Wednesday, February 28, 2018

Huemer's Gun Control-War on Terror Parallel

Philosopher Michael Huemer is on a role on Facebook. Here's the quote in full: 
I’m going to explain some of my views about two issues, views that people often have difficulty understanding or sympathizing with. Leftists have trouble with one issue; rightists have trouble with the other. By explaining my views on both issues, I’m going to make them easier for both sides to understand. If you’re left-wing, start with section I, then continue to II. If you’re right-wing, start with section II, then I.
.
I. Terrorism
a. I think most of the government’s policy on terrorism (going to war, torturing terror suspects, etc.) is bad. I don’t know *for sure* that it doesn’t work, but I think (1) it violates rights, (2) we don’t have compelling enough evidence that it works, and (3) there are plausible arguments that it is even counterproductive. (Some people might be motivated to commit terrorism *by* the government’s anti-terror policies.) (4) We're creating the sort of precedents that transform a free country to an unfree one over time. (1)-(4) together make the policy unjustified.
b. This does not show that I don’t care about terrorism, or that I’m unpatriotic, or that I don’t mind people being blown up. And I think that anyone who suggests these things is Behaving Very Badly. Suggestions like that should be immediately dismissed with disdain in a civilized culture.
c. If a politician agrees with me on (a), the most likely explanation is that this politician is persuaded by the same sort of reasons I am. The explanation is not that the politician was paid off by someone, that he’s a Muslim, that he’s unpatriotic, etc. I think you should accept this even if you think I’m mistaken on (a). And I think someone who suggests otherwise is, again, Behaving Very Badly.
d. The threat of terrorism is vastly overblown. In the last 50 years or so, about 3,300 Americans were murdered by terrorists, while about 800,000 were murdered by non-terrorists. We should stop freaking out about a relatively tiny risk.
e. If a new terrorist attack occurs somewhere tomorrow, I will not change my position on (a). It won’t change the relevant evidence, and I don’t form beliefs based on emotion. I also won’t call any politicians dogmatic, unpatriotic, uncaring, or otherwise bad if they, too, stick to their position on (a) after a new terror attack.
f. If Republicans seize on the new terror attack as an opportunity to push through new anti-terror policies that otherwise wouldn’t get passed, I now believe, in advance, that the new terror policies will almost certainly be ill-considered and bad.
g. By the way, I think the media should stop reporting terrorist attacks, since this motivates terrorists to perform such attacks: they want to be covered in the media so they can cause fear. Also, people who are prone to violence to begin with are more likely to think about doing a terror attack, and to perceive it as a thing that people do, as more such attacks are shown and discussed on the news.
.
II. Guns
a. I think most gun control policies (restrictions on carrying concealed guns, gun free zones, etc.) are bad. I don’t know *for sure* that they don’t work, but I think (1) they violate rights, (2) we don’t have compelling enough evidence that they work, and (3) there are plausible arguments that they are even counterproductive. (Some people might be deterred from committing crime by the knowledge that ordinary citizens may be armed.) (4) We're creating the sort of precedents that transform a free country to an unfree one over time. (1)-(4) together make the policy unjustified.
b. This does not show that I don’t care about children, or that I don’t mind people being shot. And I think that anyone who suggests these things is Behaving Very Badly. Suggestions like that should be immediately dismissed with disdain in a civilized culture.
c. If a politician agrees with me on (a), the most likely explanation is that this politician is persuaded by the same sort of reasons I am. The explanation is not that the politician was paid off by someone, that he’s callous, that he’s clueless, etc. I think you should accept this even if you think I’m mistaken on (a). And I think someone who suggests otherwise is, again, Behaving Very Badly.
d. The threat of mass shootings is vastly overblown. The U.S. murder rate is about 4.9 per 100,000 population per year. The comparable *mass shooting* death rate is about 0.002. We should stop freaking out about a relatively tiny risk.
e. If a new mass shooting occurs tomorrow, I will not change my position on (a). It won’t change the relevant evidence, and I don’t form beliefs based on emotion. I also won’t call any politicians dogmatic, unpatriotic, uncaring, or otherwise bad if they, too, stick to their guns (pun intended) on (a) after a new shooting.
f. If Democrats seize on the new shooting as an opportunity to push through new anti-gun policies that otherwise wouldn’t get passed, I now believe, in advance, that the new gun policies will almost certainly be ill-considered and bad.
g. I think the media should stop reporting mass shootings, since this motivates shooters to perform such attacks: they want to be covered in the media so they can be famous. Also, people who are prone to violence to begin with are more likely to think about doing a mass shooting, and to perceive it as a thing that people do, as more such attacks are shown and discussed on the news.
.
III. How Ideologues React
When I say these things, leftists applaud (I) but indignantly protest or ridicule (II). Rightists applaud (II) but protest (I). If you’re inclined toward one of these reactions, please consider the possibility that you’re just being a goddamned ideologue, and stop it.

