Scott, have you looked into using Polymarket recently? I wrote a guide on the subreddit explaining how to use it cheaply:
Prediction Markets is something that is discussed by Scott quite frequently, so I thought I would write a quick guide on how to use Polymarket cheaply.
Polymarket (https://polymarket.com/) is a cryptocurrency based prediction market running on the Ethereum blockchain. Even though it is crypto based, you can only buy shares on USDC, a stablecoin pegged to the US dollar.
Because of high gas fees, it was somewhat costly to deposit small amounts of USDC into Polymarket. However recently Polymarket opened the opportunity to deposit USDC via Polygon, a Level 2 solution on the Ethereum protocol. That makes transfers into Polymarket essentially free.
Once you transfer assets into Polygon, you can use QuickSwap (https://quickswap.exchange/#/swap) to swap whatever amount into USDC to then deposit to Polymarket.
How to borrow USDC to deposit on Polymarket
NOTE: I do not advice you to do this. If you're playing with prediction markets, do it with money you can afford to lose
I use this system because I want to keep my exposure to certain cryptocurrencies while certain markets settle.
Once you move assets to Polygon, you can then deposit them into AAVE (https://app.aave.com/markets) , and earn interest while you wait to for the right market to buy shares for. Once you are ready, you can then use those assets as collateral to borrow USDC, and send it to Polymarket.
Also, you can suggest markets in the Polymarket Discord. Using the steps above, I found it cheap and intuitive to start playing with Polymarket's prediction markets.
I read a 1990 paper about the 'psychoticism' personality factor and it mentioned cross-assortative mating, or the idea that certain traits (and especially mental illness risk factors) are heritable because e.g. schizophrenic women are more likely to be impregnated by psychopathic men. It's a consideration that hadn't even crossed my mind before but it makes a certain amount of sense given how an abused woman is much more likely to end up with an abusive spouse, and that should have predictable effects on their offspring.
Can anyone comment on this? Is this something that's borne out by research, or is the evidence against it? Or has it simply never been studied?
A question for utilitarians: I believe that the inclusion of infinity into an expected utility calculus leads to weird counter-intuitive conclusions. I feel as though utilitarians have to route around this issue and come up with a justification that feels very much like special pleading. If we must maximize expected utility, then why not include infinity?
The example that most comes to mind is the possible existence of heaven or hell. It would seem like if these existed, then all resources should be devoted towards making sure people go to heaven instead of hell. No other actions would seem morally justified because their possible return would be finite and incomparably small relative to saving someone from hell.
One objection I have heard is that we don't know what gets people closer or further from going to heaven. This doesn't seem right because praying, going to church and so forth all seem like they would increase the likelihood of salvation. Why should the government not obligate these behaviors to maximize the number of souls saved potentially? If you object that you can't be saved without truly believing, then why not dedicate all resources to missionary work and preaching? Who cares if someone dies prematurely? What matters is their soul.
I don't see how utilitarianism would not reduce down to focusing all concern on some infinite amount of suffering or happiness no matter how unlikely, as long as it is non-zero.
I think I should start off with some general apologies:
(1) For diverting the sub-thread on the book review post into "All Tolkien, All The Time". Sorry about that! But you know, when the Spirit moves you...
(2) Apologise to benwave. I am of a querulous disposition and I was too harsh and antagonistic about a minor matter, viz. the most acceptable way to spell Maori in English. If I am telling them they may suggest but cannnot compel people to do what they wish, I should remember the same applies to me as well. I apologise, benwave.
I've also been trying to think of a post that Scott either wrote or (more probably) linked to. It had a title like "How to create a state without even trying" and it described how the self-interested and rational decisions of people in an anarchic pre-agrarian society very naturally led towards the birth of the centrally-governed feudal society with taxes and policing. Anyone have any idea what I'm talking about?
My life became better when I realized complaining about complaining is still complaining.
I used to just crumple internally when I'd see someone write about how people just aren't tough enough. I'm not particularly tough, I don't know how to be different, and I'm obviously just inferior.
Then I realized I was seeing material by fragile spirits who just can't take it when they hear complaints. While I grant that listening to complaints can be wearing-- especially if they're other people's complaints rather than one's own-- it still seems like complaining about other people's lack of stoicism is a little much.
This seems like a reasonable and normal proviso for social gatherings of this sort, given the current conditions.
What if the vaccine had different exclusion criteria? Would we describe the "vaccines please" differently? Would we be pressured to not have such gatherings at all?
It would matter what percentage of people were medically excluded from vaccination. It might also, for cultural-social norms reasons, matter what categories were excluded.
What if people who recently got a joint replacement were excluded from the vaccine, and that was 0.5% of the population? What if benign physical abnormalities of the ribcage excluded you from the vaccine, 3% of the population? What if pregnancy was an exclusion, and that was 0.5% of the population? What if there were a genetic marker: 15% of people have the marker, 10% of them get a very severe reaction to the vaccine, so they're excluded as a whole group, but only 40% of people know their genetic marker status?
I'm not all that familiar with psychiatric ethics so I won't comment on "people who read the blog." But why don't you just let people apply and then waitlist the extras? Or refer them to other practices you trust. That would allow you to fill up your practice more easily and provide more value to your target market. If you get overwhelmed you can either hire other psychologists or you can hire a secretary type to handle referring the ones you reject (which you'll be able to afford if you're that swamped with clients).
Restricting supply is a bad move if you want to avoid getting overwhelmed. It's a good move if you're trying to make Lorien the Gucci Bag of psychology. But that seems like the opposite of what you want.
For the book reviews contest, not to tip the scales, but I've find myself fatigued from the format and disliking the more recent set of reviews and recalling the first handful of reviews kindly (but only vaguely).
Are others feeling fatigued from the large tranche? Things like:
- the first time someone links to SSC/ACX with a wink-nudge to the judge-author, it's funny and cheeky. After that, it feels like pandering but maybe appropriate context, so hard to evaluate
- reviews that are too long held my attention earlier in the tranche, but are now quickly disfavored
I'm an entrepreneur who has founded and exited (some successfully) a handful ventures. And yet, I still don't know the best destination for finding co-founders/partners for future ventures. I have a few semi-evolved concepts that I'd like to explore. I talk to friends and friends of friends, which is certainly productive. But I wish there was some kind of a matching service where one could meet people and immediately jump in on some brainstorming sessions and the like. Any suggestions?
Alice is given two bags of gold. She gets to look inside each of them and see how much it contains; the value of the contents are IID unif(0,1) (for the sake of the puzzle we shall assume that gold is infinitely divisible).
She picks one of the bags and shows its contents to Bob. Bob then chooses one bag, and Alice gets to keep the other.
What is Alice's optimal strategy? What is Bob's optimal response?
I think it's a good case study (no pun intended) on how things can seem easy if you are used to them, but they are really quite complicated for outsiders to learn.
Does anyone have experience dealing with industrial-grade procrastination when it comes to doing work? I'm currently doing some freelance content-writing work, all of which is tedious but manageable, and every time I try to do any of it I spend >90% of my time scrolling through social media, random websites and the like. Sometimes it's educational (reading ACX and other similar content) sometimes it's absolutely mindless cycling between the same six websites (it brings to mind the slot machine gamblers in that book review the other day). I'm not incapable of focus generally – I can spend hours reading something or working on a particular interesting project – but focus on demand really eludes me.
