Monthly Archives: June 2014

Medicine, As Not Seen On TV

Since I was twelve years old, my life has taken place in a series of Four Year Intervals. Four years of high school. Four years of college. Four years of medical school. Four years of residency. Four times four, nice … Continue reading

Invisible Women

[EDIT: Two readers – Pseudo-Erasmus and Noah Smith – have chimed in with very plausible explanations centering around labor force participation and productivity. See also my Mistakes page.] A commenter asked in yesterday’s discussion on The Two-Income Trap: why did … Continue reading

Book Review: The Two-Income Trap

A long time ago I wrote a kinda-tongue-in-cheek defense of keeping modafinil – a relatively safe and effective stimulant – illegal. My argument was that if everybody can use stimulants to work harder and sleep less without side effects, then … Continue reading

SSC Gets World Cup Fever

I’ve been following the World Cup lately. Not watching it, of course. I wouldn’t enjoy that at all. But following it has just the right combination of overly complicated procedures and total lack of physical action to appeal to the … Continue reading

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The Placebo-Singers

In medical school, I was always told that the word “placebo” came from the Latin “I will please”, because patients tried to get better to please doctors, or the pill was just there to please patients, or something like that. … Continue reading

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Court-ing Disaster

[EDIT: Some lawyers in the comments say various factors about this case sound very fishy. I know what I heard at the lecture, but it’s starting to seem more likely that the lecturer made this whole thing up or at … Continue reading

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The Art Of Writing Randian Monologues

I mentioned on Twitter yesterday that Ayn Rand’s book The Art of Fiction contained advice on how to determine the proper length for characters’ philosophical speeches. Enough people wanted to know what it said that I’ve copied it out: Such … Continue reading

Ground Morality In Party Politics

My name sounds a lot like Scott Aaronson’s and I get confused for him a lot. I try to encourage this confusion, since it can only increase people’s opinion of me. So let me propose a tool for investigating morality … Continue reading

Money On The Ground

I hear the following joke far too often: Economist 1: Look, there’s $20 on the ground! Economist 2: No there isn’t. If there were, someone would have picked it up already. It annoys me because it makes fun of a … Continue reading

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More Links For June 2014

Nassim Taleb’s List of Aphorisms, Rules, and Heuristics. 135: “Studying neurobiology to understand humans is like studying ink to understand literature”. I have spent enough time around Finns that I find the Finnish Problems meme pretty funny. An angle of … Continue reading

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