domain:papyrusrampant.substack.com
magicalkittycat
1d ago
On the other hand, one way to assess one's understanding of reality is to make predictions about what one thinks is likely to happen next. I think I've done tolerably well at that, and so my confidence in my model has increased over the years. On this topic in particular, I think I have a great deal of reasonably solid evidence at hand to support the conclusions I'm drawing. Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe I'm entirely deluded. But I've made a considerable effort over a considerable period of time to get as good a picture as possible, and I don't think either is the case.
That's a great way to go about it, but it still has an issue. I'll call it the "9/11 truther effect" because I see it in conspiracy theories a lot. People will have some sort of low evidence idea in their head that is disagreed with because of a personal bias or issue of theirs, and then update later with the claim of "Ahah, I was right all along. This proves 9/11 was manufactured!" because of course, the standards and biased thinking that led them to believing 9/11 was fake to begin with also lead them to judge they are proven correct later.
I'll give you the same thought experiment I came up for with someone else.
With your knowledge as a rational actor aware that this self perception bias is both extremely common to the point of being basically universal and it's hard to see one's own bias, what would you place the odds of the neutral alien reality knowing arbiter choosing your side being correct when they check reality?
Ok, how about if we replaced you and your side with a third party discussion, with say a flame war between PlayStation and Xbox gamers or a flame war between Twilight fans. What is the odds the alien will say the Edward stans have the underdog bias vs the Jacob stans having the underdog bias?
I'd say equal, even if I'm one of the participants. Maybe my side started the shitslinging all along and I didn't know.
But good news, the answer doesn't even matter anyway if you choose the option to have principles! If you stick up for freedom no matter when and who, the alien won't rule against you no matter what. You can't be the one who started the shitslinging if you aren't slinging shit. Join the side of keeping your principles and you'll always be a winner in this alien court.
FirmWeird
Randomly Generated Reddit Username
1d ago
The attorney general being a Zionist does not mean that "we all know" that she intervened in the case, let alone subverted the law on behalf of another Jew.
I can't help but feel you're being a bit sneaky here. I believe it is a safe assumption that someone working in the upper echelons of the Israeli government and reporting directly to Benjamin Netanyahu is a Zionist, and "let alone subverted the law on behalf of another Zionist" is actually substantially more plausible as something that everyone knows. You've switched between "Zionist" and "Jewish" as if they're the same thing in order to make your opponent's argument seem less credible, which feels against the spirit of the rules here to me.
Ok, now imagine a leftist just said the exact same thing to me. (...) That obviously reality is the right struck first and how absurd it is I suggest they could possibly exhibit an underdog bias.
Ok, I'm imagining it. It looks no different than the husband in his scenario striking first.
Tell you what why don't you show us how we should wrestle with our biases, by leading by example. How do you that everything you're saying isn't the result of bias? What steps have you taken to counteract it?
Good news, the answer doesn't even matter anyway if you choose the option to have principles!
Why do you keep saying some principle was broken, and then ignoring any response indicating that this did nit take place, or questioning you about it?
MotteThrow
1d ago
Conservatives lost on every one of those three though, which shows they did not have any power. (Aside from maybe Anti-vaxx now but that's both a left+right thing and mostly only true after progressives destroyed public health credibility themselves.) Destroying academia is in itself counteracting left wing attacks.
magicalkittycat
1d ago
Ok, now imagine a leftist just said the exact same thing to me (or how about instead of me, it's an alien arbitrator, a completely neutral third party so you don't even have to imagine you're dealing with someone possibly biased.) about the right. That obviously reality is the right struck first and how absurd it is I suggest they could possibly exhibit an underdog bias.
Certainly you can see in this scenario how to the alien arbitrator, you might not look any different than the leftists claiming the same thing. Maybe they go and look at the world and say "Ok, right wing you were correct and the left started everything". But maybe they look and say the right started it all and the leftist is correct.
With your knowledge as a rational actor aware that this bias is both extremely common to the point of being basically universal and it's hard to see one's own bias, what would you place the odds of the alien choosing your side being?
Ok, how about if we replaced "left and right" with say a flame war between PlayStation and Xbox gamers or a flame war between Twilight fans. What is the odds the alien will say the Edward stans have the underdog bias vs the Jacob stans having the underdog bias?
Good news, the answer doesn't even matter anyway if you choose the option to have principles! If you stick up for freedom no matter when and who, the alien won't rule against you no matter what. You can't be the one who started the shitslinging if you aren't slinging shit. Join the side of keeping your principles and you'll always be a winner.
FirmWeird
Randomly Generated Reddit Username
1d ago
Of course, with Da Jooos, there's always some genius like Shaun King to get things started.
