Done, except for the digit ratio, because I do not have access to a photocopier or scanner.
ChrisHallquist
Karma: 5,367
A Voting Puzzle, Some Political Science, and a Nerd Failure Mode
Neuroscience basics for LessWrongians
According to Dale Carnegie, You Can’t Win an Argument—and He Has a Point
Yes, Virginia, You Can Be 99.99% (Or More!) Certain That 53 Is Prime
Bayesianism for Humans
Self-Congratulatory Rationalism
What Can We Learn About Human Psychology from Christian Apologetics?
The Statistician’s Fallacy
Only You Can Prevent Your Mind From Getting Killed By Politics
White Lies
I Will Pay $500 To Anyone Who Can Convince Me To Cancel My Cryonics Subscription
Truth: It’s Not That Great
No Universally Compelling Arguments in Math or Science
Things I Wish They’d Taught Me When I Was Younger: Why Money Is Awesome
The Limits of Intelligence and Me: Domain Expertise
Trusting Expert Consensus
One other point I should make: this isn’t just about “someone” being wrong. It’s about an author frequently cited by people in the LessWrong community on an important issue being wrong.
Indeed, I’m not sure I’d know about Taubes at all if not for the LessWrong community.
I’ve already mentioned Eliezer’s “Correct Contrarian Cluster” as an example in another thread, but perhaps it would be helpful to mention other examples:
In a thread where someone asked what the evidence in favor of paleo was, Taubes was the main concrete source that came up. Specifically, Luke mentioned Taubes as the person he’s “usually” referred to on this question, without taking a stand himself and saying he didn’t have time to evaluate the evidence personally.
Sarah Constantin (commenter at Yvain’s blog, author of reply to Yvain’s non-libertarian FAQ, and I just learned a MetaMed VP) has cited Taubes a couple times partly to make a libertarian point.
Jack bringing up Taubes in offline conversation
Yvain’s old blog had a review of Taubes which doesn’t seem to be public right now, but which I remember as partly criticizing Taubes but also lauding him for things that now I don’t think Taubes deserves credit for.
So Taubes was someone I could expect to see cited in the future when the issue of expert consensus gets discussed on LessWrong. In spite of all the people who didn’t like these posts, I think I may have accomplished the goal of getting people to stop citing Taubes.
Eliezer Yudkowsky heard about Voltaire’s claim that “If God did not exist, it would be necessary to invent Him,” and started thinking about what programming language to use.