I wonder what people’s views on Carl Hart’s new book “Drug Use for Grown ups”. I haven’t read it but have heard some podcasts with him (David Nutt and Steven Levitt). I think he makes some good points (eg separating addicts from overdose deaths), but also says some odd things, like how he seemed to say antipsychotics were more dangerous than crack on Steve Levitt’s podcast
What skills provide the most bang for the buck? For example, improving productivity through the skill of prioritization, which is useful across many domains.
Regarding item 5: I think retaining the even/odd distinction is useful. At least on the odd-numbered threads, it encourages people to examine what they write before they click "Post", and this could have salutary effects beyond the first-order partisan or political comments.
I would speculate that people are also more likely to take seriously the comments on a "politics-free" open thread, which encourages stepping outside one's bubble.
Re #1, for future contests maybe create a Google form or the like, so you can get all the submissions in a spreadsheet. You can ask people to either upload their submission or link to it.
Am I the only one who misses the ability to like comments on ACX?
I feel like the general engagement in the comment section is lower, the number of likes correlated pretty well to the insightfulness of the post, and I liked the ability to communicate that I liked a post without having to write a comment saying so.
Hoping to narrowly skirt the politics ban, since it's relevant to community interests and (I think) fairly nonpartisan. Will delete if asked.
The Endless Frontiers Act is moving its way through the US Senate. Its summary on Congress.gov reads:
"This bill establishes a Directorate for Technology and Innovation in the National Science Foundation (NSF) and establishes various programs and activities.
The goals of the directorate shall be, among other things, the strengthening of U.S. leadership in critical technologies through basic research in key technology focus areas, such as artificial intelligence, high performance computing, and advanced manufacturing, and the commercialization of those technologies to businesses in the United States."
Vote to keep distinction between politics and no politics. Even if there are no political blowups, I suspect many people appreciate the knowledge they do not have to deal with political stuff every time they look through comments. Almost like a content warning.
The foreword to Simon Leys' book the Wreck of the Batavia is rather unusual. Leys had been gathering material for his book for years. But he praises another book by Mike Dash on the same subject. 'After carefully reading his detailed study, I put away for good all the documents and notes, sketches and photographs I had gathered over the years; I had no further use for them. In publishing the following pages, my only wish is that they may lead you to Dash's work'.
The work in question is Batavia's Graveyard and is the story of how VOC ship The Batavia came to be wrecked off the coast of Australia in 1629 with a fortune in silver and other treasures on board. Rightly or wrongly the captain and the civilian leader almost immediately abandoned the survivors and left in the ship's longboat to try to sail around 2,000 miles to try to get help.
Some 260 survivors were left behind and the man left in charge, Jeronimus Corneliez, was spectacularly unfitted for the role. Possibly a psychopath, possibly a believer in antinomianism (I am chosen by God so can do no wrong) he set about the murder of many of the survivors. He killed (or had killed) some 125 of them. It is a truly incredible story with amazing twists and turns.
I highly recommend Mike Dash's book and (ahem) the podcast I did with him:
And if you don't have time to listen then this Twitter thread from Gareth Harney is a great introduction to the story and has some great images. It concentrates on one of the treasures but tells the whole story. (But I really recommend the podcast! Mike is a great story teller).
There are a lot of optical illusions available and a fair amount of theory about what causes the illusions, but I've never seen anything about why people like them.
If there's anyone who thinks optical illusions are annoying or boring, let me know.
The impact per dollar and the "but for" or neglected causes themes make excellent sense to me I'm having a harder time relinquishing the need/desire to know the effect my giving has. So, supporting a cause far away in either distance or time, is not as appealing to me.
Does anyone have informed opinions about the new Alzheimer's drug the FDA is thinking about approving (aducanumab)? This New York Times article (https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/05/health/alzheimers-aducanumab-fda.html) makes it sound pretty iffy. But I know someone who might be interested in trying it if it is approved. Should I try to discourage them?
Meditation is a "constitutive practice" of mindfulness -- the virtue and the practice are so close that practically every exercise of mindfulness can be cast as practice in meditation as well.
In addition, the practice is dead-simple, extremely practical (i.e. can be done anywhere, anytime, at no cost) and can be pursued at practically any level of experience and produce all manner of rewards -- some (like lowering blood-pressure) that are themselves non-essential to meditation. It has a 2000-year pedigree of being used like this.
Reading (generally conceived, i.e. qua skill in interpretation) seems to me to be a constitutive practice for wisdom -- in a certain way, it seems that wisdom just is to know how to interpret the world (esp as it pertains to right action). Wisdom and reading are both ways to figure out what stuff means.
Like meditation, reading offers many other benefits even if you do not pursue the practice to its zenith, is easy and cheap to do (especially if you are interpreting/"reading" a line from memory), and can be pursued at practically any level profitably. It has at least as long of a pedigree as meditation.
Re: number 3 - wow, only today I was thinking about the former Reign of Terror. Serendipity or what?
Re: number 5 - I think it's better to keep the restriction. If I'm feeling mad about something and want to yell about it here, but it's an odd-numbered thread, I have to wait for the even-numbered one. That's good because often by the time the even-number rolls around, I've forgotten what made me so mad (so it couldn't have been that important). If I'm still mad then it must be serious enough to argue over. I think the restriction probably has helped keep down the number of political blow-ups and that is a good thing.
Appetite suppressants were totally a thing for people who are having trouble with weight loss even before this announcement, but now we have a *really really effective* one. Think this will finally be what makes a dent in the obesity epidemic?
I published this comment on the previous open thread but I think I was too late to catch major traffic and got no responses at all. Anyway, here it is again. Sorry for spamming.
So, I'm considering getting an electrotrichogenesis (ETG) treatment for my incipient baldness (I'm vain. I know). The people at the ETG clinic claim it is super effective, and judging from the before-after pictures they showed me, this seems to be the true (assuming that the pictures are real). They also cited some very impressive statistics like: 96.7% of people 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). The paper 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. (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, ETG is approved for use in Europe, Canada and Australia, however I am not sure if this means that it's proved to be effective by 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.
i have been writing a blog the last six months, and i thought i could advertise some of the better posts here along with brief abstracts. enjoy.
Can a Vegan Diet Be Healthy? A Literature Review -- i review the literature on health impacts of veganism as it relates to stuff like cardiovascular disease, cancer, diabetes, weight reduction, bone health, nutritional deficiencies and cognitive function (though i didn't find much research on this last one).
Does It Smell like Pollocks in Here? -- commentary on and critique of a recent study on "pseudo-profound bullshit" in contemporary art, including looking at bullshit as a viable strategy for artists.
Four Ways of Not Writing Software Bugs -- i propose that some powerful ways of not writing software bugs is not writing code in the first place, making necessary changes as small as possible, using automated tests and being aware of when one is not expending the cognitive effort necessary to really understand the changes one is making.
Networks of Meaning -- i argue that meaning is associative in nature, discuss this in the context of literature generally and the fiction of gerald murnane specifically and also review some of the relevant research in psychology.
Strictness of Logic versus Openness of Logic -- i observe some differences in the musical styles and methods of jean sibelius and gustav mahler, two composers with very different views on the symphony.
Problems with "Eating Animals" -- i argue against a current affairs article that seems to claim that moral veganism and systemic change are in opposition to one another. i criticise the article for lack of concreteness when talking about systemic change, and i argue that, if anything, veganism contributes in several ways to some forms of systemic change.