Deadline pressure helps, but I find myself waiting until the deadline is imminent before getting anything done, and even then not always managing to meet the deadline. I'll mentally put it off ('the deadline is 6pm, but they won't actually check until the morning so really the deadline is 7/8/9am the next day') and it can do bad things to my sleep schedule.
I don't think this is an unusual problem (and I'm aware it's made much worse by the work being boring and working from home on my own schedule); does anyone have any useful insights into working with it? I'm theoretically open to trying Modafinil/similar, but my worry has always been that I'll take it and then fixate on something irrelevant instead of the work that needs doing.
I'm a professional software developer who's interested in getting into teaching myself some hardware stuff. As a somewhat arbitrary goal I'd like to (eventually) get to the point where I can disassemble some commodity electronics, and then solder together a super basic computer that can boot CollapseOS[1]. Obviously there will be many baby steps between now and then.
Any recommendations on how to onboard my skills as quickly and uncomplicatedly as possible? Background: very familiar with high level programming languages (Haxe, PHP, Python, Javascript) decent experience with C/C++, no experience with hardware other than being able to assemble a PC and vaguely knowing what a capacitor and a resistor is, and watching my college roommate solder stuff now and then.
We've had some amazing guests recently on the Futurati Podcast.
Andreas Schleicher is something of an education policy guru, and has studied the educational systems of nearly every major country to look for common, successful policies:
We were joined by famed futurist (and highly entertaining podcast guest) Brad Templeton, who set us straight on autonomous vehicles and chatted with us about his approach to evolutionary ethics:
Elaine Pofeldt is a journalist who has made a name for herself studying 1-person businesses that bring home seven figures in revenue. If you're interested in EA or giving what you can, you should probably familiarize yourself with her case studies:
I came across a nice writeup on [How to Hire a Cartoonist to Make Your Blog Less Boring](https://mtlynch.io/how-to-hire-a-cartoonist/). Does anyone know of similar writeups on How to Hire a UI Designer to Make Your App Less Boring?
I got the sense that "having a community of nerdy peers for ones kids" has been a consistent wish for a subset the comments-section community. (from discussions with marshwiggle.)
So I wanted to share that this one extracurricular math program exists, and for the first time, is accepting applicants from across the U.S.:
It only occurred to me to tell you guys about it when I was amazed by the careful effort put into the "testing/filtering" process. (excruicating-sounding-to-me; I hate assessment) Full disclosure: I know this b/c I begin working there in-person in fall!
Also, it occurs to me that if any of you have a kid achieving well in Middle School (MathCounts, etc.) or H.S. math competitions, (AMC, AIME, etc.) and you're looking for resources, I might be able to connect you with something useful. (I am not really known to hardly any of you, but marshwiggle seems to think I'm good at math coaching stuff. That's my rec.)
Would you be able to explain why the gathering request attendees be double vaccinated? My understanding is that breakthrough cases are rare and deaths from said cases are extremely extremely rare, like way less than car accident death rare.
I know I'm coming to this a bit late, but I'm wondering what everyone's thoughts are on meal replacements? It seems like a cheaper, faster, and *arguably* healthier way to get nutrients than traditional food. Am I wrong?
I'm in Canada and I'm vegan so I've been thinking of replacing 3/4 of my meals with Soylent Original: https://www.soylent.ca/products/powder-original (and creatine) after I do some blood tests. Other meal replacement products aren't really available here. Anyone else doing something similar?
Classified want ad (thanks Scott for okaying this)
I work for a tutoring company (NYC based but almost all remote) with rather well-heeled clients. We're looking for someone who can teach, roughly, the sort of topics you'd cover in the second half of a programming degree, but with a more practical bent - web design, making mobile apps, maybe game programming. The target students would be high school kids who did well in AP CS and the like and are looking for help with next steps. The pay should not disappoint. This is contracted work but there's the option for full time and benefits if you do well.
Please have:
* Bachelors, preferably from a name-brand school.
* Experience teaching advanced CS one on one for several years.
* 3+ tutoring clients/families who can recommend you.
Plusses:
* 7+ years of tutoring experience
* Familiarity with elite NYC private schools (think Gossip Girl) and their culture.
* Ability to teach other STEM topics (physics, chem, etc).
Sounds like this might fit you? Email a resume to patrick24601 [at] gmail dot com .
Because this is likelier to be noticed here than on the Arabian Nights post, here is a DeviantArt post of a map (with copious explanatory footnotes) depicting a world where magic is real and the modern world is gripped by a Cold War between the Idealized Middle East of the Arabian Nights and the Idealized Post-Roman Empire of the Arthurian Mythos: https://www.deviantart.com/quantumbranching/art/Arthurian-Romance-vs-Arabian-Nights-736657777
The entire account, Quantum Branching, is just maps of various althists and fictional scenarios, and seems like the sort of thing that readers of this blog might find *very* appealing.
I already posted this on the subreddit, but I figure it's worth posting here as well.
For a couple months now, I've been trying to integrate Scott's posts about trapped priors (The Precision Of Sensory Evidence and Trapped Priors As A Basic Problem Of Rationality) into a more sophisticated theory about how my own OCD works and how to deal with it. I ran into some issues with this, as the model seemed to be incomplete in some way. Over the past month or so, I've compiled my "findings" into a long-ish blog post on my own Wordpress page (which I rarely use). I know this is a longshot, but I'm hoping that Scott sees it and is able to give some feedback on the model I've come up with. Feedback from others is welcome as well, especially mathematicians for the game theory related stuff in section III.
R. A. Lafferty was a very odd and striking sf author mostly writing in the 60s and 70s-- his work was a combination of sf, tall tales, Catholicism, and just plain weirdness. There's a free online event coming up on June 12. For details see the link.
The featured work is _Space Chantey_, a tall tale science fiction retelling of the Odyssey.
A typical short story by Lafferty, to the extent that such a thing exists. The human race is accelerated to the point that people can have two or three full careers in eight hours. When I read it in the late 60s, it just seemed whimsical. Now it's rather prescient. https://www.baen.com/Chapters/9781618249203/9781618249203___2.htm
Another thing which seems prescient is that he wrote a number of reputation dystopias, where people's reputations were very easily destroyed.
Question for people who understand the history of GWAS studies and the candidate gene approach: I understand that large scale GWAS studies have shown that many candidate genes are just false positives. As Scott showed in his famous 5-HTTLPR post, entire subfields of candidate gene studies have been built around false positives, only to be conclusively debunked by large GWAS studies.
What's weird to me though is that this seems to be the opposite of what I'd think would happen. All else equal, isn't a candidate gene study more responsible than a GWAS study? With a candidate gene study, you have a priori reasons to suspect a gene, which theoretically should reduce your opportunities to p-hack. In contrast, a GWAS study feels like it could be a fishing expedition across millions of nucleotides.
The reality of course was that it wasn't "all else equal". For some reason, the candidate gene people had a culture of p-hacking, whereas the GWAS people did not. For some reason, the candidate gene people had a culture of low sample sizes, whereas the GWAS study did not. And somehow, the candidate gene people never fully corrected for population stratification, whereas the GWAS people managed to find a way to do this.
My question is why? Is it just that geneticists are rigorous and psychiatrists are not? I feel like there must be a deeper reason that I'd like to understand.
On the last politics allowed open thread there was a running argument about whether the left was uniquely more censorious than the right, cancel culture, etc. Here's some recent links that may provide interesting context
On China and how the post pandemic economic recovery and ensuing political capital gains may not be sustainable.