We might say "partisan" instead of "ideologue"

Bryan Caplan comments:
Nice symmetry, though it's worth pointing out that the collateral damage of the War on Terror is many times larger than the collateral damage of gun control.

Tuesday, February 27, 2018

Econtalk on Ideology Vs. Partisans

One takeaway I got from this econtalk was not to confuse ideologues with partisans. Most people are partisans because upon closer analysis, they don't hold anything close to a competent ideology. Instead, they're engrossed in tribal warfare. They love to signal their allegiance to their tribe with belief badges. They not only fail at intellectual empathy with the other side, even trying is borderline treacherous to their side (why would you want to intellectually empathize with Socialists or Nazis?) Their worldview is a fantasy game of good vs. evil, not the logical working out a web of interrelated beliefs.

This is made even more clear by reflecting on what the red and blue tribe's beliefs even have to do with each other. Why should the pro-choice position be correlated with the high tax position? Smarter partisans will hold a few contrarian belief cards in their back pocket, just to prove they're not partisans. But logically unrelated beliefs should have absolutely no predictive power over one another. And yet if I know you think we need to build a wall on the Mexican boarder, that highly predicts that you also don't support more gun control. That's partisanship, not ideology.


Saturday, February 24, 2018

Meta-analysis on Gender Interests

A meta-analysis on effect of gender on interests:
Results showed that men prefer working with things and women prefer working with people, producing a large effect size (d 0.93) on the Things–People dimension. Men showed stronger Realistic (d 0.84) and Investigative (d 0.26) interests, and women showed stronger Artistic (d 0.35), Social (d 0.68), and Conventional (d 0.33) interests. Sex differences favoring men were also found for more specific measures of engineering (d 1.11), science (d 0.36), and mathematics (d 0.34) interests. Average effect sizes varied across interest inventories, ranging from 0.08 to 0.79
The present study suggests that interests may play a critical role in gendered occupational choices and gender disparity in the STEM fields
 There is a huge disparity between what they're saying in science, and what can be said in public.

Friday, February 23, 2018

Heumer on Emotional Decision Making

Michael Huemer's Facebook should be a blog.

Most recently, he wrote a post that moved my Bayesian needle his way.
Two general questions I was just wondering about:
1. At what time do we typically form the most reliable judgments: when we reflect calmly, or when we are maximally emotional? Are there cases where we are more reliable when most emotional?
2. When do governments typically make the wisest policy choices: when the public is calm, or when they are filled with panic, outrage, or other intense emotions?

Here are two cases you might want to take into account in thinking about the answer:
a. When should we expect a wise, effective, and properly measured response to the threat of terrorism to be devised? On what theory is the answer "Right after a major terrorist attack"?
b. When should we expect wise, effective, and properly measured gun policy to be devised? On what theory is the answer "Right after a mass shooting of children"?
After answering those questions, here's another one to reflect on:
3. On what view, or for what set of goals, is the best time for making major policy decisions the time when the public is filled with terror, outrage, grief, or other intense emotions?
Brilliant. 

Thursday, February 22, 2018

Conservative allegences

1. Everything is Racism

Liberals have become the party that goes around calling people racist all the time, and I don't think most Americans want to be a part of that. Although I think it's politically suicide to become that kind of leftist, we might want to consider whether or not they're correct.

My view of conservatives is that they're extremely loyal people. When moral psychologist Jonathan Haidt measures the moral foundations of political parties, he finds that conservatives care more about loyalty, sanctity, and authority. Liberals care more about care and fairness. So the question is, what are conservatives loyal to? Their race?

I think national loyalty and party loyalty are well established. "American First" is the explicit slogan of the right. And conservative hypocrisy feeds liberal comedy shows like The Daily Show or Last Week Tonight.

When a Republican wants infrastructure spending it's alright, when a liberal does it its socialism.

