So, prediction markets are currently regulated as gambling in the US (is my understanding). It seems from Scott’s posts that it is not regulated as much in other countries. Is there a good way to legally delineate prediction markets from, say, sports betting?
What do you people think of letting systematically important financial institutions (“too big to fail” banks and the like) go belly-up during a crisis?
I recently re-read Yudkowsky’s famous Japanese central bank post over at Less Wrong and was struck by his willingness to let this happen; probably the first intelligent person I’ve read arguing for it cogently.
Is he right? Do big banks not matter if monetary policy is loose enough? Only financial crisis book I’ve read is Adam Tooze’s Crashed, which is good, but maybe, it seems, might be too orthodox? Where can I learn more about this sort of thinking?
Have the policies of the federal reserve since the 2008 financial crisis caused an asset bubble? If so, please explain in detail the mechanism causing the bubble. If not, then why is the common perception that the Fed has caused an asset bubble? Thank you in advance for taking the time to reply.
I need to pick a BA thesis (philosophy, preferably philosophy of mind) within the next week. I am very bad at this, I tend to vastly exceed scope and cram too much into the page limit, and every student paper so far has gotten the feedback that I could turn this into a thesis easily. But I also start off from a vague area of research and settle on a proper question only in the last stages. I'm not allowed to do that for a BA, I need to register a topic and stick to it.
Anyone interested in making suggestions, asking questions, refining my notes can go to
What would it take to get an effective Iron Dome/anti-artillery or anti-ballistic missile system up and running for Ukraine, to protect at least Kyiv if not some of their other cities? I was wondering about this earlier in the week, and then I saw a Reuters article that Zelensky was asking Israel for Iron Dome technology (it’s a defensive system that shoots down Palestinian or Hezbollah rockets aimed at their cities, if you don’t know what it is).
Could Israel (with obvious Western help) set up & implement such a system in a few weeks? Months? By 2023? Would it be effective against not just Russian artillery, but also actual Russian missiles? Is this doable at all? (This question is specifically directed at John Schilling, who seems to know about these things, but obviously is open for anyone who knows more than me). Would seem to be a game-changer for Ukraine if so
Is the Beta "Reader" function on substack broken for anyone else? About a week ago or so, it just stopped showing anything at all. This seems like a "me" problem since I can't find any reference to anyone else having this issue, and after a week, if it was more widespread I would expect mention if not a fix.
I've tried different browsers all to no avail. It only shows the first of my subscritptions on the sidebar, and in the main panel, where all the recent publications should be, it's just a bunch of grey boxes.
"The Onion Knight" was amazing. Also the travelogue vignettes last year were hilarious, for example. Extremely worth the subscription cost. (Btw, I often fail to notice that subscribers-only things are subscribers-only until I try to link people to them.)
I think of myself as pretty moderate regarding politics. I can usually see both sides of an issue. I’m an ER physician by trade.
One issue that I cannot find myself at all understanding the “other side” (even after years of intentional pondering) is abortion. It just seems like such a blatant betrayal of the right to life, one of the most valued rights we have. Even hard-core libertarians that I know who believe in almost no laws are pro-life regarding abortion.
I’m all for decreasing unplanned/unwanted pregnancies via easily accessible/free contraceptives and reasonable sex ed.
For those that say the unborn aren’t viable on their own, my question is, does dependency remove personhood? I don’t think it does, as that would pose a huge issue for the disabled (and young kids). Also, for anyone that uses that argument, it would follow that they are strictly against abortion post 24 weeks when the baby is now viable apart from mom, but I find that many of these people aren’t against post 24 week abortions.
For those that want to claim right to abortion in rape cases, I think a debate can be had there, but it should be realized that rape cases are a tiny percentage of abortions (around 1%).
If a physician’s oath is “do no harm”, it seems to me that an abortion violates this. When a pregnant mom comes in with trauma, respiratory distress, or any other disease we work from a mental framework of “two patients, take care of both”.
Around a million abortions are performed each year in the US. This is astounding in and of itself, and when you count years of life lost it’s even more overwhelming. Worldwide, 40-50 million abortions occur per year. These numbers are absolutely wild. COVID has (appropriately) received a ton of press the past two year, but when you compare COVID to abortions in lives lost, and particularly years of life lost, abortion monumentally overshadows COVID numbers.
I’m all for mom to have as much support and as many rights as possible. But just as an adult doesn’t have the right to end the life of another person, so I can’t endorse a mom’s right to terminate a baby in the womb.
Other than medical emergencies that endanger the mother’s life, I do not see an ethical argument for abortion, which violates the basic right to life.
I realize this can be a very charged and emotional subject. I’m not looking to poke the bee hive or be attacked, but to hear rational thoughts on the matter.
I stopped my subscription after the first year because I figured I had done enough Scott supporting. And I needed to conserve money… Now I learn he wrote a post about onion knights?
Soon, I'll be able to go on Erasmus (six month university exchange program). Should I account for the quality/ranking of the university I'm going to, or just pick the nicest country and not worry about quality at all?
I know the exchange program won't be on my resume, so there's little to no potential signaling value to employers.
Ever since the current hostilities with Ukraine began, I saw people wonder why Russians call (some) Ukrainians "Nazi". Some think this is just another case of calling everybody Hitler, and point out how Ukrainian president is of a Jewish descent, and therefore this is a very stupid propaganda.
I think that, while, this IS propaganda, it's not as stupid as it seems to a Western reader, all due to one major misalignment of definitions.
If we look deep enough, almost nobody in the modern world is "Nazi", because you have to subscribe to a specific set of beliefs to be completely aligned with the "original" Nazi party. Most people called Nazi today would probably be kicked out of the Nazi party, or even sent to a camp. But nobody cares about that, because the word came to mean something different since 40's.
In the West, "Nazi" became a word for "someone (usually white) who hates Jews (and maybe also Black People, but if you only hate Blacks and not Jews, then you're probably not a Nazi, but just a garden-variety racist)". This is very understandable - Nazi hated Jews and did a lot to wipe the race from the face of the Earth. But for the West, the definitions stops there.
For Russians, though, things are a bit different. While Hitler harboured little love for Europeans (if I remember correctly, he did think English were Aryan, to some degree?), he had none at all for Slavs. Specifically, his plan was to cull the population of conquered Eastern lands to almost nothing and settle the emptied land with Germans. While his program for western Europe included rounded up Jews and anyone who criticized his policies, his program for USSR was "outright slaughter whole villages just because". For this reason, in Russia the term "Nazi" means "someone who hates Jews and/OR Russians".
This is why the term does not raise any eyebrows in Russia when applied to Ukrainian nationalists. To the western eye, they might seem like common nationalist group who just wants their country to be independent, but in Russia, their hatred of all things Russian and their veneration of World War-era Nazi collaborators squarely places them into "Nazi" category, even though they might not have a single bad thing to say about Jews.
I don't expect or intend this explanation to change anyone's mind about Russia or Ukraine - just to clear up just one specific thing that puzzled some people.
I'm thinking of commissioning/sponsoring one or more "Much More Than You Wanted to Know"-style posts on specific topics. One topic that I had in mind is "MMTYWTK about aerobic exercise and longevity". I'd be happy to pay $1000 for an ACX-quality post here or on the subreddit.
Does anyone have any ideas how to organize this? Maybe Scott would like to personally write it? Or maybe it's better to hold a mini-contest? Or maybe there is an existing platform for requests like that?
10 % on unambiguous Ukrainian victory (unchanged from March 12).
Ukrainian victory is defined as either a) Ukrainian government gaining control of the territory it had not controlled before February 24, regardless of whether it is now directly controlled by Russia (Crimea), or by its proxies (Donetsk and Luhansk "republics”), without loosing any similarly important territory and without conceding that it will stop its attempts to join EU or NATO, or b) Ukrainian government getting official ok from Russia to join EU or NATO without conceding any territory and without loosing de facto control of any territory it had controlled before February 24.
