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• Deontology and Why Our Jargon for Ethical Theories is a Mess [Pathe Os]: "To make a long story short, the philosophical terminology for theories in (normative) ethics is kind of a mess. Consequentialism is reasonably coherently defined (though there are some complications), but the main term for something that's supposed to be an alternative to consequentialism doesn't actually mean very much beyond 'not consequentialism.' That makes it kinda useless. If you want to say that, you can just say, "not consequentialism," and using a big fancy word like 'deontology' makes it sound like you're saying something more (and may lead you to fool yourself into thinking you're saying something more) when really you're not." (
  '17 Apr 29Added April 29, 2017, 11 p.m.
  in ethics | a)
• Car Helmets [Jefftk]: "Lots of people die in cars; driving is one of the most dangerous things we do. Should we be wearing car helmets? Is there research looking at how much they would help? The only study I can find on this is a 1997 Australian one [2] which examined three years worth of crash data (1989-1992) from Victoria, looking at the 606 people with some kind of head or neck injury. After looking at various potential methods of injury reduction they determined how much each would be expected to help over a baseline of just seat-belts and front airbags." (
  '17 Apr 28Added April 28, 2017, 11 p.m.
  in policy | a)
• Consuming More Energy in the Pursuit of Saving Energy [Freakonomics]: "My locality in Virginia has mandated biennial emissions inspections for automobiles before registrations can be renewed on those years. Since mine is expiring at the end of this month and it's been two years since my last emissions test, I took my car to the service station this morning. [...] Here's where it gets stupid. I don't drive a lot. [...] Accordingly, the guy at the service station tells me that my computer is not ready to return any results, and what I need to do is drive around for 150(!) miles so the computer can collect enough readings. So by driving around aimlessly, I'm wasting money, wasting gas, and polluting the environment more so I can comply with this law." (
  '17 Apr 27Added April 27, 2017, 11 p.m.
  in policy | a)
• You Have to Write Every Day [The Ferrett.livejournal]: "Still, the reason this 'Write every day' schtick is so schticky is because every professional writer I know has one talent in common: they write when they don't really want to. Because as a writer, while it feels better to write while inspired, most of us soon discover that there's not much of a difference in terms of what you actually create. Some of my best writing has come from days where I felt like I was trudging through broken glass, and some of my worst writing has flown effortlessly from my fingertips to land on the page like fresh cat droppings. For most - not all, but most - what we create has little to do with how we feel about it while creating it. So most of us learn not to wait for inspiration, but rather to squeeze it out of ourselves like toothpaste from a wrung tube." (
  '17 Apr 26Added April 26, 2017, 11 p.m.
  in productivity | a)
• We Still Need An Atheist Movement [Skepticink]: "Many people who are involved in what I might as well call the atheist movement would probably rather get on with making other cultural contributions (as scientists, philosophers, journalists, or whatever their callings might be). Far from being bare, narrow atheists with nothing more to them than their lack of god-belief, they are taking time from what they'd normally be doing in order to answer the widespread claims of religion to exercise some special authority in the public sphere. But we need them to. Though publicly outspoken atheists have much more to offer than, 'There are no gods' or 'The claims of religion are false' - I still maintain that we live in a time when exactly those views must be put strongly, clearly, and publicly. That's the point of an atheist movement." (
  '17 Apr 25Added April 25, 2017, 11 p.m.
  in skepticism | a)
• No One Can Exempt You From Rationality's Laws [LessWrong]: "Traditional Rationality is phrased in terms of social rules, with violations interpretable as cheating-as defections from cooperative norms. If you want me to accept a belief from you, you are obligated to provide me with a certain amount of evidence. [...] To Bayesians, the brain is an engine of accuracy: it processes and concentrates entangled evidence into a map that reflects the territory. The principles of rationality are laws in the same sense as the second law of thermodynamics: obtaining a reliable belief requires a calculable amount of entangled evidence, just as reliably cooling the contents of a refrigerator requires a calculable minimum of free energy." (
  '17 Apr 24Added April 24, 2017, 11 p.m.
  in rationality | a)
• Why Don't Charities Spend More on Fundraising? [80000hours]: "People often think it's bad for their charity of choice to spend money fundraising. Up there with percentage spent on administration, people want the portion of the budget spent fundraising to be low. This has always been a mystery to me. If a charity can use your money to go out and raise even more money, that's great! They've just multiplied the impact of your donation. An even greater mystery has been why charities don't spend even more on fundraising. [...] Although the average returns to fundraising are high, it looks like the returns from additional fundraising are much lower. We can show this with a very rough calculation" (
  '17 Apr 23Added April 23, 2017, 11 p.m.
  in giving | a)
• How to Do One Year of Work in Four Hours [80000hours]: "A year of work is about 2000 hours. So, an afternoon's work at the mass education charity does as much to fight HIV/AIDs as one long year of full-time work at the antiretrovial therapy charity. It turns out that both of these charities exist. The American Foundation for Children with AIDS gives out antiretroviral therapy. Development Media International (which we're proud to say includes a member of 80,000 Hours among its Directors) creates mass media campaigns in the developing world aimed at preventing sexually transmitted disases. We're faced with choices like these all the time. A four hour work week is 200 hours per year. So there you have it. Since we're focused on helping others, we've managed to be 50 times better than Ferriss." (
  '17 Apr 22Added April 22, 2017, 11 p.m.
  in giving | a)
• Do You Really Know What Job Will Make You Happy? [80000hours]: "Why are so many people dissatisfied with their jobs? A big part of the problem is that we're pretty bad at predicting how happy things will make us, or how long that happiness will last. We think, for example, that winning the lottery will make us much happier in the long run - but it probably won't. This has some serious ramifications for career choice." (
  '17 Apr 21Added April 21, 2017, 11 p.m.
  in career | a)
• When Truth Isn't Enough [LessWrong]: "Consider this statement: 'The ultra-rich, who control the majority of our planet's wealth, spend their time at cocktail parties and salons while millions of decent hard-working people starve.' A soft positivist would be quite happy with this proposition. If we define 'the ultra-rich' as, say, the richest two percent of people, then a quick look at the economic data shows they do control the majority of our planet's wealth. Checking up on the guest lists for cocktail parties and customer data for salons, we find that these two activities are indeed disproportionately enjoyed by the rich, so that part of the statement also seems true enough. And as anyone who's been to India or Africa knows, millions of decent hard-working people do starve[. ...] But the truth isn't always enough. Whoever's making this statement has a much deeper agenda than a simple observation on the distribution of wealth and preferred recreational activities of the upper class, one that the reduction doesn't capture." (
  '17 Apr 20Added April 20, 2017, 11 p.m.
  in rationality | a)
• Hunger Here vs. Hunger There [Blog.givewell]: "We have no intention of trivializing the situation of those in poverty in the U.S. But for a donor making choices, it can be stunning to see what a different meaning "hunger" takes on when applied at home vs. abroad. Do you value the lives of Americans so much more that you'd rather help people with the second kind of hunger than people with the first?" (
  '17 Apr 19Added April 19, 2017, 11 p.m.
  in development | a)
• Are You as Busy As You Think? [Online.wsj]: "There was a time, not so long ago, when I was busy, busy, busy. At least I thought I was. I told people I worked 60 hours a week. I claimed to sleep six hours a night. As I lamented to anyone stuck next to me at parties, I was basically too busy to breathe. Me time? Ha! Now I work 45 hours a week and sleep close to eight hours a night. But I'm not getting any less done. My secret? I started keeping track of how I spent my time, logging how many hours and minutes I devoted to different activities such as work, sleep and chores. I soon realized I'd been lying to myself about where the time was going. I spent long stretches of time lost on the Internet or puttering around the house, unsure exactly what I was doing." (
  '17 Apr 18Added April 18, 2017, 11 p.m.
  in productivity | a)
• What If Everyone Did That? [Philosophyetc.net]: "People often appeal to 'What if everyone did that?'-style moral arguments (e.g. for a putative obligation to vote). While there's something to the underlying thought here, I think it is often misapplied. If we're not careful, this 'universalizing' reasoning can easily mislead us into accepting stronger conclusions than are actually warranted. For example, advanced economies depend upon there being diverse and specialized professions. So if everyone worked in (say) construction, we'd all starve; but that obviously doesn't make working in the construction sector immoral. Even if construction work is widely regarded as permissible, there is no risk of everyone doing it, and hence no risk of disaster. Similarly for choosing not to have children. As these cases suggest, the relevant question turns out to be, not 'what if everyone did that?', but rather, 'what if everyone felt free to do that?' The answer to this latter question will often be, appropriately enough, 'no problem!'" (
  '17 Apr 17Added April 17, 2017, 11 p.m.
  in effectivealtruism | a)
• "The 2004 October Surprise, and What it Means for 2012" [The Monkeycage]: "I'm generally not a big believe in 'October surprises,' which seem to be more numerous in folklore than fact. But this guest post by Michael Tesler made me stop and think. John Kerry believed he would have been the 44th president of the United States had it not been for the surprise surfacing of a new Osama bin Laden videotape the Friday before the 2004 election (October 29). This was one of the few points of agreement between Kerry and George W. Bush, who also acknowledged that the bin Laden video helped him win reelection." (
  '17 Apr 16Added April 16, 2017, 11 p.m.
  in politicalscience | a)
• The Cost of Religion [Freethoughtblogs]: "Faith, in other words, turns out to be ordinary gullibility-believing things that are contrary to fact and reason, just because 'you're supposed to.' Gullibility has a deservedly bad reputation, because gullible people deceive themselves and open themselves up to exploitation and abuse (and sometimes even self-inflicted abuse). And yet, when you take this same approach to believing things, and call it "faith" instead of gullibility, suddenly it becomes virtuous. People actually admire you for your ability to confront the evidence, and deny it. And that's the cost of religion: it makes a serious handicap sound like an admirable virtue." (
  '17 Apr 15Added April 15, 2017, 11 p.m.
  in skepticism | a)
• Three Magical Systems in Search of a Fantasy Book [Squid314.livejournal]: "Here are mountains of fantasy novels where someone or other can draw power from people's negative emotions - you know, 'Your suffering gives me strength!'. But every time I've seen this trope, the power has always belonged to an evil character. That's the kind of lazy writing that makes most novels so cliched. Why not give the power to the good guys instead?" (
  '17 Apr 14Added April 14, 2017, 11 p.m.
  in random | a)
• Why I Am Not a Humanist (Yet) [Ockhamsbeard.wordpress]: "Not everyone likes the term 'secular religion', and I understand why, but I do think it helps us to see what we're aiming to achieve. We don't just want a cold rational philosophy and institutes that hold discussions and fora, we need an institution that engages people and gives them a practical guide for how to live a good life and helps them reach out and engage with the community and the world at large. But we don't want to compromise on the openness, the scepticism and the emphasis on rational enquiry - but we should acknowledge that these don't need to be the only entry point into Humanism." (
  '17 Apr 13Added April 13, 2017, 11 p.m.
