Polyamory Is Boring | Slate Star Codex
I. I remember explaining polyamory to my father when I met him in Utah. He just shrugged and said “I guess I’m too old-fashioned for that sort of thing to make sense.” I feel bles…| Slate Star Codex
I. I remember explaining polyamory to my father when I met him in Utah. He just shrugged and said “I guess I’m too old-fashioned for that sort of thing to make sense.” I feel bles…| Slate Star Codex
As a perk of my job, I get a free subscription to the American Journal of Psychiatry. I am still not used to this. No enraging struggles with paywalls. No “one year embargo on full text”…| Slate Star Codex
Good news! 42% of doctors can correctly answer a true-false question on p-values! That’s only 8% worse than a coin flip! And this paragraph is your friendly reminder that six months after thi…| Slate Star Codex
I have frequently heard people cite John Ioannidis’ apparent claim that “90% of medical research is false”. I think John Ioannidis is a brilliant person and I love his work and I …| Slate Star Codex
[Previously in series: The Atomic Bomb Considered As A Hungarian High School Science Fair Project, Four Nobel Truths] I. Someone summed up my previous post as “Hungarian education isn’t…| Slate Star Codex
[Previously in series: Antidepressant Pharmacogenomics: Much More Than You Wanted To Know; SSRIs: Much More Than You Wanted To Know, etc. This is all preliminary and you should not take it as a rea…| Slate Star Codex
I. The Body Keeps The Score is a book about post-traumatic stress disorder. The author, Bessel van der Kolk, helped discover the condition and lobby for its inclusion in the DSM, and the brief fora…| Slate Star Codex
[Thanks to Sarah H. and the people at her house for help understanding this paper] The predictive coding theory argues that the brain uses Bayesian calculations to make sense of the noisy and compl…| Slate Star Codex
“Human values (‘Elua’) mean hedonism and free love and namby-pamby happiness, and I’m not on board with that.” (example) Are you a human? If so, congratulations. Your …| Slate Star Codex
Many people believe that the rich have captured government for their own ends. For example, rich people use their money and power to decrease tax rates on the wealthy and sabotage legislation meant…| Slate Star Codex
From a recent Charter Cities Institute report:From India’s independence from the British Raj in 1947 to the early 1990s, the country’s economic policy was largely socialist. In the 1980s some early…| Slate Star Codex
I’ve mentioned this a few times, but it’s worth going over in detail. The full title is Clusters Of Individual Experiences Form A Continuum Of Persistent Non-Symbolic Experiences In Adu…| Slate Star Codex
Thanks for bearing with me the past few months. My new blog is at I’ll try to have a less unwieldy domain name working soon.| Slate Star Codex
There is an apocryphal story about the visit of the great atheist philosopher Diderot to the Russian court. Diderot was quite the clever debater, and soon this scandalous new atheism thing was the …| Slate Star Codex
Three years ago, in Going Loopy, I wrote:If the brain had been designed by an amateur, it would enter a runaway feedback loop the first time it felt an emotion. Think about it. You see a butterfly.…| Slate Star Codex
Ramelteon isn’t a bad drug. It’s just that its very existence stands as a condemnation of the entire medical system. All sleep medications have to straddle a very fine line between R…| Slate Star Codex
[Epistemic status: So, so speculative. Don’t take any of this seriously until it’s replicated and endorsed by other people.] I. If you’ve ever wanted to see a glitch in the Matrix…| Slate Star Codex
[This is a slightly edited repost of an essay from my old LiveJournal] A friend recently complained about how many people lack the basic skill of believing arguments. That is, if you have a valid a…| Slate Star Codex
[Content note: Suicide. May be guilt-inducing for people who feel like burdens. All patient characteristics have been heavily obfuscated to protect confidentiality.] The DSM lists nine criteria for…| Slate Star Codex
I do occasional work for my hospital’s Addiction Medicine service, and a lot of our conversations go the same way. My attending tells a patient trying to quit that she must take a certain pil…| Slate Star Codex
I. Suppose I were to come out tomorrow as gay. I have amazing and wonderful friends, and I certainly wouldn’t expect them to hate me forever or tell me to burn in Hell or anything like that. …| Slate Star Codex
[content warning: mild ideohazards about rumination that might make people who have anxiety disorders have anxiety disorders more effectively, in the bad sense of “effectively”] [episte…| Slate Star Codex
Suppose a lot of that stuff about bravery debates is right. That lots of the advice people give is useful for some people, but that the opposite advice is useful for other people. For example, R…| Slate Star Codex
