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PaperclipPerfector  9mo ago (text post)   2472 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for August 13, 2023

Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?

This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.

Culture war topics are accepted, and proposals for a better intro post are appreciated.

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How do you deal with Gell-Mann amnesia? I looked at ACX to see if there was anything new and Scott has been reading Putin's biography by Maria Gessen and suffering from a very obvious bout of Gell-Mann amnesia. Now I am worried about how strong my own Gell-Mann amnesia was while reading Scott.

I get a lot of Gell-Mann amnesia from Scott. Back on SSC, there was a whole post devoted to defending the USAF's bombing of Libya on... effective altruist grounds. He said that most EA orgs didn't have the firepower of the USAF, that the causes they could support and methods they could apply were different and that bombing Libya would likely be a cost-effective humanitarian intervention.

https://slatestarcodex.com/2013/08/30/military-strikes-are-an-extremely-cheap-way-to-help-foreigners/

And in the case of Libya, this may an underestimate, since it doesn’t take into account shortening the war, or spurring foreign investment, or the fact that Gaddafi probably would have become more repressive after the rebellion, or less tangible effects like deterrence of future dictators.

I'm repulsed by the whole post but this part in particular. Great, mission accomplished! The Russians weren't incensed at all at what the US had done in Libya, that definitely didn't have any flow-on effects in degrading the legitimacy and unity of the UN Security Council (especially when the Russians lost the gas contracts they'd arranged to French companies). And Scott didn't hypothesize any of the realized downsides either, which we now see with hindsight. First and Second Civil Wars? Massive refugee crisis? Literally none of the boons he thought could happen? What a disaster.

I also think this is rather tricky and don't know how to deal with it. To complicate matters further I also don't want to err to much in the other direction where you completely disregard everything a certain source has to say because it made a dumb mistake once while it might still have plenty of worthwhile things to say.

At least for Scott, he followed it up with a top-level post of comments, half of which were calling out potential inaccuracy / bias of the book. That makes it better, at least.

You cant avoid it. Kind of by definition.

Simple: I assume anything political is propaganda. The challenge is to keep assuming that when you're reading something you agree with.

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