  in skepticism | a)
• "What a "Life Saved" Means" [Blog.givewell]: "The goal of Cause 1 is to save lives in Africa, and we estimate that a good strategy can save a human life for somewhere in the ballpark of $1000. Sounds like an unbelievable deal, right? Not to everyone. I was recently talking to a Board member and mentioned how much cheaper it seems to be to change/save lives in Africa vs. NYC. He responded, 'Yeah, but what kind of life are you saving in Africa? Is that person just going to die of something else the next year?' I think it's interesting how (a) completely fair, relevant and important this question is for a donor; (b) how rarely we see questions like this ('Sure I helped someone, but what kind of life did I enable?') brought up and analyzed. Here's what we know right now" (
  '17 Apr 12Added April 12, 2017, 11 p.m.
  in costeffectiveness | a)
• Beyond the Welfare State - Rawls's Radical Vision for a Better America [Bostonreview.net]: "However, to treat Rawls simply as a defender of Democratic Party liberalism and the welfare state-as he is widely regarded-is to misread him. Rawls's critique of contemporary capitalism-and the condition of democratic practice within American capitalism-runs much deeper. As he made especially clear in his late writings, he did not think that welfare-state capitalism could realize his theory of justice. The architecture of welfare-state capitalism, Rawls felt, enthroned the disproportionate political power of the rich and militated against a shared sense among citizens that they are bound in a common enterprise, which operates in accordance with fair rules and respects the basic interests of all." (
  '17 Apr 11Added April 11, 2017, 11 p.m.
  in policy | a)
• The Creation Order of Genesis [Bigthink]: "This doesn't mean that progressive, scientifically minded Christians are forbidden to interpret the Genesis account as a parable for the gradual emergence of life over the eons, if they so choose. But it does mean they must abandon the pretense that the Genesis account contains any sliver of real scientific accuracy, or any hint of knowledge that wouldn't have been available to the nomadic Iron Age herdsmen who wrote it." (
  '17 Apr 10Added April 10, 2017, 11 p.m.
  in skepticism | a)
• Mormonism - The Control Group for Christianity? [Squid314.livejournal]: "And to repeat, that argument is that if twelve people say they saw something miraculous and refused to recant despite persecution and strong self-interested reasons to do so - then we can trust them. One way to knock down this argument is to find a case of twelve people who said they saw something miraculous, didn't recant despite persecution and strong self-interested reasons to do so - and yet everyone, atheist and orthodox Christian alike, agree they were wrong. Ever since I left Utah I've been slowly making my way through The Mormon People, and I was very excited to find a case of exactly that." (
  '17 Apr 09Added April 9, 2017, 11 p.m.
  in skepticism | a)
• How to Have Things Correctly [LessWrong]: "Money doesn't buy happiness. If you want to try throwing money at the problem anyway, you should buy experiences like vacations or services, rather than purchasing objects. If you have to buy objects, they should be absolute and not positional goods; positional goods just put you on a treadmill and you're never going to catch up. Supposedly. I think getting value out of spending money, owning objects, and having positional goods are all three of them skills, that people often don't have naturally but can develop. I'm going to focus mostly on the middle skill: how to have things correctly." (
  '17 Apr 07Added April 7, 2017, 11 p.m.
  in productivity | a)
• "Why I Defend Scoundrels, Part 2" [Squid314.livejournal]: "In other words, it doesn't really matter whether we start with Bob bullying Susy, or Susy bullying Bob. The end result is everyone in the school standing in a circle laughing and Bob and Bob wishing he were dead. Only one of those two kinds of bullying consistently gets punished. Because the teacher is a human being and likes attractive popular people as much as everyone else, and because the popular kids are smart enough to hide what they're doing and Bob isn't, Bob is going to end up in detention for calling Susy ugly, and everything else is going to get dismissed as 'that smelly kid complaining again'." (
  '17 Apr 06Added April 6, 2017, 11 p.m.
  in policy | a)
• The Money Illusion [The Moneyillusion]: "I occasionally post on how intellectuals tend to misuse public opinion surveys, often to argue that the public agrees with their policy preferences. I do think there are a few questions the public is capable of responding to in a semi-coherent fashion, such as "should the death penalty be abolished." But when you get into the area of complex economic policy, then public opinion is just gibberish-it completely depends on how you frame the question." (
  '17 Apr 05Added April 5, 2017, 11 p.m.
  in politicalscience | a)
• Complex Novelty [LessWrong]: "In Permutation City, Peer modified himself to find table-leg-carving fascinating and worthwhile and pleasurable. But really, at that point, you might as well modify yourself to get pleasure from playing Tic-Tac-Toe, or lie motionless on a pillow as a limbless eyeless blob having fantastic orgasms. It's not a worthy use of a human-level intelligence. Worse, carving the 162,329th table leg doesn't teach you anything that you didn't already know from carving 162,328 previous table legs. A mind that changes so little in life's course is scarcely experiencing time." (
  '17 Apr 03Added April 3, 2017, 11 p.m.
  in ethics | a)
• Why You're Probably Not As Rational As You Think You Are - And What You Can Do About It [Updates.io9]: "When it comes to self-improvement, few people consider their reasoning skills. Most of us simply assume - and take for granted - that under most circumstances, we formulate perfectly rational opinions. But according to an emerging subculture of rationality gurus, there's still plenty of room for improvement. They believe there are ways we can train ourselves to make better decisions, as well as increase personal control over our lives, health, and happiness. Here are a few of their ideas about how you can become more rational." (
  '17 Apr 02Added April 2, 2017, 11 p.m.
  in rationality | a)
• How Much Should You Care about How You Feel in Your Dreams? [Schwitzsplinters.blogspot]: "Robert Nozick famously argued against hedonism by saying that few people would choose the guaranteed pleasure one could get by plugging into an experience machine over the uncertain pleasures of real-life accomplishment. Nozickian experience machines don't really exist, of course, but dreams do, and, contra hedonism, our indifference about dreams suggests that Nozick is right: Few people value even the great pleasures and displeasures of dream life over the most meager of real-world accomplishments." (
  '17 Apr 01Added April 1, 2017, 11 p.m.
  in effectivealtruism | a)
• Micromorts [Stubbornmule.net]: "Howard's solution was to come up with a better scale than percentages to measure small risks. Shopping for coffee you would not ask for 0.00025 tons (unless you were naturally irritating), you would ask for 250 grams. In the same way, talking about a 1/125,000 or 0.000008 risk of death associated with a hang-gliding flight is rather awkward. With that in mind. Howard coined the term 'microprobability' (μp) to refer to an event with a chance of 1 in 1 million and a 1 in 1 million chance of death he calls a 'micromort' (μmt). We can now describe the risk of hang-gliding as 8 micromorts and you would have to drive around 3,000km in a car before accumulating a risk of 8μmt, which helps compare these two remote risks." (
  '17 Mar 31Added March 31, 2017, 11 p.m.
  in costeffectiveness | a)
• Richard Feynman on Why Questions [LessWrong]: "Of course, it's an excellent question. But the problem, you see, when you ask why something happens, how does a person answer why something happens? For example, Aunt Minnie is in the hospital. Why? Because she went out, slipped on the ice, and broke her hip. That satisfies people. It satisfies, but it wouldn't satisfy someone who came from another planet and who knew nothing about why when you break your hip do you go to the hospital. How do you get to the hospital when the hip is broken? Well, because her husband, seeing that her hip was broken, called the hospital up and sent somebody to get her. All that is understood by people. And when you explain a why, you have to be in some framework that you allow something to be true. Otherwise, you're perpetually asking why." (
  '17 Mar 30Added March 30, 2017, 11 p.m.
  in rationality | a)
• Why Measure [Ssireview]: "Only four of the 22 interviewees were strongly interested in getting better data on the performance of nonprofit organizations. Much to our surprise, the rest expressed skepticism - or even outright disapproval of the concept. Why this aversion to performance measurement, particularly given the group's professional background? We identified five major findings that explain their opposition. Each of these findings has implications for what providers of metrics should do in order to overcome a donor's misunderstandings and objections." (
  '17 Mar 29Added March 29, 2017, 11 p.m.
  in costeffectiveness | a)
• How to Improve the Drones Debate [The Monkeycage]: "The Washington Post special report in late October about the practice of targeted killing set off a new wave of commentary about the ethics of American drone campaigns. It was good to see so many outlets, in print and especially online, focus attention on the topic. Yet it seemed as though the most serious criticisms were difficult to pick out amidst invective and otherwise distracting lines of argument. This is a problem if you believe that debates which converge on and identify the central failings of government behavior are more likely to bring about changes in policy. With this in mind, the current post describes six ways that participants in the drones debate can make it better." (
  '17 Mar 28Added March 28, 2017, 11 p.m.
  in policy | a)
• Impatient Idealism [Overcomingbias]: "Young idealists often ask me and others what they can do to most help the world. Which is a fine question. But such folks tend to be impatient - they want to know how to most help the world in the next few years, not over their lifetime. So when they consider joining an idealistic project, they focus more on whether the project will succeed than on what skills and contacts they would acquire. Yet young folks shouldn't expect to have their biggest influence when young." (
  '17 Mar 26Added March 26, 2017, 11 p.m.
  in effectivealtruism | a)
• The Fourth Meditation on Creepiness [Squid314.livejournal]: "So either it is 'Talk about creepiness and gender relations week' and I was not invited, or just by a coincidence every blog I read and person I talk to has simultaneously decided to discuss issues of gender and creepiness and male privilege and female offendedness and so on. There is much I have to say on this topic, all of which would earn my coveted'"things i will regret writing' tag, but for now I would like to assert a right to talk about the topic at all. That despite privilege it is not totally impossible for me to understand where women are coming from even in principle." (
  '17 Mar 25Added March 25, 2017, 11 p.m.
  in culturewar | a)
• Sunk Costs in Careers [80000hours]: "n my last post we looked at sunk costs. We saw that having paid for something distorts how you think about it later on. This is a very common experience in career decisions. You might be in a degree course you don't want to be on, or climbing the ladder in a company you aren't sure about, or find out that the dream job you've spent years working for isn't as good as expected. It is only by forgetting these sunk costs that you can make the right career decisions and have as much impact as you can. If you find yourself in this situation what can you do?" (
  '17 Mar 24Added March 24, 2017, 11 p.m.
  in career | a)
• Language Learning [Squid314.livejournal]: "One of my biggest personal failures is that I am still effectively monolingual. I've tried learning a couple of languages: Latin, Spanish, Japanese, and even (in a fit of mad optimism) Finnish. As it is I can sort of half-communicate at a drunken-four-year-old level in Japanese and have pretty much forgotten or never learned the others. [...] So imagine this - I'm going to use Japanese here because it's the only language I could even remotely try to use as an example without making a total fool of myself, and I'll thank you for not correcting the inevitable errors. The course is a novel. Could be any novel, but I imagine for cutesiness reasons you'd want to use a classic from the culture you're studying, like The Tale of Genji or Death Note." (
  '17 Mar 23Added March 23, 2017, 11 p.m.
