χ might have another interpretation, but seeing how the abbreviation for this place on the About pate is ACX I'm guessing it's at least partially the Roman numeral.
Not sure about the circles without a higher-res version, but I'd take a stab at it being the Astral triad of Yesod, Hod, and Netzach (and Malkuth?). Lots of potential Kabbalistic interpretations there, including a few focusing on the psychological.
"The top and bottom chess sets in this picture are exactly the same color."
What do you mean by "the same color" ? There are convenient lens flares/dark clouds that are obscuring some of the figures; but, outside the lens flares, the bottom figures are hovering at around 80, and the top ones are at around 220.
I think they are actual copies of each other. You'll notice the lens flare of one set corresponds to the bright parts of the other, and the same with the shadows. Try cutting out half of one figure and overlaying it with the other side, they do in fact match up.
I just bought that and redirected it to this Substack (redirect will take a while to kick in). Scott, let me know if you want the domain; happy to give it to you.
"The dictionary defines ṛta as "order", "truth", or "rule", but I think of it as the intersection of all these concepts, a sort of hidden node at the center of art and harmony and rationality and the rest. What are the laws of thought? How do they reveal themselves, at every level, from the flow of electricity through the brain to the flow of money through the global economy? How can we cleave to them more closely, for our own good and the good of generations still to come?"
(it’s probably a reference to the Rick & Morty Heistotron episode, where almost everyone says "you son of a bitch, I’m in" before joining Rick's heist team )
2) If the failure of the Mohists in old China teaches us anything it's that important to have a meetable minimum standards for effective organizations. It's always possible to be better but if you live up to the Giving What We Can pledge you're a good enough effective altruist and can come to the cool effective altruist parties and not worry about being bad.
As Scott mentions, there are a lot of us in poorer countries who read Scott's posts and derive a LOT of value from it, a lot of lives changed for the better. And you're helping make that sustainable. I don't know how the calculations work out, but I believe this at least does comparable amounts of good.
Yay, so glad you're back! I've been really looking forward to your new blog launching.
And I'm glad you've gone with Astral Codex Ten. Back when you were moving from LJ and considering which blog title to use, I thought that was the better one.
Good to see you again, Scott. It's amusing reading the back catalog again. I'm digging through all the comments in your NIMBY posts with all these people mentioning the wonderful "network effects" that make hiring software developers in San Francisco so much more valuable than hiring them anywhere else and here I am two years later post-pandemic working for a software company based out of San Francisco but living in Dallas apparently generating just as much value as if I'd been 15 years younger with no family or house and able to uproot myself to move for a job.
Seconding what many are saying here. A former Lurker back at SSC (even considered buying the hardbound editions of the old blog off amazon...) This, along with the sinking of the USS Trump, has been the balm of my locked-down January... Welcome back and wishing you all the best!
I don't even know how I got here. Opened my browser after letting my phone bounce around in my pocket, and suddenly learned that the long wait was over. Feels like 2021 is starting now.
(Arguably we should subscribe to NYT again so that next time they do something questionable, we can boycott them again. But, being unemployed, I won't do that myself.)
I did check, they really are the same colour. I suspected as much but was still thought there was about a 20% chance you had assumed it to be true and fallen for a prank.
Welcome back, thrilled to finally be able to read you again. Are you going to cover stuff that happened during your hiatus, or that started during that time and is ongoing, or is it fresh topics only?
Constant lurker from SSC, never commented on anything ever....... and I'm perfectly happy to burn my first ever comment to say I am so very glad you're back and it sounds like you're flourishing. I can't wait to read more from you and for our comment community to get back to work too!
I'm so glad you are back, this blog is really important to me, I feel like it's teaching me how to think. I read almost the whole archive again during the hiatus.
PS if you want a topic, I request "How do you do the research for one of your big articles" like that early covid mask wearing article. How do you keep organized and drive research to a cohesive conclusion, how do you find papers, etc
Started reading your blog over the summer; glad you’re back, it’s amazing! As for the blog name/theme, maybe “Apollonian” (like in Nietszche) could sum it up well.
I'm glad you're bouncing back from 2020 stronger than ever. I was worried we were going to see less/no SSC posts in future, and was also worried your life was going to be blown up in a fairly permanent way. Ŗta uh... finds a way.
One other thing have you considered or talked to the ppl at substack about bundling subscriptions? Looking at the economics of cable bundling convinced me its a win and there are enough other bloggers of interest to your fans on substack I think it could be worthwhile.
So happy to have you back. I'll subscribe, but I know just what charity I'll give to when you have more money than you'll spend rationally. So will you at some point put a disclaimer with the donate option that our money might be better spent donating to a charity, like you did on ssc? Kindly, Emma Ragnhof, owner of a diary type blog I just made a leap and shared w my mother.
When I subscribed I believe I saw both a pay-what-you-want option ("Founding Member"? May have a lower limit.) and a student discount link in the description that listed $30/year iirc. Maybe take another look?
Thanks both. I could afford it I was just a bit surprised since it appears that people who can't afford $100 pa are incentivised to pay nothing rather than a reduced amout.
