Links Archive

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• Einstein Cross [En.wikipedia]: "Four images of the same distant quasar appear around a foreground galaxy due to strong gravitational lensing." (
  '18 Dec 04Added Dec. 4, 2018, 11 p.m.
  in science | a)
• Congress Continues Debate Over Whether Or Not Nation Should Be Economically Ruined [The Onion]: "Members of the U.S. Congress reported Wednesday they were continuing to carefully debate the issue of whether or not they should allow the country to descend into a roiling economic meltdown of historically dire proportions." (
  '18 Dec 03Added Dec. 3, 2018, 11 p.m.
  in policy | a)
• The Dangers of Being Wrong on Keynes [Washingtonpost]: "The central irony of financial crises is that they're caused by too much borrowing, too much confidence and too much spending, and they're solved by more confidence, more borrowing and more spending"." (
  '18 Dec 01Added Dec. 1, 2018, 11 p.m.
  in policy | a)
• Toy Stories - Combination of luck and skill that gave birth to some of our favourite games [Telegraph.co.uk]: "The toys we love most are often labours of love, desperation, skulduggery and sometimes pure fluke. And sometimes the story behind its creation is as entertaining as the toy itself…" (
  '18 Nov 30Added Nov. 30, 2018, 11 p.m.
  in random | a)
• "Lawyers, Coins, and Money" [Krugman.blogs.nytimes]: Krugman discusses three odd loopholes that might allow the country to circumvent the debt ceiling. (
  '18 Nov 27Added Nov. 27, 2018, 11 p.m.
  in policy | a)
• What's With All the Bernanke Bashing? [NYTimes]: "Mr. Bernanke has worked tirelessly to shepherd the economy through the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression, and yet, for all his efforts, seems vastly underappreciated." (
  '18 Nov 26Added Nov. 26, 2018, 11 p.m.
  in policy | a)
• Curious About Astronomy - Can Moons Have Moons? [Curious.astro.cornell.edu]: "Yes, in theory, moons can have moons. The region of space around a satellite there a sub-satellite can exist is called the Hill sphere. Outside the Hill sphere, a sub-satellite would be lost from its orbit about the satellite." (
  '18 Nov 25Added Nov. 25, 2018, 11 p.m.
  in science | a)
• Politicians In Costume [The Dailybeast]: A collection of fifteen pictures and stories regarding famous politicians in various costumes. (
  '18 Nov 24Added Nov. 24, 2018, 11 p.m.
  in random | a)
• Faking (Then Making) It - Reddit's First Year [Bigthink]: "In Reddit's early days, the site's co-founders submitted content under a variety of fake identities in order to make it look like there were more users than there actually were." (
  '18 Nov 23Added Nov. 23, 2018, 11 p.m.
  in entrepreneurship | a)
• Dungeons and Discourse - A Philosophy RPG [Raikoth.net]: "Like the game in the comic, Dungeons and Discourse is intended to be a role-playing game based on science and philosophy. Most spells, items, and game events will be based on philosophical ideas, and if played right, the game will provoke and reward interesting philosophical discussions." (
  '18 Nov 22Added Nov. 22, 2018, 11 p.m.
  in random | a)
• List of Pixar Film References [En.wikipedia]: "The following is a list of all documented self-referential nods contained within Pixar films and shorts that the various filmmakers have incorporated into their movies." (
  '18 Nov 21Added Nov. 21, 2018, 11 p.m.
  in random | a)
• The Ways of Silencing [Opinionator.blogs.nytimes]: "Suppose that President Obama really was a secret Islamist agent, or born in Kenya. In that case, he would be grossly insincere. We would have no reason to believe what he said in any situation. The function of disseminating such claims about the president is not to object to his specific arguments or agenda. It is to undermine the public's trust in him, so that nothing he says can be taken at face value." (
  '18 Nov 20Added Nov. 20, 2018, 11 p.m.
  in culturewar | a)
• "Moody's Blues, Poor Standards, and the Debt" [Krugman.blogs.nytimes]: "The invaluable Mike Konczal tells us the truth about the rating agencies and public-sector debt: not only do they constantly make mistakes, they do so in a consistent direction. Namely, they hold public-sector borrowers to vastly higher standards than they hold private borrowers." (
  '18 Nov 19Added Nov. 19, 2018, 11 p.m.
  in policy | a)
• Some of the Greatest Unsolved Mysteries [Reddit]: A Reddit discussion that shares some of history and science's greatest mystery. Lots of additional links to go to here. (
  '18 Nov 18Added Nov. 18, 2018, 11 p.m.
  in random | a)
• Spending in Disguise [Nationalaffairs]: "Because tax cuts often sound more appealing to policymakers and voters than spending increases - especially in today's political climate - the temptation to spend through the tax code is enormous. And the confusion surrounding such spending allows politicians to claim they are saving taxpayers' money when, in fact, they are really spending it." (
  '18 Nov 17Added Nov. 17, 2018, 11 p.m.
  in policy | a)
• If the Earth Stood Still [Esri]: "What would happen if the earth stopped spinning? ArcGIS was used to perform complex raster analysis and volumetric computations and generate maps that visualize these results." (
  '18 Nov 16Added Nov. 16, 2018, 11 p.m.
  in science | a)
• Divided Government [Newyorker]: "In fact, few voters ever "choose" divided government, and those voters are never a majority. The majority always wants united government. Some voters want it united under Republican auspices, some want it under Democratic auspices. Almost no one wants divided government" (
  '18 Nov 15Added Nov. 15, 2018, 11 p.m.
  in policy | a)
• Pokemon's Ten Most Disturbing Pokedex Entries [Comicsalliance]: "ComicsAlliance is wandering through the tall grass to bring you the Ten Most Disturbing (and Completely Official) Entries in the Pokedex!" (
  '18 Nov 14Added Nov. 14, 2018, 11 p.m.
  in random | a)
• How to use dice to stop people from lying on surveys [Io9]: "A toss of the dice allows people to confess things on surveys that they otherwise wouldn't." (
  '18 Nov 13Added Nov. 13, 2018, 11 p.m.
  in politicalscience | a)
• The Early Prediction Rant [Politics-by-the -numbers.blogspot]: " DON'T EVEN TRY TO PREDICT THE 2012 ELECTION WITH CURRENT (July, 2011) UNEMPLOYMENT DATA! (Sorry for shouting). There is hardly any relationship (r-squared=.07), and slight pattern that does exist is nonsensical, indicating that Obama's best strategy would be to increase unemployment as much as possible." (
  '18 Nov 11Added Nov. 11, 2018, 11 p.m.
  in politicalscience | a)
• Truly Part of You [LessWrong]: "The same experiences that lead us to formulate a belief, connect that belief to other knowledge and sensory input and motor output. If you see a beaver chewing a log, then you know what this thing-that-chews-through-logs looks like, and you will be able to recognize it on future occasions whether it is called a 'beaver' or not. But if you acquire your beliefs about beavers by someone else telling you facts about 'beaver'", you may not be able to recognize a beaver when you see one." (
  '18 Nov 10Added Nov. 10, 2018, 11 p.m.
  in rationality | a)
• How to Respond to Rick Perry's Response [NYTimes]: "To hold that elected officials can't publicly invoke their religion won't help a country of believers, agnostics and atheists reach any kind of consensus. It will only impoverish the conversation, depriving many citizens of the ability to make, and judge, arguments that reflect their most cherished views." (
  '18 Nov 09Added Nov. 9, 2018, 11 p.m.
  in skepticism | a)
• Lizards Rapidly Evolve After Introduction to Island [News.nationalgeographic]: "Italian wall lizards introduced to a tiny island off the coast of Croatia are evolving in ways that would normally take millions of years to play out, new research shows." (
  '18 Nov 08Added Nov. 8, 2018, 11 p.m.
  in science | a)
• "Two moons above Earth may have collided to create one, study says" [Latimes]: "Scientists say such a collision could explain why the moon is lopsided and why its far side is covered with mountains." (
  '18 Nov 07Added Nov. 7, 2018, 11 p.m.
  in science | a)
• Standard & Poor's has been wrong before. But they're right now. [Washingtonpost]: "After Republicans in Congress spent three months weighing whether or not to default on our debt and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell said that paying our bills would never again be a foregone conclusion, can anyone really argue with that?" (
  '18 Nov 06Added Nov. 6, 2018, 11 p.m.
  in policy | a)
• Why S.&P.'s Ratings Are Substandard and Porous [538.blogs.nytimes]: "A more cynical view is that S.&P. is playing the role of the schoolmarm, looking for excuses to reward or punish countries based on good behavior - and that this is getting in the way of their objectivity." (
  '18 Nov 05Added Nov. 5, 2018, 11 p.m.
  in policy | a)
• "Sam, Janet, and Debt" [Krugman.blogs.nytimes]: "One of the common arguments against fiscal policy in the current situation - one that sounds sensible - is that debt is the problem, so how can debt be the solution? Households borrowed too much; now you want the government to borrow even more?" (
  '18 Nov 04Added Nov. 4, 2018, 11 p.m.
  in policy | a)
• Win Together or Lose Together [NYTimes]: "We mistakenly treated the end of the cold war as a victory that allowed us to put our feet up - when it was actually the onset of one of the greatest challenges we've ever faced. We helped to unleash two billion people just like us - in China, India and Eastern Europe. For us to effectively compete and collaborate with them - to maintain the American dream - required studying harder, investing wiser, innovating faster, upgrading our infrastructure quicker and working smarter." (
  '18 Nov 03Added Nov. 3, 2018, 11 p.m.
  in nationalsecurity | a)
• "MMT, Again" [Krugman.blogs.nytimes]: "But I do get the premise that modern governments able to issue fiat money can't go bankrupt, never mind whether investors are willing to buy their bonds. And it sounds right if you look at it from a certain angle. But it isn't." (
  '18 Nov 02Added Nov. 2, 2018, 11 p.m.
  in policy | a)
• Stop Coddling the Super-Rich [NYTimes]: "Our leaders have asked for "shared sacrifice." But when they did the asking, they spared me. I checked with my mega-rich friends to learn what pain they were expecting. They, too, were left untouched." (
  '18 Nov 01Added Nov. 1, 2018, 11 p.m.
  in policy | a)
• How to Write Faster [Slate]: "It's no secret that writing is hard … but why can't I be one of those special few for whom it comes easily? What am I doing wrong? Why haven't I gotten any faster?" (
  '18 Oct 31Added Oct. 31, 2018, 11 p.m.
  in productivity | a)
• Oh! What a Lovely War! [Krugman.blogs.nytimes]: "World War II is the great natural experiment in the effects of large increases in government spending, and as such has always served as an important positive example for those of us who favor an activist approach to a depressed economy." (
  '18 Oct 28Added Oct. 28, 2018, 11 p.m.
  in policy | a)
• Remind Physicalists They're Physicalists [LessWrong]: "In another study, McCabe & Castel (2008) showed subjects fictional articles summarizing scientific results and including either no image, a brain scan image, or a bar graph. Subjects were asked to rate the soundness of scientific reasoning in the article, and they gave the highest ratings when the article included a brain scan image. But why should this be?" (
  '18 Oct 27Added Oct. 27, 2018, 11 p.m.
  in rationality | a)
• Support That Sounds Like Dissent [LessWrong]: "If we agree, we want to help the author make it stronger, so we treat it as though we were revising our own draft, point out the sections which are weak, and explain why. If we disagree, we want to change the author's mind, so we point out the sections which caused us to disagree, and explain why. These two cases are hard to distinguish, and we usually forget to say which we're doing." (
  '18 Oct 26Added Oct. 26, 2018, 11 p.m.
  in rationality | a)
• Crisis Economics [Economics.harvard.edu]: "To understand the challenge government economists have faced over the past year and a half, it is useful to imagine the case ofa physician trying to treat an ill patient." (
  '18 Oct 25Added Oct. 25, 2018, 11 p.m.
  in policy | a)
• Let Them Debate College Students [LessWrong]: "Ah, but who says that prestigious scientistsare required to debate creationists?" (
  '18 Oct 24Added Oct. 24, 2018, 11 p.m.
  in skepticism | a)
• Zombie Tax Lies [Krugman.blogs.nytimes]: "The claim that only rich people pay taxes is a zombie lie - something that keeps coming back no matter how many times it's killed by evidence. So, let's try another shot to the head." (
  '18 Oct 23Added Oct. 23, 2018, 11 p.m.
  in policy | a)
• How to Win When You're Unpopular: What Obama Can Learn From Truman [Tnr]: "Barack Obama's bid for reelection next year will, by all indications, be a tough, maybe even uphill fight. But daunting as the campaign may seem, the president can at least take some solace in a precedent from 64 years ago: Harry Truman's campaign for reelection in 1948-successful, despite a poor economic climate, and a polarized electorate-offers a promising path for Obama's reelection." (
  '18 Oct 22Added Oct. 22, 2018, 11 p.m.
  in politicalscience | a)
• Vanilla and Chocolate and Preference Judgements [LessWrong]: "It's hard to say that both of them are right, if each is hurting the other's feelings. Again, though, their argument isn't about anything factual. They both agree that there are papers on the desk and clothes on the floor, and that Albert is the one responsible. Where they diverge is the preference they place on this world-state." (
  '18 Oct 21Added Oct. 21, 2018, 11 p.m.
  in rationality | a)
• Can We Please Take a Break From Blaming the Internet? [Techland.time]: "So for the sake of the discourse itself, I feel as though we should take a break for a bit from blaming the internet for all the things wrong with our culture. They're questions fully worth considering, but for the time being they're all blurred together as tired rehashings, causing very valid points to get lost." (
  '18 Oct 20Added Oct. 20, 2018, 11 p.m.
  in culturewar | a)
• Crashing the Tea Party [NYTimes]: "But in fact the Tea Party is increasingly swimming against the tide of public opinion: among most Americans, even before the furor over the debt limit, its brand was becoming toxic. To embrace the Tea Party carries great political risk for Republicans, but perhaps not for the reason you might think." (
  '18 Oct 18Added Oct. 18, 2018, 11 p.m.
  in policy | a)
• Terrorism - An Era in Ideas [Chronicle]: "The discrepancy between the panic generated by terrorism and the deaths generated by terrorism is no accident. Panic is the whole point of terrorism, as the root of the word makes clear: "Terror" refers to a psychological state, not an enemy or an event." (
  '18 Oct 17Added Oct. 17, 2018, 11 p.m.
  in policy | a)
• Do You Care Whether the Religious Ideas You Believe in Are True or Not? [Alternet]: "Here's what I'd like to say to people who are less interested in what's really true about the universe than they are about their personal interpretation of it." (
  '18 Oct 16Added Oct. 16, 2018, 11 p.m.
  in skepticism | a)
• "U.S. Needs More Inflation to Speed Recovery, Say Mankiw, Rogoff" [Bloomberg]: "They argue that a looser rein on inflation would make it easier for debt-strapped consumers and governments to meet their obligations. It might also help the economy by encouraging Americans to spend now rather than later when prices go up." (
  '18 Oct 15Added Oct. 15, 2018, 11 p.m.
  in policy | a)
• Smart Taxes: An Open Invitation to Join the Pigou Club [Economics.harvard.edu]: "Many economists favor higher taxes on energy-related products such as gasoline, while the general public is more skeptical. This essay discusses various aspects of this policy debate. It focuses, in particular, on the use of these taxes to correct for various externalities-an idea advocated long ago by British economist Arthur Pigou." (
  '18 Oct 14Added Oct. 14, 2018, 11 p.m.
  in policy | a)
• Stupid for President [Athe Istethicist.blogspot]: "The point of the article is that intelligence should be considered a qualification for being President, and knowledge of evolution is a good litmus test for intelligence. On that test, certain candidates for office clearly come out as unqualified. They are the types of candidates for a position as important as President that should not even be on the list - let alone the short list - of possibilities." (
  '18 Oct 13Added Oct. 13, 2018, 11 p.m.
  in policy | a)
• Snake Oil Supplements Visualization [Informationisbeautiful.net]: "This image is a "balloon race". The higher a bubble, the greater the evidence for its effectiveness. But the supplements are only effective for the conditions listed inside the bubble." (
  '18 Oct 12Added Oct. 12, 2018, 11 p.m.
  in science | a)
• De Finetti's Game - How to Quantify Belief [Measureofdoubt]: "In the experiment, you show your friend a bag with 95 red and 5 blue marbles. You then offer him a choice: he can either pick a marble at random and, if it’s red, win $1 million. Or he can go back and verify that the door is locked and, if it is, get $1 million. If your friend would choose to draw a marble from the bag, he preferred the 95% chance to win. His real confidence of locking the door must be somewhere below that. So you play another round – this time with 80 red and 20 blue marbles. If he would rather check the door this time, his confidence is higher than 80% and perhaps you try a 87/13 split next round. And so on. You keep offering different deals in order to hone in on the level where he feels equally comfortable selecting a random marble and checking the door. That’s his real level of confidence." (
  '18 Oct 11Added Oct. 11, 2018, 11 p.m.
  in rationality | a)
• Climate Change - The Tub Analogy [Athe Istethicist.blogspot]: "A reader has posted a claim about climate change that I have responded to in the past, but would like to respond to again. It is a type of argument that, I hold, no rational person truly concerned with reaching a reasonable conclusion about climate change would offer." (
  '18 Oct 10Added Oct. 10, 2018, 11 p.m.
  in policy | a)
• That's So Mysto - What Makes Slang Stick [Slate]: "There's no grand unified theory for why some slang terms live and others die. In fact, it's even worse than that: The very definition of slang is tenuous and clunky." (
  '18 Oct 09Added Oct. 9, 2018, 11 p.m.
  in rationality | a)
• Reversed Stupidity Is Not Intelligence [LessWrong]: "If Stalin is evil, then everything he says should be false. You wouldn't want to agree with Stalin, would you? Stalin also believed that 2 + 2 = 4. Yet if you defend any statement made by Stalin, even "2 + 2 = 4″, people will see only that you are 'agreeing with Stalin'; you must be on his side." (
  '18 Oct 08Added Oct. 8, 2018, 11 p.m.
  in rationality | a)
• Why We Can't Take Expected Value Estimates Literally (Even When They're Unbiased) [Blog.givewell]: "While some people feel that GiveWell puts too much emphasis on the measurable and quantifiable, there are others who go further than we do in quantification, and justify their giving (or other) decisions based on fully explicit expected-value formulas. The latter group tends to critique us - or at least disagree with us - based on our preference for strong evidence over high apparent "expected value," and based on the heavy role of non-formalized intuition in our decisionmaking." (
  '18 Oct 07Added Oct. 7, 2018, 11 p.m.
  in costeffectiveness | a)
• The Crackpot Offer [LessWrong]: "Whenever you are tempted to hold on to a thought you would never have thought if you had been wiser, you are being offered the opportunity to become a crackpot - even if you never write any angry letters in green ink. If no one bothers to argue with you, or if you never tell anyone your idea, you may still be a crackpot. It's the clinging that defines it." (
  '18 Oct 06Added Oct. 6, 2018, 11 p.m.
  in rationality | a)
• "To students, it's all about the (boring) content" [Washingtonpost]: "For students, the problem is not that teachers are ineffective, that schools aren't accountable or that the textbook is an inefficient technology for delivering content. Their problem is the content itself. Students are disengaged because they're bored, and they're bored because the material is often irrelevant and meaningless." (
  '18 Oct 05Added Oct. 5, 2018, 11 p.m.
  in productivity | a)
• Businessmen and Macroeconomics [Krugman.blogs.nytimes]: "Matt Yglesias is mildly upset over a report that Obama is turning to Warren Buffet and Alan Mulally for economic advice. It's not clear how much to make of the report. But it's always good to remember that businessmen - even great businessmen - don't necessarily know much about how to make the macroeconomy work." (
  '18 Oct 04Added Oct. 4, 2018, 11 p.m.
  in policy | a)
• Generalizing From One Example [LessWrong]: "Dr. Berman dubbed this the Typical Mind Fallacy: the human tendency to believe that one's own mental structure can be generalized to apply to everyone else's." (
  '18 Oct 03Added Oct. 3, 2018, 11 p.m.
  in rationality | a)
• The Fallacy of Gray [LessWrong]: "Everything is shades of gray, but there are shades of gray so light as to be very nearly white, and shades of gray so dark as to be very nearly black. Or even if not, we can still compare shades, and say 'it is darker' or 'it is lighter'." (
  '18 Oct 02Added Oct. 2, 2018, 11 p.m.
  in rationality | a)
• The Ten Limerick Principles of Economics [Limericksecon]: "A generation of undergraduates has mastered the Ten Principles of Economics through the agency of Prof. Mankiw's famous textbooks and courses. Now, in the interest of the general public, Dr. Goose shines a light on these Principles to reveal their provocative yet oddly rational sexual subtext." (
  '18 Oct 01Added Oct. 1, 2018, 11 p.m.
  in economics | a)
• Diplomacy and Accomodationism Are Not The Same Thing [Freethoughtblogs]: "Our problem is not with being civil and friendly to believers, or with trying to make alliances with them. Our problem is with bowing to religion. Our problem is with accepting religion's assessment of itself as a special case, an idea that ought to be above criticism." (
  '18 Sep 29Added Sept. 29, 2018, 11 p.m.
  in skepticism | a)
• On the Inadequacy of the Stimulus [Krugman.blogs.nytimes]: "Hmm. I don't think I've ever put up a simple explanation of why the stimulus was so clearly inadequate to the task. By the way, my point here is not what Obama shoulda-coulda done; I just want to look at the straight economics." (
  '18 Sep 28Added Sept. 28, 2018, 11 p.m.
  in policy | a)
• "Academic Debate, Real Consequences" [Krugman.blogs.nytimes]: "With all eyes on Jackson Hole, it may be worth talking a bit about the intellectual history that lies behind some of the policy debate." (
  '18 Sep 27Added Sept. 27, 2018, 11 p.m.
  in policy | a)
• Rational Home Buying [LessWrong]: "A new house is one of the most important purchases most people will make. Because of the sums involved, the usual pitfalls of decision-making gain new importance, and it becomes especially important to make sure you're thinking rationally. Research in a couple of fields, most importantly positive psychology, offers some potentially helpful tips." (
  '18 Sep 25Added Sept. 25, 2018, 11 p.m.
  in productivity | a)
• Bastet - Bastard Tetris [Blahg.res0l.net]: "Have you ever thought Tetris(R) was evil because it wouldn't send you that straight 'I' brick you needed in order to clear four rows at the same time? Well Tetris(R) probably isn't evil, but Bastet certainly is. >:-) [...] Unlike normal Tetris(R), however, Bastet does not choose your next brick at random. Instead, Bastet uses a special algorithm designed to choose the worst brick possible. As you can imagine, playing Bastet can be a very frustrating experience!" (
  '18 Sep 24Added Sept. 24, 2018, 11 p.m.
  in random | a)
• Regulations and Job Creation [Athe Istethicist.blogspot]: "This describes what has happened with respect to smoking and climate change. Corporate executives see a regulation as hindering their profits and turn a blind eye to the fact that the regulation aims to prevent them from profiting by killing and maiming other people and destroying their property." (
  '18 Sep 23Added Sept. 23, 2018, 11 p.m.
  in policy | a)
• Why I Am Not a Compatibilist [Wordsideasandthings.blogspot]: "Suppose I want a certain woman to love me and, luckily, have the alchemy skills to concoct a perfect love potion. All I have to do is put a drop of the potion in her drink and her mind will be permanently altered in such a way that she will love me more than anyone else. [...] Loving me is what she herself wants to do and, since she has the freedom to act accordingly, she will. On the compatibilist view, she would have all the freedom 'worth wanting.' She is free to pursue the will that I gave her. But is this freedom or the perfect form of slavery?" (
  '18 Sep 22Added Sept. 22, 2018, 11 p.m.
  in skepticism | a)
• The Social Psychology of Burning Man [Blogs.scientificamerican]: "Burning Man is also a large-scale social experiment. The 50,000 people who converge on the desert each year create a temporary but legitimate city - roughly the size of Santa Cruz, CA or Flagstaff, AZ - with its own street grid, laws, and social mores. In the process, they attempt to do away with several of the most fundamental institutions underlying modern civilization." (
  '18 Sep 21Added Sept. 21, 2018, 11 p.m.
  in economics | a)
• "Make Evidence Charts, Not Review Papers" [Alexholcombe.wordpress]: "Conventional articles can be nice, but science needs new forms of communication. Here I've focused on the omission problem in articles. [...] Hal Pashler and I have created, together with Chris Simon of the Scotney Group who did the actual programming, a tool that addresses these problems. It allows one to create systematic reviews of a topic, without having to write many thousands of words, and without having to weave all the studies together with a narrative unified by a single theory." (
  '18 Sep 20Added Sept. 20, 2018, 11 p.m.
  in metascience | a)
• "Treasuries, TIPS, and Gold" [Krugman.blogs.nytimes]: "Well, I've been thinking about it - and the answer surprised me: soaring gold prices may be quite consistent with a deflationista story about the economy." (
  '18 Sep 19Added Sept. 19, 2018, 11 p.m.
  in policy | a)
• Recessions Under the Gold Standard [Krugman.blogs.nytimes]: "Anyway, one alleged fact I keep hearing is that recessions were short and shallow under the gold standard. I don't know where that's coming from, but it just ain't so. [...] Gold is no panacea." (
  '18 Sep 18Added Sept. 18, 2018, 11 p.m.
  in policy | a)
• How to Create (Not Find) the Meaning of Your Life [Daylightathe Ism]: "People should spend more time thinking about the meaning of their own lives, than the meaning of life in general." (
  '18 Sep 17Added Sept. 17, 2018, 11 p.m.
  in productivity | a)
• The Two-Bucket Mind [Dilbert]: "My hypothesis is that we humans automatically sort topics into two opposing viewpoints, or buckets. In the rare cases when we encounter a third opinion, we can't easily process it because our brains don't have a third bucket." (
  '18 Sep 16Added Sept. 16, 2018, 11 p.m.
  in rationality | a)
• Rational Communication [LessWrong]: "Like most of the skills involved in nursing, and like many of the skills involved in rationality, communication skills aren't well transmitted by book learning." (
  '18 Sep 15Added Sept. 15, 2018, 11 p.m.
  in productivity | a)
• Slow Down! Why Some Languages Sound So Fast [Time]: "[S]ome languages seem to zip by faster than others. Spanish blows the doors off French; Japanese leaves German in the dust - or at least that's how they sound. But how could that be? The dialogue in movies translated from English to Spanish doesn't whiz by in half the original time after all, which is what it should if the same lines were being spoken at double time. Similarly, Spanish films don't take four hours to unspool when they're translated into French. Somewhere among all the languages must be a great equalizer that keeps us conveying information at the same rate even if the speed limits vary from tongue to tongue." (
  '18 Sep 14Added Sept. 14, 2018, 11 p.m.
  in science | a)
• We Are All Ponzi Schemers Now [Mothe Rjones]: "If Social Security is a 'monstrous lie,' as Rick Perry says, then the entire federal government is a monstrous lie. Social Security is nothing special. It's just another tax-funded program. Taxes come in, benefits go out." (
  '18 Sep 13Added Sept. 13, 2018, 11 p.m.
  in policy | a)
• How to seem good at everything - Stop doing stupid shit [Jinfiesto.posterous]: "Even without the explosive growth in skill that eliminating stupidity usually comes with, it's surprising how far just not making dumb mistakes will get people." (
  '18 Sep 12Added Sept. 12, 2018, 11 p.m.
  in productivity | a)
• The Lens That Sees Its Flaws [LessWrong]: "Mice can see, but they can't understand seeing. You can understand seeing, and because of that, you can do things which mice cannot do. Take a moment to marvel at this, for it is indeed marvelous." (
  '18 Sep 11Added Sept. 11, 2018, 11 p.m.
  in rationality | a)
• The Virtue of Narrowness [LessWrong]: "What is true of one apple may not be true of another apple; thus more can be said about a single apple than about all the apples in the world." (
  '18 Sep 10Added Sept. 10, 2018, 11 p.m.
  in rationality | a)
• Would Al Gore Have Won in 2000 Without The Electoral College? [538.blogs.nytimes]: "The popular vote results that emerge from a universe like ours in which the Electoral College does exist are not quite the same as the ones we'd see in a world where it didn't." (
  '18 Sep 09Added Sept. 9, 2018, 11 p.m.
  in politicalscience | a)
• The Neuroscience of Human Motivation [Commonsenseathe Ism]: "So if you're not up for a 20-page tutorial on human motivation, this post isn't for you, but I hope you're glad I bothered to write it for the sake of others. If you are in the mood for a 20-page tutorial on human motivation, please proceed." (
  '18 Sep 07Added Sept. 7, 2018, 11 p.m.
  in productivity | a)
• 37 Ways That Words Can Be Wrong [LessWrong]: "Saying 'Words are arbitrary; I can define a word any way I like' makes around as much sense as driving a car over thin ice with the accelerator floored and saying, 'Looking at this steering wheel, I can't see why one radial angle is special - so I can turn the steering wheel any way I like.'" (
  '18 Sep 06Added Sept. 6, 2018, 11 p.m.
  in rationality | a)
• Does Economics Still Progress? [Krugman.blogs.nytimes]: "I've never liked the notion of talking about economic "science" - it's much too raw and imperfect a discipline to be paired casually with things like chemistry or biology, and in general when someone talks about economics as a science I immediately suspect that I'm hearing someone who doesn't know that models are only models. Still, when I was younger I firmly believed that economics was a field that progressed over time, that every generation knew more than the generation before." (
  '18 Sep 05Added Sept. 5, 2018, 11 p.m.
  in economics | a)
• Harder Choices Matter Less [LessWrong]: "I do think there's something to be said for agonizing over important decisions, but only so long as the agonization process is currently going somewhere, not stuck." (
  '18 Sep 04Added Sept. 4, 2018, 11 p.m.
  in policy | a)
• Free to Die [NYTimes]: "The incident highlighted something that I don't think most political commentators have fully absorbed: at this point, American politics is fundamentally about different moral visions." (
  '18 Sep 03Added Sept. 3, 2018, 11 p.m.
  in culturewar | a)
• Hard problem? Hack away at the edges. [LessWrong]: "I don't know how to build Friendly AI. Truth be told, I doubt humanity will figure it out before going extinct. The whole idea might be impossible or confused. But I'll tell you this: I doubt the problem will be solved by getting smart people to sit in silence and think real hard about decision theory and metaethics. If the problem can be solved, it will be solved by dozens or hundreds of people hacking away at the tractable edges of Friendly AI subproblems, drawing novel connections, inching toward new insights, drawing from others' knowledge and intuitions, and doing lots of tedious, boring work." (
  '18 Sep 02Added Sept. 2, 2018, 11 p.m.
  in productivity | a)
• Update Yourself Incrementally [LessWrong]: "Whatever. Rationality is not for winning debates, it is for deciding which side to join. If you've already decided which side to argue for, the work of rationality is done within you, whether well or poorly. But how can you, yourself, decide which side to argue? If choosing the wrong side is viscerally terrifying, even just a little viscerally terrifying, you'd best integrate all the evidence." (
  '18 Aug 31Added Aug. 31, 2018, 11 p.m.
  in rationality | a)
• The Cognitive Science of Rationality [LessWrong]: "During the last four decades, cognitive scientists have discovered a long list of common thinking errors like these. These errors lead us to false beliefs and poor decisions. How are these errors produced, and how can we overcome them? Vague advice like "be skeptical" and "think critically" may not help much. Luckily, cognitive scientists know a great deal about the mathematics of correct thinking, how thinking errors are produced, and how we can overcome these errors in order to live more fulfilling lives." (
  '18 Aug 30Added Aug. 30, 2018, 11 p.m.
  in rationality | a)
• The Tragedy of the Anticommons [LessWrong]: "However, fewer are familiar with the Tragedy of the Anticommons, a term coined by Michael Heller. Where the Tragedy of the Commons is created by too little ownership, the Tragedy of the Anticommons is created by too much." (
  '18 Aug 29Added Aug. 29, 2018, 11 p.m.
  in policy | a)
• Rationality - Common Interest of Many Causes [LessWrong]: "It is a non-so-hidden agenda of this site, Less Wrong, that there are many causes which benefit from the spread of rationality - because it takes a little more rationality than usual to see their case, as a supporter, or even just a supportive bystander." (
  '18 Aug 28Added Aug. 28, 2018, 11 p.m.
  in rationality | a)
• The Most Important Writing Lesson I Ever Learned [Stevenpressfield]: "Here it is. Here's the #1 lesson you learn working in advertising (and this has stuck with me, to my advantage, my whole working life): Nobody wants to read your shit." (
  '18 Aug 27Added Aug. 27, 2018, 11 p.m.
  in productivity | a)
• Writing naked (nakeder than Orwell) [Sethgodin.typepad]: "Orwell was on the right track. Just say it. Say it clearly. Say it now. Say it without fear of being criticized and say it without being boring." (
  '18 Aug 26Added Aug. 26, 2018, 11 p.m.
