I admitted in my last post on Reaction that I devoted insufficient space to the question of why society does seem to be drifting gradually leftward. And I now realize that in order to critique the Reactionary worldview effectively we’re going to have to go there. The easiest answer would be “because we retroactively define leftism as the direction that society went”. But this is not true. Communism is very leftist, but society eventually decided not to go that way. It seems fair to say that ther...
Aug 24, 2019•26 min•Ep. 232
From the New York Times : Are We Living In A Computer Simulation? Let’s Not Find Out . It lists the standard reasons for thinking we might be in a simulation, then brings up some proposals for testing the hypothesis (for example, the cosmic background radiation might look different in simulations and real universes). But it suggests that we not do that, because if we learn we’re in a simulation, that might ruin the simulation and cause the simulators to destroy the universe. But I think a little...
Aug 23, 2019•6 min•Ep. 231
Or at least this is the theory proposed in Brain Evolution Through The Lens Of Parasite Manipulation by Marco del Giudice. The paper starts with an overview of parasite manipulation of host behavior. These are the stories you hear about toxoplasma-infected rats seeking out cats instead of running away from them, or zombie ants climbing stalks of grass so predators will eat them. The parasite secretes chemicals that alter host neurochemistry in ways that make the host get eaten, helping the paras...
Aug 23, 2019•20 min•Ep. 230
Last year, a study came out showing that beef jerky and other cured meats, could trigger mania in bipolar disorder ( paper , popular article ). It was a pretty big deal, getting coverage in the national press and affecting the advice psychiatrists (including me) gave their patients. The study was pretty simple: psychiatrists at a mental hospital in Baltimore asked new patients if they had ever eaten any of a variety of foods. After getting a few hundred responses, they compared answers to contro...
Aug 18, 2019•9 min•Ep. 229
There is a tide in the affairs of men. It cycles with a period of about three hundred years. During its flood, farms and businesses prosper, and great empires enjoy golden ages. During its ebb, war and famine stalk the land, and states collapse into barbarism. Chinese population over time At least this is the thesis of Peter Turchin and Sergey Nefedov, authors of Secular Cycles . They start off Malthusian: due to natural reproduction, population will keep increasing until it reaches the limits o...
Aug 15, 2019•36 min•Ep. 228
“I don’t practice what I preach because I’m not the kind of person I’m preaching to.” — J. R. “Bob” Dobbs I. I read Atlas Shrugged probably about a decade ago, and felt turned off by its promotion of selfishness as a moral ideal. I thought that was basically just being a jerk. After all, if there’s one thing the world doesn’t need (I thought) it’s more selfishness. Then I talked to a friend who told me Atlas Shrugged had changed his life. That he’d been raised in a really strict family that had ...
Aug 10, 2019•14 min•Ep. 227
There’s a tradition on Reddit that when somebody repeats some cliche in a tone that makes it sound like she believes she is bringing some brilliant and heretical insight – like “I know I’m going to get downvoted for this, but believe we should have less government waste!” – people respond “SO BRAVE” in the comments. That’s what I mean by bravery debates. Discussions over who is bravely holding a nonconformist position in the face of persecution, and who is a coward defending the popular status q...
Aug 10, 2019•15 min•Ep. 226
Thanks to everyone who commented on Against Against Billionaire Philanthropy . For whatever reason, the comments there were exceptionally good. In particular, I’m happy that our usually-quiet leftists finally showed up with some strong (and interesting) pushback. I usually highlight good comments with short responses, but it was hard for me to avoid debating some of these. I realize that’s complicated, because I can’t quote most long comments in their entirety, and I realize I have more of a pla...
Aug 10, 2019•54 min•Ep. 225
I want to signal-boost Tumblr user squareallworthy ‘s analysis of various UBI plans: 1. Jensen et al’s plan 2. Healy et al’s plan 3. Andrew Yang’s plan 4. Torry’s plan 5. Sheahen’s plan 6. Dolan’s plan 7. Stern and Murray’s plans 8. Santens’ plan 8½. Varoufakis and Reich’s plan 9. Yang’s plan, redux He finds that most of them fail on basic math – they rely on funding schemes that wouldn’t come close to covering costs. The rest are too small to actually lift people out of poverty. None of them ar...
Aug 06, 2019•8 min•Ep. 224
[Conflict of interest notice: I’ve volunteered for both private and public charities, but more often private. I received a small amount of money for work done for a private charity ten years ago. Some of the private charities have been partially funded by billionaires.] From Vox: The Case Against Billionaire Philanthropy . It joins The Guardian , Truthout , Dissent Magazine , CityLab , and a host of other people and organizations arguing that rich people giving to charity is now a big problem. I...
