Astral Codex Ten Podcast

https://slatestarcodex.com/2020/02/24/book-review-just-giving/   I. Traditional book reviews tend to focus on a single book, such as  Just Giving  by Rob Reich. We ought, however, to be reviewing a broader question: what is the role of books in a liberal democratic society? And what role  should  they play? Books were first invented during the early Bronze Age. Plato states people fiercely opposed...

https://slatestarcodex.com/2020/02/17/sleep-support-an-individual-randomized-controlled-trial/   I worry my sleep quality isn't great. On weekends, no matter when I go to bed, I sleep until 11 or 12. When I wake up, I feel like I've overslept. But if I try to make myself get up earlier, I feel angry and want to go back to sleep. A supplement company I trust, Nootropics Depot, recently released a n...

https://slatestarcodex.com/2020/02/14/addendum-to-targeting-meritocracy/   I've always been dissatisfied with  Targeting Meritocracy  and the  comments  it got. My position seemed so obvious to me – and the opposite position so obvious to other people – that we both had to be missing something. Reading it over, I think I was missing the idea of  conflict vs mistake theory . I wrote the post from a...

https://slatestarcodex.com/2020/02/12/confirmation-bias-as-misfire-of-normal-bayesian-reasoning/   From the subreddit:  Humans Are Hardwired To Dismiss Facts That Don't Fit Their Worldview . Once you get through the preliminary Trump supporter and anti-vaxxer denunciations, it turns out to be an attempt at an evo psych explanation of confirmation bias: Our ancestors evolved in small groups, where...

https://slatestarcodex.com/2020/02/12/welcome-infowars-readers/ Hello to all the new readers I've gotten from, uh, Paul Watson of Infowars. Before anything else, consider reading  this statement by the CDC about vaccines . Still here? Fine. Infowars linked here with the headline  Survey Finds People Who Identify As Left Wing More Likely To Have Been Diagnosed With A Mental Illness . This is accura...

https://slatestarcodex.com/2020/02/10/autogenderphilia-is-common-and-not-especially-related-to-transgender/   "Autogynephilia" means becoming aroused by imagining yourself as a woman. "Autoandrophilia" means becoming aroused by imagining yourself as a man. There's no term that describes both, but we need one, so let's say autogenderphilia. These conditions are famous mostly because a few sexologis...

https://slatestarcodex.com/2020/02/05/suicide-hotspots-of-the-world/   [Content warning: suicide, rape, child abuse. Thanks to MC for some help with research.] I. Guyana has the highest national suicide rate in the world, 30 people per year per 100,000. Guyana has poverty and crime and those things, but no more so than neighboring Brazil (suicide rate of 6) or Venezuela (suicide rate of 4). What's...

https://slatestarcodex.com/2020/01/30/book-review-human-compatible/   I. Clarke's First Law  goes: When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible, he is almost certainly right. When he states that something is impossible, he is very probably wrong. Stuart Russell is only 58. But what he lacks in age, he makes up in distinction: he's a computer science professor at Ber...

https://slatestarcodex.com/2020/01/28/assortative-mating-and-autism/   Introduction Assortative mating is when similar people marry and have children. Some people worry about assortative mating in Silicon Valley: highly analytical tech workers marry other highly analytical tech workers. If highly analytical tech workers have more autism risk genes than the general population, assortative mating co...

https://slatestarcodex.com/2020/01/22/book-review-review-little-soldiers/   Little Soldiers  is a book by Lenora Chu about the Chinese education system. I haven't read it. This is a review of  Dormin111's review of Little Soldiers . Dormin describes the "plot": The author is a second-generation Chinese-American woman, raised by demanding Asian parents. Her parents made her work herself to the bone...

https://slatestarcodex.com/2020/01/20/ssc-survey-results-2020/   Thanks to the 8,043 people who took the 2020 Slate Star Codex survey. See the questions for the SSC survey See the results from the SSC Survey  (click "see previous responses" on that page) Some people expressed concern about privacy on the survey. Originally, respondents could see aggregate responses, including the responses of peop...

https://slatestarcodex.com/2020/01/15/contra-contra-contra-caplan-on-psych/   I. In 2006, Bryan Caplan wrote  a critique of psychiatry . In 2015,  I responded . Now it's 2020, and Bryan has  a counterargument . I'm going to break the cycle of delay and respond now, and maybe we'll finish this argument before we're both too old and demented to operate computers. Bryan writes: 1. With a few exceptio...

https://slatestarcodex.com/2020/01/13/2019-adversarial-collaboration-winners/   Thanks to everyone who participated and/or voted in the  2019 Adversarial Collaboration Contest . And the winner is… … … Adrian Liberman and Calvin Reese, for  Does Calorie Restriction Slow Aging? . An extraordinarily close second place (26.9% vs. 26.2% of votes) goes to David G and Froolow, for  Is Eating Meat A Net H...

