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Heritability of human life span is about 50% when heritability is redefined to be something different

How heritable is hair color? Well, if you’re a redhead and you have an identical twin, they will definitely also be a redhead. But the age at which twins go gray seems to vary a bit based on lifestyle. And there’s some randomness in where melanocytes end up on your...

2026.02.05

life

Why read novels?

Why should you read novels? We tell children they’re magic carpets for the mind / exercise for the soul instead of the body / lighthouses in the great sea of time. But aren’t they ultimately a form of entertainment? Many years ago, I read Crime and Punishment. Here, with no...

2026.01.22

life

Good if make prior after data instead of before

They say you’re supposed to choose your prior in advance. That’s why it’s called a “prior”. First, you’re supposed to say say how plausible different things are, and then you update your beliefs based on what you see in the world. For example, currently you are—I assume—trying to decide if...

2025.12.18

math
forecasting

Why the chicken crossed the road, according to various entities

When I started this blog, I promised myself that I would always steer into weirdness. (As they say, “Get busy being weird, or get busy dying.”) While time has shown there are limits to what y’all will tolerate [1 2 3 4] I still sometimes feel a need to publish...

2025.12.04

Underrated reasons to be thankful V

That your dog, while she appears to love you only because she’s been adapted by evolution to appear to love you, really does love you. That if you’re a life form and you cook up a baby and copy your genes to them, you’ll find that the genes have been...

2025.11.27

lists

Make product worse, get money

I recently asked why people seem to hate dating apps so much. In response, 80% of you emailed me some version of the following theory: The thing about dating apps is that if they do a good job and match people up, then the matched people will quit the app...

2025.11.20

economics

Dating: A mysterious constellation of facts

Here are a few things that seem to be true: Dating apps are very popular. Lots of people hate dating apps. They hate them so much that there’s supposedly a resurgence in alternatives like speed dating. None of those are too controversial, I think. (Let’s stress supposedly in #3.) But...

2025.10.30

life
economics

Pointing machines, population pyramids, post office scandal, type species, and horse urine

I recently wondered if explainer posts might go extinct. In response, you all assured me that I have nothing to worry about, because you already don’t care about my explanations—you just like it when I point at stuff. Well OK then! Pointing machines How did Michelangelo make this? What I...

2025.10.23

random

Will the explainer post go extinct?

Will short-form non-fiction internet writing go extinct? This may seem like a strange question to ask. After all, short-form non-fiction internet writing is currently, if anything, on the ascent—at least for politics, money, and culture war—driven by the shocking discovery that many people will pay the cost equivalent of four...

2025.10.09

writing
AI

Y'all are over-complicating these AI-risk arguments

Say an alien spaceship is headed for Earth. It has 30 aliens on it. The aliens are weak and small. They have no weapons and carry no diseases. They breed at rates similar to humans. They are bringing no new technology. No other ships are coming. There’s no trick—except that...

2025.10.02

Shoes, Algernon, Pangea, and Sea Peoples

I fear we are in the waning days of the People Read Blog Posts About Random Well-Understood Topics Instead of Asking Their Automatons Era. So before I lose my chance, here is a blog post about some random well-understood topics. Marathons are stupidly fast You probably know that people can...

2025.09.25

random

Dear PendingKetchup

PendingKetchup comments on my recent post on what it means for something to be heritable: The article seems pretty good at math and thinking through unusual implications, but my armchair Substack eugenics alarm that I keep in the back of my brain is beeping. Saying that variance was “invented for...

2025.09.11

discourse
policy

You can try to like stuff

Here’s one possible hobby: Take something you don’t like. Try to like it. It could be food or music or people or just the general situation you’re in. I recommend this hobby, partly because it’s nice to enjoy things, but mostly as an instrument for probing human nature. 1. I...

2025.08.28

life

I guess I was wrong about AI persuasion

Say I think abortion is wrong. Is there some sequence of words that you could say to me that would unlock my brain and make me think that abortion is fine? My best guess is that such words do not exist. Really, the bar for what we consider “open-minded” is...

2025.08.21

Futarchy's fundamental flaw — the market — the blog post

Here’s our story so far: Markets are a good way to know what people really think. When India and Pakistan started firing missiles at each other on May 7, I was concerned, what with them both having nuclear weapons. But then I looked at world market prices: See how it...

2025.08.14

math
forecasting

Heritability puzzlers

The heritability wars have been a-raging. Watching these, I couldn’t help but notice that there’s near-universal confusion about what “heritable” means. Partly, that’s because it’s a subtle concept. But it also seems relevant that almost all explanations of heritability are very, very confusing. For example, here’s Wikipedia’s definition: Any particular...

2025.08.07

science
math
effort

New colors without shooting lasers into your eyes

1. Your eyes sense color. They do this because you have three different kinds of cone cells on your retinas, which are sensitive to different wavelengths of light. For whatever reason, evolution decided those wavelengths should be overlapping. For example, M cones are most sensitive to 535 nm light, while...

2025.07.17

science

My 9-week unprocessed food self-experiment

The idea of “processed food” may simultaneously be the most and least controversial concept in nutrition. So I did a self-experiment alternating between periods of eating whatever and eating only “minimally processed” food, while tracking my blood sugar, blood pressure, pulse, and weight. The case against processing Carrots and barley...

2025.07.10

experiment
science

Links for July

(1) Rotating eyeballs Goats, like most hoofed mammals, have horizontal pupils. […] When a goat’s head tilts up (to look around) and down (to munch on grass), an amazing thing happens. The eyeballs actually rotate clockwise or counterclockwise within the eye socket. This keeps the pupils oriented to the horizontal....

2025.07.08

random

Do blue-blocking glasses improve sleep?

Back in 2017, everyone went crazy about these things: The theory was that perhaps the pineal gland isn’t the principal seat of the soul after all. Maybe what it does is spit out melatonin to make you sleepy. But it only does that when it’s dark, and you spend your...

2025.07.03

science
life

Scribble-based forecasting and AI 2027

AI 2027 forecasts that AGI could plausibly arrive as early as 2027. I recently spent some time looking at both the timelines forecast and some critiques [1, 2, 3]. Initially, I was interested in technical issues. What’s the best super-exponential curve? How much probability should it have? But I found...

2025.06.30

forecasting
AI

The AI safety problem is wanting

I haven’t followed AI safety too closely. I tell myself that’s because tons of smart people are working on it and I wouldn’t move the needle. But I sometimes wonder, is that logic really unrelated to the fact that every time I hear about a new AI breakthrough, my chest...

2025.06.26

Thoughts on the AI 2027 discourse

A couple of months ago (April 2025), a group of prominent folks released AI 2027, a project that predicted that AGI could plausibly be reached in 2027 and have important consequences. This included a set of forecasts and a story for how things might play out. This got a lot...

2025.06.23

AI
discourse

Moral puzzles: Man vs. machine

Update (2025.06.19): I have heard your screams of pain regarding the plots. I’ve added simple bar charts for each question. Update (2025.06.20): OK, I added another visualization, courtesy of wirmgurl. Many people are worried if future AI systems will understand human values. But how well do current AI systems understand...

2025.06.19

philosophy
AI
data

Please take my weird moral puzzles quiz

For reasons, I ask that you take a short moral puzzles survey. I’ll provide 12 scenarios. For each of them, I’ll ask (1) What percentage of current Western adults you believe would agree, and (2) If you personally agree. Please don’t overthink. I’m not trying to trap you or make...

2025.06.17

philosophy

Futarchy's fundamental flaw

Say you’re Robyn Denholm, chair of Tesla’s board. And say you’re thinking about firing Elon Musk. One way to make up your mind would be to have people bet on Tesla’s stock price six months from now in a market where all bets get cancelled unless Musk is fired. Also,...

2025.06.12- 2025.06.13

forecasting
math

Optimizing tea: An N=4 experiment

Tea is a little-known beverage, consumed for flavor or sometimes for conjectured effects as a stimulant. It’s made by submerging the leaves of C. Sinensis in hot water. But how hot should the water be? To resolve this, I brewed the same tea at four different temperatures, brought them all...