When a Republican president signs a bunch of executive orders in the first 100 days it's fine, when a liberal does it it's tyranny

When a Republican blows up the debt it's whatevs, when a liberal does it it's one more step toward the demise of the United States of America.

But wait, the last Democrat was black, so we can tell the same story about the white president and the black president. When our white president wanted X it was fine, but when our black president wanted X it was terrible. So that's the narrative that a lot of liberals have gone with. But they're not sufficiently disengangling national loyalty and party loyalty with race loyalty.

And that's where these accusations of white nationalism frustrate me. Why throw white in there, pure nationalism explains pretty all that needs to be explained. Why do you have to call people racist too? Especially since racism is such a vile accusation. People are fine with being biased toward their country or their party, They're often explicit about it, but if they're biased toward their race that's a special kind of evil. I don't think grownups should go around calling each other those kinds of names without some kind of burden of proof.

2. Separating Race from Nation and Party

It's not easy to find proper controls for nationalism and party loyalty to try to discover how much is really race loyalty. The United States is a country of primarily white people, and blacks are underrepresented in the Republican tribe too.

But isn't black underrepresentation among the red tribe evidence of racism? Not really. Blacks are strongly underrepresented in
Runners (3%). Bikers (6%). Furries (2%). Wall Street senior management (2%). Occupy Wall Street protesters (unknown but low, one source says 1.6% but likely an underestimate). BDSM (unknown but low) Tea Party members (1%). American Buddhists (~2%). Bird watchers (4%). Environmentalists (various but universally low). Wikipedia contributors (unknown but low). Atheists (2%). Vegetarian activists (maybe 1-5%). Yoga enthusiasts (unknown but low). College baseball players (5%). Swimmers (2%). Fanfiction readers (2%). Unitarian Universalists (1%).

And then occupations like dentists, surgeons, business owners, and car salesmen are underrepresented among Democrats. Does that mean it must be discrimination?

Personality seems to be the main factor triggering all these correlations. So I don't think it's enough to say, "black people don't vote Republican so you must be racist. Har har har."

I think there is a group that properly disentangles race from these other forms of loyalty. And it's pictured here:



Conservatives seem to like this group of people. They're southern, conservative, God-fearing, Christians. But they're black, where did all the racism go?



Racism's back, oh wait a sec,



Conservative racism went away again. Oh, wait, I feel another one coming


There's the racism again.

What's going on? Well, when you make other races more American, Christian, and conservative, the right seems to embrace ethnic diversity. 

They don't like China, but they love Hawaii.

They don't like Mexico, but they love Puerto Rico (when you inform them that Puerto Rico is an American territory). 

They don't like Barack Obama, but they love black church people.

When you actually control for these other differences, conservatives don't seem to care all that much about race. If I were a liberal who has been keeping racism at the tip of my tongue whenever I talk politics, I would feel ashamed. I mean, who calls other people such a vicious name with such a low burden of proof?

Wednesday, February 21, 2018

3 Great Podcasts

The stars aligned and brought me three awesome guests to three great podcasts last week

Bryan Caplan on the Rationally Speaking Podcast: Julia gave Bryan one of the best interviews I've heard. She was very challenging, and really tried to break his theory. Bryan replied brilliantly.

Steven Pinker on the Ezra Klein Show: Ezra Klein is so much better in speaking than writing. It's not like his writing is bad, it's just so slanted toward liberalism. When he speaks he's much more thoughtful. His approach is much more detached, and every bit as articulate. 

Steven Pinker of course is delightful. He's one of my favorite intellectuals to listen to. The vocabulary he uses to capture ideas is one of his greatest advantages.

Jordan Peterson joined Russ Roberts on Econtalk: They get into Jordan's book 12 rules for life, and talk about the bible a little more than I would expect.

Tuesday, February 20, 2018

Should Whites Pay Reparations?

1. Ezra's Thesis 

Ezra Klein on the compound interest of slavery
it's relatively easy for people to think in terms of the compound interest that's accrued to the income stolen from African Americans. But the power of compound interest doesn't just apply to money. It also applies to education and families and neighborhoods and self-respect. And this is where Coates' piece is so devastating. America didn't just plunder what African-Americans earned, or what they had saved. By far the hardest part of the piece to read was this account of what slavery did to black families:
It's as simple and clear as a child's math problem. The people who benefited most from American racism weren't the white men who stole the penny. It's the people who held onto the penny while it doubled and doubled and doubled and doubled.
2. Cowen's Criticism

It's easy for liberals to fall in love with this kind of argument, and neglect to put it under critical scrutiny. Luckily there are people like Tyler Cowen, who points out that any white American who has a single ancestor who at least for a while, had zero or near-zero net wealth would be except from this analysis.