Seems that commenting on these long threads is a bit broken - I had to load all the 'extra' messages.
Does anyone know how/if the RSS feed and subscriptions work together? The RSS feed doesn't seem authenticated, so I doubt it'll have the subscriber-only content.
Based on following the RSS feed of other 'substacks', you'll get a truncated entry in the feed for subscriber-only posts and will probably need to visit Substack directly to view the entire post. Some feed readers *do* support authentication but generally (AFAIK) that's for feeds that require authentication to access at all.
Welcome back. Many times in the last six months I've wondered what you would have to say about what's been going on, and I'm delighted there's a place for you to share your thoughts with us again.
I've always heard incredibly good things about your writing (and I keep hearing about Meaningness too...), but never was a reader. I'm excited to become one now. Fresh starts are always exciting. Excited to embark on this!
I thought of subscribing to a couple of Substack writers I like. I'm still thinking about it. You, otoh, I felt privileged in subscribing to. Please never stop writing ever again!
Very glad to see that you are back, and I'll be curious as to whether the diaspora from Slate Star Codex turn up again. I don't know how many times during The Great Hiatus I read, heard, or saw something and wanted to discuss it over on SSC except. So hurrah and hip-hip-hooray and Meaningful Symbolic Concept Of Your Choice bless this ship and all who sail in her!
A bunch of the readers have been 'keeping in touch' on the various SSC-related subreddits on Reddit. I've found them to be about as high-quality as the SSC comments were.
Out of curiosity, any chance you're planning on making archived posts from SSC available here? I know they're available now, but it'd be nice if they were all in one place, along with the new ones, too. I know some readers have previously put them all together in an omnibus pdf too, but I suspect new readers here might find it convenient to have something like that, as it might help them integrate into the community.
just want to say the top and bottom chess set are NOT in the same color. I checked it with color picker. That's fine, I think the author just want to make a point, but maybe trying too hard?
I am sorry to report that Lorian's page isn't very accessable, and the page also disallows the FF readability function. Contrast is very low. It also does very poorly on this checker. Thanks!
I'm sorry to report that Lorian's font isn't very accessable, and the page disallows the FF readability function. Contrast is very low. It also does very poorly on this checker. Thanks!
Comments sortable three ways, avatars much easier to customize than previously, pseudonyms mingling with named accounts... seems promising! Glad to see you are back to blogging, and pleased to see so much commenting activity also. Welcome all, let's keep it classy.
I reposted this essay with the following header on my Facebook page. Thanks Scott. Glad to have you back.
Contextual bias an existential threat.
Scott Alexander Has an eloquent and salient illustration of a point I have been trying to convey for a while now.
When it comes to politics and society, our common sense, intuitions, and reasoning abilities are dangerously flawed. I want to reinforce his idea that the sensory illusions we see, like the one below, are not isolated to vision, or even just the senses but have been clearly demonstrated to occur in judgement in myriad ways. Whether talking about sports teams, schools, subculture, political party or nations people looking at the exact same thing will judge it in ways that are diametrically opposed.
This is in part because evolution builds on old solutions to create new functions. The systems of contextual contrasts that our visual system uses for enhanced oattern recognition are also utilized in problem solving, abstraction, judgement, emotion and habitual thought problems
I will go further than Scott does here and claim there are other factors making the problem of context in judgement a more extreme problem than visual perception problems.
1) the region's of the brain dealing with these higher order problems are newer and have had less evolutionary time to work their bugs out.
2) Abstract evaluations of the nature of the world are fundamentally more difficult problems than telling what you see with your eyes. They are more complex, less grounded and something for which there are less cases we have to learn from. (We encounter fewer philosophies of life, than we encounter objects)
3) Our social dynamics tend to maneuver us into echo chambers and affinity groups. This places our judgements continually in the context of highly biased contrasts. It's like we are expected to figure out how to see clearly around us while we are in Alice's wonderland.
4) We are punished by our peer group for looking elsewhere and punished even more severely for trying to correct mistakes in perspective that are flaws in our home context that might be interpreted as outside attacks.
5) We have power structures and institutions designed around actively reinforcing these divisions. The leaders of sectarian divisions are promoted for their dedication to the "true cause" and gain power and compliance by intensifying the conflict with the outgroup.
6) Our society is far too big for us to directly interact with all the groups and people that affect us. Dunbars number is an estimate that the average person can get to know and have personal relationships with approximately 150 people. You may feel like you know your political and economic leaders but you don't. You have no personal interactions with them and even if they wanted to interact with you, neither of you would have the mental capacity to handle that many relationships. You only ever perceive rarified simulacrum that are tailored by professional media managers and survivorship bias to trigger certain perceptions in people.
7) (Divide and conquer) and (manipulate through external threat narratives) are standard strategies of the elite rulership classes used since time immemorial. The are important tools of political controls. You can see them written into slave and segregation laws, Nazi propaganda, and many other more contemporary manipulations. Abusive and exploitive power is served by disunity amongst the exploited and manipulated. The more rage against other powerless people and the less conversation, the better the interests of the elite are served.
What can you do about this?
