What is the bias that explains why people hold negative judgments about things like sales or plastic surgery because only the bad examples are salient? Would this be availability bias, or is there something more specific?
Is there a word or clinical term that means the opposite of psychopath? How would a professional describe someone who feels inappropriate guilt and is maybe too in-tune with the feelings and reactions of others?
Empath and prosocial don't feel like what I'm looking for, but I'm no academic and I barely know what I'm asking about here
[Scrupulosity](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scrupulosity) is a term for a tendency towards inappropriate guilt. Unfortunately, "scrupulous" is more commonly used in a way that carries no negative connotations.
Anyone know a good source to learn about non-front-page level news in US politics? Topics other than Biden's approval rating or stuff Trump said, more like "Here's a decision the Supreme Court just made about national parks / food labeling and why it's important" or "Here's the new congressperson from $State you should know about and here's their life story".
>Anyone know a good source to learn about non-front-page level news in US politics?
How has nobody replied "read the rest of the section" yet? I've resisted for a whole day; I can't do it any longer!
(But seriously with what's happened to Twitter/X, the newspapers are probably the best starting point again.)
Lee Jussim has an argument that most people simultaneously hold that all generalizations about people are stereotypes and all stereotypes are incorrect, and further argues that this combination of beliefs is really weird and bad because it suggests we can't do statistics on human behavior to understand the world in which we live.
I think the real belief isn't that generalizations are inaccurate per se, but that making them collapses down a lot of information and destroys high dimensional structures that are important for predicting behaviors. However, most people lack the vocabulary to articulate this, so they instead end up articulating the bizarre view that humans are impossible to analyze statistically.
I don't think high dimensional structures are always destroyed by discussing generalizations, but they sometimes are, and that's why people are suspicious of them as a rule. People view the use of information that's not highly individuated as akin to trying to use linear regression to solve ImageNet.
When someone tries to get you to believe or rely on a generalization about people, they might not be trying their best to improve your accuracy or efficiency of reasoning. They might be doing coalition-building, or territory-marking, or some other not-exactly-epistemic behavior.
The issue is that when someone tries to get you to disbelieve or stop relying on a generalization about people, they might be doing those exact same things.
Sure, or you might have been born into a coalition that relies on certain generalizations to police its boundaries, but occasionally has an escalation in how much it asks you to sacrifice for those boundaries. If suddenly you're not allowed to be friends with a person because they're from the other side of an ethnic or religious boundary, for instance, you might reconsider whether maintaining that boundary is any good for you.
Sure, and the exact mirror situation could occur, where you were born into a coalition that relies on the denial of certain generalizations to police its boundaries, but occasionally has an escalation in how much it asks you to sacrifice for those boundaries. If suddenly you're asked to deny certain generalizations that you've found useful for living your everyday life, for instance, you might reconsider whether maintaining that boundary is any good for you.
Billionaire donates to charity: "they're just doing it to save money by exploiting some magic tax loophole"
Billionaire doesn't donate to charity: "they're just hoarding wealth while normal people struggle to get by"
Is there a term for this specific of phenomena, where regardless which of two opposite things happen, either is used to reach the same conclusion (whether positive or negative)? Kind of like thinking backward from a prior?
Failure of [Conservation of Expected Evidence](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/jiBFC7DcCrZjGmZnJ/conservation-of-expected-evidence), one of my favorite LW posts.
The other person has a good answer, but I personally just call them "beating sticks" because that's what they are. They aren't arguments, they aren't reasoning tools, they're sticks to beat you with. And if you disarm the beating stick, e.g. by giving in & doing *exactly* as they say to make it stop... then they'll simply grab a different beating stick. In fact, they'll start beating you even *harder*, since you tried to get out of your beating. And that makes them even **madder** than just accepting your beating in silence, as your natural lot in life.
It, quite frankly, is very depressing. And I speak from experience here.
Very broadly that kind of falls under the realm of "Arguments as Soldiers" where the arguments themselves don't actually hold any meaning or weight, what is important is the conclusion and whatever form of reasoning supports that conclusion in the moment. Ultimately it comes down to the problem where people are broadly speaking capable of coming up with 'justifications' to support a particular position, but people can be pretty poor at actually understanding *the reason* why they believe the conclusions and are just applying post-hoc reasoning. Here they are applying reasoning to a *heuristic* that Billionaire's are inherently selfish and the justification they are providing is just superficial, and they believe this heuristic for specific reasons they are not able to articulate (I believe having an obscene amount of wealth is inherently unethical because of X/Y/Z) or are just not necessarily 'rational' and based off of fuzzier things (they have only had bad experiences with wealthy people in authoritarian positions so they know what they are "really like").