2025.06.05- 2025.06.13

experiment

My advice on (internet) writing, for what it's worth

A lot of writing advice seems to amount to: I start by having verbal intelligence that’s six standard deviations above the population mean. I find that this is really helpful! Also, here are some tips on spelling and how I cope with the never-ending adoration. I think this leaves space...

2025.05.29- 2025.06.05

writing

DumPy: NumPy except it's OK if you're dum

What I want from an array language is: Don’t make me think. Run fast on GPUs. Really, do not make me think. Do not. I say NumPy misses on three of these. So I’d like to propose a “fix” that—I claim—eliminates 90% of unnecessary thinking, with no loss of power....

2025.05.22- 2025.07.29

computer
math

The Heat Mirage: My least-favorite internet maneuver

Alice and Bob are driving through the desert. Alice: Looks dry. Bob: That’s wrong, what we see ahead is caused by the sun heating up the road. While the speed of light is constant in vacuum, when light moves through matter, the atoms emit new light that destructively interferes with...

2025.05.19- 2025.07.29

discourse

I don't like NumPy

They say you can’t truly hate someone unless you loved them first. I don’t know if that’s true as a general principle, but it certainly describes my relationship with NumPy. NumPy, by the way, is some software that does computations on arrays in Python. It’s insanely popular and has had...

2025.05.15- 2025.07.29

computer
math

How to title your blog post or whatever

So you’ve made a thing. I’ll pretend it’s a blog post, though it doesn’t really matter. If people read your thing, some would like it, and some wouldn’t. You should try to make a good thing, that many people would like. That presents certain challenges. But our subject today is...

2025.05.12- 2025.07.29

writing

How much information is in DNA?

This is an article that just appeared in Asimov Press, who kindly agreed that I could publish it here and also humored my deep emotional need to use words like “Sparklepuff”. Do you like information theory? Do you like molecular biology? Do you like the idea of smashing them together...

2025.05.08- 2025.07.29

science
effort

So much blood

In a recent post about trading stuff for money, I mentioned: Europe had a [blood plasma] shortage of around 38%, which it met by importing plasma from paid donors in the United States, where blood products account for 2% of all exports by value. The internet’s reaction was: “TWO PERCENT?”...

2025.05.05- 2025.07.29

conspiracy
economics

Trading stuff for money

Examples are good. Let’s start with some examples: We all need kidneys, or at least one kidney. Donating a kidney sucks, but having zero working kidneys really sucks. Paying people for kidneys would increase the number available, but it seems gross to pay people for part of their body. Donating...

2025.05.01- 2025.07.29

philosophy
economics

Crémieux, j'accuse

I don’t know how to internet, but I know you’re supposed to get into beefs. In the nearly five years this blog has existed, the closest I’ve come was once politely asking Slime Mold Time Mold, “Hello, would you like to have a beef?” They said, “That sounds great but...

2025.04.25- 2025.07.29

My more-hardcore theanine self-experiment

Theanine is an amino acid that occurs naturally in tea. Many people take it as a supplement for stress or anxiety. It’s mechanistically plausible, but the scientific literature hasn’t been able to find much of a benefit. So I ran a 16-month blinded self-experiment in the hopes of showing it...

2025.04.24- 2025.07.29

experiment

Links for April

(1) Romulus, Remus, and Khaleesi You probably heard that Colossal Biosciences recently reconstructed the DNA of dire wolves and created live dire wolves, bringing them back from extinction. But have you heard that also they did no such thing and you’re a bunch of chumps? Jeremy Austin, Director of the...

2025.04.17- 2025.07.29

random

Paper

Paper is good. Somehow, a blank page and a pen makes the universe open up before you. Why paper has this unique power is a mystery to me, but I think we should all stop trying to resist this reality and just accept it. Also, the world needs way more...

2025.04.10- 2025.07.29

life

Limits of smart

Take me. Now take someone with the combined talents of Von Neumann, Archimedes, Ramanujan, and Mozart. Now take someone smarter again by the same margin and repeat that a few times. Say this Being is created and has an IQ of 300. Let’s also say it can think at 10,000×...

2025.03.27- 2025.07.29

Rewarding ideas

If you were in South America 12,000 years ago and you discovered where a bunch of glyptodonts were hiding or you figured out a better glyptodont hunting method, you could tell your tribal band and later they would say, thank you for helping us kill these delicious glyptodonts we now...

2025.03.20- 2025.07.29

economics

My 16-month theanine self-experiment

The internet loves theanine. This is an amino acid analog that’s naturally found in tea, but now sold as a nutritional supplement for anxiety or mood or memory. Many people try theanine and report wow or great for ADHD or cured my (social) anxiety or changing my life. And it’s...

2025.03.06- 2025.07.29

experiment

Bayes is not a phase

People make fun of techie/rationalist/effective-altruist types for many weird obsessions, like stimulants or meditation or polyamory or psychedelics or seed oils or air quality or re-deriving all of philosophy from scratch. Some of these seem fair to me, or at least understandable.

2025.02.27- 2025.07.29

math

The first RCT for GLP-1 drugs and alcoholism isn't what we hoped

GLP-1 drugs are a miracle for diabetes and obesity. There are rumors that they might also be a miracle for addiction to alcohol, drugs, nicotine, and gambling. That would be good. We like miracles. But we just got the first good trial and—despite what you might have heard—it’s not very...

2025.02.20- 2025.07.29

science

Do you need permission from the government to do independent research?

Some of my favorite internet people sometimes organize little community experiments. Like, let’s eat potatoes and see if we lose weight. Or, let’s take some supplements and see if anxiety goes down. I’ve toyed with doing one myself, to see if theanine (a chemical in tea) really helps with stress....

2025.02.13- 2025.07.29

policy
effort

Car trouble

Some time ago—I'm not sure when exactly—my car started rattling. It would only rattle: 1. When the engine was on, sitting idle, or 2. When accelerating with just the right amount of throttle. This rattle, I did not like it. It sounded like a tiny spoon in a garbage disposal....

2025.02.06- 2025.07.29

life

Algorithmic ranking is unfairly maligned

What does “algorithmic ranking” bring to mind for you? Personally, I get visions of political ragebait and supplement hucksters and unnecessary cleavage. I see cratering attention spans and groups of friends on the subway all blankly swiping at glowing rectangles. I see overconfident charlatans and the hollow eyes of someone...

2025.01.23- 2025.07.29

I am offering mentoring

What is this? I am offering to act as a “mentor”, to you, in case that seems like something you’d find useful. How will it work? We will meet three times for 30 minutes. During those sessions, I’ll try to help you do whatever it is you’re trying to do....

2025.01.16- 2025.07.29

Links for January

On April 20, 1979, President Carter was on vacation fishing in a pond in his hometown of Plains, Georgia. After returning to DC, he mentioned to some White House staffers that a large rabbit had swum towards him 'hissing menacingly' and he'd had to scare it away. Four months later,...

2025.01.09- 2025.07.29

random

Counterintuitive effects of minimum prices

The Attorney General of Massachusetts recently announced that drivers for ride-sharing companies must be paid at least $32.50 per hour. Now, if you're a hardcore libertarian, then you probably hate the minimum wage. You need no convincing and we can part now on good terms. But what if you're part...

2025.01.02- 2025.01.03

policy
math

Things to argue about over the holidays instead of politics III

1. How much should a couple talk if they are having dinner in a restaurant, after being together for one month/year/decade? 2. If it's safer to face backwards in vehicles, then what is it that's shared by infants in cars and soldiers on military planes but no one else? 3....

2024.12.19- 2025.01.03

lists

Tactical parenting

WHERE TO BUY

2024.12.05- 2025.01.03

Underrated reasons to be thankful IV

That you can apparently learn to meditate your way into a state of profound relaxation and bliss and pleasure on par with heroin or orgasm, which was certainly not on my bingo card, which is good because bliss is good, and also because it’s cool that there can still be...