15 % on compromise solution which both sides might plausibly claim as victory (down from 30 % on March 12).
75 % on unambiguous Russian victory (up from 60 % on March 12).
Russian victory is defined as Russia getting something it wants from Ukraine without giving any substantial concessions. Russia wants either a) Ukraine to stop claiming at least some of the territories that were before war claimed by Ukraine but de facto controlled by Russia or its proxies, or b) Russia or its proxies (old or new) to get more Ukrainian territory, de facto recognized by Ukraine in something resembling Minsk ceasefire(s)* or c) some form of guarantee that Ukraine will not join NATO.
Less quantitative prediction:
Still 100 % that there will be broad consensus among reasonable people that postwar living standards in both countries would be substantially higher had they not fought the war. That it is to say, neither side can win in an utilitarian sense. But both sides made it abundantly clear that utilitarian concerns are very much NOT their priority.
Commentary:
Major theme of last week is my increased confidence that Russia is likely to win the war. I do not think that already low chances of outright Ukrainian victory have further decreased, since that would be possible if there is either major shift in Western, or perhaps Chinese, attitude toward the conflict or some unexpected weakness of Russia, or some form of Russian overreach, and I guess neither of those got less likely from last week.
What got less likely is that under continuation of current trends Ukraine will be able to negotiate a non-loosing compromise.
There were some good things happening for Ukrainians in last week. Refugee flow from Ukraine, which is imho bound to cause major problems in the future, at least slowed. Russian armies did not advance anywhere, but imho week ago they were already in such strong position east of the Dnieper that with current trends continuing, Ukrainian defences east of that great river are on track to collapse. And that is half of Ukraine, and it will be very difficult to evict Russian troops by force from that territory once they consolidate their gains.
Other new developments, as well as new information, has been pretty bad for Ukraine.
One thing I got confirmed from my non-English sources is that not only Ukrainian government, but also Ukrainian population, exhibit great message discipline in trying to minimize their losses and other problems. Which means that those are greater than their appear.
It seems that there are already signs of what I predicted last week, that Western solidarity with Ukraine is going to weaken over time. Zelensky got to speak before US and German lawmakers, two probably most important countries for the future development of the conflict (excluding those directly fighting). As far as I know, his appearance before Bundestag yielded him roughly nothing. Regarding his appearance before Congress, main thing that he got was the promise of new military equipment.
How significant is Western military hardware promised to Ukraine?
According to Biden **, military aid agreed to in connection with the Zelensky speech before Congress is worth 800 million dollars, on top of 350 million already agreed to between the start of the war and the speech ***. Well, according to Google, Russian yearly military budget is estimated to be 60 billion dollars. Large part of it goes to nuclear arsenal and other things that are not useful in current war, but still.
800 million for Ukraine would be game-changing if US would send it every week, but since this is in connection with first Zelensky’s rousing speech to Congress I assume that it is closer to a high watermark of US support than to future weekly cheque.
I realize there are big problems with estimating value of military hardware by its price tag, but I’ve got nothing better. It might be the case that Ukrainians are going to receive equipment that is not that expensive to produce for the US, but it will be extremely difficult to counter for Russians due to their (very real) technological backwardness. Or US equipment might be worth less to Ukrainians because they’ll have problems with learning how to operate it efficiently. I assume this roughly cancels out.
Meanwhile EU plan to send another 500 million euro (roughly 550 million dollars) of military aid to Ukraine has been delayed in bureaucracy (“It has now emerged that Germany needs to get approval from the Bundestag’s budget committee at home, which is unlikely to happen until next week.”**** ). Probably this will be approved eventually, but political will to do substantially more just isn’t here.
On sanctions and economic help for Ukraine, big non-news is that no major proposals for economic help were announced and no new important sanctions on Russia were approved.
EU clearly indicated that it is not going to stop paying for Russian oil and gas, for now. India is considering it will buy Russian oil at a discount and in connection with that is mulling some scheme how to get around US sanctions. Perhaps nothing will come from this, but it fits my prediction from previous week that sanctions will be eroded over time.
Russian currency, which previously traded for over 50 % below its already historically bad prewar exchange rate to dollar, now rebounded somewhat and is now trading within 25 – 50 % lower than prewar. This is imho firmly “not great, not terrible territory” as opposed to “imminent danger of total meltdown”. For comparison, day after the Brexit referendum, pound has fallen by 12 % against the dollar, and it never fully rebounded, yet. Exchange rate is very imperfect proxy for the state of the Russian economy, but I don’t know about anything better. Suggestions are welcome.
Key question is imho the strength of the Russian antiwar movement, but that is difficult to assess. My impression is that the war (which Russians are rather hilariously not allowed to call “a war”, but only “special military operation” under severe criminal penalties) is not popular in Russia. But for now, I assume that the antiwar movement, while dangerous for the government and capable of individual brave acts, as demonstrated e.g. by Marina Ovsyannikova, will not be sufficiently strong to force the end of the war at least for months, absent some unexpected military or economic setback for Putin.
*Minsk ceasefire or ceasefires (first agreement did not work, it was amended by second and since then it worked somewhat better) constituted, among other things, de facto recognition by Ukraine that Russia and its proxies will control some territory claimed by Ukraine for some time. In exchange Russia stopped trying to conquer more Ukrainian territory. Until February 24 of this year, that is.
I've been keeping up with the steady stream of "COVID cause measurable decreases in cognition for a (larger percentage/majority, it varies) of people infected, even if they have mild/no symptoms".
They keep coming out but not getting talked about; and some of theme seem pretty big/legit.
Is this because they aren't big and legit, or is it a climate change style thing where people don't want it to be real so they just don't think about it?
Has anyone seen studies citing a failure rate of one country invading another country? It seems like this might help forecasters take the outside view of Russia-Ukraine.
I posted this in a previous open thread and have been thinking about it since. The right search terms continue to escape me.
It seems to me that people who believe in utilitarian ethics should promote a high birth rate. Do they? Obviously more full lives lived means tons more utility to be had. I have to assume that on average, even in challenging situations life (vs never having existed) is massively net positive. A higher birth rate would have a positive multiplier effect on any other human-focused effective altruist efforts.
Suppose we end up in the world where you can’t make any credible public prediction without being willing to bet on it (either directly with a counterparty or through prediction markets). If you say something and aren’t willing to bet, this is considered silly.
What happens to people with gambling addictions? Do they get a kind of special social pass where it’s not considered sketchy to refuse to bet?
So far there’s a relatively small subculture of people who seem to make epistemic bets with each other, but has anyone in this subculture had to deal with problem gambling?
Forgive me if this question is in poor taste, but will postwar Ukraine present a good real estate investment opportunity? For instance, could I, a foreigner, buy a nice house in Kiev for cheap and rent it out for a healthy profit?
What about other investment opportunities that will be unusually profitable thanks to the effect of the war?
Why are the commenters on Marginal Revolution so bad?
The writing on MR is often nuanced or at least attempts to be. But the commenters are on the level of reactionary right wing Facebook commenters but with better vocabulary. Why?
I now have a chapter draft on my calculations of land gained and lost through climate change. The conclusion, if correct, is pretty dramatic, a massive increase in the amount of land usable by humans. It's a Fermi calculation, so very approximate, and I'm ignoring the question of how useful the land is — soil quality and the like. I'm just asking how much land changes from too cold for human use to a reasonable temperature for human use, from a reasonable temperature to too high, and from dry to flooded due to SLR.
I'm mostly interested in whether there are any large mistakes in my calculations that I have missed. Obviously my other reason for putting it up is that if I haven't made any mistakes it implies a large positive effect that almost nobody mentions, hence a reason both to revise down estimates of net cost of climate change and to revise down one's confidence in the reliability of the sources of information your estimates are based on if those sources didn't mention it.
