splithalf

I like this idea. It could also make the nba and nfl more racially diverse.

The problem is the assumption of linearity. Things are good now but it seems to me things are getting better at a decelerating rate, and some trends have even started to reverse in the most westernized countries. Most of what’s getting better in the world is in places like Africa or Brazil, emerging economies. Things aren’t getting better for a lot of people in a lot of cities in America. People are fleeing la, sf, etc... Empires rise and fall, predictably.

“ or wild economic gyrations stemming from desperate attempts to stave off said deflation.”

Seems certain as it’s already begun and once it has begun there’s nothing stopping it.

I have a similar reaction to a lot of YouTube psychology. So much confirmation bias and other nonsense passing for facts. It takes a lot of caution and care to discuss behavior without inadvertently misinforming people. Pinker is really excellent in this regard. Scott Alexander would be another person who is able to reason about behavior without misinforming. I think both should be more active in advocating for criminal justice reform, knowing what they know. Forensic psychology has a lot of skeletons in its closet.

But the virus is “all natural”!

You can trust Mother Nature more than a bunch of creepy pharma-scientists. Didn’t you see Godzilla?

The soft bigotry of different standards is talked about but rarely is the premise carefully examined. Can there be a single standard? Maybe the problem is expecting a good essay, composed in earnest, by a kid that can “barely string a sentence together.” We ought not be surprised when humans act human.

Maybe we should redefine public education to be a bit more exclusive, and not shame those that aren’t on a college track into pursuing mentally challenging work for which we are unfit. Give kids the money that would be spent on their education (loosely defined) and let them invest it, or spend on vocational training or seed money to start their own small business. Too much focus on producing som eidetic notion of the educated individual. People don’t wind up homeless because they weren’t exposed to Shakespeare. Some people will be lucky to attain enough basic skill to stay afloat. If such a person is able to fool plagiarism software, maybe that’s something to celebrate.

Security is impossible. As long as there are incentives, nothing will be secure. It’s just a matter of incentive/difficulty. With enough incentive stuxnet or solar winds or omb are possible. Bitcoin values are causing this equilibrium to be disrupted, making this appear as though it were a new problem.

It’s odd to hear so much focus on America and American politics. We have more liberal drug laws than other non-western countries but the discussion always has a lot of American exceptionalism in reverse.

We should ask Duck Cheney’s daughter about the diversity of her party, she seems like a poster child for that.

Half America hands it’s brain to one party, the other half to the other party. Many problems stem from this.

“Don’t hate the player, hate the game.”

Indeed. It is a scale problem. We have too many producers of research, too few destroyers of research, like Gelman. Show me the incentive and I can tell you the outcome. Encourage the whole world to become “experts” and then be amazed as the reverence and trust in expertise is devalued. That’s us.

I thought I had covid before news of covid even came out. Was googling “novel pneumonia type illnesses” and reading about sequelae. I had had close contact with wuhan travelers in late dec. 2020. Mostly fatigue and headache for a week, then the lung issues started and lasted a month or more. A few weeks later the first couple of California cases from China presented at a local er. Few cared at that point as the politics were inverted early on due to the travel ban, and also the super bowl and impeachment vying for the public’s attention.

Psychology. You can’t know anything and not know something about knowing.

Unless they are Comcast. Then it’s ok to work on a sliding scale.

Because we think we’re better. Thinking to oneself, “I don’t believe in any conspiracy theories, but those other people sure do!” is to be unaware of the human condition. Ideology exists and it’s good to get frequent reminders about that, lest we judge.