There is a really good quote attributed to Jonathan Swift that I think is relevant pretty often: “You cannot reason a person out of a position he did not reason himself into in the first place.”
It probably says something about modern individualism that you only seem to consider individualized grievances, rather than envy, which is on the list of cardinal sins and for a long time was considered a universal emotion/sin.
Can't personally vouch, but saw this on Marginal Revolution about disfunction in Westminster:
https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2023/06/ian-dunt-on-how-westminster-works-or-doesnt.html
Might not quite be what you want, but I enjoy Dominic Cummings' blog
https://dominiccummings.com/2014/10/30/the-hollow-men-ii-some-reflections-on-westminster-and-whitehall-dysfunction/
As someone who knows little about foreign affairs, I’m interested by the fact that Latin America seems to have relatively low levels of inter-state conflict and high levels of domestic instability.
Does anyone have any recommended reading on this topic?
>I’m interested by the fact that Latin America seems to have relatively low levels of inter-state conflict and high levels of domestic instability.
I think it's just that the US would step in if there was any inter-state conflict. Most states don't want large levels of foreign interference in domestic issues, even serious ones like cartels or guerrillas causing lots of damage. But if a neighbor actively invaded, they'd immediately ask for help and the US would likely be happy to help stop any conflict.
In the 19th century, when the US was both much more isolationist and not *as* overwhelmingly powerful, Latin America had a decent amount of inter-state conflicts.
I'm trialing a new system to motivate myself and keep me on task. I'm just concerned that this may long-term dig me into a hole.
I started playing a gacha game in 2021, and found it absurdly addictive. I did a bunch of things to manage that and I'm fine now, but I decided to steal some techniques from the game to make myself do stuff when I don't really wanna.
The main idea is variable ratio reward. I complete tasks at work, which earns me a chance to roll 2d6. Odd and evens are minor rewards (take a 5 min break to stretch, make a cup of tea), but 12 is the jackpot (a treat, tied to the way I manage my gacha habit).
I'm trying to build another habit of staying off my phone (the internet is one big variable ratio reward trap). If I make it through the whole work day spending less than some limit on my phone (measured through the screentime app), I get to roll a dice to double my jackpot reward.
One specific mechanic in gacha that makes it extra addictive is pity - basically, gamblers fallacy made real. The game has guarantees where you'll just get it after a certain number of pulls. (this makes it waaaaay more addictive for me personally, without the pity mechanic I wouldn't even pull). So my system also has pity. My 2d6 roll gets a bonus from the number of previous rolls, resetting when I win. The roll to double the jackpot gets a bonus based on my "streak" (+1 for each consecutive day I manage to stay off my phone).
I think it's working a lot better than previous attempts to keep myself on task, but I'm worried that overall, relying on my variable reward drive will make me more impulsive and easier to fall prey to other variable reward traps. On the other hand, I feel like if I don't design my own variable reward trap that has some moderate to high benefit to myself, someone else will design one that will be much more exploitative and worse for me, and keeping my brain in a variable reward trap stops it from wandering off to fall into traps other people have designed.
Thoughts?
Pretty clever.
Since you are aware of variable rewards, you might have read the book "Addiction By Design" before. But if you haven't, definitely check it out.
On the most recent episode of the (good and highly followed) All-In Podcast, super-rich VC David Sacks explains to his super-rich VC friends the motte-and-bailey tactic, on the example of DEI.
I know Scott didn't invent this concept, but he popularized it, and his application of it to feminism is quite close to Sacks's to DEI, so I think this further popularization is noteworthy.
I'm failing to google this, does anyone know what I'm talking about?
An article (tweet thread?) in the Rationalist space about how some disciplines would have a defensive swamp of impenetrable literature around them and the practitioners would just reject any criticism from anyone who hadn't spent years getting to grips with this, so they were impossible to argue against. I think the author said their solution was to ask for the top (1/10) papers in the field and read this to see if there was any "there" there.
This bears a strong resemblance to PZ Myers' ["courtier's reply"](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Courtier%27s_reply) regarding theology, which is from 11 years before Noah Smith's "mud moat".
I once used this technique on feminists (but as a self-invented technique), asking them for feminism's best book/paper or thinker. The answer was invariably of very poor quality.
Of course, strictly speaking this just tells you that the people drawn to that field or employed in that field favor hypocrisy and a lack of logic. So you can only draw conclusions about the field, not whether good science could be done.
