localdeity

Karma: 2,442

localdeity 8 Apr 2025 20:59 UTC
8 points
8
in reply to: Jacob Falkovich’s comment on: Navigation by Moonlight
It’s entirely possible for a highly intelligent person to follow a strategy that is completely fucking idiotic. Common, in fact.

localdeity 8 Apr 2025 0:41 UTC
2 points
0
on: Against podcasts
How different is that from them writing a book about congestion pricing and you reading it? In both scenarios you are basically consuming the outputs of this author’s mind.
Well, one difference is that, if you have a question about something the book hasn’t specifically addressed in your reading thus far (“How does your theory apply to hotels used by the eclipse-watching crowds in 2017?”), in the first scenario you can just ask the author, but in the second case, after reading the relevant section of the book (and perhaps checking neighboring sections, the index, and the table of contents for any other relevant sections), the only way to answer your question is to think it out yourself. And that seems to be the outcome you want.
(One could reply that you’d be thinking, at least at first, about what the author would say rather than what is true, but I’d say the fact you’re reading it in the first place means you believe the author has a way of thinking that is new to you and likely valuable, and hence learning to emulate the thinking [and perhaps narrowing down what parts are worth emulating] is exactly what you should do.)

localdeity 8 Apr 2025 0:09 UTC
2 points
0
on: Against podcasts
And in Childhoods of exceptional people, the author finds that immersion in boredom was a universal experience:
But this immersion in boredom is also a universal in the biographies of exceptional people. A substantial fraction were completely kept apart from other children, either because their guardians decided so or because they were bedridden with various illnesses during childhood (like Descartes). A spicy hypothesis raised by this is that socializing too much with children is simply not good for your intellectual development. (I’m not going to test that hypothesis!)
None of this is an airtight argument that solitude is in fact important, but hopefully it at least is intriguing.
It is a correlation and there are good reasons to suspect alternate directions of causation. I’ll quote Hollingworth:
THE TENDENCY TO BECOME ISOLATED
Yoder [7] noticed, in studying the boyhood of great men, that although play interests were keen among them, the play was often of a solitary kind. The same is true of children who “test high.” The majority of children testing above 160 IQ play little with other children unless special conditions are provided, such as those found in a special class. The difficulties are too great, in the ordinary course of events, in finding playmates who are appropriate in size and congenial in mentality. This fact was noted some years ago by the present writer. Terman [8] in 1930 made a special study of the play of those in his group of children who tested above 170 IQ and found them generally more solitary in work and play than children clustering around 140 IQ.
These superior children are not unfriendly or ungregarious by nature. Typically they strive to play with others but their efforts are defeated by the difficulties of the case. These difficulties are illustrated in the efforts of the seven-year-old boy already mentioned. Other children do not share their interests, their vocabulary, or their desire to organize activities. They try to reform their contemporaries but finally give up the struggle and play alone, since older children regard them as “babies” and adults seldom play during the hours when children are awake. As a result, forms of solitary play develop, and these, becoming fixed as habits, may explain the fact that many highly intellectual adults are shy, ungregarious, and unmindful of human relationships, or are even misanthropic and uncomfortable in ordinary social intercourse.
This difficulty of the gifted child in forming friendships is largely a result of the infrequency of persons who are like-minded. The more intelligent a person is, regardless of age, the less often can he find a truly congenial companion. The average child finds playmates in abundance who can think and act on a level congenial to him because there are so many average children.
Adding to the conditions which make for isolation is the fact that gifted children are often “only” children, or they have brothers and sisters who differ widely from them in age. Thus playmates in the home are less numerous for them than for children generally.
The imaginary playmate as a solution of the problem of loneliness is fairly frequent. We know but little at present of the psychology of this invention of the unreal to fill real needs. Reasoning from the general principles of mental hygiene, one would say that the pattern of companionship represented in the imaginary playmate is less valuable for personal development than a pattern founded on reality, and that effort should be made to fill the real need with genuine persons, if possible.
Also, the deep interest in reading which typifies the gifted child may further his isolation. Irwin believes that reading should be deferred in the education of the highly intelligent. “I believe it is especially important that intellectual children get a grasp on reality through real experiences in making and doing things before they are ever introduced to the wonders that lie within books.” From this point of view, the development of the physical, social, and emotional aspects of personality would have first attention in the education of a gifted child, the intellectual being fostered last of all because it comes of itself and is too likely to run away with the other three and lead to isolation.