[Conflict of interest notice: Author Garett Jones sometimes reads this blog and is generally great.] Garett Jones’ book Hive Mind is classic pop science writing: an intriguing hypothesis, a l…| Slate Star Codex
I. Albion’s Seed by David Fischer is a history professor’s nine-hundred-page treatise on patterns of early immigration to the Eastern United States. It’s not light reading and not…| Slate Star Codex
Today during an otherwise terrible lecture on ADHD I realized something important we get sort of backwards. There’s this stereotype that the Left believes that human characteristics are socia…| Slate Star Codex
I. Willpower: Rediscovering the Greatest Human Strength by Roy Baumeister and John Tierney attracted me with the following pitch: there are only two quantities in psychology that have been robustly…| Slate Star Codex
I do understand the logic behind not allowing just any old contract to be legally binding. The reductio ad absurdum is the EULA that says “By opening this product, you agree not to sue us if …| Slate Star Codex
I. Imagine a little kingdom with a quaint custom: when a man likes a woman, he offers her a tulip; if she accepts, they are married shortly thereafter. A couple who marries sans tulip is considered…| Slate Star Codex
[Trigger warning: attempt to ground morality] God help me, I’m starting to have doubts about utilitarianism. Whose Superstructure? The first doubt is something like this. Utilitarianism requi…| Slate Star Codex
I. Some people buy voluntary carbon offsets. Suppose they worry about global warming and would feel bad taking a long unnecessary plane trip that pollutes the atmosphere. So instead of not doing it…| Slate Star Codex
I. Recently spotted on Tumblr:“This is going to be an unpopular opinion but I see stuff about ppl not wanting to reblog ferguson things and awareness around the world because they do not want negat…| Slate Star Codex
I. The big news in psychiatry this month is Cipriani et al’s Comparative efficacy and acceptability of 21 antidepressant drugs for the acute treatment of adults with major depressive disorder…| Slate Star Codex
Back when I was in college, my chief complaint about my philosophy course was that it spent all its time teaching stuff by Aristotle or Plato or Descartes that was just obviously wrong. I sort of a…| Slate Star Codex
[Content warning: autism, disability, psychiatry, abuse] I. Vox: We’ve called autism a disease for decades. We were wrong. I have mixed feelings about this. On the one hand, I know and like m…| Slate Star Codex
1. Israel historically has only a moderate number of Nobels per capita On Friday, I discussed the phenomenon of Hungarian science geniuses, and conjectured it was because of Hungary’s high co…| Slate Star Codex
I. A group of Manhattan Project physicists created a tongue-in-cheek mythology where superintelligent Martian scouts landed in Budapest in the late 19th century and stayed for about a generation, a…| Slate Star Codex
I. A few months ago, I learned about Laszlo Polgar, the man who trained all three of his daughters to be chess grandmasters. He claimed he could make any child a genius just by teaching them using …| Slate Star Codex
I. Julian Jaynes’ The Origin Of Consciousness In The Breakdown Of The Bicameral Mind is a brilliant book, with only two minor flaws. First, that it purports to explains the origin of consciou…| Slate Star Codex
Remember Galton’s experiments on visual imagination? Some people just don’t have it. And they never figured it out. They assumed no one had it, and when people talked about being able t…| Slate Star Codex
[Epistemic status: Speculative. I can’t make this post less condescending and elitist, so if you don’t like condescending elitist things, this might not be for you.] Developmental psych…| Slate Star Codex
I. A recent breakthrough in pseudoscience: the location of the Great Pyramid of Giza encodes the speed of light to seven decimal places. This is actually true. The speed of light in a vacuum is 299…| Slate Star Codex
I. From Identity, Personal Identity, and the Self by John Perry:”There is something about practical things that knocks us off our philosophical high horses. Perhaps Heraclitus really thought …| Slate Star Codex
I. “Silliest internet atheist argument” is a hotly contested title, but I have a special place in my heart for the people who occasionally try to prove Biblical fallibility by pointing …| Slate Star Codex
People have asked me for advice on writing nonfiction online, so here are some tips: 1. Divide things into small chunks Nobody likes walls of text. By this point most people know that you should ha…| Slate Star Codex
“Universal love,” said the cactus person. “Transcendent joy,” said the big green bat. “Right,” I said. “I’m absolutely in favor of both those things.…| Slate Star Codex
[EDIT 2/13/21: This post is originally from June 2020, but there’s been renewed interest in it because the NYT article involved just came out. This post says the NYT was going to write a posi…| Slate Star Codex