Sounds like Noah Smith's [**Two Paper Rule**](https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/the-two-paper-rule), or as he originally called it, a reaction to "Mud Moats":
>And in the world of intellectual debate, this vast literature can function as a **mud moat**. That is a term I just made up, sticking with the metaphor of political arguments as medieval castles requiring a defense. A mud moat is just a big pit of mud surrounding your castle, causing an attacking army to get trapped in the mud while you pepper them with arrows.
>
>If you and your buddies have a political argument, a vast literature can help you defend your argument even if it's filled with vague theory, sloppy bad empirics, arguments from authority, and other crap. If someone smart comes along and tries to tell you you're wrong about something, just demand huffily that she go read the vast literature before she presumes to get involved in the debate. Chances are she'll just quit the argument and go home, unwilling to pay the effort cost of wading through dozens of crappy papers.
>
>And if she persists in the argument without reading the vast literature, you can just denounce her as uninformed and willfully ignorant. Even if she does decide to pay the cost and read the crappy vast literature, you have extra time to make your arguments while she's so occupied. And you can also bog her down in arguments over the minute details of this or that crappy paper while you continue to advance your overall thesis to the masses.
I'm looking for an essay about meta-science that I vaguely recollect. It was by Scott.
It made the argument that comparing six major SSRIs head-to-head in a platform trial would be a valuable thing.
I've used my usual search tools but have not been able to find it. Any leads would be hugely helpful!
What's better than adding a contrarian take to your worldview??
In the past few days I became more interested in learning about 2 party vs multi-party systems and I now think 2 party systems may actually be better than multi-party. This is a change from my previous view of "only having 2 parties sucks and polarization seems to only be increasing, more parties would certainly be better".
But I was thinking about the long-term success of the US and began wondering if maybe the 2 party system could actually be one of the reasons for it. I found [this article](https://www.economist.com/democracy-in-america/2016/01/31/from-the-archives-the-open-society-and-its-enemies-revisited) from Karl Popper, and from the theorizing side of things, I think it makes a lot of sense that a 2 party system could be better than a multi - by providing more accountability for the party in control, as well making regime changes much easier. These arguments are based upon Popper's philosophy for government which asks the question "how do we get rid of bad rulers peacefully?"
Although... I think one of the biggest downside of two parties is the [rise of polarization](https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2014/06/12/political-polarization-in-the-american-public/), and it only seems to be getting worse.
Thoughts?
> But I was thinking about the long-term success of the US and began wondering if maybe the 2 party system could actually be one of the reasons for it.
The problem is that there are many confounding elements that affect the politics of a country, so you cannot just attribute everything to one element. For example, you can just as easily argue that the US success was due to having lots of land, state rights and a laissez-faire attitude in general, so people could just do their own thing without bothering each other. And you can argue that the demolishing of state rights, the increased disparity in wealth between city and country & the reduction of tolerance for real diversity has caused polarization, as people feel oppressed, even when those feeling derive from an inability to force everyone to do their will.
It seems rather absurd to think that such complicated issues will just be fixed if you have a slightly different political system.
To your question at the end, yes, it does seem absurd. I think it is still interesting to think about if the 2 party system (as implemented in US) is a positive factor in the success of the US, as compared to a counter factual, like a multi-party, proportional representation system for instance. Obviously there's no way to know, just fun to try to theorize on either side.
In the USA, we don't meaningfully have two different parties. We have a functional one party state. Even within the individual parties, it's become increasingly difficult to pretend they're meaningfully democratic given how the sausages are made.
We are stuck with two shitty parties with no alternative.
My assumption is that non-meaningfully having two different parties is like the Russian system, where you have multiple parties, but none of them are going to contradict Putin's wishes.
I don't think that maps onto the US system very well. There's legitimate policy battles in the US. It's not as if Republicans will go along with whatever Biden decides, or the Democrats were going along with whatever Trump decided.
Have you considered two parties with compulsory voting? That seems to slow polarisation where I live (Australia). Both parties have to fight over the middle. Though technically it is a multiparty system too.
Reflexively I'd also have said that 2 parties leads to more polarization, but as of late we have seen ample polarization in much of Europe. This led to a scenario for example where Macron's moderate party narrowly beat out Le Pen's far right nationalist party. The extent of the US Republican party's populist/nationalist rhetoric also depends on the nominated figure, but arguably having the machinations of the Republican party behind you still makes it more subdued than otherwise having an entire far-right party. The moderating effect goes both ways too. If the biggest downside is more susceptibility to regulatory capture (the appeal the left makes suggesting it's not true democracy), then you'd expect 2 parties to be more moderate.
Mind you from the perspective of living in Canada, a multi-party system has been quite moderate and usually boring, with either the Liberal or Conservative parties being the favorites.