How Can One Tell What Is Beautiful? -- i review the arguments (including looks at recent research in psychology) for objectivity and subjectivity, critique paul graham's "preference cluster" view and interpret a passage from pierre michon's novella the life of joseph roulin.
Evolution of Programming Language Traits -- i observe that string interpolation has become more common in modern programming languages. i discuss what drives innovation, both on micro and macro scales. finally, i argue that free software norms enable innovation.
So the UFO report isn't out yet, but various news outlets seem to have gotten lots of sources to talk about what's in it. Verdict seems to be -
1. The military really does think these are real objects moving at insane speeds in ways they can't explain, and not weather balloons or pilot misidentification.
2. There is no evidence they are aliens.
3. They aren't secret American technology.
4. They probably also aren't Russian or Chinese, unless we're granting the possibility that the Russians or the Chinese have somehow gotten decades ahead of us technologically and managed to keep it secret.
As for what they actually are, the answer seems to be basically Shrug Emoji.
Still, if the articles are accurately describing the content of the report, it's quite something to have the government officially go on the records that UFOs actually are a real phenomenon that seems to deny easy explanation.
Do you get a sense of achievement from your job? If so what does that feel like from the inside. And are there any techniques for increasing that feeling
> I haven’t noticed the same number of political blowups here as on SSC. Should we lift the no-politics-on-odd-numbered-open-threads restriction?
Allowing politics on even-numbered threads seems fine to me.
My instinct says that the diminishment in political blowups is most likely due to Substack's comments system being much worse than the SSC comments system. Harder to use -> less use.
In today’s NYT there an article about the pending decision from the FDA on whether to approve Biogen’s Alzheimer’s drug Aducanumab.
Aduncanumub is an antibody that targets amyloid protein clumps that occur in the brain. But there is no evidence that such clumps cause Alzheimer’s; the only evidence is that they often but by no means always occur along with Alzheimer’s.
Some Alzheimer’s victims have low levels or no clumping; other people who die of different disease and had no Alzheimer’s symptoms, have extensive clumping.
There’s little to no evidence that Aducanumab treats Alzheimer’s and no other drug targeting Amaloid clumps has shown any success- Alzheimer’s is as untreatable now as it was when it was first diagnosed.
Perhaps it’s time to reevaluate the link between Amyloid and Alzheimer’s and for researchers to look elsewhere in the body for the causes. Biigen has sunk billions into the Amyloid-Alzheimer’s link; if they can get the FDA to approve Aducanumab they’ll get it all back and billions more, so they have no incentive to question the link. But it seems to me that until research goes off in a different direction, real progress in treating Alzheimer’s will not occur.
Regarding the register of bans, you say "Check the register if you don't know what I mean." However, two out of six problematic comments referenced there are already deleted. If part of the reasoning behind linking to those comments is telling "Hey, here are some things you should definitely not do on this blog", then this deletion could be a problem, and providing a summary of what the person did wrong (or doing something entirely different about it) could be of use. However, if the links are only for providing justification for bans, as proofs that there was indeed some offence in what those people did, then seeing that the authors have decided to delete those comments probably serves the same purpose and the situation is okay.
I'm surprised there haven't been as many blow-ups. It seems like Substack makes it easier for them to happen, since you get an email every time somebody replies to your comment.
Something I noticed the other day with buffet/all-you-can-eat restaurants. I think a good rule of thumb is that you subtract $10 off the per-person price to eat at them, and that tells you roughly what the cost would be to eat at a non-buffet restaurant with similar quality of food.
What do folks think will happen first-
1. Artificial kidney that replicates most of the functions of a regular kidney, and can be worn for years if necessary before replacement;
2. Bio-engineered animal or lab-grown kidney that can be transplanted.
Since we had nuclear come up, there's been some news about Atom On A Flatbed - AKA the military getting a nuclear reactor that could be flown in or driven in on a flatbed truck to a base for power. Pretty cool stuff, although you'd obviously have to armor it up as much as possible both for radiation mitigation and to alleviate fears that it could be targeted (proliferation is not really a big concern considering the type of fuel they're using):
> 5: I haven’t noticed the same number of political blowups here as on SSC. Should we lift the no-politics-on-odd-numbered-open-threads restriction?
I can’t substantiate this beyond a general sense of having had my finger on the pulse of a number of communities for a long time, but it seems like things ate weirdly calm everywhere, not just this corner of the web. The main visible cause is just that we have a different President now. The fights that are happening lately seem like perfunctory enactments of the required rituals, without teeth.
I don’t really expect people to agree but just in case others have noticed this as well, I think this is a cyclical component to Internet anger, and we’re just at a nadir. Some other stupid bullshit will happen to refocus everyone shortly.
Is there any writing or developed body of theory on the concept that capital is no longer scarce, and this is causing all kinds of problems?
It seems to me that for most of the history of functioning capital markets, capital was so scarce that any additional capital a person had could be put to use relatively easily, because investible opportunities dramatically outweight the amount of capital available for long term investment.
Where as in modernity, your additional thousand dollars is very unlikely to matter that much to anyone. There are giant piles of capital looking for investment somewhere that will give a positive return.
Is there someone who has explored this idea at all?
Is there any reason to believe highly intelligent life is unlikely to evolve underwater? Could an intelligent species have evolved in our oceans millions of years ago? Could they still be around?
Thanks Scott for formally reinstating the commenting policy :)
That Cassirer essay review was in fact interesting, if a little too long for me to finish. It’s rare to learn of a new historical philosopher with interesting *and* currently relevant things to say.
As a non US reader I actually really enjoy the politics free threads, if nothing else for the reason that it tends to be so heavily US politics based. Even when the quality of discourse is high, I find allowing "politics" tends to skew the discussion in a way thats much less internationally relevant.
I'm currently looking for advice on how to deal with a very specific and pernicious form of OCD, which causes me to constantly doubt my beliefs on topics that are very important to me (in such a way that evidence against me seems much more convincing than I know it should). I already posted the explanation on Reddit, so I'll just link that here instead of copying and pasting the entire thing: https://www.reddit.com/r/slatestarcodex/comments/nsh6c7/looking_for_some_help_on_an_ocd_problem/
I'm specifically looking for a way to deal with it that doesn't come too close to "just learn to be more comfortable with the uncertainty" - being comfortable with uncertainty is one thing, and I've definitely gotten better about that over the years, but the whole issue is that my OCD is actively distorting my perception of evidence and logic to try to force an artificial level of uncertainty (e.g. maybe I'd be fine being 80% certain about something, but my OCD won't even let me get above 50%). I'm already looking into solutions (I'm thinking I might need a medication adjustment), but any additional input would be appreciated.
I'm going to run Lady Blackbird (a rules light tabletop RPG) as a way to meet more folks in the rationalist/ACX/EA spheres. The time will be Thursdays at 5:30pm PST, ending at approximately 7 PST (probably a little earlier). I've ran this before with some work buddies and had a bunch of fun with it. Don't worry if you've never played an RPG before, I'll explain all the rules in the first session and my experience has been that new players are usually more fun to run with :)
* We'll use Roll20 for video and rolling. Again, no worries if you've never used it before and happy to explain the minimal UI bits you need.