Interesting both because of the importance of the long term trajectory of China to, well, everything. And what it might say about the shape of the post pandemic world more broadly if recovery leads to only a short boost in popularity for incumbent governments.
Is there a name for this type of relationship? It pops up all the time and probably is quite meaningful but I can't wrap my head around what exactly it means. None of the statistics textbooks I have can explain this case.
Similarly is there a name for the specificity-sample size tradeoff? For example let's say you are 40 years old and drive a ford f150 and you want to determine how dangerous it is to drive from San diego to Phoenix Arizona. You could look at accident rates for your car, for americans in general per mile driven, for the stretch of road you will be driving down, for people in your age group or 35-45 year olds driving ford f150's down that stretch of road over the past 5 years. Obviously the last category is the most relevant to you personally but the sample size would be tiny. The more you expand your sample size the lower quality the date you get is (the danger of driving a prius is very different from driving a truck, ect).
A black populist Republican comes to prominence on a platform of opposing abortion and immigration, protecting black civil rights, pro-capitalism and anti-government sentiment: 50%
Herman Cain's twitter account runs for President: 95%
I suppose the situation is similar to what Scott said, a problem of Moloch: that a benevolent dictator can easily fix the academic science situation, but anyone within academic science will find it almost impossible to make any constructive changes. Based on this my prediction is that: Academic Science will over time keep getting worse, progress will come slowly and with more per capita effort and unless some deep structural reforms are done there will be no way to counter-act this trend. Any thoughts?
I wonder if there's a lesson to be learned from 4chan's experience with /pol/ and the more general problem it's had with every containment board? The problem is something like "whatever we try to contain actually just multiplies in containment, and then breaks containment and spills out".
Ofc in /pol/'s case it was particularly bad since the groups and people involved were deplatformed everywhere else and became a plague on 4chins, but I wonder if there's something more general there.
For any ACX readers inhabiting or visiting Texas, the Austin LessWrong and ACX group is actively meeting in-person and will be having a dedicated far-comers meetup Saturday, June 5th.
Far-comer meetups are dedicated time for people who live too far to attend regularly, so come meet people from all over Texas. We've also had more people joining the community lately with people moving to Austin from around the country.
Is there a moral obligation to have your act together enough so that you can be reliable? Is there a good way to frame this so as not to excessively blame people with executive dysfunction?
"Symonds, who will be taking Johnson’s name, has spoken publicly of her Catholic faith, while Johnson was baptised into Catholicism but renounced it for Anglicanism during his Eton schooldays, according to biographers."
Because of course he did. Something he has in common with Maggie Thatcher, who ditched Methodism because CoE is more respectable and mainstream if you're a Tory.
I was completely unaware of any Catholic connections with Boris until now. I have never seen it mentioned, not even if/when talking about Tony Blair (who did convert). This raises a ton of questions: did he formally defect? (probably not, so technically still one of ours, like Mike Pence and Neil Gorsuch in an American context).
Given that adultery and numerous affairs and illegitimate children and (allegedly) abortion for one previous girlfriend don't seem to have troubled Boris, why now the church marriage? Well, probably Carrie. Which also raises why bother now, given that she had no problem having an affair with a married man, contributing to the cause of his divorce, and having a baby out of wedlock with him? Again, probably down to "the parents would like you to get married in church".
This is what you call cultural Catholicism, I can't even call it cafeteria Catholicism as there seems not to be any "picking and choosing which doctrines I follow", but rather "doctrines? what that?" going on. I'm one of those who would agree that it's unacceptable for the likes of this to happen - Boris and Carrie get a ceremony in Westminster Abbey (because it's quaint, I suppose?) while ordinary Catholics cannot get remarried in church after divorce - and it's not because I support second church marriages for the divorced, but the blatant favouritism, string-pulling, and 'one law for the rich and another for the poor' going on. I'm sure it's very nice they have a family friend willing to be their personal priest who has this kind of pull, but while I agree with Pope Francis that pastoral care of the fallen-away is better carried out with delicacy than hitting them over the head with a brick, there's not much chance here of bringing Boris or Carrie back to the full practice of their faith.
It's not entirely impossible, but it will be a miracle.
I have the nagging suspicion that the unhealthiness of the modern diet is not just a side effect of capitalism-driven taste hacking; that instead the enhanced taste *itself* is a causal factor. I'm now sticking to unprocessed, unseasoned foods.
Perhaps this group could use some funny animal stories. Or they could be viewed as evidence that we're no better at testing the top end of animal intelligence than we are at testing the top end of human intelligence.
A stunningly intelligent herding dog takes control of a lawn roomba. I strongly recommend the other links in this post-- the dog's shenanigans, the dog teaching another dog, the war with the fox.....
Can anyone recommend a good provider for pharmacogenetic testing, specifically applying to psychiatric medications (SSRIs, anxiolytics, etc.)? A family member is having issues with her medication and we're hoping such testing might identify better candidate therapies.
Could tracking suicidal ideation/suicidality be helpful? Or might it risk drawing undue attention to suicidal thoughts - and making the problem worse? Sometimes, I feel like it could help to keep an eye on this metric for the purposes of being sure to intervene before the problem gets too bad, and to see what positively/negatively impacts it.
- Thoughts on converting microCOVIDs to micromorts
I like the idea behind microcovid.org a lot; no opinion on how sensible the modelling is but I haven't noticed anything obviously crazy. But I feel like for youngish people in countries with a large chunk of the population vaccinated, the risk budgets are pretty conservative.
Suppose you are a 25 year old with an IFR of 0.01%. At this point, when your chances of infecting a vulnerable person are pretty low, it seems fair to assume that at least 10% of the badness of covid comes from the risk of death. So say 1 micromort = 1000 microcovids. Then the "standard risk budget" of 1% risk of covid per year works out to 10 micromorts. That seems pretty low indeed to me, compared to e.g. the risk an average American takes by driving, or the Value of a Statistical Life used by governments (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Micromort). But maybe I'm thinking about it wrong, suggestions welcome.
Recommendation request for the tabletop nerds out there. Our group's last campaign ended with them ascending to join the pantheon of gods and we're looking to do a followup campaign in a system that supports playing gods. Not in the "super awesome level 99 badass" sense but an emphasis on guiding mortals, remote action, nationbuilding/politicking, and everything one imagines an interventionist-but-not-physically-manifested deity would get up to.
This is a niche thing so I'm not expecting to find a perfect system, but I feel like there has to be some medieval royalty-simulator game or something that has a mechanical focus on the kinds of things we're looking to do.
I’ve got this perverse desire to say something just transgressive enough to earn a one day symbolic ban from ACX. It’s kind of like the time I got a behind the scenes tour of the big cats area of the zoo. If I had really wanted to I could have reached through the bars and touched a tiger’s flank. Am I the only one who gets this sort of urge?
I'm starting to get the impression that if party leaders of the Democrats or Republicans came out and said there was a giant hurricane coming, get to shelter now, a large amount of the non-leadership members of the other party would not believe them, and if they even got up to look out the window it would be solely motivated by trying to prove the other wrong.
