I think one thing to consider is that the two paths don’t have an equal % chance to succeed. Getting a tenure track position at a top 20 university is hard. Really hard. Getting a research scientist position is, based on my very uncertain and informal understanding, less hard.
Srdjan Miletic
I think this post presents a plausible explanation for why Europe colonised the world. I think my problem is that there are numerous other explanations with a great deal of supporting literature and argumentation and I don’t see much if any engagement with the alternative explanations in this post. In other words, I feel this post is trying to convince me of a certain answer without acknowledging the existence of other answers.
A few more specific thoughts:
Your model of why Europe wins:
Europe could choose when to fight by virtue of having long range ships = fights China.India at the most opportune times
Industrialisation ⇒ geographically separated empire ⇒ more industrialisation due to labour shortages and cheap raw resources
Christopher columbus = discovery of the new world = colonisation begins
I think there are a few problems with this model. First, long range ships and being able to devote enough resources to fight and win wars half way around the world are stupendous technological feats other civilizations were not capable of. I think you need an explanation for why Europe was first able to do these things while China/Arab states were not.
Secondly, the idea that a colonial empire speeds up industrialisation may or may not be true but a few things don’t line up:
European states without empires also industrialised rapidly
Britain started industrialising well before it had a substantial empire. in 1740, the “empire” was basically some parts of the US and Canada with negligible economic output compared to the mainland.
Finally, the idea that Columbus was necessary for colonisation to happen is something I’m skeptical of. Yes no discovery of America = no colonization of America but I don’t quite see why European colonization of other parts of the world was contingent on columbus.
Also, a few other popular explanations of why Europe pulled ahead:
Many competing states with a natural geography full of barriers stopping any single empire from forming and dominating = more competition/experimentation = more progress
Property rights and a strong trader/merchant class with a large degree of influence on government vs religious+millitary rule in the arab world. (Note this doesn’t apply to all of europe, more to the UK and netherlands. Doesn’t explain the success of other European nations)
Unique geographic features such as minimal natural disasters, large amounts of arable land, good climate, lots of large animals and good crops ⇒ higher pop density ⇒ more innovation and growth
European christianity being in a better state, somewhat de to the reformation, and that having ripple effects throughout society in terms of norms etc...
Hmmmm.
I find this super interesting, but as always I worry about selection effects.
There are many famous, successful and influential people in history. My question would be what % of those people had tutoring, cognitive apprenticeships etc...
This post chooses a number of famous people. Presumably the selection process goes something like this:
look at a list of famous people
look which ones have something written about their education
writes about those one
The problem is that those with unusual educations are more likely to have written about them. What if there are many famous/successful people who mostly had normal education
Agreed but it seems to me that agreeableness/conflict-avoidance makes you far more susceptible to frame-control. Not that it’s the only factor which matters or that a disagreeable person is immune.
I recently finished reading the book with a small group of friends. One thing we all thought was that the micro half of the book was far better written then the macro half. We all came away from the micro half with a clear, intuitive understanding of most of most of the concepts explained. On the other hand the macro explanations seemed to be both more complex and also less persuasive. There were a number of times we thought up obvious objections to a macro explanation, expected the book to cover it only to find that it moved on.
This sequence was incredibly interesting while also being very short and to the point. Thanks a great deal for writing it.
Generally speaking i think your hypothesis is interesting and plausible.
A few questions
For the narrow vs wide glass metaphor for population, does it really line up with the multi-century timelines involved? If populations can grow 2x every 20 years in these societies, wouldn’t europe have filled up with people much faster? Isn’t the fact that it didn’t down to a lack of technology (complex agriculture and settled states able to defend agriculture)?
How much evidence is there that concrete production fell due to lack of fuel as opposed to, say, economic collapse and constant civil wars drastically reducing demand for very expensive high-grade building materials?
Your model of intensive agriculture seems to be “everyone knows what it is but people won’t do it until it’s necessary”. Is this true? Isn’t intensive agri a super advanced tech which took centuries to develop and diffuse? Isn’t every pre-industrial society pretty much permanently at the malthusian limit, meaning everyone would already have an incentive to do intensive agriculture if possible.
Do you think the greeks developed so quickly because they were land bound and hence had to resort to intensive agriculture? Why not other hypothesis like them being next to the sea = hugely more mobility + trade = hugely more wealth = higher pop densities and more specialization in complex good creation.