1) Get to know amd talk talk in good faith with people that belong to the groups you hate. Go outside your comfort zone. Emphasize talk and activities that have nothing do with your conflict. Find area of common humanity and concern. This is not some Pollyanna notion that everyone in basically good or that we are all the same. It's a step towards clearing your prejudices enough so that you can do a bit better job figuring out who is good or bad.
2) Maintain uniform standards and assiduously apply them to both sides. Fact check those things you want to believe are true. Note how you criticize your opponents and assume malicious intent and either don't criticize them that way or establish those same standards to those you like.
3) Make a point of being critical towards what you want to praise. Your leader, celebrity and group is not worthy of your loyalty if it can't hold up to your best criticism.
4) Be the other guy. The internet provides ample opportunities for you to assume a persona and be the republican in the Democrat group, woman in a group of techie men, the POC in the proud boys group, the MRA in the feminist group, etc... Walk in their shoes and walk where you would fear to tread. Learn the other perspective well enough so that you can defend it coherently. If you can't do that you haven't listened well enough. I can give coherent (allbeit incorrect imho) arguments and evidence for creationism, flat earth, scientology, minarchism, both the major parties, and on...its possible and if you don't think it is, you don't understand the other side well enough.
5) Quit the hyperbole. Stop calling people Nazis and Commies (in the Maoist or Stalinist sense). You don't know any. Even the people who literally claim they are generally are not. They are primarily reactionary edgelords and edgeladies and/or they don't really know what they are talking about. We do have a real threat of our society taking those awful turns but one of the MAIN ways you get there is debasing the meaning of those horrific social phenomena, slathering those sloppy labels all over your out group and then doing your damnedest to marginalize and polarize those people. One way people become monsters because they are given monstrous labels, an enemy, and nothing to lose.
6) Read and learn about the people who broke the barriers of divisiveness. The black people like, Darryl Davis, who built bridges with racist groups, how Malcolm X learn to stop hating white people, how Erin Pizzy working with abused women learned to care about abused men, how Mahatma Ghandhi used his own life to stop the slaughter between Muslims and Hindus, how General Washington's fair treatment of British soldiers helped win the war and save lives, or the Iraq soldier with severe PTSD Sam Slaven, challenged his own primal fears of Muslims and reached out to Muslims to eventually become an officer of the Muslim student Association. Will a kind hand and heart always work, if course not, but you make inevitable the thing you most fear if you don't try.
7) Quit it with trying to engineer society around your xenophobia. The childish pipe dream of peaceful succession being possible or civil war being necessary and desirable is delusional. There is no red and blue America or urban and rural or Christian and Atheist America. Despite what the simplistic fairytales the mass media feeds us, there is no black and white division. Not in geography, not in ideology, not in race, not in values or religion; we are one big messy blended soup and trying to separate out the parts is going to be massive failure with more damage to innocent and ordinary people than the United States have ever seen. Partitions are always horrific big bloody genocidal messes and the United States is more jumbled than any nation I can think of.
8) I try to apply these principles but be cautious about using me as a role model. I get tired, lazy, petulant or stupid far more often than I want to.
"The top and bottom chess sets in this picture are exactly the same color. Download it and check on Paint or Photoshop if you don't believe me. We use "as different as black and white" to mean obviously, undeniably different. But in fact a slightly different context can confuse our brains so completely that we mistake white for black and vice versa. I believe the same laws of thought apply in the frontal lobe as in the visual cortex. The same forces that transform gray chess sets to white or black, outside our conscious control or comprehension, influence how we think about policies, coalitions, and principles, making them appear self-evidently good or viciously evil. I think this is the century where we'll either learn to understand and deal with our cognitive biases, or else all kill each other.
(there will also be the normal kind of politics on here, where I yell at people for being crooks and liars, because I'm only human)"
I like your comment, but it's not true that partitions are always big bloody genocidal messes. Nothing very bad happened when Czechoslovakia split into two nations, as far as I know.
I only discovered this blog in its new avatar and I love it so much. I have been exploring random posts in your old blog too. I am stunned by the ideas, creativity, humor...
The wording is a little confusing, but in fact *each* chess piece is exactly the same as the corresponding one on the other side of the board (pixel by pixel).
astralcodexten.substack.com/feed
We're glad you're here too!
I’m so glad, it feels like I’m reconnecting with an old friend !
Welcome back to blogging! Very glad that I'll be able to read your writing again!
I'm so happy, you were missed last year. So good to have you back
In our darkest hour, Scott "Trans Latex Coed" Alexander has returned to save us. Good to have you back!
Oh. Wow. I JUST got the blog title(s). Thanks for that!!
The question is, why didn't this work with the old title? It was only one letter off ("Slate rant codex" perhaps).
The missing "N" was in the figure of the codex on the old blog, as Scott explained on the blog https://slatestarcodex.com/2013/02/12/youre-probably-wondering-why-ive-called-you-here-today/
> Trans Latex Coed
Here I was, looking for the "DOTA sex central".
It's great to see you back!
Welcome back. Thrilled to see new posts coming.
Welcome back!
It's so good to have you back. Truly. This has made my day a lot brighter.
Ok there's the Raikoth spiral but why χ and what are the three circles?