This tendency to become isolated is one of the most important factors to be considered in guiding the development of personality in highly intelligent children, but it does not become a serious problem except at the very extreme degrees of intelligence. The majority of children between 130 and 150 IQ find fairly easy adjustment, because neighborhoods and schools are selective, so that like-minded children tend to be located in the same schools and districts. Furthermore, the gifted child, being large and strong for his age, is acceptable to playmates a year or two older. Great difficulty arises only when a young child is above 160 IQ. At the extremely high levels of 180 and 190 IQ, the problem of friendships is difficult indeed, and the younger the person, the more difficult it is. The trouble decreases with age because as persons become adult, they naturally seek and find on their own initiative groups who are like-minded, such as learned societies.
The anecdote of the 7-year-old comes in the previous section, also worth reading:
LEARNING TO “SUFFER FOOLS GLADLY”
A lesson which many gifted persons never learn as long as they live is that human beings in general are inherently very different from themselves in thought, in action, in general intention, and in interests. Many a reformer has died at the hands of a mob which he was trying to improve in the belief that other human beings can and should enjoy what he enjoys. This is one of the most painful and difficult lessons that each gifted child must learn, if personal development is to proceed successfully. It is more necessary that this be learned than that any school subject be mastered. Failure to learn how to tolerate in a reasonable fashion the foolishness of others leads to bitterness, disillusionment, and misanthropy.
This point may be illustrated by the behavior of a seven-year-old boy with an IQ of 178. He was not sent to school until the age of seven because of his advanced interest in reading. At seven, however, the compulsory attendance law took effect and the child was placed in the third grade at school. After about four weeks of attendance, he came home from school weeping bitterly. “Oh Grandmother, Grand-mother,” he cried, “they don’t know what’s good! They just won’t read!”
The fact came to light that he had taken book after book to school—all his favorites from his grandfather’s library—and had tried to show the other third-grade pupils what treasures these were, but the boys and girls only resisted his efforts, made fun of him, threw the treasures on the floor, and finally pulled his hair.
Such struggles as these, if they continue without directing the child’s insight, may lead to complete alienation from his contemporaries in childhood, and to misanthropy in adolescence and adulthood. Particularly deplorable are the struggles of these children against dull or otherwise unworthy adults in authority. The very gifted child or adolescent, perceiving the illogical conduct of those in charge of his affairs, may turn rebellious against all authority and fall into a condition of negative suggestibility—a most unfortunate trend of personality, since the person is then unable to take a coöperative attitude toward authority.
A person who is highly suggestible in a negative direction is as much in bondage to others around him as is the person who is positively suggestible. The social value of the person is seriously impaired in either case. The gifted are not likely to fall victims to positive suggestion but many of them develop negativism to a conspicuous degree.
The highly intelligent child will be intellectually capable of self-determination, and his greatest value to society can be realized only if he is truly self-possessed and detached from the influences of both positive and negative suggestion. The more intelligent the child, the truer this statement is. It is especially unfortunate, therefore, that so many gifted children have in authority over them persons of no special fitness for the task, who cannot gain or keep the respect of these good thinkers. Such unworthy guardians arouse, by the process of “redintegration,” contempt for authority wherever it is found, and the inability to yield gracefully to command.
Thus some gifted persons, mishandled in youth, become contentious, aggressive, and stubborn to an extent which renders them difficult and disagreeable in all human relationships involving subordination. Since subordination must precede posts of command in the ordinary course of life, this is an unfortunate trend of personality. Cynicism and negativism are likely to interfere seriously with a life career. Happily, gifted children are typically endowed with a keen sense of humor, and are apparently able to mature beyond cynicism eventually in a majority of cases.
(I wonder what percentage of Less Wrongers see themselves in the above passages)
So. It seems to me that this social isolation (in the sense of failure to make friends) is not a good thing; like accidentally exploding things in chemistry experiments as a teenager, it correlates with great ability or potential, but in itself, it is probably a negative thing.
It’s possible that deliberately engineering the above situation in youth is a high-risk, high-reward strategy. There are probably some geniuses for whom failure to make friends ended up causing, perhaps even motivating, them to spend all their time thinking or tinkering and thereby making great discoveries. But there are others for whom failure to make friends meant they didn’t understand other people, weren’t motivated to help them, and therefore didn’t create startups to solve their problems, and instead retreated from the world: into games, fantasy, alcohol, drugs, or what have you. I’m skeptical that it has positive expected value, even if you had a completely ruthless, Ender’s Game style attitude of “All I care about is the likelihood that they’ll become a world-shaking genius; if I increase that by 1% in exchange for turning the median case from ‘moderately successful professional’ to ‘homeless drug addict’, that’s worth it”.
All that said, voluntarily entering temporary periods of isolation as an adult (knowing one can come back anytime) is very different from being involuntarily isolated since early childhood. The former is a perfectly fine thing to try, and quite plausibly good for the reasons described in this post. The latter I would strongly disrecommend.

