that it was 'Malthusian'; plainly, the existing population wasn't at the death stage.
You have this stubborn notion in your head that Europe was packed full of people, there was empty space as in Finland, so how come the entirety of Europe didn't pack up and head off to colonise Finland?
Well, how would you expect them to do so? Hop on the plane and fly there? As I said, you don't seem to have a *historical* picture in your mind of how things worked. Mass migrations certainly happened, but they are slow and take a lot of time.
Secondly, people *did* move to Finland - the Swedes and Germans, as mentioned.
Thirdly, "wouldn't everyone in the Baltic area have know Finland was empty?" No, why would they? If they knew Finland at all, presumably they knew people were already living there. Why would they expect it to be available real estate?
That brings us on to your Milanese peasant: he probably didn't know about Finland, and if he did, he had little resources to up and move there. Then he would have had to adapt to a different climate, different ways of growing food, etc. If he's going to migrate, a lot easier to move to Switzerland or someplace.
You evoke a picture of human populations like swarms of locusts, that just move in one mass from an exhausted area to fresh territory. It doesn't happen like that. And you don't go from Boom! thirty couples to Boom! population of seventeen million! overnight, which is your sticking point with Malthus (why wasn't the entire country as heavily populated at time A as it was at later time B?)
Now, moving on to the Po Valley - densely populated has little to do with it. The traditional explanation is that civilisation arose in the Middle/Near East. It expanded outwards in ripple effects, so that the lands nearest to the epicentre received the benefits first, and passed those on.
Greece was nearer to the Near East than Italy, hence why the advanced antique societies were in the East rather than the North and West.
The Po Valley inhabitants looked to central European, rather than Greek/Eastern, influences and culture. This culture was less developed, and probably suffered some effects from the same events which caused the late Bronze Age collapse:
Other important developments include improved wind/watermills (not sure if these are more important in NW Europe than Italy at the time. Obviously wind-powered pumping gets important in the Low Countries at some point) and riverine/sea transport (seafaring in the Med is easier than in a lot of places) including both the vessels themselves and the waterways, from improving existing rivers to the canals of proto-industrial Britian.
https://cep.lse.ac.uk/_new/publications/abstract.asp?index=4346 This study notes that medieval France was in kind of a suboptimal situation as the Roman cities there were stuck on the old overland routes, whereas English cities (which had much less continuity with Roman settlements) could be founded on navigable rivers and coasts to take advantage of improved shipping.
Interesting. I found this on youtube if anyone wants more detail: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Csexh48XQ2I It doesn't look like anyone have reconstructed a medieval eight-ox plow though, I'm sure it would be very impressive.
I don't think we have much evidence for this hypothesis, if this population movement happened, it should have shown in the language?
But it also doesn't answer my question. The population of Finland grew seven-fold because people moved there and had more kids. My question is: Why didn't this happen earlier? What was it that suddenly made Finland able to support seven times as much people? The people living in Finland in 1000 CE presumably wanted to be prosperous and have many children, so why couldn't they?
"My question is: Why didn't this happen earlier? What was it that suddenly made Finland able to support seven times as much people? "
There are two questions here. First, the physical territory of Finland did not "suddenly" become able to support seven times as many people, it presumably always had the capacity.
So your second question is, what changed in the population of Finland? What new methods of farming, what increase in urbanisation, what difference happend to change traditional practices to newer, more efficient ones?
If you get a lot of people moving in, that will cause a population surge, because now the new people are all having kids as well as the original inhabitants. So, taking small easy numbers, a population of 1,000 people will grow and increase over time, but it won't reach as high a number as a population of 2,000 people starting at the same base.
You're measuring "native population of Finland at this arbitrary date versus population of Finland at that arbitrary rate" and ignoring "at the first arbitrary date, the population of Finland doubled (or whatever) due to immigration and settlement by outsiders". You are making the assumption that "1,000 people can increase their numbers to hit a number of total population after 500 years that will be the same as the 2,000 people hit". Dump Malthus in the bin, that is leading your astray with blinkers. "But Malthus, but Malthus!" isn't covering the questions you are asking.
Somebody capable of maths can work out the difference in population growth starting off with a base of 1,000 versus a base of 2,000 over 500 years. In fact, here is a handy formula that will do it for you:
Assume we start off with 1,000 native Finns. The growth rate is - let's say 2%, taking that from online sources. Time period is 500 years.
Over that time, starting with 1,000 Finns, we get how many? Answer: 22,026,465
Now we start off with 1,000 native Finns and 1,000 Swedish and German immigrants. Same conditions. Final population? Answer: 44,052,931
So if you want an answer to "how did the Finnish population boom to seven times its size?", you need to know (1) native Finns versus immigrants, to get the 'natural' increase if Finnish people were left on their own having kids as per your Malthusian question (2) growth rate and (3) time period.
Maybe the growth rate was higher than 2% because people were having 10 kids for every old person who died. Figure that out, get a end figure, then come back.
The obvious freakin' answer is that increasing a population, even if everyone is breeding like rabbits, takes time. *Of course* you are going to get seven times the population, or ten times or twenty times, your starting population after five hundred years. If you don't start off with seven million Finns, you can't say "but how come Finland could support seven million Finns in the fifteenth century when it didn't have seven million Finns in the tenth century?"
I assume that Finland had a massive immigration during the relevant period. Even though it isn't really needed, a seven-fold increase in population over 500 years (~20 generations) doesn't seem that impossible if conditions are good.
>So your second question is, what changed in the population of Finland? What new methods of farming, what increase in urbanisation, what difference happend to change traditional practices to newer, more efficient ones?
An immediate question comes to mind: What is the definition of "Finland" and did it significantly change at some point in your time frame?
I've not looked at the data, but political and geographical boundaries change over time. Sudden jumps, or absurdly fast growth, often mean the definition of what is being measured has changed.
Here are some (the rest is entertainment, but I was serious about changing count measurement before....) Scenarios:
_____ STATUS: SPECULATIVE, BUT BASED ON STUFF EVERYBODY KNOWS ABOUT FINLAND______
1) "Finland" was initially just a population of 2 "persons" (Santa and Mrs. Claus) with a hard-to-document population of elves (small-e elves at Santa's North Pole) who may have each been counted as fractional persons, either because they were chattel slaves (1/3 person), or because they were small (1/2 person). So maybe in this scenario a sudden change came from emancipation of the long-suffering elves toiling in the toy fields, tripling the population overnight. O maybe better nutrition from advances in plow technology (mentioned elsewhere) helped each generation of elves grow taller, 5/8, 3/4 of a person each, etc?
2) Didn't the High Elves (who had returned to Finland, with Feanor Macarthur's Expiditionary Force, in a mass-migration maybe 500 -- 700BC) depart for Valinor around 1BC or therabouts, right before this "census" started? So with the Noldor gone and Finland empty (or so it seemed) and the Dominion of Men beginning, ... well of course it looks like explosive growth when you cherry-pick your start and end dates, c'mon!
3) Initial data was based on the Household Survey, (*) which severely undercounted the Keebler Elves because census-takers used a standard "household" size of 4.5 elves, not realizing, or deliberately ignoring, the known fact that hundreds of elves live communally at each "tree" (Trëë in Finnish roughly translates to "kibbutz"). This undercount persisted until the bloody decades of the Census-Takers Reformation, documented ad nauseum elsewhere.
4) Totally invisible snipers. It wasn't until the 20th century, and the third Winter Olympics where the Finnish team swept the Biathalon AGAIN, that scholars began to suspect what had been missed for millennia: All Finnish men (and some women, but see below) are totally invisible deadly snow ninjas. Any outsiders like invading Russians or Germans or Vikings or census takers mostly saw endless snow, some Lapps, Potemkin reindeer and trees, never imaging that there were hundreds of Finns per square kilometer, ready to shoot them with a combination of Elven-bows of Lorien, the deadly Steel Bows of Numenor, sniper rifles forged from black meteor iron in secret caves, or a deadly rain of snowballs.
Invisibility plus silently killing the census-takers was a major factor in underestimates of Finnish population. Later the wily Finns realized the census folk were harmless, and began to show themselves, even taking some on months-long hunts to buy their loyalty and telll them what numbers they could report this year.
(Note the Russians still do not know this secret so don't tell them!)
-- My scholarly paper, "Knife-fighting Finnish Women and Historical TFR in Lappland: A 1500-year survey" has been accepted and will be available in pre-print as soon as I invent enough co-authors (10 authors is the minimum now, 5-7 for some dodgy journals) and find the right historical group to blame.
______WELL YOU DID ASK WTF IS UP WITH FINLAND_______
BR
* -- This is close to how the Labor Dept really figures US Unemployment, which is why salt tablets are good to have on hand when "the numbers" come out.
And the answer is: immigration from more settled, advanced, urbanised societies, with the invasion by Sweden and subsequent wave of Swedish immigrants and settlers, and others like the Germans. The same way the USA has ended up as it has, instead of being the confederation of native tribes had the Europeans not landed there.
You might as well ask why the South American empires never pushed all the way north into the empty lands of North America, where the indigenous tribes were not on the same level of organisation and sophistication as the Inca, Maya or Aztec. (That's a question I'd like answered myself).
I am not sure, but wasn't 1-1500 southern Europe an era of nasty conflicts between Christians and Muslims? Countries like Portugal and Spain were created at that time.
1. I've not looked at the data, but the obvious answer would be the starting point. 1 CE was the zenith of the Roman Empire: southern Europe was peaceful and prosperous, and Italy in particular benefitted from large scale grain imports, supporting a high population for the time. In the following 1500 years, a bunch of good and bad things happened, which overall left the south at approximately the same population level, but improved things significantly for the north.
2. Finland was colonised by Sweden. This required some military force. One could not simply walk into Finland.
3. As previously mentioned, by 1 CE, Rome was immensely large, and its population was supported by grain imports. The terrain of Greece is less conducive to large scale agriculture, although Athens was a large city in the 5th century BCE (c300k). During that time it was the hegemon of the Delian league.
4. I don't think your assumption that the UK was under Malthusian conditions during the period 1500-1700 is supported. The 15th century saw the Great Slump https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Slump_(15th_century) and the War of the Roses. By 1700 I think there had been some adoption of the four-field rotation and the Dutch plough, but these perhaps weren't sufficiently widespread to account for a significant gain in population. Our World in Data has the UK population at 5.2 million in 1700 which is only slightly higher than immediately before the Black Death. https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/population-of-england-millennium
1. What are the "good and bad things that happened"? What makes the 1500 CE Danish farmer more productive than the 1 CE Danish farmer?
2. Wouldn't the pre-existing population (the Sami?) of (inner?) Finland be happy to adapt whatever secret sauce that was needed to make Finland sustain a magnitude larger population, so that seven of their children could survive to adult age instead of two? Like, people have been living in Finland for thousands of years at this point, why haven't they figured out the means to do whatever was done already? Seems like a thousand dollar bill on the sidewalk, so I assume that my model is wrong.
3. So is my impression that the western Mediterranean went from barren barbarian wasteland to the densest population cluster in Europe somewhen after the bronze age collapse correct? What caused this?
There's a lot of technological advancements that you can't make without the preceding steps. The obvious theory is that Finland couldn't support preceding steps, like smaller lighter plows, due to geographical and climate conditions. So when advanced heavy agricultural tech was imported only then was Finland able to support much larger populations than hunter gatherers could produce.
"What makes the 1500 CE Danish farmer more productive than the 1 CE Danish farmer?"
Well gosh, who can possibly know? Apart from, you know, progress over the intervening 1,400 years. Is this a serious question or are you just trolling now?
"Wow, can anyone tell me why the 9th century Danes did not land a man on the moon, if we could do it in 1969?"
2. Obviously there's nothing *automatic* about adopting effective agricultural techniques. For most of human history people were hunter gatherers. There were significant cultural and linguistic barriers to agricultural techniques passing to Finland. Now *if* the Finns (or whoever) were determined to switch to the most productive agricultural techniques possible, no doubt they could have found a way, but they weren't. People usually aren't: they just continue doing what their ancestors did, with some minor tweaks. It takes some drastic event to shake people into adopting a whole new lifestyle.
So why aren't they displaced by their more productive neighbours? Well, they are. It doesn't happen *immediately* because it's subject to all sorts of political contingencies. While there are still prosperous, ill-defended communities to raid, that looks like a better option than subjecting Finland to the plough.
3. I think your impression is wrong. As you suggested, you're being misled by the late adoption of literacy in the west. I think there were plenty of people in Spain and Italy at the time of the LBC. The population did grow during the Pax Romana, partly because they stopped killing each other and partly because of improved co-ordination.
Generally I think you're overlooking that the Malthusian frontier is politically dependent. The population of Britain fell significantly after the Roman withdrawal, not because the land had become less productive, but because the population reverted to subsistence agriculture.
2. I think it might just be my perspective of history that's wrong. To me, it looks like Finland is basically empty for thousands of years while northern Italy is full of starving peasants desperate for land. And then I wonder why some of these peasants doesn't migrate north (when in real history the Volkswanderung mostly went the other way, from northern Europe to Italy). And I think this thread has given me a better model: Agriculture was not adapted to northern Europe. The Late Antique Little Ice Age made NE pretty barren at the start of the middle ages. Once it got warm and the technology was in place, population could grow rapidly through births and migrations (very rapidly in the case of Finland), until the Crisis of the Late Middle Ages ended the party.
New questions: So what did pre-effective northern Europe agriculture look like? Giant fields of low-yield crops? Lots of pastures? Short growing seasons?
3. Population decline could also have been caused by the Late Antique Little Ice Age? Or did the decline start before temperatures fells? It seems hard to separate the effects of politics.
Absolutely no giant fields of anything, this kind of massive industrialised agriculture only comes along in the 19th century or so. Enclosures of common land to make larger estates owned by one person comes earlier.
You really are not getting the picture right in your mind. You're looking at estimations based on raw data of what populations might have been and extrapolating wildly from that, e.g. "northern Italy is full of starving peasants while there is all this empty free real estate in Finland for the taking".
For a start, the terrain. Interior is lots of lakes, uplands are mountainous, it's the coasts which are somewhat more suitable for peasant agriculture. It's not like flat Canadian or Midwestern American plains that can be put under the plough straight away.
"This means that southern portions of the country are snow-covered about three months of the year and the northern, about seven months"
Your northern Italian peasant is going to find such conditions very difficult to adapt to. It takes *time* to work out how to adapt to such conditions, and *time* to invent and develop technologies to make it more liveable.
Your mental imagery of "northern Italy is full of starving peasants", with them all crammed in like ants in an ant hill, is incorrect. Indeed, there was a population *crash* from the fifth century onwards, the good old Dark Ages.
Wave upon wave of invading/migrating 'barbarians' filled up the former Western Empire, but this still wasn't at the level of ant-hill cramming. And if the peasant wanted to migrate, where would he go? He would likely run into the new wave of migrants, and nobody was going into the cold and empty north, the unknown. Everyone, on the contrary, was *leaving* those places. And disease constantly ravaged the populations:
"Starting in the 2nd century, various indicators of Roman civilization began to decline, including urbanization, seaborne commerce, and population. ... Estimates of the population of the Roman Empire during the period from 150 to 400 suggest a fall from 65 million to 50 million, a decline of more than 20 percent. Some scholars have connected this de-population to the Dark Ages Cold Period (300–700), when a decrease in global temperatures impaired agricultural yields.
...The gradual breakdown and transformation of economic and social linkages and infrastructure resulted in increasingly localized outlooks. This breakdown was often fast and dramatic as it became unsafe to travel or carry goods over any distance; there was a consequent collapse in trade and manufacture for export. ...Administrative, educational and military infrastructure quickly vanished, and the loss of the established cursus honorum led to the collapse of the schools and to a rise of illiteracy even among the leadership. ...For the formerly Roman area, there was another 20 per cent decline in population between 400 and 600, or a one-third decline for 150–600. ... There was also reforestation and a retreat of agriculture centred around 500.
...The Romans had practiced two-field agriculture, with a crop grown in one field and the other left fallow and ploughed under to eliminate weeds. Systematic agriculture largely disappeared and yields declined. It is estimated that the Plague of Justinian which began in 541 and recurred periodically for 150 years thereafter killed as many as 100 million people across the world.
Some historians such as Josiah C. Russell (1958) have suggested a total European population loss of 50 to 60 per cent between 541 and 700. After the year 750, major epidemic diseases did not appear again in Europe until the Black Death of the 14th century. The disease smallpox, which was eradicated in the late 20th century, did not definitively enter Western Europe until about 581 when Bishop Gregory of Tours provided an eyewitness account that describes the characteristic findings of smallpox. Waves of epidemics wiped out large rural populations. Most of the details about the epidemics are lost, probably due to the scarcity of surviving written records."
Your fifth century Milanese peasant didn't *need* to head off to Finland; if he survived crop failure, invasion and disease, there would be enough empty land for him to find at home, due to everyone else dying off and intensive agriculture declining and indeed vanishing.
"What makes the 1500 CE Danish farmer more productive than the 1 CE Danish farmer?"
Heavy metal plows that could cut through the thick North European soil; new horse harnesses which allowed horses (more energy-efficient than oxen) to pull those plows without strangling themselves; three- and four-way crop rotation that increased the productivity of the soil and provided more forage for animals; watermills and windmills that allowed to grind more flour with less manpower. (The Romans had watermills but used them sparingly; windmills were new Medieval inventions.) Plus the Netherlands were being reclaimed from the sea with their new dam systems. After 1500, the north also got potatoes from the Americas, but that's too late.
European agricultural technology went through some really impressive developments in the Middle Ages! And North Europe had more to gain, starting from a lower point in 1 CE.
Thanks! So I guess there's an element of chance involved, we might have gotten technology that suited Italy better and northern Europe would have remained barren? But I guess the technology of Italy was already pretty optimized, while technology for northern Europe was waiting to happen.
Apart from the plow more adapt for harder soils, I don't know if it's much a matter of technology being specifically suited for the north; crop rotation and watermills were certainly very precious in the Mediterranean too. The differential effect of the farming technologies might be an artifact due to the dataset starting in 1 CE. As Robert Jones points out above, Italy at the apex of the Roman Empire was very much *over*populated, and dependant on massive grain shipments from Egypt and Tunisia. I once read an argument that the death blow to the Empire was not the deposition of one emperor, but the Vandal conquest of North Africa cutting off the shipments and forcing the enormous population of Rome to emigrate or disperse in the countryside. Roman Italy had an ecological footprint much larger than itself, depending from large-scale trade and transportation; in Southern Europe, improvements in farming technology merely offset the loss of that trade, while in the north they were pure gain.
Bad: fall of the roman empire, loads of war, utterly devastated the south of Europe to the level of poverty that was the default for non roman states, if not worse because they really weren't adapted for it. 1500 CE Rome still had farms inside the old city walls, and the population of Rome didn't reach the Roman Empire peak until the 20th century, IIRC.
Good: a lot of gradual improvements in farming, mostly via breeding better crops and better animals, but also better tech in other areas, some of which flowed back into farming productivity - eg. metal ploughs. This benefited all of Europe fairly equally from ~600 to 1500, but the decline in Italy from 1 to 600 makes that hard to see in that region if you only have the two endpoints
If the population was 4.8 million in 1348, the Malthusian limit can have been no less than that, so the population was away from the Malthusian frontier until at least 1622. In fact, eye-balling the graph I suggest that there was some modest improvement in productivity over that period and the Malthusian frontier wasn't reached until 1650, when the population plateaued at around 5.3m. Then the agricultural revolution took off during the 18th century.
Maybe I'm just underestimating the population growth rate. I would have assumed that the Malthusian limit is reached within a generation or two, but I guess historical growth rates indicates that it takes hundreds or years. But I don't understand why: what's the model for medieval population growth rates? What limits the growth rate? Do you need to account for e.g. the rate at which land can be cleared that I've naively ignored? What's are some pre-industrial examples of high population growth?
"I would have assumed that the Malthusian limit is reached within a generation or two"
Only if you're starting from a high base rate so you hit the logarithmic rather than linear increase. It's like the problem about the lily pad covering a lake: the lily pad doubles in size every day up to day 47 when it fills half the lake, then it only takes one more day to cover the entire lake.
You're imagining a densely-populated Europe where the limit is reached when Giovanni's grandkids (the second generation) grow up and suddenly everyone in that generation is using every scrap of land which can't support them and they all starve to death. But *before* we get to that point, we first have to get to Giovanni's generation, and *that* takes the hundreds of years.
I think land clearance rates are definitely part of it - turning a forested rocky hillside into arable land is a project of years - but also a society isn't guaranteed to have positive pop growth when below the Malthusian limit. Eg. the societal normalisation of war was probably adapted to being at or near the limit (i.e. casualties of war keeps population growth down without famine) , and then the black death and other plagues kill a huge chunk of the population but that doesn't suddenly make war go away
But medieval wars were not mass causality events, to my understanding? But maybe war (especially the pillaging) destroyed a lot of capital, e.g. by burning fields, killing livestock and destroying buildings?
Medieval war was not mass casuality as far as the combatants were concerned, but non-combatant deaths could be very high. It was pretty normal for an invading army to steal or destroy the crops (if they hadn't already been destroyed by the defenders) and not unusual for the entire population of a captured settlement to be slaughtered.
This probably becomes less the case later in the period, e.g. I think the impact of the War of the Roses was largely in destroying capital rather than loss of life, although that was a civil war.
Possible answer to 2: majority of Finland in 1000 CE was swamps and uncultivated forests, it's known that the Swedish crown subsidized projects to settle the middle parts of Finland during this time. The settlers came from the eastern and southern parts of now-Finland and (with crown support) drove out prior Sami people who hunted in the area (which I assume is the reason those lands weren't cultivated earlier). This doesn't really explain the sevenfold increase but it must be a part of the picture.
I wonder how much of it is also Sami just plain not being counted right in the older numbers? getting accurate numbers for nomadic tribes without (AFAIK) surviving written records is going to be very hard
Good point! A recurring theme in history is that as states became more and more centralized they started cracking down on nomadic tribes more, since the state wanted accurate censuses and taxable populations.
I don't know it well, but today's Finns (who are not Samis) came from the East, not from Sweden. I.e. it wasn't only Samis who already lived there when Swedes came. Finland could have been half empty also because of the 500s volcanic eruptions (Laki and the other one) that affected mainly Northern Europe and caused a horrible famine there.
Correct, the Swedish crown subsidized Finnish settlers in the process of displacing the Sami peoples in middle and northwestern current Finland. Good input regarding the volcano disaster, I genuinely didn't know that occurred.
Thanks! I think I understand that Finland was settled in this way, I just don't understand why it didn't happen earlier? Presumably the people of 500 CE were looking for new pastures as well, so why did it take so long?
I can ask someone with more of a background in this stuff, but my impression is that such projects were difficult and required some government-sized investment, especially to deal with the presence of the Sami that had to be driven north.
Swedish military force didn't have much challenges with the Sami. The Swedish fought Novgorod and then later Moscovy/Russia, who were peer-level military competition.
Sure, the data is uncertain. Maybe the population of Finland only grew by x5. The question still remains. I think these trends are so clear that we don't have to nitpick about SDs.
Hi Marty! Your comments are all over the place, and because this is the latest one, i.e. the one most readers will see first, I will copy everything here, to make it easier for others to figure out. Please do not reply by clicking the links in e-mail, there seems to be a bug; only use the web interface.
===[ The following texts are by Marty, with occassional context added. ]===
Should not THE dependent variable be, NOT gross world happiness but gross world FLOURISHING?
And shouldn't the foundational definition of Effective Altruism be "Where the dollars/effort are most likely to increase gross world flourishing? Currently EA is dramatically not directed there.
Just one example: Software that would pair low-income U.S. intellectually gifted kids with screened/online-trained mentors. The gap between their potential and likely actualized potential is huge and, crucially, the barriers are far fewer than, for example, feeding starving people in "developing" nations to achieving greatly with major ripple effect, what I call Gross World Flourishing, (e.g., wise leaders, inventors of better preventions and cures of diseases, better technology, wise optimization of AI's benefits vs liabilities, etc.)
> Timothy M.: This strikes me as a lot more challenging than I think is implied by your proposal. First issue: identifying a significant number of such underserved youth. Second issue: tutoring, one-on-one skilled labor by screened and/or trained professionals is therefore expensive and hard to scale. You're talking an investment of probably thousands of dollars per recipient and a huge staff to have any meaningful effect. Quasi-issue: much harder to measure, takes much longer to see the outcome, therefore harder to raise money for even IF it's a cost-efficient intervention.
1. Identification is less challenging than getting services to developing nations---One email to the members of the school counselors' association will generate plenty of kids.
2. As I wrote, screening and training of both mentors and proteges would be online, like driver's traffic school.
3. There would easily be short- as well as long-term measures of efficacy: e.g., increases in student attendance, achievement, etc.
Maximal contribution to the world, including to themselves. So it would subsume increased happiness. But also, one might not be happy working 70+ hours in a lab trying to develop a preventive for cancer, but if the person were well-suited to that, any altruism that furthered that, would be contributing to Gross World Flourishing. Such efforts, for example, mentoring such young people, would have a higher probability of being "effective altruism" than providing mosquito nets, for example.
They may TEST smart, but underachievement is almost a proverb. Candidly, as a member of Mensa, I can attest to underachievement being all too pervasive.
1. Perfect is the enemy of the good. Describing the criteria and asking counselors to refer kids who fit them is a cost-effective, fine approach that promises to do far more good than does much "effective" altruism.
2. Of course, nothing is no-cost.--much altruism costs---We spend BILLIONS on altruism already. What I'm proposing is to increase the effectiveness of altruism beyond what is touted as effective altruism. But I certainly would start by funding just the creation of the software, the online training, and coordinating the program. My intuition says that paying the mentors (They're not tutors) would create the wrong incentive: doing it for the money. I'd guess that per Big Brothers and Sisters, by using volunteer mentors, you'd get and retain high-quality mentors and proteges by providing crisp, excellent training and support. And Big Bros/Sisters takes all sorts of kids. With GiftedMentorMatch, retention of mentors and proteges should be even greater. Certainly, the pilot test could have multiple cohorts: those with paid and unpaid mentors and proteges.
3. Of course, evaluating the program is a cost but a worthy one. It would result in ideas for improving the program or scrapping it.
Effectiveness and yes-cost-effectiveness would be greater using my model, whether it's volunteer mentors, low-pay mentors (which as I argued would likely decrease the quality and retention of mentors) or, developing AI- virtual mentoring. All would, for the reasons I outlined, likely yield far more effective altruism in terms of improving Gross World Flourishing than traditional EA-recommended spends.
There are many useful ways to help people, the question is which are the *most* effective per dollar spent. You compare mentoring gifted kids to feeding starving people; please notice that feeding starving people also did *not* make it to GiveWell's top charities. (Currently there is malaria prevention, vitamin A supplementing, and child vaccination.) Feeding starving people sounds like an idea from TV, because it is simple to explain.
In that context, I agree that mentoring poor gifted kids is definitely a great idea; it just doesn't make it an EA-level intervention. Do not let that discourage you though; just do whatever you think is the right thing to do, especially if you have some competitive advantage in that area.
As a problem of your plan I see finding enough mentors. Are you planning to do this worldwide? There are eight billion people, most of them poor, so maybe one billion poor kids, which means 20 million poor kids at Mensa level. How specifically do you plan to find mentors for 20 million kids? You also need some screening, otherwise many scammers, cult recruiters, crackpots, and pedophiles will apply. But even ignoring this, I believe that finding enough volunteers for your idea would be a problem -- there are many competing projects.
(This is generally a problem with education: too many kids, too few adults qualified to be good teachers without being simultaneously qualified for other jobs that pay much better. Which is why we have things such as Khan Academy, which scale better.)
If you want to do something about it, perhaps the first step would be to find out whether similar organizations already exist, and what are their typical problems. Then figure out how to overcome those problems. A typical EA cause is where people are already doing the thing, they just need more money to scale it up e.g. from one million to ten millions of people. Your case is more like: you have an idea, and you want someone else to do it all.
Perhaps I'm replying to the wrong place. I started an open thread by speaking about Gross World Flourishing as a potent dependent variable and then used low-income US Gifted Mentoring website (like a Match.com for mentoring) as an example of a program that would yield more of than than do traditional EA-recommended donations.
Effectiveness and yes-cost-effectiveness would be greater using my model, whether it's volunteer mentors, low-pay mentors (which as I argued would likely decrease the quality and retention of mentors) or, developing AI- virtual mentoring. All would, for the reasons I outlined, likely yield far more effective altruism in terms of improving Gross World Flourishing than traditional EA-recommended spends.
Yes, ok, that’s fair. But we’re not talking about an outpatient situation when somebody comes to the doctor for headaches and fatigue, saying all else is fine, and eventually via tests or whatever it becomes clear the person’s got a major drinking problem that’s an important part of the picture. My ER example was an emergency situation where it makes sense to believe the patient because (1) if you delay to try to figure out whether you’re getting the full truth the man could die from his internal bleed and (2) there’s no obvious benefit to his lying. It’s not as though they give you OxyContin for gastric bleeds. Showing up at psych admissions saying you’re hearing voices is sort of analogous. That’s pretty ominous. And the patient must be quite distressed because nobody goes into the psych ward for fun. And if there is more to learn about him you’ll have a chance to do it during his inpatient stay.
The recent post on semaglutide made me wonder something. Is there a point where you may want to make certain unfashionable risk tradeoffs, if your particular situation is bad enough on the long term?
For example, 3 months on a mild steroid course, lots of protein and not-very-intense gym have a pretty decent chance of converting maybe 10 pounds of fat to muscle, which works a lot better long term than just losing 10 pounds.
And yet I don't see this ever recommended. A cursory google finds mostly things like study proposals and acts like this is a revolutionary new treatment option, instead of something body builders (and in all likelihood Hollywood actors) have been using routinely for 50 years.
Wonder how many other options are ignored due to stigma and unwillingness to calculate tradeoffs.
There's really no reason to take anabolic steroids for your first couple years of lifting. Beginners make rapid gains without drugs; no need to risk messing up your endocrine system. Even in the pro-drugs bodybuilding community, most people will recommend you stay natural for at least a couple years, and many recommend 5 years.
I think it's also a particularly bad idea to be administering anabolic steroids to non-fitness enthusiasts. The gains from PEDs tend to be lost when coming off, whereas natural gains tend to stay more easily (presumably because your body chemistry isn't changing).
With Hollywood, the situation is a bit different. They have tight deadlines to achieve their look, and they can afford doctors to monitor their bloodwork every week and coaches with experience administering PEDs. So they have more need and less risk from PEDs than a typical beginner.
I get much colder than people around me, putting on more layers, complaining about cold when others are warm, etc. Also, when I'm cold I tend to sneeze a lot. This is exacerbated by sudden drops or changes in temperature - opening a window, someone laying a cold hand on me, touching cold floor with my feet. It can also happen when I'm getting warmer, paradoxically - I was feeling cold, afraid I might sneeze, put on a coat and immediately sneezed.
This is definitely a 1st-world problem, but I hate sneezing, so I was wondering if any of you have ideas or suggestions for the causes of my increased sensitivity? Bonus for potential treatments / tests to run.
Relevant information:
- pretty lightweight - 63 kg over 1.80 m, late 20s
- generally healthy, no chronic condition I know of
- occasional blood tests seem within the norm. Blood pressure is good enough to donate regularly.
- happens mostly in winter, but also in ACed offices in summer
Please tell me all the obvious things I should try/do.
And a person for them to perhaps get in touch with:
"Dr. Christopher Minson is a professor in the department of human physiology at the University of Oregon. One of his primary research interests is thermoregulation, that's how the brain and body interact and adapt as we heat and cool."
I don't mean this glibly or as snark, but both elements could be learned behaviors. The sneezing is the most likely one and its possible that some self guided CBT could help? If we think of the sneeze like a compulsion, CBT can be used for OCD with good effect.
When you feel a sneeze coming on, one thing you can do to suppress it is to press the tip of your finger against the top of the philtrum, so that your fingernail is positioned right in the angle where the philtrum meets the bottom of the septum.
Y'all should check you don't have reynaud's syndrome, where arteries in the hands contract and reduce blood supply to the fingers. https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/raynauds/
Yeah similar, (though older and now a littler fatter around the middle.) My hand are always cold, If they get too cold I stick them in warm water. (Doing the dishes can be a pleasure.) I put on long johns in October and don't take 'em off till April or May. ~20% of your heat is lost through your head, so I often wear a hat. I've got a few pairs of fingerless gloves/ mittens as mentioned already. I do perhaps sneeze more than most people. IDK. Not that it makes it any better but an extended sneezing fit is referred to in our house as a 'sneezure'. "Achoo, Achoo, Achoo, Achoo, achoo..., Sorry sneezure"
My wife has always felt the cold. Freezing cold hands and toes. Couldn't bear to sit outside in the evening, even in summer. I would have to warm her feet and hands in bed before she could sleep.
She was on blood thinners for several years and all that went away. She experienced temperatures much the way I did. Warm hands. Warm toes.
She is no longer on blood thinners and is back to cold hands and toes.
This is probably not much help in finding a fix but perhaps it's a clue as to the cause.
I'm also lightweight (BMI around 20) and have been more sensitive to the cold in the past than I am now. I've experienced putting on layers of clothes and feeling like it wasn't making any difference, because clothes don't make heat, they just trap the heat you generate.
I have experienced a substantial improvement through cold exposure, as Wim Hof recommends. I've been doing cold showers for a few years now (start with hot, end with cold, at whatever temperature it comes into the house). Deliberately go for walks in cold weather wearing not quite enough to be comfortable.
I've also tried Wim Hof's breathing exercises, but I didn't notice much effect from them, so I haven't continued them.
And of course, clothing where it counts, i.e. gloves, long underwear, and a woolly hat rather than piling more layers on the torso.
I don’t feel anything different in my nose, but otherwise I also have a hard time with the cold. Two things: gloves are incredible in a fabric/heat conservation ratio. Ie, they are small and light and yet help a lot. I have a fingerless pair for indoors and a regular one for outdoors (you can even find ones with special fingertips that let you use touchscreens). Second, heating pads. I find it hard to generate heat myself, but an electric heating pad takes less than 5 minutes to heat up and then I can cling to it, put it between two layers of clothes or blankets and have a handy external heat source. I also spend the cold months drinking a lot of herbal tea, since it doubles as a way of heating my hands (gabbing the cup) and my body in general (drinking it).
There is a temperature regulation system in the body. Which type of specialist deals with that? Neurologist?? An internist (specialist in diagnosis, better trained than family physician) might know.
My situation is similar in a way - I don't sneeze, but I also feel cold way before others do. And, a couple of minutes after the surrounding temperature drops below ca. 15°C (around 60°F?), my nose starts running. As with you, it happens during the cold time of the year once I go outside, but also cold environments. Five minutes after I get into the warm again, it stops.
Not sure if those are different symptoms of whatever you have or something else entirely... But I haven't found anything to help yet, not even socks, because cold face/hands seem to be a sufficient trigger.
What happened to letter.wiki? I loved the idea and some of the conversations were actually interesting. Now the site is down. A last official tweet from 2022-10-18 says that it's available in archive, but no explanation is given for why the site seems permanently closed.
I have absolutely no information on how opinion change works in China. I'm pretty sure pure bottom up protests work a lot less than in the west, but the little I know suggests there are alternative democratic mechanisms that allow information to flow to decision makers, most likely party-based. But how exactly they work, why didn't they in this case and are things different now that Xi is changing the rules... no idea.
China has a huge population. If the protests are widespread, then there could be millions of people involved. Some errant cop may hit someone in just the right way breaking up a protest, they can die. The incidence rate could be 1/1,000 or even 1/1,000,000 and still get into the double digits.
So the questions involved in calculating the number who die really revolve around two questions. How many people protest, and how much the state pushes back on it. It's almost certain that the state pushes back pretty hard, so we're really only looking at how many people are protesting actively enough to draw the attention of the state. If that number is in the millions, then hundreds or even thousands of people dying to state action (breaking up the protests) becomes pretty likely.
At a low level, I expect a substantial number of protestors to get beaten by cops (and such beatings may not even be unreasonable!), and if you do that enough times you’re going to kill a few people.
At an extreme level you get a Tiananmen Square situation.
Note that your comment doesn't really contradict any of the predictions made.
I expect that like HK, the protests will be crushed after many months (and the HK protests were very long-running).
That crushing will involve scores of people being beaten to death or having heart attacks after being tased or similar, a bit over 100 total doesn't seem too unreasonable for an over/under.
China will eventually drop its zero covid policies due to not being willing to lose its manufacturing sectors, that's a given, whether it happens within 6 months is more unsure. When it does happen the justification will be something along the lines of "now that we've had time to vaccinate everyone the glorious Chinese medical system will have no issues with people catching covid" or some equivalently face-saving lie.
Bit of both, I think - Covid provided an excuse for harsh crackdowns, but also going out to a huge protest march seemed like less of a good idea. That said, I am not a Hong Konger and wasn't paying especially close attention at the time.
Unfortunately, substack comments do not provide the markup you were trying to use. (If the use of non-rendered markup is part of a broader movement to shame substack into supporting it, I apologize.)
Business idea: Cancel Insurance. Worried your coworkers might try to get you fired if they knew your political or other beliefs? Transfer that risk to an insurer, who can replace lost wages that result from getting cancelled.
This would take a lot of the sting out of getting cancelled. (Maybe wages aren't the only concern that could be mitigated from getting cancelled?) Which would allow people who are concerned about having to hide their views/opinions to breathe a little easier. Could this lead to moral hazard, where people with the insurance are more likely to say the kind of dumb insensitive thing that will get them cancelled?
Maybe in the short term, but I'm thinking longer-term it might make it more difficult to cancel people. You can only cancel so many people before your audience gets tired of the game. Long-term, the insurance game might kill the 'joy' of cancellation and the practice could peter out.
There are probably a dozen reasons why this is dumb. Or maybe it exists already, but it's plagued by bad SEO (all searches take you to pages about how to cancel your insurance) so it doesn't get much traction. Thoughts?
It's theoretically a controllable behavior (acting in ways that would get you Cancelled) and the insurance company would almost certainly require that you don't do those activities. For instance, give up being a Nazi - which I think we could agree has a high probability of getting you Cancelled. They might also require that you give up social media, being politically outspoken (on pretty much any issue at all, on either side), or having one or more of a wide set of political beliefs.
No insurance company is going to take you on for any price even close to reasonable without heavy restrictions. If you're willing to pay way more than this service is worth on average, then you are in the population very likely to get Cancelled and the insurance company will know they should charge you more, commensurate with your level of risk.
For the average person, this service will be worth almost nothing, as the rate of people actually getting cancelled is extremely low. The rate of self-censorship is significantly higher, but insurance will have the opposite effect of helping with that problem.
I think we can distinguish between "fired from a job because of outspoken political beliefs" and "target of a social media campaign to signal boost statements (especially out of context) not made to a general audience". If you want to collect on your insurance, you have to prove you were the target of a smear campaign, not that you started talking politics with your boss. Would James Damore have been able to collect on such a plan? I'm not sure.
I think we could also distinguish between, "makes incendiary statements that are known or should be known to cause controversy" and the ever increasing, "made statements five years ago that were obvious and undisputed, but that today are anathema." Given how many things this applies to, and the sheer impossibility of predicting what will be deemed 'problematic' tomorrow, this seems like a case of risk that can neither be foreseen nor avoided.
Given the number of people on social media, it seems counterintuitive to tell someone they can't be covered unless they swear off social media. Besides, all that matters is whether you ever posted something online ever, not whether you're currently posting. Requiring someone to get off Facebook to give them Cancel Insurance would be like telling someone they can only get car insurance after they sell their car.
I'm looking at it more as the insurance company doing a thorough risk assessment and offering to sell insurance at highly variable prices depending on the risk.
So they'll sell insurance to someone who is outspoken on social media, but at a significantly higher rate than someone who isn't. They'll tell you to self select away from "problematic" activities in order to get a discount.
Unfortunately, the "known or should be known to cause controversy" is an every-moving target, often moving much faster than insurance plans could keep up. I agree that your distinction is a useful way to distinguish between types of "cancelling." In practice, real world scenarios confuse that distinction a lot. James Damore is a good example, because from his perspective he was offering accurate and useful data in direct response to his employer's request. How could that ever be problematic if it's both true and requested? That it was anathema to a particular worldview and narrative, and that his employer prescribed to that worldview to the point of firing people for expressing dissenting opinions, seems to have been a surprise to him.
Here's an interesting thought. Imagine a world where cancel insurance was a real thing, and Damore had it before circulating that memo. Damore is cancelled and goes to collect the insurance payout, collecting the evidence to support his case and presenting it to his insurer.
The mob that cancelled him finds out about his insurance. They don't want their efforts undermined, so naturally they submit counter evidence to the insurance company. They may even go so far as to crowd source donations to fight the case. As with many legal questions, the party with the most money can filibuster enough to get their way.
Damore tries to fight back. He sets up his own crowd sourcing campaign to raise money to defend his insurance claim. The cancellers naturally go after the crowd sourcing vendor to get him dropped from the site. Despite the fact that this is further evidence of Damore getting cancelled, he can afford to prove it in court.
The focus on cancel would make it a bit harder to implement. But a generic layoff insurance that is crafted to carefully define "at fault" as not including the way your express your opinions...
The application form for that insurance would be quite a document. "In order that we can accurately assess your risk of cancellation, please list your unwoke beliefs below..." Actually, that's how you could make the economics work out: sign up as many people as you can, and when the new signups start to tail off, use their application forms to blackmail all your customers.
Given the potential unhireability that can come with being sufficiently-badly "cancelled", I suspect it'd be really hard to make the economics work out. A rival ecosystem would probably be better at insurance-in-the-broad-sense; you simply work for that ecosystem and now you can't be fired for your non-SJ beliefs since the ecosystem doesn't care if SJ hates you.
(I say "ecosystem", not "company", because a single company that openly refuses to play ball would get targetted itself, which is another issue with a single "cancel insurance" company. Obviously, SJers boycotting a "cancel insurance" company wouldn't work, but SJers getting PayPal/Visa/MasterCard to refuse to process its payments, social media and web advertisers to refuse to platform its advertising, etc., that's more dangerous.)
The main pain of being cancelled as I understand it is not losing your income, but the relentless hate and critique and having your friends abandone you.
As Nancy says, it's clearly both. Losing your job can be hard, but a good support network can help you get through. Losing your support network can be hard, but with enough financial stability you can work on making new friends. When you lose both at once, you feel like the world is crashing.
As a side note, if you are an actual conservative and live in places not dominated by anti-conservative forces, neither job loss nor community loss is a thing. It seems the hardest hit by Cancel Culture are liberals who are non-conformist or the non-woke who happen to live too close to significantly woke areas.
Plenty of people have been cancelled for having held views which were mainstream at the time - Brendan Eich springs to mind. Hell, if you look at polls of e.g. attitudes to transgender self-ID (for instance https://yougov.co.uk/topics/politics/articles-reports/2020/07/16/where-does-british-public-stand-transgender-rights), people get cancelled for holding views that *currently* hold majority support. The people most in need of this insurance, and thus most likely to seek it out, would be most at risk of cancellation - but that's a problem common to all insurance. The challenge would be in marketing it to people at low risk of cancellation; you could maybe do that by stressing the two points I made above.
The issue would be getting people to pay for it and defining a cancelable event. I suppose you could advertise it on conservative networks. There is the shooting insurance stuff that at least shows some appetite for it. But you'd have to make it extremely common for it to have any kind of macro-effect.
"Maybe in the short term, but I'm thinking longer-term it might make it more difficult to cancel people."
Alternatively, it would lead to an authoritarian society with an even more stifling, even more rigid orthodoxy. Presumably the insurance would only pay out if you could prove you tried everything reasonable to hide your unwoke beliefs. Broadcasting your beliefs would be insurance fraud. Otherwise, how would the insurance work? Lots of people would buy it, pay the premium for one month, broadcast their unwoke beliefs, get fired, and claim free money.
