domain:slatestarcodex.com
Corvos
1d ago
It’s hard to cleanly separate questions of value and questions of fact because our values influence what we think about the facts.
1000x this. Which to my mind is the true and valuable insight hidden at the heart of post-modernism.
atelier
Jimmys: unrustled
1d ago
I think at the pro level it's not just giving advice it's also serving as mediator, strategist, advisor and sometimes main talent evaluator that really is too much for most coaches (especially at the NFL level). Plus the salary cap comes for the best players and often the best schemes to make use of cast off talent.
One of the reasons I didn't use Phil Jackson as my example is I don't think he was that much better at giving advice, but he was really good at managing the egos and team dynamics of all his players better than most (I think that's clear from his success with both the MJ Bulls and Kobe and Shaq Lakers).
MaiqTheTrue
Renrijra Krin
1d ago
There is no such thing as apolitical government data. He has an agenda, and I’d suggest finding it by looking at the types of data he’s highlighting, and especially any sorts of data he’s not highlighted. My suspicion is that he’s pushing a Trump-bad narrative by digging up data sets that make Trump look bad. If the GOP wanted to push a narrative through the data, they can simply put it on their various platforms and move along.
jkf
1d ago
"First do no harm," my guy -- "not that effective" is a very different from "may have killed my wife/kid".
Then there's the fact that Russia and China adopted mRNA vaccines several years after the West.
Russia and China didn't adopt MRNA vaccines in any serious way at all, unless I'm missing something?
Why wouldn't they take their perfect opportunity to screw over the West by boosting claims that mRNA vaccines cause novel harm
Who says they aren't?
2rafa
1d ago
The public aren’t interested in the nuance of trade policy. Vance can be pro-tariff in the primaries and then after taking office sign various “incredible deals” that lower rates.
jkf
1d ago
Defect:cooperate pays the best (for the defector), or else there wouldn't really be much of a dilemma, would there?
Earendil
Then over Middle-Earth he passed
1d ago
All (mostly) fair questions but I'm a bit preoccupied at the moment and probably won't be able to respond substantively until tomorrow at the soonest. Thanks for asking.
Iconochasm
2. Bootstrap the rest of the fucking omnipotence.
1d ago
This is a good point. I'd extend it even further. I think a lot of heat arises from the fact that news media brings political conflict right to our faces, but doesn't give an outlet that viscerally feels like retaliating.
I think this is a major cause of the phenomena of "progressive woman screams at her phone camera" videos. It's why people spiral deeper and deeper into violent ideation. If they redistrict us and then we redistrict them back, it just doesn't feel like a proper retaliation to an ape brain that expects retaliation to feel like knuckles violently impacting something. The endocrine response is just frustrated.
So we do a 2X tat, but it feels like a 0.1X tat, so we demand a 20X tat.
Multiple by emotional incontinence, mental illness, and arrested development.
Ioper
1d ago
Jedi fallen order is the biggest game that Disney star wars has produced by far and that was released in 2019. That should only have been 1.2 billion in revenue though.
cjet79
1d ago
There are different types of advice, and some of the threads here bring up different criticisms of each thing, or ignore other things.
- A hard thing is worth doing. - "Tough Love"
- How to make a hard thing easier to do. - "Fun Facts"
- How to be better than others at a thing. -"Winning"
- A thing you might like to do or want to do is a bad idea - Warnings
Tough Love advice is something I only give heavily caveated as "this worked for me". If it isn't something I've done I avoid giving this kind of advice to anyone outside of family and very close friends. For dieting this would be me suggesting that people cut out sugar or go low carb. It's worked for me, but it wasn't easy and it may not work for everyone (see the caveats).
Fun facts might already be known, or too broad to be useful. If someone I don't know asks for advice this is generally what I'll try to give them. For dieting this would be me mentioning that hard liquor and bacon generally don't have much sugar or carbs (unless it is added).
Winning advice becomes worthless when adopted too widely. I generally offer this advice not as a personal experience but as an example of someone else I know doing well at it. If you offer this as personal experience it just sounds like bragging. "Yeah I did much better at dating after I started working out and getting a good haircut" vs "My friend saw his dating prospects improve after he started working out and getting a nice haircut".