localdeity 7 Apr 2025 23:22 UTC
4 points
0
on: Against podcasts
What is solitude?
I have thoughts about “loneliness”, a related concept:
- There are many kinds of social interaction that you can want, need, or benefit from. (If we need to distinguish a “want” from a “need”, I’d say a “need” is something that causes more negative effects than simple frustration if it’s not satisfied.)
  - Interaction types that probably register as a “need” to at least some people: seeing human faces; having fun with friends; discussing your problems with someone; intellectual stimulation; sexual and romantic activities; probably more.
    I’m sure there is wide individual variation on how much people need these things.
- “Loneliness” is when there’s at least one type of interaction that you’re getting less of than you need.
- It follows that you can be lonely despite spending hours a day surrounded by people, if those people aren’t giving you the type of interaction you need. (I came up with this definition to explain precisely this situation.)
“Solitude” naively means being physically alone; related to “solitary”. If you want a more sophisticated definition, then in the above context I would say it means the state where there is some interaction type the person isn’t getting. “Solitude” also carries a nonnegative and maybe-positive connotation, implying that the person didn’t need the interaction, or possibly that leaving the need unsatisfied brings benefits that exceed the negatives.
It seems like you, or at least Cal Newport, are picking a subset of the above list of social interactions and declaring that to be what “solitude” refers to. I am inclined to frown upon this, and recommend picking a more specific term, like “intellectual solitude”. Like, for each of them, you could imagine cases in which it’s good to self-isolate at least temporarily, but I think the benefits, the reasons for the benefits, and the situations in which they’re net beneficial are pretty different for e.g. romantic solitude vs “seeing human faces” solitude vs “solving my own problems” solitude vs “coming up with my own intellectual ideas and research directions” solitude vs “feeling secure and happy by myself” solitude; the cases may rhyme somewhat with each other, and that may be worth noting, but most of the discussion should be about the specific kinds of solitude.

localdeity 4 Apr 2025 13:17 UTC
4 points
0
on: Explaining the Joke: Pausing is The Way
Just because the average person disapproves of a protest tactic doesn’t mean that the tactic doesn’t work. Roger Hallam’s “Designing the Revolution” series outlines the thought process underlying disruptive actions like the infamous soup-throwing protests. Reasonable people may disagree (I disagree with quite a few things he says), but if you don’t know the arguments, any objection is going to miss the point. To be clear, PauseAI does not endorse or engage in disruptive civil disobedience, but I discuss it here to illustrate some broader points. Anyways, “Designing the Revolution” is very long, so here’s a tl/dr:
- If the public response is: “I’m all for the cause those protestors are advocating, but I can’t stand their methods”...notice that the first half of this statement was approval of the only thing that matters—approval of the cause itself.
But that approval may have predated the protest, and might have been reduced by it. Have you encountered this research? “Extreme Protest Tactics Reduce Popular Support for Social Movements”. Abstract:
Social movements are critical agents of change that vary greatly in both tactics and popular support. Prior work shows that extreme protest tactics – actions that are highly counter-normative, disruptive, or harmful to others, including inflammatory rhetoric, blocking traffic, and damaging property – are effective for gaining publicity. However, we find across three experiments that extreme protest tactics decreased popular support for a given cause because they reduced feelings of identification with the movement. Though this effect obtained in tests of popular responses to extreme tactics used by animal rights, Black Lives Matter, and anti-Trump protests (Studies 1-3), we found that self-identified political activists were willing to use extreme tactics because they believed them to be effective for recruiting popular support (Studies 4a & 4b). The activist’s dilemma – wherein tactics that raise awareness also tend to reduce popular support – highlights a key challenge faced by social movements struggling to affect progressive change.
Excerpt:
Study 1. Participants read about a fictional animal rights activist group called Free the Vulnerable (FTV). The extremity of the movement’s protest behavior was manipulated at three levels: Moderate Protest, Extreme Protest, or Highly Extreme Protest conditions. The protesters in the two extreme protest conditions engaged in unlawful activities (e.g., breaking into an animal testing facility) modeled after protest activities of real-life activists, while the activists in the Moderate Protest condition peacefully marched in protest. [...] After participants read their assigned article, they completed measures of perceived extremity, social identification with the movement and support for it.
Important results: Social identification with the movement was 2.70, 2.48, 2.28 for moderate, extreme, and highly extreme protest conditions respectively. Support for the movement: 3.07, 2.60, 2.62.
Read more of the paper to see more similar results. It is nice to see them. For example, in the study with fictional BLM protests:
These results suggest that both African Americans and non-African Americans perceived protesters as more extreme and felt less support for them in the Extreme Protest condition.
[...] Thus, as with participant race, these results suggest that participants, regardless of their political ideology, reacted negatively to extreme protests.
And the study with fictional anti-Trump protests:
Together, these results suggest that regardless of pre-existing attitudes regarding Trump’s candidacy, participants in the Extreme Protest condition viewed the protesters as more extreme and reported less support for the movement.