  in activism | a)
• New Words Needed [Dilbert]: "There's no derogatory label for people who label others. This creates an imbalance in the linguistic arsenal." (
  '18 Aug 25Added Aug. 25, 2018, 11 p.m.
  in random | a)
• Meritocracy and Economics - Herman Cain on Why You're Not Rich [Dangerousidea.blogspot]: "One of the main things that, for me, made me doubt and abandon the conservative politics of my high school days, was the fact this just didn't seem true. There were too many luck factors out there to believe that economic advantage is the product of personal merit." (
  '18 Aug 24Added Aug. 24, 2018, 11 p.m.
  in policy | a)
• Being a Dick is Not Binary [Measureofdoubt]: "What we should be asking ourselves, when choosing a message, is this: 'How offended do we want people to be, and offended how?'" (
  '18 Aug 23Added Aug. 23, 2018, 11 p.m.
  in activism | a)
• Liberal vs. Conservative on Climate Change [Athe Istethicist.blogspot]: "It is really interesting that what I have been arguing - based on free trade and individual rights - is seen as 'liberal' and condemned as 'socialists' by a large portion of the population. Those people, in turn, are defending a set of attitudes that I think can more accurately be called "corporate feudalism"." (
  '18 Aug 22Added Aug. 22, 2018, 11 p.m.
  in policy | a)
• Random Reinforcement [Dilbert]: "I read somewhere that rats become more obsessed with tasks that offer random rewards than tasks that offer rewards every time. In other words, if a rat touches a button with his nose and gets a pellet every time, he'll like the task, but if he only gets a reward now and then, he'll be addicted to it. It's counterintuitive." (
  '18 Aug 21Added Aug. 21, 2018, 11 p.m.
  in rationality | a)
• Rhetoric For the Good [LessWrong]: "My other hope is that a few other writers decide theywould like to be the Voltaire of rationality and/or existential risk reduction. May this post be useful to them. It's a list of recommendations on writing style pulled from many sources, in no particular order." (
  '18 Aug 20Added Aug. 20, 2018, 11 p.m.
  in rationality | a)
• A Rationalist's Account of Objectification [LessWrong]: "Here's my confusion about objectification. Depending on what you mean by "objectification," it seems to be either something that (1) is very often perfectly acceptable, or that (2) means something very narrow and is usually not being exemplified when there is an accusation of it being exemplified." (
  '18 Aug 19Added Aug. 19, 2018, 11 p.m.
  in rationality | a)
• The Moneyball of Campaign Advertising [538.blogs.nytimes]: "So what do we know about campaign advertising? There is a better answer to this question. Just as Mr. Beane turned to math geeks, we can turn to a different species of geek: political scientists. Here are the lessons of their research about when campaign advertising does and does not matter." (
  '18 Aug 18Added Aug. 18, 2018, 11 p.m.
  in politicalscience | a)
• Better Disagreement [LessWrong]: "Now that most communication is remote rather than face-to-face, people are comfortable disagreeing more often. How, then, can we disagree well? If the goal is intellectual progress, those who disagree should aim not for name-calling but for honest counterargument." (
  '18 Aug 17Added Aug. 17, 2018, 11 p.m.
  in rationality | a)
• Why Believe in Keynesian Models [Krugman.blogs.nytimes]: "A correspondent asks a good question: what evidence makes me believe that Keynesian economics is broadly right, given the relative absence of experience with large fiscal stimulus programs? I'd answer that question with several points." (
  '18 Aug 16Added Aug. 16, 2018, 11 p.m.
  in policy | a)
• Economics and Morality [Krugman.blogs.nytimes]: "Mark Thoma directs me to Eric Schoeneberg, who argues that the right is winning economic debates because people believe, wrongly, that there's something inherently moral about free-market outcomes. [...] I'm going to think about that; but right now, let me describe how I see the US income distribution in terms of justice or the lack thereof." (
  '18 Aug 15Added Aug. 15, 2018, 11 p.m.
  in policy | a)
• Not For the Sake of Happiness Alone [LessWrong]: "It is an undeniable fact that we tend to do things that make us happy, but this doesn't mean we should regard the happiness as the onlyreason for so acting. First, this would make it difficult to explain how we could care about anyone else's happiness - how we could treat people as ends in themselves, rather than instrumental means of obtaining a warm glow of satisfaction." (
  '18 Aug 14Added Aug. 14, 2018, 11 p.m.
  in ethics | a)
• Terminal Values and Instrumental Values [LessWrong]: "I rarely notice people losing track of plans they devised themselves. People usually don't drive to the supermarket if they know the chocolate is gone. But I've also noticed that when people begin explicitly talking about goal systems instead of just wanting things, mentioning "goals" instead of using them, they oft become confused." (
  '18 Aug 13Added Aug. 13, 2018, 11 p.m.
  in rationality | a)
• Motivated Stopping and Motivated Continuation [LessWrong]: "I suggest that an analogous bias in psychologically realistic search is motivated stopping and motivated continuation: when we have a hidden motive for choosing the "best" current option, we have a hidden motive to stop, and choose, and reject consideration of any more options. When we have a hidden motive to reject the current best option, we have a hidden motive to suspend judgment pending additional evidence, to generate more options - to find something, anything, to do instead of coming to a conclusion." (
  '18 Aug 12Added Aug. 12, 2018, 11 p.m.
  in rationality | a)
• Money - The Unit of Caring [LessWrong]: "To a first approximation, money is the unit of caring up to a positive scalar factor - the unit of relative caring. Some people are frugal and spend less money on everything; but if you would, in fact, spend $5 on a burrito, then whatever you will not spend $5 on, you care about less thanyou care about the burrito." (
  '18 Aug 11Added Aug. 11, 2018, 11 p.m.
  in giving | a)
• Diseased Thinking - Dissolving Questions About Disease [LessWrong]: "If we can determine whether a person should get sympathy, and whether they should be allowed to seek medical treatment, independently of the central node 'disease' or of the criteria that feed into it, we will have successfully unasked the question are these marginal conditions real diseases" and cleared up the confusion.'" (
  '18 Aug 10Added Aug. 10, 2018, 11 p.m.
  in rationality | a)
• Why I Do What I Do [Freethoughtblogs]: "And to everyone else reading this: Atheist activism works. Making arguments against religion works; coming out as atheist works; creating atheist communities works. If a lifelong evangelical like Brad can question and possibly let go of his religious beliefs, we should never assume that it's a waste of time." (
  '18 Aug 09Added Aug. 9, 2018, 11 p.m.
  in activism | a)
• Reality Check - What Must Be the Case if Christianity is True? [Debunkingchristianity.blogspot]: "Below I've put together all thirty theses (so far) that most Christians agree on and why they are all improbable" (
  '18 Aug 08Added Aug. 8, 2018, 11 p.m.
  in skepticism | a)
• "Herman Cain, Outlier" [538.blogs.nytimes]: "Has there ever been a candidate with such strong polling but such weak fundamentals? Almost certainly not, at least not at this relatively advanced stage of the race." (
  '18 Aug 07Added Aug. 7, 2018, 11 p.m.
  in politicalscience | a)
• Echo Chamber or Picking Fights - Atheists Just Can't Win [Freethoughtblogs]: "f atheists spend time in religious public forums, and engage with religious believers… we're picking fights. And if atheists don't engage with religious believers, and spend most or all of our time with other atheists - we're living in an echo chamber. Is there any way we can win?" (
  '18 Aug 06Added Aug. 6, 2018, 11 p.m.
  in skepticism | a)
• Science Controversies Past and Present [Physicstoday]: "Although nearly all experts accept that the greenhouse gases emitted by humans have caused significant warming to the planet and will likely cause much more, only about half the US public agrees, even after years of heavy media coverage. How did we get into such a mess? What are the implications for science, for how it should be communicated, and for how debates should be interpreted? Some insights may be gained by noting that global warming is not the first 'inconvenient truth' in physics." (
  '18 Aug 05Added Aug. 5, 2018, 11 p.m.
  in metascience | a)
• The Profession and the Crisis [Palgrave-journals]: "As I see it, there are three main complaints one can make about economists and their role in the current crisis. First is the complaint that economists fell down on the job by not seeing the crisis coming. Second is the complaint that economists failed even to see the possibility of this kind of crisis - and that by pointing out the possibility, they could have helped head the crisis off. Third is the complaint that they have either failed to offer useful advice on what to do after the crisis struck, or that they have offered such a cacophony of voices as to provide no useful guidance for policy." (
  '18 Aug 04Added Aug. 4, 2018, 11 p.m.
  in policy | a)
• Not by Empathy Alone [LessWrong]: "Not only is there little evidence for the claim that empathy is necessary, there is also reason to think empathy can interfere with the ends of morality. A capacity for empathy might make us better people, but placing empathy at the center of our moral lives may be ill‐advised." (
  '18 Aug 03Added Aug. 3, 2018, 11 p.m.
  in ethics | a)
• Magic Versus Metaphysics [Edwardfeser.blogspot]: "A third is the suggestion that theism entails a belief in "magical beings." Anyone who says this either doesn't know what theism is or doesn't know what magic is." (
  '18 Aug 02Added Aug. 2, 2018, 11 p.m.
  in skepticism | a)
• "Bombs, Bridges, and Jobs" [NYTimes]: "A few years back Representative Barney Frank coined an apt phrase for many of his colleagues: weaponized Keynesians, defined as those who believe 'that the government does not create jobs when it funds the building of bridges or important research or retrains workers, but when it builds airplanes that are never going to be used in combat, that is of course economic salvation.'" (
  '18 Aug 01Added Aug. 1, 2018, 11 p.m.
  in policy | a)
• Missed Opportunities for Doing Well by Doing Good [LessWrong]: "The question now arises: if you, the reader, donated substantially more than you usually do with a view toward maximizing your positive social impact, would you become happier? Maybe, maybe not. What I would say is that it's worth the experiment. An expenditure on the order of 5% or 10% of one's annual income is small relative to one's lifetime earnings. And the potential upside for you is high." (
  '18 Jul 31Added July 31, 2018, 11 p.m.
  in giving | a)
• Something to Protect [LessWrong]: "Similarly, in Western real life, unhappy people are told that they need a 'purpose in life', so they should pick out an altruistic cause that goes well with their personality, like picking out nice living-room drapes, and this will brighten up their days by adding some color, like nice living-room drapes." (
  '18 Jul 30Added July 30, 2018, 11 p.m.
  in effectivealtruism | a)
• "The "Intuitions" Behind "Utilitarianism" [LessWrong]: "Among other things, if you try to violate 'utilitarianism', you run into paradoxes, contradictions, circular preferences, and other things that aren't symptoms of moral wrongness so much as moral incoherence." (
  '18 Jul 29Added July 29, 2018, 11 p.m.
  in ethics | a)
• "The Trouble With "Good" [LessWrong]: "I am a normative utilitarian and a descriptive emotivist: I believe utilitarianism is the correct way to resolve moral problems, but that the normal mental algorithms for resolving moral problems use emotivism." (
  '18 Jul 28Added July 28, 2018, 11 p.m.
  in ethics | a)
• The Truth About Violence [Samharris]: "Just as it is prudent to wear your seat belt while driving, it makes sense to know how best to respond to violence. In fact, it is overwhelmingly likely that some of you will become the targets of violence in the future. The purpose of this essay is to help you prepare for it." (
  '18 Jul 27Added July 27, 2018, 11 p.m.
  in policy | a)
• A Priori [LessWrong]: "Consider the problem of Occam's Razor, as confronted by Traditional philosophers. If two hypotheses fit the same observations equally well, why believe the simpler one is more likely to be true?" (
  '18 Jul 26Added July 26, 2018, 11 p.m.
  in rationality | a)
• Occam's Razor [LessWrong]: "Occam's Razor is often phrased as 'The simplest explanation that fits the facts.' Robert Heinlein replied that the simplest explanation is 'The lady down the street is a witch; she did it.' One observes that the length of an English sentence is not a good way to measure 'complexity'. And 'fitting' the facts by merely failing to prohibit them is insufficient." (
  '18 Jul 25Added July 25, 2018, 11 p.m.
  in rationality | a)
• Is Philosophy Just a Matter of Opinion? [Aphilosopher.wordpress]: "Those who fall victim to this misconception assume that there are no better or worse opinions on philosophical matters. So, any position is as good as any other and there is really no point in discussing it. From this is generally thought that once you have stated your opinion, that is enough and it should be accepted as being as good as anyone else's opinion. [...] These assumptions are appealing, but mistaken." (
  '18 Jul 24Added July 24, 2018, 11 p.m.
  in philosophy | a)
• The Top Idea in Your Mind [Paulgraham]: "I realized recently that what one thinks about in the shower in the morning is more important than I'd thought. I knew it was a good time to have ideas. Now I'd go further: now I'd say it's hard to do a really good job on anything you don't think about in the shower." (
  '18 Jul 23Added July 23, 2018, 11 p.m.
  in productivity | a)
• The Proper Use of Humility [LessWrong]: "It is widely recognized that good science requires some kind of humility. What sort of humility is more controversial." (
  '18 Jul 22Added July 22, 2018, 11 p.m.
  in rationality | a)
• How to Prioritize [Stevepavlina]: "Virtually every time management system teaches that you must prioritize your projects to make sure you're working on what's truly important instead of getting caught up in minor things. However, few systems explain precisely how to do this. How do you decide which task is really the most important at any given time?" (
  '18 Jul 21Added July 21, 2018, 11 p.m.
  in productivity | a)
• Are Your Enemies Innately Evil? [LessWrong]: "Realistically, most people don't construct their life stories with themselves as the villains. Everyone is the hero of their own story. The Enemy's story, as seen by the Enemy, is not going to make the Enemy look bad. If you try to construe motivations that would make the Enemy look bad, you'll end up flat wrong about what actually goes on in the Enemy's mind." (
  '18 Jul 20Added July 20, 2018, 11 p.m.
  in culturewar | a)
• Avoiding Your Belief's Real Weak Points [LessWrong]: "There is a tradition of inquiry. But you only attack targets for purposes of defending them. You only attack targets you know you can defend. In Modern Orthodox Judaism I have not heard much emphasis of the virtues of blind faith. You're allowed to doubt. You're just not allowed to successfully doubt." (
  '18 Jul 19Added July 19, 2018, 11 p.m.
  in rationality | a)
• A Letter to my Students [Blogs.berkeley.edu]: "The bad news is that you have been the victims of a terrible swindle, denied an inheritance you deserve by contract and by your merits. And you aren't the only ones; victims of this ripoff include the students who were on your left and on your right in high school but didn't get into Cal, a whole generation stiffed by mine. This letter is an apology, and more usefully, perhaps a signal to start demanding what's been taken from you so you can pass it on with interest." (
  '18 Jul 18Added July 18, 2018, 11 p.m.
  in policy | a)
• Friday's Deals May Not Be the Best [NYTimes]: "It is not until early December, Professor Etzioni's research shows that prices are likely to be the lowest for electronics, products that are among the biggest sellers on the Friday after Thanksgiving." (
  '18 Jul 17Added July 17, 2018, 11 p.m.
  in economics | a)
• Empty Definitions [Philosophyetc.net]: "One of the most frustrating aspects of non-philosophers' attempts to dabble in philosophy is that they tend not to clearly separate terminological and substantive questions. They often claim that disputes (from ethics to philosophy of mind) are just a matter of how we choose to "define" our terms. This is not so. How we define our terms will of course affect what claim we are making (or what proposition we express) when we assert some sentence. But the claim itself may concern some entirely language-independent matter of fact." (
  '18 Jul 16Added July 16, 2018, 11 p.m.
  in rationality | a)
• Education [Philosophyetc.net]: "Even more important is to change mere information into knowledge, and for that in turn to develop into understanding. Guiding this process should, I think, be the teacher's main role. Quickly forgotten isolated factoids don't even make it to the second stage knowledge, and they certainly don't contribute much to our overall understanding. Learning a whole bunch of pointless facts is just… well, pointless." (
  '18 Jul 14Added July 14, 2018, 11 p.m.
  in productivity | a)
• Where Recursive Justification Hits Bottom [LessWrong]: "If every belief must be justified, and those justifications in turn must be justified, then how is the infinite recursion terminated? And if you're allowed to end in something assumed-without-justification, then why aren't you allowed to assume anything without justification?" (
  '18 Jul 13Added July 13, 2018, 11 p.m.
  in rationality | a)
• Some Considerations Against More Investment in Cost-Effectiveness Estimates [Blog.givewell]: "we are arguing that focusing on directly estimating cost-effectiveness is not the best way to maximize cost-effectiveness. We believe there are alternative ways of maximizing cost-effectiveness - in particular, making limited use of cost-effectiveness estimates while focusing on finding high-quality evidence" (
  '18 Jul 12Added July 12, 2018, 11 p.m.
  in costeffectiveness | a)
• "Is Morality Unified? Evidence that Distinct Neural Systems Underlie Moral Judgments of Harm, Dishonesty, and Disgust" [Mitpressjournals]: "Is it worse to cheat on an exam or to eat your dog? Consideration of these acts feels very different, yet we tend to classify a diverse variety of acts as "morally wrong." This common linguistic label does not ensure that moral judgments of such diverse acts are similar enough to be studied as a single kind of judgment. Nonetheless, research investigating moral judgments has tended to treat moral judgments pertaining to vastly different contents as comparable or even equivalent." (
  '18 Jul 11Added July 11, 2018, 11 p.m.
  in ethics | a)
• Why Change Your Mind? [Somewhatabnormal.blogspot]: "In this view, the atheist who says, 'I never believe anything unless I have evidence for it' is saying something profoundly stupid. Such a principle would require a retreat to near total skepticism" (
  '18 Jul 09Added July 9, 2018, 11 p.m.
  in skepticism | a)
• Beware Trivial Inconveniences [LessWrong]: "The human longing for freedom of information is a terrible and wonderful thing. It delineates a pivotal difference between mental emancipation and slavery. It has launched protests, rebellions, and revolutions. Thousands have devoted their lives to it, thousands of others have even died for it. And it can be stopped dead in its tracks by requiring people to search for 'how to set up proxy' before viewing their anti-government website." (
  '18 Jul 08Added July 8, 2018, 11 p.m.
  in rationality | a)
• Why Our Kind Can't Cooperate [LessWrong]: "Yes, a group which can't tolerate disagreement is not rational. But if you tolerate only disagreement - if you tolerate disagreement but not agreement - then you also are not rational. You're only willing to hear some honest thoughts, but not others. You are a dangerous half-a-rationalist." (
  '18 Jul 07Added July 7, 2018, 11 p.m.
  in culturewar | a)
• Star Wars vs Star Trek: An Objective Analysis [Cracked]: Everything that is wrong with Star Trek is wrong with Star Wars times 100. (
  '18 Jul 06Added July 6, 2018, 11 p.m.
  in random | a)
• Is Rationality Teachable? [LessWrong]: "It is generally assumed around here that people can learn to be more rational. That's the purpose of The Sequences, after all. And veteran Less Wrongers do seem (to me) vastly more rational than the average person. But maybe it's a selection effect: maybe Less Wrong doesn't make people more rational, it's just that the people who are already relatively rational are the ones most likely to be attracted Less Wrong. Daniel Willingham (2008) thinks it's pretty hard to teach rationality / critical thinking,1 but what evidence do we have on the matter? Is rationality teachable?" (
  '18 Jul 05Added July 5, 2018, 11 p.m.
  in rationality | a)
• Top 10 Tips For Reaching Out to Atheists [Freethoughtblogs]: "In hopes for better future discussions between believers and non-believers, I decided to give some advice to believers who would like to reach out to us in the future, whether publicly or personally. In some cases I will use examples that assume the reader is a Christian since I live in America and in America seemingly 99.99% of would-be proselytizers are Christians of some sort. But most of the principles will be valuable to Muslims and those rare proselytizing Jews too." (
  '18 Jul 04Added July 4, 2018, 11 p.m.
  in skepticism | a)
• Is Dualism Predicated Upon Incredulity? [Interiorcrocodilealligator.wordpress]: "Incredulity is dualism's best friend. It is the only thing that keeps it alive, and it is fueled mostly by superstitious myths. The only evidence that may be in favor of dualism is the near-death experience. [...] Dualism is pretty much the only belief system I've ever seen that exists from gaps. The incredulity is actually difficult to detect, but I'll show you how to translate the rhetoric to the actual assertion." (
  '18 Jul 03Added July 3, 2018, 11 p.m.
  in skepticism | a)
• Approving Reinforces Low-Effort Behaviors [LessWrong]: "In addition to "liking" to describe pleasure and "wanting" to describe motivation, we add "approving" to describe thoughts that are ego syntonic. [...] Discussion of goals is mostly about approving; a goal is an ego-syntonic thought. When we speak of goals that are hard to achieve, we're usually talking about +approving/-wanting. The previous discussion of learning Swahili is one example; more noble causes like Working To Help The Less Fortunate can be others." (
  '18 Jul 02Added July 2, 2018, 11 p.m.
  in productivity | a)
• "I Don't Really Give A Fuck About Tone, Per Se" [Freethoughtblogs]: "The reason I say that we should not call religious people names is because those are not truthful, they're false. And lying for atheism is as bad (if not worse) than lying for Jesus. I don't want you to avoid calling religious people stupid only because it will turn them off, but because it is false and it makes us look-you guessed it, stupid and immature when we stoop to it." (
  '18 Jul 01Added July 1, 2018, 11 p.m.
  in activism | a)
• Reason as a Memetic Immune Disorder [LessWrong]: "You may have noticed that people who convert to religion after the age of 20 or so are generally more zealous than people who grew up with the same religion. People who grow up with a religion learn how to cope with its more inconvenient parts by partitioning them off, rationalizing them away, or forgetting about them. Religious communities actually protect their members from religion in one sense - they develop an unspoken consensus on which parts of their religion members can legitimately ignore. New converts sometimes try to actually do what their religion tells them to do." (
  '18 Jun 30Added June 30, 2018, 11 p.m.
  in skepticism | a)
• "If Money Doesn't Make You Happy, Then You Probably Aren't Spending it Right" [Dunn.psych.ubc.ca]: "Most people don't know the basic scientific facts about happiness-about what brings it and what sustains it-and so they don't know how to use their money to acquire it. It is not surprising when wealthy people who know nothing about wine end up with cellars that aren't that much better stocked than their neighbors', and it should not be surprising when wealthy people who know nothing about happiness end up with lives that aren't that much happier than anyone else's. Money is an opportunity for happiness, but it is an opportunity that people routinely squander because the things they think will make them happy often don't." (
  '18 Jun 29Added June 29, 2018, 11 p.m.
  in productivity | a)
• When Anyone Is Watching: Metaphors and the Slipperiness of Religion [Gretachristina.typepad]: "There's a trope going around among progressive religious believers and theologians. It goes something like this: 'Religious beliefs don't have to be literally true. They're just useful metaphors: stories that give shape and meaning to our lives.' I've been hearing this trope for a while. And something recently occurred to me about it: something so blindingly obvious that I'm smacking myself in the head for not having thought of it earlier. It's this: If religion is just a story, then why does it upset people so much when atheists say that it isn't true?" (
  '18 Jun 28Added June 28, 2018, 11 p.m.
  in skepticism | a)
• Cached Selves [LessWrong]: "Today, I'd like to discuss a related effect from the social psychology and marketing literatures: "commitment and consistency effects", whereby any random thing you say or do in the absence of obvious outside pressure, can hijack your self-concept for the medium- to long-term future." (
  '18 Jun 27Added June 27, 2018, 11 p.m.
  in productivity | a)
• Knowing About Biases Can Hurt People [LessWrong]: "I've seen people severely messed up by their own knowledge of biases. They have more ammunition with which to argue against anything they don't like. And that problem - too much ready ammunition - is one of the primary ways that people with high mental agility end up stupid, in Stanovich's "dysrationalia" sense of stupidity." (
  '18 Jun 26Added June 26, 2018, 11 p.m.
  in rationality | a)
• Policy Debates Should Not Appear One-Sided [LessWrong]: "On questions of simple fact (for example, whether Earthly life arose by natural selection) there's a legitimate expectation that the argument should be a one-sided battle; the facts themselves are either one way or another, and the so-called "balance of evidence" should reflect this. Indeed, under the Bayesian definition of evidence, "strong evidence" is just that sort of evidence which we only expect to find on one side of an argument. But there is no reason for complex actions with many consequences to exhibit this onesidedness property. Why do people seem to want their policydebates to be one-sided?" (
  '18 Jun 24Added June 24, 2018, 11 p.m.
  in policy | a)
• Spend Money on Ergonomics [LessWrong]: "Ergonomics is incredibly important. Sadly, so many of us in the techno-geek cluster ignore well-defined best practices of ergonomics and develop the infamous hunched back of late night computer toiling. [...] With straightforward monetary investment, you can dramatically improve the next hundreds of thousands of hours of your life. The effect size here is just enormous. Spend money on ergonomics, and you will be less fatigued, more energetic, more productive, and healthier into the later years of your life." (
  '18 Jun 23Added June 23, 2018, 11 p.m.
  in productivity | a)
• The Quiz Daniel Kahneman Wants You to Fail [Vanityfair]: "In the December 2011 issue of Vanity Fair, Michael Lewis profiles Nobel Prize-winning psychologist Daniel Kahneman, who pioneered research into 'heuristics,' or the shortcuts humans use when making decisions. Below, take our quiz to see how your own mind works." (
  '18 Jun 22Added June 22, 2018, 11 p.m.
  in rationality | a)
• What Have We Learned about Fiscal Policy from the Crisis? [Imf]: "Via Brad DeLong, there's a paper by David Romer (pdf) summarizing recent research on fiscal policy, inspired by the crisis and aftermath. And his conclusion is not at all what you hear on the talk shows; it is that there is now overwhelming evidence that fiscal policy does in fact work when it's not offset by monetary policy. And since we're now in a liquidity trap in which conventional monetary policy has no traction, that's the world we're in." (
  '18 Jun 21Added June 21, 2018, 11 p.m.
  in policy | a)
• The Guardians of Ayn Rand [LessWrong]: "I admire Newton's accomplishments. But my attitude toward a woman's right to vote, bars me from accepting Newton as a moral paragon. Just as my knowledge of Bayesian probability bars me from viewing Newton as the ultimate unbeatable source of mathematical knowledge. And my knowledge of Special Relativity, paltry and little-used though it may be, bars me from viewing Newton as the ultimate authority on physics. Newton couldn't realistically have discovered any of the ideas I'm lording over him - but progress isn't fair! That's the point! Science has heroes, but no gods. The great Names are not our superiors, or even our rivals, they are passed milestones on our road; and the most important milestone is the hero yet to come." (
  '18 Jun 19Added June 19, 2018, 11 p.m.
  in culturewar | a)
• Why Smart People Have Bad Ideas [Paulgraham]: "If you're going to spend years working on something, you'd think it might be wise to spend at least a couple days considering different ideas, instead of going with the first that comes into your head. You'd think. But people don't." (
  '18 Jun 18Added June 18, 2018, 11 p.m.
  in productivity | a)
• Luke Meuhlhauser's Moral Pluralism [Athe Istethicist.blogspot]: "When somebody adopts a moral theory, they do not necessarily adopt a set of beliefs about the world. Adopting a moral theory is to adopt a language - to decide to use moral terms in a particular way. When two people adopt two different moral languages, they will sometimes have trouble communicating. Because those languages are very similar to each other, they may be confused about the nature of their disagreements - mistaking differences in languages as differences in beliefs." (
  '18 Jun 17Added June 17, 2018, 11 p.m.
  in ethics | a)
• Ethical Injunctions [LessWrong]: "First, being human and running on corrupted hardware, we may generalize classes of situation where when you say e.g. 'It's time to rob a few banks for the greater good,' we deem it more likely that you've been corrupted than that this is really the case. (Note that we're not prohibiting it from ever being the case in reality, but we're questioning the epistemic state where you're justified in trusting your own calculation that this is the right thing to do - fair lottery tickets can win, but you can't justifiably buy them.)" (
  '18 Jun 16Added June 16, 2018, 11 p.m.
  in rationality | a)
• "No, Virginia, There Is No Santa Claus" [Freethoughtblogs]: "Your friends have been affected by the skepticism of a skeptical age. They do not believe except when they see. And good for them. Skepticism is healthy. It keeps us from being duped by liars and scam artists and people who want to control and manipulate us. More importantly: Skepticism helps us understand reality. And reality is amazing. Reality is far more important, and far more interesting, than anything we could make up about it." (
  '18 Jun 15Added June 15, 2018, 11 p.m.
  in skepticism | a)
• A Parable on Obsolete Ideologies [LessWrong]: "In the midst of the chaos, a group of German leaders come to you with a proposal. Nazism, they admit, was completely wrong. Its racist ideology was false and its consequences were horrific. However, in the bleak poverty of post-war Germany, people need to keep united somehow. They need something to believe in. And a whole generation of them have been raised on Nazi ideology and symbolism. Why not take advantage of the national unity Nazism provides while discarding all the racist baggage?" (
  '18 Jun 14Added June 14, 2018, 11 p.m.
  in policy | a)
• How William Lane Craig misleads his followers [Uncrediblehallq.net]: "For someone like me, it's tempting to ignore this kind of stuff, because to any informed person it's all just rhetoric. But based on my experiences with Campus Crusade types, that's not the whole story. For someone who hasn't read a few books on Biblical scholarship, this stuff is almost guaranteed to give a false impression of the facts. That's why Craig needs to be called out on it." (
  '18 Jun 13Added June 13, 2018, 11 p.m.
  in skepticism | a)
• Storming the Ivory Tower [Bigthink]: "Part of what I aim to do is to (metaphorically) tear off the doors of the ivory tower and drag its inhabitants down to ground level, to show them the source of the clamor. Atheists aren't causing trouble for no reason; we're reacting to the real dangers posed by the aggressive imposition of religious ideas into law and public life. Of course, there's a remaining question of how we can most effectively fight back, and whether sweeping attacks on religious belief might be counterproductive. I'll address this further objection in an upcoming post." (
  '18 Jun 12Added June 12, 2018, 11 p.m.
  in skepticism | a)
• What Americans Keep Ignoring About Finland's School Success [Atlantic]: "The problem facing education in America isn't the ethnic diversity of the population but the economic inequality of society, and this is precisely the problem that Finnish education reform addressed. More equity at home might just be what America needs to be more competitive abroad." (
  '18 Jun 11Added June 11, 2018, 11 p.m.
  in policy | a)
• Why Does Anyone Like Ron Paul? [Ashleyfmiller.wordpress]: "I've been trying to understand why smart people I know support Ron Paul and I just can't get my head around it. I get the sense that maybe the Ron Paul People I know just don't realize what Ron Paul's all about. That or they just don't care." (
  '18 Jun 10Added June 10, 2018, 11 p.m.
  in culturewar | a)
• Behind John Boehner's Debacle on the Payroll Tax Cut Battle [The Dailybeast]: "The kamikazes' casualty list this year is long. They blew up the debt-ceiling vote this summer, sparking a downgrade in the nation's credit rating. They blew up the appropriations process so thoroughly that routine spending votes morphed into philosophical standoffs that nearly locked down the federal government three times and required seven temporary funding patches just to keep the lights on. And this week, they managed to blow up not just a tax cut that nearly everyone in Washington agrees is a good idea, but also their party's hard-earned reputation for cutting taxes and, quite possibly, their chances at a long-term majority in the House and future control of the Senate." (
  '18 Jun 09Added June 9, 2018, 11 p.m.
  in policy | a)
• 6 tips for giving like a pro [Blog.givewell]: "This time of year, just about every news agency publishes an article titled something like '6 tips to give wisely this holiday season.' The advice they give makes sense to a degree - make sure the charity isn't a scam, check that the CEO's salary doesn't account for 90% of the charity's budget, etc. - but it's really targeted at someone who's aiming to not waste his/her money. For donors interested in accomplishing the most good possible with their money, here are 6 tips to help you take your giving to the next level." (
  '18 Jun 08Added June 8, 2018, 11 p.m.
  in giving | a)
• Self-Fulfilling Correlations [LessWrong]: "Correlation does not imply causation. Sometimes corr(X,Y) means X=>Y; sometimes it means Y=>X; sometimes it means W=>X, W=>Y. And sometimes it's an artifact of people's beliefs about corr(X, Y). With intelligent agents, perceived causation causes correlation. [...] Are vegetarian diets or yoga healthy for you? Does using the phone while driving increase accident rates? Yes, probably; but there is a self-fulfilling component in the data that is difficult to factor out." (
  '18 Jun 07Added June 7, 2018, 11 p.m.
  in policy | a)
• Have You Ever Tried to Sell a Diamond? [Atlantic]: "The diamond invention-the creation of the idea that diamonds are rare and valuable, and are essential signs of esteem-is a relatively recent development in the history of the diamond trade. Until the late nineteenth century, diamonds were found only in a few riverbeds in India and in the jungles of Brazil, and the entire world production of gem diamonds amounted to a few pounds a year. In 1870, however, huge diamond mines were discovered near the Orange River, in South Africa, where diamonds were soon being scooped out by the ton. Suddenly, the market was deluged with diamonds. The British financiers who had organized the South African mines quickly realized that their investment was endangered; diamonds had little intrinsic value-and their price depended almost entirely on their scarcity. The financiers feared that when new mines were developed in South Africa, diamonds would become at best only semiprecious gems." (
  '18 Jun 06Added June 6, 2018, 11 p.m.