2024.11.28- 2025.01.03

lists

OK, I can partly explain the LLM chess weirdness now

We recently talked about a mystery: All large language models (LLMs) are terrible at chess. All, that is, except for gpt-3.5-turbo-instruct, which for some reason can play at an advanced amateur level. This is despite the fact that this model is more than a year old and much smaller than...

2024.11.21- 2024.11.23

computer
AI
data

Something weird is happening with LLMs and chess

A year ago, there was a lot of talk about large language models (LLMs) playing chess. Word was that if you trained a big enough model on enough text, then you could send it a partially played game, ask it to predict the next move, and it would play at...

2024.11.14- 2024.11.23

computer
AI
data

Attitudes one can take towards people who have behaved badly

Have you ever noticed that reality has some properties that are quite annoying? For example, have you noticed that some people do bad things? And yet those same people sometimes have interesting ideas? Occasionally, I’ll bring up an idea in conversation and someone will gently remind me that the person...

2024.11.07- 2024.11.23

policy
discourse

Sloth was not the right answer

Once, when I was 12, my parents asked me what my favorite animal was. And I thought: OK, self, what you’ve got here is a totally safe question. There are no “right” or “wrong” animals and no need to worry about any consequences. Let your heart soar! At school recently,...

2024.10.31- 2024.11.01

policy

Please show lots of digits

Hi there. It’s me, the person who stares very hard at the numbers in the papers you write. I’ve brought you here today to ask a favor. Say you wrote something like this: There were 446 students tested. The left-handed students passed 5.67664% more often than right-handed students. Many people...

2024.10.24- 2024.11.01

writing
math

Arithmetic is an underrated world-modeling technology

Of all the cognitive tools our ancestors left us, what’s best? Society seems to think pretty highly of arithmetic. It’s one of the first things we learn as children. So I think it’s weird that only a tiny percentage of people seem to know how to actually use arithmetic. Or...

2024.10.17- 2024.11.01

math

Against dystopian views of high-speed audiobook listening

There was recently a thread on r/slatestarcodex about “What life hacks are actually life changing”. One of the examples given was: Buy audiobooks to read much more books, listen at 1.5-2x speed This led to the following thread (later removed): Aaa: A midwit in making Bbb: Audio books help people...

2024.10.10- 2024.11.01

discourse

The real data wall is billions of years of evolution

Say you have a time machine. You can only use it once, to send a single idea back to 2005. If you wanted to speed up the development of AI, what would you send back? Many people suggest attention or transformers. But I’m convinced that the answer is “brute-force”—to throw...

2024.10.03- 2024.11.01

AI
science

Consciousness will slip through our fingers

I guess life makes sense: For some reason there’s a universe and that universe has lots of atoms bouncing around and sometimes they bounce into patterns that copy themselves and then those patterns go to war for billions of years and voilà—you. But consciousness is weird. Why should those patterns...

2024.09.12- 2024.11.01

philosophy
science

Thoughts while watching myself be automated

An old friend visited me a few weeks ago. And we soon got to chatting about—what else—how long will it be before all human intellectual work is automated. My position was: I dunno, because things are moving fast right now but what if we run out of data or scaling...

2024.09.05- 2024.11.01

AI
writing

Nursing doubts: Is breastfeeding good?

If you ask the internet if breastfeeding is good, you will soon learn that YOU MUST BREASTFEED because BREAST MILK = OPTIMAL FOOD FOR BABY. But if you look for evidence, you'll discover two disturbing facts. First, there's no consensus about *why* breastfeeding is good. I've seen experts suggest at...

2024.08.29- 2024.11.01

health
effort

It's probably just money: Why hosts do well at the Olympics

They say that countries win more medals when they host the Olympics. But do they? And if so, why? I've seen various theories: 1. Jetlag. Maybe it's because athletes from the host country don't need to travel as far. 2. Esprit de corps. athletes feel lifted up by the local...

2024.08.08- 2024.11.01

conspiracy

Tactical typing

tap tap tap tap tap tap tap tap tap tap tap tap tap tap

2024.08.01- 2024.11.01

Is there a homeless crisis?

A few years ago, I took a look at the data on homelessness in the United States. We now have new data (and a new reality) so let’s revisit things, this time in superior list format. 1. After holding steady for years, homelessness recently jumped up a bit.

2024.07.25- 2024.11.01

policy
data
effort

Why doesn't advice work?

In ancient India, there was a long-running feud between the Pandavas and the Kauravas. Duryodhana, leader of the Kauravas, planned a huge war to end things forever. Krishna warned that this would lead to the total destruction of both sides and made every effort to forge a peace.

2024.07.11- 2024.11.01

life

Let's stop counting centuries

Here's a sentence from Steven Pinker's Enlightenment Now: 'The Enlightenment is conventionally placed in the last two-thirds of the 18th century, though it flowed out of the Scientific Revolution and the Age of Reason in the 17th century and spilled into the heyday of classical liberalism in the first half...

2024.07.04- 2024.11.01

discourse

Datasets that change the odds you exist

It's October 1962. The Cuban missile crisis just happened, thankfully without apocalyptic nuclear war. But still: Apocalyptic nuclear war easily could have happened. Crises as serious as the Cuban missile crisis clearly aren't *that* rare, since one just happened. You estimate (like President Kennedy) that there was a 25% chance...

2024.06.27- 2024.11.01

math

Obvious travel advice

1. Mindset matters more than where you go. 2. Who you go with matters more than where you go. 3. After seeing each other for a few months, many new couples take a short trip, which often ends in an apocalyptic, relationship-destroying fight. My theory is that's the trip working...

2024.06.20- 2024.11.01

life
lists

Fighting me and other survey results

Thank you to the 966 people who filled out the survey. And thanks also to the strangely numerous people who read all the questions and wrote to me about them but didn’t answer them. (Though: why?)

2024.05.09- 2024.11.01

data

Dynomight internet survey

Hello, clever charming good-looking people. I am in need of a richer understanding of: you, the nature of reality, consciousness, ethics, dynomight internet website, and have therefore created a survey, which you can take it here. (You don't need to create an account or give your email or any such...

2024.05.02- 2024.11.01

Thoughts on seed oil

A friend has spent the last three years hounding me about seed oils. Every time I thought I was safe, he’d wait a couple months and renew his attack: “When are you going to write about seed oils?”

2024.04.18- 2024.08.28

health
science
data
effort

Fahren-height

The Internet is well into middle-age, and yet doesn’t seem to have answered humanity’s most pressing question: If you pour boiling hot water from various heights, how much does it cool in flight?

2024.03.28- 2024.08.28

experiment

Things that don't work

1. Acupuncture. 2. Phenylephrine. 3. Multivitamins. 4. Phosphoric acid. (for nausea) 5. Tree-based knowledge organization. The physical world whispers to us to organize information into "trees". For example, say you write something on a piece of paper, put the paper into a binder, put the binder into a box, put...

2024.03.21- 2024.08.28

lists

Everything is espionage: Things I learned researching Assange

Who is this Julian Assange guy? Is he good or bad? Did he do espionage? Why is the US so obsessed with getting its hands on him? At dynomight.net we don't like to answer questions. Instead, we prefer to replace them with more abstract questions that we *also* don't answer....

2024.03.14- 2024.08.28

policy
effort

Using axis lines for good or evil

Say you want to plot some data. You could just plot it by itself. Or you could put lines on the left and bottom. Or you could put lines everywhere. Or you could be weird. Which is right? Many people treat this as an aesthetic choice. But I'd like to...

2024.02.29- 2024.08.28

writing
data
math

Taste games

I bet you like it when beautiful people laugh at your jokes. And I bet you like the taste of sugar. I sure do. But what about camping or dubstep or chain restaurants or installation art? What about blue cheese or pick-up trucks or reality TV? Me, I like some...

2024.02.15- 2024.08.28

bourdieu

What if you just bought everyone air purifiers?

I haven’t written about air quality in a while. Ominously, sometimes people ask me if I still care about it. So, lest anyone think I have some kind of dreadful healthy mental balance, I thought I should do some Fermi estimates.

