https://slatestarcodex.com/2020/02/12/confirmation-bias-as-misfire-of-normal-bayesian-reasoning/ From the subreddit: Humans Are Hardwired To Dismiss Facts That Don’t Fit Their Worldview . Once you get through the preliminary Trump supporter and anti-vaxxer denunciations, it turns out to be an attempt at an evo psych explanation of confirmation bias: Our ancestors evolved in small groups, where cooperation and persuasion had at least as much to do with reproductive success as holding accurate fac...
Feb 15, 2020•5 min•Ep. 282
https://slatestarcodex.com/2020/02/12/welcome-infowars-readers/ Hello to all the new readers I’ve gotten from, uh, Paul Watson of Infowars. Before anything else, consider reading this statement by the CDC about vaccines . Still here? Fine. Infowars linked here with the headline Survey Finds People Who Identify As Left Wing More Likely To Have Been Diagnosed With A Mental Illness . This is accurate only insofar as the result uses the publicly available data I provide. The claim about mental illne...
Feb 15, 2020•5 min•Ep. 281
https://slatestarcodex.com/2020/02/10/autogenderphilia-is-common-and-not-especially-related-to-transgender/ “Autogynephilia” means becoming aroused by imagining yourself as a woman. “Autoandrophilia” means becoming aroused by imagining yourself as a man. There’s no term that describes both, but we need one, so let’s say autogenderphilia. These conditions are famous mostly because a few sexologists, especially Ray Blanchard and Michael Bailey, speculate that they are the most common cause of tran...
Feb 12, 2020•18 min•Ep. 280
https://slatestarcodex.com/2020/02/05/suicide-hotspots-of-the-world/ [Content warning: suicide, rape, child abuse. Thanks to MC for some help with research.] I. Guyana has the highest national suicide rate in the world, 30 people per year per 100,000. Guyana has poverty and crime and those things, but no more so than neighboring Brazil (suicide rate of 6) or Venezuela (suicide rate of 4). What’s going on? One place to start: Guyana is a multi-ethnic country. Is its sky-high suicide rate focused ...
Feb 09, 2020•22 min•Ep. 279
https://slatestarcodex.com/2020/01/30/book-review-human-compatible/ I. Clarke’s First Law goes: When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible, he is almost certainly right. When he states that something is impossible, he is very probably wrong. Stuart Russell is only 58. But what he lacks in age, he makes up in distinction: he’s a computer science professor at Berkeley, neurosurgery professor at UCSF, DARPA advisor, and author of the leading textbook on AI. His new...
Feb 02, 2020•34 min•Ep. 278
https://slatestarcodex.com/2020/01/28/assortative-mating-and-autism/ Introduction Assortative mating is when similar people marry and have children. Some people worry about assortative mating in Silicon Valley: highly analytical tech workers marry other highly analytical tech workers. If highly analytical tech workers have more autism risk genes than the general population, assortative mating could put their children at very high risk of autism. How concerned should this make us? Methods / Sampl...
Jan 29, 2020•11 min•Ep. 277
https://slatestarcodex.com/2020/01/22/book-review-review-little-soldiers/ Little Soldiers is a book by Lenora Chu about the Chinese education system. I haven’t read it. This is a review of Dormin111’s review of Little Soldiers . Dormin describes the “plot”: The author is a second-generation Chinese-American woman, raised by demanding Asian parents. Her parents made her work herself to the bone to get perfect grades in school, practice piano, get into Ivy League schools, etc. She resisted and res...
Jan 26, 2020•26 min•Ep. 276
https://slatestarcodex.com/2020/01/20/ssc-survey-results-2020/ Thanks to the 8,043 people who took the 2020 Slate Star Codex survey. See the questions for the SSC survey See the results from the SSC Survey (click “see previous responses” on that page) Some people expressed concern about privacy on the survey. Originally, respondents could see aggregate responses, including the responses of people who marked their answers private. I figured this was okay because nobody’s responses could be connec...
Jan 21, 2020•4 min•Ep. 275
https://slatestarcodex.com/2020/01/15/contra-contra-contra-caplan-on-psych/ I. In 2006, Bryan Caplan wrote a critique of psychiatry . In 2015, I responded . Now it’s 2020, and Bryan has a counterargument . I’m going to break the cycle of delay and respond now, and maybe we’ll finish this argument before we’re both too old and demented to operate computers. Bryan writes: 1. With a few exceptions, Scott fairly and accurately explains my original (and current) position. 2. Scott correctly identifie...
Jan 18, 2020•28 min•Ep. 274
https://slatestarcodex.com/2020/01/13/2019-adversarial-collaboration-winners/ Thanks to everyone who participated and/or voted in the 2019 Adversarial Collaboration Contest . And the winner is… … … Adrian Liberman and Calvin Reese, for Does Calorie Restriction Slow Aging? . An extraordinarily close second place (26.9% vs. 26.2% of votes) goes to David G and Froolow, for Is Eating Meat A Net Harm? . Both of these did great research and were written up well. I especially like them as winners becau...