Is there a reason the US (and other NATO countries like Slovakia or Romania who also supposedly have good anti-air weapons systems) are not giving Ukraine better anti-air weapons than stingers? I am no military expert but from what I gather stingers are great against helicopters but terrible against high altitude bombers.
I don't see a reason to conserve these weapons, after all their main use is to deter the Russian army (there are no other realistic threats that could hit European NATO member states with modern military-grade equipment) and if those weapons can actually destroy that threat (the Russian fleet) then that is the one thing better than deterrence. Particularly if the destroying can be outsourced to very motivated and willing Ukrainians.
It also seems the cheaper alternative - if the Ukrainians defeat Russia, the West is realistically going to subsidize Ukraine's reconstruction heavily. The quicker the Ukrainians win, the less damage done and the lower the costs will be (in money and lives). If they lose, the West will have to deal with an even larger refugee crisis and a need to arm themselves even more.
The only reason not to do this seems the fear that Putin might escalate further and declare war on NATO. I am not sure it is likely that Putin would be "OK" (i.e. not convincingly threatening NATO with a war) with us sending Ukraine stingers and javelins but not with us sending them specific anti-bomber weaponry...
On the subject of DST, or rather time changes. Am I the only person who believes the time changes are a good thing? There are clearly problems with year long DST (very late sunrises), but conversely year long standard time ends the late summer evenings. There are heated discussions online about which is the preferred option, with nobody compromising on the obvious solution which would allow us to have late sunset in summer and reasonable sunrises in winter: that is retaining the change. It’s just assumed that the time change is a relic.
Change My View: Anti-youth ageism is easily in the top 3 most important social problems facing the West. Personally I can't see how anything other than the wars waged by the US gov and demographic change is more important to address than ageism.
Ageism is so bad because it is enforced by the State. 17 year olds are the most oppressed group in the West. Not only is ageism everywhere, permeating every space, infesting every mind, even those of the oppressed — this oppression is still enforced by the State. Imagine if we still had forced racial segregation.
Teenagers face whippings and beatings for disobedience, and if not that arbitrary confinement. It is perfectly legal across the US for a parent to “spank” their teenage property, with belts, paddles, straps, or whatever else, just as slaves have been treated throughout history. Paddling is still practiced in schools in 19 US states. Elsewhere teens are imprisoned without due process by parents and schools when they are “grounded” or assigned “detention.” Hollywood has made light of these labels, but they are serious civil rights violations, and though force is generally not used to coerce cooperation out of victims, those who fight back against said punishments are often sent to juvenile detention, or worse.
Unlucky, revolutionary teens are sent to camps, where they are deprived of an education and put to punitive labor. Starvation is a common punishment for teen victims in these camps. Collectively, this sadistic gulag-archipelago is known as the “Troubled Teen Industry,” or TTI for short. Camps are often located in the wilderness, in polities such as Utah, Jamaica, and Costa Rica. Bounty-hunters are often hired to “transport” victims to these places.
Teens are considered property under US (and, more generally, Western) law. A teenager has no medical rights; if a teen does not want a vaccine, but his parents do want him to have it, he can be restrained and inoculated against his will. If a teen does want a vaccine, but his parents do not want him to have it, he is not allowed to receive it. In medicine, the need for a patient to agree with a procedure is called assent. The legal requirement for a responsible party to sign off on a procedure is called consent. Teens are neither afforded assent (the right to veto a procedure), nor consent (the right to sign off on a procedure).
“Runaway” teens are hunted down and captured like slaves. Imagine if marital vows were still literal and runaway wives could be tracked down and returned to their husbands. Wouldn’t that be awful? This is worse, because teens never entered an agreement for that to happen in the first place.
And let's not mention the high school, which is 97.8% a waste of time, and therefore 97.8% exploitation, according to my research.
All of this despite the fact that the brain is fully mature at the end of puberty (14-16), and the fact that before that, at the age of 12 or 13, many teen demographics are more measurably mature than many "adult" demographics, per both real outcomes and lab tests.
There is an incredibly urgent need to abolish this oppression in the interests of justice. The high school must be abolished and replaced with a traditional system where 20% go on to college-level education after 8th grade and the other 80% begin hands-on internships and apprenticeships. To make way for this, ownership-by-parents must be abolished. Starting by the age of 13, youths must have medical autonomy, the ability to both initiate and veto any procedure. The punishment camps must be abolished and those responsible must be prosecuted. Working and traveling laws must be adjusted to make way for the new education system.
There is already welfare for youths who are abandoned by their families, but teens must live in restrictive group homes which reproduce the oppressive parental-ownership system in order to receive it. These homes should be abolished, and the welfare should be converted to cash. In accordance with the new education system and the science of brain development, the new age of majority should be 15. Those 13 and up who are maturely pursuing their education or who have graduated should be granted minor status, as opposed to the pupil status of children, and should be allowed to proactively divorce bad parents, sign leases, and open bank accounts.
I'm thinking about using Obsidian to keep track of the material in my qi gong classes. Do people have favorite note-taking systems? I like the idea of making it easy to keep notes associated, but I'm concerned about having a way to sort through too many associations.
I've heard a number of people argue that Putin wouldn't have invaded Ukraine if Trump were POTUS because Trump is a loose cannon and Putin would have feared him too much.
What I find interesting about that argument is that Trump supporters tended to argue that Trump was much less likely to get the US involved in foreign wars than a Democrat would.
Is there a reasonable way to square the circle and argue consistently that if Trump were still POTUS instead of Biden:
1) Putin would have been less likely to invade Ukraine
AND
2) The US would have been less likely to have involved itself in a war
I've been reading Scott since 2013-2014 and have commented both in the old Slate Star Codex threads, and over on the SCC reddit and The Motte under various names.
If it weren't for Scott's incredible output I wouldn't be anywhere near the writer or thinker I am today, and if it weren't for the incredible communities he's built I almost certainly wouldn't have had the occasion to write nearly as much as I have.
Thank you.
I started a substack recently and the first content up are some effort posts from TheMotte.
a fitting piece to link since it was Scott's humour writing and long takes that inspired me to do a Capstone pseudo-thesis, and write a far FAR too rigorous look at the rhetoric of Homeric Poetry, and how Alex Jones seemingly replicates them.
So once again thankyou Scott and thankyou everyone. The wider SCC community has been an incredible addition to my life. I can't imagine the past decade as anything but immensely poorer without your influence. thankyou.
Do you do Russian-to-English translation, have time for quick-turnaround volunteer work, and wish to support Navalny & his team? Their excellent Youtube channel needs help with its English subtitles (which aren't excellent at all & are sometimes nonexistent, especially on their longer, more analytical videos.) I wish I spoke Russian, I'd contact them and offer, but alas I only do French-to-English.
I keep arguing here that Literature offers the best insights into human psychology, yet the field of psychology mostly ignores it because it has its ow literature.
Of course Jung took literature seriously, perhaps too seriously. Not sure about Freud.
I'm sure there are plenty of individual psychologists who are well read and have learned a lot about psychology from reading literature. That said, it still seems like Western Literature is a gold mine of psychological wisdom yet to be mined by the psychologists.
A description of the huge and varied fan ecosystem that developed around a small but well-written game called Undertale.
I think we're living in an era of remarkable creativity which doesn't get noticed as much as it should be because a lot of it is created in gaming and in informal channels.
The 'American Song Contest' will premiere later today (Monday 21 March, 2022) with a two-hour primetime extravaganza on NBC in the States. The Grand Final will air on Monday 9 May - one day before the Eurovision Song Contest First Semi-Final.
Atlantic Records has released the first instalment of the original songs featured on NBC’s American Song Contest. Tonight, in the premiere episode the first 11 artists will perform their original songs in front of hosts Kelly Clarkson and Snoop Dogg, a live studio audience and millions of viewers across America. The 11 songs featured on tonight’s episode are available to enjoy now.