This is not entirely because each simply distrusts the other for being in another party, but also as a result of each one frequently exaggerating a problem, or otherwise caught lying about a particular thing, and the habit of each echo chamber's favorite past time being to emphasize any instance of this from the other. That's both a problem of hyper focusing of an echo chamber on tearing down the other, and a problem of too frequently using and even defending absurd hyperbole's within each group. Poe's law comes into play, but maybe when people start calling people out years later for saying the world won't end if [x] gets elected (real example) when the world, in fact, did not end goes a bit beyond Poe's Law.
The glimmer of hope here is that at least the plurality of the U.S. is not aligned to either major party, as best as polls can tell, and I don't usually get the impression that other distantly separated parties (Green vs Libertarian, for instance) have this extreme of a problem with each other.
Anyone have insight on (1) the extent to which inhaled glucocorticoids (specifically Symbicort) impact the effectiveness of the mRNA COVID vaccines (specifically Pfizer)?
From 20 min of Googling all I could find is the following:
The AAAAI emphatically says, "No, there is no impact on an individual’s ability to respond to the vaccine and control of asthma is essential! There is no data to suggest that inhaled corticosteroids and/or leukotriene receptor antagonists impact on immunogenicity of the mRNA COVID-19 vaccines."
(They seem to avoid the error of assuming that no evidence = no impact: they use different language when discussing another question on which "no information could be found and more information is needed" suggesting that they are not simply saying, "oh there are no studies on this so it's not a problem." They also seem to be speaking pretty specifically about Symbicort in that answer, since later they say "Daily oral steroids may interfere with the antibody response to the vaccine based on data with other immunosuppressives and flu vaccine.") (https://education.aaaai.org/resources-for-a-i-clinicians/vaccines-qa_COVID-19)
However, drugs.com says there are moderate interactions between Symbicort and the Pfizer COVID vaccine:
"If you are currently being treated or have recently been treated with budesonide, you should let your doctor know before receiving SARS-CoV-2 (COVID-19) mRNA BNT-162b2 vaccine. Depending on the dose and length of time you have been on budesonide, you may have a reduced response to the vaccine. In some situations, your doctor may want to delay vaccination to give your body time to recover from the effects of budesonide therapy. If you have recently been vaccinated with SARS-CoV-2 (COVID-19) mRNA BNT-162b2 vaccine, your doctor may choose to postpone treatment with budesonide for a couple of weeks or more"
... For SARS-CoV-2 (COVID-19) vaccines, vaccination should preferably be completed at least two weeks before initiation of immunosuppressive therapies; however, decisions to delay immunosuppressive therapy to complete COVID-19 vaccination should consider the individual's risks related to their underlying condition. Vaccines may generally be administered to patients receiving corticosteroids as replacement therapy (e.g., for Addison's disease)." (https://www.drugs.com/interactions-check.php?drug_list=432-2530,4221-19642)
Not sure if I'm violating any copyright issue here but...
From the linked article:
"In 1947, having left Nazi-occupied Vienna for the quaint idyll of Princeton, N.J., seven years before, the mathematician Kurt Gödel was studying for his citizenship exam and became preoccupied with the mechanisms of American government. A worried friend recalled Gödel talking about “some inner contradictions” in the Constitution that would make it legally possible “for somebody to become a dictator and set up a fascist regime.” Gödel started to bring this up at his actual examination, telling the judge that the United States could become a dictatorship — “I can prove it!” — before his friends (one of whom was Albert Einstein) managed to shut him up so that the naturalization process could go on as planned."
So, I'm considering getting an electrotrichogenesis (ETG) treatment for my incipient boldness (I'm vain. I know). The people at the ETG center claim it is super effective, and judging from the before-after pictures they showed be, it seems to be the case (assuming that the pictures are true). They also cited some very impressive statistics like: 96.7% exhibit extra-hair growth, and the average hair count increased by 66.7%, as compared to 25.6% in the control group. So far, so good.
When I went to check the literature for myself, I found that the results they (and every other ETG clinic) cite come from this one paper on the International Journal of Dermatology (see link at the end), which is from 1990 and has treatment group of 30 people. The reported effect sizes are so large that you should be able to capture them in such a small sample, but still the fact that the sample is so small and that there has been no follow up research makes me a bit weary of the effectiveness of the treatment. (There is a follow up paper in 1992 that uses the same subjects as the 1990 paper and extends the treatment from 30+ weeks to 70, showing further gains in hair density, girth, etc).
According to Wikipedia, it has been approved for use in Europe, Canada and Australia, however I am not sure if this means that it's proved to be effective be the corresponding authorities, or it just doesn't kill you.
Anyway. I'm curious to hear your thoughts and experiences (if you have any) on this.
Considering you forfeited your anonymity is it even a wise or ethical idea to start psychiatric practice again? I fear that train has already passed
Scott, have you looked into using Polymarket recently? I wrote a guide on the subreddit explaining how to use it cheaply:
Prediction Markets is something that is discussed by Scott quite frequently, so I thought I would write a quick guide on how to use Polymarket cheaply.
Polymarket (https://polymarket.com/) is a cryptocurrency based prediction market running on the Ethereum blockchain. Even though it is crypto based, you can only buy shares on USDC, a stablecoin pegged to the US dollar.
Because of high gas fees, it was somewhat costly to deposit small amounts of USDC into Polymarket. However recently Polymarket opened the opportunity to deposit USDC via Polygon, a Level 2 solution on the Ethereum protocol. That makes transfers into Polymarket essentially free.
Here's a guide to use and transfer cryptocurrencies into Polygon / MATIC: https://newsletter.banklesshq.com/p/how-to-use-polygon
Once you transfer assets into Polygon, you can use QuickSwap (https://quickswap.exchange/#/swap) to swap whatever amount into USDC to then deposit to Polymarket.
How to borrow USDC to deposit on Polymarket
NOTE: I do not advice you to do this. If you're playing with prediction markets, do it with money you can afford to lose
I use this system because I want to keep my exposure to certain cryptocurrencies while certain markets settle.
Once you move assets to Polygon, you can then deposit them into AAVE (https://app.aave.com/markets) , and earn interest while you wait to for the right market to buy shares for. Once you are ready, you can then use those assets as collateral to borrow USDC, and send it to Polymarket.
Also, you can suggest markets in the Polymarket Discord. Using the steps above, I found it cheap and intuitive to start playing with Polymarket's prediction markets.
Is moral nativism noble? https://whatiscalledthinking.substack.com/p/is-moral-nativism-noble?r=8nz8&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&utm_source=twitter
I read a 1990 paper about the 'psychoticism' personality factor and it mentioned cross-assortative mating, or the idea that certain traits (and especially mental illness risk factors) are heritable because e.g. schizophrenic women are more likely to be impregnated by psychopathic men. It's a consideration that hadn't even crossed my mind before but it makes a certain amount of sense given how an abused woman is much more likely to end up with an abusive spouse, and that should have predictable effects on their offspring.
Can anyone comment on this? Is this something that's borne out by research, or is the evidence against it? Or has it simply never been studied?
A question for utilitarians: I believe that the inclusion of infinity into an expected utility calculus leads to weird counter-intuitive conclusions. I feel as though utilitarians have to route around this issue and come up with a justification that feels very much like special pleading. If we must maximize expected utility, then why not include infinity?
The example that most comes to mind is the possible existence of heaven or hell. It would seem like if these existed, then all resources should be devoted towards making sure people go to heaven instead of hell. No other actions would seem morally justified because their possible return would be finite and incomparably small relative to saving someone from hell.