Jan 16, 2020•15 min•Ep. 273
Link: https://slatestarcodex.com/2020/01/08/what-intellectual-progress-did-i-make-in-the-2010s/ One of the best parts of writing a blog is being able to answer questions like this. Whenever I felt like I understood new and important, I wrote a post about it. This makes it easy to track what I learned. I think the single most important thing I discovered this decade (due to a random comment in the SSC subreddit!) was the predictive coding theory of the brain. I started groping towards it (without...
Jan 11, 2020•28 min•Ep. 272
Link: https://slatestarcodex.com/2020/01/06/a-very-unlikely-chess-game/ Almost 25 years after Kasparov vs. Deep Blue, another seminal man vs. machine matchup: Neither competitor has much to be proud of here. White has a poor opening. Black screws up and loses his queen for no reason. A few moves later, white screws up and loses his rook for no reason. Better players will no doubt spot other humiliating mistakes. But white does eventually eke out a victory. And black does hold his own through mos...
Jan 09, 2020•10 min•Ep. 271
Link: https://slatestarcodex.com/2020/01/05/hardball-questions-for-the-next-debate-2020/ [Previously: Hardball Questions (2016) , More Hardball Questions (2016) . I stole parts of the Buttigieg question from Twitter, but don’t remember enough details to give credit, sorry] Mr. Biden: Your son Hunter Biden was on the board of directors of Burisma, a Ukrainian energy company, during your vice-presidential term. The Ukrainian government was investigating Burisma for misdeeds, and Hunter was alleged...
Jan 08, 2020•9 min•Ep. 270
Link: https://slatestarcodex.com/2020/01/02/why-doctors-think-theyre-the-best/ Ninety percent of drivers think they’re above-average drivers , ninety percent of professors think they’re above-average professors etc. The relevant studies are paywalled, so I don’t know if I should trust them. Our recent discussion of therapy books would make more sense if ninety percent of therapists believed they were above-average therapists. I don’t know about that one either. But I am pretty sure ninety percen...
Jan 03, 2020•10 min•Ep. 269
Link: https://slatestarcodex.com/2019/12/30/please-take-the-2020-ssc-survey/ Please take the 2020 Slate Star Codex Survey . The survey helps me learn more about SSC readers and plan community events. But it also provides me with useful informal research data for questions I’m interested it, which I then turn into interesting posts. My favorite was 2018’s Fight Me, Psychologists: Birth Order Effects Exist And Are Very Strong , which I think made a real contribution to individual differences psych...
Dec 30, 2019•5 min•Ep. 268
Link: https://slatestarcodex.com/2019/12/26/please-vote-for-acc-winner/ I’ve now posted all eight adversarial collaborations. In case you missed any, you can find a list of them (with links) here . If you have read all the collaborations, please vote on your favorite. This year I will decide the winner by popular vote; I don’t feel like putting my finger on the scale this time. I will give $2000 to the first place winner and $500 to second place. You can vote for your favorite collaboration here...
Dec 27, 2019•2 min•Ep. 267
Link: https://slatestarcodex.com/2019/12/25/acc-how-much-significance-should-we-ascribe-to-spiritual-experiences/ [This is an entry to the 2019 Adversarial Collaboration Contest by Jeremiah Gruenberg and Seth Schoen] 1. Introduction This project seeks to explore the viability of spiritual or religious experiences as empirical evidence for a component of reality that transcends or is radically different from our ordinary experience. The question at hand is not the existence of God or higher power...
Dec 26, 2019•1 hr 54 min•Ep. 266
Link: https://slatestarcodex.com/2019/12/24/acc-should-you-have-a-merry-christmas/ [This is an entry to the 2019 Adversarial Collaboration Contest by Cindy Lou Who and the Grinch] Christmas Day is a a time full of laughter and cheer which is held in the West at the end of each year. Believers in Jesus traditionally think the day marks his birth; scientists disagree. They point to the shepherds; when carolers sing about fields full of sheep, that occurs in the spring . The Star of the Magi provid...
Dec 26, 2019•6 min•Ep. 265
Link: https://slatestarcodex.com/2019/12/23/acc-will-automation-lead-to-economic-crisis/ [This is an entry to the 2019 Adversarial Collaboration Contest by Doug Summers-Stay and Erusian] Adversarial collaboration on the question: “Automation/AI will not lead to a general, sustained economic crisis within our lifetimes or for the foreseeable future. Automation/AI’s effects into the future will have effects similar to technology’s effects in the past and, on the whole, follow the general trend.” D...
Dec 24, 2019•29 min•Ep. 264
Link: https://slatestarcodex.com/2019/12/22/a-maximally-lazy-guide-to-giving-to-charity-in-2019/ [Sorry for the interruption; we will return to our regularly scheduled Adversarial Collaboration Contest tomorrow.] [Epistemic status: I’m linking evaluations made by people I mostly trust, but there are many people who don’t trust these, I haven’t 100% evaluated them perfectly, and if your assumptions differ even a little from those of the people involved these might not be very helpful. If you don’...