I always find people making mocking "Da Jooos" comments to be mildly annoying, and ultimately counterproductive when talking about cases like this. Nobody is alleging some kind of bullshit secret conspiracy here - the "conspiracy" is completely out in the open and not even being disputed in the slightest. You have an Israeli partisan for an attorney general, who was complained about massively before they were appointed, letting an Israeli official get away with extremely serious offences. They're openly proud about what they're doing and boast about it (well until they got attention for it and deleted their account) to boot. There's no need to mock people for being credulous antisemites in a case like this unless you want to make sure that absolutely nobody gives a shit about antisemitism in the future. After seeing people use "oh you think DA JOOS" are behind this too when people object to official actions by the Israeli government I just can't take people who participate in that kind of juvenile mockery of legitimate concerns seriously.
Surely people are Goodhart'ing it, but either they're not very good at it yet or they're not trying very hard.
They are, though. The insanely skewed citation distribution is exactly what you'd expect from people figuring the optimal way to game the system. You're not getting anywhere by autistically focusing on your own reaserch, and hoping others will find it interesting enough to cite. You band together, and boost each other up. There's little individual glory in it for most people, which is why it looks like "they're not very good at it yet, or they're not trying very hard", but that's the best way for them to keep a stable job until they get their big break.
You see this on literally every social network, academia is no different, and the original statement about how much citations which kind of scientist will get, implicitly assumes people won't figure out how these systems work.
DaseindustriesLtd
late version of a small language model
1d ago
This is a funny post but
OK, he won a fields medal. Neat. Someone wins one every year.
is literally wrong. «The Fields Medal is a prize awarded to two, three, or four mathematicians under 40 years of age at the International Congress of the International Mathematical Union (IMU), a meeting that takes place every four years». So at most one person wins it every year on average. This level of ignorance of the domain suggests you can't really have valuable intuitions about his merit.
magic9mushroom
If you're going to downvote me, and nobody's already voiced your objection, please reply and tell me
1d ago
While JT may well be opposed to everyone that went through college, I'm guessing the percentage that works for universities is much, much lower than 1/3.
That is fair, somewhat; I would anticipate the split among professors being somewhat more tilted (though not as much as you'd expect, at least among the STEM faculty).
However, I didn't say "college degree". I said "postgrad degree". As in, basic tertiary degree and then another degree on top (e.g. PhD, Masters, MD, and whatever law is).
magic9mushroom
If you're going to downvote me, and nobody's already voiced your objection, please reply and tell me
1d ago
But people browsing would only need to read your post once instead of 6 times.
Gaashk
1d ago
What is he angry about? Is there an alternative to his current setting that's feasible, and where he wouldn't be angry? Sometimes there isn't, but also sometimes there is. Anger is often meant to spur people into action, to change their circumstances. Teenage boys are often physically stronger than their teachers, and really can't express anger towards them. It will certainly get him fired quickly from many jobs. But, also, the extremely restrictive prison like environment of many schools, where they can't even leave campus for lunch, isn't inevitable.
I went to community college instead of high school -- technically I was "duel enrolled" as a homeschool student, but I wasn't really studying anything in particular other than the college classes. I was angry or shocked a couple of times, so I left, sat under a tree grumping for a while, complained to my parents, and then came back a couple of days later for the next class. As long as I did my work, nobody much cared.
I also taught at an alternative high school in a small town. The teens often just didn't come to class, probably two days a week. If they were angry that day, I wouldn't want them to come to class, they were better off going for a hike in the woods or something.
FCfromSSC
Nuclear levels of sour
1d ago
Well, you could cut out the middleman and simply secede. Didn't work so well the first time, I'll grant you...
Outright dissolution of the union seems like a bad idea for a lot of reasons. A better plan is to deconstruct federal authority and the institutions from which it springs, such that the states can each have their way within their own borders. "sanctuary city" and "sanctuary state" ideology is an obvious strong movement in this direction, and has been developing for decades now. Flowering defiance of Federal law is a welcome and flourishing development; it cements the norm that federal law is and should be toothless, and it incentivizes those on the other side to do likewise.
If this continues and we are fortunate, the culture war might well be defused as the tribes sort themselves into mutually-exclusive borders and then more or less leave each other alone. An actual de jure breakup of the nation seems to me neither necessary nor wise; who gets the nukes?
ArjinFerman
Tinfoil Gigachad
1d ago
You could, if you were able to point out where it happened.
srf0638
1d ago
What do you mean by bad epistemics exactly?