Also, while it is at least controversial whether slavery was a profitable institution, even if it was it wasn't like the gains to whites were mirror images of the losses to slaves.

One last point by Tyler is that empirically, it doesn't seem like slavery-heavy regions have had especially impressive per capita incomes.

Tyler Cowen focus's in on the wealth aspect, but Ezra Klein also said it applies to education, families, neighborhoods, and self respect. This seems like kind of a floaty, wishy-washy, argument that a better writer than logician would make. I would like to hear the details of how exactly self-respect is supposed to compound interest.

With things like education where every new generation must start from scratch (every baby is a new brain to fill), it's hard to see how it compounds. Maybe parents have more to teach their children, but that explanation omits the exponential factor of compound interest. Maybe your parents teach you 5 lessons that they've learned over their lifetime, you add 2 things, and now you have 7 to teach your children. But that's not like compound interest at all. That's just addition.

Empirically, is there really much reason to believe children are taking what their parents taught them and adding to it? I'm skeptical

3. SlateStar's Criticism

SlateStar also resists Ezra's idea that slavery is like compound interest. He says we should look at whether formerly slave-owning societies are richer than formerly non-slave-owning societies. And that much of the reason wealth persists over generation isn't the inherited money, but the inherited genes. He says,
we would need to randomly select a bunch of people, give them a lot of wealth, and follow them for a couple of generations to see whether their descendants compounded that advantage or regressed back to their genetically programmed level. 
He cites studies that look at exactly this. One is an interesting natural experiment where Georgia lotteried away large fertile farms in the 1800s, and a couple generations down the line were no better off because of it.

And then we have studies of modern day lottery winners, and it doesn't seem like their grandkids are better off either.

I should note that both Slatestar's links are broken. The post is from 2014 after all. I would like to re-discover these studies.

4. More to say

It's all well and good to say, 'if you had taken $1 white slave owners gained and put it in a bank account it would be worth a zillion dollars today.' But that didn't happen. So I don't think it's okay to act like whites all inherited some great fortune from their great great great great grandparents, when most of them clearly didn't.

Normal people are repulsed by the idea of inherited debt, and I think it keeps this reparations thing from gaining any sort of traction. Even if we look at a single generation: if your dad owes my dad $100 but then dies before he pays up, you don't owe me anything. But some liberals want to go back to distant generations to assess which debts are inherited to which groups of people.

This is strange to me. It seems like closer proximity ancestors are much closer to who I am and what I'm responsible for than ancestors I've never even met. We also have a whole lot more information, and allows us to be more precise about who owes who what.

For some reason they only want to go back to slavery, and never pre-slavery. Because before slavery we had to import slaves, and we know that frequently the modern off-spring of slaves have much higher wealth as a result of their ancestors being imported from, say, Congo.

Suppose you were waiting to be born, and an angel offered you to be born in one of two lives. One where your great great great great great grandfather was imported to America as a slave, or one where he remained in West Africa? From a purely selfish standpoint, which one would you choose? It shouldn't be a hard decision.

I say, "some reason", but it's not a mystery. The argument I give above is disgusting, especially to liberals. To think that slavery could have benefited the great great great grandchildren of it's victims! I guess you're just going to have to decide how you're willing to stray from your comfort zone when thinking about these kinds of things.

So looking at the whole matter again, what I find so intellectually disingenuous is the insistence of inherited debt only for these two groups of people (whites, blacks, and sometimes natives), and only for this one thing that happened (slavery / taking of native land). There are a million other ways to cut up human diversity and a million other time frames, but none of them are mentioned. I think it's because liberals sacralize these victim groups in particular.

Monday, February 19, 2018

Jordan peterson on Parenting

Since I've been interested in Jordan Peterson, I've wanted to ask him about Judith Rich Harris and The Nurture Assumption. The basic idea of the book is that while it's intuitive to think parents are molding their children into who they will be for the rest of their lives, the scientific data says parents are overestimating their own importance.