  in productivity | a)
• Lives Can't Be Saved [Philosophyetc.net]: "We talk a lot about 'saving lives', but we shouldn't - it's really quite misleading. At best, we may save a few decades of someone's life. Death is never banished; merely postponed. 'Reducing' the number of deaths in the world is not a coherent goal: we know there will be exactly one for each life, and there's no changing that (modulo immortality research). What we really mean here is that we aim to extend life. It's worth being clear on this, since not all life-extensions are equal, but a rhetorical focus on 'death' (or 'life-saving') occludes this fact." (
  '17 Mar 21Added March 21, 2017, 11 p.m.
  in effectivealtruism | a)
• Support the Undeserving Poor [Stumblingandmumbling.typepad]: "Murrary Rothbard asks: 'Why won't the left acknowledge the difference between deserving poor and undeserving poor. Why support the feckless, lazy & irresponsible?' I'd answer thusly: 1. I'm surprised a libertarian is asking. Two of the great and correct insights of libertarianism are that the state has very limited knowledge, and that its interventions often lead to people gaming the system. This is true of welfare spending as of anything else. The government doesn't have the knowhow to distinguish well between the deserving and undeserving poor." (
  '17 Mar 20Added March 20, 2017, 11 p.m.
  in giving | a)
• The 2012 Election Was Good for Political Science [The Monkeycage]: "In late September, I was involved in an email exchange in which a historian stated that 'Someone should do a piece cataloging down all the poli sci consensi being undone this season.' Now I can write with some confidence that the findings of the political science canon were largely confirmed by the 2012 election. And those findings deserve some plaudits alongside the polls, the forecasters, and the 'nerds' at the heart of the winning presidential campaign. In our book, The Gamble, Lynn Vavreck and I are attempting to show how those lessons can inform our understanding of the 2012 election. Here is a list of findings that I think hold up reasonably well, with citations to representative studies and findings from our book where possible." (
  '17 Mar 19Added March 19, 2017, 11 p.m.
  in politicalscience | a)
• Religion's Odd Relationship with Atheism [Ockhamsbeard.wordpress]: "It almost beggars belief that many self-proclaimed so-called moral experts of the modern world - men and women of cloth, such as rabbi Adam Jacobs - exhibit such a shocking ignorance of modern ethical and evolutionary theory. Jacobs penned a piece for the Huffington Post recently that could serve as a template for the gross misunderstanding of how atheism and morality are related. [...] He might as well be saying 'because there's no edict from God over the rules of cricket, you can just give yourself a century and refuse to leave if you're caught out.' Just because it isn't written in the bible, doesn't mean there aren't any rules to cricket (cricket nihilism). And it doesn't mean you can play by whatever rules you choose (cricket egoism)." (
  '17 Mar 18Added March 18, 2017, 11 p.m.
  in skepticism | a)
• Donating toward Efficient Online Veg Ads [Utilitarian-essays]: "A few animal groups, including The Humane League, are running ads on Facebook pointing to videos of factory farming and encouraging viewers to go veg. Based on survey data for reduced meat consumption after seeing the videos, I estimate that each $1 donated toward The Humane League's veg ads prevents ~120 days of suffering on factory farms and 20 additional fish deaths. The actual number could be several times higher." (
  '17 Mar 17Added March 17, 2017, 11 p.m.
  in animals | a)
• The Mechanics of Moral Evaluation [Abc.net.au]: "Imagine a hammer, an ordinary claw hammer, used primarily for driving nails into wood, though also for pulling them out. Imagine that I point to an example of this humble but indispensable tool, and I say, 'This is a good hammer.' What do I mean when I say it? Well, presumably something like this: it has the properties or characteristics that make it efficient for driving nails into wood. [...] Moral evaluations are important, but they are not radically different from all the other evaluations that we make every day, even if we wish they were." (
  '17 Mar 16Added March 16, 2017, 11 p.m.
  in ethics | a)
• We Can End World Poverty [Yboris]: "On the bright side, extreme poverty can be eliminated, and 30 years is a reasonable, if not a conservative, timeframe. Substantial progress has already occurred due to economic growth in the developing countries: researchers estimate that the number of people living in extreme poverty was nearly halved in the past decade. [...] With identifying good charities being so easy and the costs of doing good so low, even a high school student in the U.S. can prevent a few deaths just on summer earnings!" (
  '17 Mar 15Added March 15, 2017, 11 p.m.
  in development | a)
• Why Activists Should Consider Making Lots of Money [Utilitarian-essays]: "A number of people go to work for nonprofit organizations because they care about making a difference to the world. However, in many cases, these people might be able to make a bigger total impact by making a lot of money in business and then funding other people to accomplish the 'do-gooder' work. This is especially true if the skills they would bring to a nonprofit job are easily replaceable or otherwise not highly valuable." (
  '17 Mar 14Added March 14, 2017, 11 p.m.
  in effectivealtruism | a)
• How Much Direct Suffering Is Caused by Various Animal Foods? [Utilitarian-essays]: "Consuming equal weights of different animal products may produce vastly different expected amounts of direct suffering. Farmed seafood may cause the most, followed by poultry products. Pork, beef, and especially milk produce considerably less suffering in comparison. As an extreme case, creating demand for a kg of farmed catfish meat is expected to cause 20,000 times as much suffering as creating demand for a kg of milk." (
  '17 Mar 13Added March 13, 2017, 11 p.m.
  in animals | a)
• Poll Addict Confesses [NYTimes]: "Hello, my name is David, and I'm a pollaholic. For the past several months I have spent inordinate amounts of time poring over election polls. A couple of times a day, I check the Web sites to see what the polling averages are. I check my Twitter feed to see the latest Gallup numbers. I've read countless articles dissecting the flawed methodologies of polls I don't like. I have wasted a large chunk of my life I will never get back. Why? Because I've got a problem." (
  '17 Mar 12Added March 12, 2017, 11 p.m.
  in politicalscience | a)
• More Evidence that Obama's Victory Reflects the Economic Fundamentals [The Monkeycage]: "The following is a guest post from NYU political scientist Patrick Egan on a topic near and dear to the Monkey Cage, the fact that the economic fundamentals (defined here as GDP growth) of the election suggested the likelihood of a victory in 2012 for the incumbent - albeit a fairly narrow one - and not the challenger." (
  '17 Mar 11Added March 11, 2017, 11 p.m.
  in politicalscience | a)
• Embracing the Kobayashi Maru - Why You Should Teach Your Students to Cheat [Rumint]: "Adversaries cheat. We don't. In academic institutions around the world, students understand that they will be expelled if they violate their college's honor code or otherwise fail to play by the institutional rules. The dissonance between how our adversaries operate and how we teach our students puts our students at a distinct disadvantage when faced with real world adversaries who inevitably do not play by the rules. Breaking through the paradigm where students selfcensor their ways of thinking to a new paradigm that cultivates an effective adversary mindset is both necessary and possible." (
  '17 Mar 09Added March 9, 2017, 11 p.m.
  in productivity | a)
• Neuroscience Basics for LessWrongians [LessWrong]: "Furthermore, I've noticed that while LessWrong in general seems to be very strong on the psychological or "black box" side of cognitive science, there isn't as much discussion of neuroscience here. This is somewhat understandable. Our current understanding of neuroscience is frustratingly incomplete, and too much journalism on neuroscience is sensationalistic nonsense. However, I think what we do know is worth knowing. (And part of what makes much neuroscience journalism annoying is that it makes a big deal out of things that are totally unsurprising, given what we already know.)" (
  '17 Mar 08Added March 8, 2017, 11 p.m.
  in rationality | a)
• Making Charitable Appeals to Donors' Hearts and Heads [Tacticalphilanthropy]: "A growing number of nonprofit experts are urging donors to channel more of their money to high-performing organizations, with the goal of making philanthropy more effective. But embedded in this movement is a worrisome concept - the idea that donors should give with their heads instead of their hearts. In fact, this is a false dichotomy and one that threatens to undermine a movement that otherwise is sorely needed." (
  '17 Mar 07Added March 7, 2017, 11 p.m.
  in giving | a)
• "Should We Live to 1,000?" [Project-syndicate]: "In developed countries, aging is the ultimate cause of 90% of all human deaths; thus, treating aging is a form of preventive medicine for all of the diseases of old age. Moreover, even before aging leads to our death, it reduces our capacity to enjoy our own lives and to contribute positively to the lives of others. So, instead of targeting specific diseases that are much more likely to occur when people have reached a certain age, wouldn't a better strategy be to attempt to forestall or repair the damage done to our bodies by the aging process?" (
  '17 Mar 06Added March 6, 2017, 11 p.m.
  in effectivealtruism | a)
• The Marketplace in Your Brain [Chronicle]: "In 2003, amid the coastal greenery of the Winnetu Oceanside Resort, on Martha's Vineyard, a group of about 20 scholars gathered to kick-start a new discipline. They fell, broadly, into two groups: neuroscientists and economists. What they came to talk about was a collaboration between the two fields, which a few researchers had started to call 'neuroeconomics.' Insights about brain anatomy, combined with economic models of neurons in action, could produce new insights into how people make decisions about money and life." (
  '17 Mar 05Added March 5, 2017, 11 p.m.
  in economics | a)
• Fish: The Forgotten Victims On Our Plate [Guardian.co.uk]: "Regulations for slaughter generally require that animals be rendered instantly unconscious before they are killed, or death should be brought about instantaneously, or, in the case of ritual slaughter, as close to instantaneously as the religious doctrine allows. Not for fish. There is no humane slaughter requirement for wild fish caught and killed at sea, nor, in most places, for farmed fish. Fish caught in nets by trawlers are dumped on board the ship and allowed to suffocate. Impaling live bait on hooks is a common commercial practice: long-line fishing, for example, uses hundreds or even thousands of hooks on a single line that may be 50-100km long. When fish take the bait, they are likely to remain caught for many hours before the line is hauled in." (
  '17 Mar 04Added March 4, 2017, 11 p.m.
  in animals | a)
• Freedom to Starve [Philosophyetc.net]: "There's much that's misleading in politics. But perhaps the worst offender is the common claim that Right-wing "libertarians" (e.g. ACT) champion the value of individual freedom. They stand for non-interference, but this "negative freedom" is only half the story. The more important aspect of freedom is opportunity. Imagine you find yourself stuck down a well. Libertarians claim that you are perfectly free so long as everybody else leaves you alone, since that way you suffer no interference. But surely we can see that this is mistaken. If left alone, you would dwindle and die. That's not any sort of freedom worth having. Real freedom requires that you be rescued from the well. Until that happens, you lack any opportunities to act and achieve your goals. And that is clearly what really matters." (
  '17 Mar 03Added March 3, 2017, 11 p.m.
  in policy | a)
• Bayes for Schizophrenics - Reasoning in Delusional Disorders [LessWrong]: "'You have brain damage' is also a theory with perfect explanatory adequacy. If one were to explain the Capgras delusion to Capgras patients, it would provide just as good an explanation for their odd reactions as the imposter hypothesis. Although the patient might not be able to appreciate its decreased complexity, they should at least remain indifferent between the two hypotheses. I've never read of any formal study of this, but given that someone must have tried explaining the Capgras delusion to Capgras patients I'm going to assume it doesn't work. Why not?" (
  '17 Mar 02Added March 2, 2017, 11 p.m.