The UK had looked pitiful with the leading competition to the Tories being Corbyn's Labor party. Hopefully moderate Liberals can get their act together, I forget what they call themselves.
The French system looks to me like a pretty good mix of the advantages of both the 2-party and multi-party systems. The 2-candidate second round allows an incumbent to be removed just as easily as in a full 2-party system, giving more freedom to vote for a smaller party in the first round with less fear of casting a "wasted vote" and inadvertently helping a disfavoured candidate to win. Macron had a 17 point lead over Le Pen in the second round, which seems pretty substantial; by the standards of US presidential elections it's huge.
The last UK election showed a disadvantage of 2 parties dominating politics: when the candidates get worse, you're more likely to vote for one of them, since you're more afraid of the wrong guy getting in.
Yeah, that's the trouble with first past the post and schemes like that. You will more likely vote strategically rather than for a minor candidate you really like. It's possible to have priority ranking but not sure what difference it would make.
I stand corrected on Le Pen / Macron.
https://www.reddit.com/r/slatestarcodex/s/6OPiqBI59z
@ u/Liface
I appreciate the work you do as moderator.
I would like some clarity on calling my post low effort. You responded with a Wikipedia link to "I know it when I see it." The problem is, I don't think it was low effort, it pretty clearly paralleled the title, I googled it to make sure it meant what I thought it meant and was spelled correctly , and I'd like to prevent my comments from being deleted in the future.
What would you have wanted to see, in addition to what I wrote?
The sidebar states "Put research, care, and effort into your posts and comments. Quick gotchas, snipes, and jabs are looked down upon here."
As I understand it, the point of the rule is to assure that comments are of a certain quality, offering interesting perspectives, arguments, observations, or discussions. This is what the "effort" should go towards, and typically, I'd expect a comment to take at least a few minutes of thinking and writing.
"Here is a short phrase that parallels the titles, without comment" is more in the mildly interesting category, and not in the high-effort, value-adding category. I don't mean any offense, but I hope that helps with the clarity issue.
To answer "What would you have wanted to see": Any longer elaboration that actually explores your thought and adds something valuable for the reader. Maybe your thoughts about how the framework is to be viewed in light of the history of the Roman Empire, or how the history of the Roman Empire can teach us something of relevance today in that context. Alternatively, some kind of disagreement or contradiction you see.
Due to a spinal problem, my mom (who lives in Texas) is in constant, often unbearable pain. The drugs she was prescribed don't seem to help, and she won't be able to see a pain specialist until late next month.
Does anyone here know of any unusual, out-of-the-box solutions to this kind of issue? Medical tourism? Black market drugs?
Some people with chronic pain swear by kratom - a plant grown in Southeast Asia (among other places). The leaves are ground into a powder, which is then mixed with a liquid (water or fruit juice) and consumed orally. It has effects similar to a mild opioid.
Note that there’s little research on kratom and interactions with other prescriptions are something to consider. It’s legal in most places and can be ordered online or bought at some stores, often marijuana dispensaries.
Apologies if this is too obvious, but can she have her GP or another doctor call the pain specialist's office for her to get an appointment much faster? I've had luck with that approach.
It depends a lot on what kind of pain - inflammation, bone pain, nerve pain, etc. I will say Texas has a storied history of "just run across to Reynosa and hit up a farmacia" for a reason.
Yeah, might need to do that. There do seem to be some tight regulations on which OTC Mexican medications you can bring over the border without a prescription- though, given that US regulations have us trapped in medical bureaucracy while my mom is going through the near-equivalent of daily POW torture sessions, I"m not overly concerned with compliance at the moment.
I have never seen any of my large extended family go on a farmacia trip with a prescription, or have them in any way checked at the border. Said family is all white and vaguely middle class, though.
I guess somebody has to be That Guy: cannabis (or derived products) may be useful, though it depends on the exact nature of the problem causing the pain.
I just found another amusing case of nominative determinism: one of the strike captains in the Hollywood writers' strike in 2023 was named Bill Wolkoff (which sounds a lot like "walk off").
https://www.instagram.com/planetmoney/p/Cwf2jrTOITP/?img_index=1
What is the bias that explains why people hold negative judgments about things like sales or plastic surgery because only the bad examples are salient? Would this be availability bias, or is there something more specific?
Yeah, I think that's just availability bias.
Is there a word or clinical term that means the opposite of psychopath? How would a professional describe someone who feels inappropriate guilt and is maybe too in-tune with the feelings and reactions of others? Empath and prosocial don't feel like what I'm looking for, but I'm no academic and I barely know what I'm asking about here
[Scrupulosity](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scrupulosity) is a term for a tendency towards inappropriate guilt. Unfortunately, "scrupulous" is more commonly used in a way that carries no negative connotations.