Artists featured on the first episode:
Wonderland – AleXa (OK)
Wonder – Alisabeth Von Presley (IA)
LOKO – Christian Pagán (PR)
Held On Too Long – Hueston (RI)
Feel Your Love – Jake’O (WI)
Never Like This – Kelsey Lamb (AR)
Fire – Keyone Starr (MS)
Beautiful World – Michael Bolton (CT)
New Boot Goofin’ – Ryan Charles (WY)
Love In My City – UG skywalkin (IN)
Ready To Go – Yam Haus (MN)
The 56 artists across the series span a wide range of performers, from undiscovered talent, up-and-coming new artists, and rising stars to established and legendary icons.
An incredible solo artist, duo, group or band will represent each location and perform a new original song, celebrating the depth and variety of different styles and genres across America."
Since the national broadcaster in my country failed to pick this up, for some unfathomable reason, I have been denied the opportunity to enrich my life with "New Boot Goofin'" so I am depending on you, dear American ACX readers and contributors, to let me know what I am missing out on 😁
Don't forget to mark it in your calendars - the Grand Final on 9th May!
[META] Why am I getting flamed and trolled so hard in my thread "Change My View: Anti-youth ageism is easily in the top 3 most important social problems facing the West. "?
The majority of comments at this point are ad homs or strawmans. I've started just responding with "ad hom." A select few users seem very upset about my thesis and have taken to non-stop flaming and trolling.
Examples: one guy accused me of being a troll even though I have written a whole book on anti-youth ageism, the education system, and brain development. Another guy keeps asking me about relationships between 14 year olds and 40 year olds despite me telling him multiple times that I won't be entertaining obvious scissor statement baiting. Most recently after telling him this he said "Your behavior leads me and basically everyone else who knows of your history to believe you're either a troll or a 16-year old with an unfortunate blend of low self-awareness, high narcissism, and a complete inability to NOT double down on every single half-baked idea that falls out of the Collyer Mansion you call a mind palace. " This was in response to me saying "nah I don't even care about your scissor statement bait. It's a non-issue compared to all the stuff I talk about, kind of like covid mask restrictions vs. ageism" and then he claimed he's not mad lol. One person linked me this image as his reply to my top level https://i.imgur.com/mRjjcE6.jpg . Then he said "A comment section is not a suicide pact that requires us to put up with endless bullshit." No explanation as to why my whole book that I've nourished for 4+ years is "bullshit." One person said, in response to me bringing up corporal punishment of youths, "As they say, and there's people pay good money to be treated like that, and you're complaining about getting it for free? 😁" She also insists on pontificating on what my true age is instead of engaging with my ideas. My favorite is probably "*kindly pats Joey on the head* [proceeds to patronize, no substantial objection to thesis]."
Not to be rude but isn't there rules against this kind of crap here? If I could block them I would, it's a few problem users who have decided to bravely defend the status quo against all manner of fact based criticism using only the most potent forms of irrational shaming and discussion killing. They *really* don't want people talking about ageism and it shows.
So, my question is why is this crazy level of flaming and outgroup booing being tolerated? I think this place would be a lot better without it and it really must be driving away people with ideas outside of the Overton window.
I have a puzzle. Covid infection rates per million at present are about 92 in the U.S., 1,300 in the U.K., 2300 in Germany. Covid death rates per million are 3.2 in the U.S., 1.6 in the U.K., 2.3 in Germany. So infection rates are more than ten times lower in the U.S., death rates somewhat higher. What is going on?
The obvious explanations are that the U.S. is badly undercounting infections or overcounting deaths or that the U.K. and Germany (and various other countries) are badly overcounting infections or undercounting deaths, but it is hard to see how that could explain a more than ten-fold difference. It is even harder to explain why mortality rates in the U.S. would be more than ten times as high. Vaccination rates are a little lower in the U.S., but not hugely, and the age distribution in the U.S. has more young people and fewer old, which should reduce mortality rates.
Anyone have an answer? Are there webbed analyses of the question?
There seems to be a simple solution to the Ukraine invasion, but I haven't been seeing it much discussed.
The EU and USA should offer money, asylum, and a path to citizenship to any Russian soldiers and their families. Many (most?) Russian soldiers don’t want to be fighting, but they don’t have a way out. Rather than spending billions on war, the West could simply drain Putin’s army, while bolstering its workforce with young educated citizens.
There are 150k Russian soldiers deployed in Ukraine, so we are only talking about 500k “political refugees”, which we can easily absorb. This is tiny compared to the current number of Ukrainian refugees that the EU is already having to deal with, and will mostly be young men who will spend the rest of their lives contributing to western economies.
While we’re at it, why not offer asylum to Russians in general? Putin has destroyed the futures of all Russians, and the West is punishing them even more with economic sanctions. Rather than using sanctions as weapons to hurt civilians, we could be using them to brain-drain Russia.
It’s possible that Russia would respond by forbidding emigration, like the USSR, but that would simply return us to the status quo, while sending a really strong message to Russian citizens. Ukraine has already announced cash and asylum to surrendering soldiers, but asylum in the worn-ravaged Ukraine is not carrot enough for most soldiers.
Would love to hear thoughts on how this could go wrong, and ideas on how to signal-boost this approach. I’ve seen a few articles, but they don’t seem to be getting a lot of attention in the zeitgeist.
I have been trying to put up an announcement of the South Bay meetup this Sunday, but either I am doing something wrong or the LessWrong meetup site is broken. I keep getting:
(I'm mostly happy with Biden, so disagree with that part.)
I do keep making this weird analogy between Ukraine and the Canadian convoy.
U underdog against Russia, C underdog against Canada.
U defender, C aggressor.
U supported by media, C unsupported by media
U Financial weight of west in support, C crushed by Canada (some financial, but also raw government power.)
These stories are similar to me in that there's an underdog fighting against a bigger oppressor, (and I've felt myself in full support of the underdog in both cases.) there are then different paths... (I hope Ukraine is not crushed.) And the financial weight of the west is terrifying...
What prefix (if any) can be used to explicitly denote the opposite of 'meta-' as in e.g. meta-analysis, if we're talking about the 1st order, ground level, plain-old analysis? For example if you wanted to say: "John Doe focused their investigation on the meta-analysis without paying due attention to the ___-analysis."
Is anyone at EAGx in Oxford this weekend? If so I would love to meet up, I don’t know anyone there nor any rationalists and/or ACX readers in real life. If so let me know or book a meeting, my name is Gruffydd Gozali on swapcard. Or just reply here.
---------RUSSIAN/UKRAINIAN COMMUNITY MEMBER SUPPORT COORDINATION SUBTHREAD---------
Last 2 weeks we saw a handful of 'Russian army will implode in 3 days' type statements. Have any of these folks explained why they were wrong?
So, prediction markets are currently regulated as gambling in the US (is my understanding). It seems from Scott’s posts that it is not regulated as much in other countries. Is there a good way to legally delineate prediction markets from, say, sports betting?
What do you people think of letting systematically important financial institutions (“too big to fail” banks and the like) go belly-up during a crisis?
I recently re-read Yudkowsky’s famous Japanese central bank post over at Less Wrong and was struck by his willingness to let this happen; probably the first intelligent person I’ve read arguing for it cogently.
Is he right? Do big banks not matter if monetary policy is loose enough? Only financial crisis book I’ve read is Adam Tooze’s Crashed, which is good, but maybe, it seems, might be too orthodox? Where can I learn more about this sort of thinking?
Have the policies of the federal reserve since the 2008 financial crisis caused an asset bubble? If so, please explain in detail the mechanism causing the bubble. If not, then why is the common perception that the Fed has caused an asset bubble? Thank you in advance for taking the time to reply.