That’s a good point. I’m used to the free withdrawals. Didn’t realize the costs until I looked at their blog just now.
Will update the article.
Why do you believe that proof-of-stake is a mirage? We know it’s possible as some existing blockchains already use it. Do you believe that:
It’s possible but has some serious flaw that most people don’t recognize
The main crypto’s of today (ETH + BTC) won’t transition to it
Something else
Hmmmm.
So when I read this post I initially thought it was good. But on second thought I don’t think I actually get that much from it. If I had to summarise it, I’d say
a few interesting anecdotes about experiments where measurement was misleading or difficult
some general talk about “low bit experiments” and how hard it is to control for cofounders
The most interesting claim I found was the second law of experiment design. To quote: “The Second Law of Experiment Design: if you measure enough different stuff, you might figure out what you’re actually measuring.”. But even here I didn’t get much clarity or new info. The argument seemed to boil down to “If you measure more things, you may find the actual underlying important variable”, which is true I guess but doesn’t seem particularly novel and also introduces other risks. e.g: That the more variables you measure the higher the chance that at least some of them will correlate just due to chance. There’s a pointer to a book which the author claims sheds more light on the topic and on modern statistical methods around experiment design more generally, but that’s it.
I think I also have a broader problem here, namely that the article feels a bit fuzzy in a way that makes it hard to pin down what the central claims are.
So yeah, I enjoyed it but on reflection I’m a bit less of a fan than I thought.
I think the general claim this post makes is
incredibly important
well argued
non obvious to many people
I think there’s an objection here that value != consumption of material resources, hence the constraints on growth may be far higher than the author calculates. Still, the article is great
I don’t think the conclusion “stateless societies are not in a Hobbesian state of constant war” is warranted here. With stateless societies or those in a weak state, the war isn’t between members of the group/family/clan/tribe. It’s between different groups. Within a group people are still subject to rules, sanctions for bad behaviour etc...
I agree that there are many metrics on which you can judge a language. My post above was meant to be more about writing systems specifically than languages generally. (Sorry for the lack of clarity). Given a set language with a certain vocabulary, grammar etc.. I don’t why a phonemic system of writing would lead to less communication bandwidth, expressiveness, ambiguity etc… than a non phonemic one. Ditto for logogramatic writing systems.
In essence my mental model is that you can say certain things in certain ways with a given language. Which writing system you use effects how hard or easy it is to change from verbal language to written language, but the writing system itself doesn’t change the expressiveness, signalling, capacity fo intentional ambiguity etc...
Also, even if you think that ease of learning is not the only/most important metric, I still think it’s worth taking into account and giving at least a fair amount of weight to. After all a language which is far harder to learn (e.g: chinese) will result in a far smaller pool of literate people and even the people who are literate will be comparatively less so than in an alternate world where their language use a easier to learn writing system.
I agree. There are a few feairly simple ways to implement this kind of transparancy.
When a comment is deleted, change it’s title to [deleted] and remove any content. This at least shows when censorship is happening and roughly how much.
When a comment is deleted, do as above but give users the option to show it by clicking on a “show comment” button or something similar.
Have a “show deleted comments” button on users profile pages. Users who want to avoid seeing the kind of content that is typically censored can do so. Those who would prefer to see everything can just enable the option and see all comments.
I think these features would add at least some transparancy to comment moderation. I’m still unsure how to make user bans transparent. I’m worried that without doing so, bad admins can just bad users they dislike and give the impression of a balanced discussion with little censorship.
I’m in two minds about this post.
On one hand, I think the core claim is correct Most people are generally too afraid of low negative EV stuff like lawsuits, terrorism, being murdered etc… I think this is also a subset of the general argument that goes something like “most people are too cowardly. Being less cowardly is in most cases better”
That being said, I have a few key problems with this article that make me downvote it.
I feel like it’s writing to persuade, not to explain. It’s all arguments for not caring about lawsuits and no examination of why you maybe should care. (Is the entier medical industry + pretty much every newspaper just randomly irrational in the same direction? Are we really sure we know better than the market what the risk of being sued actually is?)
I also think there’s quite a bit of fairly questionable argumentation as pointed out in the comments. e.g: comparing the current cost of claims against current $ spent on mitigation when the comparison should be with the cost of lawsuits in a no mitigation counterfactual, the fact that legal stats referenced are about cases that go to court, not out of court settlements which is 99% of cases etc...