One objection I have heard is that we don't know what gets people closer or further from going to heaven. This doesn't seem right because praying, going to church and so forth all seem like they would increase the likelihood of salvation. Why should the government not obligate these behaviors to maximize the number of souls saved potentially? If you object that you can't be saved without truly believing, then why not dedicate all resources to missionary work and preaching? Who cares if someone dies prematurely? What matters is their soul.
I don't see how utilitarianism would not reduce down to focusing all concern on some infinite amount of suffering or happiness no matter how unlikely, as long as it is non-zero.
I think I should start off with some general apologies:
(1) For diverting the sub-thread on the book review post into "All Tolkien, All The Time". Sorry about that! But you know, when the Spirit moves you...
(2) Apologise to benwave. I am of a querulous disposition and I was too harsh and antagonistic about a minor matter, viz. the most acceptable way to spell Maori in English. If I am telling them they may suggest but cannnot compel people to do what they wish, I should remember the same applies to me as well. I apologise, benwave.
I've also been trying to think of a post that Scott either wrote or (more probably) linked to. It had a title like "How to create a state without even trying" and it described how the self-interested and rational decisions of people in an anarchic pre-agrarian society very naturally led towards the birth of the centrally-governed feudal society with taxes and policing. Anyone have any idea what I'm talking about?
My life became better when I realized complaining about complaining is still complaining.
I used to just crumple internally when I'd see someone write about how people just aren't tough enough. I'm not particularly tough, I don't know how to be different, and I'm obviously just inferior.
Then I realized I was seeing material by fragile spirits who just can't take it when they hear complaints. While I grant that listening to complaints can be wearing-- especially if they're other people's complaints rather than one's own-- it still seems like complaining about other people's lack of stoicism is a little much.
> (fully vaccinated people only, please!)
This seems like a reasonable and normal proviso for social gatherings of this sort, given the current conditions.
What if the vaccine had different exclusion criteria? Would we describe the "vaccines please" differently? Would we be pressured to not have such gatherings at all?
It would matter what percentage of people were medically excluded from vaccination. It might also, for cultural-social norms reasons, matter what categories were excluded.
What if people who recently got a joint replacement were excluded from the vaccine, and that was 0.5% of the population? What if benign physical abnormalities of the ribcage excluded you from the vaccine, 3% of the population? What if pregnancy was an exclusion, and that was 0.5% of the population? What if there were a genetic marker: 15% of people have the marker, 10% of them get a very severe reaction to the vaccine, so they're excluded as a whole group, but only 40% of people know their genetic marker status?
I'm not all that familiar with psychiatric ethics so I won't comment on "people who read the blog." But why don't you just let people apply and then waitlist the extras? Or refer them to other practices you trust. That would allow you to fill up your practice more easily and provide more value to your target market. If you get overwhelmed you can either hire other psychologists or you can hire a secretary type to handle referring the ones you reject (which you'll be able to afford if you're that swamped with clients).
Restricting supply is a bad move if you want to avoid getting overwhelmed. It's a good move if you're trying to make Lorien the Gucci Bag of psychology. But that seems like the opposite of what you want.
For the book reviews contest, not to tip the scales, but I've find myself fatigued from the format and disliking the more recent set of reviews and recalling the first handful of reviews kindly (but only vaguely).
Are others feeling fatigued from the large tranche? Things like:
- the first time someone links to SSC/ACX with a wink-nudge to the judge-author, it's funny and cheeky. After that, it feels like pandering but maybe appropriate context, so hard to evaluate
- reviews that are too long held my attention earlier in the tranche, but are now quickly disfavored
I'm an entrepreneur who has founded and exited (some successfully) a handful ventures. And yet, I still don't know the best destination for finding co-founders/partners for future ventures. I have a few semi-evolved concepts that I'd like to explore. I talk to friends and friends of friends, which is certainly productive. But I wish there was some kind of a matching service where one could meet people and immediately jump in on some brainstorming sessions and the like. Any suggestions?
Here's a cute game theory puzzle.
Alice is given two bags of gold. She gets to look inside each of them and see how much it contains; the value of the contents are IID unif(0,1) (for the sake of the puzzle we shall assume that gold is infinitely divisible).
She picks one of the bags and shows its contents to Bob. Bob then chooses one bag, and Alice gets to keep the other.
What is Alice's optimal strategy? What is Bob's optimal response?
This week I wrote about my experience learning Polish, with a highlight on the number system:
https://denovo.substack.com/p/making-polish-count
I think it's a good case study (no pun intended) on how things can seem easy if you are used to them, but they are really quite complicated for outsiders to learn.
Does anyone have experience dealing with industrial-grade procrastination when it comes to doing work? I'm currently doing some freelance content-writing work, all of which is tedious but manageable, and every time I try to do any of it I spend >90% of my time scrolling through social media, random websites and the like. Sometimes it's educational (reading ACX and other similar content) sometimes it's absolutely mindless cycling between the same six websites (it brings to mind the slot machine gamblers in that book review the other day). I'm not incapable of focus generally – I can spend hours reading something or working on a particular interesting project – but focus on demand really eludes me.
Deadline pressure helps, but I find myself waiting until the deadline is imminent before getting anything done, and even then not always managing to meet the deadline. I'll mentally put it off ('the deadline is 6pm, but they won't actually check until the morning so really the deadline is 7/8/9am the next day') and it can do bad things to my sleep schedule.
I don't think this is an unusual problem (and I'm aware it's made much worse by the work being boring and working from home on my own schedule); does anyone have any useful insights into working with it? I'm theoretically open to trying Modafinil/similar, but my worry has always been that I'll take it and then fixate on something irrelevant instead of the work that needs doing.
I'm a professional software developer who's interested in getting into teaching myself some hardware stuff. As a somewhat arbitrary goal I'd like to (eventually) get to the point where I can disassemble some commodity electronics, and then solder together a super basic computer that can boot CollapseOS[1]. Obviously there will be many baby steps between now and then.
Any recommendations on how to onboard my skills as quickly and uncomplicatedly as possible? Background: very familiar with high level programming languages (Haxe, PHP, Python, Javascript) decent experience with C/C++, no experience with hardware other than being able to assemble a PC and vaguely knowing what a capacitor and a resistor is, and watching my college roommate solder stuff now and then.
[1] https://collapseos.org/
We've had some amazing guests recently on the Futurati Podcast.
Andreas Schleicher is something of an education policy guru, and has studied the educational systems of nearly every major country to look for common, successful policies:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ewr0OZ5Imjw
We were joined by famed futurist (and highly entertaining podcast guest) Brad Templeton, who set us straight on autonomous vehicles and chatted with us about his approach to evolutionary ethics:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TFsU0NUjW9U
Elaine Pofeldt is a journalist who has made a name for herself studying 1-person businesses that bring home seven figures in revenue. If you're interested in EA or giving what you can, you should probably familiarize yourself with her case studies:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YuvLyiSS9tU
The founder of HowStuffWorks, Marshall Brain, also teaches entrepreneurship and has begun writing about existential risk:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fEAg20AXovQ
We also spoke with Mark Ryan about his work in deep learning and whether DL will be enough to get us to AGI:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UPK4BAtlG2A
I came across a nice writeup on [How to Hire a Cartoonist to Make Your Blog Less Boring](https://mtlynch.io/how-to-hire-a-cartoonist/). Does anyone know of similar writeups on How to Hire a UI Designer to Make Your App Less Boring?
There was one ACX meetup already in the east bay, announced on the Bay Area LW mailing list, and it should be weekly.