  in rationality | a)
• Second- vs. Third-Person Presentations of Moral Dilemmas [Schwitzsplinters.blogspot.kr]: "Is it better for you to kill an innocent person to save others than it is for someone else to do so? And does the answer you're apt to give depend on whether you are a professional philosopher? Kevin Tobia, Wesley Buckwalter, and Stephen Stich have a forthcoming paper in which they report results that seem to suggest that philosophers think very differently about such matters than do non-philosophers. However, I'm worried that Tobia and collaborators' results might not be very robust." (
  '17 Feb 28Added Feb. 28, 2017, 11 p.m.
  in ethics | a)
• Email Addiction [Danariely]: "So, what do food pellets have to do with e-mail? If you think about it, e-mail is very much like trying to get the pellet rewards. Most of it is junk and the equivalent to pulling the lever and getting nothing in return, but every so often we receive a message that we really want. Maybe it contains good news about a job, a bit of gossip, a note from someone we haven't heard from in a long time, or some important piece of information. We are so happy to receive the unexpected e-mail (pellet) that we become addicted to checking, hoping for more such surprises. We just keep pressing that lever, over and over again, until we get our reward." (
  '17 Feb 27Added Feb. 27, 2017, 11 p.m.
  in productivity | a)
• A Five-Minute Intelligence Test for Kids [The Dailybeast]: "Imagine seven cards laid out on a table in front of you, each card two inches square, with vertical lines of different lengths in the middle of each card. [...] Your task is to move the cards around and put them in order so that the longest line is on the left, and the shortest is on the right. [...] Now what if I told you I wanted to use this simple test─and only this test─to screen all 5-year-olds and 6-year-olds to determine whether they should be enrolled in gifted programs or admitted to fancy private schools. [...] You would think I was absolutely crazy. [...] But the two tasks I've described are a real test for children, developed in Switzerland. They are phenomenally accurate at predicting full-scale intelligence scores. On 5- and 6-year-old kids, this simple test is virtually synonymous with a 90-minute intelligence test of their full cognitive capacities; the two tests have a 99 percent correlation." (
  '17 Feb 24Added Feb. 24, 2017, 11 p.m.
  in rationality | a)
• Interview With Brian Tomasik [80000hours]: "Brian Tomasik is a member of 80,000 Hours who has spent many years thinking and writing essays about how to most effectively reduce suffering in the world. Research Director Robert Wiblin sat down with Brian (metaphorically) to learn about his intellectual journey and at times unusual conclusions." (
  '17 Feb 23Added Feb. 23, 2017, 11 p.m.
  in effectivealtruism | a)
• The Science Behind Those Obama Campaign E-Mails [Businessweek]: "One fascination in a presidential race mostly bereft of intrigue was the strange, incessant, and weirdly overfamiliar e-mails that emanated from the Obama campaign. [...] But they worked. Most of the $690 million Obama raised online came from fundraising e-mails. During the campaign, Obama's staff wouldn't answer questions about them or the alchemy that made them so successful. Now, with the election over, they're opening the black box. [...] The appeals were the product of rigorous experimentation by a large team of analysts." (
  '17 Feb 22Added Feb. 22, 2017, 11 p.m.
  in politicalscience | a)
• Morality Inside-Out [Ockhamsbeard.wordpress]: "Most moral enquiry - particularly metaethical enquiry - is conducted in an arse-backwards way. Most philosophers appear to look at morality from the inside-out. And I'd suggest this inside-out view of morality is hampering our ability to understand the nature of morality in all its glorious messy complexity. What we need to do is turn this perspective around and look at morality outside-in. This is a crucial step in my overall argument in my thesis, as it explains why I choose to depart from the metaethical canon and draw on a range of empirical tools in an attempt to explain what morality is all about." (
  '17 Feb 21Added Feb. 21, 2017, 11 p.m.
  in ethics | a)
• "Animal Rights Advocate Eats Cheeseburger, So… What?" [Schwitzsplinters.blogspot.kr]: "Ethicist: 'What I personally believe is beside the point, as long as the arguments are sound. But in any case, I do believe that what I am doing is morally wrong. I don't claim to be a saint. My job is only to discover moral truths and inform the world about them. You're going to have to pay me extra if you want to add actually living morally well to my job description.' My question is this: What, if anything, is wrong with the ethicist's attitude toward philosophical ethics?" (
  '17 Feb 20Added Feb. 20, 2017, 11 p.m.
  in animals | a)
• Our Research On How To Find A Job You Love [80000hours]: "Many people aren't as satisfied as they could be with their careers. This is a big problem: not only is the person less happy, they also end up making less difference in society. The even bigger problem is that people don't seem to know what to do about this - how to find a job that they'll find satisfying. There's a lot of psychology research on happiness that could be really useful, but people don't seem to be aware of it or at least aren't applying it. So we decided to start collecting together the research that seems most useful to job satisfaction, and explain how it applies to your career decisions." (
  '17 Feb 19Added Feb. 19, 2017, 11 p.m.
  in career | a)
• How Personal Should Your Giving Be? [Blog.givewell]: "A commonplace among fundraisers is that "people take action and give for deeply personal reasons." This can mean many different things, but one of the implications is that people give to extremely specific, personal causes: diseases that loved ones have suffered from, local charities in areas where they live or grew up, charities that serve their particular ethnicity or nationality. There are obvious benefits to giving in this way, but I think the costs are underlooked." (
  '17 Feb 17Added Feb. 17, 2017, 11 p.m.
  in giving | a)
• Does Working From Home Work? - Evidence From a Chinese Experiment [Econ.brown.edu]: "The frequency of working from home has been rising rapidly in the US, with over 10% of the workforce now regularly work from home. But there is skepticism over the effectiveness of this, highlighted by phrases like "shirking from home". We report the results of the first randomized experiment on home-working in a 13,000 employee NASDAQ listed Chinese firm. Call center employees who volunteered to work from home were randomized by even/odd birth-date in a 9-month experiment of working at home or in the office. We find a 12% increase in performance from home-working, of which 8.5% is from working more minutes of per shift (fewer breaks and sick-days) and 3.5% from higher performance per minute (quieter working environment). We find no negative spillovers onto workers left in the office. Home workers also reported substantially higher work satisfaction and psychological attitude scores, and their job attrition rates fell by 50%. Despite this ex post success, the impact of home-working was ex ante unclear to the firm, which is why it ran the experiment. Employees were also ex ante uncertain, with one half of employees changing their minds on home working after the experiment. This highlights how the impact of new management practices are unclear to both firms and employees." (
  '17 Feb 16Added Feb. 16, 2017, 11 p.m.
  in productivity | a)
• My Personal Experience in 'Poverty' [Essentiallyinterdependent.blogspot]: "This message fits well with one that is put forth by Nobel-Prize-winning economist Amartya Sen in his book Development as Freedom. In chapter 4, 'Poverty as Capability Deprivation,' Sen argues that poverty is often narrowly construed as a lack of income. This definition, however, fails to encapsulate the fact that someone can be impoverished even with financial resources. One example he uses to explain this is that of unemployment. Even if someone is able to be recouped the financial loss caused by unemployment, not being able to sustain one's self through employment shows a certain poverty of dignity that most would not want to subject themselves to. This is evidenced by the uneasiness we have when unemployed and being stuck with the question 'well, what do you do?' in social situations. Poverty is not only a lack of financial resources, but is more broadly a lack of capabilities to fulfill basic human needs." (
  '17 Feb 15Added Feb. 15, 2017, 11 p.m.
  in policy | a)
• Fukushima Is No More Dangerous To You Than A Microwave [Squid314.livejournal]: "I was under the impression that everyone had already heard the spiel about radiation from the downed Japanese nuclear plants in Fukushima, but I was talking to some classmates yesterday and they were clueless. So let me vent some hot air (pun not intended) about this here, please. The radiation from Fukushima is not a serious threat to anyone except the workers in the plant. It would have been at most a moderate threat to people living nearby, but they have been evacuated. People in Tokyo who are panicking about it are misinformed. People in the United States who are panicking about radiation reaching the West Coast are extraordinarily misinformed. People who are saying we should rethink the use of nuclear are misinformed and possibly idiots." (
  '17 Feb 14Added Feb. 14, 2017, 11 p.m.
  in policy | a)
• The Trolley Came At Midnight [Squid314.livejournal]: "In Bystander's Three Options, I can: (i) do nothing, letting five die, or (ii) turn the switch to the right, killing Bob, or (iii) turn the switch to the left, killing myself. [...] So when we face three options, (ii) is wrong. And while altruistic suicide (iii) is permissible, morality cannot require me to kill myself to save the five, even if we all agreed that it would be a good deed. Even if altruistic suicide is the only permissible way to save the five, it isn't required.' See, this is the problem with appeal to intuitions. You know those scale models of the solar systems they sometimes have in city museums, where the Sun through Mars are all in the same glass museum case and then the distances gradually get longer until Pluto is out in the suburbs a twenty minute drive away? For me, options (ii) and (iii) are in that museum case, and option (i) is so much worse than either that it's out in the suburbs with Pluto." (
  '17 Feb 13Added Feb. 13, 2017, 11 p.m.
  in ethics | a)
• Getting Your Hands Dirty [Givinggladly]: "I was talking to a friend about ways to help the world, and he said something that surprised me: 'I sometimes feel guilty about doing little more than donating money to charities without actually getting my hands dirty.' Actually, I don't think he should feel guilty at all. If I moved to a poor country to do good deeds, pretty much anything I would do there would be better done by a local person. I would need to learn the local language(s), learn how to function in a new culture, and learn skills that would be useful there." (
  '17 Feb 12Added Feb. 12, 2017, 11 p.m.
  in giving | a)
• Offense 101 [Juliansanchez]: "American politics sometimes seems like a contest to see which group of partisans can take greater umbrage at the most recent outrageous remark from a member of the opposing tribe. As a mild countermeasure, I offer a modest proposal for American universities. All freshmen should be required to take a course called "Offense 101," where the readings will consist of arguments from across the political and philosophical spectrum that some substantial proportion of the student body is likely to find offensive." (
  '17 Feb 11Added Feb. 11, 2017, 11 p.m.
  in culturewar | a)
• Cheap Wine [Freakonomics]: "There was no significant difference in the rating across the four wines; the cheap wine did just as well as the expensive ones. Even more remarkable, for a given drinker, there was more variation in the rankings they gave to the two samples drawn from the same bottle than there was between any other two samples. Not only did they like the cheap wine as much as the expensive one, they were not even internally consistent in their assessments." (
  '17 Feb 10Added Feb. 10, 2017, 11 p.m.
  in rationality | a)
• That Terrible Trillion [NYTimes]: "What the Dr. Evil types think, and want you to think, is that the big current deficit is a sign that our fiscal position is completely unsustainable. Sometimes they argue that it means that a debt crisis is just around the corner, although they've been predicting that for years and it keeps not happening. (U.S. borrowing costs are near historic lows.) But more often they use the deficit to argue that we can't afford to maintain programs like Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. So it's important to understand that this is completely wrong." (
  '17 Feb 09Added Feb. 9, 2017, 11 p.m.
