Readit NewsRationalDino commented on Mysticism and Empiricism asteriskmag.com/issues/04... · Posted by u/Anon84
Currently Christianity is associated with conservatism, hence more anti-drug behavior. And this isn't exactly incorrect these days either. As the population of self identifying Christians in the US shrinks, those that remain are apt to be those with a very strong ideological base.
That is true. But in the early 60s, before the rise of the Religious Right, no such association existed. For example https://www.pbs.org/thisfarbyfaith/journey_4/p_2.html shows the strong Christian support for the Civil Rights Movement.
Also it wouldn't have mattered back then. In the early 60s, drugs were associated with neither conservativism or liberalism.
Anecdote time. My ex's grandfather was a very conservative, very Christian lawyer. He happened to also be a lawyer for some people who were involved with LSD in the early days, and hence actually tried LSD in the time frame of the research article in question. He used to laugh about how he was someone that nobody would think had taken LSD.
It was a different time.
RationalDino commented on Mysticism and Empiricism asteriskmag.com/issues/04... · Posted by u/Anon84
One problem with the experiment mentioned at the beginning of the article is that the participants still knew that a drug was being administered, which by itself would be enough to precipitate a reaction. Another aspect that I'd be curious about is who these religious people were... What denomination. No Christians I know would agree to doing this - Drugs? No. Partly out of a sense of morals, but more so because they wouldn't want their experience with God tainted by chemicals. There probably are other experiments out there where religious ppl were administered drugs but did not know it... Those results would be interesting to read about, including subsequent beliefs or positions about one's standing with God.
The experiment in question happened over 60 years ago. This was before the War on Drugs, before the hippies, and before most people had any familiarity with these drugs.
Public attitudes were very different. And the attitudes of Christians today are largely shaped by political battles that had not yet happened. Thus your current experience is not a good predictor of how easy it was to find Christians back then who would have been willing.
In fact I used to know some very conservative people who were exposed to LSD back in that early era. (They were old back when I knew them, and are dead now.) And based on what they told me, I would predict no resistance to such an experiment in 1962.
RationalDino commented on Epistemic Learned Helplessness (2019) slatestarcodex.com/2019/0... · Posted by u/gHeadphone
I am strongly reminded of https://thingofthings.substack.com/p/rationalists-and-the-cu..., which concluded that the kind of person who believes complex irrational arguments is also the kind of person who falls for conspiracy theories, weird cults, and various kinds of whacky beliefs.
That said, I would advocate a more systematic version of the article's conclusion that we should accept that we can't think. Instead borrow an idea from Superforecasting. One way to get better at predictions is to start by constructing an outside view, and an inside view.
Suppose we want to predict the odds of a thing happening. First we make a tally of roughly comparable situations. In how many did the comparable thing happen?
The inside view is a detailed analysis of how the thing could happen this time. You can analyze this to a Bayesian analysis.
The problem with the inside view is that, confronted with a way something could have happened, we overestimate all of the probabilities. We wind up too certain that it did. Conversely if we don't think of a way that it could happen, we wind up being too certain that it could not.
So the inside view has too much variance. We fix that by adjusting the inside view towards the outside view. How much you should do this takes some practice to figure out. But actually doing this makes your predictions more accurate.
Instead of calling this epistemic learned helplessness, I would call the need to adjust to the outside view as estimated epistemic uncertainty. And yes, people who practice doing this really do become a lot better at predicting what will prove to be true in uncertain circumstances.
It's much more likely that they just pinned this story on some guy who died in a motorcycling accident.
The point of killing someone over some wrong they did you is publicizing it after the fact. If you don't take credit for it, it doesn't have any deterrent power.
Or alternately, they staged what appeared to be a fatal accident to put him in a witness protection program.
Or alternately, he did it and then tried to back out of the deal. Now arranging an apparently accidental death then became the best way to keep security intact.
The one theory that makes no sense is that they intended his death from the beginning.
Based on his biographies, I think that Feynman had ADHD. He never demonstrated an ability to do things because he thought he should do them. And, as this story shows, trying just resulted in a demotivated and unproductive Feynman. On the other hand he accomplished great results when pulled by desire. Especially in the form of play.
Surely You Must Be Joking does a great job of showing how he kept coming back to play throughout his life. Everything from lock picking at Los Alamos, to playing the bongo drums.
What Do You Care What Other People Think has an extended description of the creation of Appendix F about the shuttle disaster. See https://history.nasa.gov/rogersrep/v2appf.htm for that. As someone who has been in the state, it is clear that he was in a state of hyperfocus. I've never matched what Feynman could do, but it comes as no surprise to me that he'd realize that he could get away with learning about a topic others didn't want him to learn, because he could do so quickly enough that they wouldn't believe that he'd possibly have learned it.