So it's a good thing Russ Roberts of EconTalk asked Jordan Peterson just that. Peterson's response:

Yeah, it's not true.
Well, it's really--it's an interesting thing to think about. Because what happens is that if you set up the preconditions in your household properly, then the shared environmental variance disappears. And so it looks like you are not doing anything. But that's misleading. Like, so, imagine your child has a nature and a fair bit of that is determined temperamentally, biologically. And then what you want to do is establish an individual relationship with that child, so that what they are can maximize. And the statistical processes that are used to analyze those effects aren't sufficiently sophisticated to pick up the individuality of what you are doing. And so they risk throwing the baby away with the bathwater. Like, if you treat all your children as if they are the same, then that's going to be trouble.
I don't think Bryan Caplan would agree.

Saturday, February 17, 2018

School Practices Free Range Parenting

A school in New Zealand allows "no rules recess," where kids climb high trees, craft weapons, and ride bikes toward brick walls.




I don't know if they hit the optimum risk/reward ratio when it comes to the FreeRange vs. Helicopter Parenting debate, but I'd trade the status quo for this any day.

A part of the video goes into how free play promotes the psychological development of the prefrontal cortex, which is along the lines of what Peter Gray has been saying (his Ted Talk here).

Hat tip goes to LetGrow for posting the video.

Friday, February 16, 2018

Everyone has 12 Rules to Life Now

Jordan Peterson finished his book, 12 Rules to life, and now it's an Amazon top seller.

The Rules are:
Rule 1 Stand up straight with your shoulders back
Rule 2 Treat yourself like you would someone you are responsible for helping
Rule 3 Make friends with people who want the best for you
Rule 4 Compare yourself with who you were yesterday, not with who someone else is today
Rule 5 Do not let your children do anything that makes you dislike them
Rule 6 Set your house in perfect order before you criticise the world
Rule 7 Pursue what is meaningful (not what is expedient)
Rule 8 Tell the truth – or, at least, don’t lie
Rule 9 Assume that the person you are listening to might know something you don’t
Rule 10 Be precise in your speech
Rule 11 Do not bother children when they are skate-boarding
Rule 12 Pet a cat when you encounter one on the street
In light of Peterson's book, Tyler Cowen and Russ Roberts have also written 12 rules to life.

My favorite from Cowen:
Study the symbolic systems of art, music, literature. and religion, if only to help yourself better understand alternative points of view in political and intellectual discourse. Don’t just spend time with the creations you like right away. Avoid “devalue and dismiss.
My favorite from Russ Roberts:
Hold your anger for a day...
If something riles you up, wait a day before responding either in person or in an email.
 Aaaand it looks like someone else has just written 12 Rules to Life. My favorite:
An effortless process always leads to better results than a controlling one.

Thursday, February 15, 2018

Humans Create More than Extinctions

How Humans create new biodiversity,
We have created scores of entirely new creatures, such as the hundreds of breeds of domestic cats and dogs living alongside us. We have intentionally and unwittingly transported all sorts of organisms — bacteria, ants, rodents, cattle, crops, garden plants, and roadside weeds — across the globe, to places they could never have reached on their own. We have formed numerous new environmental niches in our cities and suburbs, which many hardy critters have used to their advantage. And we have even spurred the hybridization of wild species, resulting in new chimeras, such as the Italian sparrow, yellow-flowered Yorkwort, and apple flies.

Wednesday, February 14, 2018

Individualistic Altruism

In a 2017 study examining five decades worth of data across 78 countries — from Norway to Nigeria, and Canada to Colombia — psychologists Henri Santos, Michael Varnum, and Igor Grossmann found that people increasingly report that they value friends more relative to family, want their children to be independent, and value free expression. All of these values are closely associated with individualism.
From NPR, Could a more Individualistic World also be a more Altruistic One?

It makes me think about the individualism found within the Rationalist Community and their tendency toward Effective Altruism.

Tuesday, February 13, 2018

Should we care if Human's Kill all the Polar Bears

According to Google,
More than 99 percent of all species, amounting to over five billion species, that ever lived on Earth are estimated to be extinct.
 Most of which had nothing to do with humans, obviously.

Many seem concerned that humans are responsible for the extinction of nearly 500 species since 1900. Some others seem very worried that man-mad global warming might wipe out some particular species, like Polar Bears. I don't have a particular fondness of polar bears, but even if I did I think I'd be able to accept the reality that species come and go all the time.

But what about the rate of extinctions? Aren't humans wiping out species way faster than usual? If we value biodiversity, then this would be awful.