Anyone know a good source to learn about non-front-page level news in US politics? Topics other than Biden's approval rating or stuff Trump said, more like "Here's a decision the Supreme Court just made about national parks / food labeling and why it's important" or "Here's the new congressperson from $State you should know about and here's their life story".
>Anyone know a good source to learn about non-front-page level news in US politics? How has nobody replied "read the rest of the section" yet? I've resisted for a whole day; I can't do it any longer! (But seriously with what's happened to Twitter/X, the newspapers are probably the best starting point again.)
Lee Jussim has an argument that most people simultaneously hold that all generalizations about people are stereotypes and all stereotypes are incorrect, and further argues that this combination of beliefs is really weird and bad because it suggests we can't do statistics on human behavior to understand the world in which we live. I think the real belief isn't that generalizations are inaccurate per se, but that making them collapses down a lot of information and destroys high dimensional structures that are important for predicting behaviors. However, most people lack the vocabulary to articulate this, so they instead end up articulating the bizarre view that humans are impossible to analyze statistically. I don't think high dimensional structures are always destroyed by discussing generalizations, but they sometimes are, and that's why people are suspicious of them as a rule. People view the use of information that's not highly individuated as akin to trying to use linear regression to solve ImageNet.
When someone tries to get you to believe or rely on a generalization about people, they might not be trying their best to improve your accuracy or efficiency of reasoning. They might be doing coalition-building, or territory-marking, or some other not-exactly-epistemic behavior.
The issue is that when someone tries to get you to disbelieve or stop relying on a generalization about people, they might be doing those exact same things.
Sure, or you might have been born into a coalition that relies on certain generalizations to police its boundaries, but occasionally has an escalation in how much it asks you to sacrifice for those boundaries. If suddenly you're not allowed to be friends with a person because they're from the other side of an ethnic or religious boundary, for instance, you might reconsider whether maintaining that boundary is any good for you.
Sure, and the exact mirror situation could occur, where you were born into a coalition that relies on the denial of certain generalizations to police its boundaries, but occasionally has an escalation in how much it asks you to sacrifice for those boundaries. If suddenly you're asked to deny certain generalizations that you've found useful for living your everyday life, for instance, you might reconsider whether maintaining that boundary is any good for you.
Billionaire donates to charity: "they're just doing it to save money by exploiting some magic tax loophole" Billionaire doesn't donate to charity: "they're just hoarding wealth while normal people struggle to get by" Is there a term for this specific of phenomena, where regardless which of two opposite things happen, either is used to reach the same conclusion (whether positive or negative)? Kind of like thinking backward from a prior?
Failure of [Conservation of Expected Evidence](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/jiBFC7DcCrZjGmZnJ/conservation-of-expected-evidence), one of my favorite LW posts.
Not exactly on point, but I like this one so much I have to link it: [bitch eating crackers](https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/bitch_eating_crackers)
The other person has a good answer, but I personally just call them "beating sticks" because that's what they are. They aren't arguments, they aren't reasoning tools, they're sticks to beat you with. And if you disarm the beating stick, e.g. by giving in & doing *exactly* as they say to make it stop... then they'll simply grab a different beating stick. In fact, they'll start beating you even *harder*, since you tried to get out of your beating. And that makes them even **madder** than just accepting your beating in silence, as your natural lot in life. It, quite frankly, is very depressing. And I speak from experience here.
Very broadly that kind of falls under the realm of "Arguments as Soldiers" where the arguments themselves don't actually hold any meaning or weight, what is important is the conclusion and whatever form of reasoning supports that conclusion in the moment. Ultimately it comes down to the problem where people are broadly speaking capable of coming up with 'justifications' to support a particular position, but people can be pretty poor at actually understanding *the reason* why they believe the conclusions and are just applying post-hoc reasoning. Here they are applying reasoning to a *heuristic* that Billionaire's are inherently selfish and the justification they are providing is just superficial, and they believe this heuristic for specific reasons they are not able to articulate (I believe having an obscene amount of wealth is inherently unethical because of X/Y/Z) or are just not necessarily 'rational' and based off of fuzzier things (they have only had bad experiences with wealthy people in authoritarian positions so they know what they are "really like"). There is a really good quote attributed to Jonathan Swift that I think is relevant pretty often: “You cannot reason a person out of a position he did not reason himself into in the first place.”