I got the sense that "having a community of nerdy peers for ones kids" has been a consistent wish for a subset the comments-section community. (from discussions with marshwiggle.)
So I wanted to share that this one extracurricular math program exists, and for the first time, is accepting applicants from across the U.S.:
"Adventures with Mr. Math: To Infinity and Beyond!" https://mrmathonline.com/forms/
It only occurred to me to tell you guys about it when I was amazed by the careful effort put into the "testing/filtering" process. (excruicating-sounding-to-me; I hate assessment) Full disclosure: I know this b/c I begin working there in-person in fall!
Also, it occurs to me that if any of you have a kid achieving well in Middle School (MathCounts, etc.) or H.S. math competitions, (AMC, AIME, etc.) and you're looking for resources, I might be able to connect you with something useful. (I am not really known to hardly any of you, but marshwiggle seems to think I'm good at math coaching stuff. That's my rec.)
A lot of SSC and Unsong readers enjoyed Douglas Summers-Stay's Genesis tautogram
https://llamasandmystegosaurus.blogspot.com/2017/05/alpha.html
Jim Hays later wrote one with a different starting letter
https://calvinballing.github.io/saga/
and now I've written one with still another starting letter (thanks to Jeremiah for publishing it):
https://godexperiment.org/beginnings-an-alliterative-rewrite-of-genesis-11-23
See also
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tautogram
The request that people only come to the South Bay meetup if vaccinated doesn't apply to small children, who are as always welcome.
It's interesting that the center of effective altruism isn't open to remote work for non-networking positions.
"(fully vaccinated people only, please!)" So Mr. Scott is a segregationist of the covidiot church. Good to know.
Scott,
Would you be able to explain why the gathering request attendees be double vaccinated? My understanding is that breakthrough cases are rare and deaths from said cases are extremely extremely rare, like way less than car accident death rare.
I know I'm coming to this a bit late, but I'm wondering what everyone's thoughts are on meal replacements? It seems like a cheaper, faster, and *arguably* healthier way to get nutrients than traditional food. Am I wrong?
I'm in Canada and I'm vegan so I've been thinking of replacing 3/4 of my meals with Soylent Original: https://www.soylent.ca/products/powder-original (and creatine) after I do some blood tests. Other meal replacement products aren't really available here. Anyone else doing something similar?
Classified want ad (thanks Scott for okaying this)
I work for a tutoring company (NYC based but almost all remote) with rather well-heeled clients. We're looking for someone who can teach, roughly, the sort of topics you'd cover in the second half of a programming degree, but with a more practical bent - web design, making mobile apps, maybe game programming. The target students would be high school kids who did well in AP CS and the like and are looking for help with next steps. The pay should not disappoint. This is contracted work but there's the option for full time and benefits if you do well.
Please have:
* Bachelors, preferably from a name-brand school.
* Experience teaching advanced CS one on one for several years.
* 3+ tutoring clients/families who can recommend you.
Plusses:
* 7+ years of tutoring experience
* Familiarity with elite NYC private schools (think Gossip Girl) and their culture.
* Ability to teach other STEM topics (physics, chem, etc).
Sounds like this might fit you? Email a resume to patrick24601 [at] gmail dot com .
Because this is likelier to be noticed here than on the Arabian Nights post, here is a DeviantArt post of a map (with copious explanatory footnotes) depicting a world where magic is real and the modern world is gripped by a Cold War between the Idealized Middle East of the Arabian Nights and the Idealized Post-Roman Empire of the Arthurian Mythos: https://www.deviantart.com/quantumbranching/art/Arthurian-Romance-vs-Arabian-Nights-736657777
The entire account, Quantum Branching, is just maps of various althists and fictional scenarios, and seems like the sort of thing that readers of this blog might find *very* appealing.
Yudkowsky is a god king around here but this sort of thing is embarrassing, just pure "I'm the REAL genius" acting out. He does that a lot but is never criticized for it within his community. https://mobile.twitter.com/ESYudkowsky/status/1398785849785868292
I already posted this on the subreddit, but I figure it's worth posting here as well.
For a couple months now, I've been trying to integrate Scott's posts about trapped priors (The Precision Of Sensory Evidence and Trapped Priors As A Basic Problem Of Rationality) into a more sophisticated theory about how my own OCD works and how to deal with it. I ran into some issues with this, as the model seemed to be incomplete in some way. Over the past month or so, I've compiled my "findings" into a long-ish blog post on my own Wordpress page (which I rarely use). I know this is a longshot, but I'm hoping that Scott sees it and is able to give some feedback on the model I've come up with. Feedback from others is welcome as well, especially mathematicians for the game theory related stuff in section III.
The essay is here: https://ingx24.wordpress.com/2021/05/27/the-trapped-priors-model-is-incomplete-guys-its-time-for-some-game-theory/
http://www.laffcon.org/
R. A. Lafferty was a very odd and striking sf author mostly writing in the 60s and 70s-- his work was a combination of sf, tall tales, Catholicism, and just plain weirdness. There's a free online event coming up on June 12. For details see the link.
The featured work is _Space Chantey_, a tall tale science fiction retelling of the Odyssey.
A typical short story by Lafferty, to the extent that such a thing exists. The human race is accelerated to the point that people can have two or three full careers in eight hours. When I read it in the late 60s, it just seemed whimsical. Now it's rather prescient. https://www.baen.com/Chapters/9781618249203/9781618249203___2.htm
Another thing which seems prescient is that he wrote a number of reputation dystopias, where people's reputations were very easily destroyed.
Lafferty group on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/groups/eastoflaughter
Question for people who understand the history of GWAS studies and the candidate gene approach: I understand that large scale GWAS studies have shown that many candidate genes are just false positives. As Scott showed in his famous 5-HTTLPR post, entire subfields of candidate gene studies have been built around false positives, only to be conclusively debunked by large GWAS studies.
What's weird to me though is that this seems to be the opposite of what I'd think would happen. All else equal, isn't a candidate gene study more responsible than a GWAS study? With a candidate gene study, you have a priori reasons to suspect a gene, which theoretically should reduce your opportunities to p-hack. In contrast, a GWAS study feels like it could be a fishing expedition across millions of nucleotides.
The reality of course was that it wasn't "all else equal". For some reason, the candidate gene people had a culture of p-hacking, whereas the GWAS people did not. For some reason, the candidate gene people had a culture of low sample sizes, whereas the GWAS study did not. And somehow, the candidate gene people never fully corrected for population stratification, whereas the GWAS people managed to find a way to do this.
My question is why? Is it just that geneticists are rigorous and psychiatrists are not? I feel like there must be a deeper reason that I'd like to understand.
On the last politics allowed open thread there was a running argument about whether the left was uniquely more censorious than the right, cancel culture, etc. Here's some recent links that may provide interesting context
https://www.chronicle.com/article/a-university-suspended-diversity-courses-because-of-an-incident-that-almost-certainly-didnt-happen
https://www.theguardian.com/media/2021/may/21/associated-press-emily-wilder-fired-pro-palestinian-views
On China and how the post pandemic economic recovery and ensuing political capital gains may not be sustainable.
Interesting both because of the importance of the long term trajectory of China to, well, everything. And what it might say about the shape of the post pandemic world more broadly if recovery leads to only a short boost in popularity for incumbent governments.
https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/china/2021-05-28/chinas-inconvenient-truth
Anyone watch the Dominic Cummings testimony and have opinions?