* The game runs well with 2-5 players, but I have trouble running for more than 4 people online (too little time in the spotlight for everyone). I'll run it if I get 3+ folks interested.
I only open the non-political threads, except when I forget which ones are odd and even. The announcement of Hidden Open Threads doesn't include a reminder. Plus, I always forget whether the parity of a number applies to digits after the decimal. I tried coming up with a mnemonic, which I usually am good at, but have not succeeded. (Rationalist-people problems)
I'm wondering if anyone has any hacks for reducing or eliminating bad dreams. I've been plagued by bad dreams for the past four years or so. They're not usually full-blown nightmares -- more like frustrating situations, where I'm late for a very important meeting, but I can't find the room where the meeting is being held, so I'm running all over the building opening random doors. These dreams seem to occur in the early morning, shortly before I wake up. They happen almost every day. Sometimes I remember the details, but often I wake up with just this vague feeling that I've just had a really bad dream. It's a shitty way to start the day.
There doesn't seem to be any obvious reason why these dreams have started happening so frequently (and note that this problem began way before the pandemic). There hasn't been any major change in my life situation that precipitated this.
I'm looking for suggestions on how to deal with this.
What's the most important, most impactful profession one could take up in the US?
I'm thinking it's lawyer. For one thing, even a rank and file lawyer might easily end up a part of a case that has a really big impact. For the other, lawyers are the ones who save people doing important work from being run over by some power run amok.
I feel like the lack of politics might be a case of "even numbers are reeeally close to odd numbers, even if I am commenting legitimately about it I feel like I'm only one number away from being banned on either side, so I will avoid it". Or something like that. Which would suggest that changing #5 to "politics fine on all open threads" would upset that dynamic and things would soon become political.
If you could add one class or skill to be explicitly taught in every high school in the USA, what would you choose? Is there anything that everyone should be forced to try to learn, that isn't already being taught?
So there will be book review contests in the future? It would be good to know because then I'll keep my book review instead of posting it somewhere else.
Ad 5: please don´t, though I have made close to zero contribution to comment threads on ASC so arguably my opinion should count for little.
It would be great if you would be able to get "edit comment" button back; I find it much easier to check for typos by way of first posting comment and then horifyingly realizing what atrocity did I just published, than by proper proofreading, and it is actually a big reason why I stayed away from commenting here.
Can someone tell me, or direct me to a link, that explains what the 'theory' is in critical race theory? Every time I've dug into this all I seem to find is a (somewhat discursive) list of things that 'critical race theorists believe', as opposed to an actual theory.
On point 4: I've read all reviews and really enjoyed the ride. A few observations:
- There were a few reviews I really really liked, which were streight 10/10 ratings for me (won't say which ones before the rating is over, but please take this as a motivation to have a look at them)
- Picking interesting ones based on the table of content worked very well for me, so even if you don't have the time to read all of them, have a quick look for interesting-sounding ones.
- A few provided really relevant information I was not aware of, on the level of "will affect my own life in relevant details in the future"
- there are a few ones outside the "general SCC area of interest" but with the reviewer clearly pouring all their love and heart into writing them. If you want to read an example, have a look at "the joy luck club".
- a few were just extremely delightful to read. If you want an example, have a look at "the call of cthulu".
(I feel bad about calling out specific examples before the voting is over, but I expect both my mentions to become non-finalists because of their topics, so I hope this is OK)
- I've been very delighted to see others recommend and enjoy reviews I didn't find like that much. I take this both as a reminder that enjoyment is very subjective and that the broad list of topics should satisfy everyone.
- after all, reading so many reviews also teaches you somethink about what makes writing enjoyable. For me, too many started with "I read this book because..." instead of gripping my attention and not enough included jokes, fun anecdotes and graphics. So there's maybe some room for improvement for next year's review contest? (I hope there will be one!)
What are some efficient ways you have spent money to save time in your home lives?
Exclude the low-hanging fruit that everyone is already doing, like having dishwashers.
As an example, I recently installed some automated sprinkler timers and it's great only needing to think about my lawn. I wish I had done this years ago but I thought it would be too hard or expensive to set up.
Any thoughts on this blog: https://graymirror.substack.com/p/there-is-no-ai-risk . I’m a PhD in AI, and my opinion is that we don’t have any path that we know of to reach AGI so AI risk is a non problem for the foreseeable future. Though I know some people believe AGI is around the corner. If you believe so, why? This article argues that even if we reach a really smart AGI, it won’t be a big deal
> 5: I haven’t noticed the same number of political blowups here as on SSC. Should we lift the no-politics-on-odd-numbered-open-threads restriction?
The data was patchy given survey frequency, but there was reasonably strong evidence* that a yes-politics open thread policy caused a significant dip in the number of people participating *specifically from in the political center*. I don't know if I would expect a similar effect to recur here - the dynamic looks different to me, too - but it's a tradeoff to think about and monitor if a change is made.
*I can dig up the graphs if there's particular interest, but the significant inflection was noticeable in the survey following OT113's policy change.
1) why most suicides in spring? My understanding (personal theory) is this: human bodies do have a built in hibernation program as many other species. This program is controlled by daily sunlight exposure. In preparation for the coming winter our serotonine level and our drive decreases, we eat more and build up fat storage to survive hard winter. Reduced drive (depression?) helped our ancestors (both human and animal) to look for a cave and just sleep there over the winter with least fuel consumption possible. In spring light exposure increases and with it serotonine levels. Drive (and sex drive) and motivation come back. In some individuals the depression stays longer and then they suddenly have the drive to kill themselves. Starting giving Antidepressants (SSRI) is always combined with the warning to tightly monitor the patient the first weeks so that it not kills itself due to this process.
2) why less depressed after a natural crisis or desaster? You mentioned "sense of meaning" and I guess this could be a key. Why there are so many people depressed and suicidal in "happy countries" (I guess you mean western wealthy countries)? Because these sociaties removed a lot of meaning of the lives of their people which were the norm for millions of years for our ancestors: tight daily human connections and interactions with close and loose family members, purposeful activities all the day around like feeding the family, the children, growing food, hunting food, building purposeful things like houses, tools, everything else, singing and dancing together and so on. A lot of these things are gone in the everyday lifes of a lot of western people. Instead they often life alone in anonymous apartments, doing a long daily commute to stupid companies sitting in boring and stupid meetings, producing useless things or services ("what would happen to the world if I, my job or this company would suddenly not exist anymore - nothing - nobody would take notice"). So they feel depressed. Now let's happen a natural desaster Like a flood or a hurricane or a pandemic. Suddenly all the stupid things are not porta to anymore but to help each other. No cracy meetings anymore, a lot of cooperation with formerly strangers from the neighborhood, suddenly a lot of purpose, humankind, success, self realisation asf.
I've noticed a lot of ASX fans are Tolkien fans. Do Tolkien fans tend to be Wagner fans? It would make sense if they are, but it would also make sense if they aren't.
Anyway, I hugely recommend Wagnerism by Alex Ross. If you care about music or literature or art culture at all, you need to read this. It's the best story I've read about how the 19th century became the 20th.