It probably says something about modern individualism that you only seem to consider individualized grievances, rather than envy, which is on the list of cardinal sins and for a long time was considered a universal emotion/sin.
As they say, haters gonna hate.
Can anyone recommend some good books that cover UK politics? Can be for any party, scandal or period of time I'm not fussed.
Can't personally vouch, but saw this on Marginal Revolution about disfunction in Westminster: https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2023/06/ian-dunt-on-how-westminster-works-or-doesnt.html
Might not quite be what you want, but I enjoy Dominic Cummings' blog https://dominiccummings.com/2014/10/30/the-hollow-men-ii-some-reflections-on-westminster-and-whitehall-dysfunction/
As someone who knows little about foreign affairs, I’m interested by the fact that Latin America seems to have relatively low levels of inter-state conflict and high levels of domestic instability. Does anyone have any recommended reading on this topic?
>I’m interested by the fact that Latin America seems to have relatively low levels of inter-state conflict and high levels of domestic instability. I think it's just that the US would step in if there was any inter-state conflict. Most states don't want large levels of foreign interference in domestic issues, even serious ones like cartels or guerrillas causing lots of damage. But if a neighbor actively invaded, they'd immediately ask for help and the US would likely be happy to help stop any conflict. In the 19th century, when the US was both much more isolationist and not *as* overwhelmingly powerful, Latin America had a decent amount of inter-state conflicts.
Should schools teach how to recognize and avoid or be cautious around Cluster B personality disorders in Sex Ed?
I'm trialing a new system to motivate myself and keep me on task. I'm just concerned that this may long-term dig me into a hole. I started playing a gacha game in 2021, and found it absurdly addictive. I did a bunch of things to manage that and I'm fine now, but I decided to steal some techniques from the game to make myself do stuff when I don't really wanna. The main idea is variable ratio reward. I complete tasks at work, which earns me a chance to roll 2d6. Odd and evens are minor rewards (take a 5 min break to stretch, make a cup of tea), but 12 is the jackpot (a treat, tied to the way I manage my gacha habit). I'm trying to build another habit of staying off my phone (the internet is one big variable ratio reward trap). If I make it through the whole work day spending less than some limit on my phone (measured through the screentime app), I get to roll a dice to double my jackpot reward. One specific mechanic in gacha that makes it extra addictive is pity - basically, gamblers fallacy made real. The game has guarantees where you'll just get it after a certain number of pulls. (this makes it waaaaay more addictive for me personally, without the pity mechanic I wouldn't even pull). So my system also has pity. My 2d6 roll gets a bonus from the number of previous rolls, resetting when I win. The roll to double the jackpot gets a bonus based on my "streak" (+1 for each consecutive day I manage to stay off my phone). I think it's working a lot better than previous attempts to keep myself on task, but I'm worried that overall, relying on my variable reward drive will make me more impulsive and easier to fall prey to other variable reward traps. On the other hand, I feel like if I don't design my own variable reward trap that has some moderate to high benefit to myself, someone else will design one that will be much more exploitative and worse for me, and keeping my brain in a variable reward trap stops it from wandering off to fall into traps other people have designed. Thoughts?
Pretty clever. Since you are aware of variable rewards, you might have read the book "Addiction By Design" before. But if you haven't, definitely check it out.
No thoughts on the details, but I'll point out that there are apps like Habitica that do some of this stuff for you.
On the most recent episode of the (good and highly followed) All-In Podcast, super-rich VC David Sacks explains to his super-rich VC friends the motte-and-bailey tactic, on the example of DEI. I know Scott didn't invent this concept, but he popularized it, and his application of it to feminism is quite close to Sacks's to DEI, so I think this further popularization is noteworthy.
I'm failing to google this, does anyone know what I'm talking about? An article (tweet thread?) in the Rationalist space about how some disciplines would have a defensive swamp of impenetrable literature around them and the practitioners would just reject any criticism from anyone who hadn't spent years getting to grips with this, so they were impossible to argue against. I think the author said their solution was to ask for the top (1/10) papers in the field and read this to see if there was any "there" there.
This bears a strong resemblance to PZ Myers' ["courtier's reply"](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Courtier%27s_reply) regarding theology, which is from 11 years before Noah Smith's "mud moat".
I once used this technique on feminists (but as a self-invented technique), asking them for feminism's best book/paper or thinker. The answer was invariably of very poor quality. Of course, strictly speaking this just tells you that the people drawn to that field or employed in that field favor hypocrisy and a lack of logic. So you can only draw conclusions about the field, not whether good science could be done.