localdeity 20 Mar 2025 21:54 UTC
3 points
1
in reply to: Mo Putera’s comment on: Mo Putera’s Shortform
I would also comment that, if the environment was so chaotic that roughly everything important to life could not be modeled—if general-purpose modeling ability was basically useless—then life would not have evolved that ability, and “intelligent life” probably wouldn’t exist.

localdeity 8 Mar 2025 10:16 UTC
2 points
0
in reply to: TsviBT’s comment on: Childhood and Education #9: School is Hell
You have a point, although I don’t think having a genuine feeling of despair is a hugely important variable. As the story goes:
[Method actor Dustin] Hoffman had a grueling scene coming up, where his character hadn’t slept in three days, and Hoffman told [Sir Laurence] Olivier that to prepare for the scene, he too hadn’t slept for 72 hours.
“My dear boy,” replied Olivier, “why don’t you try acting?”
But more generally, even if you want to teach some kind of set of skills and resilience for dealing with things like “sitting still for hours a day”, “doing hours of boring homework-like stuff”, “obeying lots of orders from authority figures”, etc., you can deliberately learn and practice each of them, and ramp up the difficulty more quickly, and probably reach a higher level in 8 months than most people reach in 12 years. U.S. Army boot camp is apparently 10 weeks, for example.

localdeity 7 Mar 2025 20:07 UTC
2 points
3
on: Childhood and Education #9: School is Hell
Is this a case for or against formal education? Either way, it is wise.
If one does accept the premise that feigning enthusiasm is a useful skill, that’s still not a good justification of formal education as it exists: it certainly doesn’t take 12 years of grade school to teach that skill.

localdeity 22 Feb 2025 13:57 UTC
2 points
0
on: The case for the death penalty
Epistemic status: this is an attempt to steelman the case for the death penalty
...
I do not believe in vengeance or justice. I do however believe in fixing problems. And it’s clear the only way to fix this problem is to put such people in positions where they cannot do anyone any harm.
Some people have complained that, when their opponents “steelman” their position, in practice it can mean they steelman a particular argument that is not their main argument. This struck me as a remarkably explicit and self-aware example of that.
I don’t know what the solution is. Maybe tell people not to use “steelmanning” in such cases, maybe tell people to stop expecting “steelmanning” to necessarily mean it won’t miss a central argument. Maybe decide that you should, e.g., say “I’m steelmanning this particular argument”, because if you say “I’m steelmanning the case for this conclusion” then that means you’re supposed to capture all important arguments for that conclusion.

localdeity 19 Feb 2025 0:38 UTC
2 points
0
in reply to: Brendan Long’s comment on: Born on Third Base: The Case for Inheriting Nothing and Building Everything
I personally recommend that all parents donate to the Localdeity Enrichment Fund, an important yet frequently overlooked cause area.