Having worked a teeny bit in the insurance sector, and then learned a lot more about it from a relative who was CEO of a US insurance company, this is what I was going to predict.
Free mechanic idea: if you want to justify how mice a few decades from now can be so smart, make them *genome-synthesized* mice, along the lines of 'ultra-safe cell lines', where the whole genome has been rewritten to use different codons - rendering them immune to all viruses ever and mostly to bacteria. Then the superintelligence just comes from, 'it turns out that no one's brain has functioned at as much as 1% of their true capability, because they have been damaged from conception by the relentless sea of viral & bacterial assault'.
Hey Gwern, just to check, are you referencing codon-pair bias for viral attenuation? Was a super neat idea for vaccine development; I haven't thought about this idea since reading the original paper a decade ago.
Well, a few at SSC knew of my personal history, so an update here: my and my beloved roommate have moved to an apartment in a woodsy part of San Francisco (we can see the Pacific Ocean through the tree branches and with an open window we can hear the waves), she’s been told that her remaining tumors are nit growing and there’s no need for chemotherapy for at least six months, she walks with a cane but she still walks.
Due to the higher rent we’re both going to be much poorer because of the move, but our former mutual roommate’s drunken behavior made staying at our old place unwise.
I still spend weekends with my legal wife and her kids (only the older one knows that he’s not my genetic son, only my legal one) and the 17 year old boy is applying to colleges now, his hope is UCB.
I probably missed you mentioning this a while ago but I hope whatever was wrong with your lungs has been dealt with now.
It might not be necessary if you're close enough to hear the waves but some small 8x binoculars are always a good thing to keep on the windowsill if you can just about see the sea. Especially if interesting shipping goes past from time to time.
Edit: to be clear--the article isn't arguing for AI X-risk. But its description of an AI arms race convinces me that we'll have some deadly military tech running complicated AI algorithms. It's much easier for me to imagine how a bug or a misalignment could lead the robots to Kill All Humans
I recall reading somewhere recently that the "war-games" metric is misleading. IIRC, the upshot was that non-democracies tend to run war games that always end with their own country winning, because losing looks bad. But the US tends to run war games where the US not only can lose, but routinely gives the opposition advantages that are beyond the best current estimates. It honestly felt surprising that the US military could be that clear-sighted about learning via daring to fail.
The other thing is that I imagine those wargames are specifically over Taiwan, which very heavily favours the PLA/PLAN over the USN (due to Taiwan being in SAM/AShM range of mainland China), and probably don't include the "then somebody miscalculates and nukes get launched" phase. The US "wins" when it goes nuclear because it has a lot more nukes and much closer nukes to China than the PLARF has to CONUS.
The article's not about AI X-risk, but the article's existence is concerning from the perspective of AI X-risk; one of the big fears is this kind of arms race where AI safety is skimped on to get warfighting potential faster.
My preferred alternative to an AI arms race is the policy "if you try to deploy killer robots we will nuke you, and we don't care that you'd nuke us back". The problem is developing the mindset necessary to make the threat credible i.e. to actually be willing to follow through.
Yeah to be clear--the article itself wasn't making that argument. But I'd never really considered that we'd enter into an AI arms race, and that we'd be deliberately loading AI onto killer robots. It's much easier for me to see how a paperclip-maximizer could emerge from this scenario
I though X-Risk had to be to humanity's survival? The "X" is for extinction. I prefer the American system to the Chinese but I don't think China's going to literally end humanity.
Yeah I'm no so much worried about one country destroying the other. More the idea that we're specifically building killer AI-enabled robots. It would not take much for a bug to cause a killer drone swarm to Kill All Humans instead of only enemy soldiers
My father passed away 10 days ago at the age of 60. I have been trying to calculate how many years of him did we lose?
He had diabetes(requiring insulin infections), had been on dialysis last 8 months, then underwent a kidney transplant which looked successful for 3 months but then fungal infection occured. He smoked until the age of 50 and consumed gutkha(tobacco) until few years ago. My grandfather (youngest of 3 brothers) died aged 50 from cancer. My aunt died aged 54 (also diabetic and underwent dialysis). My grandmother died aged 74 (also underwent dialysis). My father was the youngest of 3 brothers (other 2 are alive with diabetes aged 62 and 64)
How long would he have lived if the kidney transplant was successful? How long if he had stopped consuming tobacco and let the medicines do their work? How long if we never went for transplant and continued with dialysis?
I went through this process when my dad died in his mid-70s. He smoked 2 packs a day from about age 12, with a brief intermission around 68-69. He developed pneumonia from an intervention for COPD; he'd have lived longer without the intervention. For years I was convinced he'd gotten the pneumonia from a flu I'd exposed him to.
I suppose the answer is that without the cigarettes he'd have had another decade; without the intervention, another 3-5 years.
I don't advocate taking up cigarettes (vape or chew the gum if you must!).
But: my dad read all of Twain, and he was fond of saying that a decade without tobacco wasn't a decade he wanted to see.
Sorry for your loss. My dad was a Type I diabetic who didn't take care of himself and he died at age 47 after several years of declining health—leading up to kidney failure and dialysis. Like your dad, he had a kidney transplant but it only worked briefly.
Anyway, to answer your question, the average life expectancy of people on dialysis (as documented in the non-technical literature) is between 5 and 10 years. A google search yielded the information that a kidney from a living donor should normally last between 12 and 20 years, while a kidney from a deceased donor lasts about eight to 12 years.
As for the lifespans of Type I diabetics, there was a University of Pittsburgh study that was published some years back that concluded that people with type 1 diabetes born after 1965 had an average life expectancy of 69 years (sorry, I don't have a link handy). No data was given for Type I's born before 1965, but it implied the prognosis was worse. As with all studies of this sort, your mileage may vary, but it's not all random chance. Some people can maintain better control of their long-term blood glucose levels, and they will probably beat that 69-year average. Also, it depends on what age they develop Type I diabetes. Theoretically, children who develop Type I diabetes would likely have a shorter lifespan than an adult who developed Type I— that is, if all variables were equal, a Type I's life span could be boiled down to an average length of time as the disease progresses. However, my subjective experience is that people who develop Type I diabetes as adults have a harder time adjusting to the regimen than kids.
My dad developed Type I diabetes at age 21, but he didn't take it seriously. It took 26 years to kill him though.
I'm also a type I, and born before 1965. I developed it when I was 9 years old. As an adult, I couldn't get a straight answer from Dr what my life expectancy was. But, while in my mid-20s, I had a job at a life insurance company, and I hung out with one of the actuaries. I asked him what the life expectancy was as a type I of my age and profile. He came back very glum and said there was something like only a 10% probability I would live past age 40. Because I thought I'd die relatively young, I decided to live my life to the fullest I could while trying to take good care of myself with the tools I had at the time. I made a point of traveling and taking up hobbies that interested me. Once over-the-counter blood glucose tests appeared, I was able to figure out how to control my diabetes better. Then blood glucose sensors came on the market, and I've learned a lot about how my metabolism functions (which mostly doesn't jibe with the well-meant nutritional advice I got along the way). Blood glucose sensors have given me excellent control. Lo and behold! I'm 63 now. The Type I's I knew as a kid and in college are all dead (I think). It's a sucky disease.
> How long would he have lived if the kidney transplant was successful? How long if he had stopped consuming tobacco and let the medicines do their work? How long if we never went for transplant and continued with dialysis?
How long would he have lived if he'd been hit by a cement truck in 1992?
These counterfactuals are no use, he died when he died. Be grateful for the time that you had together, and sad for your loss.
We are part of the same community, and I hope I can give back one day. I like reading people's posts here because I think many people here are smart, and we have similar interests.
I am in Canada and looking for someone interested in studying the following condition. I believe I have something called maladaptive daydreaming. I can confirm I have been engaging in the behaviour since I was at least four. When I was little, I would pace while moving leaves up and down for the entire day except for stopping to eat, according to my parents. I thought I was alone in doing this type of daydreaming until I read the following article, and it described me perfectly. This article explains it really well—https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2015/04/when-daydreaming-replaces-real-life/391319/ (If a paywall shows up, put the link in archive.org, and it should work). Today I don't use leaves, but I pace for multiple hours a day while daydreaming, and it causes distress because these thoughts are useless, and they waste a tremendous amount of time. I manage to get decent grades, but it's exhausting updating all my plotlines.
MD is not an official diagnosis, so I can’t get medication for it. There is limited time because it has gotten worse in university.
If I get an appointment with a psychiatrist in the future, I am considering leaving the daydreaming out of the description of my behaviour and framing it as OCD (my dad is a hoarder) because otherwise, I don’t see how I can get medication/help for this (so far I have not been able to see a psychiatrist).
Here is how it is similar to OCD (the problem is it is not OCD, like that diagnosis sort of fits, but it doesn't exactly).
Obsessions (stories that play out in a daydream) are unwanted and distressing thoughts, images (more like a video, I feel emotion during this process), or urges that a person tries to resist (I fight against going into a daydream, but it is very difficult. My strategy has been focused on actively blocking triggers rather than resisting a trigger). I blocked all my music apps and social media. Blocked specific keywords related to media; I move furniture frequently, so I can't go into my default setting, and it is harder to pace etc.
Compulsions (pacing and repeating the same story) are repeated behaviours that reduce anxiety, neutralize obsessions, or prevent harm (when my emotions are high, I daydream way more. I pace so much that many of my socks have holes in them. Generally, the daydreams are pleasant; otherwise, they do not last as a plot line. I know when I am done daydreaming. Most of the time, they make me feel good).
What advice do you have? I am desperate, so I would be willing to take a bus to the US to meet anyone who would like to study this or meet over Zoom at any time.
Is there some list I can get on where if someone wants to research this, then they can easily contact me?
You are all very busy; thank you for reading my long post. Sincerely, Smaug.
I'm Canadian too and I've had this for about as long as I can remember. I think it started after seeing my first movie in theatres (The Lion King), which stimulated my imagination so strongly that I needed an outlet. I would pace around, flailing my arms slowly and making noise with my mouth.
I thought I was the only one who did this until I read about maladaptive daydreaming several years ago. I've since read a lot of stories from people who suffer from this.
I was surprised that they were calling it "daydreaming". I think of daydreaming as something very different. Daydreaming is sitting around and letting your mind wander. This is more like entering a trance, and though this doesn't seem to be the case for everyone, for me, it is critical that, I get up and walk around in order to enter that trance.
I would do it when I wanted to imagine something more intensely or wrap my head around a difficult abstract concept. It's like turning the imaginative, generative part of my brain up to a higher level of activation.
One difference between my experience and others' is that I do not maintain ongoing plotlines in my head and there aren't usually any characters to keep track of. They're usually just standalone hyopthetical scenarios, which I'll revisit a few times, but then drop. I do not create an imaginary world in which to live an alternate life.
This has never caused me any problems other than embarassment as a child and time wastage as an adult. I managed to quit for four years from age 15 to 19, before relapsing. I've tried to quit a few times but I don't think I managed to go more than a few weeks without doing it until recently. I haven't done it for about nine months.
I don't know if I can give you useful advice since it sounds like it's a lot harder for you to resist the urge to do than it is for me. I know that I only do it when I am alone.
It hasn't been difficult for me to quit, especially not after the first week. I think I just needed enough motivation to resist the increasingly rare urges. It seems harmless, so it's easy to do it if I don't have any reason not to. But I've decided I want to be normal and to invest my time and mental energy more productively. So I've committed myself to just not doing it anymore and seeing what happens. Maybe it will help me somehow.
I'm a psychologist who specializes in treating OCD and related disorders. I agree with you that what you have is probably not OCD. Here are some questions that I think will make it easier to know whether we can definitely rule out OCD. If any are too personal, feel free not to answer them.
OK, OCD is an anxiety disorder. What keeps people doing their repetitive behavior is fear of what will happen if they do not — either fear of some awful event such as catching typhoid, or fear that skipping the ritual will cause them unbearable worry. Here’s are a couple of OCD cases I know of that were at least a tiny bit like your daydreaming thing:
Somebody who journaled all day long. Feared that if she stopped she would forget important events in her day.
Somebody who read and reread articles assigned in class. Feared that if did not get understand them well enough. No was sure that did understand well enough, so kept re-reading.
Question: Is there some conscious fear, like the fear the OCD patients had, driving your fantasizing, or do you do it entirely because it is enjoyable, or because you just can’t keep yourself from doing it?
If there was a pill you could take that would guarantee that you would be unable to daydream more than an hour a day for the next decade, would you take it? If not, why not?
What is it like for you if you spend an extended period doing something that makes it completely impossible to daydream — say taking a long, difficult exam?
After I read your answers I’ll respond and try to give some helpful advice.
Huh, this rang a lot of bells. I don't suffer because this in the same way you seem to, but I can definitely slip into the same daydreaming pattern without much difficulty, complete with pacing and emotional experiences. Personally, I've turned this kind of thing towards my own creative writing, but it sounds like that might be too milk toast a suggestion give how much effort you seem to have put into managing the condition.
Perhaps you could try and engineer situations that prevent you from daydreaming, going out with friends or joining a club for example. Something structured that requires a degree of attention and obligation so that it is harder to fall back into maladaptive patterns. Though I would say, though, don't beat yourself up over wasting time. We are all allowed downtime and the opportunity to be inactive, and daydreaming for ninety minutes is no more a waste than watching a football match.
> I believe I have something called maladaptive daydreaming
How much fiction do you read, or films or series do you watch? Perhaps reading an hour or two of fiction of whatever kind you like best each day, e.g. historical, espionage, SF, etc, would give you so many new "plot lines" it would so to speak dilute those going round in your head to such a degree they would become barely noticeable. On the other hand, a load of new plot lines might make your problem even worse! It's hard to say.
Your comment here resonated with me as it described perfectly my condition for 2 years in my early 20s. Constantly daydreaming and concocting story lines, mostly of me in a position of power and earning admiration of others. Repeating each plot line with minor alterations each time. Pacing around and listening to music for hours in between class. Socks ripping off.
That time is mostly long gone for me, I have not returned to daydreaming since.
The key variable that changed in my life was becoming less lonely, surrounding myself with family and friends. I know it’s tough to get out of a situation of loneliness, I don’t really have much advice in this regard since the solution came to me by happenstance rather than deliberate effort. But the key to getting rid of daydreaming is to get rid of the loneliness. Good luck.
This might actually be related to OCD or be an "OCD spectrum" issue. I wouldn't rule out that getting it treated as OCD would help. Ideally, though, you would get a therapist and psychiatrist who would be interested in doing things that mitigate your symptoms as they are rather than fitting a square peg into one of a series of round holes. In the US there is actually some freedom to do this, but I don't know how it works in Canada.
Can't help with research, but I used to do this a lot, until I was about 24. Probably something to do with being homeschooled and under stimulated, with too much free time in my case? I'm not really sure. Anyway, I was about 24, and going to a great books college for a year of enjoyable but basically useless studies, and going to church a lot. So I got really into meditation and saying the Jesus Prayer, had some kind of experience kind of like the Christian version of jhana, and one day just stopped, permanently, no desire at all to continue, never took it up again. Mostly forgot about it altogether for a decade or so. (Edit: my parents are also hoarders, but I hadn't thought that was related before)
Based on this, I would recommend giving moderately serious meditation a try, but maybe with guidance, if you're associated with some kind of spiritual tradition?
The article is reminding me, actually, of my young daughter, who runs around in circles more than we're comfortable with, talking constantly, and trips a lot for no apparent reason. This is a point of household contention and distress. Not sure what I'd do if I figured out this was going on, though.
I don't know would would be a good way to get your daughter falling down for no reason looked at, but I fell down a moderate amount when I was a kid, and there turned out to be a reason-- excessive muscle tension. This may not be related to anything else that might be going on with her.
I read the Atlantic article OP cites, and it mentions that many people who can't stop daydreaming also have something called Developmental Coordination Disorder, which I have not heard of. Wondering whether you daughter has that. (Also, Nancy, wondering if you had that.)
It sure sounds like a dissociative disorder. The usual pop-psych thing to ask how your childhood was (and how much of it you remember!). You might want to consider talking to a therapist who is familiar with various types of dissociation. My guess is that it would be more useful than talking to a regular psychiatrist.
I'm not a doctor. But it sounds like you should talk to one. You have a psychological problem that's causing you significant distress and getting in the way of living a normal life.
Whether the doctor diagnoses you with OCD or something else is TBD. But I would err on the side of being honest, especially about how this is disrupting your life and causing distress.
My only advice is the same advice I give to pretty much everyone in psychological distress: try and sit quietly with your thoughts for 20-30 minutes per day. Carve out that time, and accept that whatever happens in your head during that time is OK. Watch your thoughts and make note of how they move, especially if you try and bring your focus back to your breath or an object in the room.
Over time you can build up a vocabulary for the different places your mind goes, and you can start to develop "muscles" for influencing its path. But it's a long difficult process--I'd encourage you to see a doctor in the meantime.
Sorry you're dealing with this--I hope you find a way to manage it.
I was going to start a discussion about AI, get people's thoughts using a somewhat novel focus for a discussion of the current state of AI. I'm a lawyer who, while not working directly on AI projects, I get called in to test and guide them constantly, and from my perspective: what I'm reading about what's coming down the pike does not match what is actually being developed. I wanted to get different takes from people in different industries. It occurred to me that people who aren't lawyers working directly with coming AI products might be under the misapprehension that "AI can write briefs for you", just because that's been repeated ad nauseum for months and that it is apparently going to happen tomorrow. Yeah, no. I wanted see what the truth was elsewhere. Is AI really going to start giving us our medical diagnosis?
Then my wife and I got drunk after the kids went to bed, and now I can't do that shit. Having a hard time just typing. So I want to talk about something that's been bugging me for weeks: What PC game should I tackle next? What games have you played that you though were really excellent?
Lately I've bouncing around, and I can't commit to one game. I finished Pathfindrer: Wrath of the Righteous, as a Lich! Great game. I moved on to Pillars of Eternity 2, which I've already beat three times. Started a fourth - this is going to be the first game I complete all achievements. Really great game, maybe my favorite CRPG right now. But I wandered off, and I've played Darkest Dungeon, Inscryption, They Must Be Billions (good game. Hard.), Vampire Survivors, my twelfth run at Morrowind, and huge time on Divinity Original Sin 2 (I love the world and the characters. I cannot stand how the game handles equipment upgrades and it just makes me want to quit). I've also got a game of Solasta going. Pretty good game if you can handle a tire fire of a plot. And I came full circle and started another game of Pathfinder. Two, actually: I'm working on an Azata run and an Aeon run.
This is a ridiculous long, drunken way of asking for recommendations for great games. The don't have to be new, just something that really blew you away, like Disco Elysium (you don't have to be THAT blown). Any thoughts?
Ooo, how about The Last Spell, which is just wrapping up their early access period? It is a genuinely tense and difficult tactics game where you run a squad of up to six heroes trying to defend a town from hundreds of zombies every night. It has some great RPG levelling, equipment management, a little strategic layer, and some of the most satisfying music and animation that I've seen in years
What, no recommendations for Souls-type games? Okay, I guess I'll be that gal. Doesn't have to be one of the actual entries from From Software, you can get a similar experience from, like, Shadows of Sekiro or whatever. But it's worth trying a Punishing Game, once, if you've never done so before. There really was a spark behind all the hype.
Roguelite: heard a lot of good things about Hades.
Other genres I'd have recommendations, but nothing really in that blows-you-away quality tier.
As you mentioned Morrowind, liking your games hard and being blown away by something like Disco Elysium, I'd recommend you Pathologic 2.
The best game I've ever played. The philosophy, the gameplay, the story, the meta-story, the borderline sadistic difficulty and the general atmosphere of grim beauty all working in perfect synergy to create a true masterpiece.
I just looked this up. It sounds amazing; I can’t believe I’ve never heard of it before. Thanks for the recommendation - I’m going to download it as soon as I get the kids to bed tonight. :)
Give intended difficulty a try. If the game doesn't feel a bit more challenging than it is comfortable than you are missing the point.
It's okay to replay a game day when you figured a more optimal route, though you don't have to do it. The game is already well protected from savescumming: it allows you to save only in specific places (near the clock), reloading previous saves is generally a fair play.
Becoming familiar with the combat system is a good idea as you will have a few encounters during the quests. But I'd advise against actively searching for as many troubles as possible. You are a doctor not a fighter. And death is appropriately punishing in this game.
It's possible to save all the main characters from the plague though it's an additional challenge. It's also perfectly possible to play while being infected yourself as long as you keep your immunity high and infection level low.
Talk to people. Try to remember who barters what, and for which items. Figure out what items are valuable and have enough of them in stock. Don't leave your items on the ground in the streets. Upgrade your inventory as needed. Food and water will become more scarce with each day. The leash from day one will come in handy later.
So I played the first half hour. This is the creepiest game ever. I love the horror genre done well and this is done well. Creepy, creepy tone. Love it so far, man. I'll keep you updated. Thanks!
Lately I've been playing (and enjoying) Phoenix Point, Europa Universalis 4, Rimworld, and Slay the Spire. It sounds like there might be enough taste overlap for those to be relevant recommendations.
Out of the rest, I actually own Europa Universalis 4 and RimWorld. I haven't played either though. What do you like about these two? I'm getting excited by this
I think they actually have a lot in common despite being pretty different on the surface. Both of them have pretty intimidating skill curves as a beginner, but in both games that complexity gives you a huge amount of deep and intricate systems to play around with in a way that's very compelling to a certain kind of player. Both games are extremely open-ended; there's some obvious goals to work towards, accumulating the resources and power you need to survive, but beyond that you have a lot of room to roleplay and decide what objectives are interesting to you.
Of the two EU4 has hooked me a lot harder but both have a lot to offer and I definitely recommend them. Another minor advantage of EU4 is that it's made with enough attention to detail to be somewhat educational and it covers an area of history that doesn't tend to get a ton of attention in pop culture.
For EU4, it's easily the game I play the most, but the learning curve is incredibly steep, so I recommend a coop multiplayer game if possible. I'm regularly free between 8pm and 10pm UK time (dependent on baby bedtime success) and would be happy to teach people!
It looks like EU4 and Pathological 2 for me! Thanks everyone. I knew this was a good place to find suggestions for interesting games. Looking forward to both!
I definitely have to turn back to Outer Wilds. I really enjoyed it but I got busy for a few weeks and couldn’t remember what I was doing, so it’s just been sitting there.
1. Perfect is the enemy of the good. Describing the criteria and asking counselors to refer kids who fit them is a cost-effective, fine approach that promises to do far more good than does much "effective" altruism.
2. Of course, nothing is no-cost.--much altruism costs---We spend BILLIONS on altruism already. What I'm proposing is to increase the effectiveness of altruism beyond what is touted as effective altruism. But I certainly would start by funding just the creation of the software, the online training, and coordinating the program. My intuition says that paying the mentors (They're not tutors) would create the wrong incentive: doing it for the money. I'd guess that per Big Brothers and Sisters, by using volunteer mentors, you'd get and retain high-quality mentors and proteges by providing crisp, excellent training and support. And Big Bros/Sisters takes all sorts of kids. With GiftedMentorMatch, retention of mentors and proteges should be even greater. Certainly, the pilot test could have multiple cohorts: those with paid and unpaid mentors and proteges.
3. Of course, evaluating the program is a cost but a worthy one. It would result in ideas for improving the program or scrapping it.
You're still just replying to the main thread, it's hard to follow.
I think you need to separate this idea from an argument about effective altruism. I'm not saying it's not a worthy idea, I'm just pointing out you're making a lot of assumptions about it being more cost-effective than saving lives in the third world. There's already a lot of research on that and I think to some degree the cost can be pinned down pretty well. The costs and benefits of your idea are harder to work out (and apparently you assume the hardest part, large amounts of 1-on-1 mentoring, is basically free?). So I would say that as an argument against EA being cost-effective, you're missing a lot of required information.
As an idea for how to improve the world, it might be worth pursuing.
If you use the reply function in the email, your comment will not post as a reply to the comment in question. To actually do that, you can click "Reply" under a comment.
Could be. I don't know what to do. I started a thread and responded to comments regarding more effective altruism, using a dependent variable I like: Gross World Flourishing.
Are there any free digital tools I can use to attach checksums to my personal computer files so I can tell later on if any of them have been corrupted? I'm thinking of starting a system where I keep three different external hard drives that contain backups of all of my files. All the files will have checksums, and once every few years, I will compare the contents of the three for fixity. Once that is done, I will add whatever new files I've accumulated on my PC since the last fixity check.
md5sum works fine for Linux systems. I think certutil works on Windows, but I rarely use Windows machines so not sure. Anyway, google "How do I calculate an MD5 sum for a file on [OS of choice]?" and I'm sure you'll find a bunch of useful info.
I think most people who are concerned about this kind of stuff look into automatic cloud backup, since a big commercial company can offer archival quality storage methods at a lower unit cost (and less personal hassle). I've used Dropbox for this purpose but there are undoubtably many others. It might be more advisable than rolling your own solution, particularly if in 8 years you kind of forget what protocol you established, or it has to be reconstructed by your heirs after you have a stroke.
If you are that concerned with data backups, it's probably better to follow the 3:2:1 method.
3 different copies, on 2 different media, 1 copy being offsite.
This is much simpler and more reliable.
Also.....isn't checksums across multiple drives basically what RAID arrays do automatically (the ones with multiple drive redundancy at least, no all types of RAID have that). It sounds like you are reinventing RAID except with more effort.
What kind of energy? If you mean utility-scale electrical energy, traditionally it's much easier to store the energy as unused fuel, which just sits there in a simple tank or pile on the ground, very cheap and low tech. For hydroelectric, you store the energy as water behind the dam. Once you build the dam, the ability to buffer energy production comes for free. Same idea for transportation that uses combustion, which is almost all of it: you store the extra energy as uncombusted fuel, which just sits in a tank, easy peasy.
You only really have a need to store energy if you are using an energy production method that has no economical way to store its "fuel," e.g. fission plants, windmills, or solar. You can in principle store fissionable uranium on site, but the design of almost all nukes doesn't allow modifying the output by increasing or decreasing the fuel load, so traditionally you just run nukes full bore all the time and use them for baseload (what power you need all the time anyway). With windmills and solar panels you're kind of inherently screwed because the "fuel" (wind or sunlight) is impossible to store, and the output is far less predictable than a nuke, so you need to figure out some way to store the generated electricity instead if you need to buffer production.
But this has only very recently been seen as an issue, because only very recently has anybody thought of trying to use so much wind and solar power that the buffering can't be done by the remaining generating capacity.
In the Sierra Nevada mountains there are coupled reservoirs that are used to store energy. When electrical energy is needed, water from a high elevation reservoir flows down hill to a lower elevation reservoir, passing through turbines to generate electricity. When there is excess electrical capacity, the process is reversed, storing the energy as gravitational potential energy in the upper reservoir.
At one time this was the only practical method for storing energy on a large scale. That may still be true, my information is at least 30 years old. At that time I was told efficiencies of 70% were achieved.
Because articles often talk about the sexy benefits of new things and ignore the costs which lead us to not do them.
For flywheels those are material science constraints, bad/dangerous failure modes, and relatively crappy discharge duration. Plus they are complicated and require maintenance.
Flywheels are particularly subject to this phenomenon because it's the sort of thing that journalists love to write about.
Flywheels are simple enough for both the journalist and the reader to be able to understand, and "huge important new scientific advance is something that you probably could have thought of yourself, scientists are stupid" is exactly the kind of thing that readers love to click on.
Why don't investors in the stock market just place a large number of low-downside, exponentially high-upside bets? This is famously how venture capital works- VC firms invest in a large number of startups, most of whom fail and so the investment goes to zero. Their returns are made by a small number of very large wins- an early investment in Google, Facebook, Uber, etc. A few years ago I saw a document floating around showing that very early Snapchat investors made a 15,000X return. (Fun fact, Jeff Bezos was an early Google investor after hearing a pitch from Larry & Sergey, and even if Amazon had somehow failed Bezos would still be a billionaire just based on that investment alone. Another fun fact, Bezos' parents' $200kish investment in Amazon is considered by some to have the single highest documented return of any known investment in world history).
If it works for startups- shouldn't it work for equities as well? Make a large number of bets with the potential for extremely high gain (I'm thinking here of Soros shorting the pound), accepting that the large majority of them will fail. If I'm not mistaken Nassim Taleb advocates for something like this in one of his books. Is this a viable investment strategy for someone willing to accept a lot of risk? If not, how are equities different from VC investments in startups?
"investors" when it comes to public markets are not one type of thing. There are many different types of investors all getting paid to accomplish different things.
One of the *least* common things is make as much money as possible. Thats because this is generally very risky and people who have enough money to give to a large investment firm, don't want to lose their money. Most investment firms are set up to make money in a specific way so that their clients can balance their own portfolios as they wish.
Additionally, while the winning investments by VCs will earn 15,000x (or what ever large number you want), they also lose their whole investment almost every time! So on average they make returns that are only just above the broader market.
People that do what you are suggesting are usually unsophisticated investors who lose their money OR very small firms who can exploit limited opportunities for large gains but can't do this for very long.
Taleb also talks about the stress this kind of investment strategy causes. Watching your portfolio go down year after year in the hopes that soon you'll make up for it with the next Amazon isn't great for your mental health. Also, I think he only recommends doing this with 10% of your investments, and putting the other 90% into very safe stuff.
And did Bezos invest after Google went public, or did he invest before it did? Big investors and VCs have opportunities that the rest of us don't.
So, for the average investor, I'd say any exponentially high-upside bet have a high downside as well. You aren't getting the same returns as Thiel did on his Facebook investment since you can't invest as early as he did. So to make lots and lots of money might require a decent percent of your investment money, and it could get wiped out if the company goes bust.
The market is reasonably efficient with how it prices risk. You can buy equities for small, risky companies, if you want to emulate the VC model. You might get double the returns as large, safe stocks, but you might be taking double the risk.
If you want higher returns for the same risk, there's usually some other tradeoff you need to make, such as low liquidity. Indeed, VC investments are not liquid.
I think specifically what nifty is describing would be something like a "moonshot index fund", one that specifically targets companies that are risky but have a small chance to make it huge.
There’s not as much upside with public companies in general, so you can’t make up for lots of losses with a few wins. Lots of investors talk about the importance of avoiding losses as much as making gains.
I think there's a lot of upside. Monster Energy has returned I think 250,000X since the 90s. A number of other companies have returned over 100kX in a similar time frame, including tobacco companies. Also, you can always juice your returns with leverage- a certain amount as a retail investor, and quite a bit more as a pro
If you're using leverage, the argument that you're placing bets with little downside risk no longer works. You now have the possibility that an individual stock position will be worth a negative amount.
I think the general advice is sound in terms of, "buy lots of things and hope the average works out positive" but it's hard to find something that goes up like Bitcoin did.
Everyone wants to have bought $100 of Bitcoin ten years ago, but chasing that dragon isn't getting most people very far.
I looked it up and Monster Energy seems to be up by 600X since its IPO, not 250,000X.
That's still very good, but it's a big difference.
There's about three thousand non-trivially sized publically traded companies in the US. If you bought them all and the best of them went up by 250,000x then you'd make more than enough to offset whatever other losses you might have. But if the best-performing of your three thousand one only goes up by 600x then you might still be in the red overall.
Investopedia claims that Monster has returned 87,560X over the last 27 years. (1) US News & World Report claims 260,061X. (2) I am no expert and make no claims either way
My experiment with GPT-3:
But one elder approached Jezuboad, and sought not the simple answer. And given his works in the philosophy of nature, none dared stop him. And he questioned Jezuboad once again "What did the angel speak to thou? Why can you not give us more details? These will be passed on to our children and their children onward. How do we combine heavenly ritual with nature and reason?" 16) And Jezuboad answered, “The angel told me that the Lord is the source of all understanding and that only by seeking Him out and asking for guidance can we truly understand. He said that the scriptures are like a puzzle, and only by piecing together the parts can we find the whole. He said that nature is a reflection of the Lord’s will, and that by studying it we can come to better understand the divine. He said that reason is a gift from the Lord, and that by combining it with faith we can discern truth from falsehood. He said that, ultimately, all of these elements must be combined to gain a true understanding of the Lord’s will.” 17) And the elder nodded, and said “Thank you, Jezuboad. You have enlightened us all.”
Wrote about the Sapient Paradox and Julian Jaynes's bicameral minds. I think his theory works if the date is pushed back. "Consciousness, taken seriously, would have extraordinary ramifications. We would see a phase change in creativity, planning, and searching for meaning."
https://vectors.substack.com/p/the-eve-theory-of-consciousness
Does anyone have any off-the-beaten-path suggestions about headache prevention for women? Things beyond "get good sleep" and "keep stress down"?
Could you be more specific about the type of headache? Migraine, cluster headache, etc.?
Not quite sure -- asking for a friend. I don't think they're typically migraine levels, but they are still disruptive and painful and frequent. Definitely not cluster though (which I didn't know existed but sounds incredibly brutal).
Headaches this frequently will ahve a specific cause that needs to be addressed. Unless she's living a particularly unhealthy lifestyle, they aren't a thing that should be happening frequently.
Obviously it makes sense to see a doctor to try to investigate various potential causes and / or neurologist in particular.
Migraines are characterized not just by intensity, but by a number of other symptoms (e.g. aura - although not all migraine's include aura). In some cases, migraines can produce just moderate pain. It would probably make sense to see a neurologist if possible to help determine the nature of the headaches.
Most of the following will relate to migraine, with some discussion of other types of headaches.
If the issue is migraines, a game changing class of drugs called CGRP inhibitors recently came to the market for the prevention of migraines, starting with Aimovig in 2018.
Most (Aimovig, Ajovy, Emgality) are monthly injections, while Vyepti is administered every 3 months intravenously.
However, some (Nurtec, Qulipta) are taken as pills.
Many other drugs have been used to prevent migraine (e.g. Verapamil, Amitriptyline, Propranolol), but none of these were specifically designed for migraine.
In addition to use for the *prevention* of migraine, one CGRP drug (the aforementioned Nurtec pill) is also approved for the *treatment* of migraine.
Other older options for treating migraine include Triptans (e.g. Supatriptan), and Tylenol w/ Codeine.
As far as cluster headaches, Emgality is also approved for prevention of cluster headaches.
For prevention of migraine, some studies (e.g. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/15257686/) found that a high dose of 400 mg of Riboflavin (aka Vitamin B-2) decreased the frequency of migraine.
The evidence from these studies is not so strong, but since there are few, if any side effects of this dose of Riboflavin, this is recommended for the prevention of migraine (https://ods.od.nih.gov/factsheets/Riboflavin-HealthProfessional/)
The evidence for migraine prevention seems stronger for another supplement – magnesium. On the basis of these studies 400 – 600 mg of magnesium (generally magnesium oxide, but studies have been done with other forms of magnesium, like magnesium glycinate) is often recommended (https://americanmigrainefoundation.org/resource-library/magnesium/).
Large doses of magnesium can cause an upset stomach diarrhea (some forms cause this more than others).
There is also some evidence for CoQ10 reducing the frequency of migraine, and 300 mg a day is recommended (https://americanheadachesociety.org/news/incorporating-nutraceuticals-for-migraine-prevention/).
There is also evidence for 3 mg of melatonin preventing migraine (https://jnnp.bmj.com/content/87/10/1127.long). [Melatonin was also reported to be helpful in preventing “primary stabbing headache,” which is an intense headache lasting just several seconds.]
As far as other types of headache such as tension headaches, one drug that is used to prevent tension type headaches is Amitriptyline.
Common advice like staying hydrated is worth repeating, as dehydration does cause migraine.
It can also be useful to keep a food diary to try to track potential triggers. Caffeine can be one such trigger.
Great information - thank you!
I'd like to mention that tension headaches do go away with the right kind of exercise or physical therapy, no medications required.
This is a very good summary.
One thing to note is that a frequent cause of headaches is so-called Medication Overuse Headache - frequent use of even Tylenol (or any analgesic or triptan) can predispose to more headaches.
For infrequent headaches, a generic triptan (Maxalt/rizatriptan is best) plus an NSAID works well as a treatment for most.
The CGRPs are game changers, but expect insurance pushback.
To people who take ADHD meds: how do you track if they are working for you in any sort of objective or quantified manner?
I've been diagnosed a few months ago, been on Concerta, Ritalin and Vyvanse, can't figure out if there's a positive effect, nothing at all, or do they make things worse.
I certainly feel none of these "is this how it's like to be normal" feelings I get from ADHD subreddit memes, but I'd like to know if there's some obvious parameter I can track that the meds are supposed to help with. Then I'll see if the parameter changes when I go off meds.
(Yes, I know the irony in trying to track something regularly while on ADHD. I used to track money, weight and partners on Google sheets but dropped all of them)
My first thought would be to take a bunch of short term memory tests off meds and then take a bunch on them.
Yes. This. I do the NYT Mini crossword daily, typically in AM, after coffee and Adzenys 3.1 (you're not supposed to feel it, says my doc, just feel better). With that regular routine, I get the puzzle in under a minute and if I've been exercising regularly over the previous few days, I can get it under 30 secs. However, on a lazy Sunday afternoon at 4 pm, (skipped my meds that day) lounging on a pool float with no alcohol in my system or in site, it took me over 4 mins. It's definitely a small sample but it absolutely demonstrates the difference, for me, with meds and without.
YouTube keeps suggesting me videos with pro-Russian propaganda, but the one today was especially dumb. A "radically independent news" channel interviewing a former American military expert a month ago. He keeps repeating that Ukraine is never going to capture Kherson, it's just a fantasy; Russians are not even trying to fight hard, because they are trying to save Russian lives, and yet they keep winning; and if Ukraine gives up, Russia will help them rebuilt and live in prosperity, but if they insist on fighting, they will be utterly destroyed as a nation and they deserve it... (Meanwhile, in the parallel universe where I live, Russians have already lost Kherson, and the number of their dead soldiers is approaching 100 000.)
If we had a prediction market, instead of complaining online I would be busy making my first million dollars placing easy bets against the author and half of his comment section.
(not going to make a hyperlink, but v=JCR-Phtgx0k)
Do you consider it propaganda when Ukraine overstates Russian losses? When Zelesnky says that Russia is about to nuke Ukraine?
Retracting my previous answer, because I have accepted your premise without checking it. Took me some time to remember the context of the nukes...
So, if my memory serves me well, the original Russian excuse for invasion was that Ukraine is ruled by Nazis. In the light of Zelensky being Jewish, Russians specified that by Nazis they actually meant the Azov Regiment.
Then Russians conquered Mariupol, and most members of Azov Regiment were either killed or captured there. On one hand this was a huge symbolic victory; on the other hand it kinda removed the pretext of further occupying Ukraine.
So the next move of Russian propaganda was "actually, Ukraine was developing biological weapons", and basically every time they bombed a pharmacy they posted "evidence" that some unholy research was probably going on there.
Then at some moment (I think it was when Ukraine was going to take back some major city, I do not remember which one), Russian propaganda started talking about Ukraine having a "dirty bomb", which they predicted is going to accidentally explode after the city is conquered by Ukraine. Zelensky cried that it means that the Russians are going to drop a nuke, and are already making excuses in advance. (Sounds possibly plausible to me. Or maybe that was just more empty talking on the side of Russia. Hard to say, given all kind of shit Russia says.)
Then NATO said "no nukes; if something explodes in Ukraine we are not going to listen to any bullshit, it is obvious it would be Russia, so we will bomb Moscow in turn". Russia started whining how that is unfair. Then China said "hey, we mostly ignore your petty squabbles, but our glorious leader Xi also says: no nukes". Then Russia finally shut up about nukes. Yes, Zelensky continued to milk this topic for a while.
Russia then decided that the war in Ukraine has actually always been a spiritual war between God-and-Putin-fearing Orthodox Christians on one side, and Satan-worshiping Catholics on the other side. (Ignoring the fact that most Ukrainians are also Orthodox. Ignoring the previous claim that the war is actually against NATO.) And about at that time I stopped paying attention to what Russia says, so I don't know what is the current explanation of the war.
So, back to your question...
I agree that Zelensky was talking about the nukes longer than it was necessary. But please remember that Russia started first. So we would have *two* failed predictions about nukes.
About the losses, I have zero military experience, so I have no idea what numbers are plausible for the conflict of this size. But I think it is safe to assume that each side is downplaying their own losses and exaggerating the enemy losses. So yes, I consider both number propaganda, probably multiplied by two, dunno.
Obviously that is Russian propaganda. But it should be noted that Ukrainian claimed casualty figures are similarly inaccurate. For example, even regarding their own casualties, which they ought to know with much greater certainty than Russian figures, Ukraine claimed they had 10,000 killed in early June, and only about 9,000 killed in late August.
Their claims about Russian casualties are similarly dubious. For example, in the first days after the most recent invasion, Ukraine claimed to have downed multiple Russian Ilyushin Il-76 planes, including one with paratroopers, but these supposed downed planes never materialized.
A US estimate from early November is 40,000 Russians killed.
EDIT: I misremembered the source in question - see comments below. The (US) source in question spoke of well over 100k Russian casualties, which would be consistent with 40k killed, but does not state that explicitly. It would not be consistent with Ukraine's claimed 90k.
Where are you seeing that number? The ones I've seen are all about 100K on each side (https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-63580372 for example).
That article says 100k casualties on each side - not 100k killed. Casualties included wounded soldiers as well.
Looking it up, though, I see that I too misread something (specifically, this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2022_Russian_invasion_of_Ukraine#Casualties) which lists an estimate of 40k Ukrainian civilians - not Russian soldiers.
As far as Russian soldiers, the US general cited said "well over 100k Russian casualties." If that is, e.g. 120k, and if the ratio of killed to wounded is 1:2, that would be 40k killed.
If the number of Russian casualties is 110k, and the ratio is 1:3, that would be <30k. [Note that these numbers are from November 9 - almost a month ago].
Either way, the number of Russian soldiers killed is most probably well below the Ukrainian claim of 90k.
For what its worth, earlier in the war, when NATO countries listed estimates of the number of Russian solders killed, they tended to be around half of what Ukraine was claiming. Ukraine was claiming 80k around the time that the US general gave his "well over 100k Russian casualties," which would be consistent with a 40k number.
Okay, but that's not actually a reference for 40K killed. Also, I'll point out your comment uses casualties and killed interchangeably and completely ignores the Russian claim of ~6K of their own killed which seems...equally improbable.
Both the Russians and the Ukrainians are releasing figures which are clearly intended for propaganda purposes, I don't think we've got any visibility on actual numbers beyond some pretty wild guesses (e.g. the one I linked). If you have a better source, I'm interested, if you simply wish to talk about the Ukrainian numbers being propaganda, I am not.
Yes. I am trying to be clear that I misread a source, and do not actually have an explicit source for the 40k number, although it is generally consistent with the US estimate, unlike the Ukrainian claim of 90k.
I have not used the term casualty to mean anything other than "killed and wounded." However, I used the total number of casualties to estimate the total number killed.
I am ignoring the Russian numbers, since of course they are lies. In fact, independent media have identified over 9k Russians who have been killed (https://en.zona.media/article/2022/05/11/casualties_eng).
Of course, the true number is much higher than that, since they only happen to find references to the deaths of a fraction of all Russians killed.
I agree we don't have anything better than what you linked which is an estimate by a government that is neither Russia nor Ukraine. But it doesn't say that almost 100k Russian solders were killed - it says that that a total of over 100k were killed and wounded.
Then we're in agreement on the available information. Have a nice day.
In a real sword fight, if two men hit their sword blades against each other multiple times, like in a Star Wars lightsaber battle, don't the blades get so deeply deformed and chipped that they have to be thrown away after the fight is over?
I had a sword in college, and did quite a bit of banging it edge to edge against other swords. So the edge got pretty banged up. It didn't look good, and probably wouldn't cut as well as it would have without the damage, but there was never any hint of it deforming or breaking and it remains something that you really wouldn't want to get hit by. And this thing was really crappy quality steel; it never managed to damage the *other* sword.