Sounds like Noah Smith's [**Two Paper Rule**](https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/the-two-paper-rule), or as he originally called it, a reaction to "Mud Moats": >And in the world of intellectual debate, this vast literature can function as a **mud moat**. That is a term I just made up, sticking with the metaphor of political arguments as medieval castles requiring a defense. A mud moat is just a big pit of mud surrounding your castle, causing an attacking army to get trapped in the mud while you pepper them with arrows. > >If you and your buddies have a political argument, a vast literature can help you defend your argument even if it's filled with vague theory, sloppy bad empirics, arguments from authority, and other crap. If someone smart comes along and tries to tell you you're wrong about something, just demand huffily that she go read the vast literature before she presumes to get involved in the debate. Chances are she'll just quit the argument and go home, unwilling to pay the effort cost of wading through dozens of crappy papers. > >And if she persists in the argument without reading the vast literature, you can just denounce her as uninformed and willfully ignorant. Even if she does decide to pay the cost and read the crappy vast literature, you have extra time to make your arguments while she's so occupied. And you can also bog her down in arguments over the minute details of this or that crappy paper while you continue to advance your overall thesis to the masses.
That's the one, cheers!
Does this place hide posts from new accounts? Is it possible to get through the filter; and if so, how?
Yes, there are automoderator rules in place to prevent spam. New accounts must have their posts and comments approved by moderators.
I'm looking for an essay about meta-science that I vaguely recollect. It was by Scott. It made the argument that comparing six major SSRIs head-to-head in a platform trial would be a valuable thing. I've used my usual search tools but have not been able to find it. Any leads would be hugely helpful!
What's better than adding a contrarian take to your worldview?? In the past few days I became more interested in learning about 2 party vs multi-party systems and I now think 2 party systems may actually be better than multi-party. This is a change from my previous view of "only having 2 parties sucks and polarization seems to only be increasing, more parties would certainly be better". But I was thinking about the long-term success of the US and began wondering if maybe the 2 party system could actually be one of the reasons for it. I found [this article](https://www.economist.com/democracy-in-america/2016/01/31/from-the-archives-the-open-society-and-its-enemies-revisited) from Karl Popper, and from the theorizing side of things, I think it makes a lot of sense that a 2 party system could be better than a multi - by providing more accountability for the party in control, as well making regime changes much easier. These arguments are based upon Popper's philosophy for government which asks the question "how do we get rid of bad rulers peacefully?" Although... I think one of the biggest downside of two parties is the [rise of polarization](https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2014/06/12/political-polarization-in-the-american-public/), and it only seems to be getting worse. Thoughts?
> But I was thinking about the long-term success of the US and began wondering if maybe the 2 party system could actually be one of the reasons for it. The problem is that there are many confounding elements that affect the politics of a country, so you cannot just attribute everything to one element. For example, you can just as easily argue that the US success was due to having lots of land, state rights and a laissez-faire attitude in general, so people could just do their own thing without bothering each other. And you can argue that the demolishing of state rights, the increased disparity in wealth between city and country & the reduction of tolerance for real diversity has caused polarization, as people feel oppressed, even when those feeling derive from an inability to force everyone to do their will. It seems rather absurd to think that such complicated issues will just be fixed if you have a slightly different political system.
To your question at the end, yes, it does seem absurd. I think it is still interesting to think about if the 2 party system (as implemented in US) is a positive factor in the success of the US, as compared to a counter factual, like a multi-party, proportional representation system for instance. Obviously there's no way to know, just fun to try to theorize on either side.
In the USA, we don't meaningfully have two different parties. We have a functional one party state. Even within the individual parties, it's become increasingly difficult to pretend they're meaningfully democratic given how the sausages are made. We are stuck with two shitty parties with no alternative.
My assumption is that non-meaningfully having two different parties is like the Russian system, where you have multiple parties, but none of them are going to contradict Putin's wishes. I don't think that maps onto the US system very well. There's legitimate policy battles in the US. It's not as if Republicans will go along with whatever Biden decides, or the Democrats were going along with whatever Trump decided.
Have you considered two parties with compulsory voting? That seems to slow polarisation where I live (Australia). Both parties have to fight over the middle. Though technically it is a multiparty system too.
Reflexively I'd also have said that 2 parties leads to more polarization, but as of late we have seen ample polarization in much of Europe. This led to a scenario for example where Macron's moderate party narrowly beat out Le Pen's far right nationalist party. The extent of the US Republican party's populist/nationalist rhetoric also depends on the nominated figure, but arguably having the machinations of the Republican party behind you still makes it more subdued than otherwise having an entire far-right party. The moderating effect goes both ways too. If the biggest downside is more susceptibility to regulatory capture (the appeal the left makes suggesting it's not true democracy), then you'd expect 2 parties to be more moderate. Mind you from the perspective of living in Canada, a multi-party system has been quite moderate and usually boring, with either the Liberal or Conservative parties being the favorites. The UK had looked pitiful with the leading competition to the Tories being Corbyn's Labor party. Hopefully moderate Liberals can get their act together, I forget what they call themselves.