Does anyone have any insight into this whole hullabaloo about Purism laptops being modified by a third-party supplier, possibly without Purism's knowledge but possibly with their knowledge and they kept it under wraps? My best guess is that this is not actually a big deal and that Purism would fess up if it was, and that people are just mad because that's how the linux+privacy community is. But it's possible I'm missing something and this actually is a big deal on the level of modifying chips to spy on them, and this is especially bad given Purism's strong privacy/security promises. Curious if anyone here has more knowledge/insight. https://www.reddit.com/r/Purism/comments/my8u2l/psa_librem_14_units_appear_to_have_been_modified/
It seems to me that after the Substack migration we have much more people trying to "sneakily" advertise their blogs / podcasts / substacks in the comments. Do others have this feeling too or is it just me? Personally I wouldn't mind this if it were in the straightforward form of "hey guys I've got this blog about this and that come check it out", but it often takes shape of someone posting a bold claim, and when questioned about it answering "oh I have an entire blog post / podcast episode about this claim, you'd have to go through that to find out what are my arguments", which is pretty frustrating.
Get rid of the political rule. If it isn't necessary, why have it? If things get worse, bring it back.
I was amused by the volume of posts complaining that the influx of casuals from the NYT debacle was ruining ACX with their divided and inflammatory views. I think they must be fairly new to the community themselves.
Just a reminder that the first realspace South Bay meetup since Covid will be held this Sunday, June 13th, at our house in San Jose. People who plan to come are asked to email us so we will have at least a rough count of how many we are feeding. Details here:
Can radio telescopes replace space probes in the role of mapping the surfaces of other planets in our Solar System?
I assumed that all of our topographical maps of other planets came from scans done by satellites we placed into their orbits at great expense. Today, I read about improvements to radio telescopes, which are built here on the surface of the Earth. Recently, NASA used them to produce fairly high-res images of the Moon's surface, and the technology has even more potential.
For making topographical maps of other planets in our solar system, will Earth-based radio telescopes make space probes obsolete?
Some new results from Spain on Calcifediol, a ward-randomized trial of 984 patients found that those supplemented with calcifediol had a lower ICU admissions rate and mortality rate than the control wards. This is the paper that was heavily criticized when it was released in preprint, but after peer review it looks much better.
"Results: ICU assistance was required by 102 (12.2%) participants. Out of 447 patients treated with calcifediol at admission, 20 (4.5%) required ICU, compared to 82 (21%) out of 391 non-treated (p-value<0.0001). Logistic regression of calcifediol treatment on ICU admission, adjusted by age, gender, linearized 25OHD levels at baseline, and comorbidities showed that treated patients had a reduced risk to require ICU (OR 0.13 [95% CI 0.07;0.23]). Overall mortality was 10%. In the Intention-to-Treat analysis, 21 (4.7%) out of 447 patients treated with calcifediol at admission died compared to 62 patients (15.9%) out of 391 non-treated (p=0.0001). Adjusted results showed a reduced mortality risk with an OR 0.21 [95% CI 0.10; 0.43]). In the second analysis, the obtained OR was 0.52 [95% CI 0.27;0.99]."
This follows a few other calficifediol papers from the same group:
- A large propensity score matched study of 16,000 patients found that calcifediol and cholecalciferol supplementation were associated with large reductions in Covid–19 mortality. (Loucera et al, April 2021)
- A cohort study of 574 patients in Spain found that calcifediol supplementation was associated with a significant decrease in in-hospital mortality with an adjusted odds ratio of 0.16. (Alcala-Diaz et al, May 2021)
- A parallel pilot randomized open label trial of 76 patients in Spain found that the administration of calcifediol reduced ICU admission and mortality. Of the 50 patients treated with calcifediol. 13/26 patients in the control group required ICU care compared with 1 in the intervention group. A subsequent statistical analysis showed that decreased ICU admissions were not due to uneven distribution of comorbidities or other prognostic indicators, to imperfect blinding, or to chance, but were instead associated with the calcifediol intervention. (Castillo et all, August 2020)
I want to know if there are any sure shot empirical studies on this. It'd be great if Scott's could do a much more than you wanted to know format on gender transition, a possible future article idea.
Does anyone know how many trans kids become less suicidal after gender reassignment? How many want to change back their sex? How many are happy in their new body after 5 years, 10 years? In general I would like to know how much of a condition is this really outside of being a question about politics
Re #1, that happened to mine too; I sent another email about it but if the first went to spam, I suppose that was silly of me to do, because the second would also.
The 18th Century is known as more libertine than the 19th, but why?
My guess is that, for political reasons, 19th century rulers had more interest in suppressing sexually libertine notions. For one thing, sexually libertine intellectuals tend to correlate with more liberal intellectuals in other respects (Citation needed).
To draw an analogy, Putin seems opposed to gay liberation because he is opposed to liberation in general. Same thing with China.
But to revert to my original sentence, does it make sense to say 19th century rulers were more threatened by libertinism than those of the 18th?
On point 5: Maybe, but I very much like not having to scroll through political flaming, and I really don't want it to come back.
I wonder what people’s views on Carl Hart’s new book “Drug Use for Grown ups”. I haven’t read it but have heard some podcasts with him (David Nutt and Steven Levitt). I think he makes some good points (eg separating addicts from overdose deaths), but also says some odd things, like how he seemed to say antipsychotics were more dangerous than crack on Steve Levitt’s podcast
Is moral nativism noble? https://whatiscalledthinking.substack.com/p/is-moral-nativism-noble
What skills provide the most bang for the buck? For example, improving productivity through the skill of prioritization, which is useful across many domains.
Regarding item 5: I think retaining the even/odd distinction is useful. At least on the odd-numbered threads, it encourages people to examine what they write before they click "Post", and this could have salutary effects beyond the first-order partisan or political comments.
I would speculate that people are also more likely to take seriously the comments on a "politics-free" open thread, which encourages stepping outside one's bubble.
Re #1, for future contests maybe create a Google form or the like, so you can get all the submissions in a spreadsheet. You can ask people to either upload their submission or link to it.
Am I the only one who misses the ability to like comments on ACX?
I feel like the general engagement in the comment section is lower, the number of likes correlated pretty well to the insightfulness of the post, and I liked the ability to communicate that I liked a post without having to write a comment saying so.
Hoping to narrowly skirt the politics ban, since it's relevant to community interests and (I think) fairly nonpartisan. Will delete if asked.
The Endless Frontiers Act is moving its way through the US Senate. Its summary on Congress.gov reads:
"This bill establishes a Directorate for Technology and Innovation in the National Science Foundation (NSF) and establishes various programs and activities.
The goals of the directorate shall be, among other things, the strengthening of U.S. leadership in critical technologies through basic research in key technology focus areas, such as artificial intelligence, high performance computing, and advanced manufacturing, and the commercialization of those technologies to businesses in the United States."
Thoughts?
Vote to keep distinction between politics and no politics. Even if there are no political blowups, I suspect many people appreciate the knowledge they do not have to deal with political stuff every time they look through comments. Almost like a content warning.
The foreword to Simon Leys' book the Wreck of the Batavia is rather unusual. Leys had been gathering material for his book for years. But he praises another book by Mike Dash on the same subject. 'After carefully reading his detailed study, I put away for good all the documents and notes, sketches and photographs I had gathered over the years; I had no further use for them. In publishing the following pages, my only wish is that they may lead you to Dash's work'.
