Blood doping is a real thing some athletes do! (It is considered cheating, it is not allowed in competitions.) Maybe the quotes were not intended to imply "these people made up this term", but like, it is a real thing and not new.
Huh, I tried every trick in the book to avoid going to school! Yours must be really cool. It was so boring to listen to someone droning on about what some dead old poet thought.
I think becoming "cultured" was largely a signalling system, but this rapidly lost its utility. People do not assign much status today to quoting Juvenal.
It is an agonizing question whether reading Juvenal should be abolished, since so much of the identity of the Western culture depends on matters like this. But it is also clear today people assign status to people who quote Acemoglu, and that is more useful and relevant anyway.
From the bug link: “The current rate of extinction is up to 1,000 times higher than the average over the past ten million years.” No source provided and sounds like one of those things that would be impossible to prove so is probably made up.
> Are you saying that given unlimited money, you wouldn’t build giant obstacle courses like a demented Willy Wonka? Liar.
I would do those things once global poverty was eliminated (or my money could no longer make a difference in eliminating poverty). Not doing that is of course not a reason to hate someone, but I don't think that's the main (stated) reason that people are mad at mr Beast.
> Public transit advocacy could be cost-effective if you think YIMBY activism is cost-effective.
As I said in the comments, I think bike infrastructure is better. It's cheaper, better for the environment (in most cases), has health benefits for the riders, is the form of land-transport that makes riders the most happy (excluding walking), and is easier to implement (requires less studies/paperwork/land acquisition).
"Vegetarians and vegans manage social stigma against their diets by providing personal (“I don’t like it”) rather than moral explanations for their diets and by emphasizing that they still like meat." -- I'm confused how those two things are compatible!
The paper is looking at multiple conversations, so people aren't saying both in the same conversation. The authors think that the common thread is "taking a non-judgemental approach." Either you say "I never ate meat very often to begin with, so I'm not claiming it's some big personal sacrifice that proves my moral courage," or you say "No, I still like meat, so I totally understand why you wouldn't want to be vegan and I don't think you're bad people for it," and which approach you go with depends on your history as a meat-eater or not.
I found the antidepressants piece did move me back towards thinking they probably do work pretty well for some people, but I don't find "if you reject them, you must reject other psychological treatments" to be a remotely convincing argument. Why would it be? If the other treatments get the same (seemingly) deeply mediocre scores on standard evidence-based medicine tests, why couldn't they be bad as well? It seems like an argument from authority mostly, and the most convincing critic of antidepressants I have previously read is a generic skeptic about (a lot, not all) medicine: https://aeon.co/essays/the-evidence-in-favour-of-antidepressants-is-terribly-flawedhttps://global.oup.com/academic/product/medical-nihilism-9780198747048?cc=au&lang=en&#
An argument that we have fancy statistical tests for "this helps a small subgroup a lot" and those look good is far more convincing to me, as is "maybe there is less placebo effect with the real med, and if so, effectiveness over placebo underestimates real effect".
"Are you saying that given unlimited money, you wouldn’t build giant obstacle courses like a demented Willy Wonka?"
I have nothing against Mr. Beast, but when I think about having unlimited money, I think about experimentally testing macroeconomic theories, detentes with central banks based on the principle of Mutually Assured Hyperinflation, stuff like that. Building giant obstacle courses is aiming way too low.
> Cities could adopt policies that would promote wild-animal welfare, such as requiring bird-friendly windows that birds wouldn’t run into, planting trees that provide food and shelter, and avoiding habitat fragmentation.
Don't all of these plausibly lower wild animal welfare too? Running into a window at high speed is a much more humane death than being eaten alive or dying of disease. Providing food and shelter and avoiding habitat fragmentation creates more animals who will suffer. Of course this will depend on whether one believes animal lives are overall net positive or negative, and the exact numbers involved, but e.g. Brian Tomasik suggests paving over as much land as possible to reduce insect suffering.
Blood doping is a real thing some athletes do! (It is considered cheating, it is not allowed in competitions.) Maybe the quotes were not intended to imply "these people made up this term", but like, it is a real thing and not new.
Huh, I tried every trick in the book to avoid going to school! Yours must be really cool. It was so boring to listen to someone droning on about what some dead old poet thought.
I think becoming "cultured" was largely a signalling system, but this rapidly lost its utility. People do not assign much status today to quoting Juvenal.