2024.01.25- 2024.08.28

air
conspiracy

Fancy math doesn't make simple math stop being true

What are you supposed to do when someone disagrees with you using a bunch of math you can’t understand? I’ve been thinking about that recently because of the NordICC colonoscopy trial. It took 85k Europeans aged 55-64, invited a third of them for a free one-time screening colonoscopy, and then...

2024.01.11- 2024.08.28

math
science
health

Shorts for January

I made a graph of polling data in Finland on support for joining NATO from 1998 up through Finland joining NATO in April 2023.

2024.01.04- 2024.08.28

random

Things to argue about over the holidays instead of politics II

Should you try to make your life historically significant? Or should you specifically not do that? Is there too much glamour in modern life, or too little? Why doesn't basketball have height classes, like boxing has weight classes? Would a height cap for the NBA increase the mean level of...

2023.12.21- 2024.08.28

lists

Your tastes are a point in space

Here’s something that seems weird: More educated people are more often Democrats. Richer people are more often Republicans. Richer people tend to be more educated. Don’t believe me? Here, I made some figures. (All data comes from the General Social Survey for 2016-2022, variables income16, partyid, and degree.) All three...

2023.12.14- 2024.08.28

bourdieu

Underrated reasons to be thankful III

That Earth is hot—maybe half from radioactive decay and half from leftover heat from when the planet formed—and heat is atoms jiggling around and the faster they jiggle the more often electrons absorb some kinetic energy and spit it out as a photon and when this happens on the surface...

2023.11.23- 2024.08.28

lists

Bourdieu's theory of taste: a grumbling abrégé

I recently noticed that when I buy beer, I sometimes get Belgian Trappist Quintupel. And I sometimes get American Fermented Value Product. But never Blue Moon or Sam Adams or Peroni or Becks or Pilsner Urquell. Why? I guess I thought I did that because I was… quirky and free-spirited?...

2023.11.16- 2024.08.28

bourdieu
effort

What's so great about tunnel man?

We all have our peculiarities. One of mine is an obsession with tunnel man. A few years ago, a 31-year-old man inherited some land and decided—for no particular reason—to dig a tunnel. He found that he liked tunneling so he kept doing it. He gradually spent more and more time...

2023.11.09- 2024.08.28

life

Are language models good at making predictions?

To get a crude answer to this question, we took 5000 questions from Manifold markets that were resolved after GPT-4’s current knowledge cutoff of Jan 1, 2022. We gave the text of each of them to GPT-4, along with these instructions: You are an expert superforecaster, familiar with the work...

2023.11.02- 2024.08.28

AI
data
forecasting

You’re Invited to a Colonoscopy!

Colonoscopies are the first-line method for preventing colorectal cancer in America —and almost nowhere else. But do they work? We finally have a comprehensive trial, but it’s left gastroenterologists with more questions than answers.

2023.10.26- 2024.08.28

health
effort

The midwit home

Reading a book one night, you decide to turn on the lights. And suddenly it’s obvious. Hauling your body across the room just to flip a switch is absurd. So you decide to get smart lights. Two hours later, your world is pain: Z-Wave Zigbee MQTT Matter Thread Echo Google...

2023.10.12- 2024.08.28

life

Grug on diet soda and autism

grug try to not yell about bads in science news too much because why make same yells over and over? and grug have no new learns, just feel people maybe sometimes not use old learns and grug family often plead to someday have conversation about alternate topic but rare for...

2023.10.05- 2024.08.28

health
science

Can I take ducks home from the park?

Language models, whatever. Maybe they can write code or summarize text or regurgitate copyrighted stuff. But… can you take ducks home from the park? If you ask models how to do that, they often refuse to tell you. So I asked six different models in 16 different ways. Baseline query...

2023.09.14- 2024.08.28

AI
data

My heuristics for interacting with humans

I don’t sense that I’m viewed as particularly skilled at human interaction. Still, some poor fools sometimes ask me for advice, and I find myself repeating the same little speech. For context, in life as a human you will often face difficulties with the other humans. Like: Alice keeps stealing...

2023.09.07- 2024.08.28

life

Contra four-wheeled suitcases, sort of

I have an almost moral dislike for the four-wheeled suitcase. Bear with me here. Before 1972, luggage had no wheels. Then, Bernard Sadow patented this design with four small wheels and a strap: By all accounts, this design wasn’t great and it didn’t become popular. Things changed in 1987 when...

2023.08.24- 2024.08.28

life

Thoughts on high-stakes college admissions

I wouldn't suggest literally dismantling Harvard. (Caution is advised before destroying your most successful institutions.) My real thesis is more like: College admissions are (1) highly competitive and (2) consequential. Maybe those alone are bad? Maybe we should think about them instead of exclusively arguing about admissions criteria?

2023.08.14- 2024.08.28

policy

Maybe the problem is that Harvard exists

Say that when people apply for their first driver's license, 1% get Executive Platinum licenses. For life, they get free use of toll roads and can drive 20% over the speed limit. People argue—fiercely argue—if these should be awarded based on the written test, the driving test, or based on...

2023.08.10- 2024.08.28

policy

Conspiracy theory: Electric cars make more air pollution than gas cars

Claim: Per kilometer driven down the road, electric cars create more particulate air pollution than gas cars. That’s ignoring all other emissions and anything that happens at a power plant or during manufacturing.

2023.07.27- 2024.08.28

conspiracy

WHO aspartame brouhaha

On July 14, two different arms of the WHO released their findings on aspartame. One designated it “possibly carcinogenic to humans”, while the other concluded that “dietary exposure to aspartame does not pose a health concern”. The FDA took the unusual step of issuing a statement saying that it disagreed...

2023.07.17- 2024.08.28

science

Notes on Lawrence of Arabia

1. There’s an early scene where Lawrence leaves a band of Bedouin people to go look for a man who was lost in the desert. He does this despite fierce warnings that after the sun rose, he would almost certainly die. The film seems to admire this choice, despite that...

2023.07.13- 2024.08.28

My stupid noise journey

Interested in how to be a big dumb idiot and over-complicate things and waste time and money and endure tons of stress and some real physical pain all by thinking that you’re cleverer than you actually are? (No?) Looking back, I was always sensitive to noise but never realized it...

2023.06.27- 2024.08.28

life

The second system problem

In The Vulnerable World Hypothesis, Nick Bostrom imagines we found a technological "black ball"—say a way to make a nuclear weapon with just some glass, some metal, and a battery. He concludes that society in our current "semi-archic default condition"—could not survive such a discovery. We'd have to build a...

2023.06.20- 2024.08.28

I still think it's very unlikely we're observing alien aircraft

Some suggest there might be alien aircraft on Earth now. The argument goes something like this: A priori, there’s no reason there shouldn’t be alien aircraft. Earth is 4.54 billion years old, but the universe is 13.7 billion years old, and within a billion light years of Earth there are...

2023.06.14- 2024.08.28

conspiracy

Taxonomy of procrastination

Nobody gets everything they want in life. That's OK. If everyone was a sportscaster-rockstar-scientist-model-author-influencer-billionaire, we still wouldn't be happy because everyone else would be too busy to be impressed. But still, it's a little sad when you don't at least *try* to get what you want. My mental model is:...

2023.05.08- 2024.08.28

life

Numbers without which it's impossible to talk about weight loss

We lose weight when we burn more calories than we eat. But how much weight do you lose for a given caloric deficit? This isn’t complicated. But it’s not trivial either, because the body has two forms of energy reserves: Body fat is familiar. This is used for long-term energy...

2023.05.04- 2024.08.28

health
science

Reasons after nonpersons

The year is 2029 and you’ve finally done it. You’ve written the first AI program that is so good—so damn good—that no one can deny that it thinks and has subjective experiences. Surprisingly, the world doesn’t end. Everything seems fine. Except—all those bongcloud philosophy 101 thought experiments people have done...