- 20 Jan 2023 20:54 UTC; 8 points) 's comment on The 2021 Review Phase by (
- 23 Jan 2023 19:40 UTC; 6 points) 's comment on The 2021 Review Phase by (
- 27 Jan 2023 23:35 UTC; 2 points) 's comment on Highlights and Prizes from the 2021 Review Phase by (
Counterpoint: Sometimes you don’t have a clear title because you don’t have a clear understanding of what you want to say. Starting by writing and iterating can help you clarify your thoughts and eventually lead to a clear title & article once you’re clearer on what you’re thinking/want to say.
It’s not necessarily clear that disaster relief is better handled by the government. A few things to keep in mind:
It’s not a choice between markets or government. You can have both. (e.g: The army and rescue services organizing huge logistics efforts to resupply effected regions/clear roads. At the same time supermarkets are allowed to sell goods at inflated prices, incentivizing them to store a surplus in future cases where disasters may happen as they can make a profit large enough to offset the cost of keeping excess stock in inventory.)
The same incentive problems that apply to gov’s generally also apply here. A shop owner, assuming price gouging is allowed, is incentivized to keep a small surplus of disaster items in stock even though they won’t sell in normal times because of the small chance of an extraordinary profit if a disaster strikes. The government, even thought it should ideally keep track of and prepare for disasters, often won’t due to it being in no individual’s interests to do so. e.g: Lack of food stockpiling in New Orleans prior to Katrina.
I don’t quite think you’ve solved the problem of induction.
I think there’s a fairly serious issue with your claim that being able to predict something accurately means you necessarily fully understand the variables which causes it because determinism.
The first thing to note is that “perfect predictability implies zero mutual information” plays well with approximation: approximately perfect predictability implies approximately zero mutual information. If we can predict the sled’s speed to within 1% error, then any other variables in the universe can only influence that remaining 1% error. Similarly, if we can predict the sled’s speed 99% of the time, then any other variables can only matter 1% of the time. And we can combine those: if 99% of the time we can predict the sled’s speed to within 1% error, then any other variables can only influence the 1% error except for the 1% of sled-runs when they might have a larger effect.
That’s not really the cases. E.g: let’s say that ice cream melt twice as fast in galaxies without a supermassive black hole at the center. You do experiments to see how fast ice cream melts. After controlling for type of ice cream, temperature, initial temp of the ice cream, airflow and air humidity, you find that you can predict how ice cream melts. You triumphantly claim that you know which things cause ice cream to melt at different rates, having completely missed the black hole’s effects.
Essentially, controlling for A & B but not C won’t tell you whether C has a causal influence on the thing you’re measuring unless
you intentionally change C between experiments (not practical given googleplexes of potential causal factors)
C happens to naturally vary quite a bit and so makes your experimental results different, cluing you in to the fact that you’re missing something.
I don’t know the facts of the matter and have not heard the other side of the story. Hence, I cannot determine whether the group was justified in excluding you or not. I think the same goes for most people here.
If you feel a group associated with EA/LW has acted unfairly towards you, you have a right to air your grievances.
I’d say publicly naming groups and decisions you believe, rightly or wrongly, to be unjust is good. Events like this happen far too often behind closed doors. Transparency is something we should strive for.
Ultimately, the Zurich EA group is not an official organisation representing EA. They are just a bunch of people who decide to meet up once in a while. They can choose who they do and do not allow into their group, regardless of how good/bad their reasons, criteria or disciplinary procedures are.
I think this post does two things well:
helps lower the internal barrier for what is “worth posting” on LW
helps communicate the epistemic/communication norms that define good rationalish writing
This article gives me a strange feeling of looking through a mirror into a very different kind of world. I’m highly disagreeable. Vulnerability to frame control seems to stem from being agreeable/conflict-avoidant/unassertive. I personally find many of the situations where person A tries to frame control person person B and person B just silently takes it and doesn’t say anything (at least in the initial stages) really weird and hard to imagine myself doing. Further, while rationally I know people behave like this, I really can’t put myself in their shoes and see why. The reactions to situations just seem so different from what mine would be.
E.g:
The burning man example. If I made a point and another person suggested people just listen to me because I’m tall/eloquent/have other trait X, I’d immediately confront them. I can’t imagine letting a shitty argumentative tactic like that slide, much less the insult it implies.
The student who asks the master a question, the master then responds by asking the student what motivates them to seek problems. Again, my response would be to pointedly confront the master and point out that they haven’t answered my question.