χ might have another interpretation, but seeing how the abbreviation for this place on the About pate is ACX I'm guessing it's at least partially the Roman numeral.
Not sure about the circles without a higher-res version, but I'd take a stab at it being the Astral triad of Yesod, Hod, and Netzach (and Malkuth?). Lots of potential Kabbalistic interpretations there, including a few focusing on the psychological.
It looked to me like how words in Hindi are written, so looking it up it is the Sanskrit: (Sanskrit ऋत ṛta "order, rule; truth")
Bonus question for nominative determinism points: What does any of this have to do with the Imperial School of Jurisprudence?
Why is this dated aug 10 2020?
Err aug 30 but the question stands.
August 30th was also the day that Guru Ram Das became the Fourth Sikh Guru/Master. This is not coincidence, because nothing is coincidence.
W00t!
"The top and bottom chess sets in this picture are exactly the same color."
What do you mean by "the same color" ? There are convenient lens flares/dark clouds that are obscuring some of the figures; but, outside the lens flares, the bottom figures are hovering at around 80, and the top ones are at around 220.
I think they are actual copies of each other. You'll notice the lens flare of one set corresponds to the bright parts of the other, and the same with the shadows. Try cutting out half of one figure and overlaying it with the other side, they do in fact match up.
Yup. The color at any specific point of one piece matches the color at the same point on the equivalent piece.
This might be due to JPG compression, but there certainly are color differences: https://imgur.com/a/armp2v2
Comparison run with: $ compare -metric MSE top.png bottom.png difference.png
Differences are less than 5%, so i think it's just JPG compession. Here's the difference between the two images: https://imgur.com/a/dyNkxf7
I'm not sure how the backgrounds were generated. They are similar but not identical.
this will convince you https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4uG2u255JUg&feature=youtu.be
Welcome back
Yayy, I'm so happy you're back! :) :)
Re: less unwieldy domain, a friend suggests astralcodex.net
When the TLD hits just right.
I just bought that and redirected it to this Substack (redirect will take a while to kick in). Scott, let me know if you want the domain; happy to give it to you.
Wow. This is the sort of loyalty that speaks to strong community. Kol hakavod
It looks like astralcodexten.org redirects here too.
This time, I will see all of the posts since I don't have such a large backlog to get through!
Welcome back!
YES YES YES YES YES YES
Long time lurker from the old blog here.
I am so happy you are back!
I might even dare to participate a bit now...
Welcome back. I was a stale sad cortex while you were gone.
That's going to be the name of his next blog
Hooray! How we’ve all missed you so!
Yay! Glad to have you back.
"The dictionary defines ṛta as "order", "truth", or "rule", but I think of it as the intersection of all these concepts, a sort of hidden node at the center of art and harmony and rationality and the rest. What are the laws of thought? How do they reveal themselves, at every level, from the flow of electricity through the brain to the flow of money through the global economy? How can we cleave to them more closely, for our own good and the good of generations still to come?"
You son of a bitch, I'm in.
Wow, we're already insulting Scott's mom on his first day back, huh? *smh*
(Just teasin'.)
(it’s probably a reference to the Rick & Morty Heistotron episode, where almost everyone says "you son of a bitch, I’m in" before joining Rick's heist team )
Welcome back to blogging!
Glad to have you back!
Welcome back Scott! I am thrilled to see you again.
*vibrates with excitement*
The real question is how on earth are we supposed to pronounce "Ṛta"? Only the rightful caliph can judge.
Holy cow this is exciting. Welcome back!
Great to see you back!
Welcome back. Also, I want this comment here for when I refer my children or grandchildren to your writing in 50 years.
And to my grandchildren: that comment above isn't me, but this one is.
And to mine. I was here
To my nieces and nephew I hope this writing helps you as much as it did me
1) Yay! Subscribed!
2) Am I a bad effective altruist for subscribing instead of donating that money to AMF?
2) If the failure of the Mohists in old China teaches us anything it's that important to have a meetable minimum standards for effective organizations. It's always possible to be better but if you live up to the Giving What We Can pledge you're a good enough effective altruist and can come to the cool effective altruist parties and not worry about being bad.
Wait, we have parties?
As Scott mentions, there are a lot of us in poorer countries who read Scott's posts and derive a LOT of value from it, a lot of lives changed for the better. And you're helping make that sustainable. I don't know how the calculations work out, but I believe this at least does comparable amounts of good.
Artfully articulated; a heartening start and a charter for smart articles after too long apart!
Glad you're back!
Welcome back!
I'm really glad you're back!
Welcome back!
It's wonderful to have you back!
Does anyone know what he means by the bulletin board? I'd love to join.
https://www.datasecretslox.com/
Welcome back!
Thanks! Welcome back!
You people better not ruin this by snitching to Taylor Lorenz.
Welcome back!
We do what we must because we can.
Scott comes back to us now, at the turn of the tide.
Thank you for this. By sheer coincidence it comes at the end of a rather difficult day and has made a real difference.
If you're looking for palatable arthropods, have you considered crabs?
My first substack subscription. I was saving myself for you.
Welcome back!
Same! Much excite!