Dec 23, 2019•8 min•Ep. 263
Link: https://slatestarcodex.com/2019/12/19/acc-when-during-fetal-development-does-abortion-become-morally-wrong/ [This is an entry to the 2019 Adversarial Collaboration Contest by BlockOfNihilism and Icerun] Note: For simplicity, we have constrained our analysis of data about pregnancy and motherhood to the United States. We note that these data are largely dependent on the state of the medical and social support systems that are available in a particular region. Introduction: Review of abortio...
Dec 20, 2019•35 min•Ep. 262
Link: https://slatestarcodex.com/2019/12/18/acc-should-gene-editing-technologies-be-used-in-humans/ [This is an entry to the 2019 Adversarial Collaboration Contest by Nita J and Patrick N.] Introduction In October 2018, the world’s first genetically edited babies were born, twin girls given the pseudonyms Lulu and Nana; Chinese scientist He Jiankui used CRISPR technology to edit the CCR5 gene in human embryos with the aim of conferring resistance to HIV. In response to the international furor, C...
Dec 20, 2019•39 min•Ep. 261
Link: https://slatestarcodex.com/2019/12/17/acc-should-we-colonize-space-to-mitigate-x-risk/ [This is an entry to the 2019 Adversarial Collaboration Contest by Nick D and Rob S.] I. Nick Bostrom defines existential risks (or X-risks) as “[risks] where an adverse outcome would either annihilate Earth-originating intelligent life or permanently and drastically curtail its potential.” Essentially this boils down to events where a bad outcome lies somewhere in the range of ‘destruction of civilizati...
Dec 18, 2019•30 min•Ep. 260
Link: https://slatestarcodex.com/2019/12/12/acc-does-calorie-restriction-slow-aging/ [This is an entry to the 2019 Adversarial Collaboration Contest by the delightfully-pseudonymous Adrian Liberman and Calvin Reese.] About the Authors: Adrian Liberman is currently a PhD student in biology at a university in the mid-Atlantic. He previously worked at the National Institute of Aging and remains actively interested in gerontology and the biological study of aging. Calvin Reese is an author with a BS...
Dec 14, 2019•52 min•Ep. 259
Link: https://slatestarcodex.com/2019/12/11/acc-is-eating-meat-a-net-harm/ [This is an entry to the 2019 Adversarial Collaboration Contest by David G and Froolow. Please also note my correction to yesterday’s entry .] Introduction Many people around the world have strong convictions about eating animals. These are often based on vague intuitions which results in unproductive swapping of opinions between vegetarians and meat eaters. The goal of this collaboration is to investigate all relevant co...
Dec 13, 2019•1 hr 9 min•Ep. 258
Link: https://slatestarcodex.com/2019/12/10/acc-is-infant-circumcision-ethical/ [This is an entry to the 2019 Adversarial Collaboration Contest by Joel P and Missingno] “They practise circumcision for cleanliness’ sake; for they would rather be clean than more becoming.” – Herodotus, The Histories – 2.37 The debate over circumcision in the Western world today is surprisingly similar to the conflict that Greeks and Egyptians faced 2500 years ago. Supporters tend to emphasize its hygiene and healt...
Dec 11, 2019•16 min•Ep. 257
Link: https://slatestarcodex.com/2019/12/09/2019-adversarial-collaboration-entries/ Thanks to everyone who sent in entries for the 2019 adversarial collaboration contest. Remember, an adversarial collaboration is where two people with opposite views on a controversial issue work together to present a unified summary of the evidence and its implications. In theory it’s a good way to make sure you hear the strongest arguments and counterarguments for both sides – like hearing a debate between expe...
Dec 10, 2019•3 min•Ep. 256
Link: https://slatestarcodex.com/2019/12/04/symptom-condition-cause/ On my recent post on autism, several people chimed in to say that “autism” wasn’t a unitary/homogenous category. It probably lumps together many different conditions with many different causes. It’s useless to speculate on the characteristics of “autism” until it can be separated out further. I get this every time I talk about a psychiatric condition. The proponents of this view seem to think they’re speaking a shocking heresy ...
Dec 07, 2019•11 min•Ep. 255
Link: https://slatestarcodex.com/2019/11/28/ssc-meetups-everywhere-retrospective/ Slate Star Codex has regular weekly-to-monthly meetups in a bunch of cities around the world. Earlier this autumn, we held a Meetups Everywhere event , hoping to promote and expand these groups. We collected information on existing meetups, got volunteers to create new meetups in cities that didn’t have them already, and posted times and dates prominently on the blog. During late September and early October, I trav...
Nov 29, 2019•15 min•Ep. 254
Link: https://slatestarcodex.com/2019/11/26/mental-mountains/ I. Kaj Sotala has an outstanding review of Unlocking The Emotional Brain ; I read the book, and Kaj’s review is better. He begins: UtEB’s premise is that much if not most of our behavior is driven by emotional learning. Intense emotions generate unconscious predictive models of how the world functions and what caused those emotions to occur. The brain then uses those models to guide our future behavior. Emotional issues and seemingly ...
Nov 29, 2019•33 min•Ep. 253