The work in question is Batavia's Graveyard and is the story of how VOC ship The Batavia came to be wrecked off the coast of Australia in 1629 with a fortune in silver and other treasures on board. Rightly or wrongly the captain and the civilian leader almost immediately abandoned the survivors and left in the ship's longboat to try to sail around 2,000 miles to try to get help.
Some 260 survivors were left behind and the man left in charge, Jeronimus Corneliez, was spectacularly unfitted for the role. Possibly a psychopath, possibly a believer in antinomianism (I am chosen by God so can do no wrong) he set about the murder of many of the survivors. He killed (or had killed) some 125 of them. It is a truly incredible story with amazing twists and turns.
I highly recommend Mike Dash's book and (ahem) the podcast I did with him:
https://www.buzzsprout.com/207869/8648424-mike-dash-on-batavia-s-graveyard
And if you don't have time to listen then this Twitter thread from Gareth Harney is a great introduction to the story and has some great images. It concentrates on one of the treasures but tells the whole story. (But I really recommend the podcast! Mike is a great story teller).
https://twitter.com/OptimoPrincipi/status/1379365137862291456?s=20
Why do people like optical illusions?
There are a lot of optical illusions available and a fair amount of theory about what causes the illusions, but I've never seen anything about why people like them.
If there's anyone who thinks optical illusions are annoying or boring, let me know.
Grappling with Effective Altruism:
The impact per dollar and the "but for" or neglected causes themes make excellent sense to me I'm having a harder time relinquishing the need/desire to know the effect my giving has. So, supporting a cause far away in either distance or time, is not as appealing to me.
Wondering what people think.
Does anyone have informed opinions about the new Alzheimer's drug the FDA is thinking about approving (aducanumab)? This New York Times article (https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/05/health/alzheimers-aducanumab-fda.html) makes it sound pretty iffy. But I know someone who might be interested in trying it if it is approved. Should I try to discourage them?
Meditation is a "constitutive practice" of mindfulness -- the virtue and the practice are so close that practically every exercise of mindfulness can be cast as practice in meditation as well.
In addition, the practice is dead-simple, extremely practical (i.e. can be done anywhere, anytime, at no cost) and can be pursued at practically any level of experience and produce all manner of rewards -- some (like lowering blood-pressure) that are themselves non-essential to meditation. It has a 2000-year pedigree of being used like this.
Reading (generally conceived, i.e. qua skill in interpretation) seems to me to be a constitutive practice for wisdom -- in a certain way, it seems that wisdom just is to know how to interpret the world (esp as it pertains to right action). Wisdom and reading are both ways to figure out what stuff means.
Like meditation, reading offers many other benefits even if you do not pursue the practice to its zenith, is easy and cheap to do (especially if you are interpreting/"reading" a line from memory), and can be pursued at practically any level profitably. It has at least as long of a pedigree as meditation.
What is a constitutive practice for courage?
Re: number 3 - wow, only today I was thinking about the former Reign of Terror. Serendipity or what?
Re: number 5 - I think it's better to keep the restriction. If I'm feeling mad about something and want to yell about it here, but it's an odd-numbered thread, I have to wait for the even-numbered one. That's good because often by the time the even-number rolls around, I've forgotten what made me so mad (so it couldn't have been that important). If I'm still mad then it must be serious enough to argue over. I think the restriction probably has helped keep down the number of political blow-ups and that is a good thing.
I would attribute the lack of blow ups to the increased friction of interacting with the substack comments.
The FDA finally approved semaglutide for weight loss! That usage is marketed under the name "Wegovy":
https://www.fda.gov/news-events/press-announcements/fda-approves-new-drug-treatment-chronic-weight-management-first-2014
It's the same dosage as studied here: https://www.gwern.net/docs/longevity/2021-wilding.pdf
Appetite suppressants were totally a thing for people who are having trouble with weight loss even before this announcement, but now we have a *really really effective* one. Think this will finally be what makes a dent in the obesity epidemic?
I published this comment on the previous open thread but I think I was too late to catch major traffic and got no responses at all. Anyway, here it is again. Sorry for spamming.
So, I'm considering getting an electrotrichogenesis (ETG) treatment for my incipient baldness (I'm vain. I know). The people at the ETG clinic claim it is super effective, and judging from the before-after pictures they showed me, this seems to be the true (assuming that the pictures are real). They also cited some very impressive statistics like: 96.7% of people 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). The paper 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. (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, ETG is approved for use in Europe, Canada and Australia, however I am not sure if this means that it's proved to be effective by 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.
Why encourage the national obsession with politics? Is it so important ? I say discourage it even more!
i have been writing a blog the last six months, and i thought i could advertise some of the better posts here along with brief abstracts. enjoy.
Can a Vegan Diet Be Healthy? A Literature Review -- i review the literature on health impacts of veganism as it relates to stuff like cardiovascular disease, cancer, diabetes, weight reduction, bone health, nutritional deficiencies and cognitive function (though i didn't find much research on this last one).
=> https://www.erichgrunewald.com/posts/can-a-vegan-diet-be-healthy-a-literature-review/
Does It Smell like Pollocks in Here? -- commentary on and critique of a recent study on "pseudo-profound bullshit" in contemporary art, including looking at bullshit as a viable strategy for artists.
=> https://www.erichgrunewald.com/posts/does-it-smell-like-pollocks-in-here/
Four Ways of Not Writing Software Bugs -- i propose that some powerful ways of not writing software bugs is not writing code in the first place, making necessary changes as small as possible, using automated tests and being aware of when one is not expending the cognitive effort necessary to really understand the changes one is making.
=> https://www.erichgrunewald.com/posts/four-ways-of-not-writing-software-bugs/
Networks of Meaning -- i argue that meaning is associative in nature, discuss this in the context of literature generally and the fiction of gerald murnane specifically and also review some of the relevant research in psychology.
=> https://www.erichgrunewald.com/posts/networks-of-meaning/
Strictness of Logic versus Openness of Logic -- i observe some differences in the musical styles and methods of jean sibelius and gustav mahler, two composers with very different views on the symphony.
=> https://www.erichgrunewald.com/posts/strictness-of-logic-versus-openness-of-logic/
Problems with "Eating Animals" -- i argue against a current affairs article that seems to claim that moral veganism and systemic change are in opposition to one another. i criticise the article for lack of concreteness when talking about systemic change, and i argue that, if anything, veganism contributes in several ways to some forms of systemic change.
=> https://www.erichgrunewald.com/posts/problems-with-eating-animals/
Interview with Christine M. Korsgaard: Animal Ethics, Kantianism, Utilitarianism -- a brief interview with one of my favourite philosophers.
=> https://www.erichgrunewald.com/posts/interview-with-christine-m-korsgaard-animal-ethics-kantianism-utilitarianism/
How Can One Tell What Is Beautiful? -- i review the arguments (including looks at recent research in psychology) for objectivity and subjectivity, critique paul graham's "preference cluster" view and interpret a passage from pierre michon's novella the life of joseph roulin.
=> https://www.erichgrunewald.com/posts/how-can-one-tell-what-is-beautiful/
Evolution of Programming Language Traits -- i observe that string interpolation has become more common in modern programming languages. i discuss what drives innovation, both on micro and macro scales. finally, i argue that free software norms enable innovation.
=> https://www.erichgrunewald.com/posts/evolution-of-programming-language-traits/
So the UFO report isn't out yet, but various news outlets seem to have gotten lots of sources to talk about what's in it. Verdict seems to be -
1. The military really does think these are real objects moving at insane speeds in ways they can't explain, and not weather balloons or pilot misidentification.