FINALLY--So glad to be reading this! Is it too early to call this my highlight of 2021?
Welcome back to the ethereal plane!
I am genuinely glad you're here!
Hooray!
I’m so glad you’re back! Thank you!
welcome back
Yay, so glad you're back! I've been really looking forward to your new blog launching.
And I'm glad you've gone with Astral Codex Ten. Back when you were moving from LJ and considering which blog title to use, I thought that was the better one.
https://slatestarcodex.com/2013/02/12/youre-probably-wondering-why-ive-called-you-here-today/#comment-2953
Fantastic! Can’t wait to be a part of it. Thanks!
If you don't like arthropods, how do you feel about arthritis?
So thrilled about this! Welcome back.
Never leave us again.
May he never have good reason to do so again.
Glad you are back.
Ahhh! I've missed this!!! Welcome back and hope you had a good 6 months craziness notwithstanding!
Welcome back!
And so you are born again, born now a son of fire.
Servant of rta, pillar of dharma, of impeccable acara, foremost among the twice-born, welcome back!
Seriously, it's great to have you back, man.
Welcome back!
So glad you're back. The world just got a bit brighter.
Thank you for coming back.
Good to see you again, Scott. It's amusing reading the back catalog again. I'm digging through all the comments in your NIMBY posts with all these people mentioning the wonderful "network effects" that make hiring software developers in San Francisco so much more valuable than hiring them anywhere else and here I am two years later post-pandemic working for a software company based out of San Francisco but living in Dallas apparently generating just as much value as if I'd been 15 years younger with no family or house and able to uproot myself to move for a job.
I'm quite glad the world has changed.
glad to have you back
Something really good for the year to begin with.
Super glad to have you back with us again.
Thank God! I didn’t realize what I had until it was gone. Welcome back, and looking forward to the new blog!
Glad to see you back in action!
Welcome back <3
Seconding what many are saying here. A former Lurker back at SSC (even considered buying the hardbound editions of the old blog off amazon...) This, along with the sinking of the USS Trump, has been the balm of my locked-down January... Welcome back and wishing you all the best!
Okay so it's great that the blog is back but I'm also pretty impressed by https://lorienpsych.com/
I *really* like the look of the site and am excited by what it could become.
Welcome back!!
YAAAAAAY! So happy you're back <3
After a long dark year, January <s>20</s> 21, 2021 will be remembered as the day our nightmare ended. Welcome back!
Welcome back, Scott! This makes 2021 feel like it's moving in the right direction.
Happy to pay and subscribe. At the end of a rough day (had a client fire me), it's great to get such good news.
Couldn't be happier about this! Looking forward to each and every post!
I don't even know how I got here. Opened my browser after letting my phone bounce around in my pocket, and suddenly learned that the long wait was over. Feels like 2021 is starting now.
yay!
Yaaaaay! So happy you're back!
Welcome back Scott!
Welcome back! We've all missed you. :)
The absence was a good excuse to reflect on what your writing really represented to me. Suffice it to say, I'm very glad you decided to return!
Oh joy! The world has ended but the Rightful Caliph has returned!
But when the world needed him most, he vanished... So happy you're back!
J'adore tout ce qui rampe!
I just subscribed! This is my first time paying for digital content, in my opinion your work is more than well worth it. I'm so glad you're back!
My former-NYT money is now going to ACX.
(Arguably we should subscribe to NYT again so that next time they do something questionable, we can boycott them again. But, being unemployed, I won't do that myself.)
So glad to have you back! Woo-hoo!
Oh good, you're back. Now *I* don't have to start up a copycat blog to fill half the void at a quarter the speed.
So glad you’re back! Subscribed!
Trump is gone, and you are back - the clouds begin to lift.
This made my day. It's so good to see you blogging again, I missed your writing.
Happy to have you back. Thank you.
Glad to have you back.
I did check, they really are the same colour. I suspected as much but was still thought there was about a 20% chance you had assumed it to be true and fallen for a prank.
Welcome back
Salaam
Long live the freedom revolution! Death to the new york times!
Not death, disrepute is sufficient.
Welcome back
Finally! that was a pretty long wait
Nature and nature's ṛta lay hid in night; God said "Let Scott be" and all was light.
Welcome back, thrilled to finally be able to read you again. Are you going to cover stuff that happened during your hiatus, or that started during that time and is ongoing, or is it fresh topics only?
Yesssss!
Thank you! The world's a bit brighter now.
Constant lurker from SSC, never commented on anything ever....... and I'm perfectly happy to burn my first ever comment to say I am so very glad you're back and it sounds like you're flourishing. I can't wait to read more from you and for our comment community to get back to work too!
Welcome back! I look forward to reading about Strange, Specific Stuff.
(Can we get Markdown or HTML-enabled comments? Requiring bare links is _clunky_.)
Congratulations on your new blog title that's a correct anagram of your name!
I'm so glad you are back, this blog is really important to me, I feel like it's teaching me how to think. I read almost the whole archive again during the hiatus.
PS if you want a topic, I request "How do you do the research for one of your big articles" like that early covid mask wearing article. How do you keep organized and drive research to a cohesive conclusion, how do you find papers, etc
Thank god, somebody competent is back in charge of my online reading.
