Monthly Archives: May 2014

The Wonderful Thing About Triggers

[Content note: hypothetical spiders] I complain a lot about the social justice movement. Or for a change, I sometimes complain that the media is too friendly to the social justice movement. So when the media starts challenging the movement, with … Continue reading

Don’t Fear The Filter

There’s been a recent spate of popular interest in the Great Filter theory, but I think it all misses an important point brought up in Robin Hanson’s original 1998 paper on the subject. The Great Filter, remember, is the horror-genre-adaptation … Continue reading

On Types of Typologies

My MBTI type is “the type of person who did some looking into it years ago and knows that the MBTI is neither particularly scientific nor particularly consistently applied”. Or, as it’s also called, INTJ — tropylium.tumblr.com I’m sick of … Continue reading

Compound Interest Is The Least Powerful Force In The Universe

I. I’m still iffy on Vox. Some of its reporting is excellent – their article on Governor Cuomo and the shift away from progressivism in the Democratic Party was especially enlightening. Other parts, especially the editorials, are atrocious and utterly … Continue reading

Apologia Pro Vita Sua

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 pill that will decrease her drug … Continue reading

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Nydwracu’s Fnords

I. The fnords first appear in Anton-Wilson and Shea’s book Illuminatus. Educators, operating as tools of the titular conspiracy, hypnotize all primary school children to have a panic reaction to the trigger word “fnord”. The children, who remember nothing of … Continue reading

SSC Gives A Graduation Speech

[Trigger warning for deliberately provoking horror about graduates’ real-world post-college prospects] [Epistemic status: intended as persuasive speech, may somewhat overstate case] Ladies and gentlemen, I am honored to have been invited to speak here at the great University of [mumble]. … Continue reading

Nerds Can Be Bees, Too

Jonathan Haidt has a saying: “People are ninety percent chimp and ten percent bee”. It’s supposed to mean that people usually push each other around selfishly to gain status, but occasionally have an ability to come together into a single … Continue reading

You Kant Dismiss Universalizability

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 everything” of moral philosophy. But lately, I’ve been starting … Continue reading

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More Links For May 2014

Consider taking the Effective Altruism Survey, especially if you are an effective altruist but you’re welcome to take it even if you’re not. Clever ideas: pay a small amount of money for cigarette butts picked up. “In just a few … Continue reading

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