Years ago I read about an archeological study of dings and scratches on swords; the study found that sword-to-sword contact was edge-to-edge about half the time, and the rest was edge-to-flat (which sword manuals recommended in order to protect the edge).
Also, fictional swordfights tend to be unrealistically long; like John Schilling said, real fights had less sword-to-sword contact and more sword-to-flesh contact, compared to stage fighting.
It depends on what shapes the swords are, what kind of steels are used, and how hard/at what angle they are hit. But yes, generally hitting swords against each other like you are in movies is pretty bad for the edges. The cutting edge would certainly be very chipped and the blades would likely need to be bent back into shape. Hard steels might break or shatter.
In a real sword fight, there will be very little sword-chipping because almost certainly at least *one* of the combatants will realize that if instead of hitting his sword blade against the other guy's sword blade, he hits his sword blade against the other guy's *head*, the fight will be over very quickly and he will win.
Swinging a (fake, dull) cutting sword against another such blade is a fine thing to do if you're making a movie, because it looks cool on camera and is much less likely to accidentally kill or maim one of your fellow performers. Approximately nobody who had ever been in an actual sword fight, thought it was a good idea in that context. People with thrusting swords, whether a sharp rapier or a blunted fencing foil, will frequently use them to parry attacks, but that's pushing the opposing blade aside rather than swinging at it to hit the blade edge - and there's nothing to chip because those swords usually don't have edges.
If you find yourself facing an enemy with a cutting sword and you need to stop his blows from killing you, you either wear armor that will make you nigh-impervious to cutting swords (mail will do), or you use a *shield*. Which, yeah, you might have to throw away after the fight, but shields are cheap and expendable.
"The Dark Side of the Moon" is a cheesy science fiction movie released in 1990 but set in 2022. As silly as it was, the movie depicted many aspects of the present day accurately.
https://www.militantfuturist.com/review-dark-side-of-the-moon/
There isn't a railroad connecting the Lower 48 to Alaska. In fact, Canada's railroads don't even connect to Alaska's--the farthest north the trains in Canada go is about halfway up British Columbia.
Let's say Warren Buffett offers to fix this problem by paying for a new railroad that will link Alaska's railroads to British Columbia's, allowing trains to travel from the Lower 48 to Alaska.
1) Does the terrain even allow for such a railroad line to be built? Maybe it hasn't been built because the area is too rugged.
2) Would the railroad line be profitable? Would there be enough rail traffic on it to pay for its upkeep? Maybe very little moves in and out of Alaska.
There was discussion of doing that in WWII, when there were serious concerns that the Japanese would make the sea route non-viable. Instead, they decided to build the Alaska Highway, which provided a link for trucks. Didn't end up doing all that much, but it exists. Really doubt the economics make any sense today.
People-wise, there's really only Anchorage.
https://www.alaska-demographics.com/cities_by_population
New resource access-wise, you're tangling with the Roadless Rule.
https://eelp.law.harvard.edu/2020/05/alaska-roadless-rule/
A great deal moves in and out of Alaska, particularly coal, oil, and minerals. But, as cheap as rail travel is, travel by sea is cheaper and always has been. Since most of the populated/productive regions of Alaska are coastal and the geography provides for numerous good natural harbors, and since most of the populated/productive parts of the interior are connected to those harbors by existing intrastate rail lines, and since there's another good natural harbor (with rail connections) right up at the northwest tip of the Lower 48, there doesn't seem much point in building what would be an anomalously expensive railroad across particularly rugged terrain to link the two.
Once upon a time, there would have been. Trains, while more expensive than ships per ton-km, are quite a bit faster. People and some perishable cargo care about that. Trains are more likely to be able to transport their cargo directly from its origin to its ultimate destination without having to unload, repack, and reload everything twice. So it's sometimes worth the extra price to run a train, even along a coast between good natural harbors. It just doesn't seem to have offered *enough* of an advantage to pay for such a project when it mattered.
Now, everyone and everything in any sort of a hurry, travels by air. So that advantage of rail is gone. And the invention of intermodal shipping containers (and specialized bulk-cargo capabilities with very efficient loading and unloading), means that mode-switching isn't nearly as much of an advantage as it used to be and it probably won't pay to build an Anchorage-to-Seattle rail line just to replace a bunch of cranes and crane operators at a container port.
Anyone have any views on this in relation to this "is Jhana actually real" debate?
https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2022/11/solve-for-the-equilibrium-14.html#comments
Packing for an ambulance ride to a local hospital, I grabbed a new copy of ‘The Oppermanns’, Lion Feuchtwanger’s novel of Germany in 1933 (9781946022332) and threw it in my travel bag. I had just started it, and thought it might be good to have some reading along if I had the focus to read. I’ve had pancreatitis for seven years, and am a retired librarian and researcher who likes to read a good book each time he thinks he’s dying. My library has doubled.
‘The Oppermanns’ was originally published in Amsterdam, also in 1933, and was dictated — not written — by the German-Jewish screenwriter / playwright / novelist Feuchtwanger between April and October of that same year. Dictated a screenplay, I said, between April and October of 1933. In the twelve or so hours I huddled under a blanket in the emergency room lobby, I read the first three hundred pages. Morphine helped me focus. Feuchtwanger distracted me nearly as much from both the pain and the cosmic dysphoria and, possibly, death or its simulacrum closing in. Is ‘The Oppermans’ a film or a novel? Dystopia or fantasy? Is it about caste or politics?
It is. And it’s true.
The narrative seems clumsy and dense at first. If you start the book as a novel, Feuchtwanger doesn’t dance along like John Grisham, Anne Tyler, Doctorow, Erdrich, etc., but in time the dictated screenplay somehow emerges and steadies and clarifies itself, sort of gets down to business and hard data, and scene after dystopian scene unfolds in netherworld of caste hatred and terror. It’s easy to slip into a somnolent acceptance of the violence, and chide the speaker for rather overdoing it. (What is this? Quentin Tarantino fan fiction in a time shift to the 1930s?) If Hollywood should ever decide to stop pandering to vulgar ideologues, I recommend Feuchtwanger’s dictated script. Overpaid social engineering propagandists should jump out of the daisy chain and study it. Study it as if pop culture actually had a brain and at least some ashes of character left, instead of stoking the fire.
Although I don’t know if I ever saw or met Feuchtwanger, who settled in my home town of Pacific Palisades, I may have raced past his home on my red Schwinn with the other ten-year-old gangsters in the Black Knights, Buddy Holly blaring on my transistor radio.
Feuchtwanger passed in 1958, God bless him. He made it (actually, both God and Feuchtwanger did, although it was sketchy for a time). I can’t really explain the book, but would like to quote:
‘It was not the individual crimes that had so deeply disturbed him, it was the fact that they remained unpunished. He was a German to the core, he was a member of the Steel Helmet Association, but he was also a jurist to the core. That there were brutal people of poor judgment to be found in a nation comprising sixty-five million human beings, he could very easily understand. But the barbarism and criminality of the caveman should be proclaimed as the normal temper of the nation and should be written into the laws of the country, that was what made him ashamed to be a German. The cold-blooded pogroms that were undertaken against workers and [p. 260] Jews, the anthropological and zoological nonsense that now inspired legislation, the legalized sadism — it was all this that so incensed him.’ — pp. 259-60. I survived too.
Powell's. It took a while.
I lived in Klamath Falls for five years in the early 1980s, and actually drove a bus to Portland, but I never made it to Mecca. My shame. But maybe it's better in my imagination. They usually come through with more esoteric stuff. Must have some good staff.
I was thinking about how to make the open threads better. And I thought maybe have several categories/ headings each week... The headings would change each week as some topics dropped off and others started up. And there would always be the topic/ heading of 'other', for new stuff or whatever didn't fit in one of this weeks categories. That would help organize the discussion.
Edit: Substack duplicated my posts, so I deleted one.
Edit2: Apparently it changed both of my posts to the edited version and then deleted the duplicate. Bah.
Possibly have current events open threads and everything else open threads. I don't remember why the culture war permitted/no culture war distinction broke down. Current events is a little different than culture war, if that matters.
I think fewer open threads would make them better. 1 a month maybe. It would give them more longevity.
I worry about the performance of Substack's comments. I quickly skimmed the recent archives of a few other popular substacks, and didn't see anything that broke 1100 comments (TK News had one that broke 1000). Most were in the low hundreds. But we got up past 1600 a few weeks ago. Given two weeks, I expect we'd break 2000.
Hmm IDK, if there is some substack limit, take the open thread somewhere else... The most important thing about comments here is that Scott moderates them. If they get too big there is not enough Scott.!
We need 50 Scotts!
Yeah that might be better too? (Or just one open thread...?) Some headings to post under or even a title for a thread, would help. I notice that I can collapse threads and then come back (the next day) to an open thread and find the same threads still collapsed... that helps.
Is anyone particularly well acquainted with mythology? I am looking to read a number of things, and so far I have gotten good suggestions from posters here when I've asked for things like this. I am looking for suggestions for translations/adaptions of the following:
The Matter of Britain - I have tried reading Mallory in Middle English and found it a little hard to enjoy. I know that Arthurian legend is very extensive, so it's hard to narrow down what is a good starting point
Irish mythology - I've seen very little discussion of good texts for this. I'm particularly interested in the Mythological and Ulster cycles.
Norse mythology - the poetic and prose Eddas mainly. I have been informed that starting with Neil Gaiman's book is an accessible way to get a baseline before reading the translations, would people agree with that?
Any advice is appreciated. Thanks.
https://sassafrass.bandcamp.com/album/sundown-whispers-of-ragnarok
Better link than the one I first posted.
Opera about Norse Mythology by Ada Palmer (the author of Terra Ignota)
Maybe not a terribly original suggestion, but I love Bullfinch's Mythology. It covers the Matters of Rome, Britain, and France, not only telling the stories in a compelling way but also integrating passages of poetry and literature that reference those stories so you can understand how their themes have been referenced and interpreted. It's definitely not the most scholarly work, but it's perfectly suited my desire just to read those stories for fun.
On Irish mythology, I've enjoyed Thomas Kinsella's translation of the Táin.
In general, I also really enjoy the the Myths and Legends Podcast, which has lots of episodes on Irish (https://www.mythpodcast.com/tag/irish-legends/), Norse (https://www.mythpodcast.com/tag/norse/), and Arthurian (https://www.mythpodcast.com/tag/king-arthur/) legends.
Britain: Maybe try to find a version of Mallory that modernizes the spelling and punctuation? There's one by Michael Senior, who did that but also trimmed out a lot of tournament blow-by-blows, and some side adventures, and some of the racy stuff, and got it down to about half-size. You can probably find a version like that which doesn't do any abridging at all, but if you're just starting out, half-size might be about right? Also, John Steinbeck left an unfinished version when he died: "The Acts of King Arthur and His Noble Knights". There's some wonderful stuff in there.
Norse: Yeah, I enjoyed Neil Gaiman's adaptaion. Also, there's a filk adaptation called "Sundown: Whispers of Ragnarok" composed by Ada Palmer, which I think does a good job of highlighting some of the recurring themes:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LLY9WGb6EH4&list=OLAK5uy_kAroIXTNJnQ3uMTDtLWcO4dHJm4GyEUXQ
Get an edition of the Eddas with lots and lots of footnotes. They're very hard to understand without context.
It's not the mythology itself, but I really enjoyed Children of Ash by Neil Price, a history of the viking age that goes over a lot of really interesting recent archaeology, and gives a really good backdrop to the mythology; like, what did the people who used them think these stories were?
T H White's "The Once and Future King" is an adaptation of the Arthurian legend that does a great job of capturing the way the garbled overlay of different stories and tropes have half-blended in the popular consciousness. Partly aimed at children, but partly very much not.
I enjoyed Tennyson's Idyll's of the King, but they're very much inspired by the myths rather than conveying them.
Calloo callay, Tim O'Neill has a new post up! We've been discussing Catholicism, Mormonism, etc. a lot further down in the thread, and of course a lot of this involves discussion of history and primary sources and what we can and can't know about the past.
So for your delectation, How History Is Done:
https://historyforatheists.com/2022/11/how-history-is-done/
"For over seven years now I have used History for Atheists to debunk bad historical arguments, historical myths, pseudo history and fringe historical claims used by many of my fellow atheists. Long before I began this site and its attendant video channel and podcast, I have found myself debunking bad history and fringe claims used by ideologues of various stripes: Christians, Muslims, nationalists, fascists, socialists, New Agers and contrarians. After well over three decades of this (admittedly rather odd) pastime, I have come to understand that while a fixed ideology is often the reason these people argue for these bad ideas, the reason many of them come to accept these myths and nonsense in the first place is a fundamental misunderstanding of historiography. Essentially, they do not understand how history is done, so they cannot recognise bad historical claims.
...I have often found that this confusion about how the study of history works can stem from a fundamental misunderstanding of how history as a discipline differs from the hard sciences. After all many people (though certainly not all) come to an atheistic position from their study of science. Science seems very certain compared to history. You can make hypotheses and test them in science – or at least you can in the hard sciences. You can actually prove things, as far as anything is provable. Scientific propositions are, by definition, falsifiable. If I claim light travels in a vacuum at 299,792,458 metres per second, someone can potentially come along and show, empirically, that I’m wrong. Compared to this kind of science, history can seem like so much hand-waving, where anyone can pretty much argue anything they like and all claims are equally valid. So when some atheists say “you can’t PROVE Jesus existed” they often think this means the claim he didn’t exist is somehow equivalent to the claim he did and that there is no way to determine which is more likely than the other. In its more extreme naïve form, this misconception can lead to atheists who seem to think that no valid claims about the past can be made at all and that the whole enterprise of history is worthless and can simply be dismissed.
In fact, history is very much a rigorous academic discipline, which has its own rules and methodology much as the hard sciences do. This does not mean it IS a science. It is sometimes referred to as one, especially in Europe, but this is only in the broader sense of the word; as in “a systematic way of ordering and analysing knowledge”. But before looking at how the historical method works, it might be useful to look at how the sciences differ from it.
The hard sciences are founded on the principle of probabilistic induction. A scientist uses an inductive or “bottom up” approach to work from observing specific particulars (“mice injected with this drug put on less fat”) to general propositions (“the drug is reducing their appetite”). These propositions are falsifiable via empirical testing to rule out other explanations of the particulars (“the drug is increasing their metabolism” or “those mice are more stressed by being stuck with syringes”) and so can be tested.
This is all possible in the hard sciences because of some well-established laws of cause and effect that form a basis for this kind of induction. If something is affecting the mice in my examples above today, it will affect them in the same way tomorrow, all things being equal. Done properly, this allows a scientist to work from induction to make an assessment of probable causation via empirical assessment and do so with a high degree of confidence. And their assessment can be confirmed by others because the empirical measures are controlled and repeatable.
Unfortunately, none of this works for the study of the past. Events, large and small, occur and then are gone. A historian can only assess information about them from traces they may, if we are lucky, leave behind. But unlike a researcher from the hard sciences, a historian cannot run the fall of the Western Roman Empire through a series of controlled lab experiments. They cannot even observe the events, as a zoologist might observe the behaviour of a gorilla band, and draw conclusions. And there are no well-defined laws and principles at work (apart from in a very broad and subjective sense) that allow our historian to, say, accurately measure or even postulate the effects of the rise of the printing press or decide on the exact course of the downfall of Napoleon in the way a theoretical physicist can with the composition of a distant galaxy or the formation of a long dead star."
I agree in general - but there are "subplots" in history that very much are experimentally testable - there's a whole subfield of experimental archaeology, for example. For example, if you wonder whether a pre-modern American civilisation could have reached Polynesia by raft, or flown some kind of hot air balloon over the Nazca plain, you can try and build one and try it out - of course this doesn't prove whether they did or didn't, but it adds a lot to the discussion of whether they could have.
Great read. His discussion of the flat earth myth that he links to (https://historyforatheists.com/2016/06/the-great-myths-1-the-medieval-flat-earth/) is also pure gold.
Now to figure out how to get those who need to read this to do so...
Hmm, I'm not sure getting history 'right' is going to make that much difference. We all are sorta looking for confirmation of what we already think. Stories that fit our own view of the world.
History (Archeology, history of life) is as much a science as astronomy. Just because the way you do 'experiments' is by looking at different places/ times... (double negatives get confusing).. anyway it's still a science, (there is good and bad science in every field of study.) It's weird you mention astronomy at the end, cause we can't run the universe over again, and see what happens, but have to figure things out by looking back in time, (at distant galaxies and such.)
For a start, if someone is going to confidently proclaim that "X is on the right side of history" or "Y is on the wrong side of history" (as we had in a recent thread), then it behooves them to know if history has sides in the first place, and if it makes any sense to talk of 'right' and 'wrong' sides.
There's a ton of bad history, fake history, and plain ignorance out there. People relying on third- and fourth-hand versions of events, which they then go on to quote as "the real facts". Pop culture versions (O'Neill has a go at the Columbus notion, for one) that aren't anything more than legends or media clickbait of their day, but get passed around as 'this is what really happened'. An instance from someone here about a cookery website claiming the Catholic Church banned forks, which turned out to be part of a much broader condemnation of what was perceived as excessive luxury on the part of a Byzantine noblewoman by a cleric writing after her death. That's just a silly little funny anecdote and doesn't much harm anyone, but take the claims about "9 million witches killed during the Burning Times!" You do get people who believe that as rock-solid truth, even though it's arrant nonsense.
It may be a trite saying, but there's a lot of mileage left in it: those who don't learn from history are doomed to repeat it.
Is there evidence that knowledge of history has a protective effect?
OK and history is written by the victors. I guess I don't disagree with you, but I don't know how you get people to look deeply at their own beliefs. I've got a dear friend who home schools her kids because she thinks vaccines are too much of a risk. (We just don't talk about it.) There is then the manipulation of history... this goes on all the time, it's almost impossible to combat it. What is your view of history if you live in China today? But please don't stop tilting at the windmills, you have such beautiful style up there on your charger Rocinante. (I had to look up the horses name.)
I'm mischievously[1] reminded of the entire "Foundation" arc by Asimov, which of course was based on the intriguing proposition of "psychohistory," the idea that while people as individuals are inherently unpredictable (free will et cetera), people in very large masses *are* predictable, in a statistical sense. (Asimov had in mind something like the laws of thermodynamics, which are meaningless when applied to tiny systems but rigorous when applied to very large systems.)
That is, if you believed in psychohistory, you'd say the Fall of Rome was absolutely predictable, even if who succeeded Marcus Aurelius was not, and moreover it should be possible to design an intervention to be applied in AD 200 that would prevent it with a high degree of confidence.
Of course, Asimov skirted the issue of how you would prove the theorems of psychohistory even if you developed them. Seems like it would require a controlled and repeatable experimental history, alas...
-------------------
[1] Because this is a very sensible screed.
I'm convinced by Taleb's claim that people become less predictable as they become more numerous. (Somewhere in his book a aphorisms.)
The more people, the more likely invention becomes-- maybe not in a given time period, but they're going to come up with something.
Does anyone have a contrarian (i.e. conservative, anti-labor) take on the rail strike situation?
The story as I understand it (mostly from reading Twitter leftists) is that the "tentative agreement" reached before the midterms only grants workers 1 day of paid sick leave per year (this is what negotiators agreed to put on the table before the midterms, but I don't think anyone's agreed to it yet). From some cursory reading it seems that these workers aren't paid particularly well, even after a pay raise that's in this agreement, so I find their demands for better benefits reasonable.
Matt Yglesias, not exactly conservative anti-labor, but provides this explanation:
"Do you have take on the looming railroad strike and Biden calling on Congress to avert that by passing a bill to require the unions to accept the tentative contract?
I don’t have a super-hot take on this other than the observation that the unions themselves deprioritized sick leave over wages in their bargaining, which is one reason they ended up with a contract that doesn’t have sick leave. If you leave that context out, you’ll misunderstand the situation. When Vox workers unionized and bargained for their first contract, they chose to prioritize a generous parental leave program, which is how they ended up getting one. They probably could have gotten a slightly better deal in terms of health benefits if they’d been willing to accept less on parental leave, but what the union wanted was a strong parental leave program, so that’s what they got. The rail unions like the sick leave as a talking point, but did not prioritize it in practice in bargaining — they did get a 25 percent raise, though, which is not nothing."
But I don't have any insight to the actual negotiations to confirm that.
Pursuant to what I said previously about being careful about how the situation is portrayed versus what it is. It sound slike they on average currently get 5 weeks of vacation/holiday pay, + up to 26! weeks of 60% pay (the circumstances for which you can receive this are unclear but it does seem to be mostly about illness). It also mentions the union previously trading away "sick days" to get the 60% pay for 26 weeks benefit.
If they did have sick days before and traded them away for another benefit, that would certainly be very relevant to the situation. I'm assuming they aren't asking to trade back and drop the long term disability.
Are union members paid while off sick? I read one source that said they can currently use vacation and personal days when calling off. If so, that makes the request for *additional* days a very different scenario than the implied "they can't even take off work when sick" or that they have to take them unpaid.
How many days do they get off now? If it's 20+ days a year and they can use them while sick, that seems pretty reasonable from most people's perspectives. This link (chrome-extension://efaidnbmnnnibpcajpcglclefindmkaj/https://www.aar.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/AAR-Overview-Freight-Rail-Employee-Time-Off-Policies-Fact-Sheet.pdf) says they get an average of 25-29 days per year and that senior employees get almost 40. That sounds like a *lot* compared to most employers, and a separate request for additional days seems very unnecessary.
Conservatives aren't against paid leave or sick days (or unions negotiating for such things). We are against pro-labor union stances that demand more than is reasonable, but that's not a huge deal if the negotiations are considered fairly. We are very against the government putting their thumb on the scale in favor of union labor and increasing both the negotiating power of the unions and the cost of union labor (and often also requiring union labor for government contracts, which forces the rest of us to pay inflated rates even if private labor is ready and available).
I don't know enough about it to have an opinion. National Review has a conservative reputation; here's what they say:
https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/bernie-sanders-blocks-bill-to-avert-rail-strike/
A conservative position is not anti-labor. It just says novelty is usually dangerous. So it's "anti-labor" when the "pro-labor" position involves some kind of new social structure that is purported to carry most excellent future benefits through some long chain of theoretical reasoning.
I will say conservative at least somewhat means anti-organized-labor, because organized labor is a form of top-down social engineering by force, like government, and conservatism inherently distrusts top-down social engineering by force, arising from the same general distrust of clever theoretical solutions to complex real-world problems.
Organized labor generally wants union leadership to be able to decide contracts for *all* the workers the union represents, and it wants to represent *all* workers at least in a given shop, if not an entire industry, even if only a bare majority of the workers actually agree with that proposal. So in that case organized labor tends to want to act like a government of sorts. It wants the leaders of the union to sit around and decide what's best for the workers and then use force to get them (e.g. you can't work in this shop unless you give up your bargaining rights to union leadership). That's naturally going to rub conservatives the wrong way.
On the other hand, once a situation like that is up and running successfully, and appears to be working reasonably well, the conserative would be inclined to resist changing it in some strange novel way. For example, medical education operates like a guild or trade union, but it's been long established, and if a bunch of libertarian radicals were to suggest we should just give up licensing physicians and medical schools, having the various Colleges set boards and give out certifications, and just let the free market and insurance work it all out, it would not surprise me in the least to find conservatives forcefully opposed.
On the issue at hand, what's strange about your question is the underlying assumption that there is some level of wages and benefits which railroad workers "deserve" in some ethical sense, and one's attitude toward the potential strike should be informed by this.
To me that's strange. I have no objection to the railroad workers pressing whatever (legal) leverage they have -- like threatening to, or actually, striking -- to acquire the highest wages the market will bear. There's no ethical issue, because there's no morally good and right level of compensation for the job: the "moral' wage is whatever the people who want the service are willing to freely offer, and the people who are willing to provide the service will freely accept.
Of course, on the other hand, I have no objection to the railroads pressing whatever (legal) leverage *they* have -- like firing everybody and hiring scabs, or whipping up public disapprobation by reminding consumers Christmas is put at risk by these heartless railroad Scrooges, so fuck 'em -- to end up forking out the lowest wages the market will bear. Have at it, fellows, and may the best man win.
The fact that the Biden Administration and the railroad unions between them colluded to influence the election by delaying the labor dispute until after it is sleazy but predictable and not unusual political tactics.
Long reply, but a few points:
- I was searching for more specific critiques, not just general conservative anti-union ideas; I know those well enough. Something in the genre of "being on-call is beneficial in ways not being reported" or "their overtime pay is very high" or "they have a great pension plan" something. Things conservatives would talk about and hear through their news channels, but which might not be highlighted by liberals.
- In general there is a range of wages workers would accept (and employers would be willing to give) for a given post, and I don't think it's incoherent to deem some of those wages better or worse than others from a societal perspective.
- I am more than a normal kibitzer in this labor dispute, because Congress evidently has the authority to resolve it unilaterally and Congress, at least in some sense, represents me.
No idea but the people I know who are railroad workers are very well paid for their education and appear to have great benefits because they barely ever work. Where I grew up they are seen as VERY desirable jobs for people who don’t want it go to college.
I would always watch the framing when dealing with union negotiations. I always think back to a local teachers union. That was making huge hay about “not getting any raises for 4 years” or whatever in their platform/PR. Except I knew teachers and they had built in years of services steps of over 5%/year for basically every year and a few specific COLA increases. Which is not absolutely not a feature of more normal jobs.
So average compensation had increased something like 17% over 3 years, but the public messaging was “we have received no raises”, which was strictly speaking true, but silly.
Do you think they are lying about the sick days and stuff? Or is the argument that they get all their other benefits due to being on-call workers?
Always curious to hear specific claims from the other side.
I understand that the current approach to taking days off when they are sick is to use another type of paid day off - vacation or personal days. I don't know how many of each they get, but it seems disingenuous to imply that when they get sick they go unpaid, rather than saying that they don't get a *particular kind* of paid day off, which apparently offers no new functionality. Lots of places don't allow you to use a vacation day to get paid when you call off from work, which would make a request for days you can use when you can't give advanced notice more reasonable.
I am not sure I don’t know much about this railroad dispute. But i do know some railroad workers, and they seemingly get a lot of paid days off. Like will just take a paid day off to stay out drinking a bit later some nights pretty frivolously, which is not behavior I associate with people who have few paid days off.
Not sure if those are sick days or what, and like I said above, in the past some teachers disputes I have been familiar with have been VERY disingenuous about the framing of the dispute compared to what goes on in the private sector.
Just as an example I worked at a nonprofit years ago where we originally had 10 or 11 paid holidays, I think up to two weeks paid sick time, and then a 2-3-4 week vacation ladder at 5-10 years.
At some point due to whining about people not wanting to celebrate this or that holiday, or whatever, we converted all the holidays and sick days into 3 weeks of paid vacation and people just had “PTO”.
So the vacation ladder became 5-6-7 weeks but there were no holidays or sick days.
We then had new employees who would complain vociferously about there not being paid sick time and no paid holidays and acted like it meant the job was a 19th century hellscape. This is despite them getting 5 weeks paid vacation as new hires. We would explain the situation to them, but they didn’t care. The 5 weeks vacation was just a feature of the job and rightfully theirs, while the lack of holidays or sick time was unjust!
Honest question: are their coordination advantages to a business having set holidays?
Oh for sure. Much easier for everyone's staff at most businesses to be out on the same days, particularly if they are smaller and there are not redundancies. And much easier fo rthe business to just be closed (especially at a nonprofit) than have days where only half the staff isn't there and bunche sof stuff cannot get done.
Conservative yes, contrarian yes, anti-labor no. Sorry if this is very CW but I think that's genuinely what's being asked for.
This is your friendly reminder that, when times are good, Biden and the Dems will find hundreds of billions of dollars to give to liberal arts majors in student loan forgiveness but when times get hard they'll sell out the working class to big corporations, just like they've done for decades, just like they did to Bernie.
And while Trump is far, far from ideal, he stuck by the blue collar workers who put him in office by trying to protect American jobs and limit immigration. You may think those were good ideas or you might think they were wasteful but he didn't sell the working class out.
https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/a-modest-proposal-for-republicans
Trump absolutely sold out the working class in general. He did some perfomative stuff and talked a good game, though.
Which Trump policies specifically "sold out" working class Americans?
Workers specifically want a decent number of "unpaid" sick days per year, and a removal of the infamous "points" system for missed work. This is from rail union members from various sources, though I don't think from leadership itself?
Biden is about to shatter the Democratic coalition pretty irreperably. Still better than Trump or Cruz or w/e but not good.
Democrats piss on your leg and tell you it was raining but thank god for them Republicans shit in your mouth and say it was free chocolate.
Depending on what the lead is from the rail unions there's some chance, ~5% maybe, of an attempt anyway, of a general strike.
>Democrats piss on your leg and tell you it was raining but thank god for them Republicans shit in your mouth and say it was free chocolate.
Can we try and do a bit better than this boomer-tier crap that isn't a real argument?
It isn't an argument. It is just a fact about the parties. Hasn't got anything to do with boomers either.
Can we do better than just call stuff boomer-tier?
FYI, defending Trump is the ultimate "boomer-tier" action.
Does a rail strike make a great difference, seeing as how I've been given to understand that rail is not a method of public transportation as such, once you get away from local commuter trains, but is mainly a method of goods transportation? If you want to travel long distances in America, you fly. If you're too poor for that, you take the bus. Or if you have a car, you drive.
So while people wanting to get from A to B may not be much affected (citation needed), will it mostly affect "my shipment of widgets is stuck in Tallahassee when I need them in Wichita"?
It would make a big economic difference. A lot of stuff moves by truck now, but there is still more than enough that moves by rail for a snarl to have a significant economic impact. But if they get their wage demands, that too will have an economic impact. Basically we're in for a solid goose to inflation either way.
Generally it only affects supply chain and logistics rather than human travel. Roughly 1.7billion tons a year across 140k miles of track. It would impact human travel since they are often on the same tracks but US human traffic is substantially lower per capita than other countries, presumably even more so that our industrial traffic.
A strike now or within a couple weeks could absolutely wreck Christmas deliveries.
How does that 1.7B tons compare to what is moved by truck?
I'd read some years ago that President Eisenhower had mandated the Interstate highway network during the Cold War (c. 1954) in part over fears that communists were controlling the rail workers' unions, and that a coordinated strike would paralyze the US.
About 7x as much is moved by truck I believe.
I'm working on unpacking all the meat in "Effective Altruism As A Tower Of Assumptions". Different aspects are addressed in separate child messages:
If the goal is to demonstrate to the broader public that EA is a substantial improvement in charity, the thing to do is provide a breakdown of where the EA donations go, show that the causes funded are already-agreed-upon efforts that clearly do translate into QALYs more efficiently than traditional philanthropy. Of course, that won't impress the sort of progressives who use the phrase "systemic change" ... but really, they aren't the broader public, either, they are the leftmost slightly-less-than-10% of the political spectrum. But focusing on AI risk isn't so useful, either, as a large fraction of the public isn't convinced that it's a significant problem. Focusing on animal welfare is even worse, as likely a majority of the population thinks animal rights activism is actively harmful.
An unusual aspect of the EA movement is the interest in "existential risks". I can't tell from ACX how large a fraction of EA is wrapped up in these because e.g. donating to develop a good malaria vaccine isn't going to attract much controversy even if that is 50% of EA contributions.
But work on this sort of very long term existential risk seems to have some inherent problems when allocating one's charitable donations. As a risk becomes more distant and less like things we've dealt with before, the probability that we're "attacking the wrong problem", that we're misunderstanding how the threat will materialize, or that the solutions we devise will be negated by changed circumstances increases greatly.
There's also the increased possibility of mixed motives. If one identifies a new existential threat, it's not unreasonable to solicit money to pay one's self to study the new threat. After all, nobody else is looking at it! Less obviously, as has been said earlier in ACX, every movement is a status Ponzi scheme. Putting 10% of your income into developing a good malaria vaccine isn't going to buy you any status in the malaria-vaccine-development movement; that's been running for 50 years or more. One probably still can be one of the first few hundred people to study AI risk, or at least, one of the first few hundred publicly visible advocates of studying AI risk.
One thing that isn't clear in the post (and maybe that's because I don't get out enough) is what the actual context is. Certainly, we can examine things said and done in the EA movement relative to the foundations in a somewhat objective way. But the tenor of the post is that the writer feels personally attacked and cares enough to counterattack. I wonder whether it's a matter of "I live in a sea of progressives and there's a lot of status competition over the virtuousness of one's actions to improve the world, and progressives aren't impressed by the causes EA recommends, only by progressive political causes." But if you're guided by EA principles, there's no reason to give any weight to the opinions of people who don't subscribe to EA principles.
One distinctive feature of EA is that it sets an explicit goal of improving QALYs or something close to that. Another is that it explicitly sets all humans as equally valuable. Much philanthropy is driven by the attractiveness of particular goals to the donor, or even the donor's interest in a particular charitable organization. And much philanthropy is heavily biased toward Us relative to Them, in various senses of that distinction. So traditionally philanthropy is substantially driven by the *tastes* of the donors, while EA is (at least in principle) independent of the donor.
So assessing EA versus prosaic philanthropy is sufficiently apples-vs.-oranges that it cannot be done (quasi-)objectively. OTOH, given that EA has stated foundations, it's possible to examine particular bits of the EA movement and assess how well aligned they are with the foundations.
"Another is that it explicitly sets all humans as equally valuable."
True, when it comes to "The people who are far away are just as valuable as the people near to you, and you should donate to help them".
In practice, it can come across as "the people far away are *more* valuable than the people near to you, and only dimwits would donate to local causes". That the examples of "donating to local causes" are "giving to the local opera". I don't have a local opera, and if we had one, I wouldn't be the earning bracket that donates to the arts. So why lump me giving to the St. Vincent de Paul in with the prawn sandwich brigade? That is what is off-putting.
It gets even more off-putting when "the people far away" are now "humanity in a billion years time" or "whoever is in the local light cone". The what now, Trevor?
And it's equally possible that the tastes of individual donors will drive philanthropy in EA; let us not mention He Who Should Not Be Named, but tech billionaires in general probably have an inclination to giving towards Cool SF Type Causes like AI risk, which are more novel and interesting than "write a cheque for the local playschool or soup kitchen".
Thanks for the feedback! I'd like to slice your analysis even more finely:
It's interesting that 'That the examples of "donating to local causes" are "giving to the local opera".' as that would seem to be an obviously poor choice for a comparison (by EA principles). Support for the arts does raise the quality of life for people, but it's obviously less efficient at doing so than is preventing them from dying.
And as you point out, it gives the impression that the target audience of the message is people who are sufficiently well-off that they would commonly consider donating to the opera.
OTOH, "people who are far away are just as valuable as the people near to you" *is* the EA-correct way to look at it, but it has a bitter consequence: The efficiency of turning dollars into QALYs varies depending on the local scale of costs of the person targeted. So if you live in a high cost-of-living area (Boston and San Francisco come to mind, but really, all of the United States qualifies on a world scale), you should specifically route your money *away* from your area. (Hmmm, though this presupposes globalization -- that you can move money to any particular place in the world frictionlessly.)
Regarding "humanity in a billion years' time", one difficulty is that it's hard to tell what efforts now will have the best effects a long time hence. Consider that if one had been able to influence the development of the papacy in 600 CE, which actions would have maximized QALYs in 2000 CE?
Another aspect of long-term-ism that I haven't seen addressed is the discount rate. What increased value do we place on a benefit now compared to one a year from now? This has been a significant question when considering some climate change interventions -- If you could spend $1 trillion per year now to avert spending $100 trillion per year 100 years from now, it's not immediately clear that you want to do that.
In regard to rational philanthropy, let us look at He Who Used To Be The Richest Man In The World. IMHO he chose the EA poster children: wiping on malaria, tuberculosis, and HIV. I've seen assessments that about half the people who have ever lived have died of malaria, so the QALYs to be had there are enormous.
Something to keep in mind is that there's also an efficiency cost to spending money at distances. Some of it is wasted on trying to find or create the channels to implement the spending (which can also mean bribes). Some of it is lost to extra waste due to lower oversight. Some of it is lost to poor planning due to a lack of understanding about local conditions.
I've heard some people (not necessarily EA or only EA) that complain about local 1st World problems being very expensive but also being very unsure if more money would even fix the problem. SF homelessness being a prime example. I would ask a follow-up question - do we consider problems in 3rd world countries more solvable because they really are more solvable, or because we are at such a distance that we can't see the problems of implementation that might make us reconsider if we really understood the situation?
It seems extremely likely to me that corrupt local leaders in African countries, to name an example, probably take up a lot more of charitable contributions than EA or charities consider. If 50% (made up number, don't consider the specific an argument but my real feeling is that it's in that neighborhood and can be higher or lower without changing the argument) of the money gets stolen by a local warlord or corrupt politician, that changes the math on efficiency significantly.
So, trying to open a can of worms: It strikes me as plausible that there are all sorts of possible AI risks. And it's really hard to figure out which of them will materialize and which will not. Did anyone make decent predictions what the development of the horseless carriage would do to society? (I am sure that somebody predicted that it was an existential threat.)
But there is one one AI risk that is certain, namely automation of the work output of "Educated people [who] think that the only kind of smarts worth having is the kind they possess -- superior powers of articulation combined with deep stores of knowledge." That is, people like you and me and blog writers. I propose that the remarkable attention provided to AI risk in blogs is due to this factor.
For instance, one blogger protested that while we know how autos work, we don't know how AIs work, and that makes them dangerous. Of course, we don't know how autos work, in the sense that we can't predict from their mechanical structure their influence on society. But more to the point, "we" don't know things like that. Perhaps some highly-educated types know the internal operations of XYZ but the vast majority of humans do not. And in reality, we don't assess the safety or danger of XYZ by analyzing its internal operation; we watch what happens with XYZ in the real world.
Maybe in the end the biggest risk of AI will be "competing AI". By everyone (and bots) reacting ever more rapidly to a multitude of AI conclusions, longer-term slow deliberations will become ever harder to sustain, and the temperature, so to speak, of public discourse and affairs will be raised, and complications multiply, until nobody knows whether they are coming or going!
This would be similar to people sitting at a vast complicated control panel, of a nuclear power station for example or an airliner, when warning lights start flashing and alarms sounding all over the place. Everyone runs around like headless chickens, pressing buttons here and there, most likely making the situation worse!
It is somewhat analogous to Twitter and the like: Most sensible people don't bother engaging with the wretched thing at all. But a tiny minority of vociferous activists post incessant whinges and complaints. This would be fine if everyone else largely ignored them, but the media, ever on the lookout for dissent and controversy, magnify the effect, and politicians take a ridiculously disproportionate amount of notice and react slavishly from day to day as if Twitter is a perfect gauge of public opinion. Imagine that a hundred times worse, and there you have what I call competitive AI!
Let us not forget that Gallus gallus and Bos taurus have done extremely well over the past few millennia via their alliance with Homo sapiens, who have dilligently rerouted much of the Earth's photosynthetic output to feeding them. All they've had to do is give the majority of their offspring to Homo sapiens to *eat*. But Uncle Chuck (evolution by natural selection) doesn't care how you die.
If you're the sort who might become the director of a think tank, AI is a tremendous threat, and over the short term. But as the old saying goes, we'll automate the lawyers out of work long before we automate the janitors out of work.
I have three free subscriptions to Razib Khan's Unsupervised Learning to give away. This open thread is 2 days old with lots of existing comments, so I can't really expect many responses, but if you do want it reply with an email address to send the subscription to.
marsdragon@gmail.com
Thank you.
Sent. All 3 gifts are now used.
steinly0@me.com
I have now sent it to that email.
alexanderturok25@gmail.com
I have now sent it to that email.
Is it important to keep AI generated material out of training sets for AIs? Is it possible?
I think AI research has a huge problem with training materials. Just about the only sets large enough to use are infested with garbage data, and there's no real convenient way to separate the garbage from the good. Essentially they download a piece of the internet and train on it. As with the fanfiction writing in the other post, lots of if it garbage (poor writing, improbable/impossible solutions, etc.) that would never be good enough for the AI to produce legible and useful outcomes.
We could write prompts that are clean for an AI to review, but we end up paying humans to write millions of prompts to train an AI, which seems to me what we are trying to avoid with having the AI train on "real life" materials instead of curated.
Part of me is concerned that our attempts to use the internet for training is laziness (or cost) rather than some coherent plan that using that data is somehow optimal.
It's not that we don't have good data sets ...encyclopedias, great works of literature...it's that they waterfall that big.
OTOH, look at the bright side. The first AI to try to Take Over the World in the name of Maximum Paperclips, will use a plot worthy of a knockoff Bond villain with the clever improvement of "when capturing debonair British secret agents, kill them immediately rather than monologuing and putting them in an easily-escapable deathtrap". All the training data said that was *sure* to work.
Yep. I'm actually pretty happy that the current course of AI training is loading it up with tons of junk. It means that the AI routinely messes up stupid and obvious things, so the researchers just sit back and scratch their heads and never feel confident they can go ahead and hook these things up to the nuclear arsenal.
To me, the alternative is that the researchers explicitly program the AI with one or two-dimensional scripted training materials and end up far less versatile but far more competent at what they are designed to do, and then someone feels like they can go ahead and give the AI control over something important.
What kinds of reasonably priced things are on your holiday wishlist? I have a birthday near Christmas so my family/partner are bugging me to make a list, but I really can't think of anything I want/need. Any book recommendations are also welcome.
Thanks for the suggestions everyone! Some great ideas here
Do you drink tea? Slightly fancy loose leaf tea can be nice.
Is there fancier food you don't usually indulge in but would enjoy -- chocolate, cheese, olive oil, mustard, jams, saffron, etc?
Do you have good knives, whether to cut bread, chop veggies, or for everyday use like a pocket knife? (if you even remotely like to cook, there is a lot more in this direction -- a well made lightweight cast iron pan, for instance)
Anything you wish you had a subscription for?
Socks, mittens/gloves, a hat... almost any kind of clothes that fit. (You need to provide a size.)
A fly orb, $28. https://tinyurl.com/yk4tb8aj
Book: I enjoyed the daylights out of Michael Lewis's The Premonition
Fugetsu-Do mochi
chocolates, or other such treats
Perky Jerky, any flavor pork
salmon jerky (For example, Ivy City Smokehouse Salmon Jerky)
postcards and stamps
The Emperor of Ocean Park was an interesting mystery novel leaning heavily into complexity.
I always asked for laundry soap.
Books:
- Horror: The Hollow Places by T Kingfisher
- Hard fantasy: The Way of Kings by Brandon Sanderson
- Econ/pop science: Poor Economics by Abhijit Banerjee and Esther Duflu
Other stuff:
- Wool socks, they're great and IMO you can never have enough nice socks.
- Silicone baking liners and spatulas
- [consummable item from a hobby of yours]
Anything by T Kingfisher, or even Ursula Vernon assuming you don't mind YA.
Do people here have preferred brands for wool socks? I'm fond of Darn Tough, but I haven't done a general investigation.
Darn Tough are the best!
I can't find anything that beats Darn Tough. And they come in a huge variety of colors and patterns, some quite beautiful.
https://www.thenorthface.com/en-us/womens/womens-accessories/womens-smartwool-socks-c213451/womens-hike-light-cushion-mountain-print-crew-socks-pNF0A85K1?color=PFK
LL Bean has a whole different style of wool socks, the old-timey kind made with fat yarn, & coming in a limited range of solid colors -- red, navy, gray. Those are nice too, and I like their fatness and slight looseness, especially to wear at home with slippers. They don't work as well under boots for me, though.
I'm having trouble finding people in my area willing to cuddle. Does anyone have advice?
What area are you in?
Thousand Oaks, California
Search for cuddle party on Meetup or Facebook? There must be some of that going on in the LA area.
An apparent glitch in the PC interface resulted in my thread and resulting comments being spread across separate threads.
So here's the basic point. I make the case for what I'm calling "More Effective Altruism." It funds initiatives that, per dollar or hour invested, make the biggest difference in increasing the world's people's efficacy and happiness--what I term "Gross World Flourishing."