localdeity 19 Feb 2025 0:22 UTC
3 points
0
in reply to: CstineSublime’s comment on: Which things were you surprised to learn are not metaphors?
Whoever wrote that article is confused, since in the table in the section labeled “Analogy vs Simile: The Differences” they have several entries the wrong way around (compared to the two paragraphs preceding it).
It seems to me that you could use the same comparison for either an analogy or a simile. An analogy would usually be in the present tense, “X is like Y”, and followed by more explanation of the concept the analogy is meant to illustrate. A simile would more frequently be in the past tense as part of a narrative, and more frequently use other verbs than “is”—”X moved like a Y”—and probably wouldn’t extend beyond the current sentence, usually not even beyond that phrase. I think a bare statement of “X is like Y” might go either way.

localdeity 18 Feb 2025 23:16 UTC
8 points
0
on: The Unearned Privilege We Rarely Discuss: Cognitive Capability
The term “privilege” is bad here; prefer “advantage”. “Privilege”—privi-lege, private law—implies that there’s an authority deciding to grant it to some people and not others, which would be unjust (since most things that affect intelligence, such as genetics and childhood nutrition, happen long before a person does anything to “deserve” it more than others), which in turn encourages people to get angry and suspicious, and encourages the advantaged to feel embarrassed or even guilty by association when they’ve done nothing wrong. Calling it “privilege” is only useful if you want to encourage that kind of conflict.
That said, there are plenty of people who downplay the importance of intelligence, and/or exaggerate the degree to which it can be improved through hard work, educational interventions, school funding, etc. However, those people are much more likely to be social justice activists than rationalists. The #3 top voted post in the 2023 Less Wrong review was about how to use genetic technology to improve intelligence (and other qualities) in the general population. It’s interesting to note that the 2023 post is trying to fix the problem of people not being as smart as they would like to be, while this post’s recommendations do not include trying to fix that problem.

localdeity 13 Feb 2025 17:13 UTC
3 points
1
on: Skepticism towards claims about the views of powerful institutions
Other reasons:
Biases towards claiming agreement with one’s own beliefs
If the institution is widely trusted, respected, high status, etc., as well as powerful, then if Alice convinces you that the institution supports her beliefs, then you might be inclined to give more credence to Alice’s beliefs. That would serve Alice’s political agenda.
Weaker biases towards claiming disagreement with one’s own beliefs
If the institution is widely hated—for example al-Qaeda, the CIA, the KGB—or considered low status, crazy, and so on, then if Alice convinces you that the institution opposes her beliefs, that might make you more sympathetic to her, make you distrust arguments against her beliefs, and/or defuse preexisting arguments that support for Alice’s position comes mostly from these evil/crazy institutions.

localdeity 10 Feb 2025 15:32 UTC
2 points
0
in reply to: ChristianKl’s comment on: How identical twin sisters feel about nieces vs their own daughters
In Judaism, you’re not supposed to marry a non-Jew unless they convert to Judaism (a lengthy process from what I’ve heard), so I suspect the families on both sides of the deal are usually equally religious.
In any case, googling for “grief and genetic closeness study” yields this:
A Twin Loss Survey was completed by MZ and same-sex DZ twins following loss of a cotwin and nontwin relatives. Twin survivors (N = 612; MZ = 506; DZ, n = 106) included twins whose age at loss was 15 years or older. Participation age was M = 47.66 years (SD = 15.31). Hamilton’s inclusive fitness theory generated two hypotheses: (1) MZ twins will recall greater grief intensity at loss than DZ twins; (2) loss of a twin will receive greater grief intensity ratings than loss of nontwin relatives. [...] Part I: Hypotheses regarding grief intensity were supported.
And this, where the highlights are:
- Surviving MZ twins grieve more intensely for deceased co-twins than surviving DZ twins.
- Female twins grieve more intensely for deceased co-twins than male twins.
- Twins grieve more intensely for deceased co-twins than for other deceased relatives.
- Survivors’ grief intensity varies with genetic relatedness to the deceased.