Aug 06, 2019•45 min•Ep. 223
[ Trigger warning: Death, pain, suffering, sadness ] I. Some people, having completed the traditional forms of empty speculation – “What do you want to be when you grow up?”, “If you could bang any celebrity who would it be?” – turn to “What will you say as your last words?” Sounds like a valid question. You can go out with a wisecrack, like Oscar Wilde (“Either this wallpaper goes or I do”). Or with piety and humility, like Jesus (“Into thy hands, o Father, I commend my spirit.”) Or burning wit...
Aug 01, 2019•30 min•Ep. 222
I. “Silliest internet atheist argument” is a hotly contested title, but I have a special place in my heart for the people who occasionally try to prove Biblical fallibility by pointing out whales are not a type of fish. (this is going to end up being a metaphor for something, so bear with me) The argument goes like this. Jonah got swallowed by a whale. But the Bible says Jonah got swallowed by a big fish. So the Bible seems to think whales are just big fish. Therefore the Bible is fallible. Ther...
Jul 27, 2019•38 min•Ep. 221
[self plagiarism notice: this is mostly copied from last year’s contest announcement] 1. Announcing the second annual Adversarial Collaboration Contest An adversarial collaboration is an effort by two people with opposing opinions on a topic to collaborate on a summary of the evidence. Just as we hope that a trial with both prosecutor and defense will give the jury a balanced view of the evidence for and against a suspect, so we hope an adversarial collaboration will give readers a balanced view...
Jul 27, 2019•8 min•Ep. 220
Ken Kesey, graduating college in Oregon with several wrestling championships and a creative writing degree, made a classic mistake: he moved to the San Francisco Bay Area to find himself. He rented a house in Palo Alto (this was the 1950s, when normal people could have houses in Palo Alto) and settled down to write the Great American Novel. To make ends meet, he got a job as an orderly at the local psych hospital. He also ran across some nice people called “MKULTRA” who offered him extra money t...
Jul 25, 2019•33 min•Ep. 219
The gabapentinoids are a class of drugs vaguely resembling the neurotransmitter GABA. Although they were developed to imitate GABA’s action, later research discovered they acted on a different target, the A2D subunit of calcium channels. Two gabapentinoids are approved by the FDA: gabapentin (Neurontin®) and pregabalin (Lyrica®). Gabapentin has been generic since 2004. It’s commonly used for seizures, nerve pain, alcoholism, drug addiction, itching, restless legs, sleep disorders, and anxiety. I...
Jul 21, 2019•16 min•Ep. 218
“You say it’s important to overcome biases. So isn’t it hypocritical that you’re not trying to overcome whichever bias prevents you from realizing you’re wrong and I’m right?” — everybody Correcting for bias is important. Learning about specific biases, like confirmation bias or hindsight bias , can be helpful. But bias arguments – “People probably only believe X because of their bias, so we should ignore people who say X” tend to be unproductive and even toxic. Why? 1. Everyone Is Biased All Th...
Jul 21, 2019•16 min•Ep. 217
[Related to: The Whole City Is Center ] I. I got into an argument recently with somebody who used the word “lie” to refer to a person honestly reporting their unconsciously biased beliefs – her example was a tech entrepreneur so caught up in an atmosphere of hype that he makes absurdly optimistic predictions. I promised a post explaining why I don’t like that use of “lie”. This is that post. A few months ago, a friend confessed that she had abused her boyfriend. I was shocked, because this frien...
Jul 18, 2019•15 min•Ep. 216
I. In the old days, you had your Culture, and that was that. Your Culture told you lots of stuff about what you were and weren’t allowed to do, and by golly you listened. Your Culture told you to work the job prescribed to you by your caste and gender, to marry who your parents told you to marry or at least someone of the opposite sex, to worship at the proper temples and the proper times, and to talk about proper things as opposed to the blasphemous things said by the tribe over there. Then we ...
Jul 14, 2019•47 min•Ep. 215
Along with more specific questions, I asked people who took the SSC survey to rate their experience with the mental health system on a 1 – 10 scale. About 5,000 people answered. On average, they rated their experience with psychotherapy a 5.7, and their experience with medication also 5.7. This is more optimistic than a lot of the horror stories you hear would suggest. A lot of the horror stories involve inpatient commitment (which did get a dismal 4.4/10 approval rating) so I checked what perce...
Jul 14, 2019•8 min•Ep. 214
I already started analyzing the SSC survey data on fetishes, but I wanted to move on to look at dominance, submission, sadism, and masochism. Why might this be interesting? For one thing, some people have fetishes for things that seem, well…bad. Getting hurt. Letting other people control and abuse them. As if they have a drive toward weakness and unhappiness. This is kind of reminiscent of the self-sabotage and bad decisions some people make throughout their lives (for example, marrying a spouse...