I highly recommend both books, Appendix F, and of course, https://calteches.library.caltech.edu/51/2/CargoCult.htm. (If psychologists had followed up what he said 50 years ago, the Replication Crisis would have been discovered 40 years earlier than it was. Oh well, missed opportunities.)
RationalDino commented on You Don't Batch Cook When You're Suicidal (2020) cookingonabootstrap.com/2... · Posted by u/Breadmaker
That's correlation at best (as you said, but worth emphasizing).
And IQ is a problematic metric for anything other than how good you are at taking IQ tests.
IQ measurement definitely has major flaws.. But IQ is better correlated with job performance than job interviews are.
As they say, perfect is the enemy of good. IQ tests are good. We do ourselves no favors by attempting to downplay what standardized testing tells us.
Also, regarding food and water .. it's not hard to find pictures and reports of thriving markets, cafés, clubs. Materially, I'm pretty sure Gazans are better off than Egyptians.
Of course that doesn't much diminish their grievances which is based on lost land and and lack of freedom of movement.
According to GDP per capita, before the war Gaza was at $3500/year, while Egypt was at $3700/year. Which says that Egyptians are probably better off than Gazans. Even before the problems of the blockade, lack of electricity, and the current disruptions of war conditions.
So no, people in Gaza are not better off than people in Egypt. Though they are closer than I would have guessed.
Let's also not forget the unbearable plight of all Russian HNers, who due to circumstances beyond their control are now isolated from the rest of the world. Many of them suffer greatly and fear for their own lives as Ukrainian drone attacks hit deep into Russian territory. We shouldn't treat this situation as a football match, where people only support "their" side. Instead, peaceful coexistence with both sides fulfilling their obligations according to the Minsk agreements is required.
IMO this would require that both Putin and Zelensky do not stay in power.
Funny, my mother-in-law lives in Russia and describes nothing of this sort of fear.
Young men there do have trouble working internationally. And they do have legitimate fears. But the fears are more along the line of being conscripted and sent to the front lines, and not the rather insignificant risk of drones.
Two giant factors come to mind. Genetics and racism.
Consider one genetic factor. I have ADHD. That means that it is extremely likely that one or both of my parents had ADHD. (My father, certainly. My mother, maybe. She certainly had a genetic propensity for depression that her children struggle with.) This resulted in an unstable family home. Unsurprisingly this resulted in me falling into their adverse environment category. As an adult I've done reasonably well. But yes, my challenges have affected my children. But were those challenges because I grew up with horrible problems? Or was it because I have a well-known genetic condition that causes challenges?
On genetics, I highly recommend https://press.princeton.edu/books/hardcover/9780691190808/th.... GWAS studies can only tease out genetic correlations for European Caucasians. Part of that is that they can only be done with a lot of data from somewhat related people. And part of that is that with Caucasians it is reasonable to assume that bad results are due to personal characteristics, and not racism.
But we can do it for Caucasians. And so we can know for Caucasians that the impact of genetics is about as strong as the impact of socioeconomic status. We can also separate the effects of things like the effect of when you first had sex from the genetics that make you first have sex early or late. That one is fun, because it turns out that the genetics matters a lot, and when you first did it only matters because it is correlated with your genetics. We can look at the impact of reading to kids. Yeah, that's pretty much genetics as well. We put a lot of effort into getting kids read to more, and didn't get demonstrable results for it.
So you see, understanding the impact of genetics is very important for what public policies are likely to work. They tell a great just-so story. But I'm not convinced.
Moving on, what about racism? They trace the story of Alex. Hispanic. He had a terrible upbringing. Which could be caused by the impact of racism on his family. He had a terrible adulthood. Which could be caused by the impact of racism on him. He's just as good an example for "racism sucks" as he is for "adverse childhood sucks". Which is it? We don't know. What should we do about it? That's still an open question!
And finally, let's look at personal responsibility. I don't agree with condemning poor people for being poor. But suppose you are born in whatever circumstances, with whatever genetics. What's the best way to improve your life? Judging from my experiences and understanding of human nature, it is to encourage an attitude of personal responsibility. Don't worry too much about what's outside of your control. Focus only on what's in your control, and try to do the best that you can.
Ironically, this matters more when the deck is stacked against you. If you have family background and racism are holding you back, you can't afford the third strike of a self-destructive attitude. But if your background and race give you resources, your attitude probably doesn't hurt you as badly.
Does "personal responsibility" make for a good social policy? No. But should we encourage people to individually embrace it? Absolutely!
I strongly disagree with their cavalier dismissal of the idea.