That, while of value in itself, is of even greater value in the long term, because it enables people to increase not just current but future Gross World Flourishing.
Here's just one example of such an initiative: Match.com-like software would match low-income kids of high intellectual ability, drive, and ethics with mentors, either paid or volunteer humans (screened and trained online. Or the "mentor" can be a mentoring/counseling app, adapted from extant ones or developed custom.
The pool of low-income gifted kids have great potential that, unlike with rich kids, is unlikely to be fully realized. Mentoring, even virtual, would help these kids get over practical and emotional roadblocks, increase motivation and, in turn, be more likely to develop preventives and cures for diseases, become wise leaders, even develop more effective and altruistic iPhones.
The focus probably should be on kids from developed nations because there are fewer external barriers to maximizing their efficacy in the world.
I benchmark this against typical EA recommendations---augmenting the health of a non-selected population in developing nations and I believe it's clear that "More Effective Altruism" would more increase Gross World Flourishing, which is what I believe is the most valuable outcome variable.
Hi Marty. The glitch is with the UI when you reply from an Email notification.
When you click "View Comment" in the email, it takes you to a page with a big "Write a Comment..." box, followed by the text of the comment you're replying to. But that is actually the box from the top of the comments section!
As a workaround, you can instead click the small grey "Reply" button in the bottom left of the page, which brings up a second "Write a Comment" box below the message.
I took some screenshots to hopefully explain better.
https://imgur.com/a/KABY6eh
Do you have additional suggestions for more effective altruism?
Just finding the kids sounds like a project in itself.
Communication would also be a challenge. Making sure the kids are connected can be a problem. Or could mentoring by snail mail work if necessary?
This was pretty much how Grammar Schools worked in Great Britain. Bright kids from poor homes were selected at age 11 for a more academically rigorous education.
They were extremely effective at getting disadvantaged children into university and the professional classes.
They were largely destroyed by a left-wing government in the 1960's and very few now remain. Those that are left are essentially besieged by parents trying to get their offspring into them.
This is a proven model that could be reproduced at a city, county, state, and finally national level.
Grammar schools did not select from poor homes in the sense of excluding rich ones. They selected on the basis of test ing, and kids from wealthier homes tended to do better in the tests. The very wealthy opted for private education, so the grammar schools ended up mostly middle class.
>>This was pretty much how Grammar Schools worked in Great Britain. Bright kids from poor homes were selected at age 11 for a more academically rigorous education.
Mostly, kids from rich homes were selected for a more academically rigorous education, and kids from poor homes mostly went to "Comprehensive" schools where - because there weren't very many bright kids - the quality of education was pretty poor.
But it's certainly true that a few poor bright kids got to go to grammar schools too, and often did well out it.
The basic problem any such scheme runs into is that pretty much any test of academic ability or attainment in children anyone has devised produces results that correlate strongly with socioeconomic status of parents. There are (at least) two debates around why that is (nature vs nurture; to what extent that correlation lies in test-taking vs in whatever the test "ought" to be measuring), but those are kind of beside the point - there isn't any disagreement that that pretty much always happens.
And because peer group effects are really strong, if you cream out a large group of disproportionately studious, middle-class (in the UK sense), academically able kids then the effect on those who get selected is very positive, but the effect on those who don't - especially on those who narrowly miss selection - is very negative. Is that worth it? You may feel that the small number of bright working class kids who get selected and do better than they would have otherwise outweigh the larger number who don't and suffer, but the story is much, much less clear-cut than you're making it out to be, and I think the balance probably weighs the other way/; I think out-of-school extension classes are probably a better way of achieving something similar.
(Disclaimer: I went to a grammar school).
Also an ex grammar school kid, and I agree. I failed the selection exam on my first practice paper, and my parents paid for a summer's worth of tutoring, after which I passed the real exam with full marks.
Whilst I am pretty confident I genuinely did meet the bar for grammar school (80th percentile by IQ if I remember rightly), I would undoubtedly have failed to get in if my parents had been less informed or less engaged.
I think ability-grouped education has a lot going for it, and being in a mixed ability class can be very frustrating both for high and low performers, but it's hard to come up with a selection process that can't be gamed by those with the resources to do so.
Gifted kids from poor families are the victims of the "IQ is a myth" mindset. If you ban schools for gifted kids, rich parents will find a way (careful school choice, private tutoring,...).
Agree with all the people who have pointed out the OP's defensiveness and credential waving, but even more fundamentally, do you have any evidence that mentoring or this sort produces good outcomes? Not even better than GiveDirectly or AMF, but good at all? My understanding of programs meant to encourage economically and culturally diverse populations to develop their talents in majority-culture-approved ways (go on to produce better iPhones, get into the "best" schools) is that they fair poorly by the standards of both the mentors and the mentees. I'm thinking of programs like Big Brothers Big Sisters and Head Start as well as all kinds of programs aimed at identifying and nurturing low income talent at, for example, state run universities like the one from which I recently retired.
I think there are actually some pretty good mentoring programs out there, although I agree that most end up not doing very well, and thus the burden of proof is IMO on the program to show that it actually does work.
I was very excited by the results of RCTs on the 'Becoming a Man' program to teach cognitive behavioral skills to poor American high school students, but I haven't followed up to see if later studies have been as optimistic.
https://americorps.gov/evidence-exchange/Preventing-Youth-Violence%3A-An-Evaluation-of-Youth-Guidance%E2%80%99s-Becoming-A-Man-Program#:~:text=The%20Becoming%20a%20Man%20(BAM,held%20during%20the%20school%20day.
I also freely admit that I want 'Becoming a Man' to work because learning cognitive behavioral skills and introspection was such a level up for me personally. Still would be interested to hear about later studies on it, regardless of their outcomes!
I'm actually aware of a local mentoring program in my school district that works pretty well. They start working with kids from disadvantaged backgrounds in middle school, keep them on track with tutoring and mentoring and information sessions and campus visits. When it comes time to apply, they've been spending their summers on campus for years, feel a part of that community without losing connection with their communities of origin. I occasionally see kids who have come up through this program among the finalists for a prestigious award given at graduation (I'm on the committee). This is a very different program from the one Marty is suggesting, and I think it succeeds precisely because it takes context into account. To be fair, I've no idea what the failure rate is, i.e. how many kids start the program and never graduate or even attend the university they've partnered with.
"even develop more effective and altruistic iPhones"
You had me going "Well, maybe" up until this. So we take a poor but bright kid, give him or her that educational push, help them get a qualification - and then they can work on making expensive toys for the First World that won't do a damn thing for their peasant village where the alternation of floods and droughts make life hobble along at the subsistence level.
The only benefit might be that having a good job making rich people toys means they can send money back home to support their family, so does that count as Gross World Flourishing?
I think it sounds like a great idea, and I wish you well in doing it.
But by putting the "More Effective Altruism" label on it, you're basically just picking a fight with an adjacent movement right out of the gate. Do you actually want to do good, or do you just want to argue on the internet about the best theoretical way to do good?
Please rethink the branding, and then go out and do some actual good with your ideas.
(Although parenthetically, I don't think the "software" part adds much to the mentors-for-poor-smart-kids idea.)
Your issue is that while this will probably have some impact, you need someone to both pay for this and to organize it. Presumably you don't have the money or contacts to do it yourself or you wouldn't need to post the idea here.
Lots of people have ideas, the market is oversaturated. Very few people have money or contacts or top tier organizational skill.
Do you have a more detailed explanation of the ROI on this (ideally with numbers and citations)? The proposal seems like it could work, but I feel like people under-estimate how difficult it is in practice to beat GiveDirectly/AMF/other GiveWell top charities.
First, it is critical to critique the apriori analysis. Is it not crystal clear that it holds far greater promise---replacing random recipients from developing nations to people with far greater unmet but realizable potential? It is a BIG mistake to ask for such granularity at this stage as you are doing here. That is a formula for ensured stasis and feeble incrementalism, a rationalization for the status quo being optimal. BAD.
> Is it not crystal clear that it holds far greater promise---replacing random recipients from developing nations to people with far greater unmet but realizable potential?
I really doubt that. Please notice that "random recipients" also include the gifted kids! If you save lives of 50 randomly selected kids, statistically, you have on average saved a life of one Mensa-level child. And sometimes, saving lives of 50 randomly selected kids is much cheaper than providing education for one. And for that one child, death is a greater obstacle to flourishing than the lack of mentors.
Therefore: a good idea? yes. more effective than saving lives of random people? no.
Furthermore, providing mentors to kids is not really a new idea. So what exactly is the thing you are going to do right that everyone else so far was doing wrong? You seem to suggest that it is just a question of creating the right matching website or an app. I would guess that the actual problem is lack of mentors (who can provide time and attention consistently for a long time period), and bad actors (e.g. pedophiles) volunteering as mentors. Don't trust me; ask the people who are already doing this.
So, what I would expect after creating and promoting the matching website, is 100 kids and only 10 mentors, and a few months later a scandal because one of the mentors was mostly interested in sexually grooming the kids. And it would cost about $100K.
This reply does not give me faith that you personally will be able to achieve success in a new initiative. Maybe you're not ready to provide the granular details, but that's no reason to go off on the people who want to see the details.
Honestly, I just was trying to get you to engage with the real world. I don't expect this to work because most stuff doesn't.
I'm pointing at the 'most interventions fail, and almost all are worse than GiveWell top charities' rock, and asking why you are smarter than the rock.
https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/heuristics-that-almost-always-work
Your goal is to "get me to engage with the real world?" And the basis for your objecting to my model for More Effective Altruism and an exemplar is that "most interventions fail?" Puhleeze. I've given--to use your metaphor--a rock-solid set of a priori arguments for a superior foundational model for Effective Altruism. Beware of clinging to the status quo, even in the face of, yes, rock-solid reasoning. And remember, such reasoning must be prerequisite to demands for data, let alone expensive, time-consuming data. Since you seem to venerate the source from where an idea comes (in your case, the EA establishment), I might mention that I have a Ph.D. from Berkeley specializing in the evaluation of innovation and my doctoral advisor was arguably the world's leading expert in that field, Michael Scriven, and since graduation, he and I have remained close friends and respected colleagues. And with that, I wish you well and rigorous thinking.
"I have a Ph.D. from Berkeley" here is like going to Newcastle and waving coals around.
Yes. Most interventions fail. And often in the process of failing do harm either directly or by drawing attention away from interventions that have proven track records, which is exactly what you are attempting to do here. This is a tough audience, but if an idea shows promise, they will admit it and help you see how to make it better.
Low income folks with bright kids have seen plenty of folks with PhD's from Berkeley and its cousins come stomping into their lives promising the next best thing, bossing them around, dissing their culture and families. Show us, prove to us, that your idea is better than that. I am far from convinced.
Okay, whenever somebody has to pull out "In fact, I am a DOCTOR of mumble-mumble", they've lost the argument.
I am not averse to the idea of the appeal to authority, because I don't think it's necessarily wrong to trust domain expertise, but generally yeah, when it comes to picking holes in an argument and the other person doesn't address the flaws but flourishes their parchment - it means they don't have the answer.
To quote the great Groucho Marx: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V2rX-1rTuhE
The more you write, the less confidence I have in your ability to execute your idea. You exhibit every red flag there is. The inability to come up with details. Disrespect of critics. Boasting of your credentials and academic pedigree, without accomplishments to match. This is not the way to sell your idea; it's the way to sound like the crackpot emails that flood every academic's mailbox.
To critique your idea on its merits, it is extremely hard to identify people of "high intellectual ability, drive, and ethics". After identifying them, it is hard to find mentors that will improve their potential far more than the existing mentors in their lives: their parents, teachers, counselors, Boy Scout leaders, priests, etc. Even the perfect mentor is not going to automatically overcome the material constraints of poverty, like the fact that someone needs a job to support his family instead of founding a high risk startup that's as likely as not to fail. Finally, there are already many, many educational programs aimed at helping low income kids. Is creating one more going to help? On the margins, probably a tiny bit; but it isn't going to revolutionize the world.
I describe "More Effective Altruism" in more detail in this essay linked to at the bottom of this comment. That essay should address concerns. It doesn't mention that here on Astral Codex, I appropriately responded to a commenter's demand for extensive data by replying that prematurely requiring such data is inherently too conservative, militating against generating bold ideas. The time for data is later. A few commenters lambasted me for mentioning my credentials. I did so in in response to commenters' ill-founded assertions including that if I had accomplished anything, I wouldn't be on Astral Codex?! (If you're curious about me, feel free, of course, to Google me.) In any event, here is the link to the essay: https://medium.com/@mnemko/more-effective-altruism-d05feba47ce3. And here is the link to the YouTube in which I read it aloud: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ndpa7BxkKNI.
https://manifold.markets/dglid/who-will-be-the-2024-republican-pre
Perimutuel is a terrible format for prediction markets because there's little incentive to arb incorrect probabilities early. If I bet on youngkin 0.5% now I have no idea what my actual payout will be. Could be anywhere between 200-1 and 5-1. My payout odds would be determined by people who bet after me with more information than me, so the best move is not to play. The early better subsidy can never be big enough to make me want to bet that even if the odds are off by an order of magnitude.
Manifold Markets doesn't use parimutuel betting.
the one I linked does.
Ah, you're right.
It looks like the binary markets are fixed payout (e.g. https://manifold.markets/JimAusman/will-virginia-governor-glenn-youngk), but the ones that are "free response" (i.e. allow traders to add additional options) are parimutuel.
It looks like there are also markets with a fixed number of options that are also fixed payout (e.g. https://manifold.markets/jack/who-will-win-the-2024-republican-no).
I agree with you that parimutuel is a bad format for prediction markets.
I clicked on the reply button in the email I received and it took me to the person's comment. I responded there.
These are still coming through as top level comments.
What email client are you using, anyway?
Question for the Canadians: what’s actually going on with Medical Assistance in Dying (MAID)? I’ve seen some scare stories recently (1) but I’ve also learned not to trust most media reports, on any side. But a quick perusal of the relevant stats (2) shows that MAID is now 3.3% of all deaths in Canada and has been growing by ~33%/year. That’s….kinda spooky, although the relevant years are the 20/21 Covid years, so those stats could easily be abnormal.
This feels like on of those things that will be popping up as CW over the next 5-10 years and I’d appreciate any Canadians with actual insight into the program so I can get this set straight in my own mind before CW eats all reasonable discussion.
(1) https://www.theamericanconservative.com/the-collapse-of-consent-in-canada/
(2) https://www.canada.ca/en/health-canada/services/medical-assistance-dying/annual-report-2021.html
Ånecdote; Ây mother chose MAID this past winter. She was 92 and had a host of medical issues, including chronic pain from a back injury, gall stones, gout, a form of blood cancer and god knows what else. After her admittance to a hospital in January it became clear that she was not going to be able to return home and live as she had, independently.
No one encouraged her to make this decision, including her GP. She was fed up and wanted out. Sick of all the pain, she said. Once she requested it, things moved quickly. She died cheerfully at Sunnybrook Hospital listening to Artie Shaw and wondering why no one had thought to bring her a Bloody Caesar.
I'm glad your mother lived to be so old and that she was able to end her life as she wanted. Hopefully you too will be able to live a long life, and succeed at doing those things that will facilitate it (cf. https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/open-thread-251/comment/10616525).
I hope you're handling her loss well.
Thank you. A sharp connection. Yes I am handling her loss well.
I'm having trouble finding statistics on percent of deaths by suicide in Canada for recent years, but as of the late 2010s about 1.5% of deaths in Canada were by suicide (which about matches the US 1.4% and appears to be fairly typical for developed country). I'm not sure how that's developed post MAID (has MAID largely replaced suicides or is it mostly an addition?).
Either way the rate of death by suicide has more then doubled as a percentage of total deaths post MAID (and likely more like tripled). That is interesting and possibly alarming. The question in my mind is what happened to those 3.3% of people before MAID? Committing suicide is not particularly difficult and everyone dying via MAID is presumably of sound mind and most likely (barring some edge cases) physically capable. So why weren't these people killing themselves before? What is different about MAID that leads to 3x death by suicide?
I can think of a lot of possibilities, some more alarming and some less so, I have no idea how true any of them are:
- Maybe many of them were previously committing suicide but it wasn't recorded as such (possibly even with Dr. assistance in some cases through 'aggressive' palliative care). If someone dies with stage 4 cancer not sure anyone's going to be really checking if the actual proximate cause of death was 'accidentally' overdosing on the pain pills or something like that.
- Maybe they just didn't think of it and now that MAID exists and Dr. talk about it they are prompted to think of it and consider it as an option (consider contagiousness of suicide, at least in teens)
- Maybe some degree of social pressure to do so from Dr.'s / Nurses / Families / larger social milieu
- Maybe they didn't know how to reliably/painlessly/quickly kill themselves and the trivial inconvenience of researching it (or possibility of said research being found out and stopped/miss-leading/incorrect) blocked them.
- Maybe the risk that something would go wrong and they would be unsuccessful and the possibility of being left in a worse state
- Perhaps MAID is categorized in people's minds/society differently in some ways (e.g. Suicide is shameful/sinful/selfish/illegal, MAID is honorable/altruistic/legal)
- Being easier for family to attend and say goodbye (not witnessing a crime, not feeling morally obligated to do something)
Meanwhile here in Upside-Down Canada (aka Australia) all states have over the past few years recently passed euthanasia laws of some form or another, while attracting very little attention. Euthanasia was hugely controversial back in the 1990s when the Northern Territory first tried to pass euthanasia legislation, but for one reason or another it seems the culture war in Australia is so moribund that nobody can be bothered getting worked up about it any more.
I went looking for numbers but the most recent ones I could find are nearly two years old. In the first eighteen months of euthansia being legal in the state of Victoria, there were 581 assessments made, 465 permit applications, 405 permits granted, and 224 actual deaths-by-euthanasia. 77% had cancer, 62% of the remainder had a neurodegenerative disease.
Given the population of Victoria you'd expect about 100,000 people to die in an 18-month period, so we're talking more like 0.2% of deaths, nothing like the 3.3% in Canada.
I'm much more comfortable with the lower numbers, which suggests this is something that people have to actively seek out for themselves, rather than something which hospitals are starting to push onto patients.
I find most of the comments on this post to be very polarized; let me try to forge a middle path...
On one hand, it's absolutely ridiculous that someone calling a medical help line for help with PTSD would be recommended euthanasia. That is horrible and something ought to happen to fix that.
BUT... 3.3% of deaths being MAID is, as a number, not actually concerning at all? Imagine if every patient who has terminal cancer died using MAID ~1-2 weeks before their counterfactual death due to cancer. Using US numbers (because they popped up first in google) that would be 17.8% of deaths using MAID. To my mind, that would be a totally acceptable usage of euthanasia. It would save (in the US) >11,000 person-years of some of the worst suffering.
Reading that I am not really very convinced the framing of the stories is remotely accurate.
Yeah, besides the general vibe of CW already having eaten this, the thing that's surprised me is how many people do not consider 3.3% a significant amount. Which was not my prior, my expectation for random news articles is for a few cases in a giant population to be held up as examples of a society wide-phenomenon.
This feels...dependent on how worried you are concerning assisted suicide, both in the abstract and in actual policies that are/were implemented. Like, per my lazy DDG, Canada gets roughly ~700 murders/year (1). Which is a lot less than MAID but also a lot worse and justifiably gets more attention.
I'm kind of trending towards @gph's focus on non-terminal cases. I could easily see the US, or specific states, pushing for this kind of policy and looking at non-terminal cases seems a lot more important than overall stats.
(1) https://www.reuters.com/world/americas/canadas-worst-mass-shooting-helped-push-2020-murder-rate-15-year-high-2021-11-25/
A long time ago I read this very interesting book...
https://www.amazon.com/Chasing-Daylight-Forthcoming-Death-Transformed/dp/0071499938
...in which a very successful man who'd planned a much longer life is diagnosed with a terminal brain tumor at age 53, and recounts the way he planned out and spent the 100 days he got between diagnosis and death. He used every possible minute.
I would be extremely reluctant to generally dismiss "1-2 weeks" of life -- in particular the very last 1-2 weeks of life -- as devoid of the potential for meaning, or even lacking sufficient potential for meaning to compensate for whatever suffering is entailed.
Indeed, I've sometimes heard people speak passionately of reducing the suffering near death, and wondered whether they are actually talking about the suffering of the person dying, or about their own suffering -- whether the actual goal is sparing *themselves* the spiritual suffering associated with bearing witness to something deeply frightening, and with confronting in the most brutally undeniable terms their own finiteness. Much nicer to have the dying just kind of slip away, go to sleep, walk off stage with a jaunty wave, and not ask us (the survivors), explicitly or by demonstration, any tricky and difficult questions we don't really want to think about.
My dad had a massive heart attack in the middle of the night. My mum died slowly of Alzheimer's. I am definitely hoping for the massive heart attack. (I've got an anti-white pill plan, which is to stop taking some drug keeping me alive, when I want to go.)
The last 1-2 weeks could be very meaningful, or it could be full of pain and discomfort and not much else at all. It probably varies tremendously. And if it does, there doesn't seem to be much of a reason not to give people the choice.
Yeah no shit. But that also means you can't make categorical statements like "if every patient who has terminal cancer died using MAID ~1-2 weeks before their counterfactual death due to cancer....It would save (in the US) >11,000 person-years." Because what it might actually do is save 1000 person-years of suffering and cancel 10,000 person-years of the most meaningful possible experience.
If you want to give people choice near the end of life, I'm 100% for that. If you want to make broad statements about what that choice should be, or what people will want to do, I'm 100% opposed. The key word is "choice" and the key question is what does that mean?
Consider the question of "choice" in whether a woman stays with an abusive husband. Plenty of people will say, hey, this situation sucks, but you always have the choice to divorce and leave, so why would should society do things like...build women's shelters, have restraining orders, temporary support orders, or extend the statute of limitations on filing assault or rape charges, et cetera? We don't need all this armamentarium to protect you, because you've always got a choice unless you're physically locked up, right?
But many other people say geez that's pretty damn naive, and "the ability to choose" is a way less black 'n' white than the 18-year-old naif thinks when he first discovers it. That's why the issues of consent and choice are fraught in all kinds of places.
So we can't dismiss the question of understanding the nature of "free choice" in this situation by saying free choice is just a simple and obvious thing -- our anguished #metoo debate clearly prohibits that naive viewpoint -- and we can't dismiss the question because even if they choose to die in a way that turns out not to be so free after all, it's no biggie, because they're just always cutting short meaningless suffering.
Which means the question of what "choice" means is very important, and it's very important to know whether the 3.3% of Canadians who are "choosing" to die are "choosing" in a way that is qualitatively entirely different from a woman "choosing" to say with an abusive husband.
Sometimes the last 1-2 weeks of life are spent screaming in pain / being too exhausted to scream anymore but still in pain.
Some people may consider it a meaningful spiritual experience. Other people may disagree.
For that there's palliative care and also palliative sedation (look it up).
Given that modern medicine is really good at keeping people unconscious or even in coma, something like that seems like a much easier solution to such situations.
Oh come on. Go talk to a hospice nurse or something.
That report breaks down the numbers pretty well. I'd say the most concerning part would be this:
>In 2021, 2.2% of the total number of MAID provisions (219 individuals), were individuals whose natural deaths were not reasonably foreseeable (non-RFND) (in Quebec since 2019 and the rest of Canada after the passage of the new legislation on March 17, 2021). The most commonly cited underlying medical condition for this population was neurological (45.7%), followed by other condition (37.9%), and multiple comorbidities (21.0%). The average age of individuals receiving MAID who were non-RFND was 70.1.
Only 219, but if that numbers starts climbing and we hear more reports of people who otherwise weren't going to die being pressured into suicide I'd say there is quite a bit of room for concern with how the law is being applied outside the debate of 'personal freedom' everyone in the comment thread below decided to generate a bunch of noise about.
Thanks for diving into the stats for this. I appreciate it and have updated some priors.
What's going on in Canada is a good example of a slippery slope argument proved right.
I would assume what is going on is Canada is becoming a better place to live, where people aren’t forced to live out their final misery because everyone is so hopped up on medical vitalism!
Hey Martin, what is your opinion on this story? Yes, Daily Mail link but I've seen it elsewhere so it does seem to have happened:
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11497589/Paraplegic-Canadian-veteran-says-government-caseworker-offered-euthanasia.html
https://globalnews.ca/video/9323192/former-paralympian-says-veterans-affairs-department-offered-her-assisted-death/
"A disabled veteran in Canada has slammed her government for offering to euthanize her when she grew frustrated at delays in having a wheelchair lift installed in her home.
Retired Army Corporal Christine Gauthier, a former Paralympian, testified in Parliament on Thursday that a Veterans Affairs Canada (VAC) caseworker made the assisted suicide offer.
After years of frustrating delays in getting the home lift, Gauthier says the caseworker told her: 'Madam, if you are really so desperate, we can give you medical assistance in dying now.'
The worker who made the offer hasn't been named, but they are feared to have offered three other veterans who contacted VAC with problems the same 'solution', Global News reported.
The scandal emerged a week after Canada's veterans affairs minister confirmed that at least four other veterans were similarly offered access to Canada's Medical Assistance in Dying (MAID) law in response to their troubles, a situation Prime Minister Justin Trudeau called 'absolutely unacceptable'."
Canada - we're certainly not hopped up on medical vitalism! In fact, even if you *want* to live, we'll still recommend medical assistance in suicide for you!
I mean if that is really what happened it sounds like that caseworker was terrible at their job and should be fired. I do wonder a little bit about the exact context and tone.
I have been around declining hospital patients (my own grandparents for instance, but also some other seniors) who constantly whine and joke about “not wanting it to go on”, and “I have had enough and I am not taking another shower or whatever”. I can see a pretty regular circumstance where some half joke/reminder than euthanasia is an option is perfectly acceptable/appropriate.
That said it doesn’t seem like a good/appropriate response to someone complaining about delays related to a lift installation. But even there it would for me depend on the contract and what the preceding comments were (like is this a patient constantly brining up the option or threatening suicide or saying they want to die). Or are they being super super unreasonable and crass about what are reasonable delays.
Honestly it sounds like Canada is moving t a healthier place. I maintain that the best situation for everyone is going to be when the old/indigent feel subtle societal pressure and support to just shuffle off the mortal coil.
Most people spending their last 6, 12, 18 months in a hospital bed having strangers wipe them and shower them is not a dignified way to end lives lot a good use of societies resources.
Everyone dies, you don’t need to hold on that tight.
"I maintain that the best situation for everyone is going to be when the old/indigent feel subtle societal pressure and support to just shuffle off the mortal coil.
Most people spending their last 6, 12, 18 months in a hospital bed having strangers wipe them and shower them is not a dignified way to end lives lot a good use of societies resources."
I had missed that bit of your comment. Yes indeed, now we've moved on from "will nobody have pity on the suffering who are in horrible physical/mental agony and just want to die peacefully" to "kill the poor". Those 'useless eaters' gobbling up public resources.
I believe the Germans - being a philosophical people - have, or at least had, a term for those kinds of people:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Life_unworthy_of_life
"Lebensunwertes Leben"
https://www.ushmm.org/information/exhibitions/online-exhibitions/special-focus/nazi-persecution-of-the-disabled
"On July 14, 1933, the German government instituted the “Law for the Prevention of Progeny with Hereditary Diseases.” This law called for the sterilization of all persons who suffered from diseases considered hereditary, including mental illness, learning disabilities, physical deformity, epilepsy, blindness, deafness, and severe alcoholism. With the law’s passage the Third Reich also stepped up its propaganda against the disabled, regularly labeling them “life unworthy of life” or “useless eaters” and highlighting their burden upon society."
" I do wonder a little bit about the exact context and tone."
Oh come on Martin, now you are sounding like that copypasta:
"Do you have a source on that?
Source?
A source. I need a source.
Sorry, I mean I need a source that explicitly states your argument. This is just tangential to the discussion.
No, you can't make inferences and observations from the sources you've gathered. Any additional comments from you MUST be a subset of the information from the sources you've gathered.
You can't make normative statements from empirical evidence.
Do you have a degree in that field?
A college degree? In that field?
Then your arguments are invalid.
No, it doesn't matter how close those data points are correlated. Correlation does not equal causation.
Correlation does not equal causation.
CORRELATION. DOES. NOT. EQUAL. CAUSATION.
You still haven't provided me a valid source yet.
Nope, still haven't.
I just looked through all 308 pages of your user history, figures I'm debating a glormpf supporter. A moron."
So people express concerns about what is going on with the MAID act in Canada, and the pro-euthanasia people on here say it's all overblown. Fair enough.
Then a case comes along that even Justin Freakin' Trudeau issues a statement about "Er no, we never intended this sort of thing" so yeah this is a good probability it really did happen like that and it still gets "Well now what is the exact precise context here, can we be sure this happened, it probably didn't but if it did that's a good thing, and anyway everyone dies and WE CAN'T BE FORCED TO LIVE IF WE DON'T WANT TO".
This is *not* a case about "suffering and in horrible pain person wants to die a little bit earlier than a natural death", this is "disabled woman asks for accommodations that are legal and intended to help the disabled live independently in their own homes instead of having to move into nursing homes or state care, gets offered to 'we can off you' instead".
Even if it was Just That One Case Worker, where do you think the attitude comes from? The tone of the office? The implementation of the protocol? The attitude that "now there is official help to do away with yourself, useless disabled person sucking up public resources, why aren't you availing of it?". This is the way the Liverpool Care Pathway got abused; start off with good intentions, a few potential Mengeles get carried away - and it gets defended by the euthanasia crowd because "well if we admit this point to our opponents, it will set the cause back by a lot, and what are a few dead elderly people to The Cause?"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liverpool_Care_Pathway_for_the_Dying_Patient
Flannery O'Connor sounds more and more right, the more I hear of these examples: sentimentality leads to cruelty. Good intentions are the road to Hell.
"In this popular pity, we mark our gain in sensibility and our loss in vision. If other ages felt less, they saw more, even though they saw with the blind, prophetical, unsentimental eye of acceptance, which is to say, of faith. In the absence of this faith now, we govern by tenderness. It is a tenderness which, long since cut off from the person of Christ, is wrapped in theory. When tenderness is detached from the source of tenderness, its logical outcome is terror. It ends in force-labor camps and in the fumes of the gas chamber."
"Honestly it sounds like Canada is moving to a healthier place."
Yes, a place where "if you get old and sick, kill yourself, the government will help!"
Right up until Carousel, at least.
Yes, Martin, including children. O brave new world, that has such people in it!
Yes, this is absolutely a real story, and the courts + current government have only taken a few short years to go from allowing euthanasia in highly sympathetic, defensible edge cases (and making fun of skeptics' slippery slope arguments) to a kind of ongoing frictionless tumble off a cliff where there's no obvious stopping point in who can get euthanized. Public discussion is entirely about individual entitlements and autonomy without any kind of balancing against effects on the medical profession or wider society. The actual deaths might still be *mostly* those sympathetic edge cases, but it's common enough that normal people are aware of real people being euthanized.
Opinions about euthanasia in the very elderly, terminally ill, and acutely suffering edge cases we were talking about a decade ago are barely relevant to the present situation, except as props in a motte-and-bailey about euthanizing mildly depressed children.
Watching this unfold (and similar in some European countries) has convinced me that, individual moral questions aside, the best policy is always not to euthanize anyone, at least with the explicit support of the state, because it's likely going to get out of hand, and has.
> Opinions about euthanasia in the very elderly, terminally ill, and acutely suffering edge cases we were talking about a decade ago are barely relevant to the present situation, except as props in a motte-and-bailey about euthanizing mildly depressed children.
What is this hyperbole? Minors can't be euthanized in Canada. And no one has yet been euthanized for mental illnesses.
The need for "yet" is hardly even a fig-leaf of defense; that's almost certainly going to be approved within the next year.
The law regarding MAiD is undergoing Parliamentary Review next year if I'm understanding this correctly, and [Death With Dignity Canada](https://www.dyingwithdignity.ca/blog/pr_mature_minors/) is recommending that it be allowed for 12-15 with parental consent, and 16-18 without parental consent. The *current* law regarding minors in Canada appears to be no one under 18, but those suggested age ranges match those used in [The Netherlands](https://www.deseret.com/2022/11/4/23401482/canada-euthanasia-laws-mature-minors-medical-aid-in-dying).
Interestingly, the UN reports that Canada's MAiD law [violates the UDHR](https://spcommreports.ohchr.org/TMResultsBase/DownLoadPublicCommunicationFile?gId=26002) (PDF warning), but given how accusations of human rights violations tend to be received, I wouldn't expect this to create much noise.
There's a huge gulf between someone thinking Canada will eventually euthanize mildly depressed children and Canada actually euthanizing mildly depressed children. The latter is not happening and is not going to happen but the comment seems to imply it is.
I couldn't follow your comment. Where did kidnapping come in? In what sense is ChestertonsTopiary parasitic, and what is he parasitic on? What part of his argument depends upon assuming he owns people?
Is your claim that midly depressed children aren't being euthanized, or that failing to euthanize mildly depressed children is tantamount to ... parasitic ... kidnapping?
As you can see I'm pretty lost!
I think this guy is talking about imprisoning people convicted on drug offences? Selling drugs to people for the purpose of committing suicide by overdose?
Not gonna weep salt tears over that, Andaro. The consequences are perfectly clear: break the law, know you are breaking the law, get caught, and go to jail. Don't want to go to jail? Don't break the law.
The idea seems to be that personal autonomy is an absolute sacred value. Most humans don't quite share that. I'm sympathetic to the concerns of MAiD advocates who want to alleviate suffering, and also to deontological libertarians who don't want to give an inch on personal autonomy, but those can conceivably balance against other important values. Per my username, we should at least stop and ask some questions now and then during rapid social-cultural-moral-political shifts like this one.
"Not providing state-suported euthanasia to all comers == kidnapping" is a bit like arguing that taxation is theft, or abortion is murder, or MLK was a criminal, without prying apart denotation and connotation. Scott had a very good piece on this years ago: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/yCWPkLi8wJvewPbEp/the-noncentral-fallacy-the-worst-argument-in-the-world
and I also thought of https://slatestarcodex.com/2013/04/13/proving-too-much/ (if this is kidnapping, a great many things are kidnapping)
This seems to be a fully complete argument against having criminal laws. Is your argument that we should be against laws banning euthanasia because we should be against all laws ever (including ones against kidnapping?) or is there anything specific to ChestertonsTopiary's comment that attracted your ire?
Why is it spooky? Shouldn't the default be that people die at the time and in the manner of their choosing? Even 3.3% of deaths from MAID indicates that the default is still very much the opposite. [That's not to say that individual cases of it may not be problematic.]
See https://slatestarcodex.com/2013/04/25/in-defense-of-psych-treatment-for-attempted-suicide/ .
Thank you for linking that. I don't find it too compelling, though. The potential cost of letting someone kill themselves who would have otherwise been able to be happy had they not killed themselves, is the inexistence of the hypothetically happy person. Scott argues that there are many such cases.
The cost of not letting someone who wants to end their life end their life, is a very real suffering person. This seems like a much bigger issue than the inexistence of a theoretical happy person. There are infinitely many happy people who don't exist and that does not seem like a huge issue.
Furthermore, the argument that suicide is often a bad decision that should therefore be prevented would seem to apply to many decisions. E.g. I suspect that the majority choices to consume alcohol are bad choices. Furthermore, drunk people often cause direct harm to others, which dead people don't. Additionally, people who consume alcohol can suffer the consequences of their actions, which people who commit suicide cannot.
While there are potentially some useful uses of alcohol consumption, there are probably even fewer instances of useful tobacco consumption. There too, the line of reasoning would be to ban it.
But the operative question in all these cases is not just whether the decision made is a good one, but whether the government should ban the individual making the choice.
Furthermore, it seems likely that the percentage of people making the "wrong" choice to end their lives would decrease as that choice became normalized. If the choice is highly taboo, then only the most extreme cases, who are perhaps likelier to be disturbed, would make the choice.
If the choice were more freely available, it seems conceivable that a higher percentage of people making the choice would be making the "right choice," whatever exactly that means.
[Incidentally, either Scott is not perfect with his Ideological Turing test, or I am just atypical, as when he said "And I know what the response will be," he wrote something that I did not consider and was not any of my listed objections.]
Thanks again for linking the article!
However, that article did shift my priors towards thinking that there is more merit in requiring some sort of counseling before doctors are allowed to facilitate patient suicides.
"Shouldn't the default be that people die at the time and in the manner of their choosing?"
Emphatically, no. This has never been true in the history of all life on earth.
The reductio ad absurdum of your line of reasoning is that it precludes all novel human progress.
Not at all. You say the default should be X. No, X is possible, but X shouldnt be the default. Why would it be the default?
Because it is *better*, The default used to be that children died in childhood, and only a (large) minority would grow up to be adults. The default is now that children almost always grow up to be adults and only a very small minority die in childhood.
This, I assert, is simply better.
Your "this has never been true in the history of all life on Earth" argument, would have argued against the introduction of vaccines and antibiotics for childhood diseases. And, no doubt, backed by Malthusian horror stories of the terrible consequences of letting most children make it through childhood alive.
It might be better to you but it is repugnant to alot of other people, including myself.
Your assertion that children not dying is better than children dying is duly noted. Truly a bold statement.
What that, or vaccines, or antibiotics have to do with MAID is not clear, unfortunately.
Is this a case of arguing by proximity?, e.g. because A is recognized as good, and B is somewhat linked to A, B should also be recognized as good?
An individual should have authority over their life, including the right to terminate it. This can be an axiom for those who value individual liberties. Of course, like any axiom, one either accepts it a priori or rejects it a priori.
"The right to terminate it" is not the same thing as "the right to have a medical professional terminate it."
Sure. It does not follow that the medical establishment should do it for you, or that MAID should be the default, whatever "default" means here.
Because something like MAID has the potential for a lot of abuse and big cultural impacts. Sometimes these things pop up and they're tiny, for example, if MAID was only being done to 100 people/year, that's a minimal impact from a utilitarian perspective and no cultural impact unless it gets CW traction; it's basically right-wing clickbait. If over the next 5-10 years we see hundreds of thousands of Canadians using MAID, it's already at 10k/yr, that's a real thing worth more investigation.
This is, honestly, less me trying to figure out if it's good or bad and more...is this grossly exaggerated clickbait?
A quick google find the same statistics you quote - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Euthanasia_in_Canada#Statistics.
To my eye 3.3% is still a pretty tiny fraction. It does seem to have grown quite rapidly in proportional terms, but quite slowly in absolute ones, which makes it hard to guess what point it will plateau at.
In terms of "is it clickbait", I find it significant that skimreading google hits for "Canada euthanasia scandal" finds a bunch of people saying either "euthanasia is bad in general" or being outraged at the prospect having been breached in a discussion but not (within the very cursory amount of work I've put in - I'm sure you'll find something if you dig deep enough) any headlines about people who were actually pressured to kill themselves.
So I think my answer is "not exactly - euthanasia in Canada really is growing - but the stuff about "... and it may lead to..." mostly is".
Again, if a substantial percentage of the population would like to determine the time and manner of their deaths, then a sharp rise in that is what you would expect as people have greater access to that option.
I'm sure that there are instances of malpractice; e.g. pressuring costly patients to elect to end their lives, but since the percentage of people who use MAID is still so low, it seems like the much bigger problem is probably people suffering needlessly and not controlling the manner of their death.
As far as what constitutes click-bait, I think that mostly depends on what constitutes proper news, with clickbait = 1-proper news.
Are edge cases of hospitals pressuring people to elect to end their lives, minors, people with various forms of mental illness newsworthy? That is a subjective question?
How many instances are required for it to be newsworthy (and not just click-bait)? 1? 10? 1000?
Hey man, the vibe I'm getting is you want to have an argument over whether assisted suicide is ok. If so, good luck, but that's explicitly not what I'm asking for or what I want.
Dude, he specifically asked why I thought it was spooky. Sometimes that's a good faith thing of trying to understand what the other person is looking for and what details would interest them; sometimes it's people looking for online debate.
I just read Freddie De Boer's latest (https://freddiedeboer.substack.com/p/your-personality-has-to-be-load-bearing) and it was a little anxiety inducing. Primarily because of:
> The constituent elements of our personalities can’t be fully enumerated, but I would name honesty, creativity, gentleness, courage, perceptiveness, equanimity, extroversion, intelligence, kindness, and a sense of humor as essential parts.
I guess because I feel deficient in creativity, courage, extroversion and sense of humor. I don't think I've ever made something my 'thing' to cope for that, in the way described in that article, but I've never done well with people, so this makes me think I've to try harder, which makes me think on why X didn't like me, and how do I get Y to like me, and that's a bad headspace to be in (is it?).
Do normies regularly think deliberately on how to make someone like them, or is their social interaction as fluid and unconscious as it looks?
It's okay to feel some anxiety about these kinds of things and you (probably) don't have to try harder.
> Do normies regularly think deliberately on how to make someone like them, or is their social interaction as fluid and unconscious as it looks?
Yes? You can think about trying to do something better, while still doing it mostly automatically.
When you drive a car or chop and onion or play a video game, you're probably not thinking all that hard about what you're doing, but you're conscious of it. You're aware of the dangers, you're noticing your mistakes and enjoying the moments that go perfectly, and you're thinking about how you can do it better. You don't (once you're no longer a beginner) consciously think about the question of what button to press or how to hold the knife.
So it is with social interactions. Competent people don't need to think "okay now smile with your eybrows up six millimetres", but they do think "this guy would probably enjoy my anecdote about the bus full of nuns..."
> Do normies regularly think deliberately on how to make someone like them, or is their social interaction as fluid and unconscious as it looks?
My experience is that normies will think on it for "high-stakes" situations and also "first impressions"
Putting on the charm with your boss or your church pastor or the cop who's pulled you over for speeding, even if that just means pulling in the sharper edges of an otherwise acerberic personality. This is normal and everyone does it.
A lot of the "fluid and unconscious" look is actually practiced "muscle memory" of social interactions. If you interact with normal people enough, they often have about 3 to 8 "good stories to tell" that you'll tend to overhear on repeat when they're meeting new people or winding down with a late night beer.
If you want be better at interacting with people, consider sketching out on paper some sort of prepared stories that put you in a decent light. In the real world stuff comes up and you have to improvise, but having a couple practiced interactions you can fall back on can be helpful. Personally, I don't practice it exactly line by line, but my natural social skills happen to have decent improvisation so I instead have sorts of bullet points to be able to work with.
Like whenever someone asks me "how are you?" or "what's up?", instead of just replying with a boring 'fine' or whatever, I usually end up reporting if I've had or skipped breakfast or lunch. In a work context someone knowing that you've missed a meal both implies dedication, and acts as a pre-emptive excuse for any of my habitual briskness.
Ask people about themselves. People love to talk about themselves. Especially if you actually listen and ask good follow-ups. They will find themselves unconsciously liking you for the attention.
Absolutely this. I think those of us who are socially awkward spend a lot of time thinking about what we are going to SAY and how we are going to be interesting, but no one is more interesting to someone meeting them for the first time than the person who appears to be interested in them. Asking questions and listening to the answers and then asking follow up questions (and if you can't think of any, my go to is, "I'd like to hear a little bit more about what you just said about X"). And after a time, you will find that your anxiety is reduced because you actually are interested in what the person is saying and maybe you have a similar story or a little piece of advice and it will appear "fluid and unconscious" even if it's not.
Wouldn't you say, though, that this "first impressions," and "pulling in sharper edges," is just to avoid unpleasantness. Things click with some people and it's effortless and rewarding. I think, if it wasn't that way, I might prefer being an introvert.
I'd say socializing is mostly unconscious, but in the way a martial art is unconscious - it's something that I developed through experience and practice, and when you try to put it into words it often comes out as some sort of vague platitude like "don't think, feel" or "just be yourself." Sadly, I don't know a way to get good at socializing beyond just talking to enough people that you start to get a feel for it.