  in economics | a)
• Offense Versus Harm Minimization [LessWrong]: "Imagine that one night, an alien prankster secretly implants electrodes into the brains of an entire country - let's say Britain. The next day, everyone in Britain discovers that pictures of salmon suddenly give them jolts of painful psychic distress. [...] I think most decent people would be willing to go to some trouble to avoid taking pictures of salmon if British people politely asked this favor of them. [...] So why don't most people extend the same sympathy they would give Brits who don't like pictures of salmon, to Muslims who don't like pictures of Mohammed?" (
  '18 Jun 05Added June 5, 2018, 11 p.m.
  in policy | a)
• Rationality is Systemized Winning [LessWrong]: "It is this that I intended to guard against by saying: "Rationalists should win!" Not whine, win. If you keep on losing, perhaps you are doing something wrong. Do not console yourself about how you were so wonderfully rational in the course of losing. That is not how things are supposed to go. It is not the Art that fails, but you who fails to grasp the Art." (
  '18 Jun 04Added June 4, 2018, 11 p.m.
  in rationality | a)
• How to be a Philosopher [Richardcarrier.blogspot]: "In Sense and Goodness without God I open with an impassioned plea that everyone be a philosopher, that they replace all the devotion and time they spend on religion, all to doing philosophy instead. To which I'm often asked 'How?' Indeed, someone on FaceBook just asked me that the other day. [...] I got to thinking I should at least publish some basic starter tips, which by following you can figure out on your own how to do philosophy and be a philosopher-by which I mean in a useful way, not a boring, useless, academic way. To that end I have four suggestions to get started on finding your own path." (
  '18 Jun 03Added June 3, 2018, 11 p.m.
  in productivity | a)
• I Think You're Fat [Esquire]: "The movement was founded by a sixty-six-year-old Virginia-based psychotherapist named Brad Blanton. He says everybody would be happier if we just stopped lying. Tell the truth, all the time. This would be radical enough - a world without fibs - but Blanton goes further. He says we should toss out the filters between our brains and our mouths. If you think it, say it. Confess to your boss your secret plans to start your own company. If you're having fantasies about your wife's sister, Blanton says to tell your wife and tell her sister. It's the only path to authentic relationships. It's the only way to smash through modernity's soul-deadening alienation. Oversharing? No such thing." (
  '18 Jun 02Added June 2, 2018, 11 p.m.
  in rationality | a)
• The Dwindling Power of a College Degree [NYTimes]: "One of the greatest changes is that a college degree is no longer the guarantor of a middle-class existence. Until the early 1970s, less than 11 percent of the adult population graduated from college, and most of them could get a decent job. Today nearly a third have college degrees, and a higher percentage of them graduated from nonelite schools. A bachelor's degree on its own no longer conveys intelligence and capability." (
  '18 Jun 01Added June 1, 2018, 11 p.m.
  in policy | a)
• Nobody Understands Debt [NYTimes]: "So yes, debt matters. But right now, other things matter more. We need more, not less, government spending to get us out of our unemployment trap. And the wrongheaded, ill-informed obsession with debt is standing in the way." (
  '18 May 31Added May 31, 2018, 11 p.m.
  in policy | a)
• How to Dispel Your Illusions [Nybooks]: "Kahneman is a psychologist who won a Nobel Prize for economics. His great achievement was to turn psychology into a quantitative science. He made our mental processes subject to precise measurement and exact calculation, by studying in detail how we deal with dollars and cents. By making psychology quantitative, he incidentally achieved a powerful new understanding of economics." (
  '18 May 30Added May 30, 2018, 11 p.m.
  in rationality | a)
• Utilitarian Policy [Philosophyetc.net]: "I think the world would be a much better place if public policy debates were more focused on cost-benefit analysis. Too often, people refuse to acknowledge trade-offs or opportunity costs (health and military spending are obvious candidates here). [...] It seems like there's a lot of scope for 'no brainer' policy improvements that every reasonable person should be able to agree on. But maybe I'm missing something. So let me take a stab at outlining some of the issues where the answer seems to me completely obvious - and I hope that others will add more suggestions in the comments, and/or explain where you think I'm going wrong." (
  '18 May 29Added May 29, 2018, 11 p.m.
  in policy | a)
• Ends Don't Justify Means (Among Humans) [LessWrong]: "'The end does not justify the means' is just consequentialist reasoning at one meta-level up. If a human starts thinking on the object level that the end justifies the means, this has awful consequences given our untrustworthy brains; therefore a human shouldn't think this way. But it is all still ultimately consequentialism. It's just reflective consequentialism, for beings who know that their moment-by-moment decisions are made by untrusted hardware." (
  '18 May 28Added May 28, 2018, 11 p.m.
  in rationality | a)
• Factual Politics [Richardcarrier.blogspot]: "After posting on my blog a long while ago on the question Does Free Will Matter? a bizarre anarchist going by the local moniker Benjamin replied in elaborate length denouncing the very concept of all government whatever, insisting that if we got rid of it (all of it), everyone would live happily ever after in perfect harmony. [...] That went so far off the original topic my final reply to him follows here (in several ensuing parts). I'm not even responding to half the insane things he said or claimed, and yet it's still intolerably long for most readers. But anyone interested in political philosophy as a whole, or my political philosophy in particular, will find in the following a useful toolkit for constructing a sound political philosophy from the ground up (whether they follow mine or not), by seeing where crazies like Benjamin go wrong, and avoiding what they do by doing (methodologically) exactly the opposite." (
  '18 May 26Added May 26, 2018, 11 p.m.
  in policy | a)
• The Curse of Identity [LessWrong]: "It may not be immediately obvious, but all three examples have something in common. In each case, I thought I was working for a particular goal (become capable of doing useful Singularity work, advance the cause of a political party, do useful Singularity work). But as soon as I set that goal, my brain automatically and invisibly re-interpreted it as the goal of doing something that gave the impression of doing prestigious work for a cause (spending all my waking time working, being the spokesman of a political party, writing papers or doing something else few others could do). 'Prestigious work' could also be translated as 'work that really convinces others that you are doing something valuable for a cause'." (
  '18 May 25Added May 25, 2018, 11 p.m.
  in productivity | a)
• Dreams of AI Design [LessWrong]: "If you want an AI that plays chess, you can go around in circles indefinitely talking about how you want the AI to make good moves, which are moves that can be expected to win the game, which are moves that are prudent strategies for defeating the opponent, etcetera; and while you may then have some idea of which moves you want the AI to make, it's all for naught until you come up with the notion of a mini-max search tree." (
  '18 May 24Added May 24, 2018, 11 p.m.
  in productivity | a)
• How We Won the War on Thai Chili Sauce [Schneier]: "Watch how it happens. Someone sees something, so he says something. The person he says it to - a policeman, a security guard, a flight attendant - now faces a choice: ignore or escalate. Even though he may believe that it's a false alarm, it's not in his best interests to dismiss the threat. If he's wrong, it'll cost him his career. But if he escalates, he'll be praised for "doing his job" and the cost will be borne by others. So he escalates. And the person he escalates to also escalates, in a series of CYA decisions. And before we're done, innocent people have been arrested, airports have been evacuated, and hundreds of police hours have been wasted." (
  '18 May 23Added May 23, 2018, 11 p.m.
  in policy | a)
• "Why "Yes, But" Is the Wrong Response to Misogyny" [Freethoughtblogs]: "It's depressingly predictable. And it's depressing that anyone should have to explain why this is a problem. It seems totally obvious to me. But apparently, it's not so obvious. So I'm going to spell it out. When the topic of misogyny comes up, and men change the subject, it trivializes misogyny. When the topic of misogyny comes up, and men change the subject, it conveys the message that whatever men want to talk about is more important than misogyny. When the topic of misogyny comes up, and men change the subject to something that's about them, it conveys the message that men are the ones who really matter, and that any harm done to men is always more important than misogyny." (
  '18 May 22Added May 22, 2018, 11 p.m.
  in culturewar | a)
• What You Can't Say [Paulgraham]: "If you could travel back in a time machine, one thing would be true no matter where you went: you'd have to watch what you said. Opinions we consider harmless could have gotten you in big trouble. I've already said at least one thing that would have gotten me in big trouble in most of Europe in the seventeenth century, and did get Galileo in big trouble when he said it- that the earth moves. [...] It would be a remarkable coincidence if ours were the first era to get everything just right. [...] What would someone coming back to visit us in a time machine have to be careful not to say? That's what I want to study here. But I want to do more than just shock everyone with the heresy du jour. I want to find general recipes for discovering what you can't say, in any era." (
  '18 May 21Added May 21, 2018, 11 p.m.
  in culturewar | a)
• A Fish Did Not Write This Essay [Infidels]: "Sometimes I have the chance to explain that I am an atheist not because I know there isn't a god, but because I don't believe there is. If someone insisted that their pet fish could talk, I really couldn't say I knew it didn't, especially if I could not go and see for myself, but it would still be fair for me to say that there are no talking fish. The relevance of this is that I do not believe god exists any more than I believe fish can talk. Certainly, I have not examined all species of fish, nor every single fish for that matter, nor could I ever accomplish such a feat, but the claim that they exist is so contrary to my own personal experience and reliable facts that I simply will not believe it unless very definitive proof is provided." (
  '18 May 20Added May 20, 2018, 11 p.m.
  in skepticism | a)
• Dead Child Currency [Raikoth.net]: "I think dead children should be used as a unit of currency. I know this sounds controversial, but hear me out. [...] So one dead child = eight hundred dollars. If you spend eight hundred dollars on a laptop, that's one African kid who died because you didn't give it to charity. Distasteful but true. Now that we know that, we can get down to the details of designing the currency itself. It should be a big gold coin, with a picture of a smiling Burmese child on the front, and a tombstone on the back. The abbreviation can be DC." (
  '18 May 19Added May 19, 2018, 11 p.m.
  in giving | a)
• Why Pay More for Fairness? [Project-syndicate]: "What is curious about Lindsey's argument, however, is that the Fairtrade coffee campaign can be seen as doing just what he recommends - encouraging coffee farmers to produce a specialty coffee that brings a higher price. Pro-market economists don't object to corporations that blatantly use snob appeal to promote their products. If people want to pay $48 for a pound of Jamaican Blue Mountain coffee because that's what James Bond prefers, economists don't object that the market is being distorted. So why be critical when consumers choose to pay $12 for a pound of coffee that they know has been grown without toxic chemicals, under shade trees that help birds to survive, by farmers who can now afford to feed and educate their children?" (
  '18 May 18Added May 18, 2018, 11 p.m.
  in effectivealtruism | a)
• How to Beat Procrastination [LessWrong]: "Once you know the procrastination equation, our general strategy is obvious. Since there is usually little you can do about the delay of a task's reward, we'll focus on the three terms of the procrastination equation over which we have some control. To beat procrastination, we need to: (1) Increase your expectancy of success. (2) Increase the task's value. (3) Decrease your impulsiveness. You might think these things are out of your control, but researchers have found several useful methods for achieving each of them." (
  '18 May 17Added May 17, 2018, 11 p.m.
  in productivity | a)
• Don't vote for a politician like Obama. Just don't do it. Ever. [Freethoughtblogs]: "We need to spread the meme that you should never vote for a presidential candidate who thinks the president should have the power to order his own citizens killed or detained forever without trial. Just don't vote for someone like that. Ever." (
  '18 May 15Added May 15, 2018, 11 p.m.
  in policy | a)
• Locked in the Ivory Tower - Why JSTOR Imprisons Academic Research [Atlantic]: "Step back and think about this picture. Universities that created this academic content for free must pay to read it. Step back even further. The public - which has indirectly funded this research with federal and state taxes that support our higher education system - has virtually no access to this material, since neighborhood libraries cannot afford to pay those subscription costs. Newspapers and think tanks, which could help extend research into the public sphere, are denied free access to the material." (
  '18 May 14Added May 14, 2018, 11 p.m.
  in metascience | a)
• Levels of Action [LessWrong]: "Suppose that you go onto Mechanical Turk, open an account, and spend a hundred hours transcribing audio. [...] This is an example of what I'd call a Level 1 or object-level action: something that directly moves the world from a less desirable state into a more desirable state. On the other hand, suppose you take a typing class, which teaches you to type twice as fast. [...T]he typing class can still be very useful, because every Level 1 project you tackle later which involves typing will go better- you'll be able to do it more efficiently, and you'll get a higher return on your time. This is what I'd call a Level 2 or meta-level action, because it doesn't make the world better directly - it makes the world better indirectly, by improving the effectiveness of Level 1 actions. There are also Level 3 (meta-meta-level) actions, Level 4 (meta-meta-meta-level actions), and so on." (
  '18 May 13Added May 13, 2018, 11 p.m.
  in productivity | a)
• Homosexuality and the Choice Argument [Athe Istethicist.blogspot]: "Recently, when people are confronted with the opinion that homosexuality is a choice, will make the retort, 'When did you choose to become straight?' Clever, right? Actually, no. It is a clearly flawed response that suggests that the speaker is clutching at straws in a desperate attempt to defend a strongly desired conclusion, without regard to the reasonableness of the response." (
  '18 May 12Added May 12, 2018, 11 p.m.
  in marriage | a)
• Dark Side Epistemology [LessWrong]: "If you once tell a lie, the truth is ever after your enemy. [...] If you pick up a pebble from the driveway, and tell a geologist that you found it on a beach - well, do you know what a geologist knows about rocks? I don't. But I can suspect that a water-worn pebble wouldn't look like a droplet of frozen lava from a volcanic eruption. Do you know where the pebble in your driveway really came from? Things bear the marks of their places in a lawful universe; in that web, a lie is out of place." (
  '18 May 11Added May 11, 2018, 11 p.m.
  in rationality | a)
• The Pledge and the Motto [Athe Istethicist.blogspot]: "From the time a child enters grade school, he or she encounters a very strong anti-atheist message. The pledge of allegiance tells her that people who do not support a nation 'under God' are to be thought of the same way as those who promote rebellion, tyranny, and injustice. If she looks at her money - when she learns to read the message printed there - she learns that if she lacks trust in God then she does not qualify as 'one of us'. 'We' trust in God." (
  '18 May 10Added May 10, 2018, 11 p.m.
  in skepticism | a)
• How to Do What You Love [Paulgraham]: "Once, when I was about 9 or 10, my father told me I could be whatever I wanted when I grew up, so long as I enjoyed it. I remember that precisely because it seemed so anomalous. It was like being told to use dry water. Whatever I thought he meant, I didn't think he meant work could literally be fun-fun like playing. It took me years to grasp that." (
  '18 May 09Added May 9, 2018, 11 p.m.
  in career | a)
• "I Was Wrong, and So Are You" [Atlantic]: "Shouldn't a college professor have known better? Perhaps. But adjusting for bias and groupthink is not so easy, as indicated by one of the major conclusions developed by Buturovic and sustained in our joint papers. Education had very little impact on responses, we found; survey respondents who'd gone to college did only slightly less badly than those who hadn't. [...] Still, the fact that a college education showed almost no effect-at least for those inclined to take such a survey-strongly suggests that the classroom is no great corrective for myside bias. At least when it comes to public-policy issues, the corrective value of professional academic experience might be doubted as well." (
  '18 May 08Added May 8, 2018, 11 p.m.
  in politicalscience | a)
• The Post-Truth Campaign [NYTimes]: "Over all, Mr. Obama's positions on economic policy resemble those that moderate Republicans used to espouse. Yet Mr. Romney portrays the president as the second coming of Fidel Castro and seems confident that he will pay no price for making stuff up. Welcome to post-truth politics. Why does Mr. Romney think he can get away with this kind of thing? Well, he has already gotten away with a series of equally fraudulent attacks. In fact, he has based pretty much his whole campaign around a strategy of attacking Mr. Obama for doing things that the president hasn't done and believing things he doesn't believe." (
  '18 May 07Added May 7, 2018, 11 p.m.
  in policy | a)
• The Romney Conundrum [Nationaljournal]: "As president, would Mitt Romney follow his all-star economic advisers-or the promises he has made to the Republican base?" (
  '18 May 06Added May 6, 2018, 11 p.m.
  in policy | a)
• Urges vs. Goals: The Analogy to Anticipation and Belief [LessWrong]: "Joe studies long hours, and often prides himself on how driven he is to make something of himself. But in the actual moments of his studying, Joe often looks out the window, doodles, or drags his eyes over the text while his mind wanders. Someone sent him a link to which college majors lead to the greatest lifetime earnings, and he didn't get around to reading that either. Shall we say that Joe doesn't really care about making something of himself?" (
  '18 May 05Added May 5, 2018, 11 p.m.
  in rationality | a)
• Thoughts in Captivity [Ebonmusings]: "Many critics of organized religion have compared it to brainwashing or mind control. Personally, I would not describe it in these terms. These are strong words with overtly pejorative connotations, and their use is likely to be perceived by believers as an ad hominem attack, rather than contributing to a civil and productive dialogue between atheists and theists. Nevertheless, the fact remains that their application is not without merit. Even the staunchest defender of theism cannot deny that, to an extent, religions teach their followers to prize faith over facts, to rely on the word of authorities rather than their own judgment, and to disregard arguments that run counter to their beliefs." (
  '18 May 04Added May 4, 2018, 11 p.m.
  in skepticism | a)
• Pay No Attention to the Deity Behind the Curtain [Ebonmusings]: "I can imagine a world where cities in heathen nations regularly exploded in flames for no apparent reason; a world where we could go to the Middle East and see the entrance to the Garden of Eden, locked and barred and guarded by a flaming sword, with misty green Paradise visible in the distance beyond the gates; a world where angels flew alongside planes blowing trumpets and calling on sinners to repent. I can imagine a world of miracles and spirits, where faith healers could cure severed spinal cords or regenerate lost limbs, where prophets called fire from heaven, sent rain, parted seas and multiplied loaves and fishes, where voices boomed from the sky in answer to prayers, and where the entire geologic record consisted of fossils randomly jumbled throughout strata of flood-deposited sediments. I can readily imagine a world like this. However, we don't live in that world." (
  '18 May 03Added May 3, 2018, 11 p.m.
  in skepticism | a)
• 3 Strikes Against Fatalism [Naturalism]: "Here are three brief sallies against the plausibility of fatalism, one by Bob Miller of Charlottesville. They are designed to prevent any plunge into pessimism that determinism might engender among those who suppose we must have free will for life to be worth living. Fatalism is pretty obviously false, but we want to make sure no one gets demoralized by a naturalism that understands all our behavior as fully a function of environment and heredity. It's important (and not difficult) to avoid the false conclusion that determinism disempowers us. It doesn't in the least; rather it shows us how to make the most of our abilities. If after reading these, you find yourself depressed about not having free will, please be in touch." (
  '18 May 02Added May 2, 2018, 11 p.m.
  in rationality | a)
• How Can We Learn From Our mistakes? [Spencergreenberg]: "[T]he next time you realize you may have made a mistake: Acknowledge it, if it was indeed a mistake. Otherwise you may be doomed to repeat it. See what useful principles you can learn from it, taking into account the context of the other mistakes you've made. Develop a strategy to change your behavior. Just willing yourself to do things differently next time often doesn't work. Figure out what you can do now to alter your future behavior. Keep a list of your big mistakes and what you should learn from them." (
  '18 May 01Added May 1, 2018, 11 p.m.
  in productivity | a)
• The Problem of the Magi [Bigthink]: "This must be exceedingly awkward for Christians. Astrology is flatly condemned in the Bible as pagan foolishness, sinful idolatry, even the handiwork of demons. Yet according to the Gospel of Matthew, the magi learned of the baby Jesus' existence and nature from a star! Why would demons be interested in helping people find and worship the Son of God? And doesn't this mean that astrology does give true answers at least sometimes, in contradiction to those apologists who claim it never does?" (
  '18 Apr 30Added April 30, 2018, 11 p.m.
  in skepticism | a)
• Desiring Each Good [Philosophyetc.net]: "Some critics allege that the utilitarian agent has but a single desire: to maximize welfare. This would seem to embody an objectionably instrumental attitude towards individual persons. Rather than caring about each of Tom, Dick, and Harry in their own right, the utilitarian (allegedly) just cares about helping them as a constitutive means to promoting aggregate welfare. Tom serves as a faceless 'receptacle' of utility, rather than mattering for his own sake. [...] So I think the objection ultimately fails. Even in the toughest case - that of merely possible persons, who cannot be the ultimate ground of our concern for their welfare - consequentialists can still desire each good separately, and hence refrain from treating people as fungible." (
  '18 Apr 29Added April 29, 2018, 11 p.m.
  in ethics | a)
• Illusion of Transparency: Why No One Understands You [LessWrong]: "In hindsight bias, people who know the outcome of a situation believe the outcome should have been easy to predict in advance. Knowing the outcome, we reinterpret the situation in light of that outcome. Even when warned, we can't de-interpret to empathize with someone who doesn't know what we know. Closely related is the illusion of transparency: We always know what we mean by our words, and so we expect others to know it too. Reading our own writing, the intended interpretation falls easily into place, guided by our knowledge of what we really meant. It's hard to empathize with someone who must interpret blindly, guided only by the words." (
  '18 Apr 28Added April 28, 2018, 11 p.m.
  in rationality | a)
• How Rationality Can Make Your Life More Awesome [Measureofdoubt]: "Sheer intellectual curiosity was what first drew me to rationality (by which I mean, essentially, the study of how to view the world as accurately as possible). I still enjoy rationality as an end in itself, but it didn't take me long to realize that it's also a powerful tool for achieving pretty much anything else you care about. Below, a survey of some of the ways that rationality can make your life more awesome:" (
  '18 Apr 27Added April 27, 2018, 11 p.m.
  in rationality | a)
• Don't Move the Goalpoasts [Galileounchained]: "To the Christian who thinks that science's unanswered questions make his point, I say: make a commitment. Publicly state that this issue (pick something-abiogenesis or the cause of the Big Bang or fine tuning or whatever) is the hill that you will fight to the death on. Man up, commit to it, and impose consequences. Say, 'I publicly declare that God must be the resolution to this question. A scientific consensus will never find me wrong or else I will drop my faith.'" (
  '18 Apr 25Added April 25, 2018, 11 p.m.
  in skepticism | a)
• Ask Chris #81: Scooby-Doo and Secular Humanism [Comicsalliance]: "I will fight tooth and nail over the idea that there should never, ever be even a trace of the supernatural in the world of Scooby-Doo. And as far as I'm concerned, it's not a matter of preference, either - it's so deeply ingrained into the premise of the show and the way the characters interact that if actual monsters do show up, the whole thing collapses." (
  '18 Apr 24Added April 24, 2018, 11 p.m.
  in skepticism | a)
• "Summary of "The Straw Vulcan" [LessWrong]: "The classic Hollywood example of rationality is the Vulcans from Star Trek. They are depicted as an ultra-rational race that has eschewed all emotion from their lives. But is this truly rational? [...] These characters have a sort of fake rationality. They don't fail because rationality failed, but because they aren't actually being rational. Straw Vulcan rationality is not the same thing as actual rationality." (
  '18 Apr 23Added April 23, 2018, 11 p.m.
  in rationality | a)
• "You Will Never Kill Piracy, and Piracy Will Never Kill You" [Forbes]: "Now that the SOPA and PIPA fights have died down, and Hollywood prepares their next salvo against internet freedom with ACTA and PCIP, it's worth pausing to consider how the war on piracy could actually be won. It can't, is the short answer, and one these companies do not want to hear as they put their fingers in their ears and start yelling." (
  '18 Apr 22Added April 22, 2018, 11 p.m.
  in policy | a)
• Universal Basic Income [Philosophyetc.net]: "Should the state provide a baseline income to all adult citizens? It need not be a lot - though it could be - but even a few thousand dollars a year would surely help many of the less fortunate in our society. I think it is a much better idea than targeted (non-universal) welfare benefits, for several reasons." (
  '18 Apr 21Added April 21, 2018, 11 p.m.
  in policy | a)
• Sticking to It [Project-syndicate]: "Human decision-making is complex. On our own, our tendency to yield to short-term temptations, and even to addictions, may be too strong for our rational, long-term planning. But when the temptations are not immediately present, we can erect barriers to them that make us less likely to succumb when they return. Knowing that we can control our own behavior makes it more likely that we will." (
  '18 Apr 20Added April 20, 2018, 11 p.m.
  in rationality | a)
• Knowing Why We Act [Spencergreenberg]: "A stranger asks you on a date, or asks you to dance at a club. Presumably your decision of whether to agree might depend on how good-looking you think the person is. But what other, subtler factors, might influence your decision? It turns out that a powerfully influential factor in these cases is whether the person gives you a brief touch on the upper arm when making their request." (
  '18 Apr 19Added April 19, 2018, 11 p.m.
  in rationality | a)
• "The Second Law of Thermodynamics, and Engines of Cognition" [LessWrong]: "And conversely, one subsystem cannot increase in mutual information with another subsystem, without (a) interacting with it and (b) doing thermodynamic work. Otherwise you could build a Maxwell's Demon and violate the Second Law of Thermodynamics - which in turn would violate Liouville's Theorem - which is prohibited in the standard model of physics. Which is to say: To form accurate beliefs about something, you really do have to observe it. It's a very physical, very real process: any rational mind does "work" in the thermodynamic sense, not just the sense of mental effort." (
  '18 Apr 18Added April 18, 2018, 11 p.m.
  in rationality | a)
• XFiles: Reasons and rationalizations [Realevang.wordpress]: "How do you account for the existence of suffering? Well, maybe God has a good reason for it. Ok, what good reason? Well, think of something God might be trying to do. If you can think of something, then that's a reason. But it might not be a good reason. So how can you be sure God's reasons are good? Well, what's He trying to do? If it's a good thing, then that makes the reason a good reason (aka "the end justifies the means"). Right? So maybe suffering exists because God wants us to get to know Him, because knowledge of God is the greatest possible joy and satisfaction for mankind, even if it doesn't happen until after we die. Since maximum happiness and satisfaction are good, that means God has a good reason for allowing suffering." (
  '18 Apr 17Added April 17, 2018, 11 p.m.
  in skepticism | a)
• Religious Liberty [Athe Istethicist.blogspot]: "These organizations say that anything that can be defined as a 'religious practice' - even if it is hurtful or harmful to the interests of those who are not members of that religion - must be respected by the government. Since attacking infidels fits this definition, the logical conclusion that this religious practice must be provided with constitutional protections." (
  '18 Apr 16Added April 16, 2018, 11 p.m.
  in skepticism | a)
• Why There Aren't More Googles [Paulgraham]: "From the evidence I've seen so far, startups that turn down acquisition offers usually end up doing better. Not always, but usually there's a bigger offer coming, or perhaps even an IPO. Of course, the reason startups do better when they turn down acquisition offers is not necessarily that all such offers undervalue startups. More likely the reason is that the kind of founders who have the balls to turn down a big offer also tend to be very successful. That spirit is exactly what you want in a startup." (
  '18 Apr 14Added April 14, 2018, 11 p.m.
  in entrepreneurship | a)
• David Damberger - What happens when an NGO admits failure[TED Talk] [Ted]: "International aid groups make the same mistakes over and over again. At TEDxYYC David Damberger uses his own engineering failure in India to call for the development sector to publicly admit, analyze, and learn from their missteps. David Damberger's work with Engineers Without Borders has taken him from communities in India to Southern Africa where he ran development and infrastructure programs." (
  '18 Apr 13Added April 13, 2018, 11 p.m.
  in development | a)
• Givewell's Giving 101 [Givewell]: "Your donation can change someone's life. For a few thousand dollars you can literally save someone's life in the developing world. For around $15,000 you can reduce the chance that a child born today in the United States ends up in prison. These claims aren't normal 'marketing pitches' you read in direct mail solicitations - these are the results that the top 1% of charities we've looked at achieve - and you can count on them." (
  '18 Apr 12Added April 12, 2018, 11 p.m.
  in giving | a)
• Faith as a Last Resort [Freethoughtblogs]: "So why should you need faith to believe in God? I know that seems like a dumb-ass question. But hear me out. Why should there be a real, enormously powerful entity in the world, an entity with a more real and more powerful effect on the world than anything else… and yet, for this entity and this entity only, in order to fully understand and believe in its existence, the most essential requirement is that we want to believe?" (
  '18 Apr 11Added April 11, 2018, 11 p.m.
  in skepticism | a)
• Keynes Was Right [NYTimes]: "The bottom line is that 2011 was a year in which our political elite obsessed over short-term deficits that aren't actually a problem and, in the process, made the real problem - a depressed economy and mass unemployment - worse. The good news, such as it is, is that President Obama has finally gone back to fighting against premature austerity - and he seems to be winning the political battle. And one of these years we might actually end up taking Keynes's advice, which is every bit as valid now as it was 75 years ago." (
  '18 Apr 10Added April 10, 2018, 11 p.m.
  in policy | a)
• A Mile Wide and an Inch Deep [Daylightathe Ism]: "Only four in ten Americans can name more than four of the Ten Commandments. Astonishingly, even to me, only half can name even one of the four gospels. 12% of Americans - which is something in excess of thirty million people - believe that Joan of Arc was Noah's wife. And finally, three-quarters of Americans - very nearly the nation's entire Christian population - believe that the Bible teaches that "God helps those who help themselves". This maxim was actually uttered by Benjamin Franklin, and appears nowhere in scripture." (
  '18 Apr 09Added April 9, 2018, 11 p.m.
  in skepticism | a)
• Tax and Redistribute [Philosophyetc.net]: "Really, this should be a no-brainer. And note that the lesson generalizes. Whenever someone complains that an economic disincentive "unfairly burdens the poor", the solution is to redistribute the proceeds. (Example: worried that gas taxes are a burden to the poor? Solution: redistribute the proceeds. The poor will profit, as will the environment.) Why is this not common knowledge?" (
  '18 Apr 08Added April 8, 2018, 11 p.m.
  in policy | a)
• Various Forms of Atheism [Alexvermeer]: "The word atheist has different meanings in different contexts, so we need to unpack it if we want to use the word in productive discussion. Greg Epstein in his book good without God quotes an excellent paragraph from Sherwin Wine, who separates atheism into several distinct intellectual categories, as follows" (By these categories, I'm personally an ontological, ethical, existential, and potentially ignostic atheist.)" (
  '18 Apr 07Added April 7, 2018, 11 p.m.
  in skepticism | a)
• Why We Should Use Odds All the Time [Rationallyspeaking.blogspot]: "One of the more beautiful things to discover in this world is that there are objective rules for the manipulation of subjective certainties and uncertainties. Bayesian statisticians call these levels of uncertainty 'probabilities.' (Frequentists… get confused at this point, on which I hope to write much more in the future). One of the most unexpected beneficial side-effects of thinking probabilistically as a habit, is that it makes you realize just how much you actually know. (This is probably the one skeptical conclusion that doesn't deflate one's ego.)" (
  '18 Apr 05Added April 5, 2018, 11 p.m.
  in rationality | a)
• Paul Bloom - The Origins of Pleasure [Ted]: "Why do we like an original painting better than a forgery? Psychologist Paul Bloom argues that human beings are essentialists - that our beliefs about the history of an object change how we experience it, not simply as an illusion, but as a deep feature of what pleasure (and pain) is." (
  '18 Apr 04Added April 4, 2018, 11 p.m.
  in ethics | a)
• The Non-Libertarian FAQ (aka Why I Hate Your Freedom) [Raikoth.net]: "But the Internet, especially the parts of it where people debate politics, are full of libertarians. Some areas are downright dominated by them. And I see very few attempts to provide a complete critique of libertarian philosophy. There are a bunch of ad hoc critiques of specific positions: people arguing for socialist health care, people in favor of gun control. But one of the things that draws people to libertarianism is that it is a unified, harmonious system. Unlike the mix-and-match philosophies of the Democratic and Republican parties, libertarianism is coherent and sometimes even derived from first principles. The only way to convincingly talk someone out of libertarianism is to launch a challenge on the entire system." (
  '18 Apr 03Added April 3, 2018, 11 p.m.
  in policy | a)
• Politics and the English Language [Mtholyoke.edu]: "Now, it is clear that the decline of a language must ultimately have political and economic causes: it is not due simply to the bad influence of this or that individual writer. But an effect can become a cause, reinforcing the original cause and producing the same effect in an intensified form, and so on indefinitely. A man may take to drink because he feels himself to be a failure, and then fail all the more completely because he drinks. It is rather the same thing that is happening to the English language." (
  '18 Apr 02Added April 2, 2018, 11 p.m.
  in policy | a)
• Inferring Our Desires [LessWrong]: "The idea that we lack good introspective access to our own desires - that we often have no idea what we want2 - is a key lemma in naturalistic metaethics, so it seems worth a post to collect the science by which we know that." (
  '18 Apr 01Added April 1, 2018, 11 p.m.
