Given the decision on a cap in length I think it might be worthwhile to do a second LW Lifestyle and Values survey in addition to the census. At best with half a year of distance to the census.
ChristianKl
Karma: 26,504
[Question] Why aren’t we all using Taffix?
We got what’s needed for COVID-19 vaccination completely wrong
[Question] Why did no LessWrong discourse on gain of function research develop in 2013/2014?
Taking vitamin D3 with K2 in the morning
Stupid Questions October 2020
The point of writing an ad like that is to be appealing to people who would fit the job and not be appealing to people who wouldn’t.
Why did so much of the initial CFAR employees decide to leave the organization?
LessWrong is a non-evidence-based method of teaching rationality. We don’t have good evidence that someone will get more rational after reading the sequences.
You can make a reasonable theoretic argument that people will get more rational. You don’t have the kind of evidence that you need for a EBM-treatment. In most domains where we make choices in our lives you don’t follow pratices that are supported by evidence from peer-reviewed trials.
You don’t get a haircut from a barber who practices evidence-based barbering. Even the people who pay a lot of money for their haircuts don’t. Reading scientific papers just isn’t the only way to gather useful knowledge.
The term evidence-based medicine comes from a http://jama.jamanetwork.com/article.aspx?articleid=400956 published in 1992.
It says:
Evidence-based medicine de-emphasizes intuition, unsystematic clinical experience, and pathophysiologic rationale as sufficient grounds for clinical decision making and stresses the examination of evidence from clinical research.
I wouldn’t want someone to practice open-heart surgery on me based on his intuition but I don’t see a problem with taking a massage from someone who read no scientific papers but who let’s themselves be guided by his intuition and who has a positive track record with other patients.
[Question] Why do patients in mental institutions get so little attention in the public discourse?
There a certain argument that I will call the glorification of self interest.
It goes like this: People who are subject to personal threats of their livelihood, tend to think about those threats and focus their mental energies on fighting those threats whenever possible. Because those people are indeed facing threats, they are they good guys which have to be defended. Anybody who isn’t centrally concerned with threats against them, is privileged and should be ashamed for being privileged.
The only way to act utilitarian and care substantially about people in some far off country is because one doesn’t have personal threats against oneself that need attention.
I don’t think that’s true. During the last US presidential election there were people who argued that Glenn Greenwald can afford to oppose Obama because of personal liberty issues and being a warmonger because Glenn Greenwald isn’t subject of a minority for whom it’s very important that Obama and not some Republican heads the White House.
At that point Glenn Greenwald lived in exile in Brazil because his homosexual partner couldn’t legally live in the US. As far as being discriminated against being forced to live in exile seems to be something serious. That still didn’t prevent social justice warriors from saying that Glenn opposed Obama because of his privilege as a middle class white American man.
But they’re racists who continually obsess over optimizing their philanthropic contributions to African charities. So, maybe not racists in a dangerous way?
If you are an African American and get support from some sort of charity, then you are in danger if somebody comes and says that you shouldn’t get that support because it’s higher utility to spend that money on a charity that actually operates in Africa.
If you do the utility calculation you will stop supporting many of the programs that social justice warrorism favors.
I once had a conflict in an online community about whether an African is allowed to say in that community: “Just because some countries legalized homosexuality doesn’t mean that it isn’t still a crime.” The person lived in a country in which it was a crime. We had a split that those who were white heterosexual males favored allowing the African his free expression and a US upper-middle-class woman and homosexual male wanted to censor that person.
The kind of safety belts that US social warriors want are policies that keep the majority of the world from participating.
If you are a member of an US minority group than of course you have to fear someone who makes clear utility calculations and comes to the conclusion that resources are better directed at helping poor Africans than members of US minority groups because in contrast the fate of the poor African is simply worse.
That doesn’t mean that members of US minority groups don’t suffer to some extend. but showing that you suffer just isn’t enough. If you however suffer and don’t want to make clear utility calculations because you don’t want to weaken your tribe, then you will find it hard to fit into this community.
I don’t think the claim that the only way to do those clear utility calculations is to have no self interest and thus have privilege. I think that unfair to those people in minorities.
How do you read the news critically?
Are there major points that MIRI considered to be true 5 years ago but doesn’t consider to be true today?
It seems to me like you never really tried to seriously invite people to participate and write content. The fact that people had to follow Arbitals process through “whispers, rumors, and clairvoyant divination” gave the impression that it was more in a closed state than that it was inviting people to participate.
Prediction-based medicine (PBM)
I would prefer posts like that to stand on their own in discussion and not be posted in an open thread.
You put them into a social enviroment where the high status people value logic and evidence. You give them the plausible promise that they can increase their status in that enviroment by increasing the amount that they value logic and evidence.
You are allowed to edit Wikipedia
Harry seems to have forgotten the fact that he rescued Bellatrix from Azkaban. It one of those things he should ask about when asked for unsaid stuff between the two. Given Harry’s knowledge of wizard medicine Quirrell could simply die the next week and take all the knowledge about Bellatrix with him to his grave.
I took it. A bit sad that it’s shorter than the last one.