It seems like the answer is yes and no. Humans create a lot of extinctions, but human beings are also responsible for the creation of many new varieties of life.
We have created scores of entirely new creatures, such as the hundreds of breeds of domestic cats and dogs living alongside us. We have intentionally and unwittingly transported all sorts of organisms — bacteria, ants, rodents, cattle, crops, garden plants, and roadside weeds — across the globe, to places they could never have reached on their own. We have formed numerous new environmental niches in our cities and suburbs, which many hardy critters have used to their advantage. And we have even spurred the hybridization of wild species, resulting in new chimeras, such as the Italian sparrow, yellow-flowered Yorkwort, and apple flies.
 So forgive me if I don't care that much about Polar Bears.

Monday, February 12, 2018

Long Live Jordan Peterson

Jordan Peterson. Apparently, he's popular. Tyler Cowen called him one of the most influential public intellectuals, right alongside Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg.

He's a University of Toronto clinical psychologist who first earned his fame standing up for free speech. Or maybe he stood up for hate speech if you want to call it that. A consistent commitment to absolutely free speech doesn't seem very tenable these days, so I guess we're seeing how far we're going to allow that ball to roll.

The bottom line was that there was a bill mandating gender neutral pronouns, and Jordan Peterson didn't like that. He called them the artificial constructions of radical ideologues. So he testified before the senate, debated it, and protested the issue on talk shows.

So the guy found some popularity. Tens of thousands followed the matter. But it wasn't until his interview on Channel 4 News conducted by Cathy Newman that his popularity jumped into the millions.



My interpretation of the interview is the same as many people's. Cathy tries to cram words into his mouth, argue with a fabricated picture of Jordan, and because like so many she has sacralized gender equality, she's unable to engage in nuance, statistical literacy, or intellectual empathy.

In contrast how did he come off? Well, he calmly and comprehensively rebutted her. Though you can see both of them becoming increasingly uncomfortable as the interview went on.

Afterward, a dozen awful articles were written framing him as a bully, and her as a victim. But my sense is that for every one person who thought he was a villain, there were 20 who thought he was a hero.

And this is very interesting because we never hear from those people who are annoyed with the radical PC left. If they're anything like me, they're not exactly conservatives. But they keep quiet because their friends to the left are so damn hostile about these sorts of things. I mean, on Facebook if I even suggest that men and women are biologically different, and that might have something to do with differences in the gender pay gap, the reaction will be pure fury.

So people like me who would love to vote for the liberal side, instead votes for Trump, or votes third party, or doesn't vote at all. I suspect there are a lot of people like this, and Jordan Peterson's following demonstrates it.

I also found it interesting that Trump ran not on racism, but on anti-PC, and garnered immense popularity as a result. Peterson does not have much in common with Trump, but the nerve they hit into was the same.



The video above was actually my first introduction to Jordan Peterson. I watched it for Jonathan Haidt, not for Jordan Peterson, but Peterson still made an impression on me. He was able to have such a "psychological geek conversation" with Jonathan Haidt, and then the overlap with Paul Bloom's psychology lectures lent Peterson even more intellectual credit in my eyes.

Put Steven Pinker in a room with Jon Haidt, Jordan Peterson, and Paul Bloom, and my world might explode.

Jordan Peterson also has a series of lectures on the psychological significance of biblical stories. These lectures are long and packed. An idea I found especially interesting is that knowledge can be embedded in our subconscious before it's fully articulated or even cognitively recognized. This kind of background knowledge can manifest itself in behavior or even dreams. Maybe it's not true, but it's really interesting.

The other big idea that I took away from these lectures is this: because these biblical stories were handed down verbally for many many years, they had to be remembered. This mechanism weeded out unmemorable aspects of these stories. What's left is only the most memorable aspects, and that's how these stories get their psychological power. That's why we find such depth in even the shortest of passages. That, to me, is fascinating.

The best article I've read about Jordan Peterson is called, How Awful is Jordan Peterson.
But Mr. Peterson is not the leading public intellectual of our age. He can be turgid. Much of what he says is not terribly original. A lot of it is a skillful summation of the science – not the science taught in gender-studies courses, but the science taught in evolutionary psychology. His strength is that he tackles important subjects in an accessible way.
One insightful criticism of Peterson is that he has gained a lot of stature by attacking post-modernists who are intellectually weak. The same blogger mentioned that,
There is something disconcerting about the fact that his ideas seem to come across better in a format that allows for less editorial polishing
 That seems fair to me.