2. There is no evidence they are aliens.
3. They aren't secret American technology.
4. They probably also aren't Russian or Chinese, unless we're granting the possibility that the Russians or the Chinese have somehow gotten decades ahead of us technologically and managed to keep it secret.
As for what they actually are, the answer seems to be basically Shrug Emoji.
Still, if the articles are accurately describing the content of the report, it's quite something to have the government officially go on the records that UFOs actually are a real phenomenon that seems to deny easy explanation.
Do you get a sense of achievement from your job? If so what does that feel like from the inside. And are there any techniques for increasing that feeling
"Should we lift the no-politics-on-odd-numbered-open-threads restriction?"
Absolutely not. Politics infects everything in modern America. The few spaces that still haven't gotten the virus must be quarantined at all costs.
> I haven’t noticed the same number of political blowups here as on SSC. Should we lift the no-politics-on-odd-numbered-open-threads restriction?
Allowing politics on even-numbered threads seems fine to me.
My instinct says that the diminishment in political blowups is most likely due to Substack's comments system being much worse than the SSC comments system. Harder to use -> less use.
In today’s NYT there an article about the pending decision from the FDA on whether to approve Biogen’s Alzheimer’s drug Aducanumab.
Aduncanumub is an antibody that targets amyloid protein clumps that occur in the brain. But there is no evidence that such clumps cause Alzheimer’s; the only evidence is that they often but by no means always occur along with Alzheimer’s.
Some Alzheimer’s victims have low levels or no clumping; other people who die of different disease and had no Alzheimer’s symptoms, have extensive clumping.
There’s little to no evidence that Aducanumab treats Alzheimer’s and no other drug targeting Amaloid clumps has shown any success- Alzheimer’s is as untreatable now as it was when it was first diagnosed.
Perhaps it’s time to reevaluate the link between Amyloid and Alzheimer’s and for researchers to look elsewhere in the body for the causes. Biigen has sunk billions into the Amyloid-Alzheimer’s link; if they can get the FDA to approve Aducanumab they’ll get it all back and billions more, so they have no incentive to question the link. But it seems to me that until research goes off in a different direction, real progress in treating Alzheimer’s will not occur.
Regarding the register of bans, you say "Check the register if you don't know what I mean." However, two out of six problematic comments referenced there are already deleted. If part of the reasoning behind linking to those comments is telling "Hey, here are some things you should definitely not do on this blog", then this deletion could be a problem, and providing a summary of what the person did wrong (or doing something entirely different about it) could be of use. However, if the links are only for providing justification for bans, as proofs that there was indeed some offence in what those people did, then seeing that the authors have decided to delete those comments probably serves the same purpose and the situation is okay.
I'm surprised there haven't been as many blow-ups. It seems like Substack makes it easier for them to happen, since you get an email every time somebody replies to your comment.
Something I noticed the other day with buffet/all-you-can-eat restaurants. I think a good rule of thumb is that you subtract $10 off the per-person price to eat at them, and that tells you roughly what the cost would be to eat at a non-buffet restaurant with similar quality of food.
What do folks think will happen first-
1. Artificial kidney that replicates most of the functions of a regular kidney, and can be worn for years if necessary before replacement;
2. Bio-engineered animal or lab-grown kidney that can be transplanted.
Since we had nuclear come up, there's been some news about Atom On A Flatbed - AKA the military getting a nuclear reactor that could be flown in or driven in on a flatbed truck to a base for power. Pretty cool stuff, although you'd obviously have to armor it up as much as possible both for radiation mitigation and to alleviate fears that it could be targeted (proliferation is not really a big concern considering the type of fuel they're using):
https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/40914/the-militarys-mobile-nuclear-reactor-prototype-is-set-to-begin-taking-shape
Nuclear-powered ships would be neat, too, but they're still too expensive at this point. Maybe if cargo ships go up even more size . . . .
> 5: I haven’t noticed the same number of political blowups here as on SSC. Should we lift the no-politics-on-odd-numbered-open-threads restriction?
I can’t substantiate this beyond a general sense of having had my finger on the pulse of a number of communities for a long time, but it seems like things ate weirdly calm everywhere, not just this corner of the web. The main visible cause is just that we have a different President now. The fights that are happening lately seem like perfunctory enactments of the required rituals, without teeth.
I don’t really expect people to agree but just in case others have noticed this as well, I think this is a cyclical component to Internet anger, and we’re just at a nadir. Some other stupid bullshit will happen to refocus everyone shortly.
Is there any writing or developed body of theory on the concept that capital is no longer scarce, and this is causing all kinds of problems?
It seems to me that for most of the history of functioning capital markets, capital was so scarce that any additional capital a person had could be put to use relatively easily, because investible opportunities dramatically outweight the amount of capital available for long term investment.
Where as in modernity, your additional thousand dollars is very unlikely to matter that much to anyone. There are giant piles of capital looking for investment somewhere that will give a positive return.
Is there someone who has explored this idea at all?
Ixnay on the oliticspay, si vous plait.
Is there any reason to believe highly intelligent life is unlikely to evolve underwater? Could an intelligent species have evolved in our oceans millions of years ago? Could they still be around?
What book would you reccommend to become a better writer? Not like a novelist or anything. I mainly just comment on the internet.
Thanks Scott for formally reinstating the commenting policy :)
That Cassirer essay review was in fact interesting, if a little too long for me to finish. It’s rare to learn of a new historical philosopher with interesting *and* currently relevant things to say.
Substack bug: anyone else on mobile finding that links to comments almost always land a ways above the highlighted comment?
Re: 5
A perspective that you may not have considered.
As a non US reader I actually really enjoy the politics free threads, if nothing else for the reason that it tends to be so heavily US politics based. Even when the quality of discourse is high, I find allowing "politics" tends to skew the discussion in a way thats much less internationally relevant.
I'm curious to know if I'm alone in this or not.
I'm currently looking for advice on how to deal with a very specific and pernicious form of OCD, which causes me to constantly doubt my beliefs on topics that are very important to me (in such a way that evidence against me seems much more convincing than I know it should). I already posted the explanation on Reddit, so I'll just link that here instead of copying and pasting the entire thing: https://www.reddit.com/r/slatestarcodex/comments/nsh6c7/looking_for_some_help_on_an_ocd_problem/
I'm specifically looking for a way to deal with it that doesn't come too close to "just learn to be more comfortable with the uncertainty" - being comfortable with uncertainty is one thing, and I've definitely gotten better about that over the years, but the whole issue is that my OCD is actively distorting my perception of evidence and logic to try to force an artificial level of uncertainty (e.g. maybe I'd be fine being 80% certain about something, but my OCD won't even let me get above 50%). I'm already looking into solutions (I'm thinking I might need a medication adjustment), but any additional input would be appreciated.
I Count My Pills
I count my pills.
Thirty doses left.
Can I make it until my appointment?
What if he won’t fill my meds?
I count my pills.
Twenty doses left.
Will I lose another job?
How will I see a doctor?