His truth-seeking processes are bad. In particular:
-Refuses on principle to engage with disagreement, except maybe of the "fifty Stalins" variety
-Lots of talk about intermediate outcomes but precious bloody little about actual performance
-Confident inference from naive linear regressions on heavily pre-selected populations (as in linked article)
It's not really that bad by the standards of the fitness industry, I guess, but it annoys me coming from someone whose self-presentation makes it seem like he should know better.
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
1d ago
I remember reading the first two books too, it was strange. Who gets misty-eyed about a red desolate wasteland? Bring forth the water!
Also I think that terraforming Mars is a red herring. Are we really short of lebensraum on Earth? Easier to build cities and extract resources in Canada, Antarctica, the deep oceans, Russia, the Sahara.
O'Neill cylinders are also a good option. You can put them anywhere.
Expansion into space should be with a definite, clear objective. What about Mercury, is there not a tonne of solar power there? Should we not put heavy industry there, or perhaps in Lagrange points closer to the sun? There are resources in the asteroids, let's get them. Let's get offworld certainly, advance as a civilization, secure Mars... but only with good reason. The costs must be outweighed by the benefits.
And why assume that we need Mars to be compatible to organic life to be there? It's probably easier to get robotic or otherwise hardened bodies than it is to make Mars a credible place for settlement.
There's a good Nick Land essay about this where he argues that space exploration is really about planetary disassembly by posthuman intelligences rather than domestead frontier LARPing. But the true vision can't be sold to the voters and politicians since it's too Nietzschean. Alas I cannot find it.
WandererintheWilderness
1d ago
If there were a way to avoid that, I'd be for it.
Well, you could cut out the middleman and simply secede. Didn't work so well the first time, I'll grant you, but, like… if Trump announced some kind of federal split live on air tomorrow, do you really think that ends with a boots-on-the-grounds, millions-dead civil war? Somehow I can't picture that. If it gets anywhere, I'd expect something more like a messy, drawn-out, infrastructure-wrecking, but ultimately-bloodless Brexit-type scenario. Lawfare, not warfare. Who knows how it would end, but starting from your premises, it seems worth a shot.
WandererintheWilderness
1d ago
Open letters signed as part of UCLA faculty are "part of the job"
No. His job is doing high-level math + teaching it. That is what he's paid for, and his career should only depend on how well and how conscientiously he does that. What he chooses to do with his reputation and credentials is up to him; as long as he is fulfilling those obligations, nothing about his non-math-related behavior should be able to dislodge him.
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
1d ago
Perhaps I was too flippant with the 'There are heaps more' applications for AI. I get this newsletter from alexander kruel almost daily where he gives a tonne of links about what people are using AI for. For example:
Interviewing people in the Phillipines (better than humans apparently). https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=5395709
62% of coders in this survey are using it: https://survey.stackoverflow.co/2024/ai
76% of doctors are using it: https://www.fiercehealthcare.com/special-reports/some-doctors-are-using-public-generative-ai-tools-chatgpt-clinical-decisions-it
It's thought that the US govt might've decided what tariffs to impose via AI: https://www.newsweek.com/donald-trump-tariffs-chatgpt-2055203
It goes on and on and on...
I personally used it for proofreading and indeed it can't do all of an editor's job. Editors do lots of highly visual tasks managing how words fit on the page in ways that AI isn't so good at. But it can do some of an editor's job. It can do much of a cartoonist's job (Ben Garrison is in the clear for now with his ultra-wordy cartoons?). I think it's more than fast drunk college student and more than meaningless drivel.
TitaniumButterfly
1d ago
Oh goodness gracious.
CertainlyWorse
No one is coming. It's just you.
1d ago
I get a big improvement in mental state after lifting, but it's after work 3 times a week. I used to improve my mental state by running, but my legs can't handle that and squats at the same time. What could I do on off days/daily?
You could do 30 minute walks and stretching to aid 'active recovery'. You won't get the same buzz as from running, but there will be some mental benefits.
I'm not sure you can. The whole point of goverent grants is fund what the market will not, and thus be distortionary, from a libertarian point of view.
And any libertarian-lite attemot at salvaging this by saying "well, as long as we have government grants, they should be assigned neutrally" runs into the problem of them not having been neutral for decades, and said libertarian not uttering a peep about it, as well as "neutrality" being hard to define in the he context.
The_Nybbler
If you win the rat race you're still a rat. But you're also still a winner.
1d ago
"My own group"? LOL. When this all started I was an atheist libertarian. I'm still a atheist, and in some ways a libertarian -- but I demand my libertarianism pays off in liberty for me and mine, rather than simply being beliefs which require that I let others harm me. Heck, if you think Trump himself is a religious conservative you're way off base. This motley alliance of people who are seeing Trump beat on the institutions and being OK with it was put together, not by the religious right nor by Trump nor even by J.D. Vance. It was put together by the left itself, who has been throwing everyone who disagrees with them into a political pit with various derogatory labels for well over a decade now.