localdeity 9 Feb 2025 22:02 UTC
2 points
0
on: How identical twin sisters feel about nieces vs their own daughters
Everything you say seems straightforwardly correct or a logical guess. I’d add:
- I expect identical twin sisters do feel closer to their nieces than non-identical sisters feel to their nieces. There would probably be a higher degree of discovering that this person just happens to have traits like your own.
- Even from a fully logical “optimize my inclusive genetic fitness” perspective, there is value, all else being equal, in most parent-child relationships that isn’t in most aunt-niece relationships. Because you raised this child, she probably trusts you, you know her strengths and weaknesses and where she needs help, etc.; you have a comparative advantage at helping your daughter vs helping your niece. (I speak of good parental relationships; of course, there are some where the parent has a comparative disadvantage. Also, if you know your child is a no-good criminal or something, and you know nothing about your identical sister’s child, then the latter may be a better bet for investing your resources; hence my saying “all else being equal”.)

localdeity 9 Feb 2025 21:49 UTC
2 points
0
in reply to: Kaj_Sotala’s comment on: How identical twin sisters feel about nieces vs their own daughters
I think there’s at least decent truth to it. One study:
This study examines gift giving at Israeli weddings. In accordance with kin selection theory, we hypothesized that wedding guests possessing greater genetic relatedness to the newlyweds would offer greater sums of money as wedding gifts. We also hypothesized that family members stemming from the maternal side (where the genetic lineage has higher kinship certainty) would offer the newlyweds more money than those stemming from the paternal side. Data on the monetary gift sums of the wedding guests from 30 weddings were collapsed according to two criteria: (a) genetic relatedness (0%, 6.25%, 12.5%, 25%, and 50%) and (b) kinship certainty (maternal or paternal lineage). Both hypotheses were supported.
I think I had also heard of studies that looked into either “how devastated would you feel”, or “how devastated did you feel”, regarding the death of a family member, and that these also fit the “genetic closeness” predictions. I don’t know exactly how they were done—obviously genetic closeness will correlate highly with family structure that gives you actual closeness, and one must control for that. But my impression is that the effect is real and significant, though of course not all-consuming.
There’s also an interview with someone who studied identical twins a lot, with various interesting things to say.

localdeity 7 Feb 2025 12:41 UTC
9 points
1
in reply to: Milan W’s comment on: Thread for Sense-Making on Recent Murders and How to Sanely Respond
I think the hemisphere stuff is quite literal. I think it’s general knowledge that the right eye feeds into the left side of the brain, and vice versa (Actually, looking it up, it is the case that the left is controlled by the right and vice versa, but I see some claims that the information feeds into both sides, in a nearly balanced manner^[1]; but I don’t know if Ziz knows that); and Ziz’s whole “unihemispheric sleep” thing tells you to keep one eye closed and distract the other eye so that eventually one hemisphere falls asleep.
1. ^
  Claude sez: “When nerve fibers cross at the optic chiasm, approximately 53-55% of nerve fibers cross to the opposite hemisphere, while 45-47% remain on the same side. This means that each hemisphere receives slightly different proportions of visual information from both eyes.” Wiki on Optic chiasm confirms: “The number of axons that do not cross the midline and project ipsilaterally depends on the degree of binocular vision of the animal (3% in mice and 45% in humans do not cross)”.

localdeity 5 Feb 2025 17:48 UTC
5 points
2
in reply to: Viliam’s comment on: Thread for Sense-Making on Recent Murders and How to Sanely Respond
BTW, on Ziz’s obituary someone wrote:
Like Jesus, he will arise from the dead.
not sure if sincere or trolling...
The date on that comment is Jan 30 2025. Methinks 90% likelihood it’s causally downstream from the recent murders and that the poster knows Ziz was never dead.