I need to pick a BA thesis (philosophy, preferably philosophy of mind) within the next week. I am very bad at this, I tend to vastly exceed scope and cram too much into the page limit, and every student paper so far has gotten the feedback that I could turn this into a thesis easily. But I also start off from a vague area of research and settle on a proper question only in the last stages. I'm not allowed to do that for a BA, I need to register a topic and stick to it.
Anyone interested in making suggestions, asking questions, refining my notes can go to
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1yQgNrcms-liYSlMoaN5tSUoP76DEcXdcW6VgLhjReUw/edit?usp=sharing
What would it take to get an effective Iron Dome/anti-artillery or anti-ballistic missile system up and running for Ukraine, to protect at least Kyiv if not some of their other cities? I was wondering about this earlier in the week, and then I saw a Reuters article that Zelensky was asking Israel for Iron Dome technology (it’s a defensive system that shoots down Palestinian or Hezbollah rockets aimed at their cities, if you don’t know what it is).
Could Israel (with obvious Western help) set up & implement such a system in a few weeks? Months? By 2023? Would it be effective against not just Russian artillery, but also actual Russian missiles? Is this doable at all? (This question is specifically directed at John Schilling, who seems to know about these things, but obviously is open for anyone who knows more than me). Would seem to be a game-changer for Ukraine if so
Is the Beta "Reader" function on substack broken for anyone else? About a week ago or so, it just stopped showing anything at all. This seems like a "me" problem since I can't find any reference to anyone else having this issue, and after a week, if it was more widespread I would expect mention if not a fix.
I've tried different browsers all to no avail. It only shows the first of my subscritptions on the sidebar, and in the main panel, where all the recent publications should be, it's just a bunch of grey boxes.
"The Onion Knight" was amazing. Also the travelogue vignettes last year were hilarious, for example. Extremely worth the subscription cost. (Btw, I often fail to notice that subscribers-only things are subscribers-only until I try to link people to them.)
I think of myself as pretty moderate regarding politics. I can usually see both sides of an issue. I’m an ER physician by trade.
One issue that I cannot find myself at all understanding the “other side” (even after years of intentional pondering) is abortion. It just seems like such a blatant betrayal of the right to life, one of the most valued rights we have. Even hard-core libertarians that I know who believe in almost no laws are pro-life regarding abortion.
I’m all for decreasing unplanned/unwanted pregnancies via easily accessible/free contraceptives and reasonable sex ed.
For those that say the unborn aren’t viable on their own, my question is, does dependency remove personhood? I don’t think it does, as that would pose a huge issue for the disabled (and young kids). Also, for anyone that uses that argument, it would follow that they are strictly against abortion post 24 weeks when the baby is now viable apart from mom, but I find that many of these people aren’t against post 24 week abortions.
For those that want to claim right to abortion in rape cases, I think a debate can be had there, but it should be realized that rape cases are a tiny percentage of abortions (around 1%).
If a physician’s oath is “do no harm”, it seems to me that an abortion violates this. When a pregnant mom comes in with trauma, respiratory distress, or any other disease we work from a mental framework of “two patients, take care of both”.
Around a million abortions are performed each year in the US. This is astounding in and of itself, and when you count years of life lost it’s even more overwhelming. Worldwide, 40-50 million abortions occur per year. These numbers are absolutely wild. COVID has (appropriately) received a ton of press the past two year, but when you compare COVID to abortions in lives lost, and particularly years of life lost, abortion monumentally overshadows COVID numbers.
I’m all for mom to have as much support and as many rights as possible. But just as an adult doesn’t have the right to end the life of another person, so I can’t endorse a mom’s right to terminate a baby in the womb.
Other than medical emergencies that endanger the mother’s life, I do not see an ethical argument for abortion, which violates the basic right to life.
I realize this can be a very charged and emotional subject. I’m not looking to poke the bee hive or be attacked, but to hear rational thoughts on the matter.
I stopped my subscription after the first year because I figured I had done enough Scott supporting. And I needed to conserve money… Now I learn he wrote a post about onion knights?
Hmm!
Soon, I'll be able to go on Erasmus (six month university exchange program). Should I account for the quality/ranking of the university I'm going to, or just pick the nicest country and not worry about quality at all?
I know the exchange program won't be on my resume, so there's little to no potential signaling value to employers.
Ever since the current hostilities with Ukraine began, I saw people wonder why Russians call (some) Ukrainians "Nazi". Some think this is just another case of calling everybody Hitler, and point out how Ukrainian president is of a Jewish descent, and therefore this is a very stupid propaganda.
I think that, while, this IS propaganda, it's not as stupid as it seems to a Western reader, all due to one major misalignment of definitions.
If we look deep enough, almost nobody in the modern world is "Nazi", because you have to subscribe to a specific set of beliefs to be completely aligned with the "original" Nazi party. Most people called Nazi today would probably be kicked out of the Nazi party, or even sent to a camp. But nobody cares about that, because the word came to mean something different since 40's.
In the West, "Nazi" became a word for "someone (usually white) who hates Jews (and maybe also Black People, but if you only hate Blacks and not Jews, then you're probably not a Nazi, but just a garden-variety racist)". This is very understandable - Nazi hated Jews and did a lot to wipe the race from the face of the Earth. But for the West, the definitions stops there.
For Russians, though, things are a bit different. While Hitler harboured little love for Europeans (if I remember correctly, he did think English were Aryan, to some degree?), he had none at all for Slavs. Specifically, his plan was to cull the population of conquered Eastern lands to almost nothing and settle the emptied land with Germans. While his program for western Europe included rounded up Jews and anyone who criticized his policies, his program for USSR was "outright slaughter whole villages just because". For this reason, in Russia the term "Nazi" means "someone who hates Jews and/OR Russians".
This is why the term does not raise any eyebrows in Russia when applied to Ukrainian nationalists. To the western eye, they might seem like common nationalist group who just wants their country to be independent, but in Russia, their hatred of all things Russian and their veneration of World War-era Nazi collaborators squarely places them into "Nazi" category, even though they might not have a single bad thing to say about Jews.
I don't expect or intend this explanation to change anyone's mind about Russia or Ukraine - just to clear up just one specific thing that puzzled some people.
I'm thinking of commissioning/sponsoring one or more "Much More Than You Wanted to Know"-style posts on specific topics. One topic that I had in mind is "MMTYWTK about aerobic exercise and longevity". I'd be happy to pay $1000 for an ACX-quality post here or on the subreddit.
Does anyone have any ideas how to organize this? Maybe Scott would like to personally write it? Or maybe it's better to hold a mini-contest? Or maybe there is an existing platform for requests like that?
So this is an update from my last week prediction of an outcome of the latest Russo-Ukrainian war. Previous prediction is here: https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/hidden-open-thread-2145/comment/5509257?s=r.
New estimates:
10 % on unambiguous Ukrainian victory (unchanged from March 12).
Ukrainian victory is defined as either a) Ukrainian government gaining control of the territory it had not controlled before February 24, regardless of whether it is now directly controlled by Russia (Crimea), or by its proxies (Donetsk and Luhansk "republics”), without loosing any similarly important territory and without conceding that it will stop its attempts to join EU or NATO, or b) Ukrainian government getting official ok from Russia to join EU or NATO without conceding any territory and without loosing de facto control of any territory it had controlled before February 24.
15 % on compromise solution which both sides might plausibly claim as victory (down from 30 % on March 12).
75 % on unambiguous Russian victory (up from 60 % on March 12).
Russian victory is defined as Russia getting something it wants from Ukraine without giving any substantial concessions. Russia wants either a) Ukraine to stop claiming at least some of the territories that were before war claimed by Ukraine but de facto controlled by Russia or its proxies, or b) Russia or its proxies (old or new) to get more Ukrainian territory, de facto recognized by Ukraine in something resembling Minsk ceasefire(s)* or c) some form of guarantee that Ukraine will not join NATO.