I count my pills
Fifteen doses left
Im trying not to panic
Maybe I can try half doses?
i count my pills
ten doses left
had to drop out of school
i have to save the pills for work
i count mypills
five doses left
cant afford to buy from a dealer
just gotta make it through
i count my pills
no doses left
I'm going to run Lady Blackbird (a rules light tabletop RPG) as a way to meet more folks in the rationalist/ACX/EA spheres. The time will be Thursdays at 5:30pm PST, ending at approximately 7 PST (probably a little earlier). I've ran this before with some work buddies and had a bunch of fun with it. Don't worry if you've never played an RPG before, I'll explain all the rules in the first session and my experience has been that new players are usually more fun to run with :)
Comment if you're interested!
https://johnharper.itch.io/lady-blackbird
Other logistical details:
* We'll use Roll20 for video and rolling. Again, no worries if you've never used it before and happy to explain the minimal UI bits you need.
* The game runs well with 2-5 players, but I have trouble running for more than 4 people online (too little time in the spotlight for everyone). I'll run it if I get 3+ folks interested.
* The game will probably last ~5 sessions.
I only open the non-political threads, except when I forget which ones are odd and even. The announcement of Hidden Open Threads doesn't include a reminder. Plus, I always forget whether the parity of a number applies to digits after the decimal. I tried coming up with a mnemonic, which I usually am good at, but have not succeeded. (Rationalist-people problems)
I'm wondering if anyone has any hacks for reducing or eliminating bad dreams. I've been plagued by bad dreams for the past four years or so. They're not usually full-blown nightmares -- more like frustrating situations, where I'm late for a very important meeting, but I can't find the room where the meeting is being held, so I'm running all over the building opening random doors. These dreams seem to occur in the early morning, shortly before I wake up. They happen almost every day. Sometimes I remember the details, but often I wake up with just this vague feeling that I've just had a really bad dream. It's a shitty way to start the day.
There doesn't seem to be any obvious reason why these dreams have started happening so frequently (and note that this problem began way before the pandemic). There hasn't been any major change in my life situation that precipitated this.
I'm looking for suggestions on how to deal with this.
What's the most important, most impactful profession one could take up in the US?
I'm thinking it's lawyer. For one thing, even a rank and file lawyer might easily end up a part of a case that has a really big impact. For the other, lawyers are the ones who save people doing important work from being run over by some power run amok.
Any other ideas or corrections?
I feel like the lack of politics might be a case of "even numbers are reeeally close to odd numbers, even if I am commenting legitimately about it I feel like I'm only one number away from being banned on either side, so I will avoid it". Or something like that. Which would suggest that changing #5 to "politics fine on all open threads" would upset that dynamic and things would soon become political.
If you could add one class or skill to be explicitly taught in every high school in the USA, what would you choose? Is there anything that everyone should be forced to try to learn, that isn't already being taught?
So there will be book review contests in the future? It would be good to know because then I'll keep my book review instead of posting it somewhere else.
Ad 5: please don´t, though I have made close to zero contribution to comment threads on ASC so arguably my opinion should count for little.
It would be great if you would be able to get "edit comment" button back; I find it much easier to check for typos by way of first posting comment and then horifyingly realizing what atrocity did I just published, than by proper proofreading, and it is actually a big reason why I stayed away from commenting here.
5: absolutely not; a lot of people will want to just skip the politics via easy methods, if they can. Keep 'em separated.
Can someone tell me, or direct me to a link, that explains what the 'theory' is in critical race theory? Every time I've dug into this all I seem to find is a (somewhat discursive) list of things that 'critical race theorists believe', as opposed to an actual theory.
I started writing an explanation for why eating locally is environmentally bad. It needs expansion but I think you can get the idea. Comments welcome.
https://whitherthewest.com/2021/06/07/if-youre-eating-locally-for-environmental-reasons-youre-doing-it-wrong/
On point 4: I've read all reviews and really enjoyed the ride. A few observations:
- There were a few reviews I really really liked, which were streight 10/10 ratings for me (won't say which ones before the rating is over, but please take this as a motivation to have a look at them)
- Picking interesting ones based on the table of content worked very well for me, so even if you don't have the time to read all of them, have a quick look for interesting-sounding ones.
- A few provided really relevant information I was not aware of, on the level of "will affect my own life in relevant details in the future"
- there are a few ones outside the "general SCC area of interest" but with the reviewer clearly pouring all their love and heart into writing them. If you want to read an example, have a look at "the joy luck club".
- a few were just extremely delightful to read. If you want an example, have a look at "the call of cthulu".
(I feel bad about calling out specific examples before the voting is over, but I expect both my mentions to become non-finalists because of their topics, so I hope this is OK)
- I've been very delighted to see others recommend and enjoy reviews I didn't find like that much. I take this both as a reminder that enjoyment is very subjective and that the broad list of topics should satisfy everyone.
- after all, reading so many reviews also teaches you somethink about what makes writing enjoyable. For me, too many started with "I read this book because..." instead of gripping my attention and not enough included jokes, fun anecdotes and graphics. So there's maybe some room for improvement for next year's review contest? (I hope there will be one!)
What are some efficient ways you have spent money to save time in your home lives?
Exclude the low-hanging fruit that everyone is already doing, like having dishwashers.
As an example, I recently installed some automated sprinkler timers and it's great only needing to think about my lawn. I wish I had done this years ago but I thought it would be too hard or expensive to set up.
El Salvador plans to accept Bitcoin as legal tender, possibly to facilitate remittance payments (which make up 20% of the economy there).
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-latin-america-57373058
Here's another game theory puzzle.
Two mathematical pirates are confronted with a line of 64 heaps of doubloons.
Taking it in turns, they each take one of the heaps currently at the end of the line.
Can either of the pirates guarantee not ending up with fewer doubloons than the other? How
Any thoughts on this blog: https://graymirror.substack.com/p/there-is-no-ai-risk . I’m a PhD in AI, and my opinion is that we don’t have any path that we know of to reach AGI so AI risk is a non problem for the foreseeable future. Though I know some people believe AGI is around the corner. If you believe so, why? This article argues that even if we reach a really smart AGI, it won’t be a big deal
> 5: I haven’t noticed the same number of political blowups here as on SSC. Should we lift the no-politics-on-odd-numbered-open-threads restriction?
The data was patchy given survey frequency, but there was reasonably strong evidence* that a yes-politics open thread policy caused a significant dip in the number of people participating *specifically from in the political center*. I don't know if I would expect a similar effect to recur here - the dynamic looks different to me, too - but it's a tradeoff to think about and monitor if a change is made.
*I can dig up the graphs if there's particular interest, but the significant inflection was noticeable in the survey following OT113's policy change.
@Scott: some comments on your Covid suicide article on work in progress (https://worksinprogress.co/issue/why-didnt-suicides-rise-during-covid/)
1) why most suicides in spring? My understanding (personal theory) is this: human bodies do have a built in hibernation program as many other species. This program is controlled by daily sunlight exposure. In preparation for the coming winter our serotonine level and our drive decreases, we eat more and build up fat storage to survive hard winter. Reduced drive (depression?) helped our ancestors (both human and animal) to look for a cave and just sleep there over the winter with least fuel consumption possible. In spring light exposure increases and with it serotonine levels. Drive (and sex drive) and motivation come back. In some individuals the depression stays longer and then they suddenly have the drive to kill themselves. Starting giving Antidepressants (SSRI) is always combined with the warning to tightly monitor the patient the first weeks so that it not kills itself due to this process.