  in policy | a)
• Normative Ethical Subjectivism - A Moral Theory [Celsus.blog]: "Humans are not impartial, disinterested subjects but are beings with needs and preferences. Moreover, humans are a social species of shared 'normative' goals, which we obtain as a community. Goals are most efficiently reached not through impulse, but through careful reflection and strategy. The moral life is the strategic approach to best achieving one's ethical objectives. [...] Ultimately, I offer a teleological approach to ethics, where morals serve as means to the end of happiness and self-actualization. If one conceives of morality as something other than this, then I happily elect to be amoral under such alien conceptions and see no clash in the debate." (
  '17 Feb 08Added Feb. 8, 2017, 11 p.m.
  in ethics | a)
• Caring About Animal Suffering [Reducing-suffering.blogspot]: "What are some examples of experiences that lead people to give serious concern to the suffering of animals? For Peter Singer, as he describes in Animal Liberation, it was logical argument by vegetarian friends that persuaded him to think about the issue. For Josh Balk, it was watching a video containing scenes of animals being killed. For Jon Camp, it was a college ethics course. Some people discovered animal cruelty by being stuck in traffic behind trucks bringing animals to slaughter. Many others have been affected by Vegan Outreach leaflets. In my own case, I simply needed to realize that animals could feel pain, a point that somehow escaped me until I came across an online excerpt from Animal Liberation (pp. 10-12, 14-15)." (
  '17 Feb 07Added Feb. 7, 2017, 11 p.m.
  in animals | a)
• The Power of Effective Activism [80000hours]: "The power of persuasion for making a difference is often underappreciated. If you can convince just one other person to care about a cause as much as you, then you've easily doubled your impact. But peoples' efforts at influencing others often aren't as efficient as they could be. Just as people tend to give to the charity that resonates with them most personally, they often spend years trying to convince friends or family of a cause they care about. What many people don't realise is that by stepping outside your circle of personal contacts and choosing a strategic approach, your time and influence can go ten or even a hundred times further." (
  '17 Feb 06Added Feb. 6, 2017, 11 p.m.
  in effectivealtruism | a)
• Guess Who's Coming to Dinner? The Controversial Peter Singer [The Simon]: "Recently, I had the opportunity to eat, drink and make moral calculations with philosopher Peter Singer. [...] The first order of business was to choose a restaurant. Singer had only put forth one requirement: there had to be a vegan entrée on the menu. But as a good utilitarian, I knew I had to weigh a parade of other factors. His hotel was in Santa Monica, so I chose a place nearby so as to save fuel and not contribute to global warming. I selected a totally vegan place, as a gesture to encourage exemplary establishments to be fruitful and multiply. [...] I picked up Singer from his hotel and flipped on the car's air conditioning because I wanted my important guest to be comfortable. In a polite way, he explained how my action was destroying the environment and suggested we simply lower the windows. I couldn't believe it; I had already screwed up! I quietly chastised myself for failing to make the necessary moral calculation." (
  '17 Feb 05Added Feb. 5, 2017, 11 p.m.
  in effectivealtruism | a)
• "Notes From the Frontline - Well, Search Me!" [Gizmodo.co.uk]: "I'm always really confused by the searches they do at airports. If I thought that the person I was searching might have a weapon on them, I wouldn't dream of conducting an airport search. I have found knives (even ceramic ones that wouldn't snow up on airport metal detection scanners) on people in all sorts of weird hiding places, including taped high to the inside of their thighs, or clenched between someone's butt-cheeks. You can do an incredible amount of damage to someone with a simple straight razor blade, and the size and shape of them are perfect for hiding in all sorts of places. Trust me: There's no way a half-hearted pat-down finds a razor blade gaffer-taped to the inside of someone's upper arm, or in the centre of their chest." (
  '17 Feb 04Added Feb. 4, 2017, 11 p.m.
  in policy | a)
• Both Sides[YouTube] [Youtube]: "No matter what the issue, JP Nickel gives you… Both Sides." (
  '17 Feb 03Added Feb. 3, 2017, 11 p.m.
  in policy | a)
• Finding Our False Beliefs [Spencergreenberg]: "By definition, we believe that each of our beliefs is true. And yet, simultaneously, we must admit that some of our beliefs must be wrong. We can't possibly have gotten absolutely everything right. [...] But all hope is not lost. We can effectively reason about which of our beliefs are more likely to be correct, and which are more likely to be in error. Even if we feel equally strong feelings of belief for two ideas, further considerations can make us realize that we are more likely to be correct in one of the cases than the other. [...] Consider the following properties that beliefs can have. Each of these is an indicator that a belief is less likely to be true." (
  '17 Feb 02Added Feb. 2, 2017, 11 p.m.
  in rationality | a)
• Revenge as A Charitable Act [Squid314.livejournal]: "Imagine a world in which everyone who was swindled by a crappy employer quit immediately and went on jihad against them. The world would very soon be empty of crappy employers; the only successful employers would be those who realized they couldn't get away with mistreating their workers. By taking revenge, I'm sacrificing my own pleasure - my job and my time - in order to help create a world where crappy behavior isn't tolerated and doesn't happen anymore." (
  '17 Feb 01Added Feb. 1, 2017, 11 p.m.
  in rationality | a)
• God Mode [Celsus.blog]: "For every natural explanation it requires 10x the amount of work, knowledge, and organization to convey how things work in the physical world. Why? Because the naturalist must "play be the rules" of nature. However, the apologist need only assume an omnipotent entity, capable of making new rules as they go along, and then they can weasel their way out of any otherwise impossible situation." (
  '17 Jan 31Added Jan. 31, 2017, 11 p.m.
  in skepticism | a)
• Replication Studies - Bad Copy [Nature]: "Bem published his findings in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology (JPSP) along with eight other experiments1 providing evidence for what he refers to as "psi", or psychic effects. There is, needless to say, no shortage of scientists sceptical about his claims. Three research teams independently tried to replicate the effect Bem had reported and, when they could not, they faced serious obstacles to publishing their results. The episode served as a wake-up call." (
  '17 Jan 30Added Jan. 30, 2017, 11 p.m.
  in metascience | a)
• How Much Has Citizens United Changed the Political Game? [NYTimes]: "The reason for this exponential leap in political spending, if you talk to most Democrats or read most news reports, comes down to two words: Citizens United. [...] As a matter of political strategy, this is a useful story to tell, appealing to liberals and independent voters who aren't necessarily enthusiastic about the administration but who are concerned about societal inequality, which is why President Obama has made it a rallying cry almost from the moment the Citizens United ruling was made. But if you're trying to understand what's really going on with politics and money, the accepted narrative around Citizens United is, at best, overly simplistic. And in some respects, it's just plain wrong." (
  '17 Jan 28Added Jan. 28, 2017, 11 p.m.
  in policy | a)
• Outsourcing [Athe Istethicist.blogspot]: "I hold that outsourcing tends to benefit the average American and, even if it did not - at its worst, outsourcing lifts people out of poverty, giving them better access to medical care and education and greater opportunities in their own lives at a small cost to those in the top 10% in terms of global income." (
  '17 Jan 27Added Jan. 27, 2017, 11 p.m.
  in development | a)
• Hallucinatory Near-Death Experiences [Infidels]: "Even if we disregard the overwhelming evidence for the dependence of consciousness on the brain, there remains strong evidence from reports of near-death experiences themselves that NDEs are not glimpses of an afterlife. This evidence includes: (1) discrepancies between what is seen in the out-of-body component of an NDE and what's actually happening in the physical world; (2) bodily sensations incorporated into the NDE, either as they are or experienced as NDE imagery; (3) encountering living persons during NDEs; (4) the greater variety of differences than similarities between different NDEs, where specific details of NDEs generally conform to cultural expectation; (5) the typical randomness or insignificance of the memories retrieved during those few NDEs that include a life review; (6) NDEs where the experiencer makes a decision not to return to life by crossing a barrier or threshold viewed as a 'point of no return,' but is restored to life anyway; (7) hallucinatory imagery in NDEs, including encounters with mythological creatures and fictional characters; and (8) the failure of predictions in those instances in which experiencers report seeing future events during NDEs or gaining psychic abilities after them." (
  '17 Jan 26Added Jan. 26, 2017, 11 p.m.
  in skepticism | a)
• "The Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Truth About Morality And What To Do About It" [Wjh.harvard.edu]: "In this essay I argue that ordinary moral thought and language is, while very natural, highly counterproductive and that as a result we would be wise to change the way we think and talk about moral matters. First, I argue on metaphysical grounds against moral realism, the view according to which there are first order moral truths. Second, I draw on principles of moral psychology, cognitive science, and evolutionary theory to explain why moral realism appears to be true even though it is not. I then argue, based on the picture of moral psychology developed herein, that realist moral language and thought promotes misunderstanding and exacerbates conflict. I consider a number of standard views concerning the practical implications of moral anti-realism and reject them. I then sketch and defend a set of alternative revisionist proposals for improving moral discourse, chief among them the elimination of realist moral language, especially deontological language, and the promotion of an anti-realist utilitarian framework for discussing moral issues of public concern." (
  '17 Jan 25Added Jan. 25, 2017, 11 p.m.
  in ethics | a)
• Ask an Economist: Which Bond Villain Plan Would Have Worked (and Which Not)? [Vulture]: "While the bad guy in Skyfall is obsessed primarily with revenge and humiliation, many of James Bond's chief adversaries over the years have wanted something more simple and tangible: cash money. The Bond villain is often deranged and grandiose, sure, but he (or she) is also capable of hatching elaborate plans to increase their bottom line, often by secretly manipulating the world's economic systems (sometimes with the aid of a clandestine nuclear weapon or two). So, could they have succeeded? If James Bond hadn't foiled these plots, could these Bond villains have fulfilled their dreams of financial glory? We looked through their schemes, and asked Jean-Jacques Dethier, a development economist at the World Bank (and a lifelong Bond fan), what he thought." (
  '17 Jan 24Added Jan. 24, 2017, 11 p.m.
  in economics | a)
• One Half of One Cent [Bigthink]: "To put it another way, as I once heard Neil deGrasse Tyson do in a talk: for every dollar you pay in federal taxes, slightly more than half a penny goes to NASA. And this half a penny from each of us has brought an incredible wealth of knowledge about our solar system, the origins of our world and our place in the universe. It's brought us not just Curiosity and the other Mars missions, but a whole fleet of spacecraft flying out from the Earth like seeds from a puffball: the New Horizons spacecraft on its way to Pluto, the Juno probe traveling to Jupiter, the MESSENGER craft orbiting Mercury, Cassini in orbit around Saturn, Dawn exploring the asteroids, and even the Voyagers, which are still transmitting data from the edge of the solar system. All this and much more was ours for one-half of one cent." (
  '17 Jan 23Added Jan. 23, 2017, 11 p.m.
  in policy | a)
• What Work is Really For [Opinionator.blogs.nytimes]: "We're ambivalent about work because in our capitalist system it means work-for-pay (wage-labor), not for its own sake. It is what philosophers call an instrumental good, something valuable not in itself but for what we can use it to achieve. For most of us, a paying job is still utterly essential - as masses of unemployed people know all too well. But in our economic system, most of us inevitably see our work as a means to something else: it makes a living, but it doesn't make a life. What, then, is work for? Aristotle has a striking answer: 'we work to have leisure, on which happiness depends.' This may at first seem absurd. How can we be happy just doing nothing, however sweetly (dolce far niente)? Doesn't idleness lead to boredom, the life-destroying ennui portrayed in so many novels, at least since 'Madame Bovary'?" (
  '17 Jan 22Added Jan. 22, 2017, 11 p.m.