Jacobite – which is apparently still a real magazine and not a one-off gag making fun of Jacobin – summarizes their article Under-Theorizing Government as “You’ll never hear…| Slate Star Codex
[This is a repost of the Non-Libertarian FAQ (aka “Why I Hate Your Freedom”), which I wrote about five years ago and which used to be hosted on my website. It no longer completely refle…| Slate Star Codex
[Related to: Specific vs. General Foragers vs. Farmers and War In Heaven, but especially The Gift We Give To Tomorrow] They say only Good can create, whereas Evil is sterile. Think Tolkien, where M…| Slate Star Codex
[PLEASE NOTE: This post is from 2014.] [Content note: Gender, relationships, feminism, manosphere. Quotes, without endorsing and with quite a bit of mocking, mean arguments by terrible people. Some…| Slate Star Codex
[Related: Tyler Cowen on rationalists, Noah Smith on rationalists, Will Wilkinson on rationalists, etc] If I were an actor in an improv show, and my prompt was “annoying person who’s ne…| Slate Star Codex
[Content warning: discussion of racism. Comments are turned off due to bad experience with the comments on this kind of material.] I. A set of questions, hopefully confusing: Alice is a white stay-…| Slate Star Codex
I. Eliezer Yudkowsky’s catchily-titled Inadequate Equilibria is many things. It’s a look into whether there is any role for individual reason in a world where you can always just trust …| Slate Star Codex
“I don’t practice what I preach because I’m not the kind of person I’m preaching to.” — J. R. “Bob” Dobbs I. I read Atlas Shrugged probably about a d…| Slate Star Codex
[Related to: Attitude vs. Altitude] I. I write a lot about the importance of IQ research, and I try to debunk pseudoscientific claims that IQ “isn’t real” or “doesn’t …| Slate Star Codex
When I hear scientists talk about Thomas Kuhn, he sounds very reasonable. Scientists have theories that guide their work. Sometimes they run into things their theories can’t explain. Then som…| Slate Star Codex
Last week the FDA approved esketamine for treatment-resistant depression. Let’s review how the pharmaceutical industry works: a company discovers and patents a potentially exciting new drug. …| Slate Star Codex
[Trigger warning: Death, pain, suffering, sadness] I. Some people, having completed the traditional forms of empty speculation – “What do you want to be when you grow up?”, “…| Slate Star Codex
“You say it’s important to overcome biases. So isn’t it hypocritical that you’re not trying to overcome whichever bias prevents you from realizing you’re wrong and I&#…| Slate Star Codex
[Previously: Hardball Questions (2016), More Hardball Questions (2016). I stole parts of the Buttigieg question from Twitter, but don’t remember enough details to give credit, sorry] Mr. Bide…| Slate Star Codex
Dr. Carson: One of your most important achievements as a neurosurgeon was inventing the functional hemispherectomy, a treatment for epilepsy in which the epileptic hemisphere of the brain is severe…| Slate Star Codex
[Content warning: Discussion of social justice, discussion of violence, spoilers for Jacqueline Carey books.] [Edit 10/25: This post was inspired by a debate with a friend of a friend on Facebook w…| Slate Star Codex
Official statistics say we are winning the War on Cancer. Cancer incidence rates, mortality rates, and five-year-survival rates have generally been moving in the right direction over the past few d…| Slate Star Codex
Ten years ago, everyone was talking about superintelligence, the singularity, the robot apocalypse. What happened? I think the main answer is: the field matured. Why isn’t everyone talking ab…| Slate Star Codex
I. Tyler Cowen writes about cost disease. I’d previously heard the term used to refer only to a specific theory of why costs are increasing, involving labor becoming more efficient in some ar…| Slate Star Codex
[Content warning: discussion of chronic pain and related conditions, and the debate over whether some of them may be psychological in origin. None of this is medical advice or a recommendation to s…| Slate Star Codex
I. Philosopher Amanda Askell questions the practice of moral offsetting. Offsetting is where you compensate for a bad thing by doing a good thing, then consider yourself even. For example, an envir…| Slate Star Codex
[Content note: hostility toward social justice, discussion of various prejudices] “Words! Words! Words! I’m so sick of words! I get words all day through. First from him, now from you. Is tha…| Slate Star Codex
I. Zero To One might be the first best-selling business book based on a Tumblr. Stanford student Blake Masters took Peter Thiel’s class on startups. He posted his notes on Tumblr after each l…| Slate Star Codex
They say money can’t buy love. But that was the bad old days of fiat money. Now there are dozens of love-based cryptocurrencies – LoveCoin, CupidCoin, Erosium, Nubilo – with marke…| Slate Star Codex