2) why less depressed after a natural crisis or desaster? You mentioned "sense of meaning" and I guess this could be a key. Why there are so many people depressed and suicidal in "happy countries" (I guess you mean western wealthy countries)? Because these sociaties removed a lot of meaning of the lives of their people which were the norm for millions of years for our ancestors: tight daily human connections and interactions with close and loose family members, purposeful activities all the day around like feeding the family, the children, growing food, hunting food, building purposeful things like houses, tools, everything else, singing and dancing together and so on. A lot of these things are gone in the everyday lifes of a lot of western people. Instead they often life alone in anonymous apartments, doing a long daily commute to stupid companies sitting in boring and stupid meetings, producing useless things or services ("what would happen to the world if I, my job or this company would suddenly not exist anymore - nothing - nobody would take notice"). So they feel depressed. Now let's happen a natural desaster Like a flood or a hurricane or a pandemic. Suddenly all the stupid things are not porta to anymore but to help each other. No cracy meetings anymore, a lot of cooperation with formerly strangers from the neighborhood, suddenly a lot of purpose, humankind, success, self realisation asf.
The internet is down.
I've noticed a lot of ASX fans are Tolkien fans. Do Tolkien fans tend to be Wagner fans? It would make sense if they are, but it would also make sense if they aren't.
Anyway, I hugely recommend Wagnerism by Alex Ross. If you care about music or literature or art culture at all, you need to read this. It's the best story I've read about how the 19th century became the 20th.
Does anyone have any insight into this whole hullabaloo about Purism laptops being modified by a third-party supplier, possibly without Purism's knowledge but possibly with their knowledge and they kept it under wraps? My best guess is that this is not actually a big deal and that Purism would fess up if it was, and that people are just mad because that's how the linux+privacy community is. But it's possible I'm missing something and this actually is a big deal on the level of modifying chips to spy on them, and this is especially bad given Purism's strong privacy/security promises. Curious if anyone here has more knowledge/insight. https://www.reddit.com/r/Purism/comments/my8u2l/psa_librem_14_units_appear_to_have_been_modified/
Hi Scott, just sent you a follow up email about my book review not being in finalists or runner ups- not sure if you're getting my emails. Thanks.
It seems to me that after the Substack migration we have much more people trying to "sneakily" advertise their blogs / podcasts / substacks in the comments. Do others have this feeling too or is it just me? Personally I wouldn't mind this if it were in the straightforward form of "hey guys I've got this blog about this and that come check it out", but it often takes shape of someone posting a bold claim, and when questioned about it answering "oh I have an entire blog post / podcast episode about this claim, you'd have to go through that to find out what are my arguments", which is pretty frustrating.
Get rid of the political rule. If it isn't necessary, why have it? If things get worse, bring it back.
I was amused by the volume of posts complaining that the influx of casuals from the NYT debacle was ruining ACX with their divided and inflammatory views. I think they must be fairly new to the community themselves.
Should I buy bitcoins as an investment strategy?
Just a reminder that the first realspace South Bay meetup since Covid will be held this Sunday, June 13th, at our house in San Jose. People who plan to come are asked to email us so we will have at least a rough count of how many we are feeding. Details here:
http://www.daviddfriedman.com/SSC%20Meetups%20announcement.html
Somewhere on a previous thread, someone asked me for verified statements of there being no evidence that trans women assault cis women in restrooms.
Try looking in here: https://juliaserano.medium.com/transgender-people-bathrooms-and-sexual-predators-what-the-data-say-2f31ae2a7c06
Can radio telescopes replace space probes in the role of mapping the surfaces of other planets in our Solar System?
I assumed that all of our topographical maps of other planets came from scans done by satellites we placed into their orbits at great expense. Today, I read about improvements to radio telescopes, which are built here on the surface of the Earth. Recently, NASA used them to produce fairly high-res images of the Moon's surface, and the technology has even more potential.
For making topographical maps of other planets in our solar system, will Earth-based radio telescopes make space probes obsolete?
https://www.zmescience.com/science/apollo-15-landing-site-radio-picture-054353/
Some new results from Spain on Calcifediol, a ward-randomized trial of 984 patients found that those supplemented with calcifediol had a lower ICU admissions rate and mortality rate than the control wards. This is the paper that was heavily criticized when it was released in preprint, but after peer review it looks much better.
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34097036/
"Results: ICU assistance was required by 102 (12.2%) participants. Out of 447 patients treated with calcifediol at admission, 20 (4.5%) required ICU, compared to 82 (21%) out of 391 non-treated (p-value<0.0001). Logistic regression of calcifediol treatment on ICU admission, adjusted by age, gender, linearized 25OHD levels at baseline, and comorbidities showed that treated patients had a reduced risk to require ICU (OR 0.13 [95% CI 0.07;0.23]). Overall mortality was 10%. In the Intention-to-Treat analysis, 21 (4.7%) out of 447 patients treated with calcifediol at admission died compared to 62 patients (15.9%) out of 391 non-treated (p=0.0001). Adjusted results showed a reduced mortality risk with an OR 0.21 [95% CI 0.10; 0.43]). In the second analysis, the obtained OR was 0.52 [95% CI 0.27;0.99]."
This follows a few other calficifediol papers from the same group:
- A large propensity score matched study of 16,000 patients found that calcifediol and cholecalciferol supplementation were associated with large reductions in Covid–19 mortality. (Loucera et al, April 2021)
- A cohort study of 574 patients in Spain found that calcifediol supplementation was associated with a significant decrease in in-hospital mortality with an adjusted odds ratio of 0.16. (Alcala-Diaz et al, May 2021)
- A parallel pilot randomized open label trial of 76 patients in Spain found that the administration of calcifediol reduced ICU admission and mortality. Of the 50 patients treated with calcifediol. 13/26 patients in the control group required ICU care compared with 1 in the intervention group. A subsequent statistical analysis showed that decreased ICU admissions were not due to uneven distribution of comorbidities or other prognostic indicators, to imperfect blinding, or to chance, but were instead associated with the calcifediol intervention. (Castillo et all, August 2020)
Recently I read this news report of how a hospital tried to force the parents to change the sex of their suicidally depressed child: https://www.city-journal.org/transgender-identifying-adolescents-threats-to-parental-rights?wallit_nosession=1
I want to know if there are any sure shot empirical studies on this. It'd be great if Scott's could do a much more than you wanted to know format on gender transition, a possible future article idea.
Does anyone know how many trans kids become less suicidal after gender reassignment? How many want to change back their sex? How many are happy in their new body after 5 years, 10 years? In general I would like to know how much of a condition is this really outside of being a question about politics
Can any psychiatrists or psycho-analysts tell me if such work is taken seriously: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34039063/
If true, psychiatry has much bigger problems than replication crisis?
Re #1, that happened to mine too; I sent another email about it but if the first went to spam, I suppose that was silly of me to do, because the second would also.
The 18th Century is known as more libertine than the 19th, but why?
My guess is that, for political reasons, 19th century rulers had more interest in suppressing sexually libertine notions. For one thing, sexually libertine intellectuals tend to correlate with more liberal intellectuals in other respects (Citation needed).
To draw an analogy, Putin seems opposed to gay liberation because he is opposed to liberation in general. Same thing with China.
But to revert to my original sentence, does it make sense to say 19th century rulers were more threatened by libertinism than those of the 18th?