Conservatives tend to frame things with a civilization vs. barbarism story (as opposed to the oppression frame of liberals). Looking at things this way, it seems like Jordan Peterson is on the right. His warnings of civilization's degradation also fits him into the right wing according to the thrive/survive theory of the political spectrum. Jordan Peterson also believes in God and is something like a Christian, albeit not a traditional or fundamentalist one - another right wing quality. But Peterson seems nothing like the far right. Making him one of the few right wing intellectuals I can stand.

Thursday, February 8, 2018

Male/Female differences account for

"The reasons behind such a drastic discrepancy are wide and debated, but several factors are commonly accepted as potentially contributing to the higher rate of suicide in men (Brent & Moritz, 1996; Chehil & Kutcher, 2012); compared to women, men choose more lethal methods, are more impulsive, are less likely to seek help for emotional problems, and express depression differently (Rich, Ricketts, Fowler, & Young, 1988)"
What? You mean men and women are different?

When we talk about the pay gap, natural gender differences aren't allowed to even come up. But when we talk about suicide rates, prison rates, homelessness rate, average lifespans, and number of Darwin Awards among other statistics, the idea that it could be due to simple biology is recognized.

Tuesday, February 6, 2018

Joe Rogan and Steven Pinker's

Hair jokes aside, Steven Pinker made it onto Joe Rogan's show. Go watch it.



Monday, February 5, 2018

Proverbs on Easing Misery with Alcohol

Proverbs 31:6-7 says,
Give strong drink unto him that is ready to perish, and wine unto those that be of heavy hearts. 
Let him drink, and forget his poverty, and remember his misery no more.
 The verse clearly endorsed alcohol as a means of sympathy. And although other areas of the bible warns against drunkenness, Proverbs advises drinking at least enough to forget your problems.

This rubs modern evangelicals the wrong way, as ant-alcoholism is firmly embedded in their tradition. They don't even drink wine at communion, even where children are absent. Sure, I can think of some other reasons why Welch's might be a better substitute for a bottle of Chateau Maybe Guyon, they sure are consistent on the particulars of other traditions.

When I read the verse, Alcohol sure looks like a tool for the ease of suffering. And while a True Christian may have received permanent peace of mind through their lord and savior Jesus Christ, the rest of civilization have struggling hearts eased by a different savior, Jim Beam.

Some people don't give money to homeless people because they might spend it on booze. But homelessness sucks, and easing the pain of the situation might be a valuable use of dollars as well.

Sunday, February 4, 2018

Trump backs Right to Try

We also believe that patients with terminal conditions, terminal illness, should have access to experimental treatment immediately that could potentially save their lives,”
 Yes yes yes, a million times yes.

Saturday, February 3, 2018

Were the Nazis Right Wing?

Nazis are frequently recognized as right wingers. There's something to that, the sort of hard nationalism of the Nazi 25-point program parallels the American right in many ways.

But the Nazis were explicit socialists, and there are just as many parallels between them and the American left. It's almost like the Nazis took the worst of the radical left and the radical right and merged them into something truly atrocious.

I thought it might be interesting to go through the entire 25-point program and list each one with whether it reminds me of the liberal lefties or the conservative right.

1. Right
2. Right
3. Left/Right (overpopulation concern = Left, Irregard for other nations = Right)
4. Right
5. Right
6. Right
7. Left
8. Right
9. Left
10. Left
11. Left
12. Left
13. Left
14. Left
15. Left
16. Left
17. Left/right (abolishment of land tax = Right, Regulation on speculation = Left)
18. Left/right (death penalty = Right, penalizing users and profiteers = Left)
19. ? (hard to say)
20. Left
21. Left
22. Left
23. Left/right
24. Right
25. Right

There ended up being at least as many policies that reminded me of the radical left as the radical right. Of course if a Nazi said the sky was blue he would be right, so it's possible for Nazis to be right about some things and wrong about others. But the right has at least as much warrent for calling the left a Nazi when they support the abolition of wage slavery, large scale social security, and mandatory gym class.

Nazis were the National Socialist party, and those two words say it all. They were extremely nationalist (rah rah America) and extraordinarily socialist (to each according to his need).

Friday, February 2, 2018

The Story of Gabe the Giver

If charity was about doing good every charitable dollar would go to the cause with the highest probability of doing the most good to the neediest people.