2023.04.24- 2024.08.28

philosophy

The hard problem of feelings

Here's something weird. At least, I think it's weird. The hard problem of consciousness is why it feels like something to be alive. Physics does a good job of explaining everything that happens in terms of fields and atoms and whatnot—you're eating a burrito because moments after the big bang,...

2023.04.05- 2024.08.28

philosophy
science

Why didn't we get GPT-2 in 2005?

The ancient Romans were never great at building ships and never tried to explore the Atlantic. The basic reason seems to be—why bother? The open ocean has no resources and is a vast plane of death. But imagine that in 146 BC after the Romans killed everyone in Carthage, they...

2023.03.21- 2024.08.28

science
economics
AI

First-principles on AI scaling

It's hard not to feel blinkered by recent AI progress. Every week there seems to be an AMAZING NEW SYSTEM with UNPRECEDENTED CAPABILITIES. It's impossible not to wonder what the future holds. Until recently, I thought progress was so dizzying and unpredictable that the best bet was to throw all...

2023.03.06- 2023.07.11

AI
economics

Your friend the language model

I originally wrote this as part of a much longer post on LLM scaling laws and possible barriers/trajectories for progress. The idea was to provide the minimal background necessary to understand all that stuff. But in retrospect, many people probably don’t need all this background, so I decided to make...

2023.03.03- 2023.07.11

Winner take all science

By the early 1950s, it was known thanks to people like Miescher, Levene, and Chargaff that genes were carried by long polymers in the cell nucleus. It was also known that those polymers had a sugar-phosphate backbone and were composed of four different nucleobases—cytosine (C), guanine (G), adenine (A) and...

2023.01.19- 2023.07.11

science
economics

Buy more copies

I’ve always wanted to believe that you could get enormous advantage in life just by willing to be weirder than other people. And when I read about people like Amos Tversky (leave movies early! go jogging in your underwear! throw away your mail unopened!) it almost seems true. But sadly,...

2023.01.05- 2023.07.11

life

Things to argue about over the holidays instead of politics

1. Is the existence of the Guinness Book of World Records a positive or a negative for humanity on net? 2. Bragging about material possessions is low-status in much of the West, forcing people to jostle through subtle wealth cues (travel, education, hobbies, food). But then why isn’t there another...

2022.12.24- 2023.07.11

lists

Advice on being managed

When you shift from being managed to also sometimes managing others, you have a predictable shift in perspective and a lot of obvious-in-retrospect insights. In the spirit of “saying obvious things is good” here are a few. Be honest Since you’re a fallible human, you will screw things up. And...

2022.12.15- 2023.07.11

life

Historical analogies for large language models

How will large language models (LLMs) change the world? No one knows. With such uncertainty, a good exercise is to look for historical analogies—to think about other technologies and ask what would happen if LLMs played out the same way. I like to keep things concrete, so I'll discuss the...

2022.12.08- 2023.07.11

AI
history

Valid arguments with invalid conclusions

Some time ago, I was driving somewhere with a friend and I claimed that someone was operating with subterfuge. There was an odd silence, after which my friend quietly asked, 'What was that?' Something was wrong. Was she offended? I said, '...subterfuge?' She gave me a brief and somewhat pitying...

2022.12.01- 2023.07.11

lists

Underrated reasons to be thankful II

That when cyanobacteria arose 2 billion years ago and filled the atmosphere with oxygen which killed off most species and removed methane from the air so temperatures crashed and the entire planet was encased in ice, this didn’t quite extinguish all life but eventually led to the rise of eukaryotes...

2022.11.24- 2023.07.11

lists

A modest proposal: For preventing the heat in bathwater in Britain

Europe is in an energy crisis. There are lots of things that might be done, but most are slow or expensive or painful or don't accomplish much. But here's a little daydream: 1. We use lots of energy to heat our homes. 2. We use lots of energy to heat...

2022.10.27- 2022.10.30

conspiracy

How much does a CT scan affect life expectancy?

You're probably aware that if you get a CT scan, that exposes you to a fair of radiation. But I've always wondered—how much should I care about that? So here's an attempt at a rough estimate. As always, I think the right way to quantify things is in terms of...

2022.10.14- 2022.10.30

science
conspiracy

Prediction market does not imply causation

We all want to make good decisions. But it’s hard because we aren’t sure what’s going to happen. Like, say you want to know if CO₂ emissions will go up in 10 years. One of our best ideas is to have people bet. For example, I might wager my $4...

2022.10.06- 2022.10.30

forecasting
math

The anxiety of the moderate

It's tempting for the moderate to strut. Isn't it enlightened to see truth in both sides? To calmly rise above the squabbling? But there's a strong argument against moderation: Public opinion has been evolving for hundreds of years. Many things that are moderate today were 'extreme' very recently. Isn't it...

2022.09.29- 2022.10.30

policy

The conspiratorial Monty Hall problem

The Monty Hall problem has now been a pox on humanity for two generations, diverting perfectly good brains away from productive uses. Hoping to exacerbate this problem, some time ago I announced a new and more pernicious variant: What if you and Monty try to cheat?

2022.09.23- 2022.10.30

math

Why ‟controlling for a variable” doesn't (usually) work

I’ve always seen cathedrals as presenting a kind of implicit argument to atheists. Something like: God must exist, because otherwise it would have been insane for people to build this:

2022.09.19- 2022.10.30

math

Effectiveness beats accuracy

We believe stuff because it benefits us to believe it, not necessarily because it is true. Phrased that way, it seems like an obvious point—of course evolution made us like that, what else could it have done? But this has surprising explanatory power.

2022.09.08- 2022.09.13

philosophy

Does gratitude increase happiness?

I was wrong about gratitude. I thought it was a guaranteed way to become happier and went around proclaiming we should be thankful because: "Hokey, unfashionable techniques like practicing gratitude turn out to have strong scientific evidence behind them." Sorry about that. In my defense, the internet is rife with...

2022.09.01- 2022.09.13

science
conspiracy

358 games of puzzle storm

A year ago, I started playing puzzle storm. This is a short game where you try to rapidly solve as many chess puzzles as you can in a few minutes.

2022.08.22- 2022.09.13

experiment

Rules for weird ideas

It’s frustrating to propose an idea and have people dismiss it just because it’s weird. You’ve surely seen people ridicule ideas like worrying about wild animal suffering or computers becoming sentient or comets crashing into the planet. I’ve encountered some of this for claiming aspartame is likely harmless but ultrasonic...

2022.08.15- 2022.09.13

discourse

A model for journalistic copypasta

Here’s a thing that happens sometimes:

2022.08.11- 2023.05.14

discourse

Shorts for August

I think the bluetooth speaker is a pox on our civilization. Random noise makes it hard for me to concentrate. I tried the obvious thing and created a passive-aggressive mathematical model, but that unexpectedly failed to make the problem go away. So I recently looked into technological solutions. The most...

2022.08.08- 2023.05.14

random

Old jokes

I've noticed a disturbing phenomenon: Many people who only recently watched the US version of The Office seem to think that Michael Scott invented That's what she said. Of course, the actual joke was supposed to be a ghoulish delight at seeing someone cluelessly use a joke that was so...

2022.08.04- 2023.05.14

history

No soap radio

No soap, radio is a sort of prank where you tell a "joke" with a meaningless punchline. The hope is that your victim will laugh despite not understanding it, thereby enabling you to ridicule them. Apparently, this works best if you do it with an accomplice who will pretend to...

2022.08.01- 2023.05.14

lists

Nobody optimizes happiness

Everyone I know is scheming for the future. They've got big goals and get up every day and work like mad to try to achieve them. I've always found something odd about that: Despite all this effort, people don't seem to think too much about the specifics of what would...

2022.07.28- 2023.05.14

life

Litter and circles of internalization

Say you're a dictator fed up with your citizens' littering. What can you do? Option 1: Make littering illegal. This is obvious, but it's clearly no magic bullet since everyone's already done it and yet littering hasn't perished from the earth. Why? Primarily because it's hard to catch people. You...