You've been carefully ignoring all the examples of this that have been presented, instead demanding we ignore all that and continue to give them the maximum benefit of the principles they do not hold and did not grant to us. And when that seemed a little much you retreated to the position of invincible ignorance, that we cannot know that we are right and they are wrong, so we shouldn't treat them as if they are wrong. But ignoring those things doesn't make them go away, and a universal argument against knowledge is just sophistry.
WandererintheWilderness
1d ago
Trump has definitely spoken about cancel culture in terms that clearly pointed to the means themselves as being disgraceful, not just the ends.
We must reclaim our independence from the left’s repressive mandates. Americans are exhausted trying to keep up with the latest list of approved words and phrases, and the ever-more restrictive political decrees. (…) The goal of cancel culture is to make decent Americans live in fear of being fired, expelled, shamed, humiliated, and driven from society as we know it. The far-left wants to coerce you into saying what you know to be FALSE, and scare you out of saying what you know to be TRUE. (…) We will appoint prosecutors, judges, and justices who believe in enforcing the LAW – not their own political agenda. We will ensure equal justice for citizens of every race, religion, color and creed. We will uphold your religious liberty, and defend your Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms.
There just isn't a reasonable reading of that speech where he's saying that the "firing, expelling, shaming, humiliating"-style tactics are neutral weapons that he intends to use just as much once he wins. What he told his voters in that speech was "the Left has made a mockery of true freedom and equality; Americans are rightly exhausted by the climate of fear and hypocrisy; vote for me and I will restore true normalcy and freedom, with genuinely de-politicized institutions and true equality before the law". He was definitely not saying "vote for me and I'll fire, expel, shame, terrify, humiliate and drive out anyone who disagrees with me".
Granted, that was 2020 and I don't recall if/whether he made similar statements during the last election. If your point is that he'd already given up on those principles by 2024… I guess I can't disprove that, but that's somewhat besides the point. The point is that he was saying this stuff a few years ago, and I approved of that for all that I've always disagreed with much of his platform, and now he's falling far short of that promise. It isn't that I'm surprised, but I am disappointed.
FCfromSSC
Nuclear levels of sour
1d ago
I would hope others in a rationalist community are aware of how our own biases can impact our perception.
I would hope that others in a rationalist community would, having examined their own biases and framed their efforts in a prudent level of epistemic humility, then proceed on to engage with what evidence is available to them.
How sure are you that you're uniquely immune?
I do not claim to be uniquely immune. I know that I have been wrong in the past, and that biases have played a part in my previous errors. I aim to be less wrong in the future, and I make considerable efforts to minimize my own bias as much as I can.
On the other hand, one way to assess one's understanding of reality is to make predictions about what one thinks is likely to happen next. I think I've done tolerably well at that, and so my confidence in my model has increased over the years. On this topic in particular, I think I have a great deal of reasonably solid evidence at hand to support the conclusions I'm drawing. Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe I'm entirely deluded. But I've made a considerable effort over a considerable period of time to get as good a picture as possible, and I don't think either is the case.
I've considered the possibilities you've raised, and discarded them as incompatible with my understanding of the best evidence available. I'm open to substantive arguments that I've discarded them prematurely, but that would require something with a bit more to it than you're offering so far. If you would like to see that evidence, by all means let's examine it. But if you're wedded to meta-epistemic doubt for its own sake, after more than a decade of fairly intensive conversation on this subject with a variety of opposites, that doesn't seem like a very fruitful avenue to me. I'm much more interested in trying to get the best picture possible of what happens next.
You don't think there's religious people who don't believe in evolution that are on your side of the left-wing/right-wing divide?
I agree with your general proposition that political alliances can not be split so easily to begin with and to blame you for the beliefs and actions of the religious evolution denier would be silly, but I also believe that of the many groups and factions that compose "the left".
Likewise I have been presented with tons of examples from leftists about conservative institutions and powerful elites censoring and oppressing people. Heck some examples are ironic, like a school that tried to ban Harry Potter due to depictions of witchcraft back in the 90s. That's of course a funny example, but there's plenty that aren't so funny.
The FCC's rules against "indecency" prohibiting even swearing. The radio stations that banned the Dixie chicks for opposing the Iraq war. Even now the director of the United States Office of Management and Budget has expressly said he wants to ban pornography through back door methods.
So I have evidence from both sides, strong evidence of both sides. Both of them yelling "we didn't start the fire" as they both throw Molotovs.
Good news, you can know you didn't start the fire if you don't throw molotovs and side with principled free speech organizations like FIRE.
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