A correlates with B
B Correlates with C
A Anti Correlates with C
Is there a name for this type of relationship? It pops up all the time and probably is quite meaningful but I can't wrap my head around what exactly it means. None of the statistics textbooks I have can explain this case.
Similarly is there a name for the specificity-sample size tradeoff? For example let's say you are 40 years old and drive a ford f150 and you want to determine how dangerous it is to drive from San diego to Phoenix Arizona. You could look at accident rates for your car, for americans in general per mile driven, for the stretch of road you will be driving down, for people in your age group or 35-45 year olds driving ford f150's down that stretch of road over the past 5 years. Obviously the last category is the most relevant to you personally but the sample size would be tiny. The more you expand your sample size the lower quality the date you get is (the danger of driving a prius is very different from driving a truck, ect).
Any recommendations for free or cheap online resources to improve my writing skills ?
Scott-style predictions for 2024:
Republicans take both House and Senate: 70%
A black populist Republican comes to prominence on a platform of opposing abortion and immigration, protecting black civil rights, pro-capitalism and anti-government sentiment: 50%
Herman Cain's twitter account runs for President: 95%
Lots of AI researchers have brought up the topic of Academic Fraud Lately:
https://jacobbuckman.com/2021-05-29-please-commit-more-blatant-academic-fraud/
An Ex Stanford prof brought the problem of gaming metrics and possible solutions (through new metrics): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jZZ2-eNW77o
This post by Yarvin too I think hits the nail in the coffin: https://www.unqualified-reservations.org/2007/07/my-navrozov-moments/
I suppose the situation is similar to what Scott said, a problem of Moloch: that a benevolent dictator can easily fix the academic science situation, but anyone within academic science will find it almost impossible to make any constructive changes. Based on this my prediction is that: Academic Science will over time keep getting worse, progress will come slowly and with more per capita effort and unless some deep structural reforms are done there will be no way to counter-act this trend. Any thoughts?
It's been quite a while since I posted Naval Gazing links here. So here's what I've been up to:
https://www.navalgazing.net/A-Brief-Overview-of-the-Chinese-Fleet - A look at the Navy the Chinese have been building, and why we should take them seriously.
https://www.navalgazing.net/Naval-Airships-Part-4, https://www.navalgazing.net/Naval-Airships-Part-5 and https://www.navalgazing.net/Naval-Airships-Part-6 - A discussion of the USN's lighter-than-air program from WWI to the mid-30s, with an 80% success rate at crashing rigid airships.
https://www.navalgazing.net/Battle-Stations - How ships are manned in combat
https://www.navalgazing.net/LCS-Part-1, https://www.navalgazing.net/LCS-Part-2 and https://www.navalgazing.net/LCS-Part-3 - A breakdown of the Littoral Combat Ship program, the biggest addition to the American fleet in recent years. While it's not technically the worst around, it's pretty bad.
https://www.navalgazing.net/The-Future-of-the-Aircraft-Carrier - What it says on the tin. A semi-sequel to my "Why The Carriers Aren't Doomed" series from a few years ago.
I wonder if there's a lesson to be learned from 4chan's experience with /pol/ and the more general problem it's had with every containment board? The problem is something like "whatever we try to contain actually just multiplies in containment, and then breaks containment and spills out".
Ofc in /pol/'s case it was particularly bad since the groups and people involved were deplatformed everywhere else and became a plague on 4chins, but I wonder if there's something more general there.
For any ACX readers inhabiting or visiting Texas, the Austin LessWrong and ACX group is actively meeting in-person and will be having a dedicated far-comers meetup Saturday, June 5th.
Far-comer meetups are dedicated time for people who live too far to attend regularly, so come meet people from all over Texas. We've also had more people joining the community lately with people moving to Austin from around the country.
https://www.lesswrong.com/events/TAmntujiYXccKTKKD/texas-far-comers-meetup-in-austin
Is there a moral obligation to have your act together enough so that you can be reliable? Is there a good way to frame this so as not to excessively blame people with executive dysfunction?
And today, in "People I have just learned are Catholic(ish) and kind of wish they weren't", it's the turn of Boris Johnson. Who is, or was, or maybe, or it's probably his girlfriend-now-wife. https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2021/may/30/boris-johnson-carrie-symmonds-married-catcholic-church
"Symonds, who will be taking Johnson’s name, has spoken publicly of her Catholic faith, while Johnson was baptised into Catholicism but renounced it for Anglicanism during his Eton schooldays, according to biographers."
Because of course he did. Something he has in common with Maggie Thatcher, who ditched Methodism because CoE is more respectable and mainstream if you're a Tory.
I was completely unaware of any Catholic connections with Boris until now. I have never seen it mentioned, not even if/when talking about Tony Blair (who did convert). This raises a ton of questions: did he formally defect? (probably not, so technically still one of ours, like Mike Pence and Neil Gorsuch in an American context).
Given that adultery and numerous affairs and illegitimate children and (allegedly) abortion for one previous girlfriend don't seem to have troubled Boris, why now the church marriage? Well, probably Carrie. Which also raises why bother now, given that she had no problem having an affair with a married man, contributing to the cause of his divorce, and having a baby out of wedlock with him? Again, probably down to "the parents would like you to get married in church".
This is what you call cultural Catholicism, I can't even call it cafeteria Catholicism as there seems not to be any "picking and choosing which doctrines I follow", but rather "doctrines? what that?" going on. I'm one of those who would agree that it's unacceptable for the likes of this to happen - Boris and Carrie get a ceremony in Westminster Abbey (because it's quaint, I suppose?) while ordinary Catholics cannot get remarried in church after divorce - and it's not because I support second church marriages for the divorced, but the blatant favouritism, string-pulling, and 'one law for the rich and another for the poor' going on. I'm sure it's very nice they have a family friend willing to be their personal priest who has this kind of pull, but while I agree with Pope Francis that pastoral care of the fallen-away is better carried out with delicacy than hitting them over the head with a brick, there's not much chance here of bringing Boris or Carrie back to the full practice of their faith.
It's not entirely impossible, but it will be a miracle.
I've given up on taste.
I have the nagging suspicion that the unhealthiness of the modern diet is not just a side effect of capitalism-driven taste hacking; that instead the enhanced taste *itself* is a causal factor. I'm now sticking to unprocessed, unseasoned foods.
Perhaps this group could use some funny animal stories. Or they could be viewed as evidence that we're no better at testing the top end of animal intelligence than we are at testing the top end of human intelligence.
https://gallusrostromegalus.tumblr.com/post/618966214055804928/yes-this-is-the-terrible-shenanigans-dog-since
A stunningly intelligent herding dog takes control of a lawn roomba. I strongly recommend the other links in this post-- the dog's shenanigans, the dog teaching another dog, the war with the fox.....
Who are the really fascinating people you follow, who are not related to each other? To keep an open-mind and a broad perspective on things?
My list:
Scott
Derek Sivers
Taleb
But I'm looking for more and more different people
Can anyone recommend a good provider for pharmacogenetic testing, specifically applying to psychiatric medications (SSRIs, anxiolytics, etc.)? A family member is having issues with her medication and we're hoping such testing might identify better candidate therapies.
Could tracking suicidal ideation/suicidality be helpful? Or might it risk drawing undue attention to suicidal thoughts - and making the problem worse? Sometimes, I feel like it could help to keep an eye on this metric for the purposes of being sure to intervene before the problem gets too bad, and to see what positively/negatively impacts it.