Less quantitative prediction:
Still 100 % that there will be broad consensus among reasonable people that postwar living standards in both countries would be substantially higher had they not fought the war. That it is to say, neither side can win in an utilitarian sense. But both sides made it abundantly clear that utilitarian concerns are very much NOT their priority.
Commentary:
Major theme of last week is my increased confidence that Russia is likely to win the war. I do not think that already low chances of outright Ukrainian victory have further decreased, since that would be possible if there is either major shift in Western, or perhaps Chinese, attitude toward the conflict or some unexpected weakness of Russia, or some form of Russian overreach, and I guess neither of those got less likely from last week.
What got less likely is that under continuation of current trends Ukraine will be able to negotiate a non-loosing compromise.
There were some good things happening for Ukrainians in last week. Refugee flow from Ukraine, which is imho bound to cause major problems in the future, at least slowed. Russian armies did not advance anywhere, but imho week ago they were already in such strong position east of the Dnieper that with current trends continuing, Ukrainian defences east of that great river are on track to collapse. And that is half of Ukraine, and it will be very difficult to evict Russian troops by force from that territory once they consolidate their gains.
Other new developments, as well as new information, has been pretty bad for Ukraine.
One thing I got confirmed from my non-English sources is that not only Ukrainian government, but also Ukrainian population, exhibit great message discipline in trying to minimize their losses and other problems. Which means that those are greater than their appear.
It seems that there are already signs of what I predicted last week, that Western solidarity with Ukraine is going to weaken over time. Zelensky got to speak before US and German lawmakers, two probably most important countries for the future development of the conflict (excluding those directly fighting). As far as I know, his appearance before Bundestag yielded him roughly nothing. Regarding his appearance before Congress, main thing that he got was the promise of new military equipment.
How significant is Western military hardware promised to Ukraine?
According to Biden **, military aid agreed to in connection with the Zelensky speech before Congress is worth 800 million dollars, on top of 350 million already agreed to between the start of the war and the speech ***. Well, according to Google, Russian yearly military budget is estimated to be 60 billion dollars. Large part of it goes to nuclear arsenal and other things that are not useful in current war, but still.
800 million for Ukraine would be game-changing if US would send it every week, but since this is in connection with first Zelensky’s rousing speech to Congress I assume that it is closer to a high watermark of US support than to future weekly cheque.
I realize there are big problems with estimating value of military hardware by its price tag, but I’ve got nothing better. It might be the case that Ukrainians are going to receive equipment that is not that expensive to produce for the US, but it will be extremely difficult to counter for Russians due to their (very real) technological backwardness. Or US equipment might be worth less to Ukrainians because they’ll have problems with learning how to operate it efficiently. I assume this roughly cancels out.
Meanwhile EU plan to send another 500 million euro (roughly 550 million dollars) of military aid to Ukraine has been delayed in bureaucracy (“It has now emerged that Germany needs to get approval from the Bundestag’s budget committee at home, which is unlikely to happen until next week.”**** ). Probably this will be approved eventually, but political will to do substantially more just isn’t here.
On sanctions and economic help for Ukraine, big non-news is that no major proposals for economic help were announced and no new important sanctions on Russia were approved.
EU clearly indicated that it is not going to stop paying for Russian oil and gas, for now. India is considering it will buy Russian oil at a discount and in connection with that is mulling some scheme how to get around US sanctions. Perhaps nothing will come from this, but it fits my prediction from previous week that sanctions will be eroded over time.
Russian currency, which previously traded for over 50 % below its already historically bad prewar exchange rate to dollar, now rebounded somewhat and is now trading within 25 – 50 % lower than prewar. This is imho firmly “not great, not terrible territory” as opposed to “imminent danger of total meltdown”. For comparison, day after the Brexit referendum, pound has fallen by 12 % against the dollar, and it never fully rebounded, yet. Exchange rate is very imperfect proxy for the state of the Russian economy, but I don’t know about anything better. Suggestions are welcome.
Key question is imho the strength of the Russian antiwar movement, but that is difficult to assess. My impression is that the war (which Russians are rather hilariously not allowed to call “a war”, but only “special military operation” under severe criminal penalties) is not popular in Russia. But for now, I assume that the antiwar movement, while dangerous for the government and capable of individual brave acts, as demonstrated e.g. by Marina Ovsyannikova, will not be sufficiently strong to force the end of the war at least for months, absent some unexpected military or economic setback for Putin.
*Minsk ceasefire or ceasefires (first agreement did not work, it was amended by second and since then it worked somewhat better) constituted, among other things, de facto recognition by Ukraine that Russia and its proxies will control some territory claimed by Ukraine for some time. In exchange Russia stopped trying to conquer more Ukrainian territory. Until February 24 of this year, that is.
** https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/speeches-remarks/2022/03/16/remarks-by-president-biden-on-the-assistance-the-united-states-is-providing-to-ukraine/
*** Also btw. on top of 650 milion of aid sent to Ukraine in 2021.
**** https://www.politico.eu/newsletter/brussels-playbook/eu-mulls-further-action-draghi-plays-host-in-rome-agriculture-row-brewing/
I've been keeping up with the steady stream of "COVID cause measurable decreases in cognition for a (larger percentage/majority, it varies) of people infected, even if they have mild/no symptoms".
They keep coming out but not getting talked about; and some of theme seem pretty big/legit.
Is this because they aren't big and legit, or is it a climate change style thing where people don't want it to be real so they just don't think about it?
A Harvard Business Review reports that 'study after study puts the failure rate of mergers and acquisitions somewhere between 70% and 90%' (https://hbr.org/2011/03/the-big-idea-the-new-ma-playbook).
Has anyone seen studies citing a failure rate of one country invading another country? It seems like this might help forecasters take the outside view of Russia-Ukraine.
I posted this in a previous open thread and have been thinking about it since. The right search terms continue to escape me.
It seems to me that people who believe in utilitarian ethics should promote a high birth rate. Do they? Obviously more full lives lived means tons more utility to be had. I have to assume that on average, even in challenging situations life (vs never having existed) is massively net positive. A higher birth rate would have a positive multiplier effect on any other human-focused effective altruist efforts.
Anyone else here applying to YCombinator, especially as a bio company? If so, wanna compare/mutually criticize applications?
Suppose we end up in the world where you can’t make any credible public prediction without being willing to bet on it (either directly with a counterparty or through prediction markets). If you say something and aren’t willing to bet, this is considered silly.
What happens to people with gambling addictions? Do they get a kind of special social pass where it’s not considered sketchy to refuse to bet?
So far there’s a relatively small subculture of people who seem to make epistemic bets with each other, but has anyone in this subculture had to deal with problem gambling?
Forgive me if this question is in poor taste, but will postwar Ukraine present a good real estate investment opportunity? For instance, could I, a foreigner, buy a nice house in Kiev for cheap and rent it out for a healthy profit?
What about other investment opportunities that will be unusually profitable thanks to the effect of the war?
I paid for a subscription so I could read “The Onion Knight”. I was not disappointed.
Scott, your brilliance is most apparent and best expressed in creative fiction.
Why are the commenters on Marginal Revolution so bad?
The writing on MR is often nuanced or at least attempts to be. But the commenters are on the level of reactionary right wing Facebook commenters but with better vocabulary. Why?
I now have a chapter draft on my calculations of land gained and lost through climate change. The conclusion, if correct, is pretty dramatic, a massive increase in the amount of land usable by humans. It's a Fermi calculation, so very approximate, and I'm ignoring the question of how useful the land is — soil quality and the like. I'm just asking how much land changes from too cold for human use to a reasonable temperature for human use, from a reasonable temperature to too high, and from dry to flooded due to SLR.