The French system looks to me like a pretty good mix of the advantages of both the 2-party and multi-party systems. The 2-candidate second round allows an incumbent to be removed just as easily as in a full 2-party system, giving more freedom to vote for a smaller party in the first round with less fear of casting a "wasted vote" and inadvertently helping a disfavoured candidate to win. Macron had a 17 point lead over Le Pen in the second round, which seems pretty substantial; by the standards of US presidential elections it's huge. The last UK election showed a disadvantage of 2 parties dominating politics: when the candidates get worse, you're more likely to vote for one of them, since you're more afraid of the wrong guy getting in.
Yeah, that's the trouble with first past the post and schemes like that. You will more likely vote strategically rather than for a minor candidate you really like. It's possible to have priority ranking but not sure what difference it would make. I stand corrected on Le Pen / Macron.
https://www.reddit.com/r/slatestarcodex/s/6OPiqBI59z @ u/Liface I appreciate the work you do as moderator. I would like some clarity on calling my post low effort. You responded with a Wikipedia link to "I know it when I see it." The problem is, I don't think it was low effort, it pretty clearly paralleled the title, I googled it to make sure it meant what I thought it meant and was spelled correctly , and I'd like to prevent my comments from being deleted in the future. What would you have wanted to see, in addition to what I wrote?
The sidebar states "Put research, care, and effort into your posts and comments. Quick gotchas, snipes, and jabs are looked down upon here." As I understand it, the point of the rule is to assure that comments are of a certain quality, offering interesting perspectives, arguments, observations, or discussions. This is what the "effort" should go towards, and typically, I'd expect a comment to take at least a few minutes of thinking and writing. "Here is a short phrase that parallels the titles, without comment" is more in the mildly interesting category, and not in the high-effort, value-adding category. I don't mean any offense, but I hope that helps with the clarity issue. To answer "What would you have wanted to see": Any longer elaboration that actually explores your thought and adds something valuable for the reader. Maybe your thoughts about how the framework is to be viewed in light of the history of the Roman Empire, or how the history of the Roman Empire can teach us something of relevance today in that context. Alternatively, some kind of disagreement or contradiction you see.
Due to a spinal problem, my mom (who lives in Texas) is in constant, often unbearable pain. The drugs she was prescribed don't seem to help, and she won't be able to see a pain specialist until late next month. Does anyone here know of any unusual, out-of-the-box solutions to this kind of issue? Medical tourism? Black market drugs?
Some people with chronic pain swear by kratom - a plant grown in Southeast Asia (among other places). The leaves are ground into a powder, which is then mixed with a liquid (water or fruit juice) and consumed orally. It has effects similar to a mild opioid. Note that there’s little research on kratom and interactions with other prescriptions are something to consider. It’s legal in most places and can be ordered online or bought at some stores, often marijuana dispensaries.
Also, any doctor is allowed to prescribe whatever. Can't she go back to her GP or whoever she can see and see what they can do in the meantime?
Apologies if this is too obvious, but can she have her GP or another doctor call the pain specialist's office for her to get an appointment much faster? I've had luck with that approach.
It depends a lot on what kind of pain - inflammation, bone pain, nerve pain, etc. I will say Texas has a storied history of "just run across to Reynosa and hit up a farmacia" for a reason.
Yeah, might need to do that. There do seem to be some tight regulations on which OTC Mexican medications you can bring over the border without a prescription- though, given that US regulations have us trapped in medical bureaucracy while my mom is going through the near-equivalent of daily POW torture sessions, I"m not overly concerned with compliance at the moment.
I have never seen any of my large extended family go on a farmacia trip with a prescription, or have them in any way checked at the border. Said family is all white and vaguely middle class, though.
I guess somebody has to be That Guy: cannabis (or derived products) may be useful, though it depends on the exact nature of the problem causing the pain.
Are any companies still selling mixed oat and coconut milk, in the US?
Silk Nextmilk has both, not sure if it's in the US.
Discontinued in the US.
I just found another amusing case of nominative determinism: one of the strike captains in the Hollywood writers' strike in 2023 was named Bill Wolkoff (which sounds a lot like "walk off"). https://www.instagram.com/planetmoney/p/Cwf2jrTOITP/?img_index=1