  in ethics | a)
• The Human's Hidden Utility Function (Maybe) [LessWrong]: "Suppose it turned out that humans violate the axioms of VNM rationality (and therefore don't act like they have utility functions) because there are three valuation systems in the brain that make conflicting valuations, and all three systems contribute to choice. And suppose that upon reflection we would clearly reject the outputs of two of these systems, whereas the third system looks something more like a utility function we might be able to use[...] What I just described is part of the leading theory of choice in the human brain." (
  '18 Mar 31Added March 31, 2018, 11 p.m.
  in ethics | a)
• Is Christianity Absurd? [Infidels]: "For the purpose of my argument I will understand Christianity to mean the religious view that is characterized by doctrines such as Salvation through Christ, Heaven, the Atonement, the ethical views of Jesus, and belief in God. So understood is Christianity absurd? This question is seldom asked, let alone answered. I will argue that a plausible case can be made for the claim that Christianity is absurd in an important sense of that term. In what follows I will not so much present new arguments as deploy standard atheistic ones in new ways." (
  '18 Mar 30Added March 30, 2018, 11 p.m.
  in skepticism | a)
• Creating God in One's Own Image [Blogs.discovermagazine]: "For many religious people, the popular question 'What would Jesus do?' is essentially the same as 'What would I do?' That's the message from an intriguing and controversial new study by Nicholas Epley from the University of Chicago. Through a combination of surveys, psychological manipulation and brain-scanning, he has found that when religious Americans try to infer the will of God, they mainly draw on their own personal beliefs." (
  '18 Mar 29Added March 29, 2018, 11 p.m.
  in skepticism | a)
• 2012 - A Campaign Year [Athe Istethicist.blogspot]: "Let's say you came to me wanting me to support gay marriage. Let's say that I agree with you on all of the points of evidence and reason - that the laws are discriminatory and unjust - perhaps even that these restrictions on gay marriage violate the principles on which the Constitution was founded. However, knowing my district, I know that voting for gay marriage would mean a sizable shift in campaign contributions and votes to my opponent - a bible thumping young-earth prayer-in-school creationist. [...] What you are asking me to do is, in practical terms, no different than asking me to resign my position and appoint the bible thumping young-earth prayer-in-school creationist in my place. Is that really what you want me to do? [...] Then you need to bring money and votes to the table." (
  '18 Mar 28Added March 28, 2018, 11 p.m.
  in culturewar | a)
• The Simple Truth [Yudkowsky.net]: "This essay is meant to restore a naive view of truth. [...] Many people, so questioned, don't know how to answer in exquisitely rigorous detail. Nonetheless they would not be wise to abandon the concept of 'truth'. There was a time when no one knew the equations of gravity in exquisitely rigorous detail, yet if you walked off a cliff, you would fall." (
  '18 Mar 27Added March 27, 2018, 11 p.m.
  in rationality | a)
• Free Will and Evil [Daylightathe Ism]: "Namely, an abiding puzzle for Christian theology is why, if God hates evil and sin so much, he created a world that would guarantee the production of massive quantities of it. As I've written in the past, free will is not a mathematical point, nor is it a simple binary choice between good and evil. Free will is a complex bundle of desires, habits and predispositions, any of which can be altered or taken away. Even if we grant the premise that free will is necessary for a world of meaningful choice, why wouldn't God create human beings with inclinations toward virtue, so that few people exercise the evil options that are theoretically open to them? The reality of our world seems rather to be the opposite." (
  '18 Mar 26Added March 26, 2018, 11 p.m.
  in skepticism | a)
• Existential Risk [LessWrong]: "Our technology gives us great power. If we can avoid using this power to destroy ourselves, then we can use it to spread throughout the galaxy and create structures and experiences of value on an unprecedented scale. Reducing existential risk - that is, carefully and thoughtfully preparing to not kill ourselves - may be the greatest moral imperative we have." (
  '18 Mar 24Added March 24, 2018, 11 p.m.
  in effectivealtruism | a)
• Peter Singer on The Ethics of Internet Piracy [Project-syndicate]: "Last year, I told a colleague that I would include Internet ethics in a course that I was teaching. She suggested that I read a recently published anthology on computer ethics - and attached the entire volume to the email. Should I have refused to read a pirated book? Was I receiving stolen goods, as advocates of stricter laws against Internet piracy claim?" (
  '18 Mar 23Added March 23, 2018, 11 p.m.
  in ethics | a)
• Does Altruism Actually Exist? [Atlantic]: "Some have argued that all acts of kindness are made with an ulterior motive, but new research suggests that there is a link between fairness and altruism, and it develops very early." (
  '18 Mar 21Added March 21, 2018, 11 p.m.
  in ethics | a)
• Good To & Good For [Philosophyetc.net]: "Regular readers will know that my theory of welfare is that our individual good consists in objective desire fulfillment. What matters is whether the world really is the way we desire it to be, not whether we merely believe it (and so are happy). The linked post supports this claim by appeal to thought experiments where we would prefer to be mistakenly sad rather than mistakenly happy." (
  '18 Mar 20Added March 20, 2018, 11 p.m.
  in ethics | a)
• The Power of Positivist Thinking [LessWrong]: "Call me non-conformist, call me one man against the world, but…I kinda like logical positivism. [...] Positivism became stricter and stricter, defining more and more things as meaningless, until someone finally pointed out that positivism itself was meaningless by the positivists' definitions, at which point the entire system vanished in a puff of logic. [...] But if we've learned anything from fantasy books, it is that any cabal of ancient wise men destroyed by their own hubris at the height of their glory must leave behind a single ridiculously powerful artifact, which in the right hands gains the power to dispel darkness and annihilate the forces of evil. The positivists left us the idea of verifiability, and it's time we started using it more" (
  '18 Mar 19Added March 19, 2018, 11 p.m.
  in skepticism | a)
• A Better Tax System (Assembly Instructions Included) [NYTimes]: "It's that time again. Start filing all those W-2s, 1099s and scraps of paper you'll need for your annual tax return. No doubt, this isn't your favorite activity. At some point, you may ask yourself whether there's a better way. There is. Economists who study public finance have long agreed with William E. Simon, the former Treasury secretary, who said that 'the nation should have a tax system that looks like someone designed it on purpose.' Here are four principles of tax reform that most of those economists would endorse:" (
  '18 Mar 18Added March 18, 2018, 11 p.m.
  in policy | a)
• A Fable of Science and Politics [LessWrong]: "The conflict has not vanished. Society is still divided along Blue and Green lines, and there is a "Blue" and a "Green" position on almost every contemporary issue of political or cultural importance. The Blues advocate taxes on individual incomes, the Greens advocate taxes on merchant sales; the Blues advocate stricter marriage laws, while the Greens wish to make it easier to obtain divorces; the Blues take their support from the heart of city areas, while the more distant farmers and watersellers tend to be Green; the Blues believe that the Earth is a huge spherical rock at the center of the universe, the Greens that it is a huge flat rock circling some other object called a Sun." (
  '18 Mar 17Added March 17, 2018, 11 p.m.
  in culturewar | a)
• Heuristics and Biases in Charity [LessWrong]: "So diversification and scope insensitivity are two biases that people have, and which affect charitable giving. What others are there? According to Baron & Szymanska (2010), there are a number of heuristics involved in giving that lead to various biases. Diversification we are already familiar with. The others are Evaluability, Average vs. Marginal Benefit, Prominence, Identifiability, and Voluntary vs. Tax." (
  '18 Mar 16Added March 16, 2018, 11 p.m.
  in giving | a)
• Correspondence on Naturalism with Christian Heritage School [Naturalism]: "Below is correspondence on naturalism from the sophomore and senior worldview classes at Christian Heritage School in Hillsboro, Oregon. [...] The students raise interesting, well-formulated questions that anyone considering naturalism as a worldview would want answered. The replies therefore cover some central concerns about naturalism such as its internal coherence, the naturalist's commitment to empiricism, naturalistic metaphysics, and the naturalistic basis for morality." (
  '18 Mar 14Added March 14, 2018, 11 p.m.
  in skepticism | a)
• Outside the Laboratory [LessWrong]: "Suppose we have an apparently competent scientist, who knows how to design an experiment on N subjects; the N subjects will receive a randomized treatment; blinded judges will classify the subject outcomes; and then we'll run the results through a computer and see if the results are significant at the 0.05 confidence level. Now this is not just a ritualized tradition. This is not a point of arbitrary etiquette like using the correct fork for salad. It is a ritualized tradition for testing hypotheses experimentally. Why should you test your hypothesis experimentally? Because you know the journal will demand so before it publishes your paper? Because you were trained to do it in college? Because everyone else says in unison that it's important to do the experiment, and they'll look at you funny if you say otherwise?" (
  '18 Mar 13Added March 13, 2018, 11 p.m.
  in metascience | a)
• Worldview Naturalism: A Status Report [Naturalism]: "What follows is first an overview of naturalism and its implications, then a look at its connection to atheism and humanism, and then discussion of some differences between naturalism and anti-naturalism in assumptions and conclusions. Highlighting these differences can help make the choice between worldviews easier for the undecided. Of course your worldview may not be what matters most; after all, people live quite happily without giving much thought to the big questions. But if you're curious about what it is to be human here in the cosmos, caught up in a situation you certainly didn't ask for, your worldview can open, or close off, some avenues of exploration." (
  '18 Mar 12Added March 12, 2018, 11 p.m.
  in skepticism | a)
• Critical Review of Victor Reppert's Defense of the Argument from Reason [Infidels]: "Victor Reppert has contributed what is surely the most extensive defense of the so-called 'Argument from Reason' yet to appear in print, despite its many (and serious) failings. In a nutshell, an argument from reason argues from 'the existence of rational thought' to the necessity of theism and the nonphysicality of the human mind, such that 'our very thinking' can 'provide evidence that theism is true'. In this critique I will not address every scientific and philosophic objection one could raise against Reppert's case. Rather, I will point out what I believe are the most important conceptual flaws in his arguments, and explain in detail how his arguments are ineffective against my own personal worldview." (
  '18 Mar 11Added March 11, 2018, 11 p.m.
  in rationality | a)
• Dan Gilbert on Our Mistaken Expectations[TED Talk] [Ted]: "Dan Gilbert presents research and data from his exploration of happiness - sharing some surprising tests and experiments that you can also try on yourself." This talk presents a lot of data that demonstrates that making decisions is more about not knowing how to get what we want - we don't even know what it is we want!" (
  '18 Mar 10Added March 10, 2018, 11 p.m.
  in productivity | a)
• Probability is Subjectively Objective [LessWrong]: "Your 'probability that the ten trillionth decimal digit of pi is 4′, is an attribute of yourself, and exists in your mind; the real digit is either 4 or not. And if you could change your belief about the probability by editing your brain, you wouldn't expect that to change the probability. Therefore I say of probability that it is 'subjectively objective'." (
  '18 Mar 09Added March 9, 2018, 11 p.m.
  in rationality | a)
• Truth is Not Boring [Freethoughtblogs]: "I am far more in alliance with a religious believer who cares passionately about the truth, who genuinely wants to understand the truth, who sincerely believes that God is real and is carefully investigating that question to arrive at a better understanding of the truth, than I am with an atheist who thinks truth is boring. I think that this believer, if they genuinely care about and pursue the truth, will eventually reach the conclusion of atheism. But I am more allied with them, in their sincere pursuit of the truth, than I am with an atheist who thinks truth is boring… and who issues an ill-informed lecture chiding other atheists for being so naive as to care about it." (
  '18 Mar 08Added March 8, 2018, 11 p.m.
  in skepticism | a)
• An Essential Question That No One is Asking Charities [Blog.givewell]: "If a charity demonstrates that its core program has changed lives in the past, is likely to change lives in the future, and gets great 'bang for your buck,' is this enough reason to donate to it? We say no. The missing piece: Will more funding lead to more of the good program(s)? We generally call this the 'room for more funding' question, and we've seen next to no helpful discussion of the issue within academia, within the nonprofit sector, or anywhere else." (
  '18 Mar 07Added March 7, 2018, 11 p.m.
  in costeffectiveness | a)
• Disguised Queries [LessWrong]: "How can reality vary with the meaning of a word? The points in thingspace don't move around when we redraw a boundary. But people often don't realize that their argument about where to draw a definitional boundary, is really a dispute over whether to infer a characteristic shared by most things inside an empirical cluster… Hence the phrase, 'disguised query'.." (
  '18 Mar 06Added March 6, 2018, 11 p.m.
  in rationality | a)
• B.C.A.D.C.E.B.C.E. [Freethoughtblogs]: "You may know there are two conventions for representing historical years: the traditional A.D. and B.C., and the chic new C.E. and B.C.E. [...]But why do I think C.E. and B.C.E. are dumb? [...] Calling the sixth day of the week 'Saturday' (literally "Saturn's Day") does not entail embracing a Eurocentric worldview or belief in the God Saturn. It's just using the English language. So, too, the labels B.C. and A.D." (
  '18 Mar 03Added March 3, 2018, 11 p.m.
  in skepticism | a)
• Where to Draw the Boundary [LessWrong]: "Just because there's a word "art" doesn't mean that it has a meaning, floating out there in the void, which you can discover by finding the right definition. It feels that way, but it is not so. Wondering how to define a word means you're looking at the problem the wrong way-searching for the mysterious essence of what is, in fact, a communication signal." (
  '18 Mar 02Added March 2, 2018, 11 p.m.
  in rationality | a)
• "My Perspectivist, Teleological Account Of The Relative Values Of Pleasure And Pain" [Freethoughtblogs]: "So, I agree with Aristotle, contra-utilitarians, that our good must be sought in our flourishing itself, not directly in the pleasures which should ideally naturally attend that flourishing. It would only be right that doing well in terms of what we are would be pleasant since that would encourage us to continue to succeed according to what is objectively good for us. But pleasure should be an indicator of our doing well biologically, psychologically, intellectually, morally, socially, etc., and pain should be a warning we are not. Neither is an inherent good or an inherent evil for us. We need both pleasure and pain to experience the world properly and respond to it appropriately." (
  '18 Mar 01Added March 1, 2018, 11 p.m.
  in ethics | a)
• The Relativity of Wrong [Hermiene.net]: "[W]hen people thought the Earth was flat, they were wrong. When people thought the Earth was spherical, they were wrong. But if you think that thinking the Earth is spherical is just as wrong as thinking the Earth is flat, then your view is wronger than both of them put together" (
  '18 Feb 28Added Feb. 28, 2018, 11 p.m.
  in rationality | a)
• Is There Progress in Religion? [Bigthink]: "If all that scientists had accomplished since the Enlightenment was a continual stream of reiterated assertions that skepticism and peer review are necessary to gain knowledge, we'd be right to disregard them. Instead, science has proved its worth with a tangible record of accomplishment. [...] And where is religion after all this - what comparable progress have the theologians made in this time? The answer is that they're still standing exactly where they've always been, reciting the same empty proverbs they've been handing down for thousands of years." (
  '18 Feb 27Added Feb. 27, 2018, 11 p.m.
  in skepticism | a)
• "A Lattice of Coincidence: Metaphysics, the Paranormal, and My Answer to Layne" [Freethoughtblogs]: "But a few weeks ago, Layne made a comment here saying that he believed in some sort of telepathic or precognition phenomenon, at least partly because of an experience he had in his teens, when he had a sudden fear of his sister's car being hit by a train and later found out that it almost had been. I know Layne to be a smart person with a thick skin and a fondness for a good argument, so I decided to cadge an invitation, and asked if he wanted to know my skeptic's response to his experience. He said yes ("Go ahead, hit me with your best shot" were his exact words). Here is that response." (
  '18 Feb 26Added Feb. 26, 2018, 11 p.m.
  in rationality | a)
• Remembering the Lost [Daylightathe Ism]: "In question #86 of his Reasonable Faith column, William Lane Craig addresses a question from a Christian who's troubled by one of the most wicked doctrines of that theology, the dogma of Hell. Craig's correspondent wonders whether the saved will feel compassion for the damned, but also worries that it would be a violation of free will for God to erase their memories of their lost loved ones. [...] This, then, is the Christian conception of the afterlife - blissed-out robots in Heaven, billions of the damned eternally suffering in Hell. If that's what William Lane Craig and others want to believe, that's their right. But I would hardly call this reassuring or comforting to the worried questioner - much less a 'reasonable faith'" (
  '18 Feb 25Added Feb. 25, 2018, 11 p.m.
  in skepticism | a)
• The Error in Error Theory(PDF) [Www-bcf.usc.edu]: "Moral error theory of the kind defended by J.L. Mackie and Richard Joyce is premised on two claims: (1) that moral judgements essentially presuppose that moral value has absolute authority, and (2) that this presupposition is false, because nothing has absolute authority. This paper accepts (2) but rejects (1). It is argued first that (1) is not the best explanation of the evidence from moral practice, and second that even if it were, the error theory would still be mistaken, because the assumption does not contaminate the meaning or truth-conditions of moral claims. These are determined by the essential application conditions for moral concepts, which are relational rather than absolute. An analogy is drawn between moral judgements and motion judgements." (
  '18 Feb 24Added Feb. 24, 2018, 11 p.m.
  in ethics | a)
• Getting Duped - How the Media Messes with Your Mind [Scientificamerican]: "Statements made in the media can surreptitiously plant distortions in the minds of millions. Learning to recognize two commonly used fallacies [straw man and weak man argumentation] can help you separate fact from fiction" " (
  '18 Feb 23Added Feb. 23, 2018, 11 p.m.
  in rationality | a)
• Why Some Wild Animals Are Becoming Nicer [Wired]: "Nature is supposed to be red in tooth and claw, and domestication an artificial process for making animals gentle. But it appears that some corners of the animal kingdom are becoming kinder, gentler places. Certain creatures may be domesticating themselves." (
  '18 Feb 22Added Feb. 22, 2018, 11 p.m.
  in animals | a)
• A Polite Exchange Between Author and Editor [Epjournal.net]: "It has been three months since I did you the honor of submitting my masterpiecepaper to your journal. At 9,000 words in length, I calculate you would only have to read 100 words per day (fewer words than appear in Hop on Pop) in order to have read the entire manuscript by now. Can I expect a decision soon?" (
  '18 Feb 21Added Feb. 21, 2018, 11 p.m.
  in metascience | a)
• Blue or Green on Regulation [LessWrong]: "I understand that debates are not conducted in front of perfectly rational audiences. We all know what happens when you try to trade off a sacred value against a nonsacred value. It's why, when someone says, 'But if you don't ban cars, people will die in car crashes!' you don't say 'Yes, people will die horrible flaming deaths and they don't deserve it. But it's worth it so I don't have to walk to work in the morning.' Instead you say, 'How dare you take away our freedom to drive? We'll decide for ourselves; we're just as good at making decisions as you are.'" (
  '18 Feb 20Added Feb. 20, 2018, 11 p.m.
  in policy | a)
• Timeless Control [LessWrong]: "In Thou Art Physics, I pointed out that since you are within physics, anything you control is necessarily controlled by physics. Today we will talk about a different aspect of the confusion, the words 'determined' and 'control'." (
  '18 Feb 18Added Feb. 18, 2018, 11 p.m.
  in skepticism | a)
• The Animal Research Paradox [Psychologytoday]: "The paradox is that the case for animal rights largely rests on the finding of experiments on captive animals - the very research that animal activists oppose. For example, the philosopher Tom Regan, author of the influential book The Case for Animal Rights, argues that the possession of rights should be extended to all species that possess consciousness, emotions, beliefs, desires, perceptions, memories, intentions, and a sense of the future. But how do we know which animals have these attributes? The answer, of course, is animal research." (
  '18 Feb 17Added Feb. 17, 2018, 11 p.m.
  in animals | a)
• Harms of Post-9/11 Airline Security [Schneier]: "In my previous two statements, I made two basic arguments about post-9/11 airport security. One, we are not doing the right things: the focus on airports at the expense of the broader threat is not making us safer. And two, the things we are doing are wrong: the specific security measures put in place since 9/11 do not work. Kip Hawley doesn't argue with the specifics of my criticisms, but instead provides anecdotes and asks us to trust that airport security-and the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) in particular-knows what it's doing. He wants us to trust that a 400-ml bottle of liquid is dangerous, but transferring it to four 100-ml bottles magically makes it safe. He wants us to trust that the butter knives given to first-class passengers are nevertheless too dangerous to be taken through a security checkpoint. He wants us to trust the no-fly list: 21,000 people so dangerous they're not allowed to fly, yet so innocent they can't be arrested." (
  '18 Feb 16Added Feb. 16, 2018, 11 p.m.
  in policy | a)
• Lies We Tell Kids [Paulgraham]: "Adults lie constantly to kids. I'm not saying we should stop, but I think we should at least examine which lies we tell and why. [...] One of the most remarkable things about the way we lie to kids is how broad the conspiracy is. All adults know what their culture lies to kids about: they're the questions you answer 'Ask your parents.' If a kid asked who won the World Series in 1982 or what the atomic weight of carbon was, you could just tell him. But if a kid asks you 'Is there a God?' or 'What's a prostitute?' you'll probably say 'Ask your parents.'" (
  '18 Feb 15Added Feb. 15, 2018, 11 p.m.
  in skepticism | a)
• How Journalism Distorts Reality [Spencergreenberg]: "Journalism provides us with important information about what's going on in the world. But when you consider the incentives that journalists have, combine that with their usual lack of scientific training, and add in the constraints of the medium in which they work, serious distortions of reality can result. Many journalists produce excellent work. But others leave you less informed after reading their articles than before you began. What causes journalistic distortion?" (
  '18 Feb 14Added Feb. 14, 2018, 11 p.m.
  in policy | a)
• Making Beliefs Pay Rent in Anticipated Experiences [LessWrong]: "Thus begins the ancient parable: 'If a tree falls in a forest and no one hears it, does it make a sound? One says, Yes it does, for it makes vibrations in the air. Another says, No it does not, for there is no auditory processing in any brain.' Suppose that, after the tree falls, the two walk into the forest together. Will one expect to see the tree fallen to the right, and the other expect to see the tree fallen to the left? Suppose that before the tree falls, the two leave a sound recorder next to the tree. Would one, playing back the recorder, expect to hear something different from the other? [...] Though the two argue, one saying "No," and the other saying "Yes," they do not anticipate any different experiences. The two think they have different models of the world, but they have no difference with respect to what they expect will happen to them." (
  '18 Feb 13Added Feb. 13, 2018, 11 p.m.
  in rationality | a)
• Getting Yourself To Act How You Know You Should [Spencergreenberg]: "Just because you know what you should do, doesn't mean that you're going to do it. You may know that it would be smart to lose weight, but aren't on a diet. You may be convinced that when you're feeling tired during the day you should do jumping jacks to boost your energy, but instead you lie down on the couch. You may know that using a formal decision making procedure is a good idea when you're trying to make important decisions, yet you've never bother to use one. So why don't we always do what we know we should?" (
  '18 Feb 12Added Feb. 12, 2018, 11 p.m.
  in productivity | a)
• The Best Textbooks on Every Subject [LessWrong]: "For years, my self-education was stupid and wasteful. I learned by consuming blog posts, Wikipedia articles, classic texts, podcast episodes, popular books, video lectures, peer-reviewed papers, Teaching Company courses, and Cliff's Notes. How inefficient! I've since discovered that textbooks are usually the quickest and best way to learn new material. [...] But textbooks vary widely in quality. I was forced to read some awful textbooks in college. The ones on American history and sociology were memorably bad, in my case. Other textbooks are exciting, accurate, fair, well-paced, and immediately useful. What if we could compile a list of the best textbooks on every subject? That would be extremely useful. Let's do it." (
  '18 Feb 11Added Feb. 11, 2018, 11 p.m.
  in productivity | a)
• Regulation and the Nature of Externalities [Freethoughtblogs]: "Capitalism is a good thing. A very good thing. But we've already lived through the robber baron era and we know what happens when it is unregulated. At the same time, we should use our understanding of how markets operate to design smart and effective regulation that increases competition rather than decreases it and that protects consumers and the public instead of corporate profits." (
  '18 Feb 10Added Feb. 10, 2018, 11 p.m.
  in policy | a)
• Sanity and Survival [Gwern.net]: "The following 3 essays were prepared from pages 737-780 of an ebook of Metamagical Themas: Questing for the Essence of Mind and Pattern (1985) by Douglas Hofstadter, an anthology of articles & essays primarily published in Scientific American between January 1981 and July 1983. [...] They are particularly interesting for introducing the idea of superrationality in game theory, an attempt to devise a decision theory/algorithm for agents which can reach global utility maxima on problems like the prisoner's dilemma even in the absence of coercion" (
  '18 Feb 09Added Feb. 9, 2018, 11 p.m.
  in rationality | a)
• The Basis for Morality [Ockhamsbeard.wordpress]: "You can acknowledge that there is no binding, logically necessary or factually obligatory reason to be moral, but you can choose to be moral. And there are plenty of good non-moral or prudential reasons for doing so, such as that social living benefits us, and it's a darn sight easier to live socially when there are rules of conduct. So you be moral. [...] And once you've chosen to be moral, that binds you to playing by the rules of the moral system you're in. Like when you agree to play a game of cricket, you can't just go around breaking or conforming to particular rules, or making up new ones, willy nilly. If you did that, in some important sense you wouldn't be playing cricket. And the other cricketers would certainly look upon you with great scorn and disapprobation." (
  '18 Feb 06Added Feb. 6, 2018, 11 p.m.
  in ethics | a)
• The 'Biblical View' That's Younger Than the Happy Meal [Pathe Os]: "In 1979, McDonald's introduced the Happy Meal.Sometime after that, it was decided that the Bible teaches that human life begins at conception. [...B]ack in the day, Dudley notes, Geisler 'argued for the permissibility of abortion in a 1971 book, stating: The embryo is not fully human - it is an undeveloped person.' That was in Ethics: Alternatives and Issues, published by Zondervan. It's still in print, kind of, as Christian Ethics: Contemporary Issues and Options. And now it says something different. Now it's unambiguously anti-abortion." (
  '18 Feb 05Added Feb. 5, 2018, 11 p.m.
  in skepticism | a)
• The Earth Is Round (p < .05) [Ics.uci.edu]: "After 4 decades of severe criticism, the ritual of null hypothesis significance testing-mechanical dichotomous decisions around a sacred .05 criterion-still persists. This article reviews the problems with this practice, including its near-universal misinterpretation of p as the probability that H0 is false, the misinterpretation that its complement is the probability of successful replication, and the mistaken assumption that if one rejects H0 one thereby affirms the theory that led to the test. Exploratory data analysis and the use of graphic methods, a steady improvement in and a movement toward standardization in measurement, an emphasis on estimating effect sizes using confidence intervals, and the informed use of available statistical methods is suggested. For generalization, psychologists must finally rely, as has been done in all the older sciences, on replication." (
  '18 Feb 04Added Feb. 4, 2018, 11 p.m.
  in metascience | a)
• Will Atheism Become Easier? [Freethoughtblogs]: "In the next generation or so, will it be easier to become an atheist? I don't mean socially or politically easier. I'm not wondering whether there will eventually be less anti-atheist bigotry, discrimination, stigma, whether state and church will be better separated, etc. (That's not what I'm thinking about today, anyway.) I'm wondering if it will become emotionally easier, and philosophically." (
  '18 Feb 03Added Feb. 3, 2018, 11 p.m.
  in skepticism | a)
• Dissolving The Hard Problem of Conciousness [Consciousnessonline.files.wordpress]: "In this paper we attempt to dissolve worries around the hard problem of conscious by showing that there is no good argument for the existence of such a problem. The arguments for the existence of a hard problem, as defined by Chalmers (2002), come from some classic thought experiments. We are asked to imagine a scenario radically different from our experience of the world and draw the conclusion that the intrinsic qualitative nature of a mental state is independent of the structure and function of that state. The conclusion depends on the truth of identifiable key intuitions. We suggest that these intuitions are not theory neutral. [...] These thought experiments thus cannot serve as evidence for a hard problem; that would be question begging." (
  '18 Feb 02Added Feb. 2, 2018, 11 p.m.
  in philosophy | a)
• Your Intuitions Are Not Magic [LessWrong]: "But like statistical techniques in general, our intuitions are not magic. Hitting a broken window with a hammer will not fix the window, no matter how reliable the hammer. It would certainly be easy and convenient if our intuitions always gave us the right results, just like it would be easy and convenient if our statistical techniques always gave us the right results. Yet carelessness can cost lives. Misapplying a statistical technique when evaluating the safety of a new drug might kill people or cause them to spend money on a useless treatment. Blindly following our intuitions can cause our careers, relationships or lives to crash and burn, because we did not think of the possibility that we might be wrong." (
  '18 Feb 01Added Feb. 1, 2018, 11 p.m.
  in rationality | a)
• Ethicists No More Likely Than Non-Ethicists to Pay Their Registration Fees at APA Meetings [Experimentalphilosophy.typepad]: "Until recently, the American Philosophical Association had more or less an honor system for paying meeting registration fees. There was no serious enforcement mechanism for ensuring that people who attended the meeting - even people appearing on the program as chairs, speakers, or commentators - actually paid their registration fees. [...] Here, then, are my preliminary findings: Overall, 76% of program participants paid their registration fees: 75% in 2006, 76% in 2007, and 77% in 2008. (The increasing trend is not statistically significant.) 74% of participants presenting ethics-related material (henceforth "ethicists": see the coding details) paid their registration fees, compared to 76% of non-ethicists, not a statistically significant difference." (
  '18 Jan 31Added Jan. 31, 2018, 11 p.m.
  in philosophy | a)
• Innumeracy among political journalists [The Monkeycage]: "John shoots down David Brooks's claim that 'If you look at the fundamentals, the president should be getting crushed right now.' John points out (as does Ezra Klein) that if you look at the fundamentals, you'd expect a close election. OK, there are lots of ways of looking at politics, elections, and the economy, and I'm sure that some forecasts give Obama a bit lead. But that's hardly a consensus reading of the fundamentals. [...] One aspect of innumeracy is seeing numbers as words, as rhetorical expressions rather than as quantities that can be added and subtracted, multiplied and divided. That's what's going on when Brooks talks about the fundamentals without looking." (
  '18 Jan 30Added Jan. 30, 2018, 11 p.m.
  in policy | a)
• Universal Fire [LessWrong]: "We can take the lesson further. Phosphorus derives its behavior from even deeper laws, electrodynamics and chromodynamics. "Phosphorus" is merely our word for electrons and quarks arranged a certain way. You cannot change the chemical properties of phosphorus without changing the laws governing electrons and quarks. If you stepped into a world where matches failed to strike, you would cease to exist as organized matter. Reality is laced together a lot more tightly than humans might like to believe." (
  '18 Jan 29Added Jan. 29, 2018, 11 p.m.
  in rationality | a)
• Does Free Will Matter? [Richardcarrier.blogspot]: "But once you have shown that individual responsibility not only can be, but in practice already is, based on compatibilist free will, the result is nearly zero net change in human behavior-unless the supernaturalists have yet other irrational beliefs that in actual fact weren't based on their views of free will, regardless of what they claim." (
  '18 Jan 28Added Jan. 28, 2018, 11 p.m.
  in skepticism | a)
• "On "Where the Conflict Really Lies" [Wordsideasandthings.blogspot]: "Where the Conflict Really Lies: Science, Religion, and Naturalism is Alvin Plantinga's popular-level challenge to the idea that science and religion are in conflict. At least, that's the defensive portion of the book. He goes on to argue that the real conflict is between science and an irreligious worldview. I'm concerned that people eager for this conclusion will cite Plantinga as an intellectual authority without understanding which parts of his overall argument are strong vs. which parts are weak, overly specialized, or overly generalized. My plan is to cover select portions of his book, supporting or criticizing Plantinga as appropriate." (
  '18 Jan 27Added Jan. 27, 2018, 11 p.m.
  in skepticism | a)
• What Is An Effective Altruist? [80000hours]: "80,000 Hours is built around the idea of effective altruism. What does that mean? At its most basic, effective altruism is based on two simpler concepts: effectiveness and altruism. So far so good. Altruism means wanting to help other people. It means thinking that other people's welfare matters. Effectiveness is a more fiddly idea. It's about doing something well. Say I'm in the business of making match-sticks. It's all well and good to take a whole tree and whittle away at it until all that remains is a match-stick. You've done what you set out to do, but you could have done much more with your time." (
  '18 Jan 25Added Jan. 25, 2018, 11 p.m.
  in effectivealtruism | a)
• Purchase Fuzzies and Utilons Separately [LessWrong]: "To purchase warm fuzzies, find some hard-working but poverty-stricken woman who's about to drop out of state college after her husband's hours were cut back, and personally, but anonymously, give her a cashier's check for $10,000. Repeat as desired. To purchase status among your friends, donate $100,000 to the current sexiest X-Prize, or whatever other charity seems to offer the most stylishness for the least price. Make a big deal out of it, show up for their press events, and brag about it for the next five years. Then-with absolute cold-blooded calculation-without scope insensitivity or ambiguity aversion-without concern for status or warm fuzzies-figuring out some common scheme for converting outcomes to utilons, and trying to express uncertainty in percentage probabilitiess-find the charity that offers the greatest expected utilons per dollar. Donate up to however much money you wanted to give to charity, until their marginal efficiency drops below that of the next charity on the list." (
  '18 Jan 24Added Jan. 24, 2018, 11 p.m.