Warnings need to have clear consequences laid out. And people need to believe you about those consequences. "Ingesting a large amount of cyanide will painfully kill you" Otherwise warnings just sound like threats. Sometimes warnings are just threats. "Trespassers will be shot". Warnings where you personally suffered the consequences are better than the alternative "I drank a lot of soda and ate tons of sugary food and got diabetes by age 30"
Giving good advice
There does seem to be a lot of blame going around for people not taking advice. But giving good advice is a skill too. I see it as an important life skill, because I'd like my friends and those I care about to do better. When giving advice you should consider why you feel the need to give the advice. Unsolicited advice is rarely received well. Advice that is just meant to put down the receiver or build up the giver isn't much help, and possibly doesn't even deserve the label of "advice".
There are only three people in the world that I think should definitely listen to all of my advice, and those three people are my kids. If I'm not making a warning/threat about defending myself then my advice is mostly informational, you can take it and account for it in your actions but I see no reason for you to be obligated to follow it, or even believe it is correct.
There are some people that treat advice as a full on gift giving process. They expect accolades for giving the gift. They expect the receiver to at least pretend that they liked the gift. And the gift they'd always like in return is for the receiver to act on their advice. This seems like a toxic approach to me.
WhiningCoil
Ghost of Quokka's Future
1d ago
Analysis paralysis is definitely a part of it. I feel like there are twin traps, one of analysis, the other the fact that continued inaction seems to have a momentum all it's own. Analysis paralysis might get you into the trap of inaction, but inaction's own gravity keeps you there.
But there is also this aspect where our modern society seems to be producing and entire oversocialized professional and expert class. They're risk averse and initiative averse to a degree which stifles all human actions, and they are supposed to be our betters to whom we listen.
I would trust the blue collar BJJ coach who barely graduated highschool far more than the PhD trying to give me advice. And on a lot more than BJJ at that.
Why is the Father God and not Jesus?
God to me isn't a Person, He's a Nature that three Persons share. That's why I can't tell you if someone is God without knowing what it is. That is probably a huge unspoken difference here, when I say God does something I could be referencing the Father, the Son, or the Holy Spirit.
So you hold the Father specifically in esteem because He is our creator, and when you say God you mean the Father. How odd my responses must seem to you! In that case, if you tautologically define God as the Father, then the question becomes different as to would God be God if he did not have God's nature. I don't feel like that brings me any closer to understanding why God matters to you. The word "God" has great significance that I feel like you're copying the vibe of but then using it to refer to something else. Like having a conversation about Jesus and then someone reveals they've been talking about their gardener this whole time.
With your wife, I'm wiling to bet you do reason from first principles sometimes. By this I mean, you know she is a woman, which means that she has weeks where one hormone is dominant, weeks were another hormone is dominant, sometimes gets pregnant, etc. Knowing this, I suspect that your response to her changes depending on knowledge you have of her that pre-exists knowing her. You know pregnant women need late night ice cream randomly, for example, even before the experience of your wife kicking you out of bed at 11PM to go get pickle juice and chocolate.
Ioper
1d ago
I think we should probably be more specific, its social media and algo driven content serving (especially short form) that's the issue, not watching movies on your phone or w/e.
There are plenty of studies that show this, its not some kind of new and unknown subject. The issue isn't that we don't know what's harmful, it's that there are powerful commercial interests opposing regulation. It's the same thing with online casinos, it's not the internet that's the issue, it's specifically the gambling sites.
greyenlightenment
investments: META/FBL, TSLA, TQQQ, TECL, MSFT ...
1d ago
I don’t think tariffs are a central Vance belief at all. If you oppose them it would be easier to lobby him personally in 2028 as presumptive Republican nominee than to convince people to oppose any Republican candidate on that basis.
It's possible he personally thinks they are a bad idea, but he has to signal protectionism,, as that is what is popular with voters and necessary to win the primaries. Trump has shown the winning playbook and I cannot see his successor deviating much from it, at least not during the campaign.
The rise of Trump, who copied the same protectionism of Biden, on top of Obama, has basically revealed the libertarian-adjacent wing of the GOP to be ineffectual. These people forever have been on the losing side, save for Ross Ulbricht pardon.
Ronald Reagan, pretty much the most beloved conservative president in living history doesn't count? He slowed the growth of government spending during his presidency, fought for free markets, and helped to make America far better off with his pro market small government policies. He stood up for liberty and capitalism and America stood tall while the communists kept collapsing. Even China only succeeds because Deng Xiaopeng realized they have to be a bit more like the freedom loving open market Americans to do well. And despite them having over a billion more citizens (tons of manpower and talent they can draw from) they're still at about 63% of our total GDP.
2rafa
1d ago
Perhaps he hopes viewers will become better informed about trade, to dissuade them from voting for the presumptive GOP nominee, that being JD Vance, who supports tariffs?