One piece of concrete advice I do think is helpful for introverts is: Try to get people to talk about themselves. People like to talk about themselves, and a good story can fill a lot of conversation. "Small talk" questions like "Where do you work?" or "where are you from?" aren't just meaningless "handshake" questions, they're invitations for the other person to share something interesting which can be the start of a longer conversation.
In general, if you read western wambish* far leftists and you're a nerdy STEM type they're going to make you feel bad. A core part of their political ideology is what you contribute to society is overvalued while what they contribute is undervalued. That can be a valuable corrective if you're an arrogant tech bro. But you don't seem like it.
What you're describing sounds like routine if intense anxiety. Pretty much everyone feels anxiety in social interactions. But the intensity of the anxiety and the joy at social interaction varies. People who are extremely pro-social, in my experience, feel roughly the same amount of anxiety. But it's less intense and they feel much more joy at the social experience. For example, if someone looks them up and down they feel a slight twinge of anxiety about their looks instead of going into their own head for hours. And when they get the compliment that's a much bigger deal to them.
(Also, don't underestimate how much of this is just social prestige. The cool kids get a lot of reinforcement that social interaction is good and the outcasts get a lot of the opposite. It's not necessarily that they did anything right or the other side did anything wrong.)
If you don't like it about yourself you can, with effort, change it. At least somewhat. But if you are living a happy life without them then that's fine too. I'd say getting help with the anxiety is probably a full positive. But that doesn't necessarily mean becoming an extroverted funny guy party animal.
*https://everythingstudies.com/2017/11/07/the-nerd-as-the-norm/
Wow, thanks for that article. Yeah, it's true that I've internalized, for many reasons, that wambishness is the lodestar, and I guess it triggered me to see Freddie enunciate that so clearly. As to living a happy life, I guess I'm happy, but I do want to have children and I'm basically crippled, romantically speaking, so this is something I need to work on, somehow.
Yeah, it's a definite blindspot in his thinking. Though certainly not unusual for his genre.
Anxiety's an issue for dating. Especially for men in the US. If you're unhappy with some part of yourself there's nothing wrong with working to change it. There's a bunch of work out there on anxiety reduction and you can get therapy for it. Dating itself is harder. A lot of it is unfortunately experience. But the easiest hack is just to get in shape and learn basic fashion. People are pretty shallow about this kind of thing. And if you can become reasonably conventionally attractive you'll get a lot more positive reinforcement. Both are activities you can do without triggering too much social anxiety as well.
At least for me, as someone who has all the traditional markers of nerd-dom (Physics degree, avid WoW player, hobby programmer, very happy just spending time by myself, etc etc) but also has no difficulty with social interaction: little bit of column a, little bit of column b. It generally requires very little thought for me to talk to people/engage them in a friendly manner. But of course there are times when I make a conscious choice to do something like prompt a friend or stranger to talk more about something they're clearly passionate about, or make a choice to spend my time helping a friend work on their house - you get the picture.
I don't think that there's necessarily anything wrong with the latter process, but if it forms the vast majority of your social interactions, I'd maybe stop to think about *why* you want these people to like you so badly. I certainly wouldn't judge you if the answer were simply "they are the only people available" - we all have needs - but if interaction is always comes at such a price, it may simply be that you're compatible with far fewer people than the average normie.
Jeez, is WoW really still going?
New xpac just went live.
I get bored with implementation so no. But right, Match.com is the right metaphor. And per another comment I made, even the base version of the mentoring could be an app, for example, the already existing AI-driven counseling apps.
Thanks, Villam. A couple points obfuscated by the glitch in the linking to comments:
1. Identifying low-income US Gifted kids could be as easy as one email to the mailing list of the school counselors association. Perfect no, excellent in increasing Gross World Flourishing compared with EA charities such as mosquito nets., absolutely.
2. For easy scalability, use AI-assisted mentoring, a variation on or even using the already existing AI-based counseling apps. That could be the baseline intervention with human mentors provided at least in the pilot test to see which lead to better outcomes.
It's still happening. Are you replying in email? You should reply in browser instead.
This is on substack's end no?
My best guess at what they are doing is, replying using email (meaning writing a reply email), as opposed to clicking a "reply" button that appears in the email text. I don't know why the former even posts a comment for you, but there's nothing in Substack's email notifications saying that this method of replying will end up in the child thread. It would be better if it did, but as it stands it's more like misusing the product than the product being broken. That's all as far as I can tell.
I want to see this movie. I have no idea who any of the actors are, I've seen nothing by the director before, and it looks like they're throwing everything plus the kitchen sink into it, but it seems like it will be fun. And it involves Hanuman, my favourite monkey-god.
Teaser 1:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3zMuz0CD9eI&t=1s
Teaser 2 (I presume this is the love interest):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yvNYEEvZ8SI
Trailer (where the action really takes off):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AvjvZ7q2apE
Interesting review and comparison of two upcoming big budget historical/mythological fantasy-superhero movies, "Hanuman" as above and "Adipurush":
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l7vIXb4d6mE
It looks fantastic! But I'll have to make sure it is what I think it is before I watch it. Long ago, I watched a movie called Ashoka, which I thought was going to be an action movie. Turned out to be ten minutes of action, then four hours of romance and singing, then ten more minutes of action.
You have to expect the dancing and singing in an Indian movie that is trying to appeal to a mainstream audience. The moviegoers expect a proper experience for their ticket, and that means long enough to have a proper interval and to include all the elements that appeal to everyone.
I'd be very disappointed if this movie didn't have at least one dance number! There surely has to be one when the hero and the love-interest are flirting!
Looking forward to both the dance numbers and the action. But will need subtitles. And probably a VPN.
The dance numbers can be brilliant. I haven't seen the full movie, but this take on Romeo and Juliet which is called Ram Leela has this over the top dance number which really makes me think the director watched the Baz Luhrman movie and thought "Yeah, great concept, but a bit too restrained":
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GUt-_BFJilU
And I love this scene where the hero beats the crap out of the baddies set to the Hanuman Chalisa; it's not a dance number as such, but hey, it's set to music!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-WQ3OrKMokg
I haven't watched more than 2-3 Bollywood films since I left China in 1992--for some reason the CCP found them unobjectionable. Love all kinds of dance. How to watch this kind of thing online. Do I need a specific streaming service?
You are assuming a level of technical sophistication in my viewing habits which is unwarranted 😁
Generally I try looking for stuff on Youtube, or maybe Apple Movie Store (which is not as good as it used to be). I don't subscribe to any streaming services (I really am still in the Stone Ages when it comes to music, TV, movies, etc.) and as I said, only watched "Rings of Power" on Amazon Prime because they were *begging* me to try it with free trials before paying for subscription.
There's a movie I like from 2004; it's originally a Telugu-language movie that was dubbed into Hindi (and the difference in editing between the two movies is also fascinating; the Telugu version has some slightly 'saucy' dance numbers with the love-interest that are edited out in the Hindi version). It's a fun watch *except* for a very graphic double murder early in the movie which is not representative of the rest of the film.
It's also fascinating as a look into the type of corruption that apparently is taken for granted; a local mobster/village head can get away with literal murder because he has pull with politicians in the big city, and the town policeman is incapable, does not even dream of trying to stand up to him, and instead shakes down the small business owners for 'licence fees' and the likes. So to get justice, you need divine intervention when the monkey god comes down to protect and encourage his devotee. In the modern era, because it's set in present-day (or present-day 2004).
I like the movie because it's fantasy, and it has my Hanuman starring in it, and is clearly based on elements of the Ramayana (the mobster is Ravanna, his elder brother is Kumbhakarna and so on):
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sri_Anjaneyam (details of the movie)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bSKHRREkdVI (English subbed Hindi version)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E2vBO64G0vo (original Telugu version)
For anyone who might be interested, I'm offering a $1000 cash prize to the first person who can produce a plausible, comprehensive alternate explanation for the origin of the Book of Mormon, other than the one officially espoused by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. I'm especially interested in feedback from those who may not have much background on this topic, but who are open minded and serious. Anyone is welcome to check this out and give me feedback.
The details are here: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1sGMzRWQr5zyN0b06tXVggmJlPLUZWKVvpj0qflRaOBc/edit?usp=sharing. I look forward to anyone's analysis of the logic and evidence involved!
For the vast majority of people the plausible explanation of the Book of Mormon is that Joseph Smith composed it. If you don't think that is plausible, it is hard to understand what kind of argument would convince you that it is. I'm not going to answer all your questions, but just address a few of them.
Why did Joseph Smith write a book? Well, maybe he wanted to write a book, or found it to be in him to write a book. A lot of people are inspired to write. As for why did he need a book to start a new religious movement, the answer is that the stories of Judaism, Christianity (especially Protestant Christianity) and Islam are all centered on a religious text, so in his cultural sphere, the existence of a religion is almost dependent on the existence of a Scripture.
A false religious leader (as I believe Smith to have been) is not necessarily either just sincere or completely insightful about his deceptive practices. Presumably such people at least feel a genuine need to pursue their aims, or have a sense of being special. Ron Hubbard, the guy who developed Scientology, was probably at least somewhat sincere about Dianetics/Scientology being a way of overcoming psychological problems or human weaknesses.
The point of being a conman like this is not to avoid work, but to gain influence over people. Even more conventional conmen can put a lot of work in their deceptions.
You imply several times that we should expect something different from a hoax, or expect something different from Smith's motivations. How can we have such expectations? Joseph Smith was successful in convincing many people he was at least a Christ like figure. In his culture, that was the highest status a person could ever have.
The style of the Book of Mormon is more or less what one would expect from someone of Joseph Smith's background (clever, creative, with a lot of contact with the Bible but not a lot of education otherwise).
There may be details that are correct in the Book of Mormon about the Hebrew or Egyptian culture, or geography, but there are many anachronisms or incorrect details about e.g. the Americas at the time. In such a long book, one would expect there to be some correct details, if only by coincidence.
There is a lecture on Youtube called Authorship of the Book of Mormon from a place called Centre Place in Canada (I don't know what Centre Place is exactly, it seems to be a very liberal religious institution, maybe with Mormon roots). It is interesting in that the lecturer is sympathetic to the Book of Mormon (much more than people here are likely to be) and seems to feel it has value, but accepts that Smith composed it himself. The lecture addresses some of the questions you raise, so you might be interested in it. Unfortunately it is 1,5 h long.
Wow, thanks for this thorough reply to me. I appreciate that! I'll try to respond in kind:
* Saying that "maybe" Smith wrote a book because "he wanted to write a book" might not be a low effort answer, but if someone did want to give a quick, breezy dismissal to the subject without expending much thought on it, isn't that the kind of thing someone would say? It's practically a tautology--"he wrote a book because he wanted to write a book" may not be the most penetrating hypothesis.
* As for wanting influence, I point out in my challenge that he already *had* a lot of influence, from prior revelations and visions. The role of the Book of Mormon in converting that first generation of believers was nowhere near as important as it is today, and the "bump" in followers that he got from it could hardly justify the extensive efforts to create it (even if such a thing were possible, which it really wasn't).
* You say that Smith convinced people that he was "a Christ like figure." This makes me suspect that you're maybe not quite as conversant with LDS belief as you might think you are--prophets aren't any type of deity. Perhaps you're imagining some charismatic cultic figure???
* Likewise, your characterization of the Book of Mormon's style as a folksy mishmash of his environment and inherent narrative skill is wildly obsolete. Close readings reveal it to be a profoundly complex work, structurally and linguistically, with roots in grammars far removed from the King James Bible or upstate New York of the early 19th century at all. See, for example, here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f-WHZWiECsY
* Alleged anachronism exist because of our own limited understanding of the times and places involved--how many such claims over the last 200 years have fallen apart as we've learned more about the ancient Western hemisphere, which LIDAR tech, among other things, is still teaching us was far more developed and advanced than we ever assumed. Besides, the existence of some problematic details hardly explains the many dozens of genuinely insightful nuances that simply couldn't exist in a hoax. Claiming "coincidence" for all of them is a cop out. Care to calculate the odds of everything in my challenge being the result of blind chance?
* I'm not familiar with the video you mentioned, but I'll check it out. However, I *am* familiar with many such presentations, and I have to say that they all fall far short of actually explaining the origin of the text as a hoax. You may have noticed that that's actually one of the items on my list--after nearly 200 years of relentless criticism, nobody has yet produced a coherent theory of how exactly the Book of Mormon could have been produced as a fraud. The dates, places, materials, collaborators, and research involved--none of it is accounted for even theoretically, much less documented, and the few passing swipes that people have taken at it all fall apart when we scratch just a bit below the surface. The existing responses to it are enough for those inclined to assume that it's unworthy of consideration, but the full, real situation--the one outlined in my challenge--presents a massive obstacle to any serious mind open to an honest investigation.
At any rate, thanks again for sharing your thoughts. Regardless of what you do or don't believe, I wish the very best of all things in life to you and yours!
Our host wrote a book about Qabbalah, angels and hell, none of which he believes in.
I'm not sure what the relevance of this comment is. Enlighten me, please?
Writing books is too common to indicate sincere belief in their content, let alone divine revelation.
Ah, I see now. Perhaps you're not fully appreciating what we have here. The Book of Mormon isn't like the other great books you might have in mind. The Book of Mormon gives us a wholly unique and ideal scenario--a long, complex text that suddenly appears in an unlikely place in the modern world, and which claims to be a translation of an ancient epic. That gives us a TON of material to investigate and determine whether or not that claim is true. If it is, the nature of the text's production lends immense credibility to (indeed, literally proves) the LDS church's claim that God lives and was behind the Book of Mormon, since there's no other reasonable possibility for its appearance. Give the questions in my challenge a look, if you're interested, and let me know what you think.
Theory 1: that Joseph Smith was given golden plates by an angel with a foreign text inscribed onto them, that he then translated that text into English “by the gift and power of God,” and that the narrative contained in that text is a literal record from an ancient group of people who actually existed
Theory 2: that Joseph Smith was given golden plates by a squidlike alien with a foreign text inscribed onto them, that he then translated that text into English by the gift and power of alien technology, and that the narrative contained in that text is not a literal record from an ancient group of people who actually existed.
I'm not going to address all fifty questions right now, but at a quick skim I don't think any of those would distinguish between the two theories since most of them are about whether Smith was sincere or not, and in my theory he was. If you want a plausible motivation for aliens to do this, then let's assume it was a psychology experiment to see if a new religion could easily be created among humans.
Oh wait, I just read the bit that explicitly says "theories that rely on things like aliens or time travel, etc. will be automatically disqualified". It seems a bit unfair to allow theories with angels but not theories with aliens, doesn't it?
Thanks for taking a look. I'd be very interested in seeing a complete theory that assumes Smith's sincerity, since most don't. Can most of my questions be answered in a framework of an unconscious falsehood? The "high power" that sponsored the modern translation notwithstanding, if the narrative in the text represents an actual record by actual people in the ancient world, we have quite the phenomenon on our hands here!
I'm just trying to think strategically here. My assumption is that you are for one reason or another very unlikely to be convinced of the plausibility of the sort of mundane "Joseph Smith made it up" theory that 99.9% of the population would accept and which is almost certainly true.
But if I present you with an alternative theory that's even more outlandish than the Mormonism-is-true one, I suspect you might be able to accept that it's at least plausible without having your faith shaken. So this seems to be the best shot for winning the thousand dollars.
I'm happy to leave the hard work to actually win the $1000 to someone who needs it more than I do (or at least, gains a greater marginal utility from it) though.
* "the sort of mundane 'Joseph Smith made it up' theory that 99.9% of the population would accept and which is almost certainly true." Well, most of the world isn't familiar with this book in any meaningful way, and even if they were, the prevailing attitude isn't one of studious rejection; it's passive indifference. The jury of history has not yet returned the verdict you anticipate.
* "But if I present you with an alternative theory that's even more outlandish than the Mormonism-is-true one, I suspect you might be able to accept that it's at least plausible without having your faith shaken. So this seems to be the best shot for winning the thousand dollars." Yes, absolutely :)
The initial questions involving psychology are too vague to be answered. I'm not really comparing Smith to Charles Manson, but what would we say to a Manson believer who wanted to know why he never recanted even in prison? Beats me what the answer, but he didn't, and also he was a fraud. I don't know how anyone could adequately answer the same question about Smith.
Are you suggesting a mental illness explanation for the creation of the Book of Mormon? Such theories have been posited before, but I'm not aware of any that can come anywhere close to accounting for the evidences listed in my questions...
"My goal is to raise awareness of the Book of Mormon’s quality and to help more people study it seriously. I also want to demonstrate the strength of its claim to authenticity."
I'm sorry to say that won't work for me. I absolutely do not take it seriously or as having any kind of religious validity. I don't even credit it as apocrypha https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apocrypha
but as an invention by Smith to back up his claims. And I do this from the angle of being a Christian believer, so it's not even "I'm an atheist, I don't believe in any gods, convince me".
We can argue over how sincere Smith was, did he really believe he was receiving messages from God, etc. but there again - there are a lot of people who claim this, and I don't believe them (e.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnificat_Meal_Movement).
"If you're so sure it's fake, why don't you enter for the $1,000?"
Because it's fruitless to do so. I don't doubt your sincerity, but the best efforts of all sorts of atheist evangelists haven't shifted my belief. So I don't expect any efforts to shift your belief in Mormonism, because there is always the appeal to the Holy Ghost: by the burning in my bosom, I am convinced of its truth.
And to be frank, and perhaps a little unkind, I have tried reading the Book of Mormon but the prose style is so awful, I can't get through it. Smith may have tried to emulate the King James Bible, but he was not on a par with the six committees that worked on it. Or, indeed, Cranmer and the Book of Common Prayer:
"But in order to understand all that was involved, it is necessary to say a word about the Anglican Prayer-Book itself. The Book of Common Prayer is the masterpiece of Protestantism. It is more so than the work of Milton. It is the one positive possession and attraction; the one magnet and talisman for people even outside the Anglican Church, as are the great Gothic cathedrals for people outside the Catholic Church. I can speak, I think, for many other converts, when I say that the only thing that can produce any sort of nostalgia or romantic regret, any shadow of homesickness in one who has in truth come home, is the rhythm of Cranmer’s prose. All the other supposed superiorities of any sort of Protestantism are quite fictitious. Tell a Catholic convert that he has lost his liberty, and he will laugh. A distinguished literary lady wrote recently that I had entered the most restricted of all Christian communions, and I was monstrously amused. A Catholic has fifty times more feeling of being free than a man caught in the net of the nervous compromises of Anglicanism; just as a man considering all England feels more free than a man obeying the Whips of one particular party. He has the range of two thousand years full of twelve-hundred thousand controversies, thrashed out by thinker against thinker, school against school, guild against guild, nation against nation, with no limit except the fundamental logical fact that the things were worth arguing, because they could be ultimately solved and settled. As for Reason, our monopoly is practically admitted in the modern world. Except for one or two dingy old atheists in Fleet Street (for whom I have great sympathy), nothing except Rome now defends the reliability of Reason. Much stronger is the appeal of unreason; or of that beauty which perhaps is beyond reason. The English Litany, the music and the magic of the great sixteenth-century style — that does call a man backwards like the song of the sirens; as Virgil and the poets might have called to a Pagan who had entered the Early Church. Only, being a Romanist and therefore a Rationalist, he does not go back; he naturally does not forget everything else, because his opponents four hundred years ago had a stylistic knack which they have now entirely lost. For the Anglicans cannot do the trick now, any more than anybody else. Modern prayers, and theirs perhaps more than any, seem to be perfectly incapable of avoiding journalese. And the Prayer-Book prose seems to follow them like a derisive echo. Lambeth or Convocation will publish a prayer saying something like, “Guide us, O Lord, to the solution of our social problems”; and the great organ of old will groan in the background ... “All who are desolate and oppressed.” The first Anglicans asked for peace and happiness, truth and justice; but nothing can stop the latest Anglicans, and many others, from the horrid habit of asking for improvement in international relations."
Thanks for this honest reply. I'll take it that you're passing on my challenge, then! LOL it's all good, friend. No harm, no foul. Best wishes to you and yours, and may God bless you today and always!
This is an excessively long list of questions, and as I don't want your money I won't respond to each individually. A few points:
* Since time immemorial, storytellers have appealed to muses. Differences between "divine revelation" or "divine inspiration" or "human creativity" are, to me, a distinction without importance.
* There are a lot of historical details (metal-working in pre-Columbian America) that all evidence indicates are false. The existence of evidence for a few of those claims proves nothing; if you make enough bold claims a few will be true by chance alone. That goes double for weak evidence regarding vague claims.
* Joseph Smith certainly read both the Old and New Testaments; similarities in style and direct quotes are because he read them and nothing more.
* The straw-man "Smith wasn't completely immoral" claims also prove very little; clearly his efforts were successful, and his approach to being a spiritual leader (which is what he was, regardless of the nature of the text) was better than the suggested alternatives. It just proves that you (or your straw-man) would be a bad leader. There is also the anthropic principle; if what he did didn't work (or he cashed out early) nobody would have heard of him.
Thanks for this reply--I appreciate your time!--and thanks for looking at my challenge, though it seems that you've only given it the superficial glance that most have given the Book of Mormon itself, which is what prompts any of us to say things like, "Joseph Smith certainly read both the Old and New Testaments; similarities in style and direct quotes are because he read them and nothing more." I'm sorry, but this evinces a rather shallow familiarity with the relevant texts. The Book of Mormon's intertextuality and exegesis are far more sophisticated than you (or most people!) give it credit for. If you're interested in a friendly, readable primer on that topic, I'd suggest Grant Hardy's excellent Understanding the Book of Mormon.
If God wrote the Book of Mormon, what is the benefit of a primer? Why wouldn't God have made the Book self-explanatory, so that no LDS member could ever feel the need to recommend any additional reading material?
I'm sorry, but I can't quite seem to understand what you're getting at here. This appears to be an objection. Could you please try explaining it again? To what "primer" or "additional reading material" do you refer? Doctrine-wise, the Book of Mormon truly *is* self explanatory, impressively so. On every page, the work labors to make its points as clearly and as simply as possible, using repetition only to emphasize key ideas. There is no mysticism, no loopholes, no bluster through which a con man would hide his ignorance or to which he could appeal later in an effort to backpedal. The voices in the Book of Mormon desperately seek full comprehension of its key themes from the reader. The ubiquitous earnestness of the text is one of my favorite features!
> The Book of Mormon's intertextuality and exegesis are far more sophisticated than you (or most people!) give it credit for. If you're interested in a friendly, readable primer on that topic, I'd suggest Grant Hardy's excellent Understanding the Book of Mormon.
> Doctrine-wise, the Book of Mormon truly *is* self explanatory, impressively so.
My question is why the Book of Mormon isn't easily understood in all ways, not just doctrine, so that no believer could conceive the need to write and recommend any commentaries on any aspect of it. Saying that a work has sophisticated exegesis and intertextuality, best elucidated in a commentary, is another way of saying that the common reader could easily miss important things. But why would God write a book where anything would go over the head of a common reader?
Compare with a cooking recipe: the common person understands every line. What is God's motivation for writing something more complex than a recipe?
Oh, OK, I get it now. Thanks for your patience.
This is funny, because the usual criticism of the Book of Mormon is that it's too simple, too homely, too plain. Over the last 200 years, even many believers have viewed its style as just a notch above "folk art," if that. Only in fairly recent years has enough scholarly attention been paid to it to reveal any layers of artistry beneath the surface.
But that's artistry, not meaning. What I said about the text's obviousness "doctrine wise" is true: the important gospel information is *all* on the surface, explained as directly as possible, like an elementary school workbook. Consider chapter 31 in the book of Second Nephi, one of the text's most important sections in terms of defining basic beliefs. In just 21 short verses, it lays out the "covenant path" so clearly that a child could understand it (indeed, the Book of Mormon is written at about a 6th grade reading level). https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/scriptures/bofm/2-ne/31?lang=eng
So the Book of Mormon passes your test with flying colors. It very much *does* want to be understood and applied as universally as possible!
The majority of your questions are variations on "wouldn't there be an easier or more efficient way to run a cult?" E.g. "Shouldn't Joseph Smith have just deified himself directly instead of setting himself up as a prophet and only reaping indirect benefits?" or "Shouldn't he have written something less boring or less heretical to attract more members?" But all that proves is that Mormonism is not an *optimal* cult. And being suboptimal is not proof of divinity! Lots of humans are suboptimal!
For an obvious example, a lot of cults have ended in the death or suicide of their members. You could equally well ask "Why would the Heaven's Gate cult commit mass suicide if there wasn't really a UFO coming to take them away?" The founder had a perfectly good thing going, he had lots of loyal followers and he'd just convinced them to pay a lot of money for a nice mansion, why would he throw that all away? Why not just say "the UFOs are coming 50 years from now, in the meantime continue to give me your money so we can be ready"?
Also, as I haven't started any cults of my own, I have no idea if the "more efficient" way to run a cult actually works in practice. Maybe cults work better with a soft sell, pitch yourself as a humble servant of God instead of obviously trying to take people's money. Maybe cults are like those poorly-spelled Nigerian scam emails, where the bad writing is actually a way to filter out the people who won't fall for it. Maybe it was a side effect of the "spontaneous revelation" thing - maybe Smith would have *liked* to compile it into a neatly edited version with all the cruft taken out, but doing so would have spoiled the illusion that it was divinely inspired. There are lots of possible explanations.
A lot of the other questions are variations on "Isn't it impossible for someone to spontaneously dictate a massive, complicated book with no revisions?" To which I can only reply "Have you ever heard of National Novel Writing Month?" It's absolutely possible to spit out 250,000 words of coherent story without backtracking or revising, and people do it for fun. Sure, it'll be a first draft, not the most compelling story, but you've already admitted that the Book of Mormon has some boring parts.
Thanks--I appreciate your reply--though this response seems to be giving rather short shrift to the series of astonishing "achievements" and "coincidences" that defy logic, as outlined in my challenge. It's orders of magnitude deeper than just another NaNoWriMo project. If you're interested, dig in!
>all that proves is that Mormonism is not an *optimal* cult.
I mean, if we're accepting (for the sake of argument) the axiom the religions are just "a very successful subset of cults", can you even say it *isn't* an optimal strategy? Basically all of the most successful Abrahamic religions were formed around the words of a *prophet* rather than a deity (Moses, the prophet of Islam, Smith) with only one notable exception (Jesus) who was still very prophet-like.
Yeah, that's what I was getting at when I said I don't know if the "more efficient" way actually works any better. Sure, it might sound logical that Smith could have gotten the same results with less effort, but we don't actually know that. I don't know which parts of a religion are necessary to produce tangible results for the prophet, and I doubt Joseph Smith knew either.
"it might sound logical that Smith could have gotten the same results with less effort, but we don't actually know that." Sure we do--he already had plenty of followers from his reports of visions and revelations, which would be infinitely easier to fake than a giant work of narrative and dialogic innovation. This is well documented: I recommend Bushman's biography Rough Stone Rolling on this point.
A lot of your questions hinge around providing really detailed explanations for things that don’t really require it. So, for example: the questions about why the Book of Mormon often seems to ‘predict’ the location of historical sites beg the question. Does it seem to predict that? Most people would say no: it’s fairly trivial for a text without illustrations to give vague guidance about the nature of a location and for some location within the thousands of square miles plausibly indicated to meet the necessary criteria. That’s not astonishing, it’s what one would expect.
Likewise, we do not know and cannot really know why Smith stuck his face in a hat, but frankly it’s really suspicious: it provides him an opportunity to be partially unseen, which suggests the kind of diversions employed by stage magic. You beg the question by assuming it could have nothing to do with dictating the text, but there are a hundred possible ways it could have and we don’t know enough about the circumstances (having no direct evidence, only witness accounts) to say what or why. It shouldn’t be incumbent on skeptics to explain this practice without the benefit of any externally gathered evidence; it’s like having an impressed and adulatory audience member explain a Copperfield performance and then asking the skeptics to show how it was done—a nearly impossible task.
(Note that I am in fact a theist so I don’t actually dismiss the Book of Mormon on grounds that it’s religion. My primary reason for dismissing the Book of Mormon is that it’s not theologically compatible with what we can be absolutely certain is the message of Christ, and that means it really can’t be true.)
Anyway, because you demand rigorous explanations for things that should be able to be dismissed as extraordinary claims without extraordinary evidence, I don’t see you getting a lot of takers.
Thanks for taking the time to explain your take on this. Best wishes on your walk with Christ, my friend!
However, let's imagine a scenario where someone wanted to simply brush aside the inconvenience of the Book of Mormon. Wouldn't that person say essentially the same things that you've said here? Instead of addressing the questions in my challenge head on, simply deny that the premises are valid at all?
No offense, though--I get it. If you ever change your mind and want to look into this, please let me know. May our Heavenly Father bless you and yours!
Sure, an intellectually dishonest person might dismiss those questions without examination. And someone who is genuinely intellectually honest about believing that the questions contain insufficiently substantiated premises might also dismiss them. The mere fact of a person dismissing the questions as loaded doesn't say much about the integrity of that person.
What tackling those questions, as posed, would prove is that somebody has a simply enormous amount of time on their hands plus a deep interest already in the Book of Mormon. Speaking as someone who is deeply interested in Christianity, it would still be hard to go through such a list and answer comprehensively (I've got kids!): I'd have to value my time at a pretty low hourly wage to justify even a thousand-dollar payout, and I can't be sure you would consider my answers legitimate and written in good faith.
An example: there's a question about chiasm, that demands detailing of when, how, why, etc. Joseph Smith would have learned it. My answer would be: frankly, 'literally anywhere!' It's a literary technique of little rarity that's present throughout Scripture in more or less every translation (and Shakespeare! and the Greeks! and many many other sources which any literate person of the time would have had considerable exposure to on background!), and supposing that it requires special expertise or training to employ is, no offense, absurd. I have a hard time believing that you'd take easily to me dismissing your premise like that, but it's the only answer I could give.
Anyway, God bless you too, and good luck with it.
>what we can be absolutely certain is the message of Christ
Could you elaborate on this? Because there seems to be a whole lot of disagreement as to what His message is even among His adherents.
If you just mean "it contradicts the holy book known as the Bible", it wouldn't be the first time that the Lord deemed it necessary to update the Abrahamic holy texts.
Sure. If you want the very broad overview of the essential tenets of Christianity, see the Nicene Creed formulated in 325. While the very many different sects disagree on many details, there is broad and continuing agreement that if you deny, disparage, or cannot affirm the beliefs espoused by the Nicene Creed that you are not in fact a Christian, no matter what you call yourself.
If you want the reasoning why the Nicene Creed should be held to be definitive, that is an argument larger than this margin safely contain! That said, if you want a heuristic as to why you should trust Nicene Christianity over a variant, think about this the way you might think about the moon landing: there is an overwhelming consensus of both experts and laymen that the evidence is obvious and clear. That doesn't mean I'm right, but it means you should consider strongly that I might be right.
Mormonism unfortunately fails the test against the Nicene Creed on a number of points (this list is not exhaustive): Mormons cannot affirm that Christ was the "only-begotten son of God," cannot affirm that Christ was "begotten, not made," and cannot affirm that Christ was begotten of the Father "before all worlds/before the ages." As a result Mormonism is regretfully not considered Christian.
My main problem with this answer is that the Nicene Creed is far more about the *divinity of Christ* than *the teachings of Christ*, and as such, this answer implies that's all his message is.
I'll accept that the label "Christian" applies to those who follow him properly as a divine entity, but that part always felt like one of the less important parts of Christ's "message". If we claim that Christ's message was only about the fact that he was the Son of God, that's kind of... underwhelming, as a distinguishing factor? Kind of lackluster, when the things he says in the scriptures, what I would naturally call his "message", encompass so much more.
(I also want to take issue with it being ten generations removed from Christ himself, but I have to respect your reasoning in the second paragraph there. I *do* still think the actual scriptures have more weight, though.)
There is a very big difference between 'the goal of this article is to define a bicycle' and 'the goal of this lesson is to teach you to ride a bike.' The creed definitely does not purport to be the message (the gospel), nor can the gospel be fairly contained entirely in the creed.
That said, the creed contains some handy summaries of essential points of the gospel, and those are some very important points where Mormonism contradicts Christ's message. Of course, I agree that the actual Scripture has more weight than the creed, but I'm not claiming the creed as replacement for the Scripture—in this case we are using the creed as shorthand to gesture at the Scripture itself, and if you wish you can go to the Scriptural references that undergird the creed and see how those contradict Mormon theology directly.
It would be a mistake to say that Christ's divinity, or his plan for salvation, or the facts of his life, are not part of the gospel, but something accessory to it, or less important than the rest. That's the sort of problematic approach where you end up with something like the Jefferson Bible, a pale and (if you'll forgive me) even more underwhelming Jesus, who is a really compelling public speaker with fascinating things to say about loving people, and that's it.
What are your standards for plausible? There is criticism of the historical texts advanced by Smith to back up his claims, but if you're not conversant with Egyptology, you are just taking the word of the experts on faith and naturally the Mormons can argue back about that.
I'm assuming you aren't interested in the theology, which is not standard Christian theology (to be the most polite I can be about it). After all, why valorise one set of claims about a non-existent deity over another set of claims?
I'm not sure how to answer this one. All I can do for now is to address the initial question--"plausible" should mean that reasonable, average, objective observers would be persuaded that these answers are serious and sensible. I hope this helps. Feel free to correct me if I misunderstood your intent here.
Smith was lying. I await my 1000 dollars :-)
LOL you're only 50 questions away, my friend! :)
Well, you have your Bayesian priors messed up. If you hear the theory that someone claims he was "given golden plates by an angel with a foreign text inscribed onto them, that he then translated that text into English by the gift and power of God, and that the narrative contained in that text is a literal record from an ancient group of people who actually existed." you should assume he made that up.
Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, and the fact that some details are not trivially easy to explain is not an extraordinary evidence.
Thanks for replying to me, but simply saying that "some details are not trivially easy to explain" is a humungous understatement of the situation. There is a veritable mountain of evidence that strongly suggests the authenticity of the Book of Mormon as an ancient text--my challenge presents an introduction to the "extraordinary evidence" you seek. You may or may not actually want to explore that evidence, but there's hardly intellectual integrity in ignoring the substance of this challenge and then claiming that such evidence must not be sufficient. Whether or not you or anyone else is inclined to look into this, though, I thank you again for your engagement here, and wish you and yours the very best in life.
I mean, scientologists say the same thing. As do Yehova witnesess. I wonder, have you personally looked into the doctrine of every cult under the sun in order the check whether their ridiculously sounding claims are not, by any chance, divine revelation?
This is a common query, but it fundamentally misunderstands the situation here. The Book of Mormon gives us a wholly unique and ideal scenario--a long, complex text that suddenly appears in an unlikely place in the modern world, and which claims to be a translation of an ancient epic. That gives us a TON of material to investigate and determine whether or not that claim is true. If it is, the nature of the text's production lends immense credibility to (indeed, literally proves) the LDS church's claim that God lives and was behind the Book of Mormon, since there's no other reasonable possibility for its appearance. Give the questions in my challenge a look, if you're interested, and let me know what you think.
This is a solid, well written thought, but it fundamentally misunderstands the situation here. The Book of Mormon gives us a wholly unique and ideal scenario--a long, complex text that suddenly appears in an unlikely place in the modern world, and which claims to be a translation of an ancient epic. That gives us a TON of material to investigate and determine whether or not that claim is true. If it is, the nature of the text's production lends immense credibility to (indeed, literally proves) the LDS church's claim that God lives and was behind the Book of Mormon, since there's no other reasonable possibility for its appearance. Give the questions in my challenge a look, if you're interested, and let me know what you think.
Wow, thanks for these awesome thoughts. I'll keep my response concise: if the purpose of God revealing messages is to communicate facts and motivation to people with a wide variety of mental and spiritual abilities, shouldn't we expect it to be conveyed in the simpler ergots of the age?
I've read and really enjoyed the Qur'an, but its situation isn't like the Book of Mormon's at all: nobody doubts the ancient origin of the Qur'an, not that the supernatural aspects of its ideas depend on that origin, anyway. The Book of Mormon gives us a very recent text claiming to be ancient, and it's easy to investigate that possibility, and if it truly is of ancient origin, then the supernatural claims made by the text are authenticated, due to the nature of the book's modern production.
The claim that the Book of Mormon (or any holy text, for that matter) merely reflects the ideas of the time and place in which it was produced tends to fail on closer examination. The Book of Mormon, for example, has plenty of truly original, innovative theology that stunned the original audience and still causes ripples of revolution wherever it goes.
"plausible" should mean that reasonable, average, objective observers would be persuaded that these answers are serious and sensible.
So who is the judge of what a "reasonable" or "objective" observer is.
In this case, me :)
https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/semaglutidonomics
In the semiglutinde discussion, there were people who said they had ways for everyone to lose weight or everyone could enjoy exercise, and were resistant to claims that in fact, these things are not true of everyone.
To put it mildly, this is not Bayesian. It's not adjusting beliefs in accordance with evidence.
I'm not even sure why people would stick to strong generalizations about everyone when it's clear that people vary quite a bit, and especially why people with that mental habit would show up in a rationalist venue. Are you not weird in some way or other?
There's a bit in Stirner's _The Ego and It's Own_ about how making grand abstractions about the world gives a feeling of power, and I think he was right. Yes, even if that's a generalization about people. I don't think he got to the idea that making those generalizations can be a way of getting real power.
There are examples of this sort of thing in many areas in addition to weight loss and exercise, and I invite more examples.
"Everyone's really polyamorous". "No one can make polyamory work."
"No one is really an atheist."
"Everyone is really heterosexual".
One that I've always found a bit triggering: "having trouble getting up early is laziness."
The truth is, people's biological clocks vary, and fighting it is futile.
I'm a night owl, and I've been unable to change that fact despite trying everything that's usually recommended for sleep hygiene*. I kept a regular, early schedule for many years at work, but I never adjusted to it. My body just doesn't wake up until around noon, regardless of when I get out of bed. When I struggle to keep my eyes open at morning meetings, it's not laziness, it's my high level of discipline that I'm there at all!
Sometimes I wish we could switch to a 6pm-2am work schedule, I'll be wide awake and can accuse all the others of being lazy when they find it hard to maintain :P
(*I imagine that more extreme measures could work, such as using powerful light boxes at home to simulate sunlight, as I know from my biological clock is somehow driven by sunlight. But I'd need to make big changes to my living situation for that.)
Good point. It's a slightly different variant-- there's a spectrum between "everyone really is X" and "everyone should be able to deal with X".
"Everyone generalizes from one example. At least, I do." - Steven Brust, "Issola"
If this is in reference to my comment, I think it's a bit of a mischaracterization. It's true that some people are incapable of exercising and that some of these barriers can't be solved with policy, but there's a motte and bailey here where 'no policy change can be 100% effective' or even 'policy changes are largely ineffective' is used to imply 'individuals aren't responsible for improving their lives'. I am almost positive that there are people in that comment section that could exercise and whose lives would be significantly improved in the long term by regular exercise.
This is a fundamentally different thing than your examples because gay people/athiests/polyamorous/not polyamorous people leading worse lives are particulars of a given culture and society but less fit people leading worse lives is a fact of nature. If I'm being maximally charitable, I could call it a particular of human biology or a particular of all pre-transhumanist-utopia societies, but all of these lead to the same ethical prescriptions. I am in favor of human flourishing; in some cases this means changing society (advocating for less discrimination against gay people) and in others it means advocating people to change as individuals (encouraging people to go to the gym).
My bigger problem is that your argument generalizes to any ethical or social prescription. You're criticizing some comments for not being Bayesian, or rational, or updating according to new evidence, but couldn't I just as easily argue that you advocating for more Bayesian reasoning is also making a generalization? Just like there are people who can't go to the gym, there are people who aren't capable of engaging in this reasoning. To advocate for reason is just as much of a grand abstraction as advocating for fitness.
It was in reference to your comments in addition to some others.
There are people who are harmed by exercise-- people with CFS, probably people with long covid, plausibly people in the middle of mono, no doubt others. There are probably people who just don't benefit from exercise even if they aren't hurt by it.
There are also people who can benefit from exercise, but would need to make a careful start.
I don't know what you mean by policy. It begins to sound like forcing people. You say "encourage", but I don't know what you have in mind.
If you were just saying many people can learn to enjoy exercise, I wouldn't be objecting, but you talk about all people.
I havent seen any evidence to make me update away from "If people are in caloric deficit they will lose weight"
After that we're largely talking about psychology and willpower which is much harder to reason about
Sometimes they die. This happened with some of the early rice fasts.
If you think the most important thing is for fat people to not be fat, you can end up ignoring what you're doing to actual people because you're only focused on the outcome you're imagining.
I think the idea Nancy wishes you'd update isnt that caloric deficits lead to weight loss. It's this sort of thing:
This seems an extremely weakminded and degenerate statement to make. Hunger is a natural and healthy state we evolved to cope with. Certainly you SHOULD abide hunger if you are an unhealthy weight
Yes, if you retrain your mind to think of mild hunger as positive "hooray! I am burning fat", then it can really help with losing a few lbs.
And you think the reason that so many extremely bright people on this forum are reporting failure at weight control is that this simple idea never occurred to them?
How would I know? I am stating what I found to be effective.
"I'm not even sure why people would stick to strong generalizations about everyone when it's clear that people vary quite a bit, and especially why people with that mental habit would show up in a rationalist venue."
I'd say a big part of it is narcissism. Some people just do not quite fully get it that everybody else is, just like them, a sensate being with a complicated inner life and a unique set of abilities, disabilities, loves and hates. One consequence of this is that if the person finds something easy, they think everyone else should too. They imagine that everyone was dealt the same hand they got, but that the people who have trouble doing things they do easily just are not playing it well.
If you stop eating, you will stop being hungry after around the 3rd day, and then you can just not eat until you reach your ideal weight. For me that was 10 days. Extremely easy if boring. Unlike exercise or diets which require significant willpower. I don't know if this is true for all people but has been the most effective long term solution for me / my friends who were willing to try.
That's your experience. Why do you think it's like that for everyone?
It being safe for vast majority of people: studies of doctor monitored water fasts
It not requiring much if any willpower after the 3rd day: understanding of hormones involved and personal reports from blogs and r/fasting
It not being followed by rapid weight gain as is common after other weight loss methods: mostly personal experience and small sample size from others I know who have tried it
You don't have a random sample there. Presumably fasting is only attempted by people who think they can handle it.
I'm also concerned that if it doesn't work for some people, they might not want to admit to failing.
If you reached your ideal weight after ten days' fasting, then you only had a very little weight to lose.
Could you "just not eat" for six months? Because that is the level of overweight we are talking about, not "hmm, belt is a bit tight, better cut back on the dinner and just eat a salad for lunch" level of weight.
Yeah you can just not eat for six months. I think the record is a guy who lost 280 pounds after not eating for a year. I don't know at what length of a fast you'd want doctor supervision. Basically you need to supplement with minerals, drink plenty of water, and not tear your muscles with intense exercise. You don't need a doctor for that, but that's an extremely irresponsible sentence to write on the internet so I'm not really sure how to share that belief.
I agree with the direction of skepticism (as a very rough approximation, if we take 7000 calories/kg of fat, then a very obese man's idle BMR of 3500 calories/day gives us a loss of 5kg in those ten days) but six months, even for someone with massive reserves, is just dicing with death.
I'm not a doctor, but extreme fasts like that can be dangerous. Don't try it without consulting some trusted health authority first.
Interesting. How much weight did you lose?
Around 5 pounds of fat, after regaining the lost water weight.
It is easy to lose weight. Stop eating, one bite of food earlier than you would otherwise. You won't lose a lot of weight. Nonetheless, it works for everyone and is very little impact on your quality of life. In fact, it has so little impact that it is easy to carry on indefinitely.
Have you tried this? It sounds like something you're making up.
As stated, people have differing availability of attention.
Absolutely. I am 6'2" and weighed around 190 at the time. I lost around 8 pounds over the course of 9 months to a year with no other intentional behavior changes. It is worth noting that just thinking about what you eat has unintended benefits as you at least occasionally make different eating decisions because it is more, "on your mind."