I. I don’t know much about gay history, but the heavily mythicized version of it I heard goes like this: At first open homosexuality was totally taboo. A few groups of respectable people with…| Slate Star Codex
One of the better things I’ve done with this blog was help popularize Nicholas Shackel’s “motte and bailey doctrine”. But I’ve recently been reminded I didn’t do…| Slate Star Codex
[Note: I really liked this book and if I criticize it that’s not meant as an attack but just as what I do with interesting ideas. Note that Robin has offered to debate me about some of this a…| Slate Star Codex
I. Ozy recently taught me the word “phatic”. It means talking for the sake of talking. The classic example is small talk. “Hey.” “Hey.” “How are you?”…| Slate Star Codex
I. Like most right-thinking people, I’d always found Immanuel Kant kind of silly. He was the standard-bearer for naive deontology, the “rules are rules, so follow them even if they ruin…| Slate Star Codex
I. An article by Adam Grant called Differences Between Men And Women Are Vastly Exaggerated is going viral, thanks in part to a share by Facebook exec Sheryl Sandberg. It’s a response to an e…| Slate Star Codex
I. There is a tide in the affairs of men. It cycles with a period of about three hundred years. During its flood, farms and businesses prosper, and great empires enjoy golden ages. During its ebb, …| Slate Star Codex
September 2014 There’s a screening test for bipolar disorder. You ask patients a bunch of things like “Do you ever feel really happy, then really sad?”. If they say ‘yesR…| Slate Star Codex
[Epistemic status: Very speculative, especially Parts 3 and 4. Like many good things, this post is based on a conversation with Paul Christiano; most of the good ideas are his, any errors are mine.…| Slate Star Codex
[This post was up a few weeks ago before getting taken down for complicated reasons. They have been sorted out and I’m trying again.] Is scientific progress slowing down? I recently got a cha…| Slate Star Codex
[Trigger warning for deliberately provoking horror about graduates’ real-world post-college prospects] [Epistemic status: intended as persuasive speech, may somewhat overstate case] Ladies an…| Slate Star Codex
I. Vox asks What Went Wrong With The Media’s Coronavirus Coverage? They conclude that the media needs to be better at “not just saying what we do know, but what we don’t know”. This rai…| Slate Star Codex
I. Someone recently linked me to Bryan Caplan’s post A Hardy Weed: How Traditionalists Underestimate Western Civ. He argues that “western civilization”‘s supposed defenders …| Slate Star Codex
[Related to: It’s Bayes All The Way Up, Why Are Transgender People Immune To Optical Illusions?, Can We Link Perception And Cognition?] I. Sometimes I have the fantasy of being able to glut m…| Slate Star Codex
I. Allan Crossman calls parapsychology the control group for science. That is, in let’s say a drug testing experiment, you give some people the drug and they recover. That doesn’t tell …| Slate Star Codex
Aquinas famously said: beware the man of one book. I would add: beware the man of one study. For example, take medical research. Suppose a certain drug is weakly effective against a certain disease…| Slate Star Codex
[Trigger warning: Some discussion of rape in Part III. This will make much more sense if you’ve previously read I Can Tolerate Anything Except The Outgroup] I. One day I woke up and they had …| Slate Star Codex
[Previously in sequence: Epistemic Learned Helplessness] I. “Culture is the secret of humanity’s success” sounds like the most vapid possible thesis. The Secret Of Our Success by …| Slate Star Codex
[Content note: scrupulosity and self-esteem triggers, IQ, brief discussion of weight and dieting. Not good for growth mindset.] I. I sometimes blog about research into IQ and human intelligence. I …| Slate Star Codex
[Content note: kind of talking around Trump supporters and similar groups as if they’re not there.] I. Tim Harford writes The Problem With Facts, which uses Brexit and Trump as jumping-off po…| Slate Star Codex
[Content warning: some ideas that might make you feel anxious about your political beliefs. Epistemic status: very speculative and not necessarily endorsed. This post is less something I will defen…| Slate Star Codex
I. In 2006, Bryan Caplan wrote a critique of psychiatry. In 2015, I responded. Now it’s 2020, and Bryan has a counterargument. I’m going to break the cycle of delay and respond now, and…| Slate Star Codex
[Edit 3/2014: I no longer endorse all the statements in this document. I think many of the conclusions are still correct, but especially section 1 is weaker than it should be, and many reactionarie…| Slate Star Codex
[Epistemic status: fiction] Thanks for letting me put my story on your blog. Mainstream media is crap and no one would have believed me anyway. This starts in September 2017. I was working for a sm…| Slate Star Codex