I don’t think tariffs are a central Vance belief at all. If you oppose them it would be easier to lobby him personally in 2028 as presumptive Republican nominee than to convince people to oppose any Republican candidate on that basis.
My guess is that this is an entirely personal project in which Ballmer, who is a centrist liberal, wants to ‘make an impact’ for the usual combination of civic and personal pride reasons, and has possibly been conned by one of the usual media grifter types into pouring a huge amount of money into it (but a pittance for him). The producers or other organization producing these can claim a comfortable $250k salary for “video production” or whatever, which Ballmer personally probably doesn’t know or care about, and do some light work and get taken out to lunch and invited to parties by cool ad agency people who want the spend.
The videos also star him personally, which again is less “influence operation” and more “I want the people to know who I am and feel like I’m sharing my wisdom with the world”.
Trump frequently changes his mind though. We saw this with tariffs.
A person like Scott Lincicome of CATO truly believes that government taking equity of private enterprise is bad policy, and thus it's easy for him to critique it.
And you see with libertarian Republicans like Ron Paul, Justin Amash and Thomas Massie criticizing the Intel buy
The rise of Trump, who copied the same protectionism of Biden, on top of Obama, has basically revealed the libertarian-adjacent wing of the GOP to be ineffectual. These people forever have been on the losing side, save for Ross Ulbricht pardon. Their publications and think tanks are utterly ignored by anyone of importance. They are screaming into the wind. It has always been that way, but it's like what a waste of money promoting all those libertarian causes. I think this shows that some flexibility is good, and Trump's successes is illustrative of this. Otherwise you just become obsolete and end up wasting money and time.
The government is neither owning intel, nor directing policy there. The government is owning ten percent of intel’s stock and voting with the board of directors.
What do you think stock is? It's literally part ownership.
And Intel's SEC filings even acknowledge the problems with it https://www.sec.gov/ix?doc=/Archives/edgar/data/0000050863/000005086325000129/intc-20250822.htm
It dilutes shares of existing stockholders, limit their ability to pursue future transactions that benefit the other shareholders, hurt their ability to operate internationally as a (now) government owned corporation.
And in the obvious issues that successful competitors like NVIDIA and AMD will have a tougher time dealing with a government that has direct financial stake into Intel.
Doubletree3
1d ago
There are a great many situations where your statement would be obviously untrue. Should cons start getting abortions to own the libs?
Pitt19802
1d ago
Good post.
I think where a lot of people get stuck is in waiting for the perfect piece of advice.
Line I read that stuck with me that I think applies beyond the specific instance - "Too many get stuck in analysis paralysis, worrying about the “right” source of knowledge: CLRS, TAoCP, Sedgewick, Skiena, Roughgarden, Dasgupta… you don’t need to obsess over these. Just pick something, get a foundation, and immediately move on to practice. You will learn everything from pattern recognition" (its from https://www.bowtiedfox.com/p/faang)
It's what I was trying to get at, but am not quite eloquent enough to put into words well, I think when you're young (at least I did when I was young), there's this mindset that if I follow out suboptimal advice, I'm wasting my time or I'm screwing myself over.
Being older, I think you learn a lot just by iterating over a lot of different things.
I should exercise and eat better than I do, that said, unless you're a professional athlete, starting down any path is 80% of it.
Chrisprattalpharaptr
Ave Imperaptor
1d ago
It may help to remember that I'm describing a last common ancestor (LCA) which would map to something like 6-7 MYA, not modern humans.
If you're discussing human evolution, why not drop the Tidus framing and just call them humans? And write a sourced post instead?
And, having studied this fairly intensively, the situation I'm describing is pretty much the current best mainstream academic hypothesis as to how they behaved.
What is the cliffnotes version of the data supporting this hypothesis? Just what you describe below about inference from modern primates?
The apes arrange themselves up and down the slopes more or less as would be expected by anyone who is familiar with chapter two's shellfish. Higher genetic quality individuals at the top, dregs down below. But we have a few key differences here.
What is the evidence for this being a relevant description in human evolution, or is it referring to some other concept in evolutionary biology I'm not aware of?
In the case of propensity to aggression, rather than there being one specific allele that makes the difference, which one population has and the other doesn’t, aggression is a complex, polygenic trait. Basically no gene does only one thing and they all interact with each other in massively complex ways. A typical single-gene variant (allele) might, for example, make the tail 2% shorter, make the lizard 7% more aggressive, minutely impact its ability to process certain nutrients, give it a slight aversion to the smell of the ocean, etc. Another allele (on a different gene) might make the scales slightly glossier and more blue, instill a minor fear of heights, a preference for rounded basking-rocks over flat ones, make certain bugs taste a little better, and shift its perception of light (colour) a tad, and so on — But then when both are present, they interact with each other in unforeseen ways, amplifying or canceling out each other’s effects basically at random and also leading to whole new effects which neither causes in isolation.