Seeing that you were back was like finding out Greg Egan has a new book out. Lots of good stuff happening this week.
Wait – does Egan have a new book out? I couldn't find any info about it.
No, I was just trying to think of an author for whom I'm excited when one of their books comes out. Sorry!
No worries! I was excited that he might have a new book too!
Time for some rat ṛta, whoo!
Good to hear from you again! We need nuance, perspective, humor and humility more than ever.
Also, obscure linguistic puns!
It's great to have you back, Scott.
I am so amped to see you back in business!
Hmm, testing.
This is the best thing that happened in 2021 so far. Welcome back!
> Download it and check on Paint or Photoshop if you don't believe me.
Or how about, you know, gimp for those alternative folks not beholden to corporate power centers.
WELCOME BACK!!!!
WELCOME BACK!!!!
Started reading your blog over the summer; glad you’re back, it’s amazing! As for the blog name/theme, maybe “Apollonian” (like in Nietszche) could sum it up well.
Amen. Your voice is a valuable addition to the national dialogue.
Welcome back, first time I've been convinced to subscribe to a substack
So glad to have you back!
Welcome back.
So glad to see you're writing again!
I'm glad you're bouncing back from 2020 stronger than ever. I was worried we were going to see less/no SSC posts in future, and was also worried your life was going to be blown up in a fairly permanent way. Ŗta uh... finds a way.
It's been a while, but the wait has been worth it.
Excited to read your blog for the first time! From your method of exploration into ṛta, I think you would find this website about Greek letters interesting, too. http://www.greekalphabeta.com/learn-about-ksi-xi-60.html
What a great thing to wake up to! Welcome back!
Welcome back, Doctor :)
Fantastique !
Welcome back, Doctor :)
So excited you're back!
Welcome back!
Wonderful news
Nice to see something new. I guess SSC isn't coming back, then?
When you were gone I realized what a tremendous help your posts were in navigating this confusing world.
I'm glad you're back.
Love to see you back! Hope NYT doesn't screw you over again
So delighted to see you here
What a good start to 2021, happy to see you back.
It's good to have you back.
The internet has not been the same without you, welcome back!
So happy you are BACK!
You don't actually need Photoshop to test the figure's color - list of paper with 3mm hole is enough.
Welcome back!
I never once commented on SSC proper, but I am voicing my support now!
Welcome back Scott! And what a lovely introductory post.
Glad to see you back
Welcome back; I've missed you. And now maybe I can re-subscribe to the NY Times which, it turns out, I missed less than your blog.
Another humble SSC lurker here. It's great to have you back, Scott!
demonstration of the Chess Illusion. I didn't believe so I had to check.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4uG2u255JUg&feature=youtu.be
It's been quite some time since last June. Very glad to see you back!
Here is a demonstration of the Chess Illusion effect, if you are on your phone/too lazy to check it yourself:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4uG2u255JUg&feature=youtu.be
Welcome back to the physical plane.
Wooo... You're back!
I was missing you very much, Scott and seeing this post made my day. Glad to see the blog online and I hope it's the end of interruptions!
Welcome back. I'm a long-time lurker on your old blog, and I was very sad to see it go. I'm so glad to be able to read your writing again!
One other thing have you considered or talked to the ppl at substack about bundling subscriptions? Looking at the economics of cable bundling convinced me its a win and there are enough other bloggers of interest to your fans on substack I think it could be worthwhile.
Though at least knowing you can be doxxed resolves my concern that the blog was so good it was probably written by an early AGI keeping a low profile.
Welcome back! You're my favourite blogger, so I'm really happy to see you made it through OK. I've learned a lot from you.
Yesss, welcome back Scott
Great to have you back!
I'm really happy to have you back.
So happy to have you back. I'll subscribe, but I know just what charity I'll give to when you have more money than you'll spend rationally. So will you at some point put a disclaimer with the donate option that our money might be better spent donating to a charity, like you did on ssc? Kindly, Emma Ragnhof, owner of a diary type blog I just made a leap and shared w my mother.
Congratulations! Why isn't there an option to 'subscribe' for less money, if I want to give money but not $100 pa?
When I subscribed I believe I saw both a pay-what-you-want option ("Founding Member"? May have a lower limit.) and a student discount link in the description that listed $30/year iirc. Maybe take another look?
ya, just claim to be a student. It's dishonest but it's better than nothing ;)
Thanks both. I could afford it I was just a bit surprised since it appears that people who can't afford $100 pa are incentivised to pay nothing rather than a reduced amout.
Seems that commenting on these long threads is a bit broken - I had to load all the 'extra' messages.
Does anyone know how/if the RSS feed and subscriptions work together? The RSS feed doesn't seem authenticated, so I doubt it'll have the subscriber-only content.
Based on following the RSS feed of other 'substacks', you'll get a truncated entry in the feed for subscriber-only posts and will probably need to visit Substack directly to view the entire post. Some feed readers *do* support authentication but generally (AFAIK) that's for feeds that require authentication to access at all.
rta is the origin of Robert Pirsig's Quality.