  in giving | a)
• From neural 'is' to moral 'ought' - what are the moral implications of neuroscientific moral psychology? [Wjh.harvard.edu]: "Many moral philosophers regard scientific research as irrelevant to their work because science deals with what is the case, whereas ethics deals with what ought to be. Some ethicists question this is/ought distinction, arguing that science and normative ethics are continuous and that ethics might someday be regarded as a natural social science. I agree with traditional ethicists that there is a sharp and crucial distinction between the 'is' of science and the 'ought' of ethics, but maintain nonetheless that science, and neuroscience in particular, can have profound ethical implications by providing us with information that will prompt us to re-evaluate our moral values and ourconceptions of morality" (
  '18 Jan 22Added Jan. 22, 2018, 11 p.m.
  in ethics | a)
• Between 'New Atheism' and 'Accomodationism' [Athe Istethicist.blogspot]: "I have often wondered whether I am in the camp of the 'new atheists', or if I am an 'appeaser'. Or, what I think is probably more accurate, I am a mixture of the two. On the 'new atheist' side, I can write a post defending the conclusion that faith, when it concerns beliefs that affect the life, well-being, or aspirations of others, is a vice. [...] At the same time, I do not blame religion. Intellectual recklessness is at fault, and atheists are just as prone to intellectual recklessness as theists. [...] Being an opponent of intellectual recklessness, rather than being an opponent of religion, I am morally critical of intellectually reckless atheist and pass no judgment against the intellectually responsible theist." (
  '18 Jan 21Added Jan. 21, 2018, 11 p.m.
  in skepticism | a)
• Is Humanism a Religion-Substitute? [LessWrong]: "For many years before the Wright Brothers, people dreamed of flying with magic potions. There was nothing irrational about the raw desire to fly. There was nothing tainted about the wish to look down on a cloud from above. Only the "magic potions" part was irrational. [...] If a rocket launch is what it takes to give me a feeling of aesthetic transcendence, I do not see this as a substitute for religion. That is theomorphism-the viewpoint from gloating religionists who assume that everyone who isn't religious has a hole in their mind that wants filling." (
  '18 Jan 20Added Jan. 20, 2018, 11 p.m.
  in skepticism | a)
• The Secret Joke of Kant's Soul [Wjh.harvard.edu]: "In this chapter, I draw on Haidt's and Baron's respective insights in the service of a bit of philosophical psychoanalysis. I will argue that deontological judgments tend to be driven by emotional responses, and that deontological philosophy, rather than being grounded in moral reasoning, is to a large extent an exercise in moral rationalization. This is in contrast to consequentialism, which, I will argue, arises from rather different psychological processes, ones that are more "cognitive," and more likely to involve genuine moral reasoning. These claims are strictly empirical, and I will defend them on the basis of the available evidence. Needless to say, my argument will be speculative and will not be conclusive. Beyond this, I will argue that if these empirical claims are true, they may have normative implications, casting doubt on deontology as a school of normative moral thought." (
  '18 Jan 19Added Jan. 19, 2018, 11 p.m.
  in ethics | a)
• Do People Become More Conservative as They Age? [News.discovery]: "Contrary to popular belief, people generally do not become more conservative as they age.Seniors often describe themselves as being more tolerant and more open to new ideas in their old age. What's happening in society when people come of age often greatly influences the set point for their core beliefs." (
  '18 Jan 17Added Jan. 17, 2018, 11 p.m.
  in culturewar | a)
• The Instability of Professional Philosophers' Endorsement of the Famous 'Doctrine of the Double Effect' [Experimentalphilosophy.typepad]: "The simplest interpretation of our overall results, across three types of scenarios (Double Effect, Moral Luck, and Action-Omission), is that in cases like these skill in philosophy doesn't manifest as skill in consistently applying explicitly endorsed abstract principles to reach stable judgments about hypothetical scenarios; rather, it manifests more as skill in choosing principles to rationalize, post-hoc, scenario judgments that are driven by the same types of factors that drive non-philosophers' judgments." (
  '18 Jan 16Added Jan. 16, 2018, 11 p.m.
  in ethics | a)
• The Grindstone of Persuasion [Bigthink]: "When we think about changing minds, we should bear in mind the "wind and water" analogy. Minds do change, but that change doesn't come in great tectonic shifts. It comes in slow, patient accumulation, like water dripping on stone, carrying away a few grains at a time; like ice freezing and thawing, widening the cracks a little each year. The next time you get into one of these arguments, bear this in mind." (
  '18 Jan 15Added Jan. 15, 2018, 11 p.m.
  in activism | a)
• "To Like Each Other, Sing and Dance in Synchrony" [LessWrong]: "If you want to make the members of the group like each other more and feel more like a group, synchronized actions may be one of the easiest ways of achieving this goal. Anthropologists have long known the community-building effect of dancing[...] The implication for meetup groups, as well as any other groups that might want to make their members like each other more, seems clear: spend some time singing and dancing together, possibly in the form of drinking songs if people are too self-conscious to sing while sober." (
  '18 Jan 13Added Jan. 13, 2018, 11 p.m.
  in productivity | a)
• How Bad the Debate Is [Krugman.blogs.nytimes]: "Many pundits still like to pretend that we're having something resembling a rational national debate, with members of both parties saying reasonable things given their views about how policy works. And when you find a politician saying something not at all reasonable, there's a lot of false equivalence - surely both sides do it, even if you don't have any, you know, actual examples from one side." (
  '18 Jan 12Added Jan. 12, 2018, 11 p.m.
  in culturewar | a)
• Answering Greta - My Goals As An Atheist Writer [Freethoughtblogs]: "What I am against is not religion per se but a set of awful things that existing religions, particularly in the West but also in other places, are especially prone to. Here's a somewhat comprehensive list of 16 things which I vehemently oppose which are to one or extent another unforgivably bound up with the dominant religions of the West: faith (i.e., the willful belief contrary to rational evidence), supernaturalism, superstition, moral and cultural regressivism, traditionalism for its own sake, fundamentalism, tribalism, patriarchal values, nationalism, racism, anti-intellectualism, pseudoscience, moral and cultural stagnation, anti-natural moralities, homophobia, and, most importantly, authoritarianism in all its ugly forms-be they intellectual, moral, or political." (
  '18 Jan 11Added Jan. 11, 2018, 11 p.m.
  in skepticism | a)
• The Matrix as Metaphysics [Consc.net]: "I will argue that the hypothesis that I am envatted [and thus am in a computer simulation and not the real world, aka the Matrix Hypothesis] is not a skeptical hypothesis, but a metaphysical hypothesis. That is, it is a hypothesis about the underlying nature of reality. Where physics is concerned with the microscopic processes that underlie macroscopic reality, metaphysics is concerned with the fundamental nature of reality. A metaphysical hypothesis might make a claim about the reality that underlies physics itself. Alternatively, it might say something about the nature of our minds, or the creation of our world. I think the Matrix Hypothesis should be regarded as a metaphysical hypothesis with all three of these elements. It makes a claim about the reality underlying physics, about the nature of our minds, and about the creation of the world." (
  '18 Jan 10Added Jan. 10, 2018, 11 p.m.
  in philosophy | a)
• What Do Atheists Feel? [Ladyathe Ist.blogspot]: "Believers, especially evangelical Christians, seem to be immune to logical arguments against their beliefs. My theory is that they believe for emotional reasons, as their emotional "arguments" for belief indicate. I have enountered many completely emotional responses to my rational arguments. It's like we speak two different languages. Atheism as a non-belief position rather than a systemic response to existential fears and feelings, so it offers nothing for them. In fact, they actually accuse atheists of believing in "nothing." To them, our worldview is dark, depressing, and nihilistic. So I thought I would answer some of the questions I've heard and seen coming from the other side." (
  '18 Jan 09Added Jan. 9, 2018, 11 p.m.
  in skepticism | a)
• The Trouble With Airport Profiling [Schneier]: "Why do otherwise rational people think it's a good idea to profile people at airports? Recently, neuroscientist and best-selling author Sam Harris related a story of an elderly couple being given the twice-over by the TSA, pointed out how these two were obviously not a threat, and recommended that the TSA focus on the actual threat: 'Muslims, or anyone who looks like he or she could conceivably be Muslim.' This is a bad idea. It doesn't make us any safer - and it actually puts us all at risk." (
  '18 Jan 07Added Jan. 7, 2018, 11 p.m.
  in policy | a)
• Privileging the Hypothesis [LessWrong]: "Suppose that the police of Largeville, a town with a million inhabitants, are investigating a murder in which there are few or no clues-the victim was stabbed to death in an alley, and there are no fingerprints and no witnesses. Then, one of the detectives says, 'Well… we have no idea who did it… no particular evidence singling out any of the million people in this city… but let's consider the hypothesis that this murder was committed by Mortimer Q. Snodgrass, who lives at 128 Ordinary Ln. It could have been him, after all.' I'll label this the fallacy of privileging the hypothesis." (
  '18 Jan 06Added Jan. 6, 2018, 11 p.m.
  in rationality | a)
• The Theist's Guide to Converting Atheists [Ebonmusings]: "Ask any believer what would convince him he was mistaken and persuade him to leave his religion and become an atheist, and if you get a response, it will almost invariably be, 'Nothing - I have faith in my god.' Although such people may well exist, I personally have yet to meet a theist who would acknowledge even the possibility that his belief was in error. [...] Thus, in the spirit of proving that atheists' minds are not closed, I've assembled below a list of everything I can think of that I would accept as proof that a given religion is true. Also included are things that I would accept as circumstantial evidence of a particular religion's truth and things that would not be acceptable to me as proof of anything. [...] To be fair, I invite all theists to respond by preparing a list of things that they would accept as proof that atheism is true. If any theist prepares such a list, posts it on the Internet and tells me about it, I'll link to it from this page." (
  '18 Jan 04Added Jan. 4, 2018, 11 p.m.
  in skepticism | a)
• "Happiness, Money, and Giving It Away" [Project-syndicate]: "For 50 years, Buffett, now 75, has worked at accumulating a vast fortune. [...] Yet his frugal lifestyle shows that he does not particularly enjoy spending large amounts of money. Even if his tastes were more lavish, he would be hard-pressed to spend more than a tiny fraction of his wealth. [...] Coincidentally, Kahneman's article appeared the same week that Buffett announced the largest philanthropic donation in US history - $30 billion to the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and another $7 billion to other charitable foundations. [...] Perhaps, as Kahneman's research would lead us to expect, Buffett spent less of his life in a positive mood than he would have if, at some point in the 1960's, he had quit working, lived on his assets, and played a lot more bridge. But, in that case, he surely would not have experienced the satisfaction that he can now rightly feel at the thought that his hard work and remarkable investment skills will, through the Gates Foundation, help to cure diseases that cause death and disability to billions of the world's poorest people. Buffett reminds us that there is more to happiness than being in a good mood." (
  '18 Jan 02Added Jan. 2, 2018, 11 p.m.
  in giving | a)
• "Weigh More, Pay More" [Project-syndicate]: "I am writing this at an airport. A slight Asian woman has checked in with, I would guess, about 40 kilograms (88 pounds) of suitcases and boxes. She pays extra for exceeding the weight allowance. A man who must weigh at least 40 kilos more than she does, but whose baggage is under the limit, pays nothing. Yet, in terms of the airplane's fuel consumption, it is all the same whether the extra weight is baggage or body fat." (
  '17 Dec 30Added Dec. 30, 2017, 11 p.m.
  in policy | a)
• Macromuddle [Andrewgelman]: "More and more I feel like economics reporting is based on crude principles of adding up "good news" and "bad news." Sometimes this makes sense: by almost any measure, an unemployment rate of 10% is bad news compared to an unemployment rate of 5%. Other times, though, the good/bad news framework seems so tangled. For example: house prices up is considered good news but inflation is considered bad news. A strong dollar is considered good news but it's also an unfavorable exchange rate, which is bad news. When facebook shares go down, that's bad news, but if they automatically go up, that means they were underpriced which doesn't seem so good either." (
  '17 Dec 29Added Dec. 29, 2017, 11 p.m.
  in policy | a)
• A Defense by Example of Uncompromising Secularism [Athe Istethicist.blogspot]: "I said at the start that I was going to defend a strict and unaccommodating form of secularism. This is it. There is zero tolerance in a court of law for sectarian argument. All evidence, and all forms of reasoning, must be secular. Even when the debate is over what evidence the jurists are allowed to see and what arguments are permitted, other than evidence excluded because it was obtained illegally, the concern is over whether the jurists might draw inferences harmful to the accused that are unsound in the secular sense." (
  '17 Dec 28Added Dec. 28, 2017, 11 p.m.
  in skepticism | a)
• A Year After the Non-Apocalypse: Where Are They Now? [Religiondispatches]: "A reporter tracks down the remnants of Harold Camping's apocalyptic movement and finds out you don't have to be crazy to believe something nuts." (
  '17 Dec 27Added Dec. 27, 2017, 11 p.m.
  in skepticism | a)
• "Passions, Reason & Moral Hypocrisy" [Whywereason]: "When it comes to assessing moral situations we have a gut-reaction immediately followed by a more deliberate line of reasoning. For example, when someone asks us if killing an innocent person is wrong you know right away that the answer is yes, but it usually takes a few moments to think of reasons for why this is true. This is not to say that these two systems (system 1 and system 2 as they are referred to in the popular literature) are neurologically separate, but it is to suggest that they are not necessarily on the same page at all times. Understanding their relationship is key to understanding how humans think about moral judgments." (
  '17 Dec 26Added Dec. 26, 2017, 11 p.m.
  in ethics | a)
• Hack Away at the Edges [LessWrong]: "Humanity's intellectual history is not the story of a Few Great Men who had a burst of insight, cried "Eureka!" and jumped 10 paces ahead of everyone else. More often, an intellectual breakthrough is the story of dozens of people building on the ideas of others before them, making wrong turns, proposing and discarding ideas, combining insights from multiple subfields, slamming into brick walls and getting back up again. Very slowly, the space around the solution is crowded in by dozens of investigators until finally one of them hits the payload." (
  '17 Dec 25Added Dec. 25, 2017, 11 p.m.
  in productivity | a)
• Peter Singer and William Easterly[Video] [Bloggingheads.tv]: "Peter Singer and William Easterly talk about foreign aid and non-profit organizations working in the developing world, and talk about how you can find an effective charity and best approach aid, and how aid can fail and be counter-productive if we don't look for effectiveness rigorously." (
  '17 Dec 24Added Dec. 24, 2017, 11 p.m.
  in development | a)
• Transhumanism as Simplified Humanism [Singinst]: "Suppose you find an unconscious six-year-old girl lying on the train tracks of an active railroad. What, morally speaking, ought you to do in this situation? Would it be better to leave her there to get run over, or to try to save her? How about if a 45-year-old man has a debilitating but nonfatal illness that will severely reduce his quality of life - is it better to cure him, or not cure him? Oh, and by the way: This is not a trick question. I answer that I would save them if I had the power to do so - both the six-year-old on the train tracks, and the sick 45-year-old. The obvious answer isn't always the best choice, but sometimes it is." (
  '17 Dec 23Added Dec. 23, 2017, 11 p.m.
  in effectivealtruism | a)
• The Problem of Unfreedom [Philosophyetc.net]: "I've never understood how anyone could be at all convinced by the 'free will' defence against the problem of evil. It seems obvious that any cosmic designer did a shockingly poor job of designing us to be free agents. There are all sorts of barriers to human choice and free action that no perfect being could tolerate. [...] Here's the problem: humans are not ideally free agents. Due to our imperfect biological design, we suffer a variety of internal maladies - from cravings and addiction to mental illness and simple irrationality - that impede the rational exercise of our will. Our brains are far from optimally designed for rational decision-making. If God existed, he would free us from the bondage of addiction, bias and other mental defects." (
  '17 Dec 22Added Dec. 22, 2017, 11 p.m.
  in skepticism | a)
• The Hell With Christianity [Realevang.wordpress]: "Craig has a real problem here, and that is that he himself cannot stomach what the Bible really says about Hell. Read Matthew 25. Read Jesus' description of God's attitude towards the unsaved. It's not, 'Oh dear, you're going to Hell, if only there were something I could do to save you.' God's attitude can be summed up by two words: 'Fuck you.' You pissed Me off, and I am throwing your ass in Hell, and you can stay there. No apologies, no regrets. The God of the Bible absolutely does throw people in Hell, and doesn't ask for Craig's approval or consent. Call that Inconsistency #3: Craig has to reinvent damnation before he can defend it." (
  '17 Dec 21Added Dec. 21, 2017, 11 p.m.
  in skepticism | a)
• My Algorithm for Beating Procrastination [LessWrong]: "After three months of practice, I now use a single algorithm to beat procrastination most of the times I face it.1 It probably won't work for you quite like it did for me, but it's the best advice on motivation I've got, and it's a major reason I'm known for having the 'gets shit done' property. There are reasons to hope that we can eventually break the chain of akrasia; maybe this post is one baby step in the right direction." (
  '17 Dec 20Added Dec. 20, 2017, 11 p.m.
  in productivity | a)
• How To Take Good Advice and Actually Use It To Better Your Life [Alexvermeer]: "Good advice is a waste of your time. Yes, you read that right. Good advice is mostly useless. Why? Because no matter how good the advice is you'll probably forget it and never use it. One of the big ironies of the many personal development blogs that have sprouted up all over the internet is that people can waste a lot of time reading them. Alas, I'm guilty of doing this. I've wasted many hours reading many articles on productivity, and I forget most of it! But it doesn't have to be this way, if we're smart about it." (
  '17 Dec 19Added Dec. 19, 2017, 11 p.m.
  in productivity | a)
• Do We Concede The Ground of Death Too Easily? [Freethoughtblogs]: "I think this is a huge mistake. I agree that the fear of death is one of the main reasons people cling to religion. But I don't agree, even in the slightest, that religious philosophies of death are inherently more comforting than secular ones. And if we want to make atheism a safe place to land when people let go of their faith, we need to get these secular philosophies into the public square, and let the world know what we think about death." (
  '17 Dec 18Added Dec. 18, 2017, 11 p.m.
  in skepticism | a)
• What We Miss in the Free Will Debate [Cognitivephilosophy.net]: "What does the debate on free will actually accomplish in a practical sense? Does it tell us anything new about human cognition? About the psychological and neurological factors that cause human behavior? Does it help us form systems that can lead to a more desirable society? Whether you want to label something free will or not is, ultimately, not what I'm interested in. If we want to draw a line and call everything beyond that line of neurological functioning 'free will', I'm fine with that. Whether someone in prison for armed robbery was truly 'free' in their action is not what I'm concerned with. What I am concerned with is what are the causal factors that led to this person committing that act and what are steps we can take to help that person realize the error of their ways so to speak." (
  '17 Dec 17Added Dec. 17, 2017, 11 p.m.
  in philosophy | a)
• Drawing Out Our Better Angels: The Important Role of Moral Reminders [Whywereason.wordpress]: "Vohs' and Ariely's work suggests that the question of humans being inherently good or bad is largely irrelevant. The more accurate picture is the cartoon image; our moral senses are dictated by an angel over one shoulder and a devil over the other. Therefore, the more fruitful question is: what are the external contexts and circumstances that favor one over the other? This is not to suggest a blank slate view of human morality - far from it - but it is to say that societies where messages of honesty and fairness dominate are better off. Ariely's conclusion is bad news for societies where it is almost impossible to go a day without seeing a photo, video or advertisement where avarice rules. And this is the larger and more important point. When given a chance to cheat most people do; not a lot, but enough to improve a test score by a few points (One can easily see how this can perpetuate in a negative way). But when the same people are reminded about honestly and fairness it is their moral codes that take the drivers seat." (
  '17 Dec 16Added Dec. 16, 2017, 11 p.m.
  in ethics | a)
• The Science of Happiness [Edge]: "Dan Gilbert [...] is a scientist who explores what philosophy, psychology, neuroscience, and behavioral economics have to teach us about how, and how well the human brain can imagine its own future, and about how, and how well it can predict which of those futures it will most enjoy. Below he talks about a wide range of matters that include how we measure a person's subjective emotional experience; the role of "positive hedonic experience"; science as an attempt to replace qualitative distinctions with quantitative distinctions; the role negative emotions play in our lives; the costs of variety; and the need to abandon the romantic notion that human unhappiness results from the loss of our primal innocence." (
  '17 Dec 15Added Dec. 15, 2017, 11 p.m.
  in ethics | a)
• Can All Religion Be True? - The Problem With Ecumenicalism [Freethoughtblogs]: "his notion that "all religion's true"? This notion that everyone finds their own path to God - even atheists, in our own way? This notion that people can hold religious beliefs that are not only different but totally contradictory - Jesus both is and is not the son of God, dead people both go to Heaven and are reincarnated, homosexuality is both loved and despised by God, there are many gods and there is only one God and God is a sort of three-for-one deal, Catholicism is the one true faith and Mormonism is the one true faith and Islam is the one true faith and no one faith is the one true faith - and that, somehow, all of these contradictory beliefs can be true? It's not just laughably absurd. It's not just logically impossible. It shows a callous unconcern about whether the things you believe are true." (
  '17 Dec 14Added Dec. 14, 2017, 11 p.m.
  in skepticism | a)
• Thou Art Physics [LessWrong]: "My position [on Free Will] might perhaps be called 'Requiredism.' When agency, choice, control, and moral responsibility are cashed out in a sensible way, they require determinism-at least some patches of determinism within the universe. If you choose, and plan, and act, and bring some future into being, in accordance with your desire, then all this requires a lawful sort of reality; you cannot do it amid utter chaos. There must be order over at least over those parts of reality that are being controlled by you. You are within physics, and so you/physics have determined the future. If it were not determined by physics, it could not be determined by you." (
  '17 Dec 13Added Dec. 13, 2017, 11 p.m.
  in philosophy | a)
• Steven Pinker on the myth of violence [Ted]: "Steven Pinker charts the decline of violence from Biblical times to the present, and argues that, though it may seem illogical and even obscene, given Iraq and Darfur, we are living in the most peaceful time in our species' existence." (
  '17 Dec 12Added Dec. 12, 2017, 11 p.m.
  in development | a)
• Listening to the Hair Dryer [Freethoughtblogs]: "Let's say Person 1 thinks their hair dryer is talking to them, and is telling them to shoot every redhead who gets on the 9:04 train. And let's say that Person 2 thinks their hair dryer is talking to them, and is telling them to volunteer twice a week at a homeless shelter. Is it better to volunteer at a homeless shelter than it is to shoot every redhead who gets on the 9:04 train? Of course it is. But you still have a basic problem - which is that you think your hair dryer is talking to you." (
  '17 Dec 11Added Dec. 11, 2017, 11 p.m.
  in skepticism | a)
• Why Do Atheists Gather? [Bigthink]: "In the first of my posts summing up the Reason Rally, there was a commenter who said that gathering on the National Mall was 'sink[ing] to the level of the religious'. At the time, I considered this too self-evidently absurd to merit refutation - but then I heard it again, in an NPR interview featuring Hemant Mehta and James Randi, where a caller charged that that we were 'turning atheism into a religion' by gathering in this way. Since this confusion seems to be more widespread than I thought, I decided to address it." (
  '17 Dec 10Added Dec. 10, 2017, 11 p.m.
  in skepticism | a)
• Accepting Your Error Rate [Spencergreenberg]: "It's disturbing to discover we've been mistaken about something important - especially when we've wasted time or effort because of the belief, or expressed the belief in front of others. So we're incentivized to come up with justifications for why we weren't actually wrong. We try to avoid psychological discomfort, and we try to save face in front of others. But there is a healthier way to think about wrongness: recognizing that we have an error rate." (
  '17 Dec 09Added Dec. 9, 2017, 11 p.m.
  in rationality | a)
• The Resurrection of Jesus [Somewhatabnormal.blogspot]: "Now, if you discount the idea that this was actually Jesus and the magical disappearance, this all seems very reasonable. Two followers were walking along and discussing Jesus's death (not implausible). They met a traveling rabbi who didn't look like Jesus (not implausible). They told him they were discussing the Messiah, and the rabbi began explaining the messianic interpretation of various scripture passages (not implausible). Later on, they reflected on this conversation and decided it was Jesus himself who had met them. This last step might strike some as implausible, but I think if there were already stories of Jesus's appearance circulating, it would actually be quite psychologically reasonable." (
  '17 Dec 08Added Dec. 8, 2017, 11 p.m.
  in skepticism | a)
• On The Implausibility of the Death Star's Trash Compactor [Mcsweeneys.net]: "I maintain that the trash compactor onboard the Death Star in Star Wars is implausible, unworkable, and moreover, inefficient. [...] The Death Star clearly has a garbage-disposal problem. Given its size and massive personnel, the amount of waste it generates - discarded food, broken equipment, excrement, and the like - boggles the imagination. That said, I just cannot fathom how an organization as ruthless and efficiently-run as the Empire would have signed off on such a dangerous, unsanitary, and shoddy garbage-disposal system as the one depicted in the movie. Here are the problems, as I can ascertain them, with the Death Star's garbage-disposal system:" (
  '17 Dec 07Added Dec. 7, 2017, 11 p.m.
  in random | a)
• The Root Causes of Poverty [Blog.givewell]: "GiveWell generally focuses on the question of how to get "bang for your buck" as a donor - help as many people as possible, as much as possible. Against this approach, one might seek to factor in the potential of a program to get at the "root causes" of poverty, and start - or be part of - a chain reaction that ends poverty at the country or even world level. Below is our take on the following broad question: Why have some parts of the world emerged from poverty while others haven't? How can financial aid from developed nations best be directed to cause large-scale emergence from poverty?" (
  '17 Dec 06Added Dec. 6, 2017, 11 p.m.
  in development | a)
• Test My Wings? That Would Mean Less Time For Flying! [Blog.givewell]: "Measuring success at helping people is hard; it has inherent limits; it's time-consuming; and it's expensive. But it has to be done. The first reason is that no matter how much sense an idea makes in your head, translating it to reality is another matter. I'd argue that acceptance of this basic idea is the single reason that we now have medical alternatives to prayer. The second reason is that there are a a LOT of different charities out there for a donor to choose from - and without some sense of what they've actually accomplished, a donor has nothing to go on but theories and brochures. To me, that's not much better than flinging our money randomly around the globe, with anyone who has a good story and a good accountant getting a chance to play. That isn't a reasonable approach to solving the world's problems." (
  '17 Dec 05Added Dec. 5, 2017, 11 p.m.
  in costeffectiveness | a)
• Beware of Other-Optimizing [LessWrong]: "We underestimate the distance between ourselves and others. Not just inferential distance, but distances of temperament and ability, distances of situation and resource, distances of unspoken knowledge and unnoticed skills and luck, distances of interior landscape. Even I am often surprised to find that X, which worked so well for me, doesn't work for someone else. But with so many others having tried to optimize me, I can at least recognize distance when I'm hit over the head with it." (
  '17 Dec 04Added Dec. 4, 2017, 11 p.m.
  in productivity | a)
• "Jesus, the Easter Bunny, and Other Delusions - Just Say No" [Philosophynews]: "On January 27th, 2012, Dr. Peter Boghossian of Portland State University presented a controversial thesis to a packed crowd : faith is a belief-producing process that does not lead one to the truth. [...] There are many bad ways of discovering truth about the way the world works like divination, dowsing, sacrificing animals, and lucky guesses. And most people-even people of faith-would agree that these are poor and unreliable. Faith, says Dr. Boghossian, is like these other methods and should be discarded on the same grounds. He shows how the practices of various religious traditions have been shown using the methods of science to be ineffective and lead their practitioners to false conclusions." (
  '17 Dec 03Added Dec. 3, 2017, 11 p.m.
  in skepticism | a)
• Easy Useless Economics [NYTimes]: "So now we're in another depression, not as bad as the last one, but bad enough. And, once again, authoritative-sounding figures insist that our problems are 'structural,' that they can't be fixed quickly. We must focus on the long run, such people say, believing that they are being responsible. But the reality is that they're being deeply irresponsible." (
  '17 Dec 02Added Dec. 2, 2017, 11 p.m.
  in policy | a)
• Social Control - Why Heaven is Evil [Freethoughtblogs]: "It's just now occurring to me, way later than it should have: Heaven is almost as evil a doctrine as Hell. [...] So when people offer an infinitely huge reward to get us to do what they want… without having any good reason to think this reward will happen? We should be furious. And that's exactly what the doctrine of Heaven does. [...] The doctrine of Heaven is every bit as screwed-up as the doctrine of Hell. It is every bit as insidious a form of social control. We should give it every bit as much hostility and scorn as we give to Hell." (
  '17 Dec 01Added Dec. 1, 2017, 11 p.m.
  in skepticism | a)
• The Omega Bowl [Freethoughtblogs]: "What I'm thinking of is-the Omega Bowl. Is that name taken? We could call it the Alpha and Omega Bowl if we need to be more specific. But it's not a contest between two football teams. It's a battle of the gods. Literally. Here's how it works. [...] The rules are simple: all gods are invited, and the first god to move the iron ball into the basket under his/her/their own name, WITHOUT any intervention on the part of his/her/their believers, is the One True God for the entire year. [...] Time limit is fifty-five minutes, divided into four ten-minute periods with a 5-minute intermission (stop by the snack bar!) between periods. In the event that none of the gods is able to emerge victorious, the title of One True Belief for the Year will be shared by atheism and skepticism. How about it, believers? Anyone out there with a god big enough to go head-to-head with the competition?" (
  '17 Nov 30Added Nov. 30, 2017, 11 p.m.
  in skepticism | a)
• The Substitution Principle [LessWrong]: "System 1, if you recall, is the quick, dirty and parallel part of our brains that renders instant judgements, without thinking about them in too much detail. In this case, the actual question that was asked was 'what are the best careers for making a lot of money'. The question that was actually answered was 'what careers have I come to associate with wealth'." (
  '17 Nov 29Added Nov. 29, 2017, 11 p.m.
  in rationality | a)
• Spreading the Wealth Around - Reflections Inspired by Joe the Plumber [Economics.harvard.edu]: "This essay discusses the policy debate concerning optimal taxation and the distribution of income. It begins with a brief overview of trends in income inequality, the leading hypothesis to explain these trends, and the distribution of the tax burden. It then considers the normative question of how the tax system should be designed. The conventional utilitarian framework is found to be wanting, as it leads to prescriptions that conflict with many individuals' moral intuitions. The essay then explores an alternative normative framework, dubbed the Just Deserts Theory, according to which an individual's compensation should reflect his or her social contribution." (
  '17 Nov 28Added Nov. 28, 2017, 11 p.m.
  in policy | a)
• Christopher Hitchens and the Protocol for Public Figure Deaths [Salon]: "Etiquette-based prohibitions on speaking ill of the dead should apply to private individuals, not public figures[.]" (
  '17 Nov 27Added Nov. 27, 2017, 11 p.m.
  in skepticism | a)
• Inconsequential Intuition Test [Philosophyetc.net]: "Chances are, you'll feel a lot more sympathy for one or other of these two lines of attack. If the first, you exhibit symptoms of deontology, and should consult a health professional immediately for psychiatric evaluation. If the second, you have broadly consequentialist intuitions, and should not be allowed near sharp implements, babies, or political power." (
  '17 Nov 23Added Nov. 23, 2017, 11 p.m.
  in philosophy | a)
• Why I'm Giving 10% of My Income to Charity [Tcs.cam.ac.uk]: "The lifetime earnings of a UK doctor are in the top 0.1% of the planet by wealth. By giving away 10% of my lifetime earnings I'll buy around 120000 years of healthy life - or, on the saving babies metric, about 1200 lives. My life is not going to be worse for giving money away (science shows that although money doesn't make you happy, giving it to charity does), and thousands of lives would be much better. Ethically, it's a no brainer. Cambridge grads usually earn quite a lot, so everyone reading this can do something similarly awesome." (
  '17 Nov 22Added Nov. 22, 2017, 11 p.m.
  in giving | a)
• "A Different Way of Knowing" - The Uses of Irrationality… And It's Limitations" [Gretachristina.typepad]: "There's a trope I've noticed in debates about atheism, about skepticism, about science. And the trope goes something like this: 'Logic and reason isn't everything. Not everything in this world is rational. Not everything that we know in the world is known through logic and reason. Sometimes we have to use our intuition, and listen to our hearts. There are different ways of knowing than just reason and evidence.' The thing is? I actually think there's a lot of truth to this. And I still think it's a terrible argument to make against atheism, skepticism, and/or science. Let me explain." (
  '17 Nov 21Added Nov. 21, 2017, 11 p.m.
  in skepticism | a)
• Does Philosophical Method Rest On a Mistake? [Experimentalphilosophy.typepad]: "Intuitive judgments elicited by thought-experiments, such as the Trolley Problem, are unlikely to be correct just as perceptual judgments elicited by perceptual illusions, such as the checkerboard illusion, are unlikely to be correct, since both perceptual illusions and intuition pumps are cognitively unusual scenarios. What do you make of this argument?" (
  '17 Nov 20Added Nov. 20, 2017, 11 p.m.