2022.07.25- 2023.05.14

economics
policy

Notes on the Balkans

People say the cafes in Albania are great. This is true. They are similar to Italy but with environments that are more laid-back and… better? Standards are remarkably high even at roadside cafes next to petrol stations.

2022.07.21- 2023.05.14

lists

What I learned trying to classify abortion access across the rich world

With abortion in flux in the US, I realized I didn’t have a clear picture of how things looked in the rest of the rich world. When I searched, I found lots of maps, like the following from Politico and Wikipedia:

2022.07.18- 2022.07.23

policy
data

Thoughts on the potato diet

You've probably heard about the potato diet. If not, here it is: 1. Eat potatoes. 2. As many as you want. 3. Oil and salt are OK. 4. Don't eat other stuff. I thought this sounded delightfully absurd so I tried it for a few weeks. Here are some observations....

2022.07.11- 2022.07.23

health

Shorts for July

Has a gorilla killed a human? Gorillas, despite their immense size and strength, are not aggressive. They are vegetarian except for eating insects and occasionally small rodents. In 1986, a five-year-old child fell into the gorilla pit in the Channel Islands zoo and was knocked unconscious. The crowd watched in...

2022.07.07- 2022.07.23

random

Blocked persons and letters of marque

Article I, Section 8, Clause 11 of the US Constitution reads: "The Congress shall have Power to declare War, grant Letters of Marque and Reprisal, and make Rules concerning Captures on Land and Water;" What are these Letters of Marque and Reprisal? Essentially: Permission for private citizens to carry out...

2022.07.04- 2022.07.23

conspiracy

Candidate final bosses

Evil. The problem is people doing bad things that they know are bad. Everyone just needs to stop demanding bribes and littering and murdering each other. Moral confusion. No, in reality, most people try to do the right thing most of the time. The problem is that our idea of...

2022.06.27- 2022.07.23

lists

Contra Wirecutter on the IKEA air purifier

IKEA has recently made some moves into the air purifier space. The Wirecutter is not impressed. They allow that this purifier is inexpensive and pretty. But still, it's terrible and you should instead buy a different purifier that totally coincidentally happens to pay affiliate marketing commissions. When reading this review,...

2022.06.20- 2022.07.23

air
science
conspiracy

Aspartame: Once more unto the breach

Look, I get it. Diet Coke tastes sweet because it has aspartame in it. Aspartame is a weird synthetic molecule that’s 200 times sweeter than sucrose. Half of the world’s aspartame is made by Ajinomoto of Tokyo—the same company that first brought us MSG back in 1909.

2022.06.16- 2023.06.29

science
health
effort

Diet Coke probably isn't a cognitive performance enhancer

"Very ambitious and successful and competitive and rich person loves Diet Coke" has been in the news recently, and friend of the blog Aaron Bergman proposes a theory as to why. Spelled out in more detail, it goes like this: 1. There are nine essential amino acids, one of which...

2022.06.13- 2023.06.29

conspiracy
science

Why it's bad to kill Grandma

1. In college, I had a friend who was into debate competitions. One weekend, the debate club funded him to go to a nearby city for a tournament. When I asked him how it went, he said: Oh, I didn’t have enough time to prepare, so I just skipped the...

2022.06.09- 2023.06.29

philosophy

Social dynamics of bluetooth speakers

Say you're at a park or a beach. How many people will have bluetooth speakers on? It seems to me there are three types of people: The main characters always turn on their speakers regardless of what anyone else is doing. The haters never turn on a speaker, no matter...

2022.06.06- 2023.06.29

math
policy

Shorts for June

Here's a collection of a few disconnected follow-ups plus some questions thrown into the void. Contra me on teaching. A couple of months back, I took issue with Parrhesia's proposal to make final exams worth 100% of the final grade, on the grounds that it wouldn't work in practice. "You...

2022.06.02- 2023.06.29

random

What caused the hallucinations of the Oracle of Delphi?

In ancient Greece, the Oracle of Delphi operated out of the Temple of Apollo. This temple was destroyed in AD 390 by the Roman emperor Theodosius I in the name of Christianity. Still, it's a real place and the ruins still exist today. You can go see them. How did...

2022.05.30- 2023.06.29

science
history

Don't blame ethylene for bad tomatoes

Ethylene is the source of a lot of confusion, particularly when it comes to tomatoes. In *Tomatoland*, Barry Estabrook writes: "An industrial Florida tomato is harvested when it is still hard and green and then taken to a packinghouse, where it is gassed with ethylene until it artificially acquires the...

2022.05.26- 2023.06.29

science

Why is it traitorous to understand the people you disagree with? Six models

There's a certain phenomenon I often wonder about, one that only seems to occur with culture war topics. I usually try to avoid culture war, but it's impossible to discuss this phenomenon without an example and I don't see the point of tiptoeing around. So, abortion. For better or for...

2022.05.23- 2023.06.29

policy
discourse

The madness of reduced medical diagnostics

1. Say we’re detectives. We’re getting a drink and have the following conversation: Me: Ah, this case is killing me. You: Then why don’t you go talk to Big Eddie? Me: Nah—that would do more harm than good. You: How’s that? Me: Well, we all know Big Eddie often lies....

2022.05.19- 2023.06.29

policy
science

Why nuclear weapons aren't getting bigger

The Little Boy bomb detonated over Hiroshima in 1945 was a fission weapon where a critical mass of uranium-235 created a chain reaction of atoms splitting into lighter atoms, releasing energy and neutrons. While such weapons are very destructive, they are “inefficient” in that as the bomb starts to explode,...

2022.05.16- 2023.06.29

science
conspiracy

So you want to invent a nuclear weapon

1. You’re in the mood for destruction. One day, you hear about this phenomenon of “radiation” where matter gives off energy. You think—perhaps you can harness this property of nature to make a big boom. Apparently matter is made of discrete objects called atoms, which have nuclei made up of...

2022.05.11- 2022.10.19

science
effort

Ethylene in the food supply chain

Imagine you’re flying a plane full of babies. Initially, they’re all sleeping peacefully. But if one wakes up, they’ll start crying. That will eventually wake up some of the neighbors who will also start crying, and soon your plane will be an unhappy place. In this situation, you’d try very...

2022.05.09- 2022.10.19

science

Ethylene for fun and profit and produce

Amos answered Amaziah, "No prophet am I, not any prophetic symbol, but a shepherd am I, who used to prick the sycamore fruit that it might duly ripen for the market." —Amos 7:14 (translated by Samuel Cox) While I'd like to understand the world, reality isn't structured to make that possible....

2022.05.05- 2022.10.19

science

My attempted cult recruitment

I was working in a cafe when a woman sat nearby and asked me if there was anywhere in the neighborhood she could see some art. Hoping to get back to work, I made a couple of suggestions. She asked many follow-up questions. Where were these places? Did I like...

2022.04.05- 2022.10.19

life
psychology

Creative nonfiction training exercises

After a mutant spider bite, you take Fluffer to a dog park and realize he is bark-gossiping about you with the other dogs. What is he saying?

2022.04.04- 2022.10.19

writing

Why I don't believe in long-term thinking

The argument for long-term thinking goes something like this: ● There are X people alive today. ● In the future, there will be Y≫X people alive. ● All people have equal moral weight. ● Therefore the state of the world in the future is more important than the state of...

2022.04.01- 2022.10.19

philosophy
policy

Arguing without warning

Probably most social norms are like that---even if we disagree with them, they're too entrenched to change. That's why it's important to watch for critical points where norms could go either way. Here's one such case: Say someone wrote something. You think they're wrong, so you write a manifesto arguing...

2022.03.24- 2022.10.19

discourse

You, your parents, and the hotness of who you marry

When you look for someone to marry, you’ll care about many things: Are they smart? Healthy? Kind? Funny? Educated? Employed? And are they, like, wicked hot?

2022.03.21- 2022.10.19

science

How I learned to stop worrying and structure all writing as a list

Say you want to learn about sleep. You see two articles: 1. "Theory and practice of effective sleep" 2. "Seven insights about sleep" Are you drawn to the second? I am. Of course, I hate myself for this because I've internalized the idea that lists are cheap and low-class. But...