Holy moly, welcome back!
Awesome
Welcome back! You've been missed!
Welcome back. Many times in the last six months I've wondered what you would have to say about what's been going on, and I'm delighted there's a place for you to share your thoughts with us again.
I've always heard incredibly good things about your writing (and I keep hearing about Meaningness too...), but never was a reader. I'm excited to become one now. Fresh starts are always exciting. Excited to embark on this!
Immediately wanting an option to edit my own comments here.
Meaningness is also one of my favorite sites (and its author one of my favorite writers).
I thought of subscribing to a couple of Substack writers I like. I'm still thinking about it. You, otoh, I felt privileged in subscribing to. Please never stop writing ever again!
You've missed some interesting times.
Very glad to see that you are back, and I'll be curious as to whether the diaspora from Slate Star Codex turn up again. I don't know how many times during The Great Hiatus I read, heard, or saw something and wanted to discuss it over on SSC except. So hurrah and hip-hip-hooray and Meaningful Symbolic Concept Of Your Choice bless this ship and all who sail in her!
A bunch of the readers have been 'keeping in touch' on the various SSC-related subreddits on Reddit. I've found them to be about as high-quality as the SSC comments were.
So glad to have you back
Out of curiosity, any chance you're planning on making archived posts from SSC available here? I know they're available now, but it'd be nice if they were all in one place, along with the new ones, too. I know some readers have previously put them all together in an omnibus pdf too, but I suspect new readers here might find it convenient to have something like that, as it might help them integrate into the community.
Welcome back!
Welcome back! You've been much missed!
just want to say the top and bottom chess set are NOT in the same color. I checked it with color picker. That's fine, I think the author just want to make a point, but maybe trying too hard?
Very cool!
I am sorry to report that Lorian's page isn't very accessable, and the page also disallows the FF readability function. Contrast is very low. It also does very poorly on this checker. Thanks!
https://wave.webaim.org/
Very cool!
I'm sorry to report that Lorian's font isn't very accessable, and the page disallows the FF readability function. Contrast is very low. It also does very poorly on this checker. Thanks!
https://wave.webaim.org/
Thanks!
Testing 1234, hello hello hello! Welcome back Scott, welcome back everyone!
Welcome back!
Finally the drought is over!
सत्यव्रतं सत्यपरं त्रिसत्यंसत्यस्य योनिं निहितं च सत्ये ।
सत्यस्य सत्यमृतसत्यनेत्रंसत्यात्मकं त्वां शरणं प्रपन्ना: ॥ २६ ॥
so great to have you back!
So glad you're back:)
All is now right with the world. Well, one thing is now right with the world, but it's a pretty big thing in my world. Welcome back.
Comments sortable three ways, avatars much easier to customize than previously, pseudonyms mingling with named accounts... seems promising! Glad to see you are back to blogging, and pleased to see so much commenting activity also. Welcome all, let's keep it classy.
I reposted this essay with the following header on my Facebook page. Thanks Scott. Glad to have you back.
Contextual bias an existential threat.
Scott Alexander Has an eloquent and salient illustration of a point I have been trying to convey for a while now.
When it comes to politics and society, our common sense, intuitions, and reasoning abilities are dangerously flawed. I want to reinforce his idea that the sensory illusions we see, like the one below, are not isolated to vision, or even just the senses but have been clearly demonstrated to occur in judgement in myriad ways. Whether talking about sports teams, schools, subculture, political party or nations people looking at the exact same thing will judge it in ways that are diametrically opposed.
This is in part because evolution builds on old solutions to create new functions. The systems of contextual contrasts that our visual system uses for enhanced oattern recognition are also utilized in problem solving, abstraction, judgement, emotion and habitual thought problems
I will go further than Scott does here and claim there are other factors making the problem of context in judgement a more extreme problem than visual perception problems.
1) the region's of the brain dealing with these higher order problems are newer and have had less evolutionary time to work their bugs out.
2) Abstract evaluations of the nature of the world are fundamentally more difficult problems than telling what you see with your eyes. They are more complex, less grounded and something for which there are less cases we have to learn from. (We encounter fewer philosophies of life, than we encounter objects)
3) Our social dynamics tend to maneuver us into echo chambers and affinity groups. This places our judgements continually in the context of highly biased contrasts. It's like we are expected to figure out how to see clearly around us while we are in Alice's wonderland.
4) We are punished by our peer group for looking elsewhere and punished even more severely for trying to correct mistakes in perspective that are flaws in our home context that might be interpreted as outside attacks.
5) We have power structures and institutions designed around actively reinforcing these divisions. The leaders of sectarian divisions are promoted for their dedication to the "true cause" and gain power and compliance by intensifying the conflict with the outgroup.
6) Our society is far too big for us to directly interact with all the groups and people that affect us. Dunbars number is an estimate that the average person can get to know and have personal relationships with approximately 150 people. You may feel like you know your political and economic leaders but you don't. You have no personal interactions with them and even if they wanted to interact with you, neither of you would have the mental capacity to handle that many relationships. You only ever perceive rarified simulacrum that are tailored by professional media managers and survivorship bias to trigger certain perceptions in people.