  in productivity | a)
• The Alternative Alternative Spring Break [The Lifeyoucansave]: "Taking the money I earned working over winter break, and the money I received for working as a teaching fellow this semester, I am donating $1414 - the average cost for one student at my university to go on an international service trip during spring break - and giving it directly to VillageReach, a highly efficient charity which works to improve infrastructure that would otherwise keep lifesaving vaccines from those in rural Africa who need them. By staying home, I am actually doing good abroad." (
  '17 Jan 21Added Jan. 21, 2017, 11 p.m.
  in giving | a)
• Why Vote? [Utilitarian.net]: "If we don't want a small minority to determine our government, we will favor a high turnout. Yet since our own vote makes such a tiny contribution to the outcome, each of us still faces the temptation to get a free ride, not bothering to vote while hoping that enough other people will vote to keep democracy robust and to elect a government that is responsive to the views of a majority of citizens. But there are many possible reasons for voting. Some people vote because they enjoy it, and would have nothing better to do with the time saved if they did not. Others are motivated by a sense of civic duty that does not assess the rationality of voting in terms of the possible impact of one's own ballot. [...] If these considerations fail to get people to the polls, however, compulsory voting is one way of overcoming the free-rider problem. The small cost imposed on not voting makes it rational for everyone to vote and at the same time establishes a social norm of voting." (
  '17 Jan 20Added Jan. 20, 2017, 11 p.m.
  in effectivealtruism | a)
• The Contingent Right to Life [Philosophyetc.net]: "Last night's post argued that rights cannot be morally fundamental because it's a contingent matter what rights will promote human welfare. I want to establish this point as strongly as possible by showing that even the right to life itself is contingent. I will describe a (highly fantastical) hypothetical situation in which a society would be morally required to limit the right to life, and sometimes actively kill innocent people. [Non-philosophers are reminded that this in no way implies support for government killings in our (very different!) situation. Please take care to understand the argument before hurling insults.]" (
  '17 Jan 19Added Jan. 19, 2017, 11 p.m.
  in ethics | a)
• The House GOP and the Fiscal Cliff: Position-taking vs. Policy-making [The Monkeycage]: "Long ago David Mayhew told us that much of what Members of Congress do is "position-taking." Their votes, like their speeches, are largely for public consumption. Collectively, their votes shape public policy. Yet an individual legislator knows that her vote will seldom decide the fate of a given bill. It will however contribute to the shaping of her image. Given that the individual Member of Congress controls his vote but does not control the outcome of legislative battles, he often has reason to vote based on how he would like to be seen. Often the positions a legislator wants to be seen to support and the policy outcomes he favors are closely aligned. Yet when the two diverge he has political reason to vote for what he wants to be seen to favor, rather than the legislative outcome actually he favors. This is especially so, Mayhew argues, because legislators are usually judged on the basis of the positions they take, not on policy outcomes." (
  '17 Jan 18Added Jan. 18, 2017, 11 p.m.
  in politicalscience | a)
• Comparing Apples and Oranges? [Newphilanthropycapital.wordpress]: " Our research has shown that there is a huge amount of discretion involved in any impact measurement. You can decide which indicators to use, what timeframe to look at, and who to talk to. If you are looking to examine your own performance, to learn and to decide which direction to take in the future, using discretion does not matter because you can use the same approach each time. I don't have a problem with people using their discretion or judgement as long as this is set out clearly and consistently. I do get worried when people compare results of one evaluation with another that has taken a different approach." (
  '17 Jan 17Added Jan. 17, 2017, 11 p.m.
  in costeffectiveness | a)
• A Pickpocket's Tale - The Spectacular Thefts of Appolo Robbins [Newyorker]: "Robbins, who is thirty-eight and lives in Las Vegas, is a peculiar variety-arts hybrid, known in the trade as a theatrical pickpocket. Among his peers, he is widely considered the best in the world at what he does, which is taking things from people's jackets, pants, purses, wrists, fingers, and necks, then returning them in amusing and mind-boggling ways. Robbins works smoothly and invisibly, with a diffident charm that belies his talent for larceny. One senses that he would prosper on the other side of the law. 'You have to ask yourself one question,' he often says as he holds up a wallet or a watch that he has just swiped. 'Am I being paid enough to give it back?'" (
  '17 Jan 16Added Jan. 16, 2017, 11 p.m.
  in random | a)
• Toby Ord - Why I'm Giving £1m To Charity [Bbc.co.uk]: "When Facebook founder and billionaire Mark Zuckerberg pledged to give away most of his wealth during his lifetime, some British commentators bemoaned the lack of philanthropy on this side of the Atlantic. But an academic at Oxford University is living off little more than £300 a month in an act of charity-giving that is arguably more impressive than those of Zuckerberg, Gates, Buffett and co. Toby Ord, 31, has in the past year given more than a third of his earnings, £10,0, to charities working in the poorest countries. He also gave away £15,000 of savings, as the start of his pledge to give away £1m over his lifetime." (
  '17 Jan 15Added Jan. 15, 2017, 11 p.m.
  in giving | a)
• Game Theory as a Dark Art [LessWrong]: "One of the most charming features of game theory is the almost limitless depths of evil to which it can sink. Your garden-variety evils act against your values. Your better class of evil, like Voldemort and the folk-tale version of Satan, use your greed to trick you into acting against your own values, then grab away the promised reward at the last moment. But even demons and dark wizards can only do this once or twice before most victims wise up and decide that taking their advice is a bad idea. Game theory can force you to betray your deepest principles for no lasting benefit again and again, and still leave you convinced that your behavior was rational." (
  '17 Jan 14Added Jan. 14, 2017, 11 p.m.
  in rationality | a)
• Five Myths About Political Polls [Washingtonpost]: "When Mitt Romney was trailing in public polls before the first presidential debate - particularly in swing states - his campaign manager was dismissive, contending that, according to his camp's superior internal data, the race was 'inside the margin of error.' After the debate, when Romney grabbed the advantage in some public surveys, it was the Obama campaign arguing that 'polls don't matter.' Well, polls do matter. And it matters how they're conducted and scrutinized. When trying to make sense of the numbers, here are a few myths to keep in mind." (
  '17 Jan 13Added Jan. 13, 2017, 11 p.m.
  in politicalscience | a)
• Why Honey is Vegan [Satyamag]: "I'm afraid that our public avoidance of honey is hurting us as a movement. A certain number of bees are undeniably killed by honey production, but far more insects are killed, for example, in sugar production. And if we really cared about bugs we would never again eat anything either at home or in a restaurant that wasn't strictly organically grown-after all, killing bugs is what pesticides do best. [...] Our position on honey therefore just doesn't make any sense, and I think the general population knows this on an intuitive level. Veganism for them, then, becomes more about some quasi-religious personal purity, rather than about stopping animal abuse. No wonder veganism can seem nonsensical to the average person." (
  '17 Jan 12Added Jan. 12, 2017, 11 p.m.
  in animals | a)
• A Failed Experiment [NYTimes]: "That's how things often work in America. Half-a-century of tax cuts focused on the wealthiest Americans leave us with third-rate public services, leading the wealthy to develop inefficient private workarounds. It's manifestly silly (and highly polluting) for every fine home to have a generator. It would make more sense to invest those resources in the electrical grid so that it wouldn't fail in the first place. But our political system is dysfunctional: in addressing income inequality, in confronting climate change and in maintaining national infrastructure." (
  '17 Jan 11Added Jan. 11, 2017, 11 p.m.
  in policy | a)
• Checklist of Rationality Habits [LessWrong]: "As you may know, the Center for Applied Rationality has run several workshops, each teaching content similar to that in the core sequences, but made more practical, and more into fine-grained habits. Below is the checklist of rationality habits we have been using in the minicamps' opening session. It was co-written by Eliezer, myself, and a number of others at CFAR. As mentioned below, the goal is not to assess how "rational" you are, but, rather, to develop a personal shopping list of habits to consider developing. We generated it by asking ourselves, not what rationality content it's useful to understand, but what rationality-related actions (or thinking habits) it's useful to actually do. I hope you find it useful; I certainly have." (
  '17 Jan 10Added Jan. 10, 2017, 11 p.m.
  in rationality | a)
• Redistricting Does Not Explain Why House Democrats Got a Majority of the Vote and a Minority of the Seats [The Monkeycage]: "In the wake of the 2012 House elections, it looks like Democrats won a slight majority of the major-party votes (roughly 50.5%) but only about 46% of the seats. A story has gradually developed that pins this gap on redistricting, since Republicans controlled the line-drawing process more often than not this time around. [...] We have looked at this question several times before and concluded that redistricting is a wash. [...] Democrats do gain more seats under this simulation-seven more total-but fall far short of matching their predicted vote share. The point should be clear: even under the most generous assumptions, redistricting explains less than half the gap between vote share and seat share this election cycle." (
  '17 Jan 09Added Jan. 9, 2017, 11 p.m.
  in politicalscience | a)
• The Perilous Plight of the Non-Replicator [Funderstorms.wordpress]: "As I mentioned in my previous post, while I'm sympathetic to many of the ideas that have been suggested about how to improve the reliability of psychological knowledge and move towards "scientific utopia," my own thoughts are less ambitious and keep returning to the basic issue of replication. A scientific culture that consistently produced direct replications of important results would be one that eventually purged itself of many of the problems people having been worrying about lately, including questionable research practices, p-hacking, and even data fraud. But, as I also mentioned in my previous post, this is obviously not happening. Many observers have commented on the institutional factors that discourage the conduct and, even more, the publication of replication studies." (
  '17 Jan 08Added Jan. 8, 2017, 11 p.m.
  in metascience | a)
• How to Fix the Gas Shortage: Let 'em Gouge [Cnbc]: "Gas is a good that is extremely susceptible to the temptation to hoard. It doesn't go bad under any reasonable period of time, which means that there's no penalty for purchasing excess stock in a time of shortage. The only way to discourage this is by explicit rationing or by allowing the price to increase, making people pay a higher price during the shortage. [...] There's good reason for the widespread condemnation of anti-gouging laws: they are-almost-universally harmful. There's no public good or special interest benefited by the laws. And especially when it comes to necessities like gasoline, the harm they do is sharply felt by a large part of the population. So why do we have these stupid laws at all?" (
  '17 Jan 07Added Jan. 7, 2017, 11 p.m.
  in policy | a)
• Principle of [Interpretive] Charity and N-Step Theories of Mind [Squid314.livejournal]: "How deep does the rabbit hole go? I think I have at least a 3-step theory of mind; when I read that RationalWiki article I immediately thought "No, that's not right, the creationists probably believe they can support their own arguments". I don't know if it's possible to have an unlimited-step theory of mind. I expect it is: I don't think more steps take more processing power past a certain point, just willingness to resist the temptation to be uncharitable. I think if someone did have an unlimited-step theory of mind, the way it would feel from the inside is that they and their worthier opponents have pretty much the same base-level mental algorithms all the time, but their opponents just consistently have worse epistemic luck." (
  '17 Jan 06Added Jan. 6, 2017, 11 p.m.