localdeity 5 Feb 2025 17:27 UTC
−1 points
0
in reply to: ChristianKl’s comment on: Thread for Sense-Making on Recent Murders and How to Sanely Respond
If you would use genetic studies to guide clinical trial representation for a drug to combat heart disease you would look at the genes associated with heart disease and see that mutations in those genes are evenly distributed in your clinical trial representation. You would not focus on the race with which people self-identify.
I asked Claude a few questions. I’ll just give snippets of the answers:
1. Are there scenarios where doctors recommend different doses of a medication, or other variations in a medical plan, based on a patient’s race?
  1. Yes. “For instance, some Asian populations metabolize certain antidepressants and antipsychotics differently, requiring adjusted dosages”; “African American patients often respond differently to certain blood pressure medications. Guidelines recommend specific first-line treatments like calcium channel blockers for this population.”
2. In these scenarios, have people found out the relevant genes that make the difference?
  1. Yes in some cases. “CYP2D6 gene: Affects metabolism of antidepressants, antipsychotics, and pain medications. Variations are more common in certain ethnic groups”; “HLA-B*1502 gene: Associated with severe skin reactions to carbamazepine in Asian populations, particularly those of Han Chinese descent.”
3. Are there cases where doctors adjust the treatment plan by race but don’t yet know which genes are relevant?
  1. Yes. “Kidney Disease: African Americans show different progression and treatment responses compared to other racial groups, with ongoing research to identify genetic factors”; “Differences in heart disease risk and medication response across racial groups are recognized, with some genetic pathways identified but not fully mapped.”
So. If you do know what genes make the difference, then of course that’s the best type of information to work with. But, particularly for polygenic effects, it may be that you have information about the relevance of race without knowing the genes in question. In that scenario, either you use the race information or you use nothing, and the former seems the better choice (though, yes, to the extent that “self-identification” means that someone would say “I’m X” instead of “I’m half-X and half-Y”, that makes the information lower-quality).

localdeity 2 Feb 2025 16:57 UTC
3 points
4
in reply to: Richard_Kennaway’s comment on: Thread for Sense-Making on Recent Murders and How to Sanely Respond
@Friendly Monkey , I’m replying to your reaction:
There are people who require multiple methods of persuasion before they act in the way you want. One category is decisionmakers for an organization, who have actually been persuaded by intimidation, but they can’t just say that, because they would look weak and possibly as though they’re defecting against the organization or its aims, so they need to sell it as some high-minded decision they’ve come to of their own accord. Or it could be the reverse: decisionmakers who are persuaded by your ideological arguments, but are funded / otherwise kept in charge by those who don’t care or have contempt for the ideology, so they need to sell it to their funders (presumably in private) as, “Hey, look, let’s be realistic here, if we do this then they’ll do that and we absolutely can’t afford that. But if we do this other thing, that won’t happen, and would it really be so bad? And we’ll tell the public that recent events have made us realize how important [...]”.
In both cases, it’s essential for you to have someone doing the intimidation and someone publicizing the high-minded arguments, and usually it works best if these are different people. (For example, if an intellectual who is respected by the mainstream (but only agreed with by a minority) starts making threats, that seems likely to lose them mainstream acceptance—such an ugly thing to be involved with, carrying out the threats even more so—and thus, for that reason among others, making the threats credible is more difficult than it would be for a thug who has nothing to lose.)
So, for those decisionmakers, if you have intimidation but not a public-friendly face (a book-publishing intellectual, an organization doing charity events, etc.), you get nothing, and if you have the friendly face but not intimidation, you also get nothing, but if you have both, then you win their support. It’s not a matter of “intimidation and friendliness each independently get diminishing marginal returns, and if you over-invest in one or even saturate it then that’s inefficient”; rather, you need both to have any success.
Incidentally, although violence was the subject above, I’ve used “intimidation”, which may be interpreted to also cover things like social shaming or threatening to arbitrarily cancel business deals. That makes the above patterns cover a lot of things done in recent years.
Another aspect: Frequently, the group doing the intimidation will claim it’s justified. One man’s threat of aggressive violence may be another man’s statement that he’ll act in self-defense or justified punishment, if they have different theories of rights, or perhaps disagreement about what happened.
The more mainstream-friendly group who is on their side… If they want to defend the behavior, then, depending on the circumstances, they have lots of options for their official position: the ideological, “It’s justified” or “It’s an overreaction but you do have to understand where they’re coming from”; the conversation-tactical, “Hey, look over there! Something more important is happening” or “Anyone who complains about this has contemptible traits XYZ and should be attacked”; the associational, “It wasn’t our people”, or even “It was a false flag”; the evidentiary, “It’s not as bad as they claim”, occasionally even “It didn’t happen”; and so on. (Any of these stances might have been chosen honestly, and might be correct, but, especially for the most sophisticated and the most ideological, one’s priors should be skeptical. Sometimes “Bounded Distrust” is applicable; it can be interesting to think through “If they could have taken and defended stance A, they probably would have, so the fact that they picked stance B tells me …”.)

localdeity

Biases towards claiming agreement with one’s own beliefs

Weaker biases towards claiming disagreement with one’s own beliefs