How do you expect journalism to work? The author is trying to contribute one specific story, in detail. Readers have other experiences to compare and draw from. If this was an academic piece, I might be more sympathetic.
Celer
Karma: 257
Beware Superficial Plausibility
I would replace The Republic with a good Micro textbook for anyone who hasn’t read one. A solid grasp of the mental framework that underlies Intro Micro is useful for anyone trying to parse society: not as the only framework, but an introduction to the fact that there are competing and incompatible mental frameworks. Following that, I would replace your book with an IR textbook, which must cover different and competing theories. They will be shallow introductions to complex thoughts, but they will give the reader the critical chance to test and compare the competing and incompatible theories against each other, and realize that no one theory has a convenient answer for all problems. The discussions of constructivism and responses to the neo-neo “debate” will help you recontextualize and better understand the micro textbook. Reading these books (If you have no idea what to go for, I’d recommend Cowen and Tabarrok for Micro and Introduction to International Relations: Theories and Approaches by Jackson and Sorenson for IR) will give you a broad overview of many theories, including modern ones informed by modern data.
Monthly Shorts 8/21
This is deeply unconvincing. We didn’t have a great power war in the 60s or the 70s because that would have meant nuclear war. High-level US government officials in internal documents describe Russia as an existential threat. Russian government documents, as I understand it, reflect terror of American willingness to use nukes. We haven’t had a war between the US and China yet, but estimates of that holding true over the next five years are less confident than I’d like.
“Most wars have ultimately been fought over land because land determines food production and food production was a matter of life and death.”
It seems like you’re explaining the actions of kings with the preferences of peasants (and I am very unconvinced that a victorious war was better for the average peasant than peace), and I don’t see that as particularly persuasive.
Monthly Shorts 10/22
There’s not a hard cutoff between 2005, when Ioannidis publishes, and the present, but I’ve worked on multiple systematic reviews, going over thousands of papers, and there’s a visible improvement in quality over time, and that seemed like a reasonable date for “replication crisis attention is high.”
I am a 16 year old. To be honest, most teens wouldn’t handle the site. The requirement for an understanding of mathematics, logic, and science are beyond the reach of most, and the desire of most of the rest. That said, I have introduced two friends of mine to HPMOR and they have taken to it, and I am leading them towards Less Wrong. On the other hand? I don’t know how many adults would handle less wrong either. If you want my advice on how to be more appealing to teenagers, it is relatively simple.
Link everything, so that someone who doesn’t understand can follow your links and find out. Useful more for teens than for adults, it is still good practice. Few intelligent teens will tolerate a teens area for long.
Monthly Shorts 9/22, and An Essay in Defense of Technodeterminism
5/23
Monthly Shorts 1&2/23
I disagree here with what seems to be an unstated assumption. Namely, that the injunctive “That which can be destroyed by the truth, should be” is intended for application to the world. I instead understand it, as I think many here understand it, as applying to beliefs. If I believe something, it should not be false, and if I think it is false, it is a good thing for me to destroy that belief. Furthermore, in debates over religion, politics, and science, truth is the value that should be pursued. But the idea that I must tell the police about a crime a friend committed because “what can be destroyed by the truth, should be” seems absur, and it is not how I or, I think, many others interpret the phrase.
Personal Benefits from Rationality
Monthly Shorts 4/23
6/23
Monthly Shorts 4/2022
Monthly Shorts 11/22
I think you’re right, so I’ll start by assuming that you’re wrong, because I have an alternative explanation for those who disagree with you (and which I think is the most convincing if we assume that the signalling explanation isn’t the correct one). I think Eukaryote is missing one important cause. Assume that most writers arguing for caring more or less about a cause are doing so because they believe that this is an important way to serve that cause. Particularly outside our community, people rarely write about causes just for intellectual entertainment. “Everything is signalling” is a valid response, but I’ll first reply to the rational-actor case, since that informs the limits and types of signalling. If I am writing to people who are “broadly value aligned”, an admittedly imprecise term, I tend to expect that they are not opposed to me on topics that I think are most important. I expect most (85% if I’m optimistic) instances of reading writing to happen when people who are broadly value aligned with the author, at least with respect to the topic of the piece.
If someone cares less about something, I might value that directly (because I dislike the results of them caring), and I might value that indirectly (because I expect effort they take away from the target of my writing to go towards other causes that I value). However, conditional on broad value alignment, the causes that my readers care passionately about are not causes I’m opposed to, and the causes that I care passionately about are not ones that they’re opposed to. So direct benefit, except in writing that is explicitly trying to convince people “from the other side”, will rarely motivate me to try to make people care less.
Most communities have more than 3-4 potential cause areas. One specific friend of mine will physically go to events to support gun control, gender equality, fighting racism, homelessness prevention, Palestine, Pride, her church, abortion rights, and other topics. If I make her be less confident that gun control is an effective way of reducing violence, her efforts will be split fairly broadly. It is unlikely that whatever topic I find most important, or even whatever bundle of topics I find most important, is going to receive much marginal support. EAs are relatively unusual in that deactivating someone along one cause area has a high expected affect on specific other cause areas.
Chapter 38: Lucius Malfoy claims that he was under an Imperius curse cast by Lord Voldemort. In canon, that claim was made by many powerful pureblood lords.
Chapter 26: Freeing someone from an Imperius curse by killing the caster of that curse creates a debt
Chapter 4: Bounties payable to the killer of Lord Voldemort could be delivered to Harry Potter.
Conclusion: Harry Potter is owed a blood debt by a number of the lords of the Wizengamot, which might be large enough that he could call it in and save Hermione. Even if it is just Lucius who owes him this debt, it could be enough.
Comments: Law of Conservation of Detail leans towards these facts being used, feels very desperate and Harry like, allows Hermione to come back to Hogwarts as a student.