  in philosophy | a)
• There Is No Progress in Philosophy [Dl.dropbox]: "Except for a patina of twenty-first century modernity, in the form of logic and language, philosophy is exactly the same now as it ever was; it has made no progress whatsoever. We philosophers wrestle with the exact same problems the Pre-Socratics wrestled with. Even more outrageous than this claim, though, is the blatant denial of its obvious truth by many practicing philosophers. The No-Progress view is explored and argued for here. Its denial is diagnosed as a form of anosognosia, a mental condition where the affected person denies there is any problem. The theories of two eminent philosophers supporting the No-Progress view are also examined. The final section offers an explanation for philosophy's inability to solve any philosophical problem, ever. The paper closes with some reflections on philosophy's future." (
  '17 Nov 19Added Nov. 19, 2017, 11 p.m.
  in philosophy | a)
• Meta-Research [Blog.givewell]: "Meta-research refers to improving the incentives in the academic world, to bring them more in line with producing work of maximal benefit to society. Below, we discuss [1] Problems and potential solutions we perceive for (the incentives within) development economics, the area of academia we're currently most familiar with. [2] Some preliminary thoughts on the potential of meta-research interventions in other fields, particularly medicine. [3] Why we find meta-research so promising and high-priority as a cause. [4] Our plans at the moment for investigating meta-research further." (
  '17 Nov 17Added Nov. 17, 2017, 11 p.m.
  in metascience | a)
• Causality and Moral Responsibility [LessWrong]: "This, it seems to me, is the very essence of moral responsibility - in the one case, for a cowardly choice; in the other case, for a heroic one. And I don't see what difference it makes, if John's decision was physically deterministic given his initial conditions, or if John's decision was preplanned by some alien creator that built him out of carbon atoms, or even if - worst of all - there exists some set of understandable psychological factors that were the very substance of John and caused his decision." (
  '17 Nov 16Added Nov. 16, 2017, 11 p.m.
  in ethics | a)
• Why Did God Create Atheists? [Freethoughtblogs]: "Why did God create atheists? This is a question I always want to ask religious believers. (One of many questions, actually. 'What evidence do you have that God is real?' and 'Why are religious beliefs so different and so contradictory?' are also high on the list.) If God is real, and religious believers are perceiving a real entity… why is anyone an atheist? Why don't we all perceive him? If God is powerful enough to reach out to believers just by sending out his thoughts or love or whatever… why isn't he powerful enough to reach all of us? Why is there anyone who doesn't believe in him? [...] I've seen a couple of religious responses to this question. Neither of which is very satisfactory. But they keep coming up… so today, I want to take them on." (
  '17 Nov 15Added Nov. 15, 2017, 11 p.m.
  in skepticism | a)
• The Fivefold Challenge [The Skepticalreview]: "Fundamentalist Christians claim that the Bible is a historically accurate work in every detail. They delight in showing how 'modern archaeology"'has verified this little biblical detail or that minor biblical event. But something they don't talk about much is the failure of modern archaeology to confirm some major events in the Bible." (
  '17 Nov 14Added Nov. 14, 2017, 11 p.m.
  in skepticism | a)
• Evolutionary Psychology [LessWrong]: "This historical fact about the origin of anger confuses all too many people. They say, 'Wait, are you saying that when I'm angry, I'm subconsciously trying to have children? That's not what I'm thinking after someone punches me in the nose.' No. No. No. NO! Individual organisms are best thought of as adaptation-executers, not fitness-maximizers. The cause of an adaptation, the shape of an adaptation, and the consequence of an adaptation, are all separate things. If you built a toaster, you wouldn't expect the toaster to reshape itself when you tried to cram in a whole loaf of bread; yes, you intended it to make toast, but that intention is a fact about you, not a fact about the toaster. The toaster has no sense of its own purpose." (
  '17 Nov 13Added Nov. 13, 2017, 11 p.m.
  in rationality | a)
• Free Will - mere semantic quibble? [Philosophyetc.net]: "The real disagreement is about the meaning of 'free', about whether it requires a categorical 'could', or merely a hypothetical one. Clearly the incompatibalist intends his use of 'could' to be interpreted categorically[. ...] Given that premise 2 is thus a logical truth, any counterargument must instead attack the first premise. [...] Put another way, it is a redefinition of freedom to mean 'not coerced', rather than 'not (deterministically) caused'. [...] Is this whole debate really that trivial? Well, not exactly. After all, we do use the word 'freedom' a lot, so it's fairly important to be clear about which concept we are referring to. The really important question, then, is 'which concept (F1 or F2) is most useful for our purposes (when using the word 'freedom')?' That, I think, is what the free will debate is really all about." (
  '17 Nov 12Added Nov. 12, 2017, 11 p.m.
  in philosophy | a)
• America Isn't A Corporation [NYTimes]: "But there's a deeper problem in the whole notion that what this nation needs is a successful businessman as president: America is not, in fact, a corporation. Making good economic policy isn't at all like maximizing corporate profits. And businessmen - even great businessmen - do not, in general, have any special insights into what it takes to achieve economic recovery. Why isn't a national economy like a corporation? For one thing, there's no simple bottom line. For another, the economy is vastly more complex than even the largest private company." (
  '17 Nov 11Added Nov. 11, 2017, 11 p.m.
  in policy | a)
• Secularism and Religion in the Public Square [Athe Istethicist.blogspot]: "It is interesting that it is not the symbols of the Christian religion, but the ancient Roman and Greek religions, that survive today in our concept of justice. In addition to trials where evidence was presented and a verdict rendered, they also gave us democracy. In fact, we can find much closer representations of our current form of government in ancient Greek and Roman forms than we can in any Christian government formed before 1700. The omnipresence of the religious symbolism of Justitis (and even the very name Justice) tells us the true origin of these concepts. We are not so much a Christian nation as we are an ancient pagan Greek nation. We show this by continuing to include ancient pagan Greek and Roman religious symbolism in our government documents." (
  '17 Nov 10Added Nov. 10, 2017, 11 p.m.
  in skepticism | a)
• Peter Singer and Tyler Cowen transcript [LessWrong]: "In March 2009, Tyler Cowen (blog) interviewed Peter Singer about morality, giving, and how we can most improve the world. They are both thinkers I respect a lot, and I was excited to read their debate. Unfortunately the interview was available only as a video. I wanted a transcript, so I made one" (
  '17 Nov 09Added Nov. 9, 2017, 11 p.m.
  in effectivealtruism | a)
• Tradeoffs [Givinggladly]: "Before I parted with any money, I'd ask myself what it could do for a woman in Africa. (It doesn't have to be her, but that's who I always imagined.) Did I value my new jeans more than her month's groceries? More than her children's vaccinations or school fees? Could I make that tradeoff? [...] I also think there's only so much grief we can carry. I cannot go the next 70 years counting dead children on every receipt. I would break. So my advice is to spend a while really noticing that tradeoff. Notice whether you really do value the milkshake more than a child's vaccination. And then, after a time, make yourself a budget that reflects those values. Set aside money for unnecessary things that make you happy. Do what you think will nurture you to age 100 as a generous and strategic giver. Because that, in the end, is what will help the most people." (
  '17 Nov 08Added Nov. 8, 2017, 11 p.m.
  in giving | a)
• Why I Should Pay Higher Taxes [Bigthink]: "It doesn't do me any good to be personally wealthier if my country or the world as a whole is becoming more unequal, more unstable, more gripped by poverty, more resentful, more insecure. I want to be successful, of course, but not at the expense of millions of people who didn't have the same advantages or the same good fortune I've enjoyed. As I've written in the past, what I want is a society that offers equality of opportunity, and I think we've wandered far from this ideal. Anti-tax dogma is causing a dangerous deterioration of the social contract, and we can't reverse that trend unless we accept that sometimes, yes, our taxes do need to be increased." (
  '17 Nov 07Added Nov. 7, 2017, 11 p.m.
  in policy | a)
• Charity - the video game that's real [Blog.givewell]: "What sucked about this experience was that it was all fake, and in the back of my head I knew that. In the end I felt pretty empty and lame. Enter altruism - where the bad guys are ACTUALLY BAD GUYS. Sure, I don't get the same satisfying explosion when they die… I don't even know to what extent, or whether, they die. So you can think of this video game as being more in the camp of something lame, like an RPG or something. But it's infinitely better because it's real. I don't care whether the kids are cute, or whether the organizations are nice to me, or whether my friends like my decisions. As with video games, I probably spend 99% of my time frustrated rather than happy. But… Malaria Man just pisses me off. It's that simple." (
  '17 Nov 06Added Nov. 6, 2017, 11 p.m.
  in giving | a)
• "So-Called "Litmus Tests": Skepticism and Social Justice" [Freethoughtblogs]: "There's this argument that keeps cropping up. Some skeptics argue that skepticism - skeptical organizations, conferences, publications, meetups, etc. - should branch out from the traditional topics we're usually associated with, such as astrology and UFOs and Bigfoot, and spend more time applying skepticism to social justice issues. The drug war; abstinence-only sex education; laws about birth control; laws about homosexuality and same-sex marriage; police policy… that sort of thing." (
  '17 Nov 03Added Nov. 3, 2017, 11 p.m.
  in skepticism | a)
• Arguing by Definition [LessWrong]: "When people argue definitions, they usually start with some visible, known, or at least widely believed set of characteristics; then pull out a dictionary, and point out that these characteristics fit the dictionary definition; and so conclude, 'Therefore, by definition, atheism is a religion!' But visible, known, widely believed characteristics are rarely the real point of a dispute." (
  '17 Nov 02Added Nov. 2, 2017, 11 p.m.
  in rationality | a)
• The Death-Penalty Debate Represents a Market Failure [Bloomberg]: "The debate over the death penalty offers a vivid illustration of a tragic flaw in the market of ideas: Strong beliefs attract a lot more attention, and can have a lot more influence, than the truth. [...] The reality, unsatisfying and inconvenient as it may be, is that we simply don't know how capital punishment affects the homicide rate." (
  '17 Nov 01Added Nov. 1, 2017, 11 p.m.
  in policy | a)
• What Makes Countries Rich or Poor? [Nybooks]: "Power, prosperity, and poverty vary greatly around the world. Norway, the world's richest country, is 496 times richer than Burundi, the world's poorest country (average per capita incomes $84,290 and $170 respectively, according to the World Bank). Why? That's a central question of economics." (
  '17 Oct 31Added Oct. 31, 2017, 11 p.m.
  in development | a)
• Pushing moral buttons: The interaction between personal force and intention in moral judgment [Wjh.harvard.edu]: "In some cases people judge it morally acceptable to sacrifice one person's life in order to save several other lives, while in other similar cases they make the opposite judgment. Researchers have identified two general factors that may explain this phenomenon at the stimulus level: (1) the agent's intention (i.e. whether the harmful event is intended as a means or merely foreseen as a side-effect) and (2) whether the agent harms the victim in a manner that is relatively "direct" or "personal". Here we integrate these two classes of findings." (
  '17 Oct 30Added Oct. 30, 2017, 11 p.m.
  in ethics | a)
• Indirect Utilitarianism [Philosophyetc.net]: "Utilitarianism is a much maligned moral theory, in part because it's so easily abused. It's easy for people to misunderstand the theory, and use it to 'justify' all sorts of atrocities. But of course utilitarianism properly understood does not lead to this. In fact, it tends to support our common-sense moral intuitions. Strange as it may seem, utilitarianism recommends that we do not base our everyday moral decision-making on calculations of utility." (
  '17 Oct 29Added Oct. 29, 2017, 11 p.m.
  in effectivealtruism | a)
• How to Get Your Dream Job [Wizards]: "My assignment was very straightforward. I had forty minutes to talk about what I did, how I came to do it, and what kids could do if they wanted a similar career. That wasn't enough for me, though. I wanted to have a message bigger than just that-this is the life of a game designer. After much thought, I decided my theme was going to be 'How To Get Your Dream Job.' I didn't just want to talk to the kids about my job, but rather about what my job represented to me. I wanted to explain the holy grail of the job search. I hoped to instill in the kids that, when planning your future, you should aim high." (
  '17 Oct 28Added Oct. 28, 2017, 11 p.m.
  in career | a)
• The Way It Was [Givinggladly]: "In thinking about problems that currently devastate developing nation, I try to remember that the US was a developing nation not so long ago. Malaria once plagued the American south and Midwest. It's the reason English colonists abandoned the Jamestown, Virginia settlement for somewhere with fewer mosquitoes. In 1946, the Centers for Disease Control were formed to fight malaria. Five years later, malaria was eradicated in the United States. [...] We've come a long way. Now I want this life for everyone." (
  '17 Oct 26Added Oct. 26, 2017, 11 p.m.
  in development | a)
• Abortive Virtues [Philosophyetc.net]: "Peter Thurley argues that circumstances of rape or incest are irrelevant to the (im)morality of abortion. Mostly everyone else in the world disagrees. Peter argues that the circumstances shouldn't register on the two extreme ideologies of 'pro-life' and 'pro-choice'. But he neglects to note that most people have a more moderate view. Indeed, I think that the common-sense view is best reflected in theory by some form of virtue ethics." (
  '17 Oct 25Added Oct. 25, 2017, 11 p.m.
  in ethics | a)
• Today's Reasons To Quit the Catholic Church [Bigthink]: "Consider the picture painted by all these stories taken together. The Catholic church admits that its most powerful officials have participated in the cover-up of child molestation; it pays off the child molesters and castrates their victims; and wherever the laws permit it, it tries to have its critics arrested and imprisoned. Is this arrogant, corrupt, medievally minded institution the kind of religion you want to belong to? If you haven't left the church yet, what are you waiting for?" (
  '17 Oct 24Added Oct. 24, 2017, 11 p.m.
  in skepticism | a)
• Faith is a Vice [Athe Istethicist.blogspot]: "Faith is like drunk driving, or failing to secure a load when going on the highway. He creates a risk for others. Faith that a prayer may cure a young child puts the child at risk of dying from an easily treatable disease. The person who kills that child is no different than a drunk parent driving with their child in the back seat. The person who boasts about his faith should be looked at the same way we look at the person who brags that he constantly drives while drunk and hasn't killed anybody . . . yet. They display the same qualities, and deserve to be treated as such." (
  '17 Oct 23Added Oct. 23, 2017, 11 p.m.
  in skepticism | a)
• The Psychology of the Honor System at the Farm Stand [Npr]: "But what customers seem to love at least as much as the expansive views and good food is Swanton's old-style method of payment: Step up to the unmanned counter whenever you're ready, figure out what you owe (scratch paper provided), and stuff the cash through a slot in the honor box. Swanton founder Jim Cochran says his stand has thrived for years on the honor payment system, a style of business he first admired as a college student at his favorite bakery in Santa Cruz decades ago. [...] That doesn't surprise social psychologist Michael Cunningham of the University of Louisville who has used "trust games" to investigate what spurs good and bad behavior for the last 25 years. For many people, Cunningham says, trust seems to be at least as strong a motivator as guilt. He thinks he knows why." (
  '17 Oct 22Added Oct. 22, 2017, 11 p.m.
  in economics | a)
• Don't Replace Data With Ideology [Bloomberg]: "In the U.S., a battle is brewing in Congress over two of the most valuable gauges of the nation's economic health: the American Community Survey and the Economic Census. The data sets, which the U.S. has maintained in some form since the early 1900s, provide researchers and the public with a trove of information on everything from the size of families' mortgage payments in Boise, Idaho, to the nation's median annual income. [...] It's hard to overstate how dangerous the destruction of high-quality, objective statistical information would be. Policy making would become more subjective, and hence more ideological. Governments would have more leeway to lie to the people about the success of their policies and the state of the economy." (
  '17 Oct 21Added Oct. 21, 2017, 11 p.m.
  in policy | a)
• Rand Paul Takes on The TSA [Schneier]: "It doesn't matter if an airport screener receives a paycheck signed by the Department of the Treasury or Private Airport Screening Services, Inc. As long as a terrorized government - one that needs to be seen by voters as "tough on terror" and wants to stop every terrorist attack, regardless of the cost, and is willing to sacrifice all for the illusion of security - gets to set the security standards, we're going to get TSA-style security." (
  '17 Oct 20Added Oct. 20, 2017, 11 p.m.
  in policy | a)
• Seek Criticism [Spencergreenberg]: "There was a time as a kid when I believed I was pretty much flawless. Unsurprisingly, it turned out I had even more flaws as a kid than I do now. I just had very poor self-awareness. [...] Criticism is easier to hear when you have sought it out than when it is thrust on you. And most people won't volunteer it, until they are quite annoyed. So don't wait until criticism comes your way. Seek criticism from your friends, your boss, and your spouse. Even acquaintances can provide an interesting perspective. Break down this criticism into the Accurate, Ignorant, and Emotive components. Know your flaws so you can correct them. Become greater." (
  '17 Oct 19Added Oct. 19, 2017, 11 p.m.
  in productivity | a)
• Some Mistakes of Scripture - When the Bible Gets the Bible Wrong [Ebonmusings]: "As most atheists are well aware, fundamentalist Christians generally treat the Bible as a perfect, self-contained whole: missing nothing, containing no errors, and every word written by the infallible inspiration of God. [...But t]he Bible is not the flawless, self-contained whole they imagine it to be: the text convicts itself of this, by repeatedly quoting and referring to other writings, evidently considered in their own day to be just as canonical as the surviving ones, but that are now long lost or have long since been rejected as pious forgeries. Nor were the Bible's authors the inspired, divinely guided saints of Christian myth; on the contrary, they were as fallible and forgetful as any other human being. We can see proof of this in the mistakes they made - mistakes that are preserved in the text as we have it today." (
  '17 Oct 18Added Oct. 18, 2017, 11 p.m.
  in skepticism | a)
• How Science Works: As Told By the Higgs Boson [Skepticdetective.wordpress]: "The astrologers and homeopaths of the world want to enjoy the benefits of being scientifically proven without going through any of the tiresome business of actual testing. While groups like the AIDS deniers want you to believe that all scientists are evil and are trying to deceive you for their own dastardly ends. The discovery of the Higgs is a wonderful opportunity for scientists and science advocates, like myself, to point out how science actually works." (
  '17 Oct 17Added Oct. 17, 2017, 11 p.m.
  in skepticism | a)
• The Crisis of Big Science [Nybooks]: "The International Space Station was partly responsible for the cancellation of the SSC [The Supercolliding Superconductor, and even bigger particle accelerator that was being constructed in Texas, but had its funding cut]. Both came up for a crucial vote in Congress in 1993. Because the Space Station would be managed from Houston, both were seen as Texas projects. After promising active support for the SSC, in 1993 the Clinton administration decided that it could only support one large technological project in Texas, and it chose the Space Station. Members of Congress were hazy about the difference." (
  '17 Oct 16Added Oct. 16, 2017, 11 p.m.
  in metascience | a)
• Does the Higgs Boson Discovery Resolve the Religion-Science Debate? [Huffingtonpost]: "Strong religious and anti-religious language has swirled around the search for the Higgs boson. One group took to calling it 'the God particle.' After all, they said, the Higgs boson is the foundation on which the standard model of physics rests. Not only that; the Higgs field adds real mass to pure energy, so it's like the moment of creation. 'Baloney!' replied the other group; we should just call it 'the God-damn particle,' since it's been so bloody difficult to detect over so many years." (
  '17 Oct 15Added Oct. 15, 2017, 11 p.m.
  in science | a)
• Particle Consistent with Higgs Boson Found [Cam.ac.uk]: "Researchers from the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN have today, 4 July 2012, confirmed that they have found a new particle consistent with the long-sought Higgs Boson. [...] Andy Parker is the Professor of High Energy Physics at the University of Cambridge's Department of Physics (the Cavendish Laboratory). His current research interests involve experiments to reveal new physics such as extra space dimensions, quantum-sized black holes, and supersymmetry. [...] Below, he answers some questions surrounding the Higgs Boson." (
  '17 Oct 14Added Oct. 14, 2017, 11 p.m.
  in science | a)
• What Exactly is the Higgs Boson? [Science.howstuffworks]: "Particle physics usually has a hard time competing with politics and celebrity gossip for headlines, but the Higgs boson has garnered some serious attention. That's exactly what happened on July 4, 2012, though, when scientists at CERN announced that they'd found a particle that behaved the way they expect the Higgs boson to behave." (
  '17 Oct 13Added Oct. 13, 2017, 11 p.m.
  in science | a)
• The Higgs Boson Explained[Vimeo] [Vimeo]: "We visit particle physicist Daniel Whiteson at CERN, where he talks to us about what the mysterious Higgs Boson is and how the LHC [Large Hadron Collider] is going to find it (if it exists)." (
  '17 Oct 12Added Oct. 12, 2017, 11 p.m.
  in science | a)
• The Higgs Boson: Why You Should Care [The Dailybeast]: "Tiny particles visible for fractions of a second? Turns out the implications are a very big deal for how we understand the planet, the universe, and ourselves." (
  '17 Oct 09Added Oct. 9, 2017, 11 p.m.
  in science | a)
• Biased Accomodations [Philosophyetc.net]: "As a society we tend to be much more accommodating of some commitments (e.g. religious or familial) than others (hobbies, etc.). Is this fair?" (
  '17 Oct 08Added Oct. 8, 2017, 11 p.m.
  in skepticism | a)
• Three Questions Help Me Live a More Fulfilling Life [Blogs.hbr]: "I am on a plane with my wife Eleanor as we fly back from our once-a-year-without-children vacation. It was, for us, the perfect week. After years of planning vacations, we've finally figured out how to reliably create a meaningful, fun, fulfilling week. The solution was answering three questions[: What is the vacation about? What is the day about? What is the moment about?]" (
  '17 Oct 07Added Oct. 7, 2017, 11 p.m.
  in productivity | a)
• What Part of 'Austerity Isn't Working' Don't People Get? [Rollingstone]: "As I prepared for a talk on austerity last week, I found myself a bit stuck. What can you say other than that it's very clearly not working, nor should we expect it to, nor has it ever? And then I hit upon what I think is the key question: Why do governments stick with the austerity approach when all the evidence suggests it's a total failure?" (
  '17 Oct 04Added Oct. 4, 2017, 11 p.m.
  in policy | a)
• Inching Towards Generalization [Microfinance.cgap]: "I like to say that research is the pursuit of responsible generalization. I'm excited that just in the last few months, it has become possible to generalize more responsibly about the impacts of microfinance. Fortunately, the latest results strengthen the conclusions of my book-they don't show that microcredit cures poverty after all. More importantly, they enrich our understanding of the impacts of microfinance." (
  '17 Oct 03Added Oct. 3, 2017, 11 p.m.
  in development | a)
• Does Medicaid Matter? - If only we could arbitrarily deny coverage to some poor people… [The Monkeycage]: "There is (apparently) a debate on whether needy people would be better off relying on emergency rooms and charity than Medicaid. One could try to test the effect of Medicaid by comparing the health & wealth of people enrolled in Medicaid with similar people who are not enrolled, but this is complicated by selection effects. Scholars could try to resolve this with an experiment, but this runs afoul of human subjects regulations and, well, basic morality[. ...] Luckily, in 2008, Oregon offered just such an experiment. It could only afford to offer coverage to 10,000 of the 90,000 eligible applicants for its Medicaid program, and chose to allocate the slots by lottery." (
  '17 Oct 02Added Oct. 2, 2017, 11 p.m.
  in policy | a)
• The Most Sensible Tax of All [NYTimes]: "Substituting a carbon tax for some of our current taxes - on payroll, on investment, on businesses and on workers - is a no-brainer. Why tax good things when you can tax bad things, like emissions? The idea has support from economists across the political spectrum, from Arthur B. Laffer and N. Gregory Mankiw on the right to Peter Orszag and Joseph E. Stiglitz on the left. That's because economists know that a carbon tax swap can reduce the economic drag created by our current tax system and increase long-run growth by nudging the economy away from consumption and borrowing and toward saving and investment." (
  '17 Oct 01Added Oct. 1, 2017, 11 p.m.
  in policy | a)
• How States are Restricting Political Speech [Washingtonpost]: "State law - this is the state of John McCain, apostle of political purification through the regulation of political speech - says that anytime two or more people work together to influence a vote on a ballot measure, they instantly become a 'political committee.' This transformation triggers various requirements - registering with the government, filing forms, establishing a bank account for the 'committee' even if it has raised no money and does not intend to. This must be done before members of this fictitious 'committee' may speak." (
  '17 Sep 28Added Sept. 28, 2017, 11 p.m.
  in policy | a)
• Would Paying Politicians More Attract Better Politicians? [Freakonomics]: "Whenever you look at a political system and find it wanting, one tempting thought is this: Maybe we have subpar politicians because the job simply isn't attracting the right people. And, therefore, if we were to significantly raise politicians' salaries, we would attract a better class of politician. [...I]s there any evidence that paying politicians more actually improves quality?" (
  '17 Sep 27Added Sept. 27, 2017, 11 p.m.
  in politicalscience | a)
• Sometimes Happiness is Choice [Psychologytoday]: "If someone assaults you, steals from you, or cheats on you, you have every right to feel upset or angry [...] Yes, these feelings make sense-but past a certain point, they may do you more harm than good. They may even trap you in an endless loop of paralysis and negativity. Freeing yourself from this trap is critical to moving on with your life." (
  '17 Sep 26Added Sept. 26, 2017, 11 p.m.
  in productivity | a)
• Superhappiness [Superhappiness]: "Is happiness more akin to intelligence or lifespan, something that transhumanists should strive to enhance without limit - with the almost unimaginable implications that such an indefinite increase entails? [...] I don't intend to answer this question here. As it happens, I predict that superintelligent posthumans will be animated by gradients of bliss that are literally billions of times richer than anything biologically accessible today; but whether or not such civilisations exist beyond extremely low density branches of the universal wave function is pure conjecture. Instead, I want to raise ten objections to the indefinite amplification of well-being - and sketch out ten possible replies." (
  '17 Sep 25Added Sept. 25, 2017, 11 p.m.
  in effectivealtruism | a)
• "Did Thomas Jefferson Really Father a Child With Sally Heming? And If Not, How Did The Story Get Born?" [Freakonomics]: "The claim that Thomas Jefferson had a sexual relationship with Sally Hemings began with James Thomson Callender, a notorious journalist and scandalmonger. Callender had demanded that Jefferson, who was elected president in 1800, appoint him postmaster of Richmond, Va. At one point during the summer of 1802, Callendar shouted from in front of the White House, 'Sir, you know that by lying [in press attacks on President John Adams] I made you President!'" (
  '17 Sep 24Added Sept. 24, 2017, 11 p.m.
  in politicalscience | a)
• Think Outside the Box: The Cutest Response to Creationism Ever [Pathe Os]: "'I found these puzzle pieces laying here next to this box. Want to help me put it together?''No. It's a picture of a duck. There's no point doing all the work. The box already told me what it is.''Some of these pieces don't seem to match the picture. I'd like to figure out why.'" (
  '17 Sep 23Added Sept. 23, 2017, 11 p.m.
  in skepticism | a)
• To Give or To Get: The Paradox of Choice and Pro-social Spending [Whywereason.wordpress]: "To be sure, some choice is good. [...] But too many choices make us worse off. [...] Is it possible to avoid the paradox of choice? In a society where there is an option for everything (my local drug store carries about 30 different brands of floss!) it seems impossible. But here's one idea: spend your money on other people (what's called prosocial spending), it will make you happier." (
  '17 Sep 21Added Sept. 21, 2017, 11 p.m.
  in policy | a)
• Thick and Thin [Westhunt.wordpress]: "Personally, I wonder if part of the problem is the great difficulty of explaining the analysis of a thick problem to someone without a similar depth of knowledge. At best, they believe you because you've been right in the past. Or, sometimes, once you have developed the answer, there is a 'thin' way of confirming your answer - as when Rochefort took Jasper Holmes's suggestion and had Midway broadcast an uncoded complaint about the failure of their distillation system - soon followed by a Japanese report that 'AF' was short of water." (
  '17 Sep 20Added Sept. 20, 2017, 11 p.m.
  in rationality | a)
• "If You Demand Magic, Magic Won't Help" [LessWrong]: "I was pondering the philosophy of fantasy stories, and it occurred to me that if there were actually dragons in our world-if you could go down to the zoo, or even to a distant mountain, and meet a fire-breathing dragon-while nobody had ever actually seen a zebra, then our fantasy stories would contain zebras aplenty, while dragons would be unexciting. Now that's what I call painting yourself into a corner, wot? The grass is always greener on the other side of unreality." (
  '17 Sep 19Added Sept. 19, 2017, 11 p.m.
  in rationality | a)
• Our Worst Subjects [80000hours]: "'I prefer to give to local organizations.' I've heard this a lot. Imagine a high school student who sits down to study for exams. Her chemistry book is lying closest to her on the desk, so she decides to study chemistry. Her father points out that since she has an A in chemistry and a D in geometry, studying geometry might help her grades more. 'But that book is all the way over there in my backpack,' the student points out; 'I prefer to study locally.'" (
  '17 Sep 18Added Sept. 18, 2017, 11 p.m.
  in giving | a)
• Morality Without God [Ockhamsbeard.wordpress]: "It keeps being said that without God, there can be no morality. It keeps being said that if we're evolved from selfish genes, there can be no altruism. It keeps being said that a universe without a divine creator is a universe without meaning. It keeps being said. And it's flat out wrong. [...] So, in the interests of providing a clear and unambiguous exposition of the secular moral position, I've compiled a list of false claims made by some in the religious community and the reasons why they're in error." (
  '17 Sep 14Added Sept. 14, 2017, 11 p.m.
  in skepticism | a)
• Moral Beliefs Don't Motivate Much [Freethoughtblogs]: "I think there's something much more persuasive in The Life You Can Save, namely the part where Singer cites the charity rating organization GiveWell as figuring out that one particular charity was managing to save one life for every $650-$1000 it spent. When you have that kind of factual information, it to some extent moots the moral arguments. Here's why: rather than trying to argue anyone into different priorities, all you have do is point out to them that if they care about saving lives enough to spend $1,000 doing it, then they should donate that $1,000 to charity. Forget about the point of marginal utility: all that matters is the point at which you don't have anything you'd rather spend $1,000 on than saving a life. In other words, forget about what you think people should do. Just ask them how badly they, as a matter of fact, care about other people's well-being and work from there." (
  '17 Sep 13Added Sept. 13, 2017, 11 p.m.
  in ethics | a)
• "Do Progressives, Conservatives and Libertarians Understand Freedom Differently?" [Dl.dropbox]: "A long standing assumption in political philosophy is that the way in which one defines freedom has important consequences for the political system that one favors. The present paper tests this assumption by means of a comprehensive survey that explores trade-offs between seven different concepts of freedom. The results show that, beyond a certain common background, important differences are indeed present[. ...] Finally, it seems that these differences are explained by differences in personal preferences and in the beliefs about what best serves the common good. People thus seem to rationalize their definitions of freedom to fit their normative judgments." (
  '17 Sep 12Added Sept. 12, 2017, 11 p.m.
  in culturewar | a)
• Break Your Downward Emotional Spiral [Spencergreenberg]: "But negative emotions don't just cause negative thoughts, they cause excessively negative thoughts, that reflect a distorted picture of reality. Anxiety causes us to overestimate how dangerous things are, depression makes our situation seem hopeless, and anger makes small slights seem like major attacks. In other words, negative emotions cause us to think in distorted ways that make these same emotions grow." (
  '17 Sep 11Added Sept. 11, 2017, 11 p.m.
  in productivity | a)
• Know Your Addictions [Spencergreenberg]: "Sometimes, the right choice is not cutting an activity out, but changing its form. Perhaps you can't stop playing World of Warcraft once you log on, but there may be other games you enjoy that you don't have nearly as much trouble stopping. So switch to one of those. Or maybe there is a certain type of chip that you find you always over consume, but another snack you enjoy almost as much that you can eat in reasonable quantities." (
  '17 Sep 10Added Sept. 10, 2017, 11 p.m.
  in productivity | a)
• The Prisoner's Dilemma [Bosker.wordpress]: "The Prisoner's Dilemma is a game, but a game that seems to bear lessons for the conduct of human affairs more generally, and it has attracted a great deal of attention from men not noted for their frivolity. It was discovered in 1950 at the RAND corporation, a military think-tank established after World War II by the United States Air Force to conduct a 'program of study and research on the broad subject of intercontinental warfare'." (
  '17 Sep 09Added Sept. 9, 2017, 11 p.m.
  in rationality | a)
• The Problems With Forecasting and How to Get Better at It [538.blogs.nytimes]: "Are political scientists any good at making predictions? Jacqueline Stevens, a professor of political science at Northwestern University, argued in an Op-Ed last Sunday that political scientists make for lousy forecasters. [...] My position on these issues is somewhat complicated. [...] First, Ms. Stevens is right that there is a problem - prediction has gone very badly in the discipline. But second, her proposed solution might make matters worse. Some of the habits she encourages are the same ones that have helped produce such lousy forecasts in the first place." (
  '17 Sep 08Added Sept. 8, 2017, 11 p.m.