If charity was about looking good charitable spending would look like it does now; spending on a buffet of causes, associating yourself with a variety of benefactions.

Knowing this should encourage you to think more about how you contribute to charity. This is what Effective Altruism and Givewell are all about. But it makes me wonder, just because we've switched over to Effective Altruism-esk charity, does that mean our motives have changed?

I don't think so. I think it's still essentially smarter and more consistent signalling.

I mean, if charity was about altruism wouldn't you be doing effective altruism in the first place? When I buy a vacuum cleaner I don't need to be talked into buying an effective one. When I go to a restaurant I don't need to be talked into going to one with good value. I seek value instinctively.

So what makes more sense is that effective altruists aren't true altruists, they're still just trying to look good. The difference between them and their unthoughtful-altruism counterparts is that the effective altruists square their selfish giving with rationality.

So I wrote a story about Gabe the Giver:

Gabe gave to charity
Thought himself a good person
Was thought of as a good person by others
When Gabe met Tye, Tye pointed out that Gabe gave to ineffective charities
Gabe thought about it
Gabe felt cognitive dissonance about it
Gabe even felt embarrassed about it
Gabe thought himself a good person, 
but a good person would have thought more about what kind of charities he gave to.
Gabe finally realized Tye was right
So Gabe started giving only to effective charities
"the highest probability of doing the most good to the neediest people"

But when Tye came back
he pointed out that Gabe still wasn't actually a good person
"Gabe my friend," Tye said, "stop playing this game"
"You've been giving quietly haven't you?"
"Yes, yes I have" answered Gabe, "because I'm not trying to show off anymore"
"But not showing off is the less effective"
"By showing off, your charity may multiply"
"Seeming pompous and preachy to your friends is true sacrifice"
Gabe realized again that Tye was right
And Gabe became an outspoken effective altruist

Tye returned and shook his head
"You still don't get it, do you?"
"You've been giving just enough for people to notice, haven't you"
Gabe confessed, "about 1% of my income"
"what a conspicuous amount"
"Just enough that it doesn't hurt more than it has to to look like like a sacrifice"
".5% doesn't look like giving at all"
"But 5% is a real challenge financially"
"You've shown me again how you yearn to seem good"
"But not be good"
A frustrated Gabe took some time to think
Before he finally decided to donate everything he could
to live on subsistence and give every extra penny
to the most effective charity
And annoyed all his friends by talking about it all the time

Why Tye returned to an impoverished Gabe he shook his head once again
"You showed me your true nature when we met"
"only then you put on the mask of an effective altruist"
"You showed me your true nature in your silence about effective altruism"
"only then you put on a mask of an outspoken one"
"You showed me your true nature when you gave just enough to get noticed"
"Only then did you put on the mask of a generous giver
"You want to look good, Gabe"
"but you're just not a good person"

Gabe nearly choked on his tears
"But what about you, Tye?"
Tye was taken aback
"You say all these things, tearing down layers of signals"
"But at the bottom is exhaustion"
"Do you realize?"
"This illusion of virtue promotes giving"
"And the greater the illusion the more effective, the more contagious, the more generous the giving"
"But strip the illusion away, take it one layer too far,
and all that's left is selfish giving, which nobody wants"
"So they don't"
"and even though deep down it's selfish giving, the recipients don't care"
"When you're starving for food, thirsting for drink, you're not concerned with the heart of the one your meal came from"
"Now I feel defeated Tye"
"You've won, congratulations"
"I'm not good and I don't want to give anymore"
I'm going to go eat my fill at Denny's now

Tye nodded his head, "Gabe, now that my job's done I will reveal to you
"I am the Spirit of Truth"
"My job is to uncover the secrets that cover human eyes"
My job is to etch reality into the human brain
"My job is to help you believe what is true, not do what is good"
"That's the spirit of Benevolence's job"
"She told me not to come here"
Then Tye, the Spirit of Truth, vanished into his cloak

"Well that guy was a real jerk," Gabe said to himself
"See? I told you" spoke a delicate voice as Gabe's hat transformed into a shining angelic spirit
"But we needed him," The spirit said, "to do good work"
"Well, I'm sure you have places to be, Gwen the Spirit of Benevolence," said Gabe
"I do" Gwen replied before she transformed into a dove and flew away
Gabe's adventure was over
He walked past the Denny's back into his cot beside the dumpster