  in rationality | a)
• Charity Variance - Vision [Jefftk]: "Imagine you want to help blind people. You're considering two charities: one that trains seeing eye dogs, another that performs cataract surgeries. You check Charity Navigator and find that they have roughly similar overhead expenses, and neither looks like a scam, so does it matter which one you pick? It turns out it matters a lot. By the charities' numbers, a guide dog is very expensive (~$50,000) while cataract surgery is much cheaper (~$25). Assuming you think curing blindness in one eye is about as good as providing a seeing eye dog and training someone to use it, a donation of $200,000 to a seeing eye dog foundation is equivalent to donating $100 to a third world cataract charity: each helps four people." (
  '17 Jan 05Added Jan. 5, 2017, 11 p.m.
  in effectivealtruism | a)
• How To Save Ourselves From Extinction (One System at a Time) [Lareviewofbooks]: "What to do? It seems as if the human race is ready to throw itself over a cliff. [...] Climate change, nuclear weapons, deadly viruses, crashing markets, poverty and intolerance (to name a few) do not lend themselves to the kinds of solutions that this bossy, ancient brain, which runs most of our lives, can even understand. [...] The only conclusion is that we're not in our right minds - which appears to be true. The two books considered in this review may not have an obvious relationship. Fred Guterl's The Fate of the Species: Why the Human Race May Cause Its Own Extinction and How We Can Stop It, tells a compelling if disturbing narrative of what went wrong, with great stories, clear explanations and just enough optimism to think we might make it after all. But his book, by design I think, doesn't deal with the biggest danger of all: the very nature of human thought. Daniel Kahneman's Thinking Fast and Slow deals with the very nature of thought, and it just may be the most important book I've read in many years. Kahneman, a Nobel Laureate in Economics, offers potential solutions that actually might work. In tandem, the books provide a useful map of where the dragons lie and also potential paths to safety." (
  '17 Jan 04Added Jan. 4, 2017, 11 p.m.
  in effectivealtruism | a)
• Bad Charity? (All I Got Was This Lousy T-Shirt!) [Time]: "In the history of foreign aid, it looked pretty harmless: a young Florida businessman decided to collect a million shirts and send them to poor people in Africa. Jason Sadler just wanted to help. He thought he'd start with all the leftover T-shirts from his advertising company, I Wear Your Shirt. But judging by the response Sadler got from a group of foreign aid bloggers, you'd think he wanted to toss squirrels into wood chippers or steal lunch boxes from fourth-graders. [...] Little did Sadler know he had stumbled into a debate that is raging in the aid world about the best and worst ways to deliver charity, or whether to give at all. He crashed up against a rather simple theory that returned to prominence after aid failures following the 2004 Asian tsunami and 2010 Haiti earthquake: wanting to do something to help is no excuse for not knowing the consequences of what you're doing." (
  '17 Jan 03Added Jan. 3, 2017, 11 p.m.
  in development | a)
• Replaceability - Thinking on the Margin [Jefftk]: "Consider a surgeon: how many lives does she save in her career? Perhaps she does 6-9 surgeries per week of which 2 are life-saving, working 45 weeks per year from age 25 to 70. Multiplying up we get 4000 life-saving surgeries. This is pretty good: to get similar results by giving to GiveWell's current top charity you'd need to donate $200,000 every year for forty years. But let's imagine she gets sick of the job and retires early, at 47. What happens to the people that she would have been operating on? The other doctors work somewhat more to keep the operating room staffed while the hospital hires a replacement. The 2,000 lives she would have saved in the remainder of her career end up being saved by other surgeons." (
  '17 Jan 02Added Jan. 2, 2017, 11 p.m.
  in effectivealtruism | a)
• A Conversation With Michael Clemens [Givewell]: "Michael Clemens is an economist who studies the relationship between migration and development. GiveWell spoke with Michael Clemens to learn about the issues surrounding migration. Some of the topics discussed were: (1) Increased labor mobility as an excellent mechanism for increasing developing world citizens' incomes. (2) The restrictiveness of the United States visa program for low-skilled migrant workers. (3) The relatively recent change in the United States migration policy to allow low-skilled migrant workers from Haiti to obtain visas. (4) Government-run migration programs outside of the United States. (5) Examples of successful countries with large migrant populations." (
  '17 Jan 01Added Jan. 1, 2017, 11 p.m.
  in immigration | a)
• "Give Me Your Tired, Your Poor and Your Economists, Too" [NYTimes]: "First, many economists, especially conservative ones, have a libertarian streak. Ever since Adam Smith taught us about the wonders of free markets and the magic of the invisible hand, we have been loath to prohibit mutually advantageous trades between consenting adults. If an American farmer wants to hire a worker to pick fruits and vegetables, the fact that the worker happens to have been born in Mexico does not seem a compelling reason to stop the transaction. Second, many economists, especially liberal ones, have an egalitarian streak. They follow the philosopher John Rawls's theory of justice in believing that policy should be particularly attuned to its impact on the least fortunate. When thinking about immigration, there is little doubt that the least fortunate, and the ones with the most at stake in the outcome, are the poor workers who yearn to come to the United States to make a better life for themselves and their families." (
  '16 Dec 31Added Dec. 31, 2016, 11 p.m.
  in immigration | a)
• "Don't Help Refugees, You Bastards" [Robertwiblin]: "How can Rudd get away with and indeed benefit from, this hyperbole? I think his reaction is accepted by the public because of this peculiar intuition raised by Katja Grace: someone who avoids having anything to do with a suffering group is unlikely to be condemned for ignoring them but someone who interacts with them, even a little bit, is usually condemned if they don't do a great job at their own expense. Due to their interaction with asylum seekers people smugglers are condemned for failing to provide refugees with boats in good condition free of charge. But because they refuse to have anything to do with these refugees, the Commonwealth of Australia avoids condemnation for failing to do the same, even though it is in a much better position to assist them with their problems than the people smugglers." (
  '16 Dec 30Added Dec. 30, 2016, 11 p.m.
  in immigration | a)
• We're You Against The Apartheid? [Robertwiblin]: "Food for thought from Let Their People Come (page 79): [...] 'The analogy between apartheid and restrictions on labor mobility is almost exact. People are not allowed to live and work where they please. Rather, some are only allowed to live in places where earning opportunities are scarce. Workers often have to travel long distances and often live far from their families to obtain work. The restrictions about who can work where are based on conditions of birth, not on any notion of individual effort or merit. The current international system of restrictions on labor mobility enforces gaps in living standards across people that are large or larger than any in apartheid South Africa. It is even true that labor restrictions in nearly every case explicitly work to disadvantage people of color against those of European descent.'" (
  '16 Dec 29Added Dec. 29, 2016, 11 p.m.
  in immigration | a)
• Migration As A Possible Way of Helping The Poor [Givingwhatwecan]: "Hundreds of millions of people in poor developing nations say they would move to rich nations such as the US and UK, if given the opportunity. However, developed nations only offer work permits to a small percentage of those who would like them. [...] Moving a person to a country that is better organized and makes use of more advanced technology can increase their economic productivity many times over. Reflecting this, the same taxi driver in Swaziland earns multiples of her previous income if she can do the same job in Switzerland. This is a faster and larger financial impact than that offered by any other health, education, or economic empowerment program I know of." (
  '16 Dec 28Added Dec. 28, 2016, 11 p.m.
  in immigration | a)
• Grow Out Of It! [Robertwiblin]: "What is the easiest way to get economic growth? Immigration, says Bill Easterly! [...] 'Here's the short version. If you are worried about having enough tax revenue to pay interest on the government debt, find more taxpayers! And look, here are some people volunteering to become new taxpayers: Haitian immigrants fleeing quakes and poverty! So let's open the door to our Haitian fiscal rescuers, who will also lift themselves out of poverty as dramatized by a previous post. It's a TWOFER!' End poverty and get your bill paid on time! Immigration - is there anything it can't do?" (
  '16 Dec 27Added Dec. 27, 2016, 11 p.m.
  in immigration | a)
• Immigrants Don't Steal Your Jobs Any More Than Your Own Children Do [Robertwiblin]: "Reviewing the literature on the impact of immigrants on the economy, I've been impressed by the unanimity on the empirical question of whether immigrants increase unemployment or reduce wages in the receiving country. [...] These results are interesting only because the myth that immigrants 'take jobs' is so widespread. It is a peculiar myth - why would new people reduce the pool of productive jobs available? All countries have doubled their populations many times over due to childbirth and they never run out of productive work to do because there is no limited pool of work to be divided up." (
  '16 Dec 26Added Dec. 26, 2016, 11 p.m.
  in immigration | a)
• Your Huddled Masses Yearning to Breathe Free [Givinggladly]: "I was interested to hear a friend advocate a tool against world poverty that I hadn't thought of: immigration. The World Bank estimates that migrants around the world sent home $406 billion dollars last year. Young people move to rich countries, get jobs that pay far better than they could make back home in India or Mexico, and send some of their earnings back home to their families. That money amounts to more than twice the global aid to developing countries. What about the effect on rich countries? Despite the popular debate among immigration, both liberal and conservative economists mostly agree that immigration is good for the US economy. When immigration rises, there are more inventions and patents, more companies founded, more taxpayers, and more young people available to care for our large crop of elders. Some unskilled workers in rich countries do face more competition for jobs. But in general, immigration is a win-win situation." (
  '16 Dec 25Added Dec. 25, 2016, 11 p.m.
  in immigration | a)
• Heard Through The Marble [The Monkeycage]: "Yesterday, I attended oral argument in the Supreme Court's Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) case. This was particularly exciting for me, as I have argued in my research that concerns about the Court's public perception and legitimacy, particularly in the context of intense public interest, may be consequential for the Court's decision-making. As I stood among the protestors, both before and after oral argument, I could not avoid the conclusion that while the protestors' physical voices were not audible in the courtroom, their presence was felt and was part of the underlying themes argued by the lawyers and justices." (
  '16 Dec 24Added Dec. 24, 2016, 11 p.m.
  in marriage | a)
• The Dimensions of Law and the Same-Sex Marriage Cases [The Monkeycage]: "There are two factors which are particularly important for understanding the dynamics that will drive the justices' decisions in these cases. First, the justices have much more nuanced views across different legal issues than the political science literature has traditionally recognized. Second, the justices are indeed sensitive to the dynamics of public opinion on important issues in society. [...] That public opinion on same-sex marriage has moved significantly in favor of supporting marriage equality is a fact that has been documented by the popular press as well as by political scientists (gated). In this post, we focus on the justices' preferences across areas of the law and leave the issue of the effects of public opinion for later." (
  '16 Dec 23Added Dec. 23, 2016, 11 p.m.