I'm mostly interested in whether there are any large mistakes in my calculations that I have missed. Obviously my other reason for putting it up is that if I haven't made any mistakes it implies a large positive effect that almost nobody mentions, hence a reason both to revise down estimates of net cost of climate change and to revise down one's confidence in the reliability of the sources of information your estimates are based on if those sources didn't mention it.
http://www.daviddfriedman.com/Ideas%20I/Climate/Land%20Gained%20and%20Lost.pdf
Is there a reason the US (and other NATO countries like Slovakia or Romania who also supposedly have good anti-air weapons systems) are not giving Ukraine better anti-air weapons than stingers? I am no military expert but from what I gather stingers are great against helicopters but terrible against high altitude bombers.
I don't see a reason to conserve these weapons, after all their main use is to deter the Russian army (there are no other realistic threats that could hit European NATO member states with modern military-grade equipment) and if those weapons can actually destroy that threat (the Russian fleet) then that is the one thing better than deterrence. Particularly if the destroying can be outsourced to very motivated and willing Ukrainians.
It also seems the cheaper alternative - if the Ukrainians defeat Russia, the West is realistically going to subsidize Ukraine's reconstruction heavily. The quicker the Ukrainians win, the less damage done and the lower the costs will be (in money and lives). If they lose, the West will have to deal with an even larger refugee crisis and a need to arm themselves even more.
The only reason not to do this seems the fear that Putin might escalate further and declare war on NATO. I am not sure it is likely that Putin would be "OK" (i.e. not convincingly threatening NATO with a war) with us sending Ukraine stingers and javelins but not with us sending them specific anti-bomber weaponry...
On the subject of DST, or rather time changes. Am I the only person who believes the time changes are a good thing? There are clearly problems with year long DST (very late sunrises), but conversely year long standard time ends the late summer evenings. There are heated discussions online about which is the preferred option, with nobody compromising on the obvious solution which would allow us to have late sunset in summer and reasonable sunrises in winter: that is retaining the change. It’s just assumed that the time change is a relic.
(My preference is a 3 month winter time).
Subtle ACX callout in the latest Galeev twitter thread on the Russo-Ukraine crisis: https://twitter.com/kamilkazani/status/1505922954718113798
Change My View: Anti-youth ageism is easily in the top 3 most important social problems facing the West. Personally I can't see how anything other than the wars waged by the US gov and demographic change is more important to address than ageism.
Ageism is so bad because it is enforced by the State. 17 year olds are the most oppressed group in the West. Not only is ageism everywhere, permeating every space, infesting every mind, even those of the oppressed — this oppression is still enforced by the State. Imagine if we still had forced racial segregation.
Teenagers face whippings and beatings for disobedience, and if not that arbitrary confinement. It is perfectly legal across the US for a parent to “spank” their teenage property, with belts, paddles, straps, or whatever else, just as slaves have been treated throughout history. Paddling is still practiced in schools in 19 US states. Elsewhere teens are imprisoned without due process by parents and schools when they are “grounded” or assigned “detention.” Hollywood has made light of these labels, but they are serious civil rights violations, and though force is generally not used to coerce cooperation out of victims, those who fight back against said punishments are often sent to juvenile detention, or worse.
Unlucky, revolutionary teens are sent to camps, where they are deprived of an education and put to punitive labor. Starvation is a common punishment for teen victims in these camps. Collectively, this sadistic gulag-archipelago is known as the “Troubled Teen Industry,” or TTI for short. Camps are often located in the wilderness, in polities such as Utah, Jamaica, and Costa Rica. Bounty-hunters are often hired to “transport” victims to these places.
Teens are considered property under US (and, more generally, Western) law. A teenager has no medical rights; if a teen does not want a vaccine, but his parents do want him to have it, he can be restrained and inoculated against his will. If a teen does want a vaccine, but his parents do not want him to have it, he is not allowed to receive it. In medicine, the need for a patient to agree with a procedure is called assent. The legal requirement for a responsible party to sign off on a procedure is called consent. Teens are neither afforded assent (the right to veto a procedure), nor consent (the right to sign off on a procedure).
“Runaway” teens are hunted down and captured like slaves. Imagine if marital vows were still literal and runaway wives could be tracked down and returned to their husbands. Wouldn’t that be awful? This is worse, because teens never entered an agreement for that to happen in the first place.
And let's not mention the high school, which is 97.8% a waste of time, and therefore 97.8% exploitation, according to my research.
All of this despite the fact that the brain is fully mature at the end of puberty (14-16), and the fact that before that, at the age of 12 or 13, many teen demographics are more measurably mature than many "adult" demographics, per both real outcomes and lab tests.
There is an incredibly urgent need to abolish this oppression in the interests of justice. The high school must be abolished and replaced with a traditional system where 20% go on to college-level education after 8th grade and the other 80% begin hands-on internships and apprenticeships. To make way for this, ownership-by-parents must be abolished. Starting by the age of 13, youths must have medical autonomy, the ability to both initiate and veto any procedure. The punishment camps must be abolished and those responsible must be prosecuted. Working and traveling laws must be adjusted to make way for the new education system.
There is already welfare for youths who are abandoned by their families, but teens must live in restrictive group homes which reproduce the oppressive parental-ownership system in order to receive it. These homes should be abolished, and the welfare should be converted to cash. In accordance with the new education system and the science of brain development, the new age of majority should be 15. Those 13 and up who are maturely pursuing their education or who have graduated should be granted minor status, as opposed to the pupil status of children, and should be allowed to proactively divorce bad parents, sign leases, and open bank accounts.
I'm thinking about using Obsidian to keep track of the material in my qi gong classes. Do people have favorite note-taking systems? I like the idea of making it easy to keep notes associated, but I'm concerned about having a way to sort through too many associations.
And now for something political...
I've heard a number of people argue that Putin wouldn't have invaded Ukraine if Trump were POTUS because Trump is a loose cannon and Putin would have feared him too much.
What I find interesting about that argument is that Trump supporters tended to argue that Trump was much less likely to get the US involved in foreign wars than a Democrat would.
Is there a reasonable way to square the circle and argue consistently that if Trump were still POTUS instead of Biden:
1) Putin would have been less likely to invade Ukraine
AND
2) The US would have been less likely to have involved itself in a war
?
I'd like to thank Scott for his influence on me.
I've been reading Scott since 2013-2014 and have commented both in the old Slate Star Codex threads, and over on the SCC reddit and The Motte under various names.
If it weren't for Scott's incredible output I wouldn't be anywhere near the writer or thinker I am today, and if it weren't for the incredible communities he's built I almost certainly wouldn't have had the occasion to write nearly as much as I have.
Thank you.
I started a substack recently and the first content up are some effort posts from TheMotte.
This is the Piece that won post of the year 2019:
https://anarchonomicon.substack.com/p/alex-jones-wordsmith?r=1b6v2r&s=w&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web
a fitting piece to link since it was Scott's humour writing and long takes that inspired me to do a Capstone pseudo-thesis, and write a far FAR too rigorous look at the rhetoric of Homeric Poetry, and how Alex Jones seemingly replicates them.
So once again thankyou Scott and thankyou everyone. The wider SCC community has been an incredible addition to my life. I can't imagine the past decade as anything but immensely poorer without your influence. thankyou.
Do you do Russian-to-English translation, have time for quick-turnaround volunteer work, and wish to support Navalny & his team? Their excellent Youtube channel needs help with its English subtitles (which aren't excellent at all & are sometimes nonexistent, especially on their longer, more analytical videos.) I wish I spoke Russian, I'd contact them and offer, but alas I only do French-to-English.
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC7Elc-kLydl-NAV4g204pDQ
I keep arguing here that Literature offers the best insights into human psychology, yet the field of psychology mostly ignores it because it has its ow literature.
Of course Jung took literature seriously, perhaps too seriously. Not sure about Freud.
I'm sure there are plenty of individual psychologists who are well read and have learned a lot about psychology from reading literature. That said, it still seems like Western Literature is a gold mine of psychological wisdom yet to be mined by the psychologists.
Am I wrong? Have they mined it?