The other behavior that I did which also resulted in a fair bit of weight loss and was easy to do was to intentionally eat something healthy prior to eating something unhealthy. In other words, if I wanted some chips, I ate an apple first. The net result being that you can still enjoy high calorie snacks but are more sated when you start eating and tend to eat less.
Thanks. I'm glad it worked for you. This is still not a demonstration that it would work for everyone. I would file it under probably a safe thing to try.
I may not be effective for everyone. I would say that it will work for everyone who is capable of eating one bite less greater than 0% of the time, so long as the attempt does not also cause them to eat more. It might not work for someone who was catatonic....
It could probably be dangerous for someone with an eating disorder, too.
Yeah, you know what's not easy?
(1) Recognizing the exact point you would stop with each of several foods on your plate -- what, after 87% of the peas?
(2) Remembering to stop one bite short of that magic point. You are trying to override a habit you have followed your whole life: eating each item until you feel ready to stop.
(3) Stopping one bite short of the magic point when you do not want to do that, at the end of a day when you are already tired and kind of used up from doing several difficult things you did not want to do: Getting up at 4 to take somebody to the airport before you go to work. Doing the work day on 4.5 hours of sleep. In the course of the work day, pushing through your anxiety about giving a difficult presentation and doing a good job of it. Stopping at the grocery store on the way home with your wife because you know that will put her in a good mood and you two having being gettng along that well for a while.
(5) Following the stop-one-bite-early plan with after dinner stress-snacking, which is often the main source of weight gain. When somebody is doing after dinner stress-snacking, they are probably also doing something to entertain themselves at the same time -- like maybe watching TV -- so they cannot be alert for the next-bite-is-last-one-I-want feeling. And anyhow, when somebody is stress-eating something highly palatable and not very filling like ice cream, THERE NEVER COMES A POINT WHEN THEY TAKE A BITE AND REALIZE THEY ARE SATISFIED AND READY TO STOP EATING.
Except for the above, the stop-one-bite-early plan is great.
Are you just being intentionally obtuse? Do you think that attempting to stop a bite early is going to make you eat more? Do you think that you will fail to eat less on even one of the meals where you think about this? It seems very clear to us rationalists that eating less once and eating more never equals weight loss.
"Stop one bite early" depends on portion size. If I have the recommended plate size (or whatever metrics they are using today) of healthy veggies and few carbs etc. and I stop with *exactly* one bite of food left, then perhaps over time I will lose some weight.
If I have a double helping of all the wrong foods, stopping with *just* one last bite left won't do anything much.
What you seem to be recommending is the old advice: "stop while you are still hungry/feel you could eat more". That's more than just "one bite fewer".
And if you are still hungry after a meal, then yes, you may be more inclined to snack to 'fill in the gaps'.
No, I'm not being intentionally obtuse. In fact, I'm not being obtuse at all. But you sure are being rude as fuck.
I have no trouble at all grasping that if some of the time you stop one bite early and the rest of the time you just stop at the usual time, that your total intake will be less. None of the objections I made hinged on the failing to comprehend this very simple math. Here they are again, expressed more briefly, plus one additional:
Original points:
(1) I realize I'm eating my last bite while I am chewing that bite. There's a feeling of, "OK, no more, I'm satisfied." And I think I'm probably typical. At that point it's too late to stop one bite short. And there is no next-to-the-last-bite feeling.
(2) Difficult to remember to do something so different from usual habit.
(3) Difficult to do something you don't feel like doing at end of a hard day at a time you associate with relaxation and comfort and hunger satisfaction.
(4)Won't work for eating ice cream and such during tv-watching esnacking, because there's generally no feeling of a last bite with ice cream-eating under these circumstances. People just eat and eat til bed.
One additional: Even if none of the above applied, this approach would only work for someone whose weight is stable. Many overweight people have been gaining weight for years, and are continuing to. For them, your system would just get slowing of gain, or at best no further gain. It would not lead to weight loss.
Those generalizations are not all of the same type. There are ways for everyone to lose weight, e.g. being in an environment like prison where someone else controls one's food supply completely.
Someone who says "no one is really an atheist" probably means that atheism is impossible, and even one true atheist would invalidate that. But if someone says "everyone could enjoy exercise", what they probably mean is that the vast majority of non-exercising people could theoretically find some kind of exercise that they would enjoy. So it's a sloppy way of talking but it's not a claim that there is any particular evidence against.
I think part of this is differing ideas of "lose weight". People can lose weight in extreme circumstances.
What people would like is being able to lose enough weight to be respectable* while food that they're entitled to eat is extremely available and with out high costs in effort/pain/side effects.
I say respectable because I keep hearing about people who lose weight from being very ill and getting congratulated. And from people who find that no accomplishment gets as much praise as losing weight.
In that case, you can never disprove it. Someone can keep trying different kinds of exercise and hating all of them, and you could still keep telling them that there's some kind of exercise they would enjoy. There's no point at which that claim is falsified, which makes it meaningless.
It doesn't have to be falsifiable to be meaningful. In any case, I admitted that the claim is not absolute; there are people who can't exercise at all after all or for whom practically all exercise causes pain. And I didn't say that everyone can find a way of exercising that they like as a practical matter.
Just as a matter of common experience, people do quite often learn to enjoy things that they disliked at first. But no one can know that beforehand and of course it is often obnoxious to try to tell them that they will.
"I don't think he got to the idea that making those generalizations can be a way of getting real power. "
I wonder if it's not the converse: power is what enables one to make these sorts of generalisations without suffering too much cognitive dissonance.
I think that analysis that this is in part about power is fair. But I think it is mostly about sloppy thinking, laziness, and wanting to stake out strong positions for rhetorical/negotiating purposes.
Just underlining that it's partly about power, but frequently about getting the *feeling* of power. Stirner was scathing about people who settle for the feeling.
Everyone will have heard of dark matter, the mysterious invisible non-interacting diffuse substance which among other things gives galaxies enough extra mass for their stars to orbit the galaxy without tangential sheer (luckily for us - or else all kinds of "interesting" cosmic objects would have passed the solar system dangerously close over time!)
The consensus of opinion among physicists is that dark matter is composed of a hypothetical particle called an axion, and several searches are currently underway to detect these. To my way of thinking, this has somewhat the feel of the phlogiston theory of heat; but whatever one's views, thorough searches are absolutely the right thing to perform.
Quite a popular, but less widely accepted, contending theory (MOND, short for Modified Newton Dynamics) is that over cosmic distances the behavior of gravity varies slightly from hitherto established laws, and accounts for the effect without the need to posit the presence of any extra kind of matter.
But to my knowledge, a third possibility has not been seriously considered, tachyons, i.e. particles traveling faster than light speed.
For most physicists, tachyons are the word that dare not speak its name. Mention these with a physicist standing behind one, and they will likely start smirking, rolling their eyes, and twirling their finger making a loony sign!
Not least this is because anything traveling faster then light speed is heading into the past, which plays havoc with causality and related calculations. But that very difficulty could be the reason why dark matter as tachyons don't interact with normal matter or light, so causality is preserved.
I very much doubt tachyons could be produced by any conventional interaction. But inside a black hole, who is to say? For all we know, black holes could be leaking a constant stream of tachyons, like steam from a pot of boiling water!
From an external observer's standpoint, this would not affect any of its measurable properties such as mass, because the event horizon is a frozen barrier to discern anything going on in the future inside. (I believe Hawking radiation is a surface phenomenon or, strictly speaking, occurring a whisker above the surface.)
One might even be able to extend this notion to explain dark energy: Normal matter particles ("bradyons") gain energy as they approach light speed. But, paradoxically, tachyons (if they exist) lose energy as their speed increases.
So if these tachyons can transfer energy somehow, in a non-localized form, to conventional fields and as a result accelerate ever faster, then the result will be a uniform background of them traveling arbitrarily fast from unlimited distances (far beyond the cosmic horizon), which could manifest itself as a uniform expansion of space. That said though, I'm not sure if the signs of the energy could be reconciled, because I gather dark energy is negative whereas presumably tachyons have positive energy.
Here are some older discussions about MOND:
https://www.reddit.com/r/slatestarcodex/comments/9m6w4p/what_is_dark_matter_even_the_best_theories_are/
https://slatestarcodex.com/2017/10/25/open-thread-87-25/#comment-561342
There is a recent review at https://arxiv.org/abs/2209.04025 of a theory called the Relativistic Transactional Interpretation (RTI). It seems this combines MOND and entropic gravity
2022-09-08 "Gravity from Transactions: A Review of Recent Developments", by A Schlatter & R E Kastner
It's easy enough to click on the link, but for the reader's convenience I'll spoon feed you here with the abstract :-)
"This is a review of new developments in entropic gravity in light of the Relativistic Transactional Interpretation (RTI). A transactional approach to spacetime events can give rise in a natural way to entropic gravity (in the way originally proposed by Eric Verlinde) while also overcoming extant objections to that research program. The theory also naturally gives rise to a Cosmological Constant and to Modified Newtonian Dynamics (MOND) and thus provides a physical explanation for the phenomena historically attributed to "dark energy" and "dark matter".
As for MOND, unless I'm seriously misunderstanding it, it posits that the difference between being subjected to a total net force of epsilon newtons northwards and being subjected to a total net force of epsilon newtons southwards does not tend to zero as epsilon approaches zero, which feels way more absurd to me than the alternatives.
> The consensus of opinion among physicists is that dark matter is composed of a hypothetical particle called an axion
What? The most popular hypothesis, but still nowhere near popular enough to be called a consensus, is that it's made of weakly interacting massive particles (WIMPs), where originally the "W" was intended to mean the interaction mediated by W and Z bosons and the "M" to mean much heavier than a proton (and the most popular specific example was the lightest supersymmetric partner of a Standard Model neutral particle). Nowadays it's usually interpreted more generically, with the "W" meaning any interaction with small cross sections and the "M" meaning heavy enough to be non-relativistic when the CMB decoupled, but still not including axions.
Besides the things Thor Odinson said, in a quantum theory if there's a tachyonic field it means the "vacuum" state you are doing perturbations around is actually unstable, and the easier it is to produce tachyons the less stable it is. By the time we got enough tachyons to play the explanatory role of dark matter the unstable vacuum would long since have collapsed and turned into something else.
Possibly a dumb question, but does that actually count as evidence? I wouldn't expect anyone to observe the collapse in timelines where it happens, since (I'm guessing) everyone would be quite dead.
I expect if you believe in a form of quantum immortality or anthropic principle strong enough for this to not be an issue in a physical theory you will definitely run into other philosophical issues (simulations, Boltzmann brains, etc) to such a level that you'd have to question your ability to predict anything at all. Which is to say that even if it's not as absurdly strong evidence as a straightforward calculation of the probabilities from quantum theory would indicate, it's still pretty substantial.
So, there's a bunch of things to say here.
Firstly while Axions are one of the leading contenders, there are quite a few other hypothesised particles, eg. heavy neutrinos (we need something to explain non-zero masses for the light neutrinos anyway). Axions' biggest advantage is that they're something that we both haven't yet ruled out and can search for without waiting a century for better tech. (Same reason Super Symmetry was super popular 20 years ago, but most of the 'nicest' models for SuSy have been ruled out by the LHC)
Secondly, basically a footnote, but MOND is totally shit. Dark matter explains about 5 different things at once and MOND at best manages 1 or 2 of them. Every piece of evidence we have lines up with Dark Matter being a new form of Matter, rather than an issue with our understanding of gravity.
Thirdly, what we know about dark matter distributions has it responding normally to gravity and moving quite slowly (it's "cold"), which seems to me to be incompatible with it being tachyonic, though it's been almost a decade since I took General Relativity in grad school.
I just want to push back on the idea that mond is without value. Mond is more a phenomenological theory. It describes what nature looks like and doesn't (yet) have any mechanisms to propose. (Dark matter proposes, some unseen mass.) With only one parameter mond does a tremendous job at fitting the galactical scale data. It doesn't work for fitting galaxy clusters, and it fails to predict the height of the third bump in the CMB data. (It did however predict the size of the second bump.. and did it better than Lamda/ CDM... the later had to adjust stuff to get the second bump right and this has lead to other problems for Lamda/CDM.)
With our failure to find any dark matter. (the search space is getting very small.) I became more interested in Mond. I started following https://tritonstation.com/ a blog by Stacy McGraugh on cosmology and mond. And started reading cosmology text books to get myself up to speed. Let me link to one of my favorite pieces of data. https://tritonstation.com/2021/06/28/the-rar-extended-by-weak-lensing/ This is just amazing the fit is over several orders of magnitude. I don't know what Mond is, but it feels like this is the biggest missed piece of data in describing how our world works, and I expect physics to eventually catch on... If some dark matter particle is discovered then mond dies in a day. Till then gravity at the weakest acceleration scales is weirder than most of us think.
I'm happy to provide links to other triton station posts, to expand on any of my claims.
Thanks Thor. I've never found MOND very convincing, and it doesn't explain situations such as the Bullet Cluster, in which the dark matter of a couple of colliding galaxies seems to have come adrift from the galaxies themselves, or is misaligned at least. It would be interesting to know where the super-massive black holes (assuming they exist) of these galaxies currently are in relation to the latter.
Re: the Bullet Cluster. From here http://astroweb.case.edu/ssm/mond/
read this; http://astroweb.case.edu/ssm/mond/bullet_comments.html
Is the comment threading here messed up for anyone else? Seems to be a lot of replies posted as top level comments
There's a problem with the UI when you reply from an Email notification.
When you click "View Comment" in the email, it takes you to a page with a big "Write a Comment..." box, followed by the text of the comment you're replying to. But that is actually the box from the top of the comments section!
You need to instead click the small grey "Reply" button in the bottom left of the page, which brings up a second "Write a Comment" box below the message.
I took some screenshots to hopefully explain better.
https://imgur.com/a/KABY6eh
YES! I've been aware for a while that if you get notified of a comment by email, it does not work to reply to it within email (even though you are offered the chance to) -- you have to go back to the thread itself. If you don't your reply gets posted as a top level comment. But there are way more than unusual of these misplaced comments in this thread. I don't know whether it's because Substack's doing even less well than usual or because we've got more newbies than usual commenting here.
It's probably one person replying from the comment alert emails instead of going to the website to reply, which causes your reply to be unthreaded. I really wish substack would fix that--it doesn't usually get this bad but there are always at least a couple in an open thread.
It seems to be mostly replies from certain people that get posted wrong. My theory is that if you're posting from your phone it's easy to hit the wrong button. (I don't actually know what this site looks like on a phone, but on my browser it doesn't seem like an easy mistake to make.)
Thank you to everyone on the semaglutinide post who shared their struggles with weight loss. I would like to understand the *internal* experience of what people mean when they say the 'can't control themselves' (or equivalent).
I fully empathize with the comments saying 'get more willpower' are not helpful; I do not know where my willpower came from, so it would be unreasonable to ask someone else to get more.
My experience of weight loss is, I realise, not typical (I gained weight after two step changes in my metabolism, one after stopping swimming and another in my mid to late twenties, and in both cases lost the weight by deciding to eat less until my hunger levels stabilised at a lower baseline).
When people struggle with self control, is it like:
A) It feels like sleepwalking, where the actions happen on a non conscious level (eating too much, getting through the whole bag of crisps)
B) It feels like possession, where you're aware of what's happening but it feels like an outside force is controlling your limbs
C) It feels like an outside force is persuading you too do something you don't want to (like certain instances of schizophrenia)
D) You forget what your earlier wants were and are only aware of new wants which supplant them, like how in a dream you aren't aware that your actions seem strange/not in keeping with your awake self
Furthermore, I'm interested in how it's different between eating the junk in front of you absentmindedly vs driving to the store to get more, which just be premeditated to a certain degree (I find the latter much harder to understand; why make the decision harder for your future self? This is an honest question.)
I have experienced "B) It feels like possession, where you're aware of what's happening but it feels like an outside force is controlling your limbs" before. Internally I'm screaming "Don't walk to the kitchen. Don't touch the cookie jar. Don't take the cookie. Put it back. Throw it away. Don't eat it!" but I do it anyway, feeling like a passenger in my body.
But not very often! Now when I do experience it I spend the time contemplating Dan Dennett's multiple drafts model of consciousness.
Most of the time, I just crave chocolate. It's not hunger - I can eat a hearty meal, so full I can't possibly eat another bite, and I'll still find myself reaching for chocolate right afterwards. I have almost no willpower, and using willpower to fight cravings is a losing battle. I can use willpower to resist chocolate this minute, but next minute the chocolate is still there and I need to have the same internal battle again and again.
I don't live alone, so I can't just not have chocolate in the house. If I get desperate enough I'll eat the kid's chocolate, or the cooking chocolate, so I make sure I have supplies to cover my own cravings. And chocolate is available everywhere - it seems that there's a display of chocolates at the counter of every store (not just supermarkets & servos - stores dedicated to boardgames, office supplies, hardware, you name it).
There's a theory that craving chocolate means you're low on magnesium. Might be worth checking.
This is an aside and is nothing to do with weight loss -- I'm interested in the specificity of chocolate as a craving. The people I've known who had a craving for chocolate with that kind of power (where it wasn't more generalized to carbs or fried foods, etc) were going through heartbreak, bereavement, or were depressed. Chocolate increases serotonin, so they say. It seems to me any compulsive behavior is an attempt to solve a real problem.
No bereavement, and I'd estimate no more depression than the average member of society. This is a lifelong thing and has persisted regardless of relationship status etc.
I just like the taste of chocolate and eating it is particularly pleasurable.
None of the above. All those things we cannot get ourselves to do we could do if there were a gun to our head. We could do them with far less external motivation than that. For instance, every year I have trouble getting myself to do my taxes -- I procrastinate madly. But if I had a talk with someone about it and they bet me I could not get myself to do them, and if somehow their confidence irritated me and I craved to prove the wrong -- then I could do my taxes that very day.
So the things we can't get ourselves to do -- it's rarely because the doing of them is hard. What's wrong is one level : We are failing to be good motivators of ourselves. We can't be the gun or the obnoxious better Why can't we? Well, because the motivator level of us, they level that says "do it" is not the same sort of entity as the guy with the gun or the obnoxious better. It's loyal to us. It *is* us. We can't convincingly tell ourselves we'll shoot ourselves if we don't start doing them right away. We can't convincingly be obnoxious to ourselves like the better. And there's something wrong 2 levels up. We aren't good at motivating ourselves to be good motivators. If you interview someone who has a big problem with procrastination and avoiding tasks, you'll fine there's not much going on on level 2. People aren't saying, how can I set up this weekend so that I can actually get myself to do the taxes. What would make me want to get them done? What would make me actually dread not doing them this weekend?
(random thoughts, not making any big point here)
Procrastination is a flavor of emotional avoidance, isn't it? The problem about the taxes as you say isn't logistical (I have the same issue) -- it's facing the uncomfortable feelings raised by the taxes. Is over-eating not also a flavor of emotional avoidance -- such that stopping some part of it would be as hard as doing one's taxes for the tax procrastinator?
Motivation it seems to me is capacity/willingness to experience suffering in some arena. And if one is already suffering a fair amount, it's very very hard to squeeze more blood from that stone. So many people practice all kinds of emotional avoidance, but don't have to experience the social shame of it because their avoidance may be invisible to all but their closest people. I bet there are even a few who go to the gym regularly but who practice emotional avoidance in other areas of their life.
Yes, I agree, it's emotional avoidance, but there's some kind of trick rolled up in it. In some cases the sense that doing the task will be extremely unpleasant is an illusion. Take taxes. They used to scare me, because I was worried about what I'd owe, but the way I have things set up these days I've always overpaid for the year, so I'm not scared -- just curious about how much I'll get back. It feels like these days I avoid taxes just because it's going to be so many hours of tedious work, and I develop this delusion that I'm going to be so insanely low-energy, bored and annoyed that every single second of my hours of work will be very unpleasant, and I will be constantly fighting the urge to bail. And that *never* happens. Once I start doint the taxes I even sort of vaguely enjoy it. The longer I work, the closer I get to the reveal -- how much I'm getting back! Plus it's a much easier task than things I have to do at work. It's cut and dried, you know? After half an hour at most I'm engrossed enough in the task that I think I would actually mind being interrupted. Still, every year it's the same -- oh god, not this weekend, I can't face it. So I'm not sure what that's about.
Does it work this way?: Doing taxes is going to be mildly unpleasant in some ways, and will certainly interfere with me reading, doing hobbies, & crapping around online. So in order to spare myself the mild unpleasantness of the getting-started phase, I convince myself that the entire task, all 6 hours or so of it, is going to be tremendously unpleasant?
Maybe it's something about inertia? Once I'm in relaxed, do-what-I-feel-like mode, something in me wants to prolong the time I'm there. So that part convinces me that any actual practical task will be a visit to hell. . .
If your taxes distress you, then it makes sense you'd avoid them. But what's going on with me? And you probably have things that really aren't very unpleasant that you avoid too.
That 'level 2' element is what I was trying to get at with the final paragraph of the initial post (why not set up your life to have, on average, healthier food around - not grocery shopping when you're hungry, etc), and wasn't much discussed, albeit I think is effectively addressed in the high time discounting discussion and, indirectly, in the 'non-hunger-related cravings' part. Given these specific cravings are a relatively recent cultural phenomenon, if the issue just the environmental ubiquity (as Spikejester highlights, chocolate is *everywhere*, and would be much easier to resist if you had to go to the Chocolate Store a hundred kilometers away that will only sell you one bar of chocolate at at time).
None of these explanations feel right to me, so I'll give you my two cents.
My brain makes me more and more uncomfortable until I give in to the temptation.
The best metaphor I can think of is a very assertive person nagging at you constantly for something they want. First, they ask politely, and you tell them "no". Then, they start trying to convince you (they deserve it, they need it, etc.). Finally, if it gets this far, imagine the person tapping on your shoulder to ask for it again every 10-20 seconds until you either give in or go to sleep. If you choose the latter, they will ask you again right when you wake up.
This can be overcome. Eventually, the nagging for the thing you want will lessen. But it takes a significant concentration of will power to overcome the nagging that has to be maintained for weeks at least. Anyone who gives in to a nagging spouse or child should relate, except the nagging comes from within.
It's not like any of those. Suppose someone gave you an extremely good reason to hold a red-hot iron against your arm for five minutes, like if you did it then they'd donate $10 billion to a good charity. I think most people would find it extremely difficult, if not impossible, but none of the explanations you give describe the experience very well. It's more like the base/animal part of the brain simply overrides the higher cognition, and the higher cognition is helpless even when it knows it's being overriden.
I think the whole "willpower" thing is misleading. For me, willpower is what I would need to get myself to do something difficult at a certain point of time, or maybe not to do something, but the idea that I could exercise willpower all the time not to do something, day after day, is a bit silly. No one has that kind of willpower. To make that kind of change would require changing my attitudes or my beliefs or my environment or my lifestyle so that I could change my behavior without willpower. For dieting it is even trickier than just not doing something, because everyone has to eat something, so it's a question of eating differently, which is cognitively more complicated. (I don't personally have a problem with weight, I just talking in general about this subject.)
Also hyperbolic discounting. Each individual decision is rational on short/medium term - it's just when you add them up that you get the opposite of what you want.
Which makes the whole dilemma a lot more complicated. You don't have a single choice to make between "to eat" and "not to eat". You're having a intertemporal negotiation with a multitude of selves, each with its own interests, priorities and attention spans.
> You don't have a single choice to make between "to eat" and "not to eat".
Exactly. Even if you follow the rules of perfect diet for 23 1/2 hours every day, that is not enough.
Compared to that, exercise is much easier; it only requires willpower for 1 hour a day.
This seems to describe the experience of many of the people commenting here well, and also describes the behaviours. I suppose it could be easily rationalised in the moment that any given [junk food] is very unlikely to make the difference between [heart attack/sore knees/whatever] or not, whereas it is *very* likely to make a difference between the current hunger/craving or not.
The 'you get really hungry' commenters don't quite answer the question - I consider it plausible in principle that some people could feel hunger more intensely than others, but that doesn't answer the full query:
- A sensation (hunger) is not the same as action (eating) and I want to understand how people experience the conversion of the former into the latter (despite pre-existing commitments not to)
- It also does not explain why the hunger cannot be sated with healthier food, perhaps bought ahead of time in the weekly shop
Very high future discounting does address both. It also raises the question of whether this future discounting is cross-domain or not, so I did a bit of digging, and it looks like there is a somewhat generalised future-discounting factor (this is very much not a comprehensive literature review, so happy for someone who has looked into this in more depth to find counter-examples if they can).
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1093/aepp/ppt034
"By utilizing the Rotter score that measures self-control capability, we find that obese individuals exhibit a lower degree of self-control than normal-weight individuals, and that this lack of self-control is associated with poor eating and exercise behaviors, as well as increased Body Mass Index and obesity risk."
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0956797614540467
"We found that the decision to contribute to a 401 (k) retirement plan predicted whether an individual acted to correct poor physical-health indicators revealed during an employer-sponsored health examination. [...] These findings are consistent with an underlying individual time-discounting trait that is both difficult to change and domain interdependent, and that predicts long-term individual behaviors in multiple dimensions."
How it feels from inside for me (cannot speak for others) is that at some moment I simply don't care anymore. More likely to happen in the evening, when I am tired. Willpower depletion... yes, I know that some people say it was debunked, but for some reason my brain fails to follow the latest science.
The correlation with general lower self-control does not explain the direction of causality. Maybe some people just naturally do not care about future, and as a consequence do many harmful things. Or maybe some people do stupid things when they are tired or under too much stress, and then both "not caring about future" and "obesity" are consequences of having more stress than they can handle.
This is a huge element of it.
For me it is much more simple than all that. When I sit back and dispassionately look at what I want to do with my consumption and weight, it is very clear what I need to do. But the mind is a VERY powerful rationalization engine. And so on the fly I find myself making exceptions and allowances and coming up with reasons why today isn’t a good day etc.
I am very good about not giving into these in many aspects of my life, but with food just not so much.
So even though 2 hours ago I promised myself I wouldn’t eat anything until 1pm, at 11 my children come home with a delicious donut they bought for me, and they are eating donuts, and I badly want to eat the donut, and in the grand scheme of things, and my weight, this particular donut is meaningless.
So I eat the donut. But life is that same decision again and again and again.
Like I said I am great at willpower in other ways. I have gotten up at 6AM to workout 2 days a week ~50 weeks a year for over a decade. But the difference there is regardless of how shitty I feel at the start, by the end I am happy.
With weight loss the feeling happy is many many months in the future.
Have you ever been really, *really* thirsty?
The kind of thirsty where the craving for water constantly intrudes on your thoughts, where you long for it ceaselessly, where any attempt at distraction brings you right back to the thirst?
The kind of thirst where only water (or some equally satisfying fluid) makes the sensation of want go away?
Just imagine being that *thirsty*, except the thirst is for a favorite cheeseburger with fries and a milkshake, or Doritos, or pizza, or, or, or.
When a thirst/craving is especially strong, it can be so intrusive it is incredibly difficult to resist. Some people can't resist, some people can manage with coping strategies, and some just don't seem to have the capacity for great thirst/craving. I don't think it has anything to do with virute; I think it has to do with people's capacity for "thirst" / "craving."
I've been pretty darn thirsty. I once climbed a ~10,000' local mountain peak on an unfamiliar[1] loop trail that turned out to be ~25 miles. This particular area was far drier than where I usually hike, and it was in the middle of a very unusual dry spell, so it turned out the only two water sources were at the start of the trail and 5 miles before the end of it. I ran out of water about 3 hours in, and had to walk something like 15 hours and 17 miles over pretty rugged and almost entirely shade-less terrain without any water.
The cherry on top is that when I finally reached a creek with flowing water, my disinfection method was iodine[2] tablets, which work very slowly at the low temperatures of mountain water, and as I recall I had to wait an additional 15-30 min after collecting the water -- just kind of looking at it gurgling cheerfully away there, untouchable -- before I could drink any.
The strange thing, though, is that while it was definitely hard to wait that last 15-30 min to quench a thirst that had been building so long, it wasn't like a constant battle against temptation. I knew damn well why I wasn't drinking the stuff, and I knew when I could (to the second ha ha), and once I'd set my mind to it the temptation didn't really come pecking away like a woodpecker at my will, rat-a-tat-tat so I couldn't think any other thought. It was hard to do only in the sense that climbing the mountain was hard, there was soreness and tiredness, but at no point did I even consider cheating on the wait time[3], any more than I would have sat down halfway down the trail home and given up.
But that of course doesn't mean I'm *not* tempted by eating or drinking something I rather wish (later) I hadn't -- some bad snack, one too many Old Fashioneds, that kind of thing. What I find, however, is that if I'm doing something very simple with a mild existential challenge ("You need to reach the trailhead before it's dark or you will have a Bad Night") it's not a problem to put up with a surprising amount of physical discomfort. In the last 5 years I have taken to doing peak climbs without anything but an emergency PowerBar or two in the pack. It's much lighter, I'm covered if I get really stuck, and while one gets a bit hungry hiking ~10-12 hours without food, I actually don't notice it that much after a while, once I get over the learned habit of mindlessly snarfing trail mix every 30 min, and as a well-fed American I have at least a week or two of spare fuel anyway.
But God help me if I'm sitting in front of the computer with about 16 bullshit professional e-mails to write, which have to be worded diplomatically, or if I have some stupid problem with equipment or program I can't suss out, or if I have to sit through a tedious 3 hour meeting in which people say nothing in several different styles at great length. Under those circumstances I can easily get irreresistable munchies and eat or drink all kinds of cheap nasty snacks or sugary pop, and the temptation is just freaking impossible to resist, I would need a will of iron.
Why the difference, I don't know. I'm tempted to say there is something peculiar about the modern indoor fluorescent lit staring at a 16" screen all day day, with weird complex social stresses instead of the far more straightforward physical stresses of exertion, distance, rain, cold -- something different that twists up the signaling in our brains. But that's probably just sentimental Rousseaueian bullshit.
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[1] This is obviously dumb, and my excuse is that I was a lot younger.
[2] Which tells you how long ago this was and how much poorer I was. No Katadyn filter, no Steripen.
[3] I mean, Giardia, ugh.
This is somewhat unrelated, but once I was camping at a larp event, and one day I was a bit tired, someone suggested to eat something, and I realized that I'd had my previous meal two days before. Since then I am quite firmly persuaded that a well-fed westerner is never really hungry, and has probably never experienced hunger in their life.
I agree; for me the feeling is probably much more mental than physical. Doesn't make it feel less real, unfortunately. :(
I could go long time without meal if I do not see any food, no one mentions food, and I am busy doing something that is not frustrating (so that my mind does not try to change the subject and stumble upon the topic of food).
But show me some food, and something in my mind switches and refuses to switch back. From that point on, not eating is suffering that feels physical.
I could imagine a perfect environment, adapted to my specific weakness. Kitchen hidden out of sight, so that I don't even see it unless I specifically decide to go there. A source of water outside the kitchen (maybe I could just bring a big bottle).
In reality, I have two kids I need to take care of, which includes planning the meals, buying food, cooking food, serving the meals, listening to complaints about why they cannot have their favorite meal every day instead of whatever I made today, checking whether it is the time for meal... shortly, I am reminded of the existence of food all day long.
I have actually never been that thirsty, and actually would be surprised to hear it's a common experience. It sounds like something I've read about in accounts of severe dehydration, like people who get lost in the desert or who are in prison or during a famine. Sometimes when travelling I forget to drink, and then I get a headache and I think, oh I must be dehydrated. But I've never had water constantly intrude on my thoughts.
Huh. Maybe thirst and hunger have a much wider subjective range of intensity than we generally imagine. (Obviously) I have experienced an all-consuming and intrusive thirst in my life - many times, in fact. I did most of my growing up in Phoenix and much of that was on a backyard ranchita with horses, which is dusty, thirsty work! Both the craving for water and the physical sensation of a dusty, parched mouth and throat were universally intrusive and demanding enough that *everyone* in the area would cheerfully drink hot hose water from a spigot 6 feet from a stall to alleviate thirst rather than wait another hour or two to get home.
(For what it's worth, horses seem to experience great thirst, too. Coming back from a long trail ride or even in from being worked in an arena, they would often go straight to their water dispenser or bucket and begin sucking down huge quantities and could not be distracted from that mission with treats.)
I've also been unable to sleep due to thirst. For me, the sensation of hunger might go away if I'm distracted enough for long enough, but thirst is unrelenting, even if I spend all my time in a climate controlled environment.
I mean, I have both the capacity for great thirst and great hunger, but the difference between thirst and what you’re describing is that there’s basically no wrong time to drink water. I never deny myself water if I want it because there is no harm in drinking water to satiation.
Whereas when I’m eating I very much do deny myself food, even if I am ‘hungry,’ because there are plenty of reasons I might psychologically desire food when I have no physiological need for any more food: taste, comfort, habit. Is it always easy to tell the difference from the feeling alone? No. But the feeling isn’t as important as rationally knowing that I do not actually require the calories. And if you ignore a desire like that long enough it does in fact go away and leave you wondering why you wanted the additional food to begin with.
I have a hard time believing that the internal perception of others is substantially different except that the feeling for them is more important than their reasoning.
"I have a hard time believing that the internal perception of others is substantially different except that the feeling for them is more important than their reasoning."
And that is the problem right there. "I am six foot five in height and I can easily reach the top shelves. I don't know what all these 'short' people are complaining about; just stretch out your arm like I do!"
Forgive me, but I think you missed the point of my using the sensation and urgency of "great thirst" as an an example of how some people experience craving and urgency for food they (arguably) should not eat.
Don't resist this idea because it conflicts with your internal experience. Instead, please just imagine you are abducted by aliens and they modify your brain so that the sensation of being hungry for Doritos (or whatever) feels exactly like great thirst.
That is what some people experience, including pregnant women to a degree that it's a universally acknowledged phenomenon. You do not, and good for you.
It might be hard to believe that other people are different from you, but you should try to believe it anyway.
Saying "my urges must just be stronger than yours" seems about as substantiated as "I have more willpower to resist urges than you"
It's arguing about and comparing internal subjective states to escape/assign blame, but is it useful?
I think by definition if one person is able to resist an urge and the other was not, the urge was weaker for the former and stronger for the latter.
I have willpower issues with procrastination, rather than food. To me, resisting temptation and exerting willpower feels like trying to lift a heavy weight - on a good day, perfectly doable, on a bad day, nigh impossible without another person helping.
Conversely, giving in makes time pass in a blur, so "5 more minutes" can easily turn into 3 hours. I imagine eating far too much is a similar phenomenon - a small snack simply never stops until it's become rather a large meal.
Procrastination, and breaking out of mental flows in general (e.g. putting away a book I'm enjoying because it's time to do something else) can be a challenge for me, too. It doesn't happen so often as to be damaging, but the experience is similar to what you describe: I'm perfectly aware I'm doing it, but the dominant mental track continues regardless, and the specific mental lever which will physically break the flow is out of reach.
I see what you're asking, but the internal experience is simply that you get very hungry. Which I think is actually pretty familiar to people.
Internal experiences are very different! I often don't feel hunger per se, I just notice if I go too long without food that I'm feeling weak and irritable and have learned from experience that that's a symptom of insufficient food (with some parts being a low blood sugar short term thing, and general weakness/tiredness if I haven't got enough calories on a medium term basis). As a rather direct result I often miss meals and have been slightly underweight most of my life despite a sedentary lifestyle (due to chronic health issues).
But how does that feeling of hunger convert into irresistible action? I've been very angry without punching people, or very hot without jumping into the nearest body of water, because I didn't want the consequences of those actions; what is it about hunger that makes people ignore the consequences?
The negative consequences of any 1 particular meal are neglible compared to the negatives of punching someone and thus have much less sway.
I would like to signal boost https://metamoderna.org, another addition to the ecosystem of “Let's try to make the society and governance suck less“.
I would especially mention https://metamoderna.org/is-metamodernism-the-last-stage-of-development-chaos-theory-might-hold-the-answer/. The core thesis is that the developmental phases of the culture are changing with ever increasing speed and (drawing on some hyperspeculative resemblance with chaos theory) come to a conclusion of an incoming social singularity. What do you think about this theory?
I'm very sympathetic to Hanzi's argument here. I hadn't read this specific article, but the criticisms of 'The Dawn of Everything' really resonated, re: "there are actually stages of history that have distinct characteristics and that are useful to talk about". I think the speed of communication as noted below is the key factor, but I disagree with Martin that we haven't reached it yet. Instant networked communication en masse is a very young phenomenon, and I think it's fast enough to effect the type of social singularity via chaos that Hanzi proposes in the linked essay. The jump from circa 1950s "everyone has a telephone and can do fast 1:1 communication limited by region" to circa now "everyone has the ability to broadcast anything 1:many via any medium" is as big if not bigger than than the printing press or radio/tv, we're just now seeing the implications of it (just like how the printing press actually took a while to change everything).
Oh I absolutely think the speed of communication is going to change a lot. I just don’t think it will be a “singularity” per se, which I think of as a pretty specific type of phenomenon.
That a social singularity isn’t possible because human communication is too slow. Maybe once people’s minds are directly networked.
Well, the printing press accelerated human communication, as did radio and tv after it.
I propose that a social singularity (or even just a social waterfall) can definitely happen as people adapt to the increased transmission speed and shortened feedback loops of social media.
There are physical limits for sure, but the existence of limits is not the same as us currently being close to running into them as our technology increases.
Some questions about historical demographics of Europe (after looking trough Maddison project data: https://www.rug.nl/ggdc/historicaldevelopment/maddison/releases/maddison-project-database-2020)
(and some of the questions might just be because errors in the data. And I know that the modern states mostly didn't exist in 1000 CE, I'm just using the same "area of what now is the country" shorthand as the data.)
1. The population of southern Europe (e.g. Italy) looks pretty stable between 1 CE and 1500 CE. The population of northern Europe (e.g. Netherlands) grows a lot during the same time period. Why? Was there some technological innovation or climatic change that suddenly made northern Europe more livable? (And if so, why didn't it have any impact on southern Europe?)
2. Extreme example of previous question: WTF is going on in Finland? Between 1000 CE and 1500 CE, population grows by a factor of seven!? Why wasn’t Finland already this densely populated in 1000 CE if it had extra capacity to spare and everyone else was Malthusian? What prevented a 500 CE peasant from the area around Milan to escape the Malthusian conditions of Italy for apparently empty Finland?
3. The dataset only starts in 1 CE, but let’s move beyond that. Why is Greece so sparsely populated compared to Italy? Did Italy become densely populated with the Romans, if so why? If not, why do I don’t hear anything about the pre-roman populations of Italy? Why is the history of pre-bronze-age collapse so sparse on the western Mediterranean? (Weren’t they literate?) I'm getting the impression that most people lived in the eastern Mediterranean during the bronze age, then during antiquity the population of Italy and Spain exploded, then during medieval times people figured out that you could live in norther Europe as well.
4. Why did population grow so much even before the Industrial Revolution? How could e.g. the UK feed four million in 1500 (presumably under Malthusian conditions) and eight million 1700 (presumably also under Malthusian conditions)?
If anyone wants to recommend a book on medieval demographics instead I'd be happy to know!
Regarding the medieval agricultural revolution in northern Europe, the textbook answer usually involves the cluster of innovations around horse-based agriculture (horse collar, larger draft horses, moldboard plow, nailed horseshoes, three-field crop rotation) making intense agriculture viable in northern soils viable. Also, the medieval warm period helped push the frontier of intense agriculture northwards.
Thanks!
> 4. Why did population grow so much even before the Industrial Revolution? How could e.g. the UK feed four million in 1500 (presumably under Malthusian conditions) and eight million 1700 (presumably also under Malthusian conditions)?
The UK population didn't grow much in the 1500s, although I think prosperity (eventually) started growing following the dissolution of the monasteries in the 1530s, which "privatized" a lot of ecclesiastical wealth.
There was also presumably some "trickle down" from the gold which British privateers pinched from Spanish treasure fleets during the second half of the 1500s. The introduction of the first official Poor Laws in 1601 must also have helped.
I imagine the main growth was following the final epidemic of plague in the UK, in 1665. The year after that, most of London burnt to the ground and a law was introduced banning thatched roofs in towns, due to the obvious fire hazard. What nobody knew at the time was that the black rats, which had spread the plague, then had nowhere to nest and became much rarer. (The larger and less agile brown rat we mostly see today prefers to nest below ground, in drains and suchlike.)
Gold can't really explain it: wouldn't it just drive inflation? It was not as the UK population grew while some other population declined because UK merchants bought all their food. There seems to have been a genuine increase in food production in the UK during the era.
Nice fact on the rats though, interesting!
Besides the disappearing black rats, something else that could have raised the UK population rapidly towards the end of the 18th century was that most people had started drinking tea, imported from China and India, and coffee. Obviously sticking to hot drinks reduces the risk of contracting water-borne diseases such as cholera and dysentery.
In earlier times people had drunk ale and and cider and similar alcoholic drinks, often exclusively (instead of water). But I don't know if those are as effective at preventing disease, especially as the drinking vessels were likely rinsed in cold water between use.
(edit) Yet another reason for rapid population increase, especially in Ireland (which had been nominally part of the UK since the time of Henry II in the 1170s) was the potato, which is nourishing and simple to grow and thrives in a damp climate (until or unless it is infected by fungus). A lot of Irish people emigrated to England towards the end of the 18th century to gain employment digging the many canals being constructed at that time, and potatoes became popular throughout the UK.
It's a longstanding myth that people drank alcohol to avoid tainted water. Most people could only afford a few beers a day so they had to drink a lot of water too.
"Between 1000 CE and 1500 CE, population grows by a factor of seven!? Why wasn’t Finland already this densely populated in 1000 CE if it had extra capacity to spare and everyone else was Malthusian?" What prevented a 500 CE peasant from the area around Milan to escape the Malthusian conditions of Italy for apparently empty Finland?"
Cursory Googling about what happened in Finland: the Swedes invaded and established control in the western half of the country, while Russia (I am taking this *very* loosely) pushed its influence into the eastern half.
"During the 13th century, Finland was integrated into medieval European civilization. The Dominican order arrived in Finland around 1249 and came to exercise great influence there. In the early 14th century, the first records of Finnish students at the Sorbonne appear. In the southwestern part of the country, an urban settlement evolved in Turku. Turku was one of the biggest towns in the Kingdom of Sweden, and its population included German merchants and craftsmen. Otherwise the degree of urbanization was very low in medieval Finland. Southern Finland and the long coastal zone of the Gulf of Bothnia had a sparse farming settlements, organized as parishes and castellanies. In the other parts of the country a small population of Sami hunters, fishermen, and small-scale farmers lived. These were exploited by the Finnish and Karelian tax collectors. During the 12th and 13th centuries, great numbers of Swedish settlers moved to the southern and northwestern coasts of Finland, to the Åland Islands, and to the archipelago between Turku and the Åland Islands."
So your question is akin to "how come when European settlers arrived in America, there was all this empty land available, if the indigenous peoples were Malthusian like the rest of humanity?"
"What prevented a 500 CE peasant from the area around Milan to escape the Malthusian conditions of Italy for apparently empty Finland?"
What prevents you from establishing a habitat on the Moon? People have been there, there are missions to it, why can't you just hop on a rocket and homestead on Luna?
That's the level of difficulty you are asking of one individual to achieve. Had there been a mass, organised movement of Milanese peasants to Finland, that would be a different matter. But in the 5th century, your Milanese peasant had no incentive to leave Milan and head off for the hellhole of the frozen North. Also, they were slightly busy with being invaded by the Goths at that time:
"After the siege of the city by the Visigoths in 402, the imperial residence moved to Ravenna. An age of decline began which worsened when Attila, King of the Huns, sacked and devastated the city in 452 AD. In 539 the Ostrogoths conquered and destroyed Milan during the Gothic War against Byzantine Emperor Justinian I. In the summer of 569 the Lombards (from whom the name of the Italian region Lombardy derives), conquered Milan, overpowering the small Byzantine garrison left for its defence. Some Roman structures remained in use in Milan under Lombard rule."