You open with wanting to discuss polygenic traits, then what follows is largely a description of pleiotropy. Pleiotropy is far from universal (your 'no gene does only one thing' quote) with 10-20% of human genes estimated to be pleiotropic. Polygenic traits frequently have very significant environmental influences (Even in animals, and even in genetically identical animals) which you also do not discuss.
This sort of polygenic interaction is almost impossible to keep track of. Computers help a lot, since even with genetic sequencing no one could possibly track the myriad interactions with pen and paper
I don't know what you're referring to here, but this sort of polygenic interaction is impossible to keep track of with our current level of understanding. There's no way to construct a deterministic/mechanistic model of how genetic variation will translate to a given trait. If you're referring to polygenic scores, I wouldn't call that 'keeping track of polygenic interactions,' and furthermore, their explanatory power is in the single to low double-digit percentages of variance explained.
They also behave differently along other axes, and look different, and — this is the important part — experience the world differently. Sense data occurs to them differently. They feel differently about things.
What is the evidence for this? Is it a purely theoretical conclusion based on your argument around pleiotropy? Because:
And you know this about them at a glance if they look different, since many genes which code for behaviour or anything else also code for physical appearance. In other words, you couldn't genetically edit an embryo to change its adult appearance without also changing its behavioural proclivities.
This just isn't true. I can give you plenty of examples of genes I could manipulate that would result in an observable difference in physical appearance that aren't even expressed in the brain. I'd have an even easier time giving you genes that would mess with your immune system without affecting the brain. I suppose you would argue that I could never prove to your satisfaction that those mice experience the world differently, but that would just a be waste of everyone's time.
To be frank: I find is disquieting how many people reject psychology when it concludes that racial diversity improves team efficiency, stereotype threat or whatever other bullshit and then happily eat up evo psych slop that flatters their own biases. 'Current best mainstream academic hypothesis' is only as rigorous as the data behind it, and there's obviously differences in rigor between disciplines.
Were you HelmedHorror on the old site?
greyenlightenment
investments: META/FBL, TSLA, TQQQ, TECL, MSFT ...
1d ago
Competent teachers and coaches through talent and experience are able to identify these levels in their clients/students and will adjust advice accordingly
yeah there is a "you get what you pay for" rule in regard to advice quality
Grant_us_eyes
1d ago
A different audience in Europe. London, specifically.
This particular myth tends to annoy me a great deal, because it's a perfect encapsulation of a tactic I've seen displayed by left-leaning types time and time again - the constant, insistent urge to drag politics into areas that it doesn't really belong(ie, entertainment).
This wasn't Cancel Culture. It was a masks-off moment for a bunch of grifting entertainers that were trying to belong to the Cool Kids Club. Surprise, surprise, the group that made them popular from the start didn't take well to being grifted.
I don't entirely disagree with negative traits of modern people, but resisting submission does make sense from one perspective. Think of it like an immune system. Most people who preach something merely want your money. Most people who do speeches merely want you to invest in their cause. Most charities are scams. Everything competes for our attention and uses advanced techniques to manipulate us for the sake of making money.
Over time, one learns to have one hell of a strong defense mechanism. I can drink alcohol until I struggle to stand, and I will still remain rational. I'm immune to hypnosis, I sometimes notice that I'm dreaming because I realize that something is wrong. I've been suicidal and I've been rather manic, and in both cases, those around me wouldn't notice unless I told them.
To trust somebody with all your heart, to give yourself to something else, to invest 100% in one thing, to let down your guard entirely, these are all powerful choices, and people who can choose them tend to be wonderful people, but life simply teaches us that this is naive and dangerous. So we become superficial narcissists who don't commit to anything unless it offers immediate rewards.
I hope to be more healthy, but it requires staying in a healthy environment, and there's less of these by the year.
You can't make all advice part of yourself, though. For the same reason that you cannot be every class at once in an RPG game. There's very much "paths" to take in life, and advice which is good for some people, but incompatible with ones path. "one man's meat is another man's poison" and such. Nietzsche seems to value a sort of purity when he says "With fifty blotches painted on your face and limbs, thus you sat there to my amazement, you people of the present!". He certainly seems to advice against nitpicking a bit of everything and plastering it on yourself.
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