Linkpost for March
Effective altruism, politics, life advice, sex and relationships, short stories, fun.
Effective Altruism
If hospitals promote breastfeeding, infants are more likely to breastfeed, less likely to have diarrhea, and less likely to die. In some situations, these programs may be of comparative cost-effectiveness to GiveWell top charities.
If you read only one link read this: We don’t have a good definition of what life is. Specifically, if viruses aren’t alive then neither is a particular Mexican fish. I hate this (tone: approving).
Pescetarianism is worse for animal welfare than just eating meat.
In 2017, Eliezer Yudkowsky and Bryan Caplan bet about whether unaligned AI was going to end the world by 2030. Eliezer explains that this is an attempt to harness Bryan Caplan’s perfect betting record in order to ward off human extinction.
After some dithering about whether this was “effective altruism” or “fun”: Moly’s Substack is a summary of the top posts on Weibo each day. It’s an entertaining way to get more of a sense of modern-day Chinese culture.
“Scope-sensitive ethics” is approving of actions that bring about more intuitively good things and disapproving of actions that bring about more intuitively bad things, and how much you approve/disapprove depends on how many of the good/bad things it brings about. This concept captures the intuitive appeal of utilitarianism without committing you to “all human values can be reduced to a single metric”, not caring about personal identity, or weird philosophical thought experiments.
A good interview about norms in the effective altruism community. Bits I particularly liked: You should clearly distinguish what you believe due to the evidence you have and what you believe due to deferring to other people who know more. You should be willing to give up on projects that turn out to not have much impact (“creative destruction”). Effective altruists should try to be honest and kind to each other. “Cause neutrality” (the effective altruism movement being open to working on a wide range of problems) isn’t the same as the effective altruism movement actually working on a wide range of problems, or the effective altruism movement not having an opinion on which causes are best to work on.
In the effective altruist community, the burden of preventing sexual harassment should be on everyone, not just on survivors.
Case study of an individual’s experiences reducing sexual harassment and assault in a community. Don’t hesitate to kick people out for harassment and assault. Create a policy against established members hitting on or sleeping with new members for the first year of their membership. Fire leadership that has been accused of harassment or assault. Try to remove the reputation of the group as being a good place to go for casual sex, such as by discussing orgies less and holding meetings outside of people’s houses.
It’s very difficult to exclude people from decentralized communities.
Politics
David Friedman proposes a simplified Political Turing Test: can you name the major arguments of your opponents? He provides questions for several views that he personally holds, so that readers who disagree with him can take the test themselves. Answers here.
Ken White hates everyone involved in a recent free-speech dispute at Stanford.
The insane saga of a wealthy Chinese dissident who connected with Steve Bannon in order to do affinity fraud on the Chinese-American community while claiming to be the primary advocate against the Chinese Communist Party.
Social Security hasn’t eliminated elder poverty in the United States. Adding a minimum benefit would fix this at relatively low cost.
Life Advice
Don’t just say “hello” in chat. Say “hello” followed by whatever you’re DMing the person about.
In many fields, a person can get to 95th percentile just by actually trying to improve.
Sex and Relationships
Lesbian feminist Marilyn Frye’s 1987 essay about why lesbians can’t have sex. While I don’t agree with all of it, I think it’s thought-provoking to read even today.
South Korea has developed a lesbian separatist community.
In a survey which has more questions about sex than about any other topic, trans people are more psychologically similar to other trans people (of any assigned sex at birth) than they are to any group of cis people. [Content note: some cissexist language at the link.]
Polyamorous people have slightly better relationships than monogamous people, way more sexual partners, and about half as many children. Monogamous people are more entwined and dependent on their partners and more jealous than polyamorous people. Monogamish people have the worst relationships.
Short Stories
The Best We Can: A sad-yet-uplifting human-scale story about archaeology and first contact with aliens.
The Names of the Drowned Are These: Creepy little horror story set in Tasmania; beautifully structured, with every little detail paying off at the end. Content note for racism, colonialism and, like, being a horror story.
Little Green Men: A rewrite of a Ferengi-focused Star Trek episode with Ferengi that make significantly more economic sense.
Ask A Manager: Help, I’m Being Transferred To My Mother’s Work Unit!: Ivan Vorpatril from the Vorkosigan Saga writes Ask A Manager.
Fun
An essay from the nineties proposes that there are four kinds of players in a MUD (a multiuser dungeon, a sort of early MMO). “Achievers” want to make numbers go up; “explorers” want to poke the game system until they find out all its quirks; “socializers” want to talk to each other; and “killers” want to murder people. The essay discusses how these four playing styles interact with each other to create the MUD’s culture.
Ordinary math nerd who likes making interesting arrangements of polyhedra discovers Important Math Thing. His blog bio.
Gwyneth Paltrow is involved in a very frivolous lawsuit and it’s great.
Conway’s Game of Life is recursive and you can build Conway’s Game of Life in it.
Aesthetically trustworthy websites.
Four anonymous Oscar voters give their takes on why they voted the way they did.
Someone has finally listened to me and written a song about how nice public broadcasting is. It’s a bop.
So so so pleased to be in the 5% that laughed.
That Marilyn Frye essay is excellent, and less inflammatory than I was worried it might be. I bet that lesbians find communicating about sex harder than heterosexuals because your friend group and dating group tend to overlap more. It's weird to talk about your sex life with your friends when that means you are telling them about another friend's sex life. I don't know the extent to which this is true for gay men, though. My impression is that they're a lot less likely to sleep with their friends.