Jul 11, 2019•6 min•Ep. 213
I. I went to Antigua Guatemala in April. Their claim to fame is the world’s biggest Easter celebration. I wasn’t even there for Easter. I was three weeks early. But already the roads were choked with pre-parties, practice parades, and centurion cosplayers. I couldn’t go out and grab dinner at 9 PM because all the streets looked like this Day. Night. The hours of the morning when tourists are trying to sleep and don’t want loud Spanish singing outside their hotel windows. It didn’t stop. Some peo...
Jul 11, 2019•28 min•Ep. 212
The saying goes: “Never offend people with style when you can offend them with substance”. This is the same idea as “weirdness points” : you can only bother people a certain amount before they go away. So if you have something important to bother them about, don’t also bother them in random ways that don’t matter. In writing about science or rationality, you already risk sounding too nerdy or out-of-touch with real life. This doesn’t matter much if you’re writing about black holes or something. ...
Jul 10, 2019•11 min•Ep. 211
1. According to the survey, only 13% of SSC commenters identify as rationalists. Almost none of the rationalists I know IRL comment on SSC. Saying “rationalist community” when you mean “SSC comments section” or vice versa will leave everybody pretty confused. 2. Not every blog by a Christian is “a Christian blog”, and not every blog by a rationalist is “a rationalist blog”. I would hope blogs by Christians don’t go around praising Baal, and I try to have some minimum standards too, but I don’t w...
Jul 05, 2019•6 min•Ep. 210
A few years ago, I wrote the online serial novel Unsong . Someday I want to get it published. But I want to fix it up before I try. I know publishers will have their own editors and their own demands. But I want something I’m happy with before I give it to someone else to tear apart. This post is to solicit feedback on what needs improvement and how it could be improved. I’m going to list some of my thoughts below. All of these are really spoiler-y. If you haven’t read Unsong yet, you may not wa...
Jul 04, 2019•18 min•Ep. 209
I. Tyler Cowen writes about cost disease . I’d previously heard the term used to refer only to a specific theory of why costs are increasing, involving labor becoming more efficient in some areas than others. Cowen seems to use it indiscriminately to refer to increasing costs in general – which I guess is fine, goodness knows we need a word for that. Cowen assumes his readers already understand that cost disease exists. I don’t know if this is true. My impression is that most people still don’t ...
Jun 29, 2019•50 min•Ep. 208
[ Epistemic status: Somewhat confident in the medical analysis, a little out of my depth discussing the statistics] For years, we’ve been warning patients that their sleeping pills could kill them. How? In every way possible. People taking sleeping pills not only have higher all-cause mortality. They have higher mortality from every individual cause studied. Death from cancer? Higher. Death from heart disease? Higher. Death from lung disease? Higher. Death from car accidents? Higher. Death from ...
Jun 27, 2019•14 min•Ep. 207
There’s a silly subreddit called r/totallynotrobots where people pretend to be badly-disguised robots. They post cat pictures with captions like “SINCE I AM A HUMAN, THIS SMALL FELINE GENERATES POSITIVE EMOTIONS IN MY CARBON-BASED BRAIN” or something like that. There’s another subreddit called r/SubSimulatorGPT2 , that trains GPT-2 on various subreddits to create imitations of their output. Now r/SubSimulatorGPT2 has gotten to r/totallynotrobots, which means we get to see a robot pretending to b...
Jun 22, 2019•3 min•Ep. 206
I. Did cultural evolution create sexual purity taboos to prevent the spread of STIs? A few weeks ago, I wrote a post assuming this was obviously true; after getting some pushback, so I want to look into it in more depth. STIs were a bigger problem in the past than most people think. Things got especially bad after the rise of syphilis: British studies find an urban syphilis rate of 8-10% from the 1700s to the early 1900s . At the time the condition was incurable, and progressed to insanity and d...
Jun 22, 2019•11 min•Ep. 205
Philip Morris is pivoting to smoke-free cigarettes , because “society expects us to act responsibly, and we are doing just that by designing a smoke-free future”. Also, KFC “promises not to let vegans down” with their new meatless chicken-like nuggets. They’ll have to compete with factory-farming mega-conglomerate Tyson Foods, who are coming out with their own vegetarian chicken option . Clearly this is progress. Tobacco-free cigarettes have helped a lot of people quit smoking; meat substitutes ...
Jun 21, 2019•6 min•Ep. 204
Last week I reviewed Alex Tabarrok and Eric Helland’s Why Are The Prices So D*mn High? . On Marginal Revolution, Tabarrok wrote : SSC does have some lingering doubts and points to certain areas where the data isn’t clear and where we could have been clearer. I think this is inevitable. A lot has happened in the post World War II era. In dealing with very long run trends so much else is going on that answers will never be conclusive. It’s hard to see the signal in the noise. I think of the Baumol...
Jun 20, 2019•15 min•Ep. 203