You seem to be taking Malthus as some kind of infallible prophet. What is predicted in theory and what happens in practice are often quite different. You can construct a graph of what *should* happen under Malthusian principles if you keep it simple, as though populations of humans were rats in a cage in a laboratory, but when faced with what *did* happen, you have to account for various factors that are not a controlled environment.
>So your question is akin to "how come when European settlers arrived in America, there was all this empty land available, if the indigenous peoples were Malthusian like the rest of humanity?"
But the Europeans didn't know that the American existed (and the empty land was not empty before the indigenous population died of smallpox). Everyone in the Baltic area must have been aware that Finland existed, and that it was sparsely populated.
>That's the level of difficulty you are asking of one individual to achieve. Had there been a mass, organised movement of Milanese peasants to Finland, that would be a different matter. But in the 5th century, your Milanese peasant had no incentive to leave Milan and head off for the hellhole of the frozen North. Also, they were slightly busy with being invaded by the Goths at that time:
Good incentives to leave Milan: 1. There's not enough land and you are all living under Malthusian conditions, so only one or two of your children will reach adulthood and have children of their own. (2. You are being invaded by the Goths.)
Malthus is a (simple) model. When the simple model is wrong, I investigate to understand why. This thread has helped me understand the situation much better (but the Malthus model is still useful).
"Good incentives to leave Milan: 1. There's not enough land and you are all living under Malthusian conditions, so only one or two of your children will reach adulthood and have children of their own."
Even if they moved to Finland, figured out how to farm in a totally different climate, and had a kid every year, childhood mortality might still mean that they only had one or two children who reached adulthood. Malthus' model is *useful* but it's not The Only Way. Malthus, to simplify it, is "once every single scrap of land is being utilised to the maximum and there are more people than it can support trying to live on it, then the population will reduce due to starvation and disease". Milan was not at the point of "there is not one scrap more of land we can use" in the fifth century. Your argument presupposes that "only one or two children survive to adulthood" is down purely to "starving to death because too many people" and that's not necessarily so; disease, accident, violence, physical ailments that couldn't be treated then but can now like diabetes and yes periodic famines all account for high mortality levels.
This site says that up to the 1950s child mortality rates were high:
https://ourworldindata.org/child-mortality-in-the-past
"And lastly, we find that a large number of independent studies for very different societies, locations, and times come to surprisingly similar assessments: all point to very high mortality rates for children. For societies that lived thousands of kilometers away from each other and were separated by thousands of years of history, mortality in childhood was terribly high in all of them. The researchers find that on average a quarter of infants died before their first birthday and half of all children died before they reached puberty."
Rates like that are not down to a simplistic "too many people, not enough land".
>Even if they moved to Finland, figured out how to farm in a totally different climate, and had a kid every year, childhood mortality might still mean that they only had one or two children who reached adulthood.
The people who made Finlands population grow x7 had more children reach adulthood. I understand that a 500 CE Milan peasant couldn't copy these guys, but I'm trying to understand what exactly that is hard to copy.
I understand that child mortality was high. I understand that people die for all kinds of reasons. But if there's fertile land available, it would be very strange for a population to shrink or remain constant for long, since people are generally incentivized to feed their children.
As far as Italy being more densely populated than Greece, they are very similar areas with the exception that Italy has a lot more super great farmland, I suspect that is your answer.
So has Italy always been more densely populated than Greece? Why haven't I heard anything about bronze age Italy compare about how much I hear of bronze age Greece?
Here's an article that may be helpful for you about the Bronze Age in Italy:
https://www.encyclopedia.com/humanities/encyclopedias-almanacs-transcripts-and-maps/italian-bronze-age
As to why we hear more about Greece than Italy, for a very crude approximation: culture spreads from the east, from more advanced societies, via trade and waves of migration:
https://phys.org/news/2021-05-bronze-age-migrations-societal-genomic.html
The article doesn't really say much. There were different cultures and settlements (dhu). There are some treasure caches (but nothing impressive like e.g. Mask of Agamemnon). It just doesn't seem to match Greece of the same era. Why wasn't there an advanced antique society in the Po Valley? It was one of the most densely populated places in Europe in 1300 CE as far as I can tell.
People are offering you answers and you are stuck on Malthus. You don't seem to have even an amateur interest in history or archaeology so I don't know what you want us to say: "oh yeah, Malthus totally right, secret magical instant explosion in population due to the pixies!" or what.
You seem to imagine that everything must be on a level of "if the land isn't filled to the brim with population one thousand years earlier, how can this be?" I honestly don't understand your queries. Are you claiming the later population records are wrong and there weren't those levels of people living there? That could be so, the source you linked to is doing estimations.
Are you claiming the land was full to the brim, but due to Malthus, all bow our heads at the sacred name, they all died off like good little experimental subjects and that the increase later recorded was due to the magical pixies?
You don't seem to accept that (1) we start off with any territory, as in a petri dish, with lots of room and resources (2) a population is introduced (3) due to having lots of room and resources, the population increases (4) now Malthus comes in: an expanding population in a confined area will reach the limits at which it now dies off because it has consumed all the resources.
So you want to know (a) why was Finland empty and not full of people in the 10th century, but it had a bigger population in the 15th century?
Answer: lag phase, log phase, stationary phase, death phase
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bacterial_growth
The early Finnish population was in the lag phase of slow growth, and the population may well have been kept in check due to environmental causes. But nonetheless, it was growing, albeit slowly. Left alone over time, there is no reason it would not have eventually filled up Finland to the Malthusian level (if Malthus was infallible, which it is not).
Add in migration, advanced farming techniques and urbanisation meaning more land is put under cultivation, and the population goes into log phase - rapid, exponential growth.
"Exponential" is the key here because unlike the lag phase, it's not simple linear growth. This is where you get population 'explosions' and rapid increase so that "hey, how come Finland used to be mostly empty and now is not as empty?"
"Why wasn’t Finland already this densely populated in 1000 CE if it had extra capacity to spare and everyone else was Malthusian?"
Time. Even Malthus needs *time* to come into effect. Populations do not hit the death phase all at once; first they have to get into equilibrium, so that birth and death rates balance out, and then resources decrease. There is nothing to say the resources of Finland had been depleted to a level that it was 'Malthusian'; plainly, the existing population wasn't at the death stage.
You have this stubborn notion in your head that Europe was packed full of people, there was empty space as in Finland, so how come the entirety of Europe didn't pack up and head off to colonise Finland?
Well, how would you expect them to do so? Hop on the plane and fly there? As I said, you don't seem to have a *historical* picture in your mind of how things worked. Mass migrations certainly happened, but they are slow and take a lot of time.
Secondly, people *did* move to Finland - the Swedes and Germans, as mentioned.
Thirdly, "wouldn't everyone in the Baltic area have know Finland was empty?" No, why would they? If they knew Finland at all, presumably they knew people were already living there. Why would they expect it to be available real estate?
That brings us on to your Milanese peasant: he probably didn't know about Finland, and if he did, he had little resources to up and move there. Then he would have had to adapt to a different climate, different ways of growing food, etc. If he's going to migrate, a lot easier to move to Switzerland or someplace.
You evoke a picture of human populations like swarms of locusts, that just move in one mass from an exhausted area to fresh territory. It doesn't happen like that. And you don't go from Boom! thirty couples to Boom! population of seventeen million! overnight, which is your sticking point with Malthus (why wasn't the entire country as heavily populated at time A as it was at later time B?)
Now, moving on to the Po Valley - densely populated has little to do with it. The traditional explanation is that civilisation arose in the Middle/Near East. It expanded outwards in ripple effects, so that the lands nearest to the epicentre received the benefits first, and passed those on.
Greece was nearer to the Near East than Italy, hence why the advanced antique societies were in the East rather than the North and West.
The Po Valley inhabitants looked to central European, rather than Greek/Eastern, influences and culture. This culture was less developed, and probably suffered some effects from the same events which caused the late Bronze Age collapse:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Late_Bronze_Age_collapse
You see a regression in Greek art (as per pottery) and culture during this period.
Because they had less contact with Mesopotamia and Egypt where most advanced knowledge was emanating from.
Anton Howes sometimes talks about improvements in agriculture around that period.
https://antonhowes.substack.com/p/age-of-invention-grain-drain
I think his general impression is that it's still a bit mysterious.
Interesting! Thanks for the link.
It was an advance in plowing technology. Older plows didn't work as well in northern soils.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carruca
Other important developments include improved wind/watermills (not sure if these are more important in NW Europe than Italy at the time. Obviously wind-powered pumping gets important in the Low Countries at some point) and riverine/sea transport (seafaring in the Med is easier than in a lot of places) including both the vessels themselves and the waterways, from improving existing rivers to the canals of proto-industrial Britian.
https://cep.lse.ac.uk/_new/publications/abstract.asp?index=4346 This study notes that medieval France was in kind of a suboptimal situation as the Roman cities there were stuck on the old overland routes, whereas English cities (which had much less continuity with Roman settlements) could be founded on navigable rivers and coasts to take advantage of improved shipping.
Interesting, thanks!
Interesting. I found this on youtube if anyone wants more detail: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Csexh48XQ2I It doesn't look like anyone have reconstructed a medieval eight-ox plow though, I'm sure it would be very impressive.
> WTF is going on in Finland? Between 1000 CE and 1500 CE, population grows by a factor of seven!?
Possibly people from further south, in present day Russia, were displaced to Finland by Mongol invasions in the 1200s.
A map in the Wikipedia article https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mongol_invasion_of_Europe shows that Mongols were marauding and occupying territory not far south of Finland:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mongol_invasion_of_Europe#/media/File:Kingdom_of_Galicia_Volhynia_Rus'_Ukraine_1245_1349.jpg
I don't think we have much evidence for this hypothesis, if this population movement happened, it should have shown in the language?
But it also doesn't answer my question. The population of Finland grew seven-fold because people moved there and had more kids. My question is: Why didn't this happen earlier? What was it that suddenly made Finland able to support seven times as much people? The people living in Finland in 1000 CE presumably wanted to be prosperous and have many children, so why couldn't they?
"My question is: Why didn't this happen earlier? What was it that suddenly made Finland able to support seven times as much people? "
There are two questions here. First, the physical territory of Finland did not "suddenly" become able to support seven times as many people, it presumably always had the capacity.
So your second question is, what changed in the population of Finland? What new methods of farming, what increase in urbanisation, what difference happend to change traditional practices to newer, more efficient ones?
If you get a lot of people moving in, that will cause a population surge, because now the new people are all having kids as well as the original inhabitants. So, taking small easy numbers, a population of 1,000 people will grow and increase over time, but it won't reach as high a number as a population of 2,000 people starting at the same base.
You're measuring "native population of Finland at this arbitrary date versus population of Finland at that arbitrary rate" and ignoring "at the first arbitrary date, the population of Finland doubled (or whatever) due to immigration and settlement by outsiders". You are making the assumption that "1,000 people can increase their numbers to hit a number of total population after 500 years that will be the same as the 2,000 people hit". Dump Malthus in the bin, that is leading your astray with blinkers. "But Malthus, but Malthus!" isn't covering the questions you are asking.
Somebody capable of maths can work out the difference in population growth starting off with a base of 1,000 versus a base of 2,000 over 500 years. In fact, here is a handy formula that will do it for you:
https://www2.palomar.edu/users/warmstrong/lmexer9.htm
Assume we start off with 1,000 native Finns. The growth rate is - let's say 2%, taking that from online sources. Time period is 500 years.
Over that time, starting with 1,000 Finns, we get how many? Answer: 22,026,465
Now we start off with 1,000 native Finns and 1,000 Swedish and German immigrants. Same conditions. Final population? Answer: 44,052,931
So if you want an answer to "how did the Finnish population boom to seven times its size?", you need to know (1) native Finns versus immigrants, to get the 'natural' increase if Finnish people were left on their own having kids as per your Malthusian question (2) growth rate and (3) time period.
Maybe the growth rate was higher than 2% because people were having 10 kids for every old person who died. Figure that out, get a end figure, then come back.
The obvious freakin' answer is that increasing a population, even if everyone is breeding like rabbits, takes time. *Of course* you are going to get seven times the population, or ten times or twenty times, your starting population after five hundred years. If you don't start off with seven million Finns, you can't say "but how come Finland could support seven million Finns in the fifteenth century when it didn't have seven million Finns in the tenth century?"
I assume that Finland had a massive immigration during the relevant period. Even though it isn't really needed, a seven-fold increase in population over 500 years (~20 generations) doesn't seem that impossible if conditions are good.
>So your second question is, what changed in the population of Finland? What new methods of farming, what increase in urbanisation, what difference happend to change traditional practices to newer, more efficient ones?
This is exactly what I'm asking.
An immediate question comes to mind: What is the definition of "Finland" and did it significantly change at some point in your time frame?
I've not looked at the data, but political and geographical boundaries change over time. Sudden jumps, or absurdly fast growth, often mean the definition of what is being measured has changed.
Here are some (the rest is entertainment, but I was serious about changing count measurement before....) Scenarios:
_____ STATUS: SPECULATIVE, BUT BASED ON STUFF EVERYBODY KNOWS ABOUT FINLAND______
1) "Finland" was initially just a population of 2 "persons" (Santa and Mrs. Claus) with a hard-to-document population of elves (small-e elves at Santa's North Pole) who may have each been counted as fractional persons, either because they were chattel slaves (1/3 person), or because they were small (1/2 person). So maybe in this scenario a sudden change came from emancipation of the long-suffering elves toiling in the toy fields, tripling the population overnight. O maybe better nutrition from advances in plow technology (mentioned elsewhere) helped each generation of elves grow taller, 5/8, 3/4 of a person each, etc?
2) Didn't the High Elves (who had returned to Finland, with Feanor Macarthur's Expiditionary Force, in a mass-migration maybe 500 -- 700BC) depart for Valinor around 1BC or therabouts, right before this "census" started? So with the Noldor gone and Finland empty (or so it seemed) and the Dominion of Men beginning, ... well of course it looks like explosive growth when you cherry-pick your start and end dates, c'mon!
3) Initial data was based on the Household Survey, (*) which severely undercounted the Keebler Elves because census-takers used a standard "household" size of 4.5 elves, not realizing, or deliberately ignoring, the known fact that hundreds of elves live communally at each "tree" (Trëë in Finnish roughly translates to "kibbutz"). This undercount persisted until the bloody decades of the Census-Takers Reformation, documented ad nauseum elsewhere.
4) Totally invisible snipers. It wasn't until the 20th century, and the third Winter Olympics where the Finnish team swept the Biathalon AGAIN, that scholars began to suspect what had been missed for millennia: All Finnish men (and some women, but see below) are totally invisible deadly snow ninjas. Any outsiders like invading Russians or Germans or Vikings or census takers mostly saw endless snow, some Lapps, Potemkin reindeer and trees, never imaging that there were hundreds of Finns per square kilometer, ready to shoot them with a combination of Elven-bows of Lorien, the deadly Steel Bows of Numenor, sniper rifles forged from black meteor iron in secret caves, or a deadly rain of snowballs.
Invisibility plus silently killing the census-takers was a major factor in underestimates of Finnish population. Later the wily Finns realized the census folk were harmless, and began to show themselves, even taking some on months-long hunts to buy their loyalty and telll them what numbers they could report this year.
(Note the Russians still do not know this secret so don't tell them!)
-- My scholarly paper, "Knife-fighting Finnish Women and Historical TFR in Lappland: A 1500-year survey" has been accepted and will be available in pre-print as soon as I invent enough co-authors (10 authors is the minimum now, 5-7 for some dodgy journals) and find the right historical group to blame.
______WELL YOU DID ASK WTF IS UP WITH FINLAND_______
BR
* -- This is close to how the Labor Dept really figures US Unemployment, which is why salt tablets are good to have on hand when "the numbers" come out.
"This is exactly what I'm asking."
And the answer is: immigration from more settled, advanced, urbanised societies, with the invasion by Sweden and subsequent wave of Swedish immigrants and settlers, and others like the Germans. The same way the USA has ended up as it has, instead of being the confederation of native tribes had the Europeans not landed there.
You might as well ask why the South American empires never pushed all the way north into the empty lands of North America, where the indigenous tribes were not on the same level of organisation and sophistication as the Inca, Maya or Aztec. (That's a question I'd like answered myself).
I figure it's the same reason medieval Europe didn't have much interaction with tropical Africa. There's a big desert in the way.
I am not sure, but wasn't 1-1500 southern Europe an era of nasty conflicts between Christians and Muslims? Countries like Portugal and Spain were created at that time.
There was plenty of nasty conflicts everywhere as far as I can tell. But maybe there was a difference in quantity?
1. I've not looked at the data, but the obvious answer would be the starting point. 1 CE was the zenith of the Roman Empire: southern Europe was peaceful and prosperous, and Italy in particular benefitted from large scale grain imports, supporting a high population for the time. In the following 1500 years, a bunch of good and bad things happened, which overall left the south at approximately the same population level, but improved things significantly for the north.
2. Finland was colonised by Sweden. This required some military force. One could not simply walk into Finland.
3. As previously mentioned, by 1 CE, Rome was immensely large, and its population was supported by grain imports. The terrain of Greece is less conducive to large scale agriculture, although Athens was a large city in the 5th century BCE (c300k). During that time it was the hegemon of the Delian league.
4. I don't think your assumption that the UK was under Malthusian conditions during the period 1500-1700 is supported. The 15th century saw the Great Slump https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Slump_(15th_century) and the War of the Roses. By 1700 I think there had been some adoption of the four-field rotation and the Dutch plough, but these perhaps weren't sufficiently widespread to account for a significant gain in population. Our World in Data has the UK population at 5.2 million in 1700 which is only slightly higher than immediately before the Black Death. https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/population-of-england-millennium
1. What are the "good and bad things that happened"? What makes the 1500 CE Danish farmer more productive than the 1 CE Danish farmer?
2. Wouldn't the pre-existing population (the Sami?) of (inner?) Finland be happy to adapt whatever secret sauce that was needed to make Finland sustain a magnitude larger population, so that seven of their children could survive to adult age instead of two? Like, people have been living in Finland for thousands of years at this point, why haven't they figured out the means to do whatever was done already? Seems like a thousand dollar bill on the sidewalk, so I assume that my model is wrong.
3. So is my impression that the western Mediterranean went from barren barbarian wasteland to the densest population cluster in Europe somewhen after the bronze age collapse correct? What caused this?
There's a lot of technological advancements that you can't make without the preceding steps. The obvious theory is that Finland couldn't support preceding steps, like smaller lighter plows, due to geographical and climate conditions. So when advanced heavy agricultural tech was imported only then was Finland able to support much larger populations than hunter gatherers could produce.
"What makes the 1500 CE Danish farmer more productive than the 1 CE Danish farmer?"
Well gosh, who can possibly know? Apart from, you know, progress over the intervening 1,400 years. Is this a serious question or are you just trolling now?
"Wow, can anyone tell me why the 9th century Danes did not land a man on the moon, if we could do it in 1969?"
2. Obviously there's nothing *automatic* about adopting effective agricultural techniques. For most of human history people were hunter gatherers. There were significant cultural and linguistic barriers to agricultural techniques passing to Finland. Now *if* the Finns (or whoever) were determined to switch to the most productive agricultural techniques possible, no doubt they could have found a way, but they weren't. People usually aren't: they just continue doing what their ancestors did, with some minor tweaks. It takes some drastic event to shake people into adopting a whole new lifestyle.
So why aren't they displaced by their more productive neighbours? Well, they are. It doesn't happen *immediately* because it's subject to all sorts of political contingencies. While there are still prosperous, ill-defended communities to raid, that looks like a better option than subjecting Finland to the plough.
3. I think your impression is wrong. As you suggested, you're being misled by the late adoption of literacy in the west. I think there were plenty of people in Spain and Italy at the time of the LBC. The population did grow during the Pax Romana, partly because they stopped killing each other and partly because of improved co-ordination.
Generally I think you're overlooking that the Malthusian frontier is politically dependent. The population of Britain fell significantly after the Roman withdrawal, not because the land had become less productive, but because the population reverted to subsistence agriculture.
2. I think it might just be my perspective of history that's wrong. To me, it looks like Finland is basically empty for thousands of years while northern Italy is full of starving peasants desperate for land. And then I wonder why some of these peasants doesn't migrate north (when in real history the Volkswanderung mostly went the other way, from northern Europe to Italy). And I think this thread has given me a better model: Agriculture was not adapted to northern Europe. The Late Antique Little Ice Age made NE pretty barren at the start of the middle ages. Once it got warm and the technology was in place, population could grow rapidly through births and migrations (very rapidly in the case of Finland), until the Crisis of the Late Middle Ages ended the party.
New questions: So what did pre-effective northern Europe agriculture look like? Giant fields of low-yield crops? Lots of pastures? Short growing seasons?
3. Population decline could also have been caused by the Late Antique Little Ice Age? Or did the decline start before temperatures fells? It seems hard to separate the effects of politics.
"Giant fields of low-yield crops?"
Absolutely no giant fields of anything, this kind of massive industrialised agriculture only comes along in the 19th century or so. Enclosures of common land to make larger estates owned by one person comes earlier.
You really are not getting the picture right in your mind. You're looking at estimations based on raw data of what populations might have been and extrapolating wildly from that, e.g. "northern Italy is full of starving peasants while there is all this empty free real estate in Finland for the taking".
For a start, the terrain. Interior is lots of lakes, uplands are mountainous, it's the coasts which are somewhat more suitable for peasant agriculture. It's not like flat Canadian or Midwestern American plains that can be put under the plough straight away.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geography_of_Finland
Climate:
"This means that southern portions of the country are snow-covered about three months of the year and the northern, about seven months"
Your northern Italian peasant is going to find such conditions very difficult to adapt to. It takes *time* to work out how to adapt to such conditions, and *time* to invent and develop technologies to make it more liveable.
Your mental imagery of "northern Italy is full of starving peasants", with them all crammed in like ants in an ant hill, is incorrect. Indeed, there was a population *crash* from the fifth century onwards, the good old Dark Ages.
Wave upon wave of invading/migrating 'barbarians' filled up the former Western Empire, but this still wasn't at the level of ant-hill cramming. And if the peasant wanted to migrate, where would he go? He would likely run into the new wave of migrants, and nobody was going into the cold and empty north, the unknown. Everyone, on the contrary, was *leaving* those places. And disease constantly ravaged the populations:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Early_Middle_Ages
"Starting in the 2nd century, various indicators of Roman civilization began to decline, including urbanization, seaborne commerce, and population. ... Estimates of the population of the Roman Empire during the period from 150 to 400 suggest a fall from 65 million to 50 million, a decline of more than 20 percent. Some scholars have connected this de-population to the Dark Ages Cold Period (300–700), when a decrease in global temperatures impaired agricultural yields.
...The gradual breakdown and transformation of economic and social linkages and infrastructure resulted in increasingly localized outlooks. This breakdown was often fast and dramatic as it became unsafe to travel or carry goods over any distance; there was a consequent collapse in trade and manufacture for export. ...Administrative, educational and military infrastructure quickly vanished, and the loss of the established cursus honorum led to the collapse of the schools and to a rise of illiteracy even among the leadership. ...For the formerly Roman area, there was another 20 per cent decline in population between 400 and 600, or a one-third decline for 150–600. ... There was also reforestation and a retreat of agriculture centred around 500.
...The Romans had practiced two-field agriculture, with a crop grown in one field and the other left fallow and ploughed under to eliminate weeds. Systematic agriculture largely disappeared and yields declined. It is estimated that the Plague of Justinian which began in 541 and recurred periodically for 150 years thereafter killed as many as 100 million people across the world.
Some historians such as Josiah C. Russell (1958) have suggested a total European population loss of 50 to 60 per cent between 541 and 700. After the year 750, major epidemic diseases did not appear again in Europe until the Black Death of the 14th century. The disease smallpox, which was eradicated in the late 20th century, did not definitively enter Western Europe until about 581 when Bishop Gregory of Tours provided an eyewitness account that describes the characteristic findings of smallpox. Waves of epidemics wiped out large rural populations. Most of the details about the epidemics are lost, probably due to the scarcity of surviving written records."
Your fifth century Milanese peasant didn't *need* to head off to Finland; if he survived crop failure, invasion and disease, there would be enough empty land for him to find at home, due to everyone else dying off and intensive agriculture declining and indeed vanishing.
"What makes the 1500 CE Danish farmer more productive than the 1 CE Danish farmer?"
Heavy metal plows that could cut through the thick North European soil; new horse harnesses which allowed horses (more energy-efficient than oxen) to pull those plows without strangling themselves; three- and four-way crop rotation that increased the productivity of the soil and provided more forage for animals; watermills and windmills that allowed to grind more flour with less manpower. (The Romans had watermills but used them sparingly; windmills were new Medieval inventions.) Plus the Netherlands were being reclaimed from the sea with their new dam systems. After 1500, the north also got potatoes from the Americas, but that's too late.
European agricultural technology went through some really impressive developments in the Middle Ages! And North Europe had more to gain, starting from a lower point in 1 CE.
Thanks! So I guess there's an element of chance involved, we might have gotten technology that suited Italy better and northern Europe would have remained barren? But I guess the technology of Italy was already pretty optimized, while technology for northern Europe was waiting to happen.
Apart from the plow more adapt for harder soils, I don't know if it's much a matter of technology being specifically suited for the north; crop rotation and watermills were certainly very precious in the Mediterranean too. The differential effect of the farming technologies might be an artifact due to the dataset starting in 1 CE. As Robert Jones points out above, Italy at the apex of the Roman Empire was very much *over*populated, and dependant on massive grain shipments from Egypt and Tunisia. I once read an argument that the death blow to the Empire was not the deposition of one emperor, but the Vandal conquest of North Africa cutting off the shipments and forcing the enormous population of Rome to emigrate or disperse in the countryside. Roman Italy had an ecological footprint much larger than itself, depending from large-scale trade and transportation; in Southern Europe, improvements in farming technology merely offset the loss of that trade, while in the north they were pure gain.
Make sense. I'll hope someone will make a better dataset that goes back further in time.
Bad: fall of the roman empire, loads of war, utterly devastated the south of Europe to the level of poverty that was the default for non roman states, if not worse because they really weren't adapted for it. 1500 CE Rome still had farms inside the old city walls, and the population of Rome didn't reach the Roman Empire peak until the 20th century, IIRC.
Good: a lot of gradual improvements in farming, mostly via breeding better crops and better animals, but also better tech in other areas, some of which flowed back into farming productivity - eg. metal ploughs. This benefited all of Europe fairly equally from ~600 to 1500, but the decline in Italy from 1 to 600 makes that hard to see in that region if you only have the two endpoints
Thanks! Do you know a good source that goes deeper into pre-industrial agricultural improvements?
If the population was 4.8 million in 1348, the Malthusian limit can have been no less than that, so the population was away from the Malthusian frontier until at least 1622. In fact, eye-balling the graph I suggest that there was some modest improvement in productivity over that period and the Malthusian frontier wasn't reached until 1650, when the population plateaued at around 5.3m. Then the agricultural revolution took off during the 18th century.
Maybe I'm just underestimating the population growth rate. I would have assumed that the Malthusian limit is reached within a generation or two, but I guess historical growth rates indicates that it takes hundreds or years. But I don't understand why: what's the model for medieval population growth rates? What limits the growth rate? Do you need to account for e.g. the rate at which land can be cleared that I've naively ignored? What's are some pre-industrial examples of high population growth?
"I would have assumed that the Malthusian limit is reached within a generation or two"
Only if you're starting from a high base rate so you hit the logarithmic rather than linear increase. It's like the problem about the lily pad covering a lake: the lily pad doubles in size every day up to day 47 when it fills half the lake, then it only takes one more day to cover the entire lake.
You're imagining a densely-populated Europe where the limit is reached when Giovanni's grandkids (the second generation) grow up and suddenly everyone in that generation is using every scrap of land which can't support them and they all starve to death. But *before* we get to that point, we first have to get to Giovanni's generation, and *that* takes the hundreds of years.
I think land clearance rates are definitely part of it - turning a forested rocky hillside into arable land is a project of years - but also a society isn't guaranteed to have positive pop growth when below the Malthusian limit. Eg. the societal normalisation of war was probably adapted to being at or near the limit (i.e. casualties of war keeps population growth down without famine) , and then the black death and other plagues kill a huge chunk of the population but that doesn't suddenly make war go away
But medieval wars were not mass causality events, to my understanding? But maybe war (especially the pillaging) destroyed a lot of capital, e.g. by burning fields, killing livestock and destroying buildings?
Medieval war was not mass casuality as far as the combatants were concerned, but non-combatant deaths could be very high. It was pretty normal for an invading army to steal or destroy the crops (if they hadn't already been destroyed by the defenders) and not unusual for the entire population of a captured settlement to be slaughtered.
This probably becomes less the case later in the period, e.g. I think the impact of the War of the Roses was largely in destroying capital rather than loss of life, although that was a civil war.
Possible answer to 2: majority of Finland in 1000 CE was swamps and uncultivated forests, it's known that the Swedish crown subsidized projects to settle the middle parts of Finland during this time. The settlers came from the eastern and southern parts of now-Finland and (with crown support) drove out prior Sami people who hunted in the area (which I assume is the reason those lands weren't cultivated earlier). This doesn't really explain the sevenfold increase but it must be a part of the picture.
I wonder how much of it is also Sami just plain not being counted right in the older numbers? getting accurate numbers for nomadic tribes without (AFAIK) surviving written records is going to be very hard
Good point! A recurring theme in history is that as states became more and more centralized they started cracking down on nomadic tribes more, since the state wanted accurate censuses and taxable populations.
I don't know it well, but today's Finns (who are not Samis) came from the East, not from Sweden. I.e. it wasn't only Samis who already lived there when Swedes came. Finland could have been half empty also because of the 500s volcanic eruptions (Laki and the other one) that affected mainly Northern Europe and caused a horrible famine there.
Sorry, the medieval eruptions did't involve Laki, it was supposed to be Ilopango in El Salvador.
Correct, the Swedish crown subsidized Finnish settlers in the process of displacing the Sami peoples in middle and northwestern current Finland. Good input regarding the volcano disaster, I genuinely didn't know that occurred.
Thanks! I think I understand that Finland was settled in this way, I just don't understand why it didn't happen earlier? Presumably the people of 500 CE were looking for new pastures as well, so why did it take so long?
I can ask someone with more of a background in this stuff, but my impression is that such projects were difficult and required some government-sized investment, especially to deal with the presence of the Sami that had to be driven north.
Swedish military force didn't have much challenges with the Sami. The Swedish fought Novgorod and then later Moscovy/Russia, who were peer-level military competition.
Sure, the data is uncertain. Maybe the population of Finland only grew by x5. The question still remains. I think these trends are so clear that we don't have to nitpick about SDs.
I'll make sure to mention the SDs in the peer-reviewed paper I'm writing.
Thank you. Candidly, I've now done as much as I feel I can volunteer to do. If that goes nowhere, so be it.
Hi Marty! Your comments are all over the place, and because this is the latest one, i.e. the one most readers will see first, I will copy everything here, to make it easier for others to figure out. Please do not reply by clicking the links in e-mail, there seems to be a bug; only use the web interface.
===[ The following texts are by Marty, with occassional context added. ]===
Should not THE dependent variable be, NOT gross world happiness but gross world FLOURISHING?
And shouldn't the foundational definition of Effective Altruism be "Where the dollars/effort are most likely to increase gross world flourishing? Currently EA is dramatically not directed there.
Just one example: Software that would pair low-income U.S. intellectually gifted kids with screened/online-trained mentors. The gap between their potential and likely actualized potential is huge and, crucially, the barriers are far fewer than, for example, feeding starving people in "developing" nations to achieving greatly with major ripple effect, what I call Gross World Flourishing, (e.g., wise leaders, inventors of better preventions and cures of diseases, better technology, wise optimization of AI's benefits vs liabilities, etc.)
> Timothy M.: This strikes me as a lot more challenging than I think is implied by your proposal. First issue: identifying a significant number of such underserved youth. Second issue: tutoring, one-on-one skilled labor by screened and/or trained professionals is therefore expensive and hard to scale. You're talking an investment of probably thousands of dollars per recipient and a huge staff to have any meaningful effect. Quasi-issue: much harder to measure, takes much longer to see the outcome, therefore harder to raise money for even IF it's a cost-efficient intervention.
1. Identification is less challenging than getting services to developing nations---One email to the members of the school counselors' association will generate plenty of kids.
2. As I wrote, screening and training of both mentors and proteges would be online, like driver's traffic school.
3. There would easily be short- as well as long-term measures of efficacy: e.g., increases in student attendance, achievement, etc.
Maximal contribution to the world, including to themselves. So it would subsume increased happiness. But also, one might not be happy working 70+ hours in a lab trying to develop a preventive for cancer, but if the person were well-suited to that, any altruism that furthered that, would be contributing to Gross World Flourishing. Such efforts, for example, mentoring such young people, would have a higher probability of being "effective altruism" than providing mosquito nets, for example.
They may TEST smart, but underachievement is almost a proverb. Candidly, as a member of Mensa, I can attest to underachievement being all too pervasive.
1. Perfect is the enemy of the good. Describing the criteria and asking counselors to refer kids who fit them is a cost-effective, fine approach that promises to do far more good than does much "effective" altruism.
2. Of course, nothing is no-cost.--much altruism costs---We spend BILLIONS on altruism already. What I'm proposing is to increase the effectiveness of altruism beyond what is touted as effective altruism. But I certainly would start by funding just the creation of the software, the online training, and coordinating the program. My intuition says that paying the mentors (They're not tutors) would create the wrong incentive: doing it for the money. I'd guess that per Big Brothers and Sisters, by using volunteer mentors, you'd get and retain high-quality mentors and proteges by providing crisp, excellent training and support. And Big Bros/Sisters takes all sorts of kids. With GiftedMentorMatch, retention of mentors and proteges should be even greater. Certainly, the pilot test could have multiple cohorts: those with paid and unpaid mentors and proteges.
3. Of course, evaluating the program is a cost but a worthy one. It would result in ideas for improving the program or scrapping it.
Effectiveness and yes-cost-effectiveness would be greater using my model, whether it's volunteer mentors, low-pay mentors (which as I argued would likely decrease the quality and retention of mentors) or, developing AI- virtual mentoring. All would, for the reasons I outlined, likely yield far more effective altruism in terms of improving Gross World Flourishing than traditional EA-recommended spends.
My reply:
There are many useful ways to help people, the question is which are the *most* effective per dollar spent. You compare mentoring gifted kids to feeding starving people; please notice that feeding starving people also did *not* make it to GiveWell's top charities. (Currently there is malaria prevention, vitamin A supplementing, and child vaccination.) Feeding starving people sounds like an idea from TV, because it is simple to explain.
In that context, I agree that mentoring poor gifted kids is definitely a great idea; it just doesn't make it an EA-level intervention. Do not let that discourage you though; just do whatever you think is the right thing to do, especially if you have some competitive advantage in that area.
As a problem of your plan I see finding enough mentors. Are you planning to do this worldwide? There are eight billion people, most of them poor, so maybe one billion poor kids, which means 20 million poor kids at Mensa level. How specifically do you plan to find mentors for 20 million kids? You also need some screening, otherwise many scammers, cult recruiters, crackpots, and pedophiles will apply. But even ignoring this, I believe that finding enough volunteers for your idea would be a problem -- there are many competing projects.
(This is generally a problem with education: too many kids, too few adults qualified to be good teachers without being simultaneously qualified for other jobs that pay much better. Which is why we have things such as Khan Academy, which scale better.)
If you want to do something about it, perhaps the first step would be to find out whether similar organizations already exist, and what are their typical problems. Then figure out how to overcome those problems. A typical EA cause is where people are already doing the thing, they just need more money to scale it up e.g. from one million to ten millions of people. Your case is more like: you have an idea, and you want someone else to do it all.
Perhaps I'm replying to the wrong place. I started an open thread by speaking about Gross World Flourishing as a potent dependent variable and then used low-income US Gifted Mentoring website (like a Match.com for mentoring) as an example of a program that would yield more of than than do traditional EA-recommended donations.
Effectiveness and yes-cost-effectiveness would be greater using my model, whether it's volunteer mentors, low-pay mentors (which as I argued would likely decrease the quality and retention of mentors) or, developing AI- virtual mentoring. All would, for the reasons I outlined, likely yield far more effective altruism in terms of improving Gross World Flourishing than traditional EA-recommended spends.
This : "low-income US Gifted Mentoring website" sounds excellent. Have you used match.com for this? How did it work?
Yes, there are tons of resources for gifted kids and I'd love to help kids without guidance find them.
Yes, ok, that’s fair. But we’re not talking about an outpatient situation when somebody comes to the doctor for headaches and fatigue, saying all else is fine, and eventually via tests or whatever it becomes clear the person’s got a major drinking problem that’s an important part of the picture. My ER example was an emergency situation where it makes sense to believe the patient because (1) if you delay to try to figure out whether you’re getting the full truth the man could die from his internal bleed and (2) there’s no obvious benefit to his lying. It’s not as though they give you OxyContin for gastric bleeds. Showing up at psych admissions saying you’re hearing voices is sort of analogous. That’s pretty ominous. And the patient must be quite distressed because nobody goes into the psych ward for fun. And if there is more to learn about him you’ll have a chance to do it during his inpatient stay.
The recent post on semaglutide made me wonder something. Is there a point where you may want to make certain unfashionable risk tradeoffs, if your particular situation is bad enough on the long term?
For example, 3 months on a mild steroid course, lots of protein and not-very-intense gym have a pretty decent chance of converting maybe 10 pounds of fat to muscle, which works a lot better long term than just losing 10 pounds.
And yet I don't see this ever recommended. A cursory google finds mostly things like study proposals and acts like this is a revolutionary new treatment option, instead of something body builders (and in all likelihood Hollywood actors) have been using routinely for 50 years.
Wonder how many other options are ignored due to stigma and unwillingness to calculate tradeoffs.
There's really no reason to take anabolic steroids for your first couple years of lifting. Beginners make rapid gains without drugs; no need to risk messing up your endocrine system. Even in the pro-drugs bodybuilding community, most people will recommend you stay natural for at least a couple years, and many recommend 5 years.
I think it's also a particularly bad idea to be administering anabolic steroids to non-fitness enthusiasts. The gains from PEDs tend to be lost when coming off, whereas natural gains tend to stay more easily (presumably because your body chemistry isn't changing).
With Hollywood, the situation is a bit different. They have tight deadlines to achieve their look, and they can afford doctors to monitor their bloodwork every week and coaches with experience administering PEDs. So they have more need and less risk from PEDs than a typical beginner.
I get much colder than people around me, putting on more layers, complaining about cold when others are warm, etc. Also, when I'm cold I tend to sneeze a lot. This is exacerbated by sudden drops or changes in temperature - opening a window, someone laying a cold hand on me, touching cold floor with my feet. It can also happen when I'm getting warmer, paradoxically - I was feeling cold, afraid I might sneeze, put on a coat and immediately sneezed.
This is definitely a 1st-world problem, but I hate sneezing, so I was wondering if any of you have ideas or suggestions for the causes of my increased sensitivity? Bonus for potential treatments / tests to run.
Relevant information:
- pretty lightweight - 63 kg over 1.80 m, late 20s
- generally healthy, no chronic condition I know of
- occasional blood tests seem within the norm. Blood pressure is good enough to donate regularly.
- happens mostly in winter, but also in ACed offices in summer
Please tell me all the obvious things I should try/do.
Here's a useful article for people on this thread.
https://www.upworthy.com/a-body-temperature-expert-explains-why-some-people-are-always-freezing-rp
And a person for them to perhaps get in touch with:
"Dr. Christopher Minson is a professor in the department of human physiology at the University of Oregon. One of his primary research interests is thermoregulation, that's how the brain and body interact and adapt as we heat and cool."
I don't mean this glibly or as snark, but both elements could be learned behaviors. The sneezing is the most likely one and its possible that some self guided CBT could help? If we think of the sneeze like a compulsion, CBT can be used for OCD with good effect.
When you feel a sneeze coming on, one thing you can do to suppress it is to press the tip of your finger against the top of the philtrum, so that your fingernail is positioned right in the angle where the philtrum meets the bottom of the septum.
Y'all should check you don't have reynaud's syndrome, where arteries in the hands contract and reduce blood supply to the fingers. https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/raynauds/
Did you have your TSH checked? Hypothyroid people tend to be cold all the time.
Yeah similar, (though older and now a littler fatter around the middle.) My hand are always cold, If they get too cold I stick them in warm water. (Doing the dishes can be a pleasure.) I put on long johns in October and don't take 'em off till April or May. ~20% of your heat is lost through your head, so I often wear a hat. I've got a few pairs of fingerless gloves/ mittens as mentioned already. I do perhaps sneeze more than most people. IDK. Not that it makes it any better but an extended sneezing fit is referred to in our house as a 'sneezure'. "Achoo, Achoo, Achoo, Achoo, achoo..., Sorry sneezure"
My wife has always felt the cold. Freezing cold hands and toes. Couldn't bear to sit outside in the evening, even in summer. I would have to warm her feet and hands in bed before she could sleep.
She was on blood thinners for several years and all that went away. She experienced temperatures much the way I did. Warm hands. Warm toes.
She is no longer on blood thinners and is back to cold hands and toes.
This is probably not much help in finding a fix but perhaps it's a clue as to the cause.
I'm also lightweight (BMI around 20) and have been more sensitive to the cold in the past than I am now. I've experienced putting on layers of clothes and feeling like it wasn't making any difference, because clothes don't make heat, they just trap the heat you generate.
I have experienced a substantial improvement through cold exposure, as Wim Hof recommends. I've been doing cold showers for a few years now (start with hot, end with cold, at whatever temperature it comes into the house). Deliberately go for walks in cold weather wearing not quite enough to be comfortable.
I've also tried Wim Hof's breathing exercises, but I didn't notice much effect from them, so I haven't continued them.
And of course, clothing where it counts, i.e. gloves, long underwear, and a woolly hat rather than piling more layers on the torso.
I don’t feel anything different in my nose, but otherwise I also have a hard time with the cold. Two things: gloves are incredible in a fabric/heat conservation ratio. Ie, they are small and light and yet help a lot. I have a fingerless pair for indoors and a regular one for outdoors (you can even find ones with special fingertips that let you use touchscreens). Second, heating pads. I find it hard to generate heat myself, but an electric heating pad takes less than 5 minutes to heat up and then I can cling to it, put it between two layers of clothes or blankets and have a handy external heat source. I also spend the cold months drinking a lot of herbal tea, since it doubles as a way of heating my hands (gabbing the cup) and my body in general (drinking it).
Start going to the gym and put on some muscle, and eat more food. Buff dudes are always complaining that it's too hot.
Getting more body weight would probably help.
Have you tried holding your nostrils and mouth shut while sneezing? In my opinion it reduces most of the unpleasantness of sneezing.
There is a temperature regulation system in the body. Which type of specialist deals with that? Neurologist?? An internist (specialist in diagnosis, better trained than family physician) might know.
Might be a place to look.
My situation is similar in a way - I don't sneeze, but I also feel cold way before others do. And, a couple of minutes after the surrounding temperature drops below ca. 15°C (around 60°F?), my nose starts running. As with you, it happens during the cold time of the year once I go outside, but also cold environments. Five minutes after I get into the warm again, it stops.
Not sure if those are different symptoms of whatever you have or something else entirely... But I haven't found anything to help yet, not even socks, because cold face/hands seem to be a sufficient trigger.
Socks. Two at a time, or thicker woolen ones if you have them.
What happened to letter.wiki? I loved the idea and some of the conversations were actually interesting. Now the site is down. A last official tweet from 2022-10-18 says that it's available in archive, but no explanation is given for why the site seems permanently closed.
It got acquired by substack and recently relaunched as substack letters: https://read.substack.com/p/letters
Thanks! Good to see that they are still going
China protests - register your predictions.