2022.03.17- 2023.04.15

lists
writing

Teaching is a slow process of becoming everything you hate

In a recent post, Parrhesia suggested that course grades should be 100% determined by performance on a final exam—an exam that could be taken repeatedly, with the last attempt being the course grade. (See also the discussion at r/slatestarcodex.) The idea is that grades are supposed to measure what you...

2022.03.11- 2023.04.15

policy

Do economies tend to converge or diverge?

I used to have a mental model that economic growth was about: 1. Figuring out clever ways to do stuff. 2. Doing it. Rich countries are at the technological frontier, so they have to do both of these things at the same time. Since figuring things out is hard, they...

2022.03.07- 2023.04.15

economics
data

So you're thinking about writing on the internet

I'm not famous or successful, so why should you care what I think? Well, I have some observations about the dynamics of writing on the internet that I think my (even more non-famous and non-successful) self would have benefited from when I started. The whole idea of writing is crazy:...

2022.02.14- 2023.07.28

writing

Warby Parker multiverse

In your particular branch of spacetime, you may see things like this:

2022.02.14- 2023.07.28

A summary of the research on gas stoves and health

Many recent articles have raised the idea that gas stoves are harmful to health:

2022.02.09- 2023.07.28

air
effort

Reasons and Persons: The case against the self

You want to go to Mars. There’s a machine that will scan and destroy all the matter in your body, send the locations of every atom to Mars, and then recreate it. You worry: Does this transport you, or does it kill you and make a new copy?

2022.02.01- 2023.07.28

philosophy

How to use analogies for good not evil

To fix the analogy, you'd need some bizarre scenario where during the party America had lots of fun and created lots of dirty dishes but also, like, discovered new partying methodology and new ways to use dishes so they are easier to wash?

2022.01.24- 2023.07.28

discourse

Things you're doing but don't want to be doing

You learn a lot about people from their bedrooms. Some have TVs or books or laptops. Some have blackout curtains or stuffed animals or bottles of pills. But, vast as human experience is, one thing is consistent: Everyone has once-worn clothes strewn on the furniture. Why? In one sense, it's...

2022.01.10- 2023.07.28

life

Homosexuality and evolution

Here are two things that seem to be true:

2021.12.21- 2023.07.28

philosophy
science

Plans you're not supposed to talk about

You're in love. The two of you want to share the rest of your lives. So, being good game theorists, you have a romantic dinner and plan how to align your interests for mutually beneficial optimal strategic behavior. Your goals are (1) to Odysseus yourself so that even if you're...

2021.12.14- 2023.07.28

philosophy

Reasons and Persons: Watch theories eat themselves

You live with a group of utterly rational and self-interested people on an island, gathering coconuts to survive. Tired of working so hard, Alice builds a machine and implants it in her brain. This machine leaves her rational except when it comes to fulfilling threats, which she always does regardless...

2021.12.07- 2023.07.28

philosophy
effort

How many extra days of life do you get from taking statins?

It’s hard to say how much running increases lifespan. To test it, you should take thousands of people, tell half to run, and then follow everyone for years while making sure they follow their instructions. That’s not easy, and even if you did it, you still have to worry: Did...

2021.12.02- 2022.07.15

science
health

Effective selfishness

Here are some things I'd like to know about how to live my life: 1. If I eat Brussels sprouts for dinner tonight instead of pizza, how much longer do I live (in expectation, in minutes)? 2. What should I eat to avoid getting tired after lunch? 3. If I...

2021.11.30- 2022.07.15

life

How the United States didn't ban the death penalty

Early America inherited much of Britain’s bloodthirsty but arbitrary approach to the death penalty, with theoretical penalties for things like theft and rebellious children that were rarely carried out. However, executions did happen for crimes short of murder: Death was a common penalty for repeated theft, and in 1644, a...

2021.11.26- 2022.07.15

policy
history

Underrated reasons to be thankful

That our atmosphere has low enough pressure and levels of deuterium that nuclear fission in air doesn’t cause hydrogen atoms to fuse into helium, meaning that the first nuclear bomb test in 1945 didn’t in fact ignite the atmosphere and engulf the planet in flames, which was still a bit...

2021.11.25- 2022.07.15

lists

How France banned the death penalty

Capital punishment was debated during the French revolution (1789-1799). Due to the influence of Beccaria and Voltaire, the discussion was similar to how the death penalty is discussed today. Robespierre said “The state’s execution of the death penalty is legalized murder.” (Though as Hammel points out, “given his later role...

2021.11.24- 2022.07.15

policy
history

How the United Kingdom banned the death penalty

When Beccaria wrote On Crimes and Punishments in 1764, there were around 150 crimes punishable in Britain by death. This “bloody code” included crimes as small as the theft of some items worth 1 shilling. For context, a skilled worker at the time could earn around 20 shillings in a...

2021.11.23- 2022.07.15

policy
history

How Germany banned the death penalty

Germany came close to banning the death penalty several times in its early history: In the 1848 revolution, the new constitution almost completely banned it, but this was immediately overturned by the conservative restoration. When Germany unified in 1870-1871 it again came very close to abolition before a late intervention...

2021.11.22- 2022.07.15

policy
history

The death penalty as a lens on democracy

Who is really in charge? In democracies, policies are correlated with public opinion, but why? The obvious explanation is that people choose representatives, and those representatives give them what they want. But maybe the causal arrow points in the other direction—maybe elites choose policies, and the public gradually figures that...

2021.11.22- 2022.07.15

policy
history

A breakdown of the data on the homeless crisis across the U.S.

Is the US in the midst of a homelessness crisis? Many people think so, but that's largely based on based on anecdotes. What does the data say? At a glance, this doesn't look very crisisy. Since 2015, things have gone up by less than three percent. Still, I think there...

2021.11.11- 2022.07.15

policy
effort

The main thing about P2P meth is that there's so much of it

Sam Quinones was recently on Econtalk and in the Atlantic talking about methamphetamines and homelessness. He points out that “old” meth was made from ephedrine and that “new” meth is made from a chemical called Phenylacetone or P2P. He suggests that new meth might be chemically different in a way...

2021.10.26- 2022.08.22

science
policy

Two conspiracy theories about cola

Our first conspiracy theory has all the best qualities: 1. It sounds insane. 2. At first, the facts seem to support it. 3. Later, the facts lead to disquieting reevaluations of the medical system. So here's the conspiracy: "Cola has so much sugar in it that you'd throw up from...

2021.10.20- 2022.08.26

conspiracy

The big alcohol study that didn't happen: My primal scream of rage

What does drinking do to your health? We can say two things with confidence: 1. Drinking is associated with lots of health problems. 2. Heavy drinking is bad for you. Here's a graph of some associations. Someone who averages 10 drinks per day is 50x more likely to get cirrhosis...

2021.10.04- 2022.08.26

science
conspiracy
effort

Statistical nihilism and culture-war island hopping

The Guadalcanal campaign was the first major offensive operation by the Allies in the Pacific theater of World War 2. This nightmarish battle ran for six months and—while an Allied victory—involved losses so high the US Navy refused to release casualty figures for years afterward. When this campaign ended in...

2021.08.26- 2022.08.26

policy
discourse

Political polarization is partly a sample bias illusion

We’re here on Earth for such a short time. So, I often wonder—what do people spend their days thinking about? Judging from the ever-increasing amount of screaming everywhere, the answer would seem to be politics. But is that right? What opinions do normal people really have?

2021.08.19- 2022.08.26

policy

General factors of intelligence and physical fitness

Is there a general factor of intelligence?

2021.08.17- 2022.08.26

psychology
data
math

It’s perfectly valid for a trait to be more than 100% heritable

All psychological traits are heritable. This is the best replicated finding in all of behavioral genetics. Some recent numbers include: Religiosity: 44% Schizophrenia: 79% Big five personality traits: ~40% But what, exactly, does "heritability" mean? I used to have a mental model something like this: Each person has some number...