Link: https://slatestarcodex.com/2020/01/08/what-intellectual-progress-did-i-make-in-the-2010s/   One of the best parts of writing a blog is being able to answer questions like this. Whenever I felt like I understood new and important, I wrote a post about it. This makes it easy to track what I learned. I think the single most important thing I discovered this decade (due to a random comment in th...

Link: https://slatestarcodex.com/2020/01/06/a-very-unlikely-chess-game/   Almost 25 years after Kasparov vs. Deep Blue, another seminal man vs. machine matchup: Neither competitor has much to be proud of here. White has a poor opening. Black screws up and loses his queen for no reason. A few moves later, white screws up and loses his rook for no reason. Better players will no doubt spot other humi...

Link: https://slatestarcodex.com/2020/01/05/hardball-questions-for-the-next-debate-2020/   [Previously:  Hardball Questions (2016) ,  More Hardball Questions (2016) . I stole parts of the Buttigieg question from Twitter, but don't remember enough details to give credit, sorry] Mr. Biden:  Your son Hunter Biden was on the board of directors of Burisma, a Ukrainian energy company, during your vice-p...

Link: https://slatestarcodex.com/2020/01/02/why-doctors-think-theyre-the-best/   Ninety percent of drivers think they're  above-average drivers , ninety percent of professors think they're  above-average professors  etc. The relevant studies are paywalled, so I don't know if I should trust them. Our recent  discussion of therapy books  would make more sense if ninety percent of therapists believed...

Link: https://slatestarcodex.com/2019/12/30/please-take-the-2020-ssc-survey/   Please take  the 2020 Slate Star Codex Survey . The survey helps me learn more about SSC readers and plan community events. But it also provides me with useful informal research data for questions I'm interested it, which I then turn into interesting posts. My favorite was 2018's  Fight Me, Psychologists: Birth Order Ef...

Link: https://slatestarcodex.com/2019/12/26/please-vote-for-acc-winner/   I've now posted all eight adversarial collaborations. In case you missed any, you can find a list of them (with links)  here . If you have read all the collaborations, please vote on your favorite. This year I will decide the winner by popular vote; I don't feel like putting my finger on the scale this time. I will give $200...

Link: https://slatestarcodex.com/2019/12/25/acc-how-much-significance-should-we-ascribe-to-spiritual-experiences/   [This is an entry to the  2019 Adversarial Collaboration Contest  by Jeremiah Gruenberg and Seth Schoen] 1. Introduction This project seeks to explore the viability of spiritual or religious experiences as empirical evidence for a component of reality that transcends or is radically...

Link: https://slatestarcodex.com/2019/12/24/acc-should-you-have-a-merry-christmas/   [This is an entry to the  2019 Adversarial Collaboration Contest  by Cindy Lou Who and the Grinch] Christmas Day is a a time full of laughter and cheer which is held in the West at the end of each year. Believers in Jesus traditionally think the day marks his birth; scientists disagree. They point to the shepherds...

Link: https://slatestarcodex.com/2019/12/23/acc-will-automation-lead-to-economic-crisis/   [This is an entry to the  2019 Adversarial Collaboration Contest  by Doug Summers-Stay and Erusian] Adversarial collaboration on the question:  "Automation/AI will not lead to a general, sustained economic crisis within our lifetimes or for the foreseeable future. Automation/AI's effects into the future will...

Link: https://slatestarcodex.com/2019/12/22/a-maximally-lazy-guide-to-giving-to-charity-in-2019/ [Sorry for the interruption; we will return to our regularly scheduled Adversarial Collaboration Contest tomorrow.] [Epistemic status: I'm linking evaluations made by people I mostly trust, but there are many people who don't trust these, I haven't 100% evaluated them perfectly, and if your assumptions...

Link: https://slatestarcodex.com/2019/12/19/acc-when-during-fetal-development-does-abortion-become-morally-wrong/ [This is an entry to the  2019 Adversarial Collaboration Contest  by BlockOfNihilism and Icerun] Note: For simplicity, we have constrained our analysis of data about pregnancy and motherhood to the United States. We note that these data are largely dependent on the state of the medical...

Link: https://slatestarcodex.com/2019/12/18/acc-should-gene-editing-technologies-be-used-in-humans/   [This is an entry to the  2019 Adversarial Collaboration Contest  by Nita J and Patrick N.] Introduction In October 2018, the world's first genetically edited babies were born, twin girls given the pseudonyms Lulu and Nana; Chinese scientist  He Jiankui  used CRISPR technology to edit the CCR5 gen...