I predict that 6 months from now:
China will have abandoned Zero COVID (in practice): 65%
China will have abandoned Zero COVID (officially): 30%
The protests will have subsided or been crushed: 85%
The CCP will still be in power: 99%
There will be some kind of formal international condemnation of China's handling of the protests: 20%
China will have killed 10 or more protestors: 90%
China will have killed 100 or more protestors: 60%
China will have killed 1000 or more protestors: 10%
I have absolutely no information on how opinion change works in China. I'm pretty sure pure bottom up protests work a lot less than in the west, but the little I know suggests there are alternative democratic mechanisms that allow information to flow to decision makers, most likely party-based. But how exactly they work, why didn't they in this case and are things different now that Xi is changing the rules... no idea.
Kill? It's hard for me to imagine that happening, can someone provide background info? Are protest organizers usually sentenced to death or something?
China has a huge population. If the protests are widespread, then there could be millions of people involved. Some errant cop may hit someone in just the right way breaking up a protest, they can die. The incidence rate could be 1/1,000 or even 1/1,000,000 and still get into the double digits.
So the questions involved in calculating the number who die really revolve around two questions. How many people protest, and how much the state pushes back on it. It's almost certain that the state pushes back pretty hard, so we're really only looking at how many people are protesting actively enough to draw the attention of the state. If that number is in the millions, then hundreds or even thousands of people dying to state action (breaking up the protests) becomes pretty likely.
At a low level, I expect a substantial number of protestors to get beaten by cops (and such beatings may not even be unreasonable!), and if you do that enough times you’re going to kill a few people.
At an extreme level you get a Tiananmen Square situation.
Open some manifold market? Makes it much easier to keep track and bet on these.
Note that your comment doesn't really contradict any of the predictions made.
I expect that like HK, the protests will be crushed after many months (and the HK protests were very long-running).
That crushing will involve scores of people being beaten to death or having heart attacks after being tased or similar, a bit over 100 total doesn't seem too unreasonable for an over/under.
China will eventually drop its zero covid policies due to not being willing to lose its manufacturing sectors, that's a given, whether it happens within 6 months is more unsure. When it does happen the justification will be something along the lines of "now that we've had time to vaccinate everyone the glorious Chinese medical system will have no issues with people catching covid" or some equivalently face-saving lie.
The Hong Kong protests lasted months and were only ended by the outbreak of Covid: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2019%E2%80%932020_Hong_Kong_protests
~~the outbreak of Covid~~ the really harsh crackdowns that Covid provided an excuse for
Bit of both, I think - Covid provided an excuse for harsh crackdowns, but also going out to a huge protest march seemed like less of a good idea. That said, I am not a Hong Konger and wasn't paying especially close attention at the time.
Unfortunately, substack comments do not provide the markup you were trying to use. (If the use of non-rendered markup is part of a broader movement to shame substack into supporting it, I apologize.)
Business idea: Cancel Insurance. Worried your coworkers might try to get you fired if they knew your political or other beliefs? Transfer that risk to an insurer, who can replace lost wages that result from getting cancelled.
This would take a lot of the sting out of getting cancelled. (Maybe wages aren't the only concern that could be mitigated from getting cancelled?) Which would allow people who are concerned about having to hide their views/opinions to breathe a little easier. Could this lead to moral hazard, where people with the insurance are more likely to say the kind of dumb insensitive thing that will get them cancelled?
Maybe in the short term, but I'm thinking longer-term it might make it more difficult to cancel people. You can only cancel so many people before your audience gets tired of the game. Long-term, the insurance game might kill the 'joy' of cancellation and the practice could peter out.
There are probably a dozen reasons why this is dumb. Or maybe it exists already, but it's plagued by bad SEO (all searches take you to pages about how to cancel your insurance) so it doesn't get much traction. Thoughts?
It's theoretically a controllable behavior (acting in ways that would get you Cancelled) and the insurance company would almost certainly require that you don't do those activities. For instance, give up being a Nazi - which I think we could agree has a high probability of getting you Cancelled. They might also require that you give up social media, being politically outspoken (on pretty much any issue at all, on either side), or having one or more of a wide set of political beliefs.
No insurance company is going to take you on for any price even close to reasonable without heavy restrictions. If you're willing to pay way more than this service is worth on average, then you are in the population very likely to get Cancelled and the insurance company will know they should charge you more, commensurate with your level of risk.
For the average person, this service will be worth almost nothing, as the rate of people actually getting cancelled is extremely low. The rate of self-censorship is significantly higher, but insurance will have the opposite effect of helping with that problem.
I think we can distinguish between "fired from a job because of outspoken political beliefs" and "target of a social media campaign to signal boost statements (especially out of context) not made to a general audience". If you want to collect on your insurance, you have to prove you were the target of a smear campaign, not that you started talking politics with your boss. Would James Damore have been able to collect on such a plan? I'm not sure.
I think we could also distinguish between, "makes incendiary statements that are known or should be known to cause controversy" and the ever increasing, "made statements five years ago that were obvious and undisputed, but that today are anathema." Given how many things this applies to, and the sheer impossibility of predicting what will be deemed 'problematic' tomorrow, this seems like a case of risk that can neither be foreseen nor avoided.
Given the number of people on social media, it seems counterintuitive to tell someone they can't be covered unless they swear off social media. Besides, all that matters is whether you ever posted something online ever, not whether you're currently posting. Requiring someone to get off Facebook to give them Cancel Insurance would be like telling someone they can only get car insurance after they sell their car.
I'm looking at it more as the insurance company doing a thorough risk assessment and offering to sell insurance at highly variable prices depending on the risk.
So they'll sell insurance to someone who is outspoken on social media, but at a significantly higher rate than someone who isn't. They'll tell you to self select away from "problematic" activities in order to get a discount.
Unfortunately, the "known or should be known to cause controversy" is an every-moving target, often moving much faster than insurance plans could keep up. I agree that your distinction is a useful way to distinguish between types of "cancelling." In practice, real world scenarios confuse that distinction a lot. James Damore is a good example, because from his perspective he was offering accurate and useful data in direct response to his employer's request. How could that ever be problematic if it's both true and requested? That it was anathema to a particular worldview and narrative, and that his employer prescribed to that worldview to the point of firing people for expressing dissenting opinions, seems to have been a surprise to him.
Here's an interesting thought. Imagine a world where cancel insurance was a real thing, and Damore had it before circulating that memo. Damore is cancelled and goes to collect the insurance payout, collecting the evidence to support his case and presenting it to his insurer.
The mob that cancelled him finds out about his insurance. They don't want their efforts undermined, so naturally they submit counter evidence to the insurance company. They may even go so far as to crowd source donations to fight the case. As with many legal questions, the party with the most money can filibuster enough to get their way.
Damore tries to fight back. He sets up his own crowd sourcing campaign to raise money to defend his insurance claim. The cancellers naturally go after the crowd sourcing vendor to get him dropped from the site. Despite the fact that this is further evidence of Damore getting cancelled, he can afford to prove it in court.
I think that it would probably be impossible to distinguish legitimate cases from insurance fraud.
Anyone looking to quit their current job would have the incentive to take the insurance and make sure they get cancelled instead.
I presume this would charge more for pre-existing conditions?
The focus on cancel would make it a bit harder to implement. But a generic layoff insurance that is crafted to carefully define "at fault" as not including the way your express your opinions...
The application form for that insurance would be quite a document. "In order that we can accurately assess your risk of cancellation, please list your unwoke beliefs below..." Actually, that's how you could make the economics work out: sign up as many people as you can, and when the new signups start to tail off, use their application forms to blackmail all your customers.
Given the potential unhireability that can come with being sufficiently-badly "cancelled", I suspect it'd be really hard to make the economics work out. A rival ecosystem would probably be better at insurance-in-the-broad-sense; you simply work for that ecosystem and now you can't be fired for your non-SJ beliefs since the ecosystem doesn't care if SJ hates you.
(I say "ecosystem", not "company", because a single company that openly refuses to play ball would get targetted itself, which is another issue with a single "cancel insurance" company. Obviously, SJers boycotting a "cancel insurance" company wouldn't work, but SJers getting PayPal/Visa/MasterCard to refuse to process its payments, social media and web advertisers to refuse to platform its advertising, etc., that's more dangerous.)
The main pain of being cancelled as I understand it is not losing your income, but the relentless hate and critique and having your friends abandone you.
As Nancy says, it's clearly both. Losing your job can be hard, but a good support network can help you get through. Losing your support network can be hard, but with enough financial stability you can work on making new friends. When you lose both at once, you feel like the world is crashing.
As a side note, if you are an actual conservative and live in places not dominated by anti-conservative forces, neither job loss nor community loss is a thing. It seems the hardest hit by Cancel Culture are liberals who are non-conformist or the non-woke who happen to live too close to significantly woke areas.
It's both. The loss of income-- or just having to scramble to get another source of income- is a serious thing.
Anyone who would want this insurance would be uninsurable.
Plenty of people have been cancelled for having held views which were mainstream at the time - Brendan Eich springs to mind. Hell, if you look at polls of e.g. attitudes to transgender self-ID (for instance https://yougov.co.uk/topics/politics/articles-reports/2020/07/16/where-does-british-public-stand-transgender-rights), people get cancelled for holding views that *currently* hold majority support. The people most in need of this insurance, and thus most likely to seek it out, would be most at risk of cancellation - but that's a problem common to all insurance. The challenge would be in marketing it to people at low risk of cancellation; you could maybe do that by stressing the two points I made above.
The issue would be getting people to pay for it and defining a cancelable event. I suppose you could advertise it on conservative networks. There is the shooting insurance stuff that at least shows some appetite for it. But you'd have to make it extremely common for it to have any kind of macro-effect.
"Maybe in the short term, but I'm thinking longer-term it might make it more difficult to cancel people."
Alternatively, it would lead to an authoritarian society with an even more stifling, even more rigid orthodoxy. Presumably the insurance would only pay out if you could prove you tried everything reasonable to hide your unwoke beliefs. Broadcasting your beliefs would be insurance fraud. Otherwise, how would the insurance work? Lots of people would buy it, pay the premium for one month, broadcast their unwoke beliefs, get fired, and claim free money.
Having worked a teeny bit in the insurance sector, and then learned a lot more about it from a relative who was CEO of a US insurance company, this is what I was going to predict.
I wrote a short story about a mouse singularity which I thought this crowd might like: https://solquy.substack.com/p/111422-the-squeakularity
Hope y’all are having a nice end to the weekend :)
Free mechanic idea: if you want to justify how mice a few decades from now can be so smart, make them *genome-synthesized* mice, along the lines of 'ultra-safe cell lines', where the whole genome has been rewritten to use different codons - rendering them immune to all viruses ever and mostly to bacteria. Then the superintelligence just comes from, 'it turns out that no one's brain has functioned at as much as 1% of their true capability, because they have been damaged from conception by the relentless sea of viral & bacterial assault'.
Hey Gwern, just to check, are you referencing codon-pair bias for viral attenuation? Was a super neat idea for vaccine development; I haven't thought about this idea since reading the original paper a decade ago.
https://www.science.org/doi/full/10.1126/science.1155761?casa_token=HdazQtyBVqMAAAAA%3AZj87kchXh0fzJfmYD5rIsgjov1e5Te-S8mM2XqHl2G7__Grgce02kx4FR--CPB8Mat_k0EpS1yHryC4
Hope you're doing well!
I do like these. Keep up the good work.
That was a fun read.
I don't know who Beatrix Potter is though.
Too lazy to go google?
Early twentieth-century author of children's stories, best known for The Tale of Peter Rabbit: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beatrix_Potter
You as well.
I think you should go on a date with Beatrix Potter.
Half-seriously..
She died in 1943, which might put a bit of a strain on the relationship.
Metaphorically speaking. I enjoyed your story. It reminded me of the mouse culture she imagined. The Tailor of Gloucester in particular.
Thanks very much! I had actually never heard of Beatrix Potter before this, will check out her stuff. <3
Well, a few at SSC knew of my personal history, so an update here: my and my beloved roommate have moved to an apartment in a woodsy part of San Francisco (we can see the Pacific Ocean through the tree branches and with an open window we can hear the waves), she’s been told that her remaining tumors are nit growing and there’s no need for chemotherapy for at least six months, she walks with a cane but she still walks.
Due to the higher rent we’re both going to be much poorer because of the move, but our former mutual roommate’s drunken behavior made staying at our old place unwise.
I still spend weekends with my legal wife and her kids (only the older one knows that he’s not my genetic son, only my legal one) and the 17 year old boy is applying to colleges now, his hope is UCB.
The six year old is as energetic as ever.
lol
I probably missed you mentioning this a while ago but I hope whatever was wrong with your lungs has been dealt with now.
It might not be necessary if you're close enough to hear the waves but some small 8x binoculars are always a good thing to keep on the windowsill if you can just about see the sea. Especially if interesting shipping goes past from time to time.
Thanks! Not that you know me, but I lurked on SSC long enough to care about what happens to you. :-)
Thanks
This sounds like a good update. As always, I hope your life continues to improve.
Thank you
I think this article [1] has finally convinced me that AI X-risk is something I should actively be worrying/thinking about.
[1] https://alexw.substack.com/p/war
Edit: to be clear--the article isn't arguing for AI X-risk. But its description of an AI arms race convinces me that we'll have some deadly military tech running complicated AI algorithms. It's much easier for me to imagine how a bug or a misalignment could lead the robots to Kill All Humans
I recall reading somewhere recently that the "war-games" metric is misleading. IIRC, the upshot was that non-democracies tend to run war games that always end with their own country winning, because losing looks bad. But the US tends to run war games where the US not only can lose, but routinely gives the opposition advantages that are beyond the best current estimates. It honestly felt surprising that the US military could be that clear-sighted about learning via daring to fail.
The other thing is that I imagine those wargames are specifically over Taiwan, which very heavily favours the PLA/PLAN over the USN (due to Taiwan being in SAM/AShM range of mainland China), and probably don't include the "then somebody miscalculates and nukes get launched" phase. The US "wins" when it goes nuclear because it has a lot more nukes and much closer nukes to China than the PLARF has to CONUS.
The article's not about AI X-risk, but the article's existence is concerning from the perspective of AI X-risk; one of the big fears is this kind of arms race where AI safety is skimped on to get warfighting potential faster.
My preferred alternative to an AI arms race is the policy "if you try to deploy killer robots we will nuke you, and we don't care that you'd nuke us back". The problem is developing the mindset necessary to make the threat credible i.e. to actually be willing to follow through.
Yeah to be clear--the article itself wasn't making that argument. But I'd never really considered that we'd enter into an AI arms race, and that we'd be deliberately loading AI onto killer robots. It's much easier for me to see how a paperclip-maximizer could emerge from this scenario
I though X-Risk had to be to humanity's survival? The "X" is for extinction. I prefer the American system to the Chinese but I don't think China's going to literally end humanity.
Yeah I'm no so much worried about one country destroying the other. More the idea that we're specifically building killer AI-enabled robots. It would not take much for a bug to cause a killer drone swarm to Kill All Humans instead of only enemy soldiers
My father passed away 10 days ago at the age of 60. I have been trying to calculate how many years of him did we lose?
He had diabetes(requiring insulin infections), had been on dialysis last 8 months, then underwent a kidney transplant which looked successful for 3 months but then fungal infection occured. He smoked until the age of 50 and consumed gutkha(tobacco) until few years ago. My grandfather (youngest of 3 brothers) died aged 50 from cancer. My aunt died aged 54 (also diabetic and underwent dialysis). My grandmother died aged 74 (also underwent dialysis). My father was the youngest of 3 brothers (other 2 are alive with diabetes aged 62 and 64)
How long would he have lived if the kidney transplant was successful? How long if he had stopped consuming tobacco and let the medicines do their work? How long if we never went for transplant and continued with dialysis?
I have my estimates ranging from 4-8 years.
I went through this process when my dad died in his mid-70s. He smoked 2 packs a day from about age 12, with a brief intermission around 68-69. He developed pneumonia from an intervention for COPD; he'd have lived longer without the intervention. For years I was convinced he'd gotten the pneumonia from a flu I'd exposed him to.
I suppose the answer is that without the cigarettes he'd have had another decade; without the intervention, another 3-5 years.
I don't advocate taking up cigarettes (vape or chew the gum if you must!).
But: my dad read all of Twain, and he was fond of saying that a decade without tobacco wasn't a decade he wanted to see.
I'm sorry for your loss.
Sorry for your loss. My dad was a Type I diabetic who didn't take care of himself and he died at age 47 after several years of declining health—leading up to kidney failure and dialysis. Like your dad, he had a kidney transplant but it only worked briefly.
Anyway, to answer your question, the average life expectancy of people on dialysis (as documented in the non-technical literature) is between 5 and 10 years. A google search yielded the information that a kidney from a living donor should normally last between 12 and 20 years, while a kidney from a deceased donor lasts about eight to 12 years.
As for the lifespans of Type I diabetics, there was a University of Pittsburgh study that was published some years back that concluded that people with type 1 diabetes born after 1965 had an average life expectancy of 69 years (sorry, I don't have a link handy). No data was given for Type I's born before 1965, but it implied the prognosis was worse. As with all studies of this sort, your mileage may vary, but it's not all random chance. Some people can maintain better control of their long-term blood glucose levels, and they will probably beat that 69-year average. Also, it depends on what age they develop Type I diabetes. Theoretically, children who develop Type I diabetes would likely have a shorter lifespan than an adult who developed Type I— that is, if all variables were equal, a Type I's life span could be boiled down to an average length of time as the disease progresses. However, my subjective experience is that people who develop Type I diabetes as adults have a harder time adjusting to the regimen than kids.
My dad developed Type I diabetes at age 21, but he didn't take it seriously. It took 26 years to kill him though.
I'm also a type I, and born before 1965. I developed it when I was 9 years old. As an adult, I couldn't get a straight answer from Dr what my life expectancy was. But, while in my mid-20s, I had a job at a life insurance company, and I hung out with one of the actuaries. I asked him what the life expectancy was as a type I of my age and profile. He came back very glum and said there was something like only a 10% probability I would live past age 40. Because I thought I'd die relatively young, I decided to live my life to the fullest I could while trying to take good care of myself with the tools I had at the time. I made a point of traveling and taking up hobbies that interested me. Once over-the-counter blood glucose tests appeared, I was able to figure out how to control my diabetes better. Then blood glucose sensors came on the market, and I've learned a lot about how my metabolism functions (which mostly doesn't jibe with the well-meant nutritional advice I got along the way). Blood glucose sensors have given me excellent control. Lo and behold! I'm 63 now. The Type I's I knew as a kid and in college are all dead (I think). It's a sucky disease.
> How long would he have lived if the kidney transplant was successful? How long if he had stopped consuming tobacco and let the medicines do their work? How long if we never went for transplant and continued with dialysis?
How long would he have lived if he'd been hit by a cement truck in 1992?
These counterfactuals are no use, he died when he died. Be grateful for the time that you had together, and sad for your loss.
We are part of the same community, and I hope I can give back one day. I like reading people's posts here because I think many people here are smart, and we have similar interests.
I am in Canada and looking for someone interested in studying the following condition. I believe I have something called maladaptive daydreaming. I can confirm I have been engaging in the behaviour since I was at least four. When I was little, I would pace while moving leaves up and down for the entire day except for stopping to eat, according to my parents. I thought I was alone in doing this type of daydreaming until I read the following article, and it described me perfectly. This article explains it really well—https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2015/04/when-daydreaming-replaces-real-life/391319/ (If a paywall shows up, put the link in archive.org, and it should work). Today I don't use leaves, but I pace for multiple hours a day while daydreaming, and it causes distress because these thoughts are useless, and they waste a tremendous amount of time. I manage to get decent grades, but it's exhausting updating all my plotlines.
MD is not an official diagnosis, so I can’t get medication for it. There is limited time because it has gotten worse in university.
If I get an appointment with a psychiatrist in the future, I am considering leaving the daydreaming out of the description of my behaviour and framing it as OCD (my dad is a hoarder) because otherwise, I don’t see how I can get medication/help for this (so far I have not been able to see a psychiatrist).
Here is how it is similar to OCD (the problem is it is not OCD, like that diagnosis sort of fits, but it doesn't exactly).
Obsessions (stories that play out in a daydream) are unwanted and distressing thoughts, images (more like a video, I feel emotion during this process), or urges that a person tries to resist (I fight against going into a daydream, but it is very difficult. My strategy has been focused on actively blocking triggers rather than resisting a trigger). I blocked all my music apps and social media. Blocked specific keywords related to media; I move furniture frequently, so I can't go into my default setting, and it is harder to pace etc.
Compulsions (pacing and repeating the same story) are repeated behaviours that reduce anxiety, neutralize obsessions, or prevent harm (when my emotions are high, I daydream way more. I pace so much that many of my socks have holes in them. Generally, the daydreams are pleasant; otherwise, they do not last as a plot line. I know when I am done daydreaming. Most of the time, they make me feel good).
What advice do you have? I am desperate, so I would be willing to take a bus to the US to meet anyone who would like to study this or meet over Zoom at any time.
Is there some list I can get on where if someone wants to research this, then they can easily contact me?
You are all very busy; thank you for reading my long post. Sincerely, Smaug.
I'm Canadian too and I've had this for about as long as I can remember. I think it started after seeing my first movie in theatres (The Lion King), which stimulated my imagination so strongly that I needed an outlet. I would pace around, flailing my arms slowly and making noise with my mouth.
I thought I was the only one who did this until I read about maladaptive daydreaming several years ago. I've since read a lot of stories from people who suffer from this.
I was surprised that they were calling it "daydreaming". I think of daydreaming as something very different. Daydreaming is sitting around and letting your mind wander. This is more like entering a trance, and though this doesn't seem to be the case for everyone, for me, it is critical that, I get up and walk around in order to enter that trance.
I would do it when I wanted to imagine something more intensely or wrap my head around a difficult abstract concept. It's like turning the imaginative, generative part of my brain up to a higher level of activation.
One difference between my experience and others' is that I do not maintain ongoing plotlines in my head and there aren't usually any characters to keep track of. They're usually just standalone hyopthetical scenarios, which I'll revisit a few times, but then drop. I do not create an imaginary world in which to live an alternate life.
This has never caused me any problems other than embarassment as a child and time wastage as an adult. I managed to quit for four years from age 15 to 19, before relapsing. I've tried to quit a few times but I don't think I managed to go more than a few weeks without doing it until recently. I haven't done it for about nine months.
I don't know if I can give you useful advice since it sounds like it's a lot harder for you to resist the urge to do than it is for me. I know that I only do it when I am alone.
It hasn't been difficult for me to quit, especially not after the first week. I think I just needed enough motivation to resist the increasingly rare urges. It seems harmless, so it's easy to do it if I don't have any reason not to. But I've decided I want to be normal and to invest my time and mental energy more productively. So I've committed myself to just not doing it anymore and seeing what happens. Maybe it will help me somehow.
I'm a psychologist who specializes in treating OCD and related disorders. I agree with you that what you have is probably not OCD. Here are some questions that I think will make it easier to know whether we can definitely rule out OCD. If any are too personal, feel free not to answer them.
OK, OCD is an anxiety disorder. What keeps people doing their repetitive behavior is fear of what will happen if they do not — either fear of some awful event such as catching typhoid, or fear that skipping the ritual will cause them unbearable worry. Here’s are a couple of OCD cases I know of that were at least a tiny bit like your daydreaming thing:
Somebody who journaled all day long. Feared that if she stopped she would forget important events in her day.
Somebody who read and reread articles assigned in class. Feared that if did not get understand them well enough. No was sure that did understand well enough, so kept re-reading.
Question: Is there some conscious fear, like the fear the OCD patients had, driving your fantasizing, or do you do it entirely because it is enjoyable, or because you just can’t keep yourself from doing it?
If there was a pill you could take that would guarantee that you would be unable to daydream more than an hour a day for the next decade, would you take it? If not, why not?
What is it like for you if you spend an extended period doing something that makes it completely impossible to daydream — say taking a long, difficult exam?
After I read your answers I’ll respond and try to give some helpful advice.
Huh, this rang a lot of bells. I don't suffer because this in the same way you seem to, but I can definitely slip into the same daydreaming pattern without much difficulty, complete with pacing and emotional experiences. Personally, I've turned this kind of thing towards my own creative writing, but it sounds like that might be too milk toast a suggestion give how much effort you seem to have put into managing the condition.
Perhaps you could try and engineer situations that prevent you from daydreaming, going out with friends or joining a club for example. Something structured that requires a degree of attention and obligation so that it is harder to fall back into maladaptive patterns. Though I would say, though, don't beat yourself up over wasting time. We are all allowed downtime and the opportunity to be inactive, and daydreaming for ninety minutes is no more a waste than watching a football match.
> I believe I have something called maladaptive daydreaming
How much fiction do you read, or films or series do you watch? Perhaps reading an hour or two of fiction of whatever kind you like best each day, e.g. historical, espionage, SF, etc, would give you so many new "plot lines" it would so to speak dilute those going round in your head to such a degree they would become barely noticeable. On the other hand, a load of new plot lines might make your problem even worse! It's hard to say.
Your comment here resonated with me as it described perfectly my condition for 2 years in my early 20s. Constantly daydreaming and concocting story lines, mostly of me in a position of power and earning admiration of others. Repeating each plot line with minor alterations each time. Pacing around and listening to music for hours in between class. Socks ripping off.
That time is mostly long gone for me, I have not returned to daydreaming since.
The key variable that changed in my life was becoming less lonely, surrounding myself with family and friends. I know it’s tough to get out of a situation of loneliness, I don’t really have much advice in this regard since the solution came to me by happenstance rather than deliberate effort. But the key to getting rid of daydreaming is to get rid of the loneliness. Good luck.
This might actually be related to OCD or be an "OCD spectrum" issue. I wouldn't rule out that getting it treated as OCD would help. Ideally, though, you would get a therapist and psychiatrist who would be interested in doing things that mitigate your symptoms as they are rather than fitting a square peg into one of a series of round holes. In the US there is actually some freedom to do this, but I don't know how it works in Canada.
Can't help with research, but I used to do this a lot, until I was about 24. Probably something to do with being homeschooled and under stimulated, with too much free time in my case? I'm not really sure. Anyway, I was about 24, and going to a great books college for a year of enjoyable but basically useless studies, and going to church a lot. So I got really into meditation and saying the Jesus Prayer, had some kind of experience kind of like the Christian version of jhana, and one day just stopped, permanently, no desire at all to continue, never took it up again. Mostly forgot about it altogether for a decade or so. (Edit: my parents are also hoarders, but I hadn't thought that was related before)
Based on this, I would recommend giving moderately serious meditation a try, but maybe with guidance, if you're associated with some kind of spiritual tradition?
The article is reminding me, actually, of my young daughter, who runs around in circles more than we're comfortable with, talking constantly, and trips a lot for no apparent reason. This is a point of household contention and distress. Not sure what I'd do if I figured out this was going on, though.
I don't know would would be a good way to get your daughter falling down for no reason looked at, but I fell down a moderate amount when I was a kid, and there turned out to be a reason-- excessive muscle tension. This may not be related to anything else that might be going on with her.
https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/semaglutidonomics/comment/10716604
I read the Atlantic article OP cites, and it mentions that many people who can't stop daydreaming also have something called Developmental Coordination Disorder, which I have not heard of. Wondering whether you daughter has that. (Also, Nancy, wondering if you had that.)
I don't think so-- what you're talking about seems to be a whole body problem, while my dexterity is and was well above average.
It sure sounds like a dissociative disorder. The usual pop-psych thing to ask how your childhood was (and how much of it you remember!). You might want to consider talking to a therapist who is familiar with various types of dissociation. My guess is that it would be more useful than talking to a regular psychiatrist.
I'm not a doctor. But it sounds like you should talk to one. You have a psychological problem that's causing you significant distress and getting in the way of living a normal life.
Whether the doctor diagnoses you with OCD or something else is TBD. But I would err on the side of being honest, especially about how this is disrupting your life and causing distress.
My only advice is the same advice I give to pretty much everyone in psychological distress: try and sit quietly with your thoughts for 20-30 minutes per day. Carve out that time, and accept that whatever happens in your head during that time is OK. Watch your thoughts and make note of how they move, especially if you try and bring your focus back to your breath or an object in the room.
Over time you can build up a vocabulary for the different places your mind goes, and you can start to develop "muscles" for influencing its path. But it's a long difficult process--I'd encourage you to see a doctor in the meantime.
Sorry you're dealing with this--I hope you find a way to manage it.
I was going to start a discussion about AI, get people's thoughts using a somewhat novel focus for a discussion of the current state of AI. I'm a lawyer who, while not working directly on AI projects, I get called in to test and guide them constantly, and from my perspective: what I'm reading about what's coming down the pike does not match what is actually being developed. I wanted to get different takes from people in different industries. It occurred to me that people who aren't lawyers working directly with coming AI products might be under the misapprehension that "AI can write briefs for you", just because that's been repeated ad nauseum for months and that it is apparently going to happen tomorrow. Yeah, no. I wanted see what the truth was elsewhere. Is AI really going to start giving us our medical diagnosis?
Then my wife and I got drunk after the kids went to bed, and now I can't do that shit. Having a hard time just typing. So I want to talk about something that's been bugging me for weeks: What PC game should I tackle next? What games have you played that you though were really excellent?
Lately I've bouncing around, and I can't commit to one game. I finished Pathfindrer: Wrath of the Righteous, as a Lich! Great game. I moved on to Pillars of Eternity 2, which I've already beat three times. Started a fourth - this is going to be the first game I complete all achievements. Really great game, maybe my favorite CRPG right now. But I wandered off, and I've played Darkest Dungeon, Inscryption, They Must Be Billions (good game. Hard.), Vampire Survivors, my twelfth run at Morrowind, and huge time on Divinity Original Sin 2 (I love the world and the characters. I cannot stand how the game handles equipment upgrades and it just makes me want to quit). I've also got a game of Solasta going. Pretty good game if you can handle a tire fire of a plot. And I came full circle and started another game of Pathfinder. Two, actually: I'm working on an Azata run and an Aeon run.
This is a ridiculous long, drunken way of asking for recommendations for great games. The don't have to be new, just something that really blew you away, like Disco Elysium (you don't have to be THAT blown). Any thoughts?
Ooo, how about The Last Spell, which is just wrapping up their early access period? It is a genuinely tense and difficult tactics game where you run a squad of up to six heroes trying to defend a town from hundreds of zombies every night. It has some great RPG levelling, equipment management, a little strategic layer, and some of the most satisfying music and animation that I've seen in years
What, no recommendations for Souls-type games? Okay, I guess I'll be that gal. Doesn't have to be one of the actual entries from From Software, you can get a similar experience from, like, Shadows of Sekiro or whatever. But it's worth trying a Punishing Game, once, if you've never done so before. There really was a spark behind all the hype.
Roguelite: heard a lot of good things about Hades.
Other genres I'd have recommendations, but nothing really in that blows-you-away quality tier.
Love the Souls game! I think it’s Bloodborne for the win with them. Can’t get enough of that one.
And Hades is a blast, by the way. Lots of fun progression, beautiful artwork, and an incredibly well done, unique world built out of Greek mythology.
As you mentioned Morrowind, liking your games hard and being blown away by something like Disco Elysium, I'd recommend you Pathologic 2.
The best game I've ever played. The philosophy, the gameplay, the story, the meta-story, the borderline sadistic difficulty and the general atmosphere of grim beauty all working in perfect synergy to create a true masterpiece.
I just looked this up. It sounds amazing; I can’t believe I’ve never heard of it before. Thanks for the recommendation - I’m going to download it as soon as I get the kids to bed tonight. :)
Any advice going in?
Glad to hear it! Here are some of my tips:
Give intended difficulty a try. If the game doesn't feel a bit more challenging than it is comfortable than you are missing the point.
It's okay to replay a game day when you figured a more optimal route, though you don't have to do it. The game is already well protected from savescumming: it allows you to save only in specific places (near the clock), reloading previous saves is generally a fair play.
Becoming familiar with the combat system is a good idea as you will have a few encounters during the quests. But I'd advise against actively searching for as many troubles as possible. You are a doctor not a fighter. And death is appropriately punishing in this game.
It's possible to save all the main characters from the plague though it's an additional challenge. It's also perfectly possible to play while being infected yourself as long as you keep your immunity high and infection level low.
Talk to people. Try to remember who barters what, and for which items. Figure out what items are valuable and have enough of them in stock. Don't leave your items on the ground in the streets. Upgrade your inventory as needed. Food and water will become more scarce with each day. The leash from day one will come in handy later.
So I played the first half hour. This is the creepiest game ever. I love the horror genre done well and this is done well. Creepy, creepy tone. Love it so far, man. I'll keep you updated. Thanks!
Lately I've been playing (and enjoying) Phoenix Point, Europa Universalis 4, Rimworld, and Slay the Spire. It sounds like there might be enough taste overlap for those to be relevant recommendations.
Thanks! I love Slay the Spire.
Out of the rest, I actually own Europa Universalis 4 and RimWorld. I haven't played either though. What do you like about these two? I'm getting excited by this
I think they actually have a lot in common despite being pretty different on the surface. Both of them have pretty intimidating skill curves as a beginner, but in both games that complexity gives you a huge amount of deep and intricate systems to play around with in a way that's very compelling to a certain kind of player. Both games are extremely open-ended; there's some obvious goals to work towards, accumulating the resources and power you need to survive, but beyond that you have a lot of room to roleplay and decide what objectives are interesting to you.
Of the two EU4 has hooked me a lot harder but both have a lot to offer and I definitely recommend them. Another minor advantage of EU4 is that it's made with enough attention to detail to be somewhat educational and it covers an area of history that doesn't tend to get a ton of attention in pop culture.
For EU4, it's easily the game I play the most, but the learning curve is incredibly steep, so I recommend a coop multiplayer game if possible. I'm regularly free between 8pm and 10pm UK time (dependent on baby bedtime success) and would be happy to teach people!
It looks like EU4 and Pathological 2 for me! Thanks everyone. I knew this was a good place to find suggestions for interesting games. Looking forward to both!
I definitely have to turn back to Outer Wilds. I really enjoyed it but I got busy for a few weeks and couldn’t remember what I was doing, so it’s just been sitting there.
Timothy,
1. Perfect is the enemy of the good. Describing the criteria and asking counselors to refer kids who fit them is a cost-effective, fine approach that promises to do far more good than does much "effective" altruism.
2. Of course, nothing is no-cost.--much altruism costs---We spend BILLIONS on altruism already. What I'm proposing is to increase the effectiveness of altruism beyond what is touted as effective altruism. But I certainly would start by funding just the creation of the software, the online training, and coordinating the program. My intuition says that paying the mentors (They're not tutors) would create the wrong incentive: doing it for the money. I'd guess that per Big Brothers and Sisters, by using volunteer mentors, you'd get and retain high-quality mentors and proteges by providing crisp, excellent training and support. And Big Bros/Sisters takes all sorts of kids. With GiftedMentorMatch, retention of mentors and proteges should be even greater. Certainly, the pilot test could have multiple cohorts: those with paid and unpaid mentors and proteges.
3. Of course, evaluating the program is a cost but a worthy one. It would result in ideas for improving the program or scrapping it.
You're still just replying to the main thread, it's hard to follow.
I think you need to separate this idea from an argument about effective altruism. I'm not saying it's not a worthy idea, I'm just pointing out you're making a lot of assumptions about it being more cost-effective than saving lives in the third world. There's already a lot of research on that and I think to some degree the cost can be pinned down pretty well. The costs and benefits of your idea are harder to work out (and apparently you assume the hardest part, large amounts of 1-on-1 mentoring, is basically free?). So I would say that as an argument against EA being cost-effective, you're missing a lot of required information.
As an idea for how to improve the world, it might be worth pursuing.
Forgive my ignorance but should I/need I do something about that?
If you use the reply function in the email, your comment will not post as a reply to the comment in question. To actually do that, you can click "Reply" under a comment.
Seems like you might be trying and failing to reply to another comment?
Could be. I don't know what to do. I started a thread and responded to comments regarding more effective altruism, using a dependent variable I like: Gross World Flourishing.
Are there any free digital tools I can use to attach checksums to my personal computer files so I can tell later on if any of them have been corrupted? I'm thinking of starting a system where I keep three different external hard drives that contain backups of all of my files. All the files will have checksums, and once every few years, I will compare the contents of the three for fixity. Once that is done, I will add whatever new files I've accumulated on my PC since the last fixity check.
md5sum works fine for Linux systems. I think certutil works on Windows, but I rarely use Windows machines so not sure. Anyway, google "How do I calculate an MD5 sum for a file on [OS of choice]?" and I'm sure you'll find a bunch of useful info.
I think most people who are concerned about this kind of stuff look into automatic cloud backup, since a big commercial company can offer archival quality storage methods at a lower unit cost (and less personal hassle). I've used Dropbox for this purpose but there are undoubtably many others. It might be more advisable than rolling your own solution, particularly if in 8 years you kind of forget what protocol you established, or it has to be reconstructed by your heirs after you have a stroke.
If you are that concerned with data backups, it's probably better to follow the 3:2:1 method.
3 different copies, on 2 different media, 1 copy being offsite.
This is much simpler and more reliable.
Also.....isn't checksums across multiple drives basically what RAID arrays do automatically (the ones with multiple drive redundancy at least, no all types of RAID have that). It sounds like you are reinventing RAID except with more effort.
Why aren't we making massive use of flywheels to store energy? Every article I've read about them says they're amazing devices.
What kind of energy? If you mean utility-scale electrical energy, traditionally it's much easier to store the energy as unused fuel, which just sits there in a simple tank or pile on the ground, very cheap and low tech. For hydroelectric, you store the energy as water behind the dam. Once you build the dam, the ability to buffer energy production comes for free. Same idea for transportation that uses combustion, which is almost all of it: you store the extra energy as uncombusted fuel, which just sits in a tank, easy peasy.
You only really have a need to store energy if you are using an energy production method that has no economical way to store its "fuel," e.g. fission plants, windmills, or solar. You can in principle store fissionable uranium on site, but the design of almost all nukes doesn't allow modifying the output by increasing or decreasing the fuel load, so traditionally you just run nukes full bore all the time and use them for baseload (what power you need all the time anyway). With windmills and solar panels you're kind of inherently screwed because the "fuel" (wind or sunlight) is impossible to store, and the output is far less predictable than a nuke, so you need to figure out some way to store the generated electricity instead if you need to buffer production.
But this has only very recently been seen as an issue, because only very recently has anybody thought of trying to use so much wind and solar power that the buffering can't be done by the remaining generating capacity.
In the Sierra Nevada mountains there are coupled reservoirs that are used to store energy. When electrical energy is needed, water from a high elevation reservoir flows down hill to a lower elevation reservoir, passing through turbines to generate electricity. When there is excess electrical capacity, the process is reversed, storing the energy as gravitational potential energy in the upper reservoir.
At one time this was the only practical method for storing energy on a large scale. That may still be true, my information is at least 30 years old. At that time I was told efficiencies of 70% were achieved.
Here is a good video on the current state of mechanical energy storage (ie flywheels and similar).
TL:DW: It's being researched but is still not cost competitive with other energy storage methods
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8X2U7bDNcPM
Because articles often talk about the sexy benefits of new things and ignore the costs which lead us to not do them.
For flywheels those are material science constraints, bad/dangerous failure modes, and relatively crappy discharge duration. Plus they are complicated and require maintenance.
Flywheels seem like flying cars, in that they'd both be magnets for terrorists.
Flywheels are particularly subject to this phenomenon because it's the sort of thing that journalists love to write about.
Flywheels are simple enough for both the journalist and the reader to be able to understand, and "huge important new scientific advance is something that you probably could have thought of yourself, scientists are stupid" is exactly the kind of thing that readers love to click on.
Why don't investors in the stock market just place a large number of low-downside, exponentially high-upside bets? This is famously how venture capital works- VC firms invest in a large number of startups, most of whom fail and so the investment goes to zero. Their returns are made by a small number of very large wins- an early investment in Google, Facebook, Uber, etc. A few years ago I saw a document floating around showing that very early Snapchat investors made a 15,000X return. (Fun fact, Jeff Bezos was an early Google investor after hearing a pitch from Larry & Sergey, and even if Amazon had somehow failed Bezos would still be a billionaire just based on that investment alone. Another fun fact, Bezos' parents' $200kish investment in Amazon is considered by some to have the single highest documented return of any known investment in world history).
If it works for startups- shouldn't it work for equities as well? Make a large number of bets with the potential for extremely high gain (I'm thinking here of Soros shorting the pound), accepting that the large majority of them will fail. If I'm not mistaken Nassim Taleb advocates for something like this in one of his books. Is this a viable investment strategy for someone willing to accept a lot of risk? If not, how are equities different from VC investments in startups?
"investors" when it comes to public markets are not one type of thing. There are many different types of investors all getting paid to accomplish different things.
One of the *least* common things is make as much money as possible. Thats because this is generally very risky and people who have enough money to give to a large investment firm, don't want to lose their money. Most investment firms are set up to make money in a specific way so that their clients can balance their own portfolios as they wish.
Additionally, while the winning investments by VCs will earn 15,000x (or what ever large number you want), they also lose their whole investment almost every time! So on average they make returns that are only just above the broader market.
People that do what you are suggesting are usually unsophisticated investors who lose their money OR very small firms who can exploit limited opportunities for large gains but can't do this for very long.
Taleb also talks about the stress this kind of investment strategy causes. Watching your portfolio go down year after year in the hopes that soon you'll make up for it with the next Amazon isn't great for your mental health. Also, I think he only recommends doing this with 10% of your investments, and putting the other 90% into very safe stuff.
And did Bezos invest after Google went public, or did he invest before it did? Big investors and VCs have opportunities that the rest of us don't.
So, for the average investor, I'd say any exponentially high-upside bet have a high downside as well. You aren't getting the same returns as Thiel did on his Facebook investment since you can't invest as early as he did. So to make lots and lots of money might require a decent percent of your investment money, and it could get wiped out if the company goes bust.
The market is reasonably efficient with how it prices risk. You can buy equities for small, risky companies, if you want to emulate the VC model. You might get double the returns as large, safe stocks, but you might be taking double the risk.
If you want higher returns for the same risk, there's usually some other tradeoff you need to make, such as low liquidity. Indeed, VC investments are not liquid.
Buying a small part of a large number of public companies is generally known as an index fund. It's a totally valid investment strategy.
I think specifically what nifty is describing would be something like a "moonshot index fund", one that specifically targets companies that are risky but have a small chance to make it huge.
I mean it is what a huge portion of people in investing are trying to do in some sense. A lot easier said than done.
There’s not as much upside with public companies in general, so you can’t make up for lots of losses with a few wins. Lots of investors talk about the importance of avoiding losses as much as making gains.
I think there's a lot of upside. Monster Energy has returned I think 250,000X since the 90s. A number of other companies have returned over 100kX in a similar time frame, including tobacco companies. Also, you can always juice your returns with leverage- a certain amount as a retail investor, and quite a bit more as a pro
If you're using leverage, the argument that you're placing bets with little downside risk no longer works. You now have the possibility that an individual stock position will be worth a negative amount.
I think the general advice is sound in terms of, "buy lots of things and hope the average works out positive" but it's hard to find something that goes up like Bitcoin did.
Everyone wants to have bought $100 of Bitcoin ten years ago, but chasing that dragon isn't getting most people very far.
I looked it up and Monster Energy seems to be up by 600X since its IPO, not 250,000X.
That's still very good, but it's a big difference.
There's about three thousand non-trivially sized publically traded companies in the US. If you bought them all and the best of them went up by 250,000x then you'd make more than enough to offset whatever other losses you might have. But if the best-performing of your three thousand one only goes up by 600x then you might still be in the red overall.
Investopedia claims that Monster has returned 87,560X over the last 27 years. (1) US News & World Report claims 260,061X. (2) I am no expert and make no claims either way
1. https://www.investopedia.com/articles/investing/022716/5-best-performing-stocks-last-20-years-gmcr-celg.asp
2. https://money.usnews.com/investing/stock-market-news/slideshows/best-performing-stocks-of-the-past-30-years?slide=2