  in policy | a)
• "No, Science Really Can't Determine Human Values" [Abc.net.au]: "There's a lot to like about Sam Harris's views on morality. In fact, I suspect that even his most vocal critics agree with him on a vast majority of what he has to say. His advocacy for a scientific engagement with morality is warmly welcomed, as is his commitment to go beyond the old God versus no-God debate to suggest a positive agenda to build a secular morality devoid of supernatural meddling. But there's one sticking point - one to which Harris continues to apply glue - and one against which people like myself and Russell Blackford continue to rebound. That is Harris's insistence that science can describe morality all the way down." (
  '17 Sep 07Added Sept. 7, 2017, 11 p.m.
  in ethics | a)
• How to Talk to a Climate Skeptic [Scienceblogs]: "Below is a listing of all the articles to be found in the "How to Talk to a Climate Sceptic" guide, presented as a handy one-stop shop for all the material you should need to rebut the more common anti-global warming science arguments constantly echoed across the internet." (
  '17 Sep 05Added Sept. 5, 2017, 11 p.m.
  in activism | a)
• Getting Stuck in Trivial Choices [Psychologytoday]: "[E]very once in a while, I find someone standing in front of a wall of tomato sauce, conditioner, or baked beans trying to figure out which one to buy. In the grand scheme of things, that particular choice is probably not that important, yet someone can spend a few minutes contemplating the benefits of one brand over another. If you asked shoppers whether it was worth spending so much time choosing that product, they would probably say no, yet they do it anyhow. Why? [...] They suggest that unimportant decisions can suck us in when they are more difficult than we expect them to be. They call these choices decision quicksand, because they pull you in and take more effort than they deserve." (
  '17 Sep 04Added Sept. 4, 2017, 11 p.m.
  in rationality | a)
• Five Myths About SuperPACs [Washingtonpost]: "The Supreme Court's ruling in Citizens United allowed them. Political candidates rely on them. And Stephen Colbert parodies them. But as a former chair of the Federal Election Commission and the lawyer behind Colbert's super PAC - Americans for a Better Tomorrow, Tomorrow - I find that most people don't understand the role that these largely unaccountable organizations play in American politics. As the GOP primary race draws to a close, let's take a look at some common misconceptions about groups powerful enough to evade traditional limits with a single bound." (
  '17 Sep 03Added Sept. 3, 2017, 11 p.m.
  in politicalscience | a)
• Negative Income Tax [Jefftk]: "There's not really logic behind this mess, but much of it comes from misguided attempts to save money. 'If we gave people cash, they might spend it on alcohol instead of things they really need.' Or 'if we don't means test then people will get more help than they need.' Except that by means testing too aggressively and giving people vouchers only for what we decide they need, we are actively keeping people poor by not letting them keep enough of the additional money they earn. That is not just harmful, but stupid. It would be so much better if we could get people to move from needing (net) assistance to paying (net) taxes. Not just because this would mean that they were wealthier, but we would have more money to spend on other things." (
  '17 Sep 02Added Sept. 2, 2017, 11 p.m.
  in policy | a)
• Psychology of Fraud: Why Good People Do Bad Things [Npr]: "There is, she says, a common misperception that at moments like this, when people face an ethical decision, they clearly understand the choice that they are making. [...T]the business frame cognitively activates one set of goals - to be competent, to be successful; the ethics frame triggers other goals. And once you're in, say, a business frame, you become really focused on meeting those goals, and other goals can completely fade from view. [...] It's not that they're evil - it's that they don't see. And if we want to attack fraud, we have to understand that a lot of fraud is unintentional. " (
  '17 Aug 30Added Aug. 30, 2017, 11 p.m.
  in ethics | a)
• 20 Questions [Freethoughtblogs]: "Are there '20 Questions Atheists Struggle to Answer'? I was asked how I respond to Peter Saunders' claim that there are, and how I would respond to those questions. According to God's Advocate, Saunders thinks 'there have not been any decent responses to [these twenty questions] in the past 40yrs,' but evidently he isn't bothering to read any of the best answers available or even to find out what they are. The questions themselves are pretty much boiler plate, and consist mostly of fallacious loaded questions that ignore the established science behind nearly every one. [...] So here are my answers to his twenty questions…" (
  '17 Aug 28Added Aug. 28, 2017, 11 p.m.
  in skepticism | a)
• Singer's Pond and Quality of Will [Philosophyetc.net]: "Singer argues that, just as we're obliged to save a drowning child at modest cost to ourselves (e.g. ruining an expensive suit), so we're obliged to help the distant needy when we're in a position to do so (e.g. by donating to GiveWell-recommended aid organizations). People often balk at this comparison, but I don't see any plausible grounds for escaping the conclusion that we have similarly strong reasons to act in either case. [...] What is counter-intuitive, I think, is the putative implication that when we fail to donate to effective charities we are thereby just as bad, or as blameworthy, as a person who lets a child drown before their eyes. Such a person, we feel, would have to be monstrously callous. As for ourselves, we may not be saints, but at least we are surely not moral monsters. Thus the comparison strikes us as preposterous." (
  '17 Aug 27Added Aug. 27, 2017, 11 p.m.
  in effectivealtruism | a)
• When is Your Help Special? [Givinggladly]: "I've heard the argument that we should 'think globally, act locally' because we understand the needs of our own communities best. I'm willing to accept this for some situations. [...] But here's where I think people go askew with this logic: they feel that financial help should also work this way. After all, don't I understand the needs in my own community better than anyone? [...] But rich people live in communities with other rich people, and poor people live near poor people. Your average American probably has several relatives or neighbors who have a few thousand dollars in their bank accounts. Your average Liberian does not know any such people. When both rich and poor people give in their own communities, the opera gets a lot more funding than the maternal health clinic in Liberia. Of course, lots of first-worlders have given misguided aid because they misunderstood the needs of people in other countries. But you can misunderstand the needs even in your own community." (
  '17 Aug 25Added Aug. 25, 2017, 11 p.m.
  in giving | a)
• A Person Paper on Purity in Language [Cs.virginia.edu]: "Perhaps this piece shocks you. It is meant to. The entire point of it is to use something that we find shocking as leverage to illustrate the fact that something that we usually close our eyes to is also very shocking. The most effective way I know to do so is to develop an extended analogy with something known as shocking and reprehensible. Racism is that thing, in this case. I am happy with this piece, despite-but also because of-its shock value. I think it makes its point better than any factual article could." (
  '17 Aug 24Added Aug. 24, 2017, 11 p.m.
  in rationality | a)
• "Genetically Engineering 'Ethical' Babies is a Moral Obligation, says Oxford Professor" [Telegraph.co.uk]: "Professor Julian Savulescu said that creating so-called designer babies could be considered a 'moral obligation' as it makes them grow up into 'ethically better children'. The expert in practical ethics said that we should actively give parents the choice to screen out personality flaws in their children as it meant they were then less likely to "'arm themselves and others'. The academic, who is also editor-in-chief of the Journal of Medical Ethics, made his comments in an article in the latest edition of Reader's Digest He explained that we are now in the middle of a genetic revolution and that although screening, for all but a few conditions, remained illegal it should be welcomed." (
  '17 Aug 23Added Aug. 23, 2017, 11 p.m.
  in effectivealtruism | a)
• Which of These Boasts is Not Like the Others? [Blog.givewell]: "1. '90c of your dollar goes directly to building cars. Only 10% of our expenses go into planning and designing them.' 2. 'We're using a volunteer director and no advertising, so we can spend 100% of the movie's budget on shooting expenses. It'll be a hit!' 3. '90% of our military budget goes directly to soldiers and weapons. We don't waste your tax dollars on administrative costs.' 4. 'More than 90 percent of our expended resources … support our poverty-fighting projects around the world. Less than 10 percent of expended resources go toward administrative and fund-raising costs.' The answer, of course, is #4, because it's real. But to hear me tell it, it's as silly a 'selling point' as the others." (
  '17 Aug 19Added Aug. 19, 2017, 11 p.m.
  in giving | a)
• Loading the Climate Dice [NYTimes]: "A couple of weeks ago the Northeast was in the grip of a severe heat wave. As I write this, however, it's a fairly cool day in New Jersey, considering that it's late July. Weather is like that; it fluctuates. And this banal observation may be what dooms us to climate catastrophe, in two ways. [...] Almost a quarter of a century ago James Hansen, the NASA scientist who did more than anyone to put climate change on the agenda, suggested the analogy of loaded dice. Imagine, he and his associates suggested, representing the probabilities of a hot, average or cold summer by historical standards as a die with two faces painted red, two white and two blue. By the early 21st century, they predicted, it would be as if four of the faces were red, one white and one blue. Hot summers would become much more frequent, but there would still be cold summers now and then." (
  '17 Aug 17Added Aug. 17, 2017, 11 p.m.
  in policy | a)
• "How to Implement True, Full Employment" [Worldacademy]: "We will briefly describe a program that would generate true, full employment, price stability, and currency stability. We will show that this program can be adopted in any nation that issues its own currency. Our presentation consists of three sections. First, we briefly examine a pilot program at the University of Missouri-Kansas City (UMKC). This provides the basis for the analysis in the second section of the functioning of a national monetary system. Finally, we show how this knowledge can be used to construct a public service program (PSE) that guarantees true, full employment with price and currency stability." (
  '17 Aug 14Added Aug. 14, 2017, 11 p.m.
  in policy | a)
• Time to Try Government as Employer of Last Resort [Huffingtonpost]: "At 10.2%, unemployment is now at its highest level since 1983. Nearly 16 million people can't find jobs even, though we are constantly being told that the worst recession since the Great Depression has officially ended. Yet instead of trying to revive the productive economy, most of the Obama administration's recovery efforts still remain focused on cardio-shock treatment for Wall Street. [...] We therefore suggest a new approach: Government as Employer of Last Resort (ELR). The U.S. Government can proceed directly to zero unemployment by hiring all of the labor that cannot find private sector employment. Furthermore, by fixing the wage paid under this ELR program at a level that does not disrupt existing labor markets, i.e., a wage level close to the existing minimum wage, substantive price stability can be expected." (
  '17 Aug 13Added Aug. 13, 2017, 11 p.m.
  in policy | a)
• Why We Regulate [NYTimes]: "Just to be clear, businessmen are human - although the lords of finance have a tendency to forget that - and they make money-losing mistakes all the time. That in itself is no reason for the government to get involved. But banks are special, because the risks they take are borne, in large part, by taxpayers and the economy as a whole. And what JPMorgan has just demonstrated is that even supposedly smart bankers must be sharply limited in the kinds of risk they're allowed to take on." (
  '17 Aug 12Added Aug. 12, 2017, 11 p.m.
  in policy | a)
• Stacking Habits: How to Create New Habits That Stick [Liferapture]: "I've known about this approach to tackling tasks you're not too thrilled about having to do for a while now. If you've not heard of it before, the logic is if you tell yourself you're only going to exercise [...] for five minutes, your brain doesn't have much of a leg to stand on. Nobody can argue with "only five minutes"-including your brain-so it lets you have it. Of course, what then usually happens is five minutes into your task, you really start to get into it. You realise it isn't nearly as hard as you had pegged it to be (as putting something off for a long time will naturally make your brain perceive it to be more difficult than it actually is), and so you continue on." (
  '17 Aug 10Added Aug. 10, 2017, 11 p.m.
  in productivity | a)
• Reagan Was a Keynesian [NYTimes]: "I find it especially instructive to look at spending levels three years into each man's administration - that is, in the first quarter of 1984 in Reagan's case, and in the first quarter of 2012 in Mr. Obama's - compared with four years earlier, which in each case more or less corresponds to the start of an economic crisis. Under one president, real per capita government spending at that point was 14.4 percent higher than four years previously; under the other, less than half as much, just 6.4 percent. O.K., by now many readers have probably figured out the trick here: Reagan, not Obama, was the big spender." (
  '17 Aug 09Added Aug. 9, 2017, 11 p.m.
  in policy | a)
• Relativity and Conformity [Ockhamsbeard.wordpress]: "There are many ways of living socially, and many moral systems that foster social and cooperative behaviour - none perfect, but some better than others in certain environments. That's the crux of moral ecology, a theory I'm elaborating in my PhD thesis. [...] Thus moral ecology, in a sense, is a form of relativism. I'm arguing that different cultures (or, more accurately, cultures living in different environments) can and should employ different moral systems. The monism at the core, however, is that all these systems serve the same ultimate end: fostering social and cooperative behaviour within that group." (
  '17 Aug 08Added Aug. 8, 2017, 11 p.m.
  in ethics | a)
• Death Star? No Thank You. [The Monkeycage]: "I wish to address the most important policy question of the millenium: should we build a Death Star? Seth Masket and Jamelle Bouie highlight the military downside of the Death Star, suggesting that more people might rebel against the wholesale genocide of the Empire, and that the Death Star would be the prime target of any rebellion. I have two thoughts to add. First, the Death Star is a bit misunderstood. It is primarily a tool of domestic politics rather than warfare, and should be compared to alternative means of suppressing the population of a galaxy. Second, as a weapon of war, it should be compared to alternative uses of scarce defense resources. Understood properly, the Death Star is not worth it." (
  '17 Aug 07Added Aug. 7, 2017, 11 p.m.
  in policy | a)
• Why Are Believers Willfully Ignorant About Atheists? [Alternet]: "Yes, atheists think that morality and virtue, love and friendship, reason and grief, are physical phenomena with no supernatural component. We don't understand exactly how this works - humanity is very much in the early stages of figuring out consciousness - but an overwhelming body of evidence strongly points to that conclusion, and atheists understand and accept that. Whatever consciousness is, it is almost certainly a construct of the brain. And we think social experiences, such as morality, virtue, love, grief, are emotions and mental constructs, which evolved in us to help us survive and flourish as a social species. But that is not the same as saying they are false. It is not the same as saying they are illusions. It is not the same as saying they have no meaning." (
  '17 Aug 05Added Aug. 5, 2017, 11 p.m.
  in skepticism | a)
• Do Drones Change Americans Views on the Use of Force? [The Monkeycage]: "These results suggest that drones may well alter how Americans think about using military force. The effect of military casualties found here implies that drone technology could make it much easier, and perhaps tempting, for Presidents to use them in conflicts overseas. The smaller effect of mission success means that even the prospect of failure may serve as only a small brake on such impulses. Civilian deaths, though, may well moderate support for drone strikes." (
  '17 Aug 04Added Aug. 4, 2017, 11 p.m.
  in policy | a)
• "Good Cop, Bad Cop - Atheist Activism" [Freethoughtblogs]: "here's a lively debate in the godless movement about how we should be going about the business of atheist, agnostic, skeptical, humanist, and other godless activism. Some, like Richard Dawkins and PZ Myers, favor a more passionate, confrontational approach, speaking directly and without mincing words about the absurdities and contradictions and troubling manifestations of religion and religious institutions. Others, like Michael Shermer, prefer a more respectful, more sympathetic, less confrontational approach towards religion and religious beliefs. Here's what I want to know: Why is this an either/or question?" (
  '17 Aug 03Added Aug. 3, 2017, 11 p.m.
  in activism | a)
• Inflation Lessons [Krugman.blogs.nytimes]: "One of the themes I've hit on many times is the fact that the crisis and slump have been a testing ground for economic doctrines. People came into this mess with very different views about how the economy works, and the crisis in effect provided natural experiments that tested those views. Most notably, what we got was a test of demand-side versus supply-side stories about the nature of depressions. [...] How could you tell which story was right? One answer was to look at the behavior of interest rates; the other was to look at inflation. For if you believed a demand-side story, you would also believe that even a large monetary expansion would have little inflationary effect; if you believed a supply-side story, you would expect lots of inflation from too much money chasing a reduced supply of goods. And indeed, people on the right have been forecasting runaway inflation for years now. Yet the predicted inflation keeps not coming." (
  '17 Aug 02Added Aug. 2, 2017, 11 p.m.
  in policy | a)
• The 'Interpreter' in Your Head Spins Stories to Make Sense of the World [Discovermagazine]: "We humans think we make all our decisions to act consciously and willfully. We all feel we are wonderfully unified, coherent mental machines and that our underlying brain structure must reflect this overpowering sense. It doesn't. No command center keeps all other brain systems hopping to the instructions of a five-star general. The brain has millions of local processors making important decisions. There is no one boss in the brain. You are certainly not the boss of your brain. Have you ever succeeded in telling your brain to shut up already and go to sleep?" (
  '17 Aug 01Added Aug. 1, 2017, 11 p.m.
  in rationality | a)
• Eight Short Stories on Excuses [LessWrong]: "In all these stories, the first party wants to credibly pre-commit to a rule, but also has incentives to forgive other people's deviations from the rule. The second party breaks the rules, but comes up with an excuse for why its infraction should be forgiven. The first party's response is based not only on whether the person's excuse is believable, not even on whether the person's excuse is morally valid, but on whether the excuse can be accepted without straining the credibility of their previous pre-commitment. The general principle is that by accepting an excuse, a rule-maker is also committing themselves to accepting all equally good excuses in the future." (
  '17 Jul 31Added July 31, 2017, 11 p.m.
  in rationality | a)
• Why is It So Hard to Get the Fundamentals Right? [The Monkeycage]: "And then he's off into riffs on Romney's various problems. He's not a 'natural candidate.' He didn't air enough positive ads to make voters 'comfortable' with him. He should have taken Rubio's position on immigration to win Latinos. He shouldn't be having a discussion of Medicare. Maybe those things are true. Or maybe the economy just doesn't predict that Obama should be losing. I've said it before and I'll say it again: many an unduly complicated interpretation of an election began with a misreading of the fundamentals. Fortunately, I don't need to say much more." (
  '17 Jul 30Added July 30, 2017, 11 p.m.
  in politicalscience | a)
• The Use and Abuse of Religious Freedom [Project-syndicate]: "When people are prohibited from practicing their religion - for example, by laws that bar worshiping in certain ways - there can be no doubt that their freedom of religion has been violated. Religious persecution was common in previous centuries, and still occurs in some countries today. But prohibiting the ritual slaughter of animals does not stop Jews or Muslims from practicing their religion. [...] Neither Islam nor Judaism upholds a requirement to eat meat. [...] Restricting the legitimate defense of religious freedom to rejecting proposals that stop people from practicing their religion makes it possible to resolve many other disputes in which it is claimed that freedom of religion is at stake. For example, allowing men and women to sit in any part of a bus does not violate orthodox Jews' religious freedom, because Jewish law does not command that one use public transport. It's just a convenience that one can do without - and orthodox Jews can hardly believe that the laws to which they adhere were intended to make life maximally convenient. Likewise, the Obama administration's requirement to provide health insurance that covers contraception does not prevent Catholics from practicing their religion. Catholicism does not oblige its adherents to run hospitals and universities." (
  '17 Jul 29Added July 29, 2017, 11 p.m.
  in skepticism | a)
• "Stop Bullying the "Soft" Sciences" [Latimes]: "Once, during a meeting at my university, a biologist mentioned that he was the only faculty member present from a science department. When I corrected him, noting that I was from the Department of Psychology, he waved his hand dismissively, as if I were a Little Leaguer telling a member of the New York Yankees that I too played baseball. There has long been snobbery in the sciences, with the "hard" ones (physics, chemistry, biology) considering themselves to be more legitimate than the "soft" ones (psychology, sociology). It is thus no surprise that many members of the general public feel the same way. But of late, skepticism about the rigors of social science has reached absurd heights." (
  '17 Jul 28Added July 28, 2017, 11 p.m.
  in metascience | a)
• Development Controversy a Sign of Sophistication [Ssireview]: "The striking shift here is not in the details or merits of the specific programs, but in that these rows happen at all. They are precisely how science is supposed to work. [...] International development has become much more scientific in the last 15 years: evaluating ideas through randomized control trials; publishing enough detail about a program's methods and results that it can be replicated elsewhere; subjecting analysis to peer review; and publishing in respected journals. The organizations whose data are being contested should be proud that their data are capable of such contest. They contrast starkly with much activity in charities, philanthropy, and even social policy where performance data are often too scarce, too private, too vague, and/or otherwise too flaky to be meaningfully debated." (
  '17 Jul 27Added July 27, 2017, 11 p.m.
  in development | a)
• Ultimate Responsibility [Philosophyetc.net]: "How does 'responsibility' enter the causal chain? Compatibilists may say it emerges from "reasons responsiveness" or rational agency. Past states of the world cause my cognitive functioning - that is, me - to exist, and I in turn cause downstream effects to occur through my actions, for which I am responsible. Responsibility enters the system when the causal chain flows through an agent - through one's character, values, and practical reasoning. Incompatibilists object to this: 'how can you be responsible for your actions if you weren't responsible for the upstream causes which determined your cognitive functioning (character, etc.) in the first place?' They claim, in short, that responsibility requires ultimate responsibility. But is this even possible?" (
  '17 Jul 26Added July 26, 2017, 11 p.m.
  in ethics | a)
• How Confrontationalism Can Open Doors [The Humanist]: "A woman walks into a café, orders a coffee and, before she pays, crosses off "In God We Trust" on her $20 bill. The woman is me, and scratching the motto off money is something I often do. This time the woman behind the counter gave me a look. [...] I felt uncomfortable. [...] Was it obnoxious of me to do my little ' secular government' visibility action in front of the barista, who is professionally required to be polite to me and doesn't have the option of telling me to piss off? In doing my visibility shtick and trying to open some eyes to some new ideas and questions, had I instead just closed a door? Here's what happened next. The woman came back with my coffee and said, 'If you don't mind my asking-why do you do that?' And the door opened." (
  '17 Jul 25Added July 25, 2017, 11 p.m.
  in activism | a)
• The Mind of a Flip Flopper [NYTimes]: "Forget for a minute everything you know about politics. Barack Obama now openly supports gay marriage. Mitt Romney now opposes roughly the same kind of health care reform he fought for as governor of Massachusetts. What if they weren't two politicians calculating how to win an election but instead just two guys who changed their minds? They didn't 'flip-flop'; they experienced, as social scientists say, an attitude change, the way any of us do when we become a vegetarian or befriend a neighbor we used to hate or even just choose to buy a new brand of toothpaste." (
  '17 Jul 24Added July 24, 2017, 11 p.m.
  in policy | a)
• Things Christians Say to Explain Away Biblical Moral Atrocities [Randalrauser]: "Upon reading this horrifying account, properly functioning, minimally moral people would immediately judge the massacre in Roumidia to constitute a moral atrocity. We wouldn't even dignify their claim for moral justification with a moment's serious consideration. This is where things get perplexing, because countless Christians will suddenly shelve the skepticism when it comes to reading accounts of similar atrocities in the Bible. As surely as they dismiss any claim for moral justification to the Roumidian village slaughter, so they dismiss any possible claim against moral justification for things like the Israelite slaughter of the Canaanites. What do Christians say to explain this curious double standard? Let's consider a few examples that have appeared in recent days in the blog." (
  '17 Jul 23Added July 23, 2017, 11 p.m.
  in skepticism | a)
• Compassion Made Easy [NYTimes]: "As a social psychologist interested in the emotions, I long wondered whether this spiritual understanding of compassion was also scientifically accurate. Empirically speaking, does the experience of compassion toward one person measurably affect our actions and attitudes toward other people? If so, are there practical steps we can take to further cultivate this feeling? Recently, my colleagues and I conducted experiments that answered yes to both questions." (
  '17 Jul 22Added July 22, 2017, 11 p.m.
  in ethics | a)
• Can You Prove It Didn't Happen? Progressive Religion and the Standards of Evidence [Gretachristina.typepad]: "I could, in the next fifteen minutes, come up with half a dozen beliefs that aren't contradicted by evidence but that also aren't supported by any. The universe was created by a cosmic graffiti artist, and the Big Bang was the result of her spray can exploding under pressure. Cats talk to each other in Sanskrit - but only when nobody's listening. Gravity is caused by hundreds of tiny invisible demons inside every physical object, pulling towards each other with a magical force field. Etc., etc., etc. [...] Why are any of these hypotheses any less plausible than any of the commonly- held God hypotheses actually believed by millions of people? Why do they have any less gravitas?" (
  '17 Jul 21Added July 21, 2017, 11 p.m.
  in skepticism | a)
• Guessing the Teacher's Password [LessWrong]: "There is an instinctive tendency to think that if a physicist says 'light is made of waves', and the teacher says 'What is light made of?', and the student says 'Waves!', the student has made a true statement. That's only fair, right? We accept 'waves' as a correct answer from the physicist; wouldn't it be unfair to reject it from the student? Surely, the answer 'Waves!' is either true or false, right?" (
  '17 Jul 20Added July 20, 2017, 11 p.m.
  in rationality | a)
• "Inbox Zero" is a Thing?" [Qntm]: "Wait, zero unread messages? I thought 'inbox zero' meant zero messages. People aiming for zero unread messages are at stage one. I'm at stage two: my email inbox contains almost zero messages outright. Since the snazzy 'inbox zero' term is already taken, I suppose this could be called 'true inbox zero'. Or perhaps 'inbox zero omega'. 'Inbox double zero'? Every email in my inbox has been read. Every email which has been acted upon, and requires no further action from me, has been archived or deleted." (
  '17 Jul 19Added July 19, 2017, 11 p.m.
  in productivity | a)
• Why Do Nigerian Scammers Say They Are From Nigeria? [Research.microsoft]: "Far-fetched tales of West African riches strike most as comical. Our analysis suggests that is an advantage to the attacker, not a disadvantage. Since his attack has a low density of victims the Nigerian scammer has an over-riding need to reduce false positives. By sending an email that repels all but the most gullible the scammer gets the most promising marks to self-select, and tilts the true to false positive ratio in his favor." (
  '17 Jul 18Added July 18, 2017, 11 p.m.
  in rationality | a)
• Do Ethicists Eat Less Meat? [Schwitzsplinters.blogspot]: "Conclusion? Ethicists condemn meat-eating more than the other groups, but actually eat meat at about the same rate. Perhaps also, they're more likely to misrepresent their meat-eating practices (on the meals-per-week question and at philosophy functions) than the other groups." (
  '17 Jul 16Added July 16, 2017, 11 p.m.
  in ethics | a)
• When Do We Become Truly Conscious? [Slate]: "Having prided myself on my objectivity throughout my adult life, I've embarrassingly found that my daughter is the main exception to this aim: I've not only been taken aback by how fiercely I love her but also by how proud I am of her and how quickly I distort the truth to make her seem exceptional in every way. But when I can step back from these views, I ask myself: At what point did she become conscious? Obviously she is conscious now, as she can tell me her inner thoughts via language. But when did she start experiencing her environment? On a personal, intuitive level, I had little doubt that her first intense bursts of laughter at my silly antics, when she was a few months old, reflected a substantive consciousness. But was she conscious well before this? Was she aware when she was still in the womb, kicking away? Or could she only experience things when she first opened her eyes to the outside world on the day of her birth?" (
  '17 Jul 14Added July 14, 2017, 11 p.m.
  in philosophy | a)
• Don't Jump to Conclusions About the Aurora Killer [NYTimes]: "You've been bombarded with 'facts' and opinions about James Holmes's motives. You have probably expressed your opinion on why he did it. You are probably wrong. I learned that the hard way. In 1999 I lived in Denver and was part of the first wave of reporters to descend on Columbine High School the afternoon it was attacked. I ran with the journalistic pack that created the myths we are still living with. We created those myths for one reason: we were trying to answer the burning question of why, and we were trying to answer it way too soon. I spent 10 years studying Columbine, and we all know what happened there, right? Two outcast loners exacted revenge against the jocks for relentlessly bullying them. Not one bit of that turned out to be true." (
  '17 Jul 13Added July 13, 2017, 11 p.m.
  in rationality | a)
• Local Action and Remote Donation [Jefftk]: "In response to my post on occupy [place] and inequality, I had the following discussion with a friend. They have a perspective that I think is pretty common in my cohort: local activism and community action does more good than trying to earn a lot to give via international aid [...But g]lobally and locally, most rich people live near other rich people. So if everyone works to benefit their local community, this helps richer people a lot more than poorer people." (
  '17 Jul 12Added July 12, 2017, 11 p.m.
  in giving | a)
• Fuel Efficiency Standards Have Costs of Their Own [NYTimes]: "Just the other day, President Obama unveiled another example of how our hostility to anything that even remotely looks like a tax is leading us down the wrong path, ultimately making us worse off. [...] The reason is fairly straightforward. Fuel-efficiency standards do not really change drivers' behavior in a helpful way. Gas taxes do." (
  '17 Jul 10Added July 10, 2017, 11 p.m.
  in policy | a)
• How Stereotypes Can Drive Women To Quit Science [Npr]: "The sampling technique has revealed flaws in common stereotypes. Take the one about how women like to talk much more than men. When Mehl actually measured how many words men and women speak each day, he found there was practically no difference - both men and women speak around 17,000 words a day, give or take a few hundred. [...] When male scientists talked to other scientists about their research, it energized them. But it was a different story for women.'For women, the pattern was just the opposite, specifically in their conversations with male colleagues,' Schmader said. 'So the more women in their conversations with male colleagues were talking about research, the more disengaged they reported being in their work.' Disengagement predicts that someone is at risk of dropping out." (
  '17 Jul 09Added July 9, 2017, 11 p.m.
  in management | a)
• "Bayesians, Frequentists, and Lance Armstrong" [The Monkeycage]: "As social scientists, at least as regards what we can empirically assess, we tend to make statements of probability rather than fact. So rather than say that Armstrong did or did not use performance enhancers, we would talk about how likely versus not likely it is that he used the substances. It frustrates many people that we rarely make categorical statements, but we're trying to be honest about what we know and don't know." (
  '17 Jul 08Added July 8, 2017, 11 p.m.
  in rationality | a)
• Welfare Recipients Are Actually Mostly White And Less Likely Than The Average American To Use Drugs [Addictinginfo]: "The idea is that lazy people of color are using 'your' taxpayer dollars (it is always assumed that 'those people' do not also pay taxes) to avoid work while getting high on illegal drugs, but the truth is that this is bunk and it is not-so-thinly-veiled racism. I, for one, do not want my tax dollars to go towards programs that intend to punish people on welfare for using drugs when it is simpler to just help pay for welfare for the needy and not add yet another hurdle to the process that is designed to shame, scapegoat, reinforce racial stereotypes that aren't even remotely accurate, and make it more difficult to get assistance when it is needed." (
  '17 Jul 07Added July 7, 2017, 11 p.m.
  in policy | a)
• Wall Street Is Too Big to Regulate [NYTimes]: "The Barclays interest-rate scandal, HSBC's openness to money laundering by Mexican drug traffickers, the epic blunders at JPMorgan Chase - at this point, four years after Wall Street wrecked the global economy, does anyone really believe we can regulate the big banks? And if we broke them up, would they really stay broken up? [...] Some economists in and around the University of Chicago, who founded the modern conservative tradition, had a surprisingly different take: When it comes to the really big fish in the economic pond, some felt, the only way to preserve competition was to nationalize the largest ones, which defied regulation." (
  '17 Jul 06Added July 6, 2017, 11 p.m.
  in policy | a)
• Book Review - The Nurture Assumption [Squid314.livejournal]: "The latest book I read was The Nurture Assumption by Judith Rich Harris, which was supposed to argue that parents don't really have much of an effect on how their kids turn out. This sounded ridiculous when I first heard it, but people I trusted like Steven Pinker kept endorsing it, so I finally picked it up. The thesis might be a little more subtle than that. Parents can still impact their kids' biological development - to take an extreme example, if you malnourish a baby, that's going to hurt brain development. They can still guide them into certain areas by, again to take an extreme example, making them go to music lessons every day starting at age four. But they don't have to worry that by being too strict or not strict enough or just the right amount of strict but at the wrong time they're going to seriously harm their children's adult personalities. The most dutiful helicopter parents probably wouldn't change much by plopping their kids on the couch every day and telling them not to bother them." (
  '17 Jul 05Added July 5, 2017, 11 p.m.
  in productivity | a)
• Blogging Better Angels - The Bad Old Days [Bigthink]: "Pinker's first major theme is that, when comparing the present to past eras, we tend to forget just how violent the past really was. Some people speak fondly of "the good old days", which they romanticize as a peaceful, pastoral existence lacking the squalor and dangers of modern civilization. But the reality is that our civilization, today, is probably the safest and most peaceful that the planet has ever known. For ordinary people throughout most of history, life was a constant struggle to survive, with violence an omnipresent reality and death from war, crime or disease a perpetual danger. What's more, the people of those eras accepted, and even cheered on, a level of brutality and violence that most people today would find sickening and unimaginable." (
  '17 Jul 04Added July 4, 2017, 11 p.m.