  in marriage | a)
• The 'Conservative Case' for Same-Sex Marriage: Is it Working? [The Monkeycage]: "The amicus brief. Endorsements from well-known GOP members. A television ad featuring prominent GOP voices. Over the past few years - and precipitously within the past few months - a growing number of Republican and conservative elites led by former RNC Chairman Ken Mehlman are bucking their party's traditional stance on same-sex marriage and claiming that the issue actually embodies the very values their party holds dear: individual freedom, limited government, and the teachings of the "golden rule." But are recent arguments that make this "conservative case" for same-sex marriage working on the very people at whom they are aimed - fellow Republicans? At first glance, it doesn't look like it." (
  '16 Dec 22Added Dec. 22, 2016, 11 p.m.
  in marriage | a)
• The Myth of 'The Social Issues': The Politics of Abortion and the Politics of Gay Rights are Different [The Monkeycage]: "Where the article goes off the rails is the claim that what is true of same-sex marriage is true of abortion. It isn't. Tellingly, Saulny does not cite any actual polling data on abortion. Instead, Saulny interviewed young GOP activists and found some who are pro-marriage equality and pro-choice and want their party to focus on the economy and downplay [the social issues.[ Of course attitudes on abortion and gay rights are correlated and it's not surprising that activists who are willing to loudly buck their party on one of these topics may also break from it on another. Moreover, there remain many pro-choice Republican (and pro-life Democratic) voters. [...] Yet the larger story of survey after survey is one of change on same-sex marriage and LGBT rights generally as contrasted with great stability on the question of abortion rights. There is even some evidence that younger voters are more on the pro-life side of the debate." (
  '16 Dec 21Added Dec. 21, 2016, 11 p.m.
  in marriage | a)
• "How Opinion on Same-Sex Marriage Is Changing, and What It Means" [538.blogs.nytimes]: "Support for same-sex marriage is increasing - but is it doing so at a faster rate than in the past? Is it now safe to say that a majority approves it? How much of the shift is because people are changing their minds, as opposed to generational turnover? Is there still a gap between how well same-sex marriage performs in the polls and at the ballot booth? How many states would approve same-sex marriage today, and how many might do so by 2016?" (
  '16 Dec 20Added Dec. 20, 2016, 11 p.m.
  in marriage | a)
• The Conservative Case for Gay Marriage [The Dailybeast]: "Many of my fellow conservatives have an almost knee-jerk hostility toward gay marriage. This does not make sense, because same-sex unions promote the values conservatives prize. Marriage is one of the basic building blocks of our neighborhoods and our nation. At its best, it is a stable bond between two individuals who work to create a loving household and a social and economic partnership. We encourage couples to marry because the commitments they make to one another provide benefits not only to themselves but also to their families and communities. Marriage requires thinking beyond one's own needs. It transforms two individuals into a union based on shared aspirations, and in doing so establishes a formal investment in the well-being of society. The fact that individuals who happen to be gay want to share in this vital social institution is evidence that conservative ideals enjoy widespread acceptance. Conservatives should celebrate this, rather than lament it." (
  '16 Dec 17Added Dec. 17, 2016, 11 p.m.
  in marriage | a)
• "Arguments for the Preservation of "Traditional" Marriage - Then and Now" [Equalitygiving]: All the arguments against same-sex marriage in 2000 are identical to the arguments against interracial marriage from 1948 to 1967. (
  '16 Dec 16Added Dec. 16, 2016, 11 p.m.
  in marriage | a)
• Gay Marriage and The Bigot's Proof [Athe Istethicist.blogspot]: "What is the difference, really, between selling hot dogs at a ball game or drawings of Mohammed on a web site? Both are prohibited by certain religions. Don't they both call for violence against the infidels that would offend the religion by these practices? Or, perhaps we should form the judgment that neither of them justifies legal entanglements. The same line of reasoning applies to gay marriage. A person's prohibitions are their own business." (
  '16 Dec 15Added Dec. 15, 2016, 11 p.m.
  in marriage | a)
• What Do Members of Congress Tweet About? [The Monkeycage]: "Many members of Congress are on Twitter, and we can track, via a site like Tweet Congress, how often these members tweet and how many people follow them. But what we still do not know is how members of Congress use Twitter. A recent study on the use of Twitter reports that most of what people do on Twitter is 'pointless babble.' Do members of Congress also use tweet endlessly about what they had for lunch? What do they tweet about?" (
  '16 Dec 14Added Dec. 14, 2016, 11 p.m.
  in politicalscience | a)
• The Science Behind What Motivates Us to Get Up For Work Every Day [Blog.bufferapp]: "So, here is the thing right at the start: I've always been uncomfortable with the traditional ideal of the professional - cool, collected, and capable, checking off tasks left and right, all numbers and results and making it happen, please, with not a hair out of place. An effective employee, no fuss, no muss, a manager's dream. You might as well be describing an ideal vacuum cleaner. I admit that I've never been able to work that way. There is one thing that always came first and most importantly for me: How am I feeling today? I found that it can easily happen to think of emotions as something that gets in the way of work. When I grew, I often heard that they obstruct reasoning and rationality, but I feel that we as humans can't shut off our humanness when we come to work." (
  '16 Dec 13Added Dec. 13, 2016, 11 p.m.
  in productivity | a)
• "Animals, Not Arguments" [Veganoutreach]: "When I went vegan 20+ years ago, a common theme was to 'win an argument with a meat eater.' Every topic was fair game, and every question or theory - no matter how tangential or absurd - was argued fanatically. I fell into this trap, too, believing and parroting the most outrageous claims about impotence, water usage, etc. It took me a long time to realize the point isn't to show how many claims I had memorized, or to glorify my veganism, or to 'defeat' a meat eater. Rather, the bottom line is to help animals by helping more people make informed, compassionate choices. However, many dubious 'pro-veg' claims continue to float around today, undermining effective advocacy for the animals." (
  '16 Dec 12Added Dec. 12, 2016, 11 p.m.
  in animals | a)
• "A Review of "Why Nations Fail" By Bill Gates" [The Gatesnotes]: "Normally, I'm fairly positive about the books I review, but here's one I really took issue with. Why have some countries prospered and created great living conditions for their citizens, while others have not? This is a topic I care a lot about, so I was eager to pick up a book recently on exactly this topic. Why Nations Fail is easy to read, with lots of interesting historical stories about different countries. It makes an argument that is appealingly simple: countries with 'inclusive' political and economic institutions are the ones that succeed and survive over the long term. Ultimately, though, the book is a major disappointment. I found the authors' analysis vague and simplistic. Beyond their 'inclusive vs. extractive' view of political and economic institutions, they largely dismiss all other factors-history and logic notwithstanding. Important terms aren't really defined, and they never explain how a country can move to have more 'inclusive institutions.'" (
  '16 Dec 11Added Dec. 11, 2016, 11 p.m.
  in development | a)
• 99 Life Hacks to Make Your Life Easier [Dedalvs.tumblr]: "omg most of this stuff is brilliant!!!!!" (
  '16 Dec 10Added Dec. 10, 2016, 11 p.m.
  in productivity | a)
• Writer Evan Ratliff Tried to Vanish: Here's What Happened [Wired]: "August 13, 6:40 PM: I'm driving East out of San Francisco on I-80, fleeing my life under the cover of dusk. Having come to the interstate by a circuitous route, full of quick turns and double backs, I'm reasonably sure that no one is following me. I keep checking the rearview mirror anyway. From this point on, there's no such thing as sure. Being too sure will get me caught. [...] Officially it will be another 24 hours before the manhunt begins. That's when Wired's announcement of my disappearance will be posted online. It coincides with the arrival on newsstands of the September issue of the magazine, which contains a page of mugshot-like photos of me, eyes slightly vacant. The premise is simple: I will try to vanish for a month and start over under a new identity. Wired readers, or whoever else happens upon the chase, will try to find me. The idea for the contest started with a series of questions, foremost among them: How hard is it to vanish in the digital age?" (
  '16 Dec 09Added Dec. 9, 2016, 11 p.m.
  in technology | a)
• An Alternative to Democracy [Freakonomics]: "In Glen's voting mechanism, every voter can vote as many times as he or she likes. The catch, however, is that you have to pay each time you vote, and the amount you have to pay is a function of the square of the number of votes you cast. As a consequence, each extra vote you cast costs more than the previous vote. Just for the sake of argument, let's say the first vote costs you $1. Then to vote a second time would cost $4. The third vote would be $9, the fourth $16, and so on. One hundred votes would cost you $10,000. So eventually, no matter how much you like a candidate, you choose to vote a finite number of times. [...] This voting scheme can work in any situation where there are multiple people trying to choose between two alternatives - e.g., a group of people trying to decide which movie or restaurant to go to, housemates trying to decide which of two TV's to buy, etc. In settings like those, the pool of money that is collected from people voting would be divided equally and then redistributed to the participants. My hope is that a few of you might be inspired to give this sort of voting scheme a try. If you do, I definitely want to hear about how it works out!" (
  '16 Dec 08Added Dec. 8, 2016, 11 p.m.
  in politicalscience | a)
• How to Write Six Important Papers a Year without Breaking a Sweat - The Deep Immersion Approach to Deep Work [Calnewport]: "I'm fascinated by people who produce a large volume of valuable output. Motivated by this interest, I recently setup a conversation with a hot shot young professor who rose quickly in his field. I asked him about his work habits. Though his answer was detailed - he had obviously put great thought into these issues - there was one strategy that caught my attention: he confines his deep work to long, uninterrupted bursts. On small time scales, this means each day is either completely dedicated to a single deep work task, or is left open to deal with all the e-mail and meetings and revisions that also define academic life. If he's going to write a paper, for example, he puts aside two days, and does nothing else, emerging from his immersion with a completed first draft. If he's going to instead deal with requests and logistics, he'll spend the whole day doing so." (
  '16 Dec 07Added Dec. 7, 2016, 11 p.m.
  in productivity | a)
• The Unintuitive Power Laws of Giving [Jefftk]: "Why give globally? Why give money? Why health charities? Why single-issue organizations? At first glance these all seem like arbitrary choices: what if I would rather volunteer, or donate to local charities? Why does it matter? It comes down to two distributions: cost-effectiveness and income. [...] Neither of these distributions are intuitive: we don't feel that rich, and charities all seem kind of interchangeable. But understanding them can make the difference between trying to do good and really succeeding." (
  '16 Dec 06Added Dec. 6, 2016, 11 p.m.
  in giving | a)
• Moral Realism As Moral Motivation: The Impact of Meta-ethics on Everyday Decision Making [Moralitylab.bc.edu]: "People disagree about whether 'moral facts' are objective facts like mathematical truths (moral realism) or simply products of the human mind (moral antirealism). What is the impact of different meta-ethical views on actual behavior? In Experiment 1, a street canvasser, soliciting donations for a charitable organization dedicated to helping impoverished children, primed passersby with realism or antirealism. Participants primed with realism were twice as likely to be donors, compared to control participants and participants primed with antirealism. In Experiment 2, online participants primed with realism as opposed to antirealism reported being willing to donate more money to a charity of their choice. Considering the existence of non-negotiable moral facts may have raised the stakes and motivated participants to behave better. These results therefore reveal the impact of meta-ethics on everyday decision-making: priming a belief in moral realism improved moral behavior." (
  '16 Dec 05Added Dec. 5, 2016, 11 p.m.
  in ethics | a)