7) (Divide and conquer) and (manipulate through external threat narratives) are standard strategies of the elite rulership classes used since time immemorial. The are important tools of political controls. You can see them written into slave and segregation laws, Nazi propaganda, and many other more contemporary manipulations. Abusive and exploitive power is served by disunity amongst the exploited and manipulated. The more rage against other powerless people and the less conversation, the better the interests of the elite are served.
What can you do about this?
1) Get to know amd talk talk in good faith with people that belong to the groups you hate. Go outside your comfort zone. Emphasize talk and activities that have nothing do with your conflict. Find area of common humanity and concern. This is not some Pollyanna notion that everyone in basically good or that we are all the same. It's a step towards clearing your prejudices enough so that you can do a bit better job figuring out who is good or bad.
2) Maintain uniform standards and assiduously apply them to both sides. Fact check those things you want to believe are true. Note how you criticize your opponents and assume malicious intent and either don't criticize them that way or establish those same standards to those you like.
3) Make a point of being critical towards what you want to praise. Your leader, celebrity and group is not worthy of your loyalty if it can't hold up to your best criticism.
4) Be the other guy. The internet provides ample opportunities for you to assume a persona and be the republican in the Democrat group, woman in a group of techie men, the POC in the proud boys group, the MRA in the feminist group, etc... Walk in their shoes and walk where you would fear to tread. Learn the other perspective well enough so that you can defend it coherently. If you can't do that you haven't listened well enough. I can give coherent (allbeit incorrect imho) arguments and evidence for creationism, flat earth, scientology, minarchism, both the major parties, and on...its possible and if you don't think it is, you don't understand the other side well enough.
5) Quit the hyperbole. Stop calling people Nazis and Commies (in the Maoist or Stalinist sense). You don't know any. Even the people who literally claim they are generally are not. They are primarily reactionary edgelords and edgeladies and/or they don't really know what they are talking about. We do have a real threat of our society taking those awful turns but one of the MAIN ways you get there is debasing the meaning of those horrific social phenomena, slathering those sloppy labels all over your out group and then doing your damnedest to marginalize and polarize those people. One way people become monsters because they are given monstrous labels, an enemy, and nothing to lose.
6) Read and learn about the people who broke the barriers of divisiveness. The black people like, Darryl Davis, who built bridges with racist groups, how Malcolm X learn to stop hating white people, how Erin Pizzy working with abused women learned to care about abused men, how Mahatma Ghandhi used his own life to stop the slaughter between Muslims and Hindus, how General Washington's fair treatment of British soldiers helped win the war and save lives, or the Iraq soldier with severe PTSD Sam Slaven, challenged his own primal fears of Muslims and reached out to Muslims to eventually become an officer of the Muslim student Association. Will a kind hand and heart always work, if course not, but you make inevitable the thing you most fear if you don't try.
7) Quit it with trying to engineer society around your xenophobia. The childish pipe dream of peaceful succession being possible or civil war being necessary and desirable is delusional. There is no red and blue America or urban and rural or Christian and Atheist America. Despite what the simplistic fairytales the mass media feeds us, there is no black and white division. Not in geography, not in ideology, not in race, not in values or religion; we are one big messy blended soup and trying to separate out the parts is going to be massive failure with more damage to innocent and ordinary people than the United States have ever seen. Partitions are always horrific big bloody genocidal messes and the United States is more jumbled than any nation I can think of.
8) I try to apply these principles but be cautious about using me as a role model. I get tired, lazy, petulant or stupid far more often than I want to.
"The top and bottom chess sets in this picture are exactly the same color. Download it and check on Paint or Photoshop if you don't believe me. We use "as different as black and white" to mean obviously, undeniably different. But in fact a slightly different context can confuse our brains so completely that we mistake white for black and vice versa. I believe the same laws of thought apply in the frontal lobe as in the visual cortex. The same forces that transform gray chess sets to white or black, outside our conscious control or comprehension, influence how we think about policies, coalitions, and principles, making them appear self-evidently good or viciously evil. I think this is the century where we'll either learn to understand and deal with our cognitive biases, or else all kill each other.
(there will also be the normal kind of politics on here, where I yell at people for being crooks and liars, because I'm only human)"
https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/youre-probably-wondering-why-ive
I like your comment, but it's not true that partitions are always big bloody genocidal messes. Nothing very bad happened when Czechoslovakia split into two nations, as far as I know.
Enjoyed your old blog. Thanks for being back
Astral Codex Ten? Oh I see, Astral is "relating to the Slate of Stars" and Ten is the binary number 10. Welcome to SlateStarCodex2 y'all!
This is quality resolution that I only get to experience in works of fiction! So wholesome :)
Welcome back Scott!
I only discovered this blog in its new avatar and I love it so much. I have been exploring random posts in your old blog too. I am stunned by the ideas, creativity, humor...
Why did I not hear about this sooner?!
I took you up on your offer to open the chess piece photo, and lo and behold: you are completely wrong! The colors are just as they appear! Hmm..
The wording is a little confusing, but in fact *each* chess piece is exactly the same as the corresponding one on the other side of the board (pixel by pixel).