It is an agonizing question whether reading Juvenal should be abolished, since so much of the identity of the Western culture depends on matters like this. But it is also clear today people assign status to people who quote Acemoglu, and that is more useful and relevant anyway.
> On one hand you have the people who say we are not engineers because we do not live up to “engineering standards”.
> Engineers work on predictable projects with a lot of upfront planning and rigorous requirements.
Oh my sweet summer child...
(I wonder if any of the people interviewed went software -> meatspace like i did, instead of the sensible way of doing it)
From the bug link: “The current rate of extinction is up to 1,000 times higher than the average over the past ten million years.” No source provided and sounds like one of those things that would be impossible to prove so is probably made up.
> whether it would be possible to program a superintelligence not to be ambitious or to be nice to other value systems.
This is what we're working on at SatisfIA: https://substack.com/@bobjacobs/p-146883772
> Are you saying that given unlimited money, you wouldn’t build giant obstacle courses like a demented Willy Wonka? Liar.
I would do those things once global poverty was eliminated (or my money could no longer make a difference in eliminating poverty). Not doing that is of course not a reason to hate someone, but I don't think that's the main (stated) reason that people are mad at mr Beast.
> Public transit advocacy could be cost-effective if you think YIMBY activism is cost-effective.
As I said in the comments, I think bike infrastructure is better. It's cheaper, better for the environment (in most cases), has health benefits for the riders, is the form of land-transport that makes riders the most happy (excluding walking), and is easier to implement (requires less studies/paperwork/land acquisition).
Disappointed that Ballerina Farm isn't a farm that produces ballerinas. "We had a bumper crop of ballerinas last year".
"Vegetarians and vegans manage social stigma against their diets by providing personal (“I don’t like it”) rather than moral explanations for their diets and by emphasizing that they still like meat." -- I'm confused how those two things are compatible!
The paper is looking at multiple conversations, so people aren't saying both in the same conversation. The authors think that the common thread is "taking a non-judgemental approach." Either you say "I never ate meat very often to begin with, so I'm not claiming it's some big personal sacrifice that proves my moral courage," or you say "No, I still like meat, so I totally understand why you wouldn't want to be vegan and I don't think you're bad people for it," and which approach you go with depends on your history as a meat-eater or not.
I found the antidepressants piece did move me back towards thinking they probably do work pretty well for some people, but I don't find "if you reject them, you must reject other psychological treatments" to be a remotely convincing argument. Why would it be? If the other treatments get the same (seemingly) deeply mediocre scores on standard evidence-based medicine tests, why couldn't they be bad as well? It seems like an argument from authority mostly, and the most convincing critic of antidepressants I have previously read is a generic skeptic about (a lot, not all) medicine: https://aeon.co/essays/the-evidence-in-favour-of-antidepressants-is-terribly-flawed https://global.oup.com/academic/product/medical-nihilism-9780198747048?cc=au&lang=en&#
An argument that we have fancy statistical tests for "this helps a small subgroup a lot" and those look good is far more convincing to me, as is "maybe there is less placebo effect with the real med, and if so, effectiveness over placebo underestimates real effect".
"Are you saying that given unlimited money, you wouldn’t build giant obstacle courses like a demented Willy Wonka?"
I have nothing against Mr. Beast, but when I think about having unlimited money, I think about experimentally testing macroeconomic theories, detentes with central banks based on the principle of Mutually Assured Hyperinflation, stuff like that. Building giant obstacle courses is aiming way too low.
That's just Mr Beast video ideas but for economists
This is intriging, but "detentes with central banks" is surely different level of rich from "demented Willy Wonka"?
Well, Ozy did say *unlimited* money.
Thanks for sharing my post, Ozy! (the public transit one)
https://sunyshore.substack.com/p/proposing-public-transit-advocacy
> Cities could adopt policies that would promote wild-animal welfare, such as requiring bird-friendly windows that birds wouldn’t run into, planting trees that provide food and shelter, and avoiding habitat fragmentation.
Don't all of these plausibly lower wild animal welfare too? Running into a window at high speed is a much more humane death than being eaten alive or dying of disease. Providing food and shelter and avoiding habitat fragmentation creates more animals who will suffer. Of course this will depend on whether one believes animal lives are overall net positive or negative, and the exact numbers involved, but e.g. Brian Tomasik suggests paving over as much land as possible to reduce insect suffering.
Why does the veganism paper censor "vegan" as "veg*an"?
I think that's supposed to mean "vegan or vegetarian".
OH! That makes so much more sense.