Request for thoughts on judging covid risk, specifically:
- Any opinions on microcovid.org
- Thoughts on converting microCOVIDs to micromorts
I like the idea behind microcovid.org a lot; no opinion on how sensible the modelling is but I haven't noticed anything obviously crazy. But I feel like for youngish people in countries with a large chunk of the population vaccinated, the risk budgets are pretty conservative.
Suppose you are a 25 year old with an IFR of 0.01%. At this point, when your chances of infecting a vulnerable person are pretty low, it seems fair to assume that at least 10% of the badness of covid comes from the risk of death. So say 1 micromort = 1000 microcovids. Then the "standard risk budget" of 1% risk of covid per year works out to 10 micromorts. That seems pretty low indeed to me, compared to e.g. the risk an average American takes by driving, or the Value of a Statistical Life used by governments (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Micromort). But maybe I'm thinking about it wrong, suggestions welcome.
Recommendation request for the tabletop nerds out there. Our group's last campaign ended with them ascending to join the pantheon of gods and we're looking to do a followup campaign in a system that supports playing gods. Not in the "super awesome level 99 badass" sense but an emphasis on guiding mortals, remote action, nationbuilding/politicking, and everything one imagines an interventionist-but-not-physically-manifested deity would get up to.
This is a niche thing so I'm not expecting to find a perfect system, but I feel like there has to be some medieval royalty-simulator game or something that has a mechanical focus on the kinds of things we're looking to do.
There is an interesting discussion among mathematicians about improving peer review, common and hidden knowledge, and anonymity: https://mathoverflow.net/questions/394101/peer-review-2-0
I’ve got this perverse desire to say something just transgressive enough to earn a one day symbolic ban from ACX. It’s kind of like the time I got a behind the scenes tour of the big cats area of the zoo. If I had really wanted to I could have reached through the bars and touched a tiger’s flank. Am I the only one who gets this sort of urge?
Okay let’s give this a whirl.
Hey Scott, Thomas Bayes wore combat boots!
ACX Miami Meetup this Thursday (6/3) @ 2:30pm
Location: Pasion del Cielo coffee in Brickell City Center
701 S Miami Ave Unit B350, Miami, FL 33130
Facebook event: https://www.facebook.com/events/1390917134609778
I'm starting to get the impression that if party leaders of the Democrats or Republicans came out and said there was a giant hurricane coming, get to shelter now, a large amount of the non-leadership members of the other party would not believe them, and if they even got up to look out the window it would be solely motivated by trying to prove the other wrong.
This is not entirely because each simply distrusts the other for being in another party, but also as a result of each one frequently exaggerating a problem, or otherwise caught lying about a particular thing, and the habit of each echo chamber's favorite past time being to emphasize any instance of this from the other. That's both a problem of hyper focusing of an echo chamber on tearing down the other, and a problem of too frequently using and even defending absurd hyperbole's within each group. Poe's law comes into play, but maybe when people start calling people out years later for saying the world won't end if [x] gets elected (real example) when the world, in fact, did not end goes a bit beyond Poe's Law.
The glimmer of hope here is that at least the plurality of the U.S. is not aligned to either major party, as best as polls can tell, and I don't usually get the impression that other distantly separated parties (Green vs Libertarian, for instance) have this extreme of a problem with each other.
Anyone have insight on (1) the extent to which inhaled glucocorticoids (specifically Symbicort) impact the effectiveness of the mRNA COVID vaccines (specifically Pfizer)?
From 20 min of Googling all I could find is the following:
The AAAAI emphatically says, "No, there is no impact on an individual’s ability to respond to the vaccine and control of asthma is essential! There is no data to suggest that inhaled corticosteroids and/or leukotriene receptor antagonists impact on immunogenicity of the mRNA COVID-19 vaccines."
(They seem to avoid the error of assuming that no evidence = no impact: they use different language when discussing another question on which "no information could be found and more information is needed" suggesting that they are not simply saying, "oh there are no studies on this so it's not a problem." They also seem to be speaking pretty specifically about Symbicort in that answer, since later they say "Daily oral steroids may interfere with the antibody response to the vaccine based on data with other immunosuppressives and flu vaccine.") (https://education.aaaai.org/resources-for-a-i-clinicians/vaccines-qa_COVID-19)
However, drugs.com says there are moderate interactions between Symbicort and the Pfizer COVID vaccine:
"If you are currently being treated or have recently been treated with budesonide, you should let your doctor know before receiving SARS-CoV-2 (COVID-19) mRNA BNT-162b2 vaccine. Depending on the dose and length of time you have been on budesonide, you may have a reduced response to the vaccine. In some situations, your doctor may want to delay vaccination to give your body time to recover from the effects of budesonide therapy. If you have recently been vaccinated with SARS-CoV-2 (COVID-19) mRNA BNT-162b2 vaccine, your doctor may choose to postpone treatment with budesonide for a couple of weeks or more"
... For SARS-CoV-2 (COVID-19) vaccines, vaccination should preferably be completed at least two weeks before initiation of immunosuppressive therapies; however, decisions to delay immunosuppressive therapy to complete COVID-19 vaccination should consider the individual's risks related to their underlying condition. Vaccines may generally be administered to patients receiving corticosteroids as replacement therapy (e.g., for Addison's disease)." (https://www.drugs.com/interactions-check.php?drug_list=432-2530,4221-19642)
Not sure if I'm violating any copyright issue here but...
From the linked article:
"In 1947, having left Nazi-occupied Vienna for the quaint idyll of Princeton, N.J., seven years before, the mathematician Kurt Gödel was studying for his citizenship exam and became preoccupied with the mechanisms of American government. A worried friend recalled Gödel talking about “some inner contradictions” in the Constitution that would make it legally possible “for somebody to become a dictator and set up a fascist regime.” Gödel started to bring this up at his actual examination, telling the judge that the United States could become a dictatorship — “I can prove it!” — before his friends (one of whom was Albert Einstein) managed to shut him up so that the naturalization process could go on as planned."
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/02/books/review-journey-edge-of-reason-kurt-godel-biography-stephen-budiansky.html
So, I'm considering getting an electrotrichogenesis (ETG) treatment for my incipient boldness (I'm vain. I know). The people at the ETG center claim it is super effective, and judging from the before-after pictures they showed be, it seems to be the case (assuming that the pictures are true). They also cited some very impressive statistics like: 96.7% exhibit extra-hair growth, and the average hair count increased by 66.7%, as compared to 25.6% in the control group. So far, so good.
When I went to check the literature for myself, I found that the results they (and every other ETG clinic) cite come from this one paper on the International Journal of Dermatology (see link at the end), which is from 1990 and has treatment group of 30 people. The reported effect sizes are so large that you should be able to capture them in such a small sample, but still the fact that the sample is so small and that there has been no follow up research makes me a bit weary of the effectiveness of the treatment. (There is a follow up paper in 1992 that uses the same subjects as the 1990 paper and extends the treatment from 30+ weeks to 70, showing further gains in hair density, girth, etc).
According to Wikipedia, it has been approved for use in Europe, Canada and Australia, however I am not sure if this means that it's proved to be effective be the corresponding authorities, or it just doesn't kill you.
Anyway. I'm curious to hear your thoughts and experiences (if you have any) on this.
Here's the link to the 1990 paper.
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/2397975/