2021.07.15- 2022.08.20

science
math

Does the gender-equality paradox actually exist?

The gender-equality paradox is the (disputed) idea that countries with more gender equality have fewer women in STEM careers. While there’s lots of debate in the scientific literature about the causal implications of this paradox, there’s no agreement about a more basic question: Does the paradox even exist, or is...

2021.07.01- 2021.12.06

policy
data
conspiracy

A review of early split-brain experiments

What happens if you cut your cortex in half? When this was first tried on animals, the answer seemed to be not much. But starting in the late 1950s, a series of experiments found that very weird things happen under careful testing. These experiments are fascinating for their implications into...

2021.06.17- 2021.12.06

science
data
conspiracy

Alcohol, health, and the ruthless logic of the Asian flush

Say you’re an evil scientist. One day at work you discover a protein that crosses the blood-brain barrier and causes crippling migraine headaches if someone’s attention drifts while driving. Despite being evil, you’re a loving parent with a kid learning to drive. Like everyone else, your kid is completely addicted...

2021.05.30- 2021.09.02

health
science

Are some personalities just better?

I don't know if you like parties. I don't know if you're organized or punctual. But I bet you don't like rotting smells or long swims in freezing water. That is to say: People are different, but only in certain ways. What's the difference? Hypothermia enthusiasts have few kids, so...

2021.05.06- 2021.09.03

psychology
data

The case against ultrasonic humidifiers

Let me state two things upfront: It is possible to use ultrasonic humidifiers safely. Regardless of how they’re used, we don’t know for sure that ultrasonic humidifiers are dangerous. Absolutely true! However, as typically used, ultrasonic humidifiers might cause health problems. This is supported by an abundance of peer-reviewed research...

2021.04.18- 2021.12.22

air
conspiracy

The irrelevance of test scores is greatly exaggerated

Here are some claims about how grades (GPA) and test scores (ACT) predict success in college. "In a study released this month, the University of Chicago Consortium on School Research found—after surveying more than 55,000 public high school graduates—that grade point averages were five times as strong at predicting college...

2021.04.14- 2022.10.24

policy
conspiracy
data

Better air quality is the easiest way not to die

What do you worry about more: Getting exercise, eating vegetables, or the air you breathe? While most things that clearly improve health are well known, one is insanely underrated: Fixing your air. I suspect this is often the most effective health intervention, period. Nothing else is so important while also...

2021.04.02- 2021.07.23

air
health
effort

The Cuboid: A DIY air purifier that's better than a box-fan

I love box-fan based air purifiers. They are cheap, trivial to build, and people around the world have done experiments to show they actually work.

2021.02.26- 2021.03.02

air
experiment

What I learned from reading about writing

Have a consistent ruleset. Titles are a black art. Have empathy for the brain’s parser. It’s impossible to follow all the conventions. Write a thesis statement even if you hate it

2021.02.07- 2021.03.02

writing

Are ethics all a lie?

Some people claim ethics aren’t practical. Others make a grim philosophical argument:

2021.01.28- 2021.02.16

philosophy

How to run without all the pesky agonizing pain

I used to think the people I saw running were insane. They were confused about life. Whatever the benefits of running, nothing could justify that much suffering. Runners were cut from a different cloth. They had a strength of will I lacked. I would never be one of them.

2021.01.25- 2021.02.16

life
health

What happens if you don't fill out that ethnicity form?

If you ever joined a large organization in the US, you filled out an ethnicity form. Here’s a typical one:

2021.01.15- 2021.02.16

policy

Napoleon's failure in Russia as an analogy for T-cell based viral immunity

In June of 1812 Napoleon assembled the largest European army in history and invaded Russia. After months of bloody fighting, the French finally arrived in Moscow in September, surprised to find the city mostly abandoned. That night, remaining Russians set fires across the city, eventually burning most of it to...

2020.12.22- 2021.09.03

science

Experiments on a $50 DIY air purifier you can make in 30s

Bad air is bad for you. The air purifier market, though, is a mess. Every purifier uses incompatible proprietary filters, presumably to lock you into buying replacements. How do we know these actually work? Few seem to publish lab tests. And why does it cost $100-$300 for a big plastic...

2020.12.15- 2021.09.03

air
experiment

Sales tax creates more unnecessary pain than value added tax

It turns out that sales tax has a huge, gigantic, terrible flaw: It punishes specialized businesses. A value added tax (VAT) has no such problems.

2020.12.09- 2021.09.03

economics
policy

Why I'm skeptical of universal basic income

Universal basic income (UBI) is an odd duck. Proponents range from futurists to libertarians to social democrats. Why this weird range of people?

2020.12.03- 2021.11.28

economics
policy

Why fairness is basically unobservable

We want to know if things are fair. Do some groups of people tend to get a raw deal in company hiring or university admissions or court sentences?

2020.11.23- 2021.03.14

policy

Policy proposals and what we don't know about them

You can’t measure police bias using simple population ratios. A better idea is to check if police behave differently when it’s dark, but this doesn’t give any firm conclusions either. What else can we do?

2020.11.21- 2021.03.14

policy

Simpson's paradox all the way down

It's hard to get into Oxford. Is it easier if your parents are rich? In 2013, The Guardian showed noticed something disturbing: Students from (expensive) independent schools were accepted more often that students from state schools (28% vs 20%). Of course, a natural question to ask is, did students from...

2020.11.16- 2022.12.11

math

The simplest possible way to convert Celsius and Fahrenheit

This is a new way to convert temperatures between Celsius and Fahrenheit. It’s not the most accurate method, but it’s surely the easiest.

2020.10.30- 2022.02.18

science
math

Pragmatic reasons to believe in formal ethics

Here’s a “low-brow” take on ethics that’s worth taking seriously:

2020.10.29- 2021.03.11

philosophy

It's hard to use utility maximization to justify creating new sentient beings

Cedric and Bertrand want to see a movie. Bertrand wants to see Muscled Duded Blow Stuff Up. Cedric wants to see Quiet Remembrances: Time as Allegory. There’s also Middlebrow Space Fantasy. They are rational but not selfish - they care about the other’s happiness as much as their own. What...

2020.10.19- 2021.03.11

philosophy
math

The veil of darkness

Measuring police bias using simple ratios doesn’t work. You can never cleanly separate the impact of race from other associated factors.

2020.10.12- 2021.02.09

policy
math

Your ratios don't prove what you think they prove

Watching people discuss police bias statistics, I despair. Some claim simple calculations prove police bias, some claim the opposite. Who is right?

2020.10.08- 2021.02.09

policy
math

Doing discourse better: Stuff I wish I knew

Talking about sugar Nick and Maria want to talk about sugar. Does it reduce lifespan? They disagree, but are honest and principled. They want to find the truth and agree on it. How should they talk? Take turns? Try hard to be polite and respectful? Allow interruptions? Search for origins...

2020.09.29- 2021.02.09

discourse

Making the Monty Hall problem weirder but obvious

Here’s an Obvious Problem: There are 10 doors. A car is behind a random door, goats behind the others. Do you want what’s behind door 1, or what’s behind all the other doors? That’s easy, right? Well, how about the Monty Hall problem? There are three doors. A car is...

2020.09.17- 2021.12.16

math

What happens if you drink acetone?

Question: Should you drink acetone?

2020.09.14- 2022.08.25

science
conspiracy

Comparative advantage and when to blow up your island

Economists say free trade is good because of “comparative advantage”. But what is comparative advantage? Why is it good? This is sometimes considered an arcane part of economics. (Wikipedia defines it using “autarky”.) But it’s really a very simple idea. Anyone can use it to understand the world and make...

2020.09.11- 2022.08.25

economics

In defense of Myers-Briggs

The Myers-Briggs Personality Indicator (MBTI) gets a lot of scorn. It would seem that the the MBTI is nonsense, but the Big Five is a real, scientifically valid test. To be sure, there's nothing wrong with the Big Five. But these haughty claims that it's dramatically better than the MBTI...

2020.06.12- 2021.03.01

psychology