Hey Scott, do you any interest in taking a look at the Pfizer COVID vaccine trial data that has been released?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FFIs6LsV0a4&ab_channel=SuperEyepatchWolf
A description of the huge and varied fan ecosystem that developed around a small but well-written game called Undertale.
I think we're living in an era of remarkable creativity which doesn't get noticed as much as it should be because a lot of it is created in gaming and in informal channels.
They said it would never happen. They said it could never happen. They said it should never happen.
But it happened!
The American Song Contest!
https://eurovision.tv/story/the-american-song-contest-is-about-to-begin
"YESTERDAY, 16:15 CET
The 'American Song Contest' will premiere later today (Monday 21 March, 2022) with a two-hour primetime extravaganza on NBC in the States. The Grand Final will air on Monday 9 May - one day before the Eurovision Song Contest First Semi-Final.
Atlantic Records has released the first instalment of the original songs featured on NBC’s American Song Contest. Tonight, in the premiere episode the first 11 artists will perform their original songs in front of hosts Kelly Clarkson and Snoop Dogg, a live studio audience and millions of viewers across America. The 11 songs featured on tonight’s episode are available to enjoy now.
Artists featured on the first episode:
Wonderland – AleXa (OK)
Wonder – Alisabeth Von Presley (IA)
LOKO – Christian Pagán (PR)
Held On Too Long – Hueston (RI)
Feel Your Love – Jake’O (WI)
Never Like This – Kelsey Lamb (AR)
Fire – Keyone Starr (MS)
Beautiful World – Michael Bolton (CT)
New Boot Goofin’ – Ryan Charles (WY)
Love In My City – UG skywalkin (IN)
Ready To Go – Yam Haus (MN)
The 56 artists across the series span a wide range of performers, from undiscovered talent, up-and-coming new artists, and rising stars to established and legendary icons.
An incredible solo artist, duo, group or band will represent each location and perform a new original song, celebrating the depth and variety of different styles and genres across America."
Since the national broadcaster in my country failed to pick this up, for some unfathomable reason, I have been denied the opportunity to enrich my life with "New Boot Goofin'" so I am depending on you, dear American ACX readers and contributors, to let me know what I am missing out on 😁
Don't forget to mark it in your calendars - the Grand Final on 9th May!
[META] Why am I getting flamed and trolled so hard in my thread "Change My View: Anti-youth ageism is easily in the top 3 most important social problems facing the West. "?
The majority of comments at this point are ad homs or strawmans. I've started just responding with "ad hom." A select few users seem very upset about my thesis and have taken to non-stop flaming and trolling.
Examples: one guy accused me of being a troll even though I have written a whole book on anti-youth ageism, the education system, and brain development. Another guy keeps asking me about relationships between 14 year olds and 40 year olds despite me telling him multiple times that I won't be entertaining obvious scissor statement baiting. Most recently after telling him this he said "Your behavior leads me and basically everyone else who knows of your history to believe you're either a troll or a 16-year old with an unfortunate blend of low self-awareness, high narcissism, and a complete inability to NOT double down on every single half-baked idea that falls out of the Collyer Mansion you call a mind palace. " This was in response to me saying "nah I don't even care about your scissor statement bait. It's a non-issue compared to all the stuff I talk about, kind of like covid mask restrictions vs. ageism" and then he claimed he's not mad lol. One person linked me this image as his reply to my top level https://i.imgur.com/mRjjcE6.jpg . Then he said "A comment section is not a suicide pact that requires us to put up with endless bullshit." No explanation as to why my whole book that I've nourished for 4+ years is "bullshit." One person said, in response to me bringing up corporal punishment of youths, "As they say, and there's people pay good money to be treated like that, and you're complaining about getting it for free? 😁" She also insists on pontificating on what my true age is instead of engaging with my ideas. My favorite is probably "*kindly pats Joey on the head* [proceeds to patronize, no substantial objection to thesis]."
Not to be rude but isn't there rules against this kind of crap here? If I could block them I would, it's a few problem users who have decided to bravely defend the status quo against all manner of fact based criticism using only the most potent forms of irrational shaming and discussion killing. They *really* don't want people talking about ageism and it shows.
So, my question is why is this crazy level of flaming and outgroup booing being tolerated? I think this place would be a lot better without it and it really must be driving away people with ideas outside of the Overton window.
I have a puzzle. Covid infection rates per million at present are about 92 in the U.S., 1,300 in the U.K., 2300 in Germany. Covid death rates per million are 3.2 in the U.S., 1.6 in the U.K., 2.3 in Germany. So infection rates are more than ten times lower in the U.S., death rates somewhat higher. What is going on?
The obvious explanations are that the U.S. is badly undercounting infections or overcounting deaths or that the U.K. and Germany (and various other countries) are badly overcounting infections or undercounting deaths, but it is hard to see how that could explain a more than ten-fold difference. It is even harder to explain why mortality rates in the U.S. would be more than ten times as high. Vaccination rates are a little lower in the U.S., but not hugely, and the age distribution in the U.S. has more young people and fewer old, which should reduce mortality rates.
Anyone have an answer? Are there webbed analyses of the question?
There seems to be a simple solution to the Ukraine invasion, but I haven't been seeing it much discussed.
The EU and USA should offer money, asylum, and a path to citizenship to any Russian soldiers and their families. Many (most?) Russian soldiers don’t want to be fighting, but they don’t have a way out. Rather than spending billions on war, the West could simply drain Putin’s army, while bolstering its workforce with young educated citizens.
There are 150k Russian soldiers deployed in Ukraine, so we are only talking about 500k “political refugees”, which we can easily absorb. This is tiny compared to the current number of Ukrainian refugees that the EU is already having to deal with, and will mostly be young men who will spend the rest of their lives contributing to western economies.
While we’re at it, why not offer asylum to Russians in general? Putin has destroyed the futures of all Russians, and the West is punishing them even more with economic sanctions. Rather than using sanctions as weapons to hurt civilians, we could be using them to brain-drain Russia.
It’s possible that Russia would respond by forbidding emigration, like the USSR, but that would simply return us to the status quo, while sending a really strong message to Russian citizens. Ukraine has already announced cash and asylum to surrendering soldiers, but asylum in the worn-ravaged Ukraine is not carrot enough for most soldiers.
Would love to hear thoughts on how this could go wrong, and ideas on how to signal-boost this approach. I’ve seen a few articles, but they don’t seem to be getting a lot of attention in the zeitgeist.
I have been trying to put up an announcement of the South Bay meetup this Sunday, but either I am doing something wrong or the LessWrong meetup site is broken. I keep getting:
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I liked this Bari Weiss piece on Ukraine, US, world. https://bariweiss.substack.com/p/things-worth-fighting-for?s=r
(I'm mostly happy with Biden, so disagree with that part.)
I do keep making this weird analogy between Ukraine and the Canadian convoy.
U underdog against Russia, C underdog against Canada.
U defender, C aggressor.
U supported by media, C unsupported by media
U Financial weight of west in support, C crushed by Canada (some financial, but also raw government power.)
These stories are similar to me in that there's an underdog fighting against a bigger oppressor, (and I've felt myself in full support of the underdog in both cases.) there are then different paths... (I hope Ukraine is not crushed.) And the financial weight of the west is terrifying...
What prefix (if any) can be used to explicitly denote the opposite of 'meta-' as in e.g. meta-analysis, if we're talking about the 1st order, ground level, plain-old analysis? For example if you wanted to say: "John Doe focused their investigation on the meta-analysis without paying due attention to the ___-analysis."
Is anyone at EAGx in Oxford this weekend? If so I would love to meet up, I don’t know anyone there nor any rationalists and/or ACX readers in real life. If so let me know or book a meeting, my name is Gruffydd Gozali on swapcard. Or just reply here.
This would be in Austria, so easier with work permits: https://jobs.redbull.com/de-de/elsbethen-data-excellence-specialist-140946-057130?lang=en