  in policy | a)
• Affluence Today [Psychologytoday]: "Roughly matching the one billion people living in extreme poverty, there are about a billion living at a level of affluence never previously known except in the courts of kings and nobles. [...] If you're shaking your head at the excesses of the superrich, though, don't shake too hard. Think again about some of the ways Americans with average incomes spend their money. In most places in the U.S., you can get your recommended eight glasses of water a day out of the tap for less than a penny, while a bottle of water will set you back a dollar fifty or more. [...] Most of us are absolutely certain that we wouldn't hesitate to save a drowning child, and that we would do it at considerable cost to ourselves. Yet while thousands of children die each day, we spend money on things we take for granted, and would hardly notice if they were not there. Is that wrong? If so, how far does our obligation to the poor go?" (
  '17 Jul 03Added July 3, 2017, 11 p.m.
  in giving | a)
• Epiphany Addiction [Succeedsocially]: "'Epiphany Addiction' is an informal little term I came up with to describe a process that I've observed happen to people who try to work on their personal issues. How it works is that someone will be trying to solve a problem they have, say a lack of confidence around other people. They'll come across a piece of advice or a motivational snippet that will lead them have an epiphany or a profound realization. This often happens when someone is reading self-help books or articles. [...] The problem with these epiphanies is that they can make you feel really charged up, and like something has clicked into place in your mind, and that your life will be different from now on. They usually don't lead to any tangible results though. You walk around for a day or two feeling ready to take on the world, but you don't act any differently, and the 'high' soon wears off." (
  '17 Jul 02Added July 2, 2017, 11 p.m.
  in productivity | a)
• "The Triviality of the Debate Over "Is-Ought" and the Definition of "Moral" [Utilitarian.net]: "The problem of how statements of fact are related to moral judgments has dominated recent moral philosophy. Associated with this problem is another, which has also been given considerable attention - the question of how morality is to be defined. The two issues are linked, since some definitions of morality allow us to move from statements of fact to moral judgments, while others do not. In this article I shall take the two issues together, and try to show that they do not merit the amount of attention they have been given. I shall argue that the differences between the contending parties are terminological, and that there are various possible terminologies, none of which has, on balance, any great advantage over any other terminology. So instead of continuing to regard these issues as central, moral philosophers could, I believe, 'agree to disagree' about the 'is-ought' problem, and about the definition of morality, provided only that everyone was careful to stipulate how he was using the term 'moral' and was aware of the implications and limitations of the definition he was using. Moral philosophers could then move on to consider more important issues." (
  '17 Jul 01Added July 1, 2017, 11 p.m.
  in ethics | a)
• We Don't Need No Education [NYTimes]: "Conservatives would have you believe that our disappointing economic performance has somehow been caused by excessive government spending, which crowds out private job creation. But the reality is that private-sector job growth has more or less matched the recoveries from the last two recessions; the big difference this time is an unprecedented fall in public employment, which is now about 1.4 million jobs less than it would be if it had grown as fast as it did under President George W. Bush. And, if we had those extra jobs, the unemployment rate would be much lower than it is - something like 7.3 percent instead of 8.2 percent. It sure looks as if cutting government when the economy is deeply depressed hurts rather than helps the American people." (
  '17 Jun 30Added June 30, 2017, 11 p.m.
  in policy | a)
• Is That Your True Rejection? [Cato-unbound]: "What would it take to get you to change your mind about libertarianism? What are the arguments such that, if they were decisively refuted, you would actually change your mind? When I ask myself this question, I think my actual political views would change primarily with my beliefs about how likely government interventions are in practice to do more harm than good. I think my libertarianism rests chiefly on the empirical proposition-a factual belief which is either false or true, depending on how the universe actually works-that 90% of the time you have a bright idea like 'offer government mortgage guarantees so that more people can own houses,' someone will somehow manage to screw it up, or there'll be side effects you didn't think about, and most of the time you'll end up doing more harm than good, and the next time won't be much different from the last time." (
  '17 Jun 29Added June 29, 2017, 11 p.m.
  in rationality | a)
• Schelling Fences on Slippery Slopes [LessWrong]: "Slippery slopes are themselves a slippery concept. Imagine trying to explain them to an alien: 'Well, we right-thinking people are quite sure that the Holocaust happened, so banning Holocaust denial would shut up some crackpots and improve the discourse. But it's one step on the road to things like banning unpopular political positions or religions, and we right-thinking people oppose that, so we won't ban Holocaust denial.' And the alien might well respond: 'But you could just ban Holocaust denial, but not ban unpopular political positions or religions. Then you right-thinking people get the thing you want, but not the thing you don't want.' This post is about some of the replies you might give the alien." (
  '17 Jun 28Added June 28, 2017, 11 p.m.
  in policy | a)
• Partisan Standard of Ethics [Danariely]: "We say that politicians are slimy, our noses wrinkling with disdain - but is that the way we like them? It seems the answer depends on whether we agree with their agenda. With the 2012 election steadily approaching, I wondered whether Democratic and Republican voters hold their preferred candidate and the opposing candidate to similar ethical standards. To find out, Heather Mann (a graduate student working with me) and I conducted a little survey on American voters." (
  '17 Jun 25Added June 25, 2017, 11 p.m.
  in culturewar | a)
• Get the Picture? Art in the Brain of the Beholder [Newscientist]: "Since then, I have come to appreciate the work of many more modern artists, who express varying levels of abstraction in their work, in particular the great Piet Mondrian, Paul Klee, and contemporary artist Hiroshi Sugimoto. Even so, when I tried to explain my taste, I found myself lost for words. Why are we attracted to paintings and sculptures that seem to bear no relation to the physical world? Little did I know that researchers have already started to address this question. By studying the brain's responses to different paintings, they have been examining the way the mind perceives art. Although their work cannot yet explain the nuances of our tastes, it has highlighted some of the unique ways in which these masterpieces hijack the brain's visual system." (
  '17 Jun 24Added June 24, 2017, 11 p.m.
  in rationality | a)
• The Seventh Mediation on the War on Applause Lights [Squid314.livejournal]: "Speaking of Wars on Things, let's talk about the War on Terror. Everyone agrees terrorism is really bad. Some people want a Strong Response To Terror, which in practice consists of waterboarding some people and then bombing a randomly chosen Middle Eastern country. Other people want a More Measured Response To Terror, which in practice consists of trying to figure out what kind of things we do that make us a target for terrorism and then not doing them. The former group of people call the latter group of people Soft On Terror. [...] And every time they try to figure out the conditions that promote terrorism and decrease them, it's because of their deep-seated desire to blame the victims of terrorism for the attacks." (
  '17 Jun 22Added June 22, 2017, 11 p.m.
  in policy | a)
• You Have $75 Billion To Save the World - How Would You Spend It? [Slate]: "If you had $75 billion to spend over the next four years and your goal was to advance human welfare, especially in the developing world, how could you get the most value for your money? That is the question that I posed to a panel of five top economists, including four Nobel laureates, in the Copenhagen Consensus 2012 project. The panel members were chosen for their expertise in prioritization and their ability to use economic principles to compare policy choices." (
  '17 Jun 21Added June 21, 2017, 11 p.m.
  in development | a)
• Cultivating Virtue - How to Encourage Moral Behaviour [Ockhamsbeard.wordpress]: "It seems a crucial but oft overlooked step in discussions of morality: how to actually encourage moral behaviour? Most moral philosophy is obsessed with either understanding the nature of moral judgement, or in developing a system that reliably produces the correct moral judgements. Good on it, but that's not the end of the story. Even if we did have a system that produces judgements on which we can all agree, what then? How to we translate that theoretical triumph into the actual end goal of moral enquiry: encouraging moral behaviour? Seems little ink has been spilled by moral philosophers on this issue." (
  '17 Jun 20Added June 20, 2017, 11 p.m.
  in ethics | a)
• Atheist Tribes [Athe Istethicist.blogspot]: "I told you so. [...] I told you that atheists are human beings. They are not a group of hyper-rational super humans. We have not discovered how to transcend those elements of our psychology that still plagues those who *scoff* believe in a god. We are humans, subject to human foibles unless we take pains to correct them. Unfortunately, we cannot take pains to correct them as long as we believe that we are some super-human entity that have overcome the failings of mere mortals. It is a classic case of admitting that a problem exists before we can take steps to effectively fight it." (
  '17 Jun 19Added June 19, 2017, 11 p.m.
  in skepticism | a)
• The Worst Argument in the World [LessWrong]: "I declare the Worst Argument In The World to be this: 'X is in a category whose archetypal member gives us a certain emotional reaction. Therefore, we should apply that emotional reaction to X, even though it is only a marginal category member.' [...] It sounds dumb only because we are talking soberly of categories and features. As soon as the argument gets framed in terms of words, it becomes so powerful that somewhere between many and most of the bad arguments in politics, philosophy and culture take some form of the Worst Argument In The World." (
  '17 Jun 18Added June 18, 2017, 11 p.m.
  in rationality | a)
• A Non-Random Walk Down Campaign Street [The Monkeycage]: "Political campaigns are commonly understood as random walks, during which, at any point in time, the level of support for any party or candidate is equally likely to go up or down. Each shift in the polls is then interpreted as the result of some combination of news and campaign strategies. A completely different story of campaigns is the mean reversion model in which the elections are determined by fundamental factors of the economy and partisanship; the role of the campaign is to give voters a chance to reach their predetermined positions." (
  '17 Jun 17Added June 17, 2017, 11 p.m.
  in politicalscience | a)
• Temporal Acrobatics of Harm [Philosophyetc.net]: "I'm not sure why some people are so shocked by the idea that we can be harmed by actions that take place before we exist. An event harms us if it causes our life to go worse than it otherwise would have. That is, if the nearest possible world in which the event does not occur, is a world in which our life goes better for us. It is obviously possible for this modal condition to be satisfied by events which precede our existence. (If you're feeling unimaginative, see the "wooden statue" example below.) But if the issue is so simple, why are others making mistakes about it? Here are a few possible explanations" (
  '17 Jun 16Added June 16, 2017, 11 p.m.
  in ethics | a)
• The Economics of Video Games [Washingtonpost]: "Nowadays, many massively multiplayer online video games have become so complex that game companies are turning to economists for help. Without oversight, the games' economies can go badly awry - as when a gambling ban triggered a virtual bank run in the online world of Second Life in 2007, with one bank alone costing players $750,000 in real-life money. But there's a flip side, too. Just as video game designers are in dire need of economic advice, many academic economists are keen on studying video games. A virtual world, after all, allows economists to study concepts that rarely occur in real life, such as full-reserve banking, a popular libertarian alternative to the current banking system that cropped up in Eve Online. The data is richer. And it's easier to run economy-wide experiments in a video game - experiments that, for obvious reasons, can't be run on countries. That ability to experiment on a massive scale, academics say, could revolutionize economics." (
  '17 Jun 15Added June 15, 2017, 11 p.m.
  in economics | a)
• Five Myths About Campaign Ads [Washingtonpost]: "Political campaigns often spend more on ads than on anything else, and ad spending has risen rapidly in recent years - a trend that has intensified since the Supreme Court's 2010 Citizens United decision. But do the ads work? Are they as nefarious as their reputation suggests? Two decades of research has exposed several myths about campaign advertising." (
  '17 Jun 14Added June 14, 2017, 11 p.m.
  in politicalscience | a)
• The Real Reason for Big Government [Huffingtonpost]: "A chronicle of government growth over the last 100 years shows that most of the increase in federal programs took place in only two decades: the 1930s and the 1960s. And the last 40 years have seen little significant growth in our national government. In 1970, 2.9 million civilians worked for the federal government; in 2008, that figure was 2.8 million. In 1970, federal bureaucrats made up 3.8 percent of total U.S. workers, while in 2008 they made up a mere 1.9 percent. [...] In this view, we have come to have big government largely because this is what the American public has demanded. Consider this: the two periods that account for most of the growth in federal programs - the 1930s and 1960s - were also times of extraordinary political unrest and citizen activism. People wanted big new government programs to deal with the pressing issues of those times." (
  '17 Jun 13Added June 13, 2017, 11 p.m.
  in policy | a)
• Rosie Ruiz Republicans [NYTimes]: "Remember Rosie Ruiz? In 1980 she was the first woman to cross the finish line at the Boston Marathon - except it turned out that she hadn't actually run most of the race, that she sneaked onto the course around a mile from the end. Ever since, she has symbolized a particular kind of fraud, in which people claim credit for achieving things they have not, in fact, achieved. And these days Paul Ryan is the Rosie Ruiz of American politics. This would have been an apt comparison even before the curious story of Mr. Ryan's own marathon came to light. Still, that's quite a story, so let's talk about it first." (
  '17 Jun 12Added June 12, 2017, 11 p.m.
  in policy | a)
• Utilitarian Jihad [Squid314.livejournal]: "Two days ago I applied to join Giving What We Can, an organization for people who pledge to donate at least 10% of everything they earn ever to charity. [...] I had kind of avoided joining GWWC until now because I thought it would be sort of presumptuous to join when I didn't have an income. But in between doing odd jobs for SIAI/CFAR and occasional unexpected windfalls, I seem to be making enough now to not quite be the stereotypical eternally-borrowing student. And I really like their 10% idea. I've always been a fan of the utilitarian argument that you should donate everything you have to charity and even wrote up my own version, but of course that will never happen and so the tendency is just to sit around feeling vaguely guilty and not donate anything. Ten percent is a nice round number that makes a good Schelling fence and makes me feel as virtuous as the Jews, Catholics, and Mormons (and better than the Muslims even if not quite as good as the Baha'i. But when I have a steadier job and start making more money and am comfortable, those Baha'i are going down.)" (
  '17 Jun 11Added June 11, 2017, 11 p.m.
  in giving | a)
• "On Being A Feminist, A Trans/Queer-Rights Advocate And An Atheist/Skeptic At The Same Time, Or: How To Be Hated By All Your Friends & Allies" [Freethoughtblogs]: "So where does this leave me? If there are trends within feminism that hate trans women and atheists, and trends within the trans community that hate atheists and feminists, and trends within the atheist community that hate feminists and trans women? No matter where I'm locating myself at a given moment, I have to push uphill against some kind of problematic set of biases and viewpoints or another. I can't win." (
  '17 Jun 10Added June 10, 2017, 11 p.m.
  in activism | a)
• Why The Future of Neuroscience Will Be Emotionless [Whywereason]: "In Phaedrus, Plato likens the mind to a charioteer who commands two horses, one that is irrational and crazed and another that is noble and of good stock. The job of the charioteer is to control the horses to proceed towards Enlightenment and the truth. Plato's allegory sparked an idea that perpetuated throughout the next several millennia in western thought: emotion gets in the way of reason. [...] Around the 17th and 18th centuries, however, thinkers began to challenge this idea. David Hume turned the tables on Plato: reason, Hume said, was the slave of the passions. Psychological research of the last few decades not only confirms this view, some of it suggests that emotion is better at deciding. We know a lot more about how the brain works compared to the ancient Greeks, but a decade into the 21st century researchers are still debating which of Plato's horses is in control, and which one we should listen to." (
  '17 Jun 09Added June 9, 2017, 11 p.m.
  in science | a)
• The Useful Idea of Truth [LessWrong]: "Since my expectations sometimes conflict with my subsequent experiences, I need different names for the thingies that determine my experimental predictions and the thingy that determines my experimental results. I call the former thingies 'beliefs', and the latter thingy 'reality'. You won't get a direct collision between belief and reality - or between someone else's beliefs and reality - by sitting in your living-room with your eyes closed. But the situation is different if you open your eyes!" (
  '17 Jun 08Added June 8, 2017, 11 p.m.
  in rationality | a)
• "Passwords Are Not Broken, But How We Choose Them Sure Is" [Schneier]: "I've been reading a lot about how passwords are no longer good security. The reality is more complicated. Passwords are still secure enough for many applications, but you have to choose a good one. And that's hard. The best way to explain how to choose a good password is to describe how they're broken. The most serious attack is called offline password guessing. There are commercial programs that do this, sold primarily to police departments. There are also hacker tools that do the same thing." (
  '17 Jun 07Added June 7, 2017, 11 p.m.
  in productivity | a)
• What Happens When We Turn the World's Most Famous Robot Test on Ourselves? [Atlantic]: "But the Turing Test's application is no longer limited to questions of artificial intelligence: Social scientists too are getting in on the action and using the test in a completely new way - to compare different human subjects and their ability to pass as members of groups to which they do not belong, such as religious and ethnic minorities or particular professional classes. With the Turing Test, sociologists can compare the extent to which subjects can understand people who are different from them in some way." (
  '17 Jun 06Added June 6, 2017, 11 p.m.
  in rationality | a)
• Stop Buying into Mass Consumerism [Liferapture]: "Every September, parents drag their unappreciative kids along with them to pick out stationary for the new school year. New pencils, new pens, new pencil cases, new rulers, new erasers, new pads, new folders, new dividers, new plastic wallets, new paper wallets, new paint brushes, new staplers, new hole punches, new rolls of sellotape, new packs of tack… The list goes on. I honestly don't know what the parents think their child is going to do with all these new goodies - and more to the point, what the hell did they do with all of last years new goodies? Do they really need ten folders, six packs of staples and a green glow-in-the-dark lunch box? When I ring up the total the parents often gasp at the cost, at which point, as if by clockwork, the child will chime in with 'I will use it all though'. HOW? HOW WILL YOU USE IT ALL?" (
  '17 Jun 05Added June 5, 2017, 11 p.m.
  in productivity | a)
• "Rubio Shows Why "In God We Trust" Must Go" [Psychologytoday]: "Exhibiting stunning insensitivity to the millions of Americans who do not profess a belief in any deities, Rubio declared: 'Our national motto is In God we Trust, reminding us that faith in our Creator is the most important American value of all.' [...] Defenders of the national motto have often disingenuously claimed that the affirmation is not at all religious, but instead should be understood as a benign acknowledgment of the nation's religious heritage. Many nonbelievers have found it rather odd that the nation must make a factual affirmation of a belief in a divinity in order to "acknowledge heritage," but most have quietly gone along with it. [...] Rubio shows us, however, that such assumptions are wrong. He shows us that even educated, high-ranking leaders - never mind the average guy down the street - can see the In God We Trust motto as validating religious Americans and implying that nonbelievers lack 'the most important American value of all.' " (
  '17 Jun 03Added June 3, 2017, 11 p.m.
  in skepticism | a)
• Should We Ban Cigarettes? [Project-syndicate]: "Proctor says, cigarettes, not guns or bombs, are the deadliest artifacts in the history of civilization. If we want to save lives and improve health, nothing else that is readily achievable would be as effective as an international ban on the sale of cigarettes. [...] Some argue that as long as a drug harms only those who choose to use it, the state should let individuals make their own decisions, limiting its role to ensuring that users are informed of the risks that they are running. But tobacco is not such a drug, given the dangers posed by secondhand smoke, especially when adults smoke in a home with young children. Even setting aside the harm that smokers inflict on nonsmokers, the free-to-choose argument is unconvincing with a drug as highly addictive as tobacco, and it becomes even more dubious when we consider that most smokers take up the habit as teenagers and later want to quit. Reducing the amount of nicotine in cigarette smoke to a level that was not addictive might meet this objection." (
  '17 Jun 02Added June 2, 2017, 11 p.m.
  in policy | a)
• Morality as Means [Philosophyetc.net]: "So, I've argued that we have reason to care about morality because it is a means, recommended by social rationality, to our common ends. Another issue I'd like to consider is whether morality is merely a means. In other words, is moral behaviour intrinsically good (does it 'add more goodness' simply in virtue of being moral?), or is it merely good insofar as it brings about non-morally good effects (such as fulfilling some person's desires)? I think it is merely a means. Suppose we have a moral obligation to keep our promises. I might then increase the quantity of moral behaviour in the world by promising to do things that I intended to do anyway. ('I promise to breathe in… I promise to breathe out…') Clearly there is nothing particularly good about such behaviour." (
  '17 Jun 01Added June 1, 2017, 11 p.m.
  in ethics | a)
• The Effects of Negative Political Campaigns: A Meta-Analytic Reassessment [Lime.weeg.uiowa.edu]: "The conventional wisdom about negative political campaigning holds that it works, i.e., it has the consequences its practitioners intend. Many observers also fear that negative campaigning has unintended but detrimental effects on the political system itself. An earlier meta-analytic assessment of the relevant literature found no reliable evidence for these claims, but since then the research literature has more than doubled in size and has greatly improved in quality. We reexamine this literature and find that the major conclusions from the earlier meta-analysis still hold. All told, the research literature does not bear out the idea that negative campaigning is an effective means of winning votes, even though it tends to be more memorable and stimulate knowledge about the campaign. Nor is there any reliable evidence that negative campaigning depresses voter turnout, though it does slightly lower feelings of political efficacy, trust in government, and possibly overall public mood." (
  '17 May 31Added May 31, 2017, 11 p.m.
  in politicalscience | a)
• How Much Malaria is Biodiversity Worth? [80000hours]: "very day, almost everything we do is about prioritisation. When I pick BLT or egg-mayo, I'm prioritising. When a small business owner decides whether to hire a new worker or install a new machine, they're prioritising. When we decide to increase the cost of energy in order to reduce future climate change, we're prioritizing. [...] Whenever any person, group or government makes any decision about how to spend or what to work on they are implicitly making these comparisons. And they're doing it badly, carelessly, and unconsciously. There are some groups working to tackle the challenge of global prioritisation. Organisations like the Disease Control Priorities Project try to engage with a specific part of the challenge. The Copenhagen Consensus has engaged lots of specialists in a broad range of fields to present the case for many types of opportunity, and has worked on comparing the best of them." (
  '17 May 29Added May 29, 2017, 11 p.m.
  in effectivealtruism | a)
• On Obama's Reddit Appearance [Atlantic]: "For the next year or so, slide decks across America will have a new photo that proves social media is changing the world. This is it: That's President Obama, purportedly during his Ask Me Anything session on the social network Reddit. Ask Me Anythings allow Reddit users to pose queries of all kinds of people from some guy from the show Community to Darrell Issa to the President." (
  '17 May 28Added May 28, 2017, 11 p.m.
  in policy | a)
• Sherrod Brown's lessons for Obama [Washingtonpost]: "If anyone can testify to the problem of giving really rich people a chance to tilt the political playing field, it's Sen. Sherrod Brown. A proud labor-populist, Brown seems to invite the hostility of wealthy conservatives and deep-pocketed interest groups. The amount they have spent to defeat him topped $20 million this week. [...] I spoke with Brown a few days after President Obama's unfortunate first debate, and the contrast between Brown's approach and the president's was striking - even though Brown, a loyal Obama supporter, did not bring it up himself. Brown is not the sort to let down his guard in a debate." (
  '17 May 27Added May 27, 2017, 11 p.m.
  in policy | a)
• "Two Presidents, Smoking and Scheming" [NYTimes]: "After the debate, I was talking to Aaron Sorkin [the producer of West Wing], who was a little down. Or, as he put it, 'nonverbal, shouting incoherently at a squirrel, angrier than when the Jets lost to the 49ers last Sunday without ever really being on the field.' Aaron was mollified when he learned that President Obama, realizing things were dire, privately sought the counsel of a former Democratic president known for throwing down in debates. I asked Aaron if he knew how the conversation between the two presidents had gone and, as it happened, he did. This is his account." (
  '17 May 26Added May 26, 2017, 11 p.m.
  in policy | a)
• How Obama Bungled the Syrian Revolution [Washingtonpost]: "The deaths of Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other Americans in Benghazi were a calamity - but those losses were mainly the result of poor security decisions by mid-level State Department officials, not policy choices by Obama. The president's handling of Syria, on the other hand, exemplifies every weakness in his foreign policy - from his excessive faith in "engaging" troublesome foreign leaders to his insistence on multilateralism as an end in itself to his self-defeating caution in asserting American power." (
  '17 May 24Added May 24, 2017, 11 p.m.
  in policy | a)
• Team Obama Off-Balance [Washingtonpost]: "If Obama figured out in a day that this was a planned terrorist attack, why was Jay Carney sent out on Sept. 14 to insist it was all about an anti-Muslim video? Why didn't someone tell U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice before she went on five Sunday talk shows tying the murder of four Americans to a protest growing out of a video? Why did the president repeat this in his Sept. 20 Univision appearance and then dwell on the anti-Muslim videoat the United Nations? Declaring that the president knew full well on Sept. 12 that he was dealing with terrorism makes him and many in his administration liars." (
  '17 May 23Added May 23, 2017, 11 p.m.
  in policy | a)
• "Unlike Afghan leaders, Obama fights for power of indefinite military detention" [Guardian.co.uk]: "Is that not amazing? On the very same day that the Obama DOJ fights vigorously in US courts for the right to imprison people without charges, the Afghan government fights just as vigorously for basic due process. Remember: the US, we're frequently told, is in Afghanistan to bring democracy to the Afghan people and to teach them about freedom. But the Afghan government is refusing the US demand to imprison people without charges on the ground that such lawless detention violates their conceptions of basic freedom. Maybe Afghanistan should invade the US in order to teach Americans about freedom." (
  '17 May 18Added May 18, 2017, 11 p.m.
  in policy | a)
• NDAA: The Biggest Election Issue No One's Talking About [Cracked]: "You don't have to live alone in the woods, reading issues of Guns and Ammo and co-writing your manifesto with beard lice, to be terrified about the state of basic freedoms in America today. Given the counterterrorism provisions in the fairly recent National Defense Authorization Act of 2012 (NDAA), we currently live in a country where the government can pick up American citizens and detain them indefinitely without access to a lawyer or even a criminal trial. That means locked up forever without even the basic protections we afford to rapists and murderers. 'That can't be right,' you say. 'Such a power would be completely unconstitutional! And you're right. Even President Obama said he had 'serious reservations with certain provisions [of the bill] that regulate the detention, interrogation and prosecution of suspected terrorists.' And then he signed it." (
  '17 May 17Added May 17, 2017, 11 p.m.
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• Why I Refuse to Vote for Barack Obama [Atlantic]: "What I am saying is that Obama has done things that, while not comparable to a historic evil like chattel slavery, go far beyond my moral comfort zone. Everyone must define their own deal-breakers. Doing so is no easy task in this broken world. But this year isn't a close call for me. [...] How can you vilify Romney as a heartless plutocrat unfit for the presidency, and then enthusiastically recommend a guy who held Bradley Manning in solitary and killed a 16-year-old American kid? If you're a utilitarian who plans to vote for Obama, better to mournfully acknowledge that you regard him as the lesser of two evils, with all that phrase denotes." (
  '17 May 16Added May 16, 2017, 11 p.m.
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• "For Mitt Romney, a Change in Tone, Not Policies" [Washingtonpost]: "For the most part, Romney has shifted his tone and emphasis, not his policy. All along, he has proposed tax reform, not merely tax cuts. He never opposed all federal financial regulations - though this is not the kind of thing a Republican emphasizes in the primaries. In these cases, Romney hasn't changed his plans. He has merely refuted caricatures of his plans. You can hardly blame a man for refusing to be a straw man. [...] The accusation of lying shuts down all genuine policy debate. [...] Those who urge Obama in the next debate to call Romney a liar, or close to it, are doing him no favors. It is one thing to do this on the stump, where taunting and mocking result in applause." (
  '17 May 14Added May 14, 2017, 11 p.m.
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• Platform's Sharp Turn to Right Has Conservatives Cheering [NYTimes]: "One party platform [...] highlighted the need for "dependable and affordable" mass transit in cities [...and] prefaced its plank on abortion by saying that 'we recognize differing views on this question among Americans in general - and in our own party.' The other party platform [...] chided the Democratic administration for "replacing civil engineering with social engineering["...a]nd its abortion plank recognized no dissent, taking the position that 'the unborn child has a fundamental individual right to life which cannot be infringed.' No, they are not the platforms of the Democratic and Republican Parties. They are both Republican platforms: the first from 1980, at the dawn of the Reagan revolution, and the second the 2012 Republican platform that was approved on Tuesday afternoon in Tampa, Fla." (
  '17 May 12Added May 12, 2017, 11 p.m.
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• Still Fighting The Same Old Culture War [Washingtonpost]: "Mourdock may have been indelicate in stating his position, but he is hardly a monster for believing that the definition of life, like the definition of rape, should not be parsed. As to Romney's choice to not comment, why would he? This is the ultimate no-win - and the answer is meaningless except as a political point, which perhaps explains the media's insistence on a response. Romney's position on the subject is clear. He supports exceptions for rape and incest. He also said early in the primary season: 'Contraception, it's working just fine. Just leave it alone.'" (
  '17 May 11Added May 11, 2017, 11 p.m.
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• An Insurance Company With an Army [Krugman.blogs.nytimes]: "I gather, from what I've been reading and hearing in various places, that the right-wing line is that it's all Solyndra - that your tax dollars are going to pay for vast numbers of wasteful projects. Now, even the Solyndra story is a lot more nuanced than that. But this seems like a good time to repeat, once again, the truth about federal spending: Your federal government is basically an insurance company with an army. The vast bulk of its spending goes to the big five: Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, defense, and interest on the debt." (
  '17 May 10Added May 10, 2017, 11 p.m.
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• The Real Referendum [NYTimes]: "Yet there is a sense in which the election is indeed a referendum, but of a different kind. Voters are, in effect, being asked to deliver a verdict on the legacy of the New Deal and the Great Society, on Social Security, Medicare and, yes, Obamacare, which represents an extension of that legacy. Will they vote for politicians who want to replace Medicare with Vouchercare, who denounce Social Security as 'collectivist' (as Paul Ryan once did), who dismiss those who turn to social insurance programs as people unwilling to take responsibility for their lives?" (
  '17 May 09Added May 9, 2017, 11 p.m.
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• What We Aren't Debating [Nybooks]: "It's a social policy that, many experts agree, has failed miserably since it was introduced more than forty years ago, tearing apart families and communities across the United States, consuming tens of thousands of lives abroad, and squandering huge sums of money. Yet hardly any national politician is willing to challenge it, and it's been completely ignored during the 2012 presidential campaign. I'm speaking of the war on drugs." (
  '17 May 08Added May 8, 2017, 11 p.m.
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• This Republican Economy [NYTimes]: "What should be done about the economy? Republicans claim to have the answer: slash spending and cut taxes. What they hope voters won't notice is that that's precisely the policy we've been following the past couple of years. Never mind the Democrat in the White House; for all practical purposes, this is already the economic policy of Republican dreams." (
  '17 May 07Added May 7, 2017, 11 p.m.
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• Can Romney Lie His Way to the Presidency? [Wbur]: "Mitt Romney's pollster declared angrily months ago, 'We're not going to let our campaign be dictated by fact-checkers.' He and Romney's campaign have held true to that prediction. Romney's outright lies, reversals, contradictions, contortions and distortions are so numerous, so cynical, so lacking in respect for voters, one veteran of national campaigns said,'"If he wins, it changes everything I know about American politics.' Let's stop pretending both candidates are guilty of similar transgressions, because they are not. The real offender is Romney, who just makes stuff up." (
  '17 May 06Added May 6, 2017, 11 p.m.
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• The Life Issue [Squid314.livejournal]: "But what I reject is the implicit idea that this should be one-sided. The president who decides to launch a drone attack in order to save people from terrorism later on should have to think long and hard about what he's doing - to really imagine the civilians who might die, and the pain of their families, instead of thinking of them as 'collateral damage'. But the equal and opposite president who decides not to launch the drone attack should have to think long and hard about what he's doing too - to really take on board that if that terrorist he decided not to kill blows himself up in a busy marketplace two weeks later killing forty people, all those deaths are now on his conscience. I think Obama has gone through enough hand-wringing that I'm prepared to give him a pass on this one. I hope his critics understand they need some hand-wringing too." (
  '17 May 03Added May 3, 2017, 11 p.m.
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• Writing on Politics [Athe Istethicist.blogspot]: "A couple of decades ago, there was a faction of the Republican Party that felt that it was very important to provide and support institutions that provided people with food, shelter, health care, security, and opportunities to live their lives as best they could. These were not government solutions - which were prone to corruption and bureaucratic inefficiencies. They were private solutions offered within a framework that guaranteed that people treated each other fairly and honestly and peacefully. [...] That Republican faction probably still exists, but I have trouble seeing it." (
  '17 May 02Added May 2, 2017, 11 p.m.
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• Obstruct and Exploit [NYTimes]: "Put it this way: When Republicans took control of the House, they declared that their economic philosophy was 'cut and grow' - cut government, and the economy will prosper. And thanks to their scorched-earth tactics, we've actually had the cuts they wanted. But the promised growth has failed to materialize - and they want to make that failure Mr. Obama's fault. Now, all of this puts the White House in a difficult bind. Making a big deal of Republican obstructionism could all too easily come across as whining. Yet this obstructionism is real, and arguably is the biggest single reason for our ongoing economic weakness." (
  '17 May 01Added May 1, 2017, 11 p.m.
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• Medicaid on the Ballot [NYTimes]: "So this election is, to an important degree, really about Medicaid. And this, in turn, means that you need to know something more about the program. For while Medicaid is generally viewed as health care for the nonelderly poor, that's only part of the story. And focusing solely on who Medicaid covers can obscure an equally important fact: Medicaid has been more successful at controlling costs than any other major part of the nation's health care system." (
  '17 Apr 